the ordinary is in progress, and the lessons of the past tell us clearly enough that it is a vast social upheaval that we are experiencing.
To determine what are the appropriate methods for Socialists to employ at this juncture alike in educational propaganda, in industrial organisation, and in political policy, it is necessary to understand the nature and tendencies of present-day capitalism. And to do this, in turn, requires us to keep a most careful watch on every vital transformation in the methods and organisation of production.
Another industrial Revolution.
Amongst other things this war has proved to be a gigantic test of the capabilities as well as a stock-taking of the resources of modern industry. It has been a colossal trial of efficiency, in which have been revealed alike the weakness and the strength of the system. The industrial structure of every country at war has been strained to the uttermost to supply the requirements of its government and people. For once, a continuous demand has been maintained which, contrary to all the experience of the past, has become larger and larger the more fierce has been the competitive struggle. Industry has had to produce faster and ever faster every kind of raw material and many kinds of finished articles. It has had to increase the production despite the fact that it has had a constantly diminishing reserve of skilled and accustomed workmen. It has had to enlist in its depleted ranks tens and hundreds of thousands of white women and young persons, and men of the barbaric as well as the agricultural peoples. It has called into existence a new proletariat, a new reserve of labourers, composed of a class of persons who have never before minded a machine and seldom handled a tool.
For these inexperienced workers and to augment output, capitalist industry has needed to add to the number and variety of its tools. It has required to instal machines which turn out a great number of parts all of the same shape and size, and it has had to organise a type of factory where all these parts can be sorted and fitted together into the finished article. It has had to share out the manufacture of the parts of a shell, or an engine, or whatnot, among scores and hundreds of shops, all of them independent before
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