Thorstein Veblen:
BOLSHEVISM AND THE VESTED INTERESTS IN AMERICA
I. On the Danger of a Revolutionary Overturn             p. 296
   The Dial. No. 800, Oct., 4, 1919, pp. 296-301
II. On the Circumstances Which Make for a Change         p. 339
  The Dial. No. 801, Oct., 18, 1919, pp. 339-346
III. A Memorandum on a Practicable Soviet of Technicians p. 373
   The Dial. No. 802, Nov., 1, 1919, pp. 373-380

The Dial. A Fortnightly (New York)
Vol. LXVII (July 12 to November 29, 1919)
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BOLSHEVISM AND THE VESTED INTERESTS IN AMERICA
III. A Memorandum on a Practicable Soviet of Technicians

The Dial. No. 802, Nov., 1, 1919, pp. 373-380

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[373]
IT is THE PURPOSE of this memorandum to show, in an objective way, that under, 
existing circumstances there need be no fear, and no hope, of an effectual 
revolutionary overturn in America, such as would unsettle the established order 
and unseat those Vested Interests that now control the country's industrial 
system. In an earlier paper (THE DIAL, October 4) it has been argued that no 
effectual move in the direction of such an overturn can be made except on the 
initiative and under the direction of the country's technicians, taking action 
in common and on a concerted plan. Notoriously, no move of this nature has been 
made hitherto, nor is there evidence that anything of the kind has been 
contemplated by the technicians. They still are consistently loyal, with 
something more than a hired-man's loyalty, to the established order of 
commercial profit and absentee ownership. And any adequate plan of concerted 
action, such as would be required for the enterprise in question, is not a small 
matter that can be arranged between two days.

Any plan of action that small hope to meet the requirements of the case in any 
passable fashion must necessarily have the benefit of mature deliberation among 
the technicians who are competent to initiate such an enterprise; it must engage 
the intelligent co-operation of several thousand technically trained men 
scattered over the face of the country, in one industry and another; must carry 
out a passably complete cadastration of the country's industrial forces; must 
set up practicable organization tables covering the country's industry in some 
detail, energy-resources, materials, and man power; and it must also engage the 
aggressive support of the trained men at work in transportation, mining, and the 
greater mechanical industries. These are initial requirements, indispensable to 
the initiation of any enterprise of the kind in such an industrial country as 
America; and so soon as this is called to mind it will be realised that any fear 
of an effectual move in this direction at present is quite chimerical. So that, 
in fact, it may be set down without a touch of ambiguity that absentee ownership 
is secure, just yet.

Therefore, to show conclusively and in an objective way how remote any 
contingency of this nature still is, it is here proposed to set out in a summary 
fashion the main lines which any such concerted plan of action would have to 
follow, and what will of necessity be the manner of organization which alone can 
hope to take over the industrial system, following the eventual abdication or 
disposession of the Vested Interests and their absentee [374] owners. And, by 
way of parenthesis, it is always the self-made though reluctant abdication of 
the Vested Interests and their absentee owners, rather than their forcible 
dispossession, that is to be looked for as a reasonably probable event in the 
calculable future. It should, in effect, cause no surprise to find that they 
will, in a sense, eliminate themselves, by letting go quite involuntarily after 
the industrial situation gets quite beyond their control. In fact, they have, in 
the present difficult juncture, already sufficiently shown their unfitness to 
take care of the country's material welfare, which is after all the only ground 
on which they can set up a colorable claim to their vested rights. At the same 
time something like an opening bid for a bargain of abdication has already come 
in from more than one quarter. So that a discontinuance of the existing system 
of absentee ownership, on one plan or another, is no longer to be considered a 
purely speculative novelty; and an objective canvass of the manner of 
organization that is to be looked to to take the place of the control now 
exercised by the Vested Interests in the event of their prospective abdication 
should accordingly have some present interest, even apart from its bearing on 
the moot question of any forcible disruption of the established system of 
absentee ownership.

As a matter of course, the powers and duties of the incoming directorate will be 
of a technological nature, in the main if not altogether; inasmuch as the 
purpose of its coming into control is the care of the community's material 
welfare by a more competent management of the country's industrial system. It 
may be added that even in the unexpected event that the contemplated overturn 
should, in the beginning, meet with armed opposition from the partisans of the 
old order, it will still be true that the duties of the incoming directorate 
will be of a technological character, in the main; inasmuch as warlike 
operations are also now substantially a matter of technology, both in the 
immediate conduct of hostilities and in the still more urgent work of material 
support and supply.

The incoming industrial order is designed to correct the shortcomings of the 
old. The duties and powers of the incoming directorate will accordingly converge 
on those points in the administration of industry where the old order has most 
signally fallen short; that is to say, on the due allocation of resources and a 
consequent full and reasonably proportioned employment of the available 
equipment and man power; on the avoidance of waste and duplication of work; and 
on an equitable and sufficient supply of goods and services to consumers. 
Evidently the most immediate and most urgent work to be taken over by the 
incoming directorate is that for want of which under the old order the 
industrial system has been working slack and at cross purposes; that is to say 
the due allocation of available resources, in power, equipment, and materials, 
among the greater primary industries. For this necessary work of allocation 
there has been substantially no provision under the old order.

To carry on this allocation, the country's transportation system must be placed 
at the disposal of the same staff that has the work of allocation to do; since, 
under modern conditions, any such allocation will take effect only by use of the 
transportation system. But, by the same token, the effectual control of the 
distribution of goods to consumers will also necessarily fall into the same 
hands; since the traffic in consumable goods is also a matter of transportation, 
in the main.

On these considerations, which would only be reenforced by a more detailed 
inquiry into the work to be done, the central directorate will apparently take 
the shape of a loosely tripartite executive council, with power to act in 
matters of industrial administration; the council to include technicians whose 
qualifications enable them to be called Resource Engineers, together with 
similarly competent spokesmen of the transportation system and of the 
distributive traffic in finished products and services. With a view to 
efficiency and expedition, this executive council will presumably not be a 
numerous body; although its staff of intelligence and advice may be expected to 
be fairly large, and it will be guided by current consultation with the 
accredited spokesmen (deputies, commissioners, executives, or whatever they may 
be called) of the several main subdivisions of productive industry, 
transportation, and distributive traffic.

Armed with these powers and working in due consultation with a sufficient 
ramification of subcenters and local councils, this industrial directorate 
should be in a position to avoid virtually all unemployment of serviceable 
equipment and man power on the one hand, and all local or seasonal scarcity on 
the other hand. The main line of duties indicated by the character of the work 
incumbent on the directorate, as well as the main line of qualifications in its 
personnel, both executive and advisory, is such as will call for the services of 
Production Engineers, to use a term which is coming into use. But it is also 
evident that in its continued work of planning and advisement the directorate 
will require the services of an appreciable number of consulting economists; men 
who are qualified to be called Production Economists.

[375] The profession now includes men with the requisite qualifications, 
although it cannot be said that the gild of economists is made up of such men in 
the main. Quite blamelessly, the economists have, by tradition and by force of 
commercial pressure, habitually gone in for a theoretical inquiry into the ways 
and means of salesmanship, financial traffic, and the distribution of income and 
property, rather than a study of the industrial system considered as a ways and 
means of producing goods and services. Yet there now are, after all, especially 
among the younger generation, an appreciable number, perhaps an adequate number, 
of economists who have learned that "business" is not "industry" and that 
investment is not production. And, here as always, the best is good enough, 
perforce.

"Consulting economists" of this order are a necessary adjunct to the personnel 
of the central directorate, because the technical training that goes to make a 
resource engineer, or a production engineer, or indeed a competent industrial 
expert in any line of specialization, is not of a kind to give him the requisite 
sure and facile insight into the play of economic forces at large; and as a 
matter of notorious fact, very few of the technicians have gone at all far 
afield to acquaint themselves with anything more to the point in this connection 
than the half-forgotten commonplaces of the old order. The "consulting 
economist" is accordingly necessary to cover an otherwise uncovered joint in the 
new articulation of things. His place in the scheme is analogous to the part 
which legal counsel now plays in the manoeuvers of diplomatists and statesmen; 
and the discretionary personnel of the incoming directorate are to be, in 
effect, something in the way of industrial statesmen under the new order.

There is also a certain general reservation to be 
made with regard to personnel, which may conveniently be spoken of at this 
point. To avoid persistent confusion and prospective defeat, it will be 
necessary to exclude from all positions of trust and executive, responsibility 
all persons who have been trained for business or who have had experience in 
business undertakings of the larger sort. This will apply generally, throughout 
the administrative scheme, although it will apply more imperatively as regards 
the responsible personnel of the directorate, central and subordinate, together 
with their staff of intelligence and advice, where-ever judgment and insight are 
essential. What is wanted is training in the ways and means of productive 
industry, not in the ways and means of salesmanship and profitable investment.

By force of habit, men trained to a businesslike view of what is right and real 
will be irretrievably biassed against any plan of production and distribution 
that is not drawn in terms of commercial profit and loss and does not provide a 
margin of free income to go to absentee owners. The personal exceptions to the 
rule are apparently very few. But this one point is after all of relatively 
minor consequence. What is more to the point in the same connection is that the 
commercial bias induced by their training in businesslike ways of thinking 
leaves them incapable of anything like an effectual insight into the use of 
resources or the needs and aims of productive industry, in any other terms than 
those of commercial profit and loss. Their units and standards of valuation and 
accountancy are units and standards of price, and of private gain in terms of 
price; whereas for any scheme of productive industry which runs, not on 
salesmanship and earnings, but on tangible performance and tangible benefit to 
the community at large, the valuations and accountancy of salesmanship and 
earnings are misleading. With the best and most benevolent intentions, men sp 
trained will unavoidably make their appraisals of production and their 
disposition of productive forces in the only practical terms with which they are 
familiar, the terms of commercial accountancy; which is the same as saying, the 
accountancy of absentee ownership and free income; all of which it is the 
abiding purpose of the projected plan to displace. For the purposes of this 
projected new order of production, therefore, the experienced and capable 
business men are at the best to be rated as well-intentioned deaf-mute blind 
men. Their wisest judgment and sincerest endeavors become meaningless and 
misguided so soon as the controlling purpose of industry shifts from the footing 
of profits on absentee investment to that of a serviceable output of goods.

All this abjuration of business principles and businesslike sagacity may appear 
to be a taking of precautions about a vacant formality; but it is as well to 
recall that by trained propensity and tradition the business men, great and 
small, are after all, each in their degree, lieutenants of those Vested 
Interests which the projected organization of industry is designed to displace, 
schooled in their tactics and marching under their banners. The experience of 
the war administration and its management of industry by help of the business 
men during the past few years goes to show what manner of industrial wisdom is 
to be looked for where capable and well-intentioned business men are called in 
to direct industry with a view to maximum production and economy. For its [376] 
responsible personnel the administration has uniformly drawn on experienced 
business men, preferably men of successful experience in Big Business; that is 
to say, trained men with a shrewd eye to the main chance. And the tale of its 
adventures, so far as a businesslike reticence has allowed them to become known, 
is an amazing comedy of errors; which runs to substantially the same issue 
whether it is told of one or another of the many departments, boards, councils, 
commissions, and administrations, that have had this work to do.

Notoriously, this choice of personnel has with singular uniformity proved to be 
of doubtful advisability, not to choose a harsher epithet. The policies pursued, 
doubtless with the best and most sagacious intentions of which this businesslike 
personnel have been capable, have uniformly resulted in the safeguarding of 
investments and the allocation of commercial profits; all the while that the 
avowed aim of it all, and doubtless the conscientious purpose of the 
businesslike administrators, has been quantity production of essential goods. 
The more that comes to light, the more visible becomes the difference between 
the avowed purpose and the tangible performance. Tangible performance in the way 
of productive industry is precisely what the business men do not know how to 
propose, but it is also that on which the possible success of any projected plan 
of overturn will always rest. Yet it is also to be remarked that even the 
reluctant and blindfold endeavors of these businesslike administrators to break 
away from their lifelong rule of reasonable earnings, appear to have resulted in 
a very appreciably increased industrial output per unit of man power and 
equipment employed. That such was the outcome under the war administration is 
presumably due in great part to the fact that the business men in charge were 
unable to exercise so strict a control over the working force of technicians and 
skilled operatives during that period of stress.

And here the argument comes in touch with one of the substantial reasons why 
there need be no present fear of a revolutionary overturn. By settled habit, the 
American population are quite unable to see their way to entrust any appreciable 
responsibility to any other than business men; at the same time that such a move 
of overturn can hope to succeed only if it excludes the business men from all 
positions of responsibility. This sentimental deference of the American people 
to the sagacity of its business men is massive, profound, and alert. So much so 
that it will take harsh and protracted experience to remove it, pr to divert it 
sufficiently for the purposes of any revolutionary diversion. And more 
particularly, popular sentiment in this country will not tolerate the assumption 
of responsibility by the technicians, who are in the popular apprehension 
conceived to be a somewhat fantastic brotherhood of over-specialized cranks, not 
to be trusted out of sight except under the restraining hand of safe and sane 
business men. Nor are the technicians themselves in the habit of taking a 
greatly different view of their own case. They still feel themselves, in the 
nature of things, to fall into place as employees of those enterprising business 
men who are, in the nature of things, elected to get something for nothing. 
Absentee ownership is secure, just yet. In time, with sufficient provocation, 
this popular frame of mind may change, of course; but it is in any case a matter 
of an appreciable lapse of time.

Even such a scant and bare outline of generalities as has been hastily sketched 
above will serve to show that any effectual overturn of the established order is 
not a matter to be undertaken out of hand, or to be manoeuvred into shape by 
makeshifts after the initial move has been made. There is no chance without 
deliberate preparations from beforehand. There are two main lines of 
preparations that will have to be taken care of by anybody of men who may 
contemplate such a move: (a) An inquiry into existing conditions and into the 
available ways and means; and (b) the setting up of practicable organization 
tables and a survey of the available personnel. And bound up with this work of 
preparation, and conditioning it, provision must also be made for the growth of 
such a spirit of teamwork as will be ready to undertake and undergo this 
critical adventure. All of which will take time.

It will be necessary to investigate and to set out in a convincing way what are 
the various kinds and lines of waste that are necessarily involved in the 
present businesslike control of industry; what are the abiding causes of these 
wasteful and obstructive practices; and what economies of management and 
production will become practicable on the elimination of the present 
businesslike control. This will call for diligent team-work on the part of a 
suitable group of economists and engineers, who will have to be drawn together 
by self-selection on the basis of a common interest in productive efficiency, 
economical use of resources, and an equitable distribution of the consumable 
output. Hitherto no such self-selection of competent persons has visibly taken 
place, and the beginnings of a plan for team-work in carrying on such an inquiry 
are yet to be made.

In the course of this contemplated inquiry and on the basis afforded by its 
findings there is no [377] less serious work to be done in the way of 
deliberation and advisement, among the members of the group in question and in 
consultation with outside technological men who know what can best be done with 
the means in hand, and whose interest in things drives them to dip into the same 
gainless adventure. This will involve the setting up of organization tables to 
cover the efficient use of the available resources and equipment, as well as to 
re-organize the traffic involved in the distribution of the output.

By way of an illustrative instance, to show by an example something of what the 
scope and method of this inquiry and advisement will presumably be like, it may 
be remarked that under the new order the existing competitive commercial traffic 
engaged in the distribution of goods to consumers will presumably fall away, in 
the main, for want of a commercial incentive. It is well known, in a general 
way, that the present organization of this traffic, by wholesale and retail 
merchandising, involves a very large and very costly duplication of work, 
equipment, stock, and personnel, several hundred per cent more than would be 
required by an economically efficient management of the traffic on a reasonable 
plan. In looking for a way out of the present extremely wasteful merchandising 
traffic, and in working out organization tables for an equitable and efficient 
distribution of goods to consumers, the experts in the case will, it is 
believed, be greatly helped out by detailed information on such existing 
organizations as, e.g., the distributing system of the Chicago Packers, the 
chain stores, and the mail-order houses. These are commercial organizations, of 
course, and as such they are managed with a view to the commercial gain of their 
owners and managers; but they are at the same time designed to avoid the 
ordinary wastes of the ordinary retail distribution, for the benefit of their 
absentee owners. There are not a few object-lessons of economy of this practical 
character to be found among the Vested Interests; so much so that the economies 
which result from them are among the valuable capitalized assets of these 
business concerns.

This contemplated inquiry will, of course, also be useful in the way of 
publicity; to show, concretely and convincingly, what are the inherent defects 
of the present businesslike control of industry, why these defects are 
inseparable from a businesslike control under existing circumstances, and what 
may fairly be expected of an industrial management which takes no account of 
absentee ownership. The ways and means of publicity to be employed is a question 
that plainly cannot profitably be discussed beforehand, so long as the whole 
question of the contemplated inquiry itself has little more than a speculative 
interest; and much the same will have to be said as to the scope and detail of 
the inquiry, which will have to be determined in great part by the interest and 
qualifications of the men who are to carry it on. Nothing but provisional 
generalities could at all confidently be sketched into its program until the 
work is in hand.

The contemplated eventual shift to a new and more practicable system of 
industrial production and distribution has been here spoken of as a 
"revolutionary overturn" of the established order. This flagitious form of words 
is here used chiefly because the Guardians of the established order are plainly 
apprehensive of something sinister that can be called by no gentle name, rather 
than with the intention of suggesting that extreme and subversive measures alone 
can now save the life of the underlying population from the increasingly 
disserviceable rule of the Vested Interests. The move which is here discussed in 
a speculative way under this sinister form of words, as a contingency to be 
guarded against by fair means and foul, need, in effect, be nothing spectacular; 
assuredly it need involve no clash of arms or fluttering of banners, unless, as 
is beginning to seem likely, the Guardians of the old order should find that 
sort of thing expedient. In its elements, the move will be of the simplest and 
most matter-of-fact character; although there will doubtless be many intricate 
adjustments to be made in detail. In principle, all that is necessarily involved 
is a disallowance of absentee ownership; that is to say, the disestablishment of 
an institution which has, in the course of time and change, proved to be noxious 
to the common good. The rest will follow quite simply from the cancelment of 
this outworn and footless vested right.

By absentee ownership, as the term applies in this connection, is here to be 
understood the ownership of an industrially useful article by any person or 
persons who are not habitually employed in the industrial use of it. In this 
connection, office work of a commercial nature is not rated as industrial 
employment. A corollary of some breadth follows immediately, although it is so 
obvious an implication of the main proposition that it should scarcely need 
explicit statement: An owner who is employed in the industrial use of a given 
parcel of property owned by him, will still be an "absentee owner," within the 
meaning of the term, in case he is not the only person habitually employed in 
its use. A further corollary follows, perhaps less obvious at first sight, but 
no less convincing on closer [378] attention to the sense of the terms employed: 
Collective ownership, of the corporate form, that is to say ownership by a 
collectivity instituted ad hoc, also falls away as being unavoidably absentee 
ownership, within the meaning of the term. It will be noted that all this does 
not touch joint ownership of property held in undivided interest by a household 
group and made use of by the members of the household indiscriminately. It is 
only in so far as the household is possessed of useful property not made use of 
by its members, or not made use of without hired help, that its ownership of 
such property falls within the meaning of the term, absentee ownership. To be 
sufficiently explicit; it may be added that the cancelment of absentee ownership 
as here understood will apply indiscriminately to all industrially useful 
objects, whether realty or personality, whether natural resources, equipment, 
banking capital, or wrought goods in stock.

As an immediate consequence of this cancelment of absentee ownership it should 
seem to be altogether probable that industrially useful articles will presently 
cease to be used for purposes of ownership, that is to say for purposes of 
private gain; although there might be no administrative interference with such 
use. Under the existing state of the industrial arts, neither the natural 
resources drawn on for power and materials nor the equipment employed in the 
great and controlling industries are of a nature to lend themselves to any other 
than absentee ownership; and these industries control the situation, so that 
private enterprise for gain on a small scale would scarcely find a suitable 
market. At the same time the inducement to private accumulation of wealth at the 
cost of the community would virtually fall away, inasmuch as the inducement to 
such accumulation now is in nearly all cases an ambition to come in for 
something in the way of absentee ownership. In effect, other incentives are a 
negligible quantity. Evidently, the secondary effects of such cancelment will go 
far, in more than one direction, but evidently, too, there could be little 
profit in endeavoring to follow up these ulterior contingencies in extended 
speculations here.

As to the formalities, of a legal complexion, that would be involved in such a 
disallowance of absentee ownership, they need also be neither large nor 
intricate; at least not in their main incidence. It will in all probability take 
the shape of a cancelment of all corporation securities, as an initial move. 
Articles of partnership, evidences of debt, and other legal instruments which 
now give title to property not in hand or not in use by the owner, will be 
voided by the same act. In all probability this will be sufficient for the 
purpose.

This act of disallowance may be called subversive and revolutionary; but while 
there is no intention here to offer anything in the way of exculpation, it is 
necessary to an objective appraisal of the contemplated move to note that the 
effect of such disallowance would be subversive or revolutionary only in a 
figurative sense of the words. It would all of it neither subvert nor derange 
any substantial mechanical contrivance or relation, nor need it materially 
disturb the relations, either as workman or as consumer of goods and services, 
of any appreciable number of persons now engaged in productive industry. In 
fact, the disallowance will touch nothing more substantial than a legal make-
believe. This would, of course, be serious enough in its consequences to those 
classes called the kept classes whose livelihood hangs on the maintenance of 
this legal make-believe. So, likewise, it would vacate the occupation of the 
"middleman," which likewise turns on the maintenance of this legal make-believe; 
which gives "title" to that to which one stands in no material relation.

Doubtless, hardship will follow thick and fast, among those classes who are 
least inured to privation; and doubtless all men will agree that it is a great 
pity. But this evil is, after all, a side issue, as regards the present 
argument, which has to do with nothing else than the practicability of the 
scheme. So it is necessary to note that, however detrimental to the special 
interests of the absentee owners this move may be, yet it will not in any degree 
derange or diminish those material facts that constitute the ways and means of 
productive industry; nor will it in any degree enfeeble or mutilate that joint 
stock of technical knowledge and practice that constitutes the intellectual 
working force of the industrial system. It does not directly touch the material 
facts of industry, for better or worse. In this sense it is a completely idle 
matter, in its immediate incidence, whatever its secondary consequences may be 
believed to be.

But there is no doubt that a proposal to disallow absentee ownership will shock 
the moral sensibilities of many persons; more particularly the sensibilities of 
the absentee owners. To avoid the appearance of willful neglect, therefore, it 
is necessary to speak also of the "moral aspect." There is no intention here to 
argue the moral merits of this contemplated disallowance of absentee ownership; 
or to argue for or against such a move, on moral or other grounds. Absentee 
ownership is legally sound today. Indeed, as is well known, the [379] 
Constitution includes a clause which specially safeguards its security. If, and 
when, the law is changed, in this respect, what so is legal today will of course 
cease to be legal. There is, in fact, not much more to be said about it; except 
that, in the last resort, the economic moralities wait on the economic 
necessities. The economic-moral sense of the American community today runs 
unequivocally to the effect that absentee ownership is fundamentally and 
eternally right and good; and it should seem reasonable to believe that it will 
continue to run to that effect for some time yet.

There has lately been some irritation and faultfinding with what is called 
"profiteering" and there may be more or less uneasy discontent with what is felt 
to be an unduly disproportionate inequality in the present distribution of 
income; but apprehensive persons should not lose sight of the main fact that 
absentee ownership after all is the idol of every true American heart. It is the 
substance of things hoped for and the reality of things not seen. To achieve (or 
to inherit) a competency, that is to say to accumulate such wealth as will 
assure a "decent" livelihood in industrial absentia, is the universal, and 
universally laudable, ambition of all who have reached years of discretion; but 
it all means the same thing to get something for nothing, at any cost. Similarly 
universal is the awestruck deference with which the larger absentee owners are 
looked up to for guidance and example. These substantial citizens are the ones 
who have "made good," in the popular apprehension. They are the great and good 
men whose lives "all remind us we can make our lives sublime, etc."

This commercialized frame of mind is a sturdy outgrowth of many generations of 
consistent training in the pursuit of the main chance; it is second nature, and 
there need be no fear that it will allow the Americans to see workday facts in 
any other than its own perspective, just yet. The most tenacious factor in any 
civilization is a settled popular frame of mind, and to this abiding American 
frame of mind absentee ownership is the controlling center of all the economic 
realities.

So, having made plain that all this argument on a practicable overturn of the 
established order has none but a speculative interest, the argument can go on to 
consider what will be the nature of the initial move of overturn which is to 
break with the old order of absentee ownership and set up a regime of 
workmanship governed by the country's technicians.

As has already been called to mind, repeatedly, the effective management of the 
industrial system at large is already in the hands of the technicians, so far as 
regards the work actually done; but it is all under the control of the Vested 
Interests, representing absentee owners, so far as regards its failure to work. 
And the failure is, quite reasonably, attracting much attention lately. In this 
two-cleft, or bi-cameral, administration of industry, the technicians may be 
said to represent the community at large in its industrial capacity, or in other 
words the industrial system as a going concern; whereas the business men speak 
for the commercial interest of the absentee owners, as a body which holds the 
industrial community in usufruct. It is the part of the technicians, between 
them, to know the country's available resources, in mechanical power, and 
equipment; to know and put in practice the joint stock of technological 
knowledge which is indispensable to industrial production; as well as to know 
and take care of the community's habitual need and use of consumable goods. They 
are, in effect, the general staff of production engineers, under whose 
surveillance the required output of goods and services is produced and 
distributed to the consumers. Whereas it is the part of the business men to know 
what rate and volume of production and distribution will best serve the 
commercial interest of the absentee owners, and to put this commercial knowledge 
in practice by nicely limiting production and distribution of the output to such 
a rate and volume as their commercial traffic will bear that is to say, what 
will yield the largest net income to the absentee owners in terms of price. In 
this work of sagaciously retarding industry the captains of industry necessarily 
work at cross purposes, among themselves, since the traffic is of a competitive 
nature.

Accordingly, in this two-cleft arrangement of administrative functions, it is 
the duty of the technicians to plan the work and to carry it on; and it is the 
duty of the captains of industry to see that the work will benefit none but the 
captains and their associated absentee owners, and that it is not pushed beyond 
the salutary minimum which their commercial traffic will bear. In all that 
concerns the planning and execution of the work done,* the technicians 
necessarily take the initiative and exercise the necessary creative surveillance 
and direction; that being what they, and they alone, are good for; whereas the 
businesslike deputies of the absentee owners sagaciously exercise a running veto 
power over the technicians and their productive industry. They are able 
effectually to exercise this commercially sagacious veto power by the fact that 
the technicians are, in effect, their employees, hired to do their bidding and 
fired if they do not; and perhaps no less by this other fact, that the 
technicians have hitherto been working piecemeal, as [380] scattered individuals 
under their master's eye; they have hitherto not drawn together on their own 
ground and taken counsel together as a general staff of industry, to determine 
what had best be done and what not. So that they have hitherto figured in the 
conduct of the country's industrial enterprise only as a technological extension 
of the business men's grasp on the commercial main chance.

Yet, immediately and unremittingly, the technicians and their advice and 
surveillance are essential to any work whatever in those great primary 
industries on which the country's productive systems turns, and which set the 
pace for all the rest. And it is obvious that so soon as they shall draw 
together, in a reasonably inclusive way, and take common counsel as to what had 
best be done, they are in a position to say what work shall be done and to fix 
the terms on which it is to be done. In .short, so far as regards the technical 
requirements of the case, the situation is ready for a self-selected, but 
inclusive, Soviet of technicians to take over the economic affairs of the 
country and to allow and disallow what they may agree on; provided always that 
they live within the requirements of that state of the industrial arts whose 
keepers they are, and provided that their pretensions continue to have the 
support of the industrial rank and file; which comes near saying that their 
Soviet must consistently and effectually take care of the material welfare of 
the underlying population.

Now, this revolutionary posture of the present state of the industrial arts may 
be undesirable, in some respects, but there is nothing to be gained by denying 
the fact. So soon but only so soon as the engineers draw together, take common 
counsel, work out a plan of action, and decide to disallow absentee ownership 
out of hand, that move will have been made. The obvious and simple means of 
doing it is a conscientious withdrawal of efficiency; that is to say the general 
strike, to include so much of the country's staff of technicians as will suffice 
to incapacitate the industrial system at large by their withdrawal, for such 
time as may be required to enforce their argument.

In its elements, the project is simple and obvious, but its working out will 
require much painstaking preparation, much more than appears on the face of this 
bald statement; for it also follows from the present state of the industrial 
arts and from the character of the industrial system in which modern technology 
works out, that even a transient failure to make good in the conduct of 
productive industry will result in a precipitate collapse of the enterprise.

By themselves alone, the technicians can, in a few weeks, effectually 
incapacitate the country's productive industry sufficiently for the purpose. No 
one who will dispassionately consider the technical character of this industrial 
system will fail to recognize that fact. But so long as they have not, at least, 
the tolerant consent of the population at large, backed by the aggressive 
support of the trained working force engaged in transportation and in the 
greater primary industries, they will be substantially helpless to set up a 
practicable working organization on the new footing; which is the same as saying 
that they will in that case accomplish nothing more to the purpose than a 
transient period of hardship and dissension.

Accordingly, if it be presumed that the production engineers are of a mind to 
play their part, there will be at least two main lines of subsidiary preparation 
to be taken care of before any overt move can reasonably be undertaken: (a) An 
extensive campaign of inquiry and publicity, such as will bring the underlying 
population to a reasonable understanding of what it is all about; and (b) the 
working-out of a common understanding and a solidarity of sentiment between the 
technicians and the working force engaged in transportation and in the greater 
underlying industries of the system: to which is to be added as being nearly 
indispensable from the outset, an active adherence to this plan on the part of 
the trained workmen in the great generality of the mechanical industries. Until 
these prerequisites are taken care of, any project for the overturn of the 
established order of absentee ownership will be nugatory.

By way of conclusion it may be recalled again that, just yet, the production 
engineers are a scattering lot of fairly contented subalterns, working piecemeal 
under orders from the deputies of the absentee owners; the working force of the 
great mechanical industries, including transportation, are still nearly out of 
touch and out of sympathy with the technical men, and are bound in rival trade 
organizations whose sole and self-seeking interest converges on the full dinner-
pail; while the underlying population are as nearly uninformed on the state of 
things as the. Guardians of the Vested Interests, including the commercialized 
newspapers, can manage to keep them, and they are consequently still in a frame 
of mind to tolerate no substantial abatement of absentee ownership; and the 
constituted authorities are competently occupied with maintaining the status quo 
There is nothing in the situation that should reasonably flutter the 
sensibilities of the Guardians or of that massive body of well-to-do citizens 
who make up the rank and file of absentee owners, just yet.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN.
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