This motive of circumscribed self-interest during an era of political and industrial expansion has been adopted by philosophers as the guide as well as a clue to conduct; it was hailed by them as a sufficient and complete motivation for wealth creation; they used it as a basis of a theory for race progress resting solely on the efforts of men to satisfy their material needs through their ability to capture goods.  This motive together with the possibilities which machine production opened up for wealth exploitation, gave birth to the dismal science of Political Economy; it suggested the materialistic interpretation of history, and brought to earth utopian schemes of brotherhood.  Political science is dismal because it is an interpretation of dismal institutions.  It may be ungenerous to speak slightingly of institutions which have yielded such great wealth, which have transformed inert matter into productive power and brought in consequence the whole world into acquaintanceship and rivalry.  It would be ungenerous if it were not for a fact which has become poignant, that the exploitation of wealth and undigested relationships are to-day the outstanding menace to civilization.

The present world conflict has made it clear that relationships cannot remain undigested; that they are not in their nature passive.  They are either integrating in their force or disintegrating.  Socialism has undertaken for two generations to prove that exploitation, carries with it its own seeds of destruction.  The position of the socialists is passing out of theory and propaganda through the hands of diplomatists, into statutes.  Both the socialists and their successors would eradicate exploitation by repressing it.  The socialists would repress it by shifting ownership of wealth from individuals to the state, while the diplomatists, through the same agency, would regulate those who own it.

It is an historical fact as well as a psychological one that you do not get rid of traits or institutions except as you replace them with something of positive service, or greater competitive value.  The institution of capitalism exists not because of its predatory character, but because in spite of its exploitation it promotes industry, and labor and other industrial technicians do not.  As our industrial institutions have grown out of a predatory concept instead of a creative one, as capture has been rewarded rather than work, as the possessive desire has been stimulated and the creative desire has been sacrificed, as employers of men and owners of machines have engaged in production because of their interest not in the process or in the use of the product, but in the reward, as wage workers have hired out for the day’s work or continued during their adult life in their trade without interest in its development, because like their employers they wanted the highest cash return, wealth exploitation has come to be synonymous in the minds of men with wealth creation.  A creative concept which could survive and inhibit the predatory concept must rest on such elements of creative force as are now absent from our industrial institution.