Love, the Law of Life

Strife is useful for demolishing, but it contributes nothing toward invention and discovery, 1. e., toward inner psychical development. Hence, the attempt to effect economic organization solely through class struggle will undoubtedly end in colossal failure.

If it be admitted that there are situations where class struggle is effective, these must be cases where for the cause of humanity some parasitic thing has to be removed from a productive class (i. e., a developing class) in order to guarantee growth and production. In such situations class struggle is, I believe, justifiable. But I cannot think that struggle is a permanent condition in economic life.

Growth is eternal; struggle is temporary. Growth is an inner process, while struggle is extraneous. Following the inner urge, humanity takes the way of selfdetermination. Pursuing the extraneous will perforce mean yielding to chance, for the good is not necessarily preserved by fighting. ©

Long ago Clodius made supplication to the gods of Olympus for victory in battle, and received the oracle, “Thou shalt surely destroy a country.”’ King Clodius set forth exultantly to the battle field, but in the end his own kingdom was destroyed. In anger he went to demand an explanation at the temple of Olympus. The priestess replied, ““When I said that you would destroy a country I did not necessarily mean that it would be the enemy’s country. Is not your kingdom a country?”’

There is, then, in struggle this sad fact. If the good side invariably conquered, war would mean joyful victory. But there is always the anxiety that war will destroy the finer strains. Wherefore, though races do not perish, countries are forever being destroyed. For to this day nations are established as agencies of war. The word national state signifies an organized military power. For this reason a separation occasionally takes place between society and the nation. Society en-. deavors to escape from warfare and give time to discovery. Our problem is this: we are so to effect our inner evolution that we shall render this organized military force unnecessary. But while misunderstandings, insanity, and greed exist, struggle will prevail; organized military power will accordingly be regarded as indispensable; and the so-called national states will continue. In a free society, however, these phenomena will be unknown. Love will replace violence.

It is asserted by some that violence has educational efficacy. “Violence,” they claim, “has no deep signification. It is a species of ‘will manifestation.’”’ And “The violence of the laboring classes is their way of speaking. Since their spoken words are awkward, they express themselves by violence.’ If so, then we may ask them to what degree is violence a will manifestation? To the extent of wounding men, or of killing them? Probably they would reply that it should not proceed to the point of wounding people. If their violence be merely that, then it is not violence: it may even be the lash of love!

However, real violence means violence that deals death. When it eventuates thus, violence is not a “way of speaking,” but a negation of reality. In my opinion, violence used as an educational measure is the very acme of awkwardness.

There are many who ridicule the Christian principle of non-resistance. To those who do not know God or the meaning of salvation there is no ethic so stupid as the principle of non-resistance; but to those who know God and salvation resistance by violence is absurd, and

_ they have no inclination to employ it.

The ethics of Jesus is an absolute ethics. Existence itself negates violence. Destruction does not guarantee reality. But love and harmony do assure the reality of society. 'To all who consider existence to be something good, the belief in love and harmony is the only possible course. For the reality of childhood parental love is necessary; for the reality of the child’s intelligence the love of the teacher is required; and for the parents of children the love of all society is essential. Without love, real existence does not come to light.

Destruction is negative; it is a denial.

Love is creation, evolution, reality.

The ethics of Jesus, I repeat, proceeds from a world of absolute values. Destruction and violence are impossible in a genuine society. Jesus’ principle of nonresistance is founded upon the standard of ethical life in this ideal society.

Jesus’ teaching of non-resistance is incomprehensible to men who fail to know God and his redemption. The man who does not strike back when attacked possibly appears to be a spiritless being, a coward. But as for Jesus, he was charged with the mission of redeeming his attackers, just as God does. Even though men should put him to death, he believed that God was able to save. Hence, it was in the belief that for the possessor of truth death has no significance, that the principle of non-resistance had its origin.

Had we not the mission of saving men placed upon us, it would be unprofitable to do things in moderation. But we who are to redeem men must not fight. For

» we know that the power to redeem is a superhuman power. Jesus’ teaching of non-resistance was born of this sublime faith. F

Among modern men such surpassing faith is in very poor repute, and this is the reason why non-resistance is not generally accepted. But men who do have this surpassing faith are compelled to accept the ethic of non-resistance. ‘“‘ Vengeance is mine,’’ God declares; judgment and punishment are God’s work. It is meet for men to draw from the fountain of love within. If we would have the society of the present progress toward the ideal society, we must from today put into practice the ethics of non-resistance.

If evolution is a certainty, there is no call for us to fight. Our faith is a redemptive faith.

Non-resistance does not mean cowardice. Some misunderstand the meaning of non-resistance and take it to signify non-rejection of evil. But that is a gross error. For since it fundamentally rejects evil, it tells men to cease their petty interference.

Love evolves perennially, never grudging sacrifice. Since love has never abhorred martyrdom, it perceives that in the process of evolution it is more effective to be killed than to kill.!

Men who fear to make the sacrifice of love will have to fight. Those who believe in the sacrifice through love believe in the principle of non-injury.

For those who eternally evolve there is an eternal cross.

Love is basic for the birth of a true society, while violence has in it the essence of anti-sociality.

Love is positive; violence is negative.

Love injures none, is eternal. Violence is degeneracy: it is its own destruction.

How hard it is to understand!—the people of this age all think that economics is a matter of goods and 'gold. All think so—capitalists, laborers, merchants, officials, soldiers, shop boys, housewives—every one, even the economic experts! And those heroes called socialists, who have become aware of the power of labor, have not yet awakened from this same vagary.

What is needed is a “Copernican revolution,” for the world still believes in a “Ptolemaic” theory of economics. I would thus characterize a society which puts its faith in goods and specie. These people are still ignorant of the fact that the earth rotates!

Goods do not constitute wealth. Wealth arises where men absorb things. Value does not reside in materials. Wealth comes into being where the energy latent in matter is transformed into the strength of men. Wealth is born in human life. Apart from life and energy wealth is non-existent.

But no one believes what I say. The economic society of the present does not believe that anything has value which cannot be exchanged. And men go on evaluating all things with gold.

Evaluating with gold, however, does not differ greatly from measuring the electric current with a meter. In the beginnings of trade value attached to money because with it exchange was facilitated. Exchange is the alternating current of social energy. Without this alternating current of exchange money has no value whatever. In brief, money does no more than to indicate the strength, speed, and breadth of the current.

No value, then, resides in money. It is in the alternating current of life that value resides. Yet, though I make these statements, no one gives credence to my economic theory.

_ The world is too deeply under the spell of its “ Ptolemaic system’”’ of economics. Hence men store great crops of rice and wheat, while other men hard by are starving to death. Endeavoring to live by economics, men perish by economics.

Marxians declare that economics is the basis of all culture. But do they really grasp the true meaning of the word economics? It is likely that they do not— these men who have the materialistic view of life, who adopt the simple equational mode of thought which considers economics to mean merely material production. Marx makes frequent use of the term, “‘social capital.”” I wish that he had thoroughly comprehended its meaning.

We must understand that capital is not mere mate- —Yials, but that all of society’s organizations which “ayia these materials are themselves true capital. The term social capital signifies the totality of the inner social energy of humankind. It is not simply material things. It includes all—the heredity of human capacities, inventions, syntheses, analyses, systems, productive powers, assimilative powers, confidence in others, knowledge, abilities, and so forth. In other words, social capital means social energy.

Social energy proceeds to remake materials, and stores up the social energy within these material products. Whence, to some, this material accumulation alone is regarded as the economic factor. It is exactly as if men should store electrical energy in a storage battery, and then when transporting, exchanging, or trading it, should look upon the electrical energy and the storage battery as being identical.

Economic action is a concern of life forces. It corresponds to electrical energy, and is not to be regarded as a mere storage battery.

Economic acts are neither games nor blind mechanical life. How tragic it is that today this social capital is devastated by mechanical, superficial, fortuitous life, and is not fulfilling its human mission! That is, the social capital of today means blind social energy, and neither does it spring from social capacities awakened to purposiveness, nor is it an idealistic entity validated by spiritual life. It is ruled by superficialism. It matters not that we organize companies and form guilds, for since they do not have their inception in an ethical conscience, they avail nothing whatever.

Then, whither is our modern economic life proceeding? Of what use is our modern mass production? Whither does it tend? To what end do we build a hundred locomotives or a thousand electric motors? What harvests do we gain through them? When will the gaping money bags of the capitalists and the eternally empty stomachs of the laborers ever be filled? For what purpose is the social capital expended? For what end is the social energy consumed?

Social capital brings forth social capital, and social energy bears social energy. Is mere increase alone to be called economics?

What is the essence of economics? Is it only a futile transmigration of social energy? Ah, this vain, ineffectual cycle! Social energy must have eyes to see with. Social economics must have a meaning. What is the function of economics?

Social economics too must return again to mankind. It must return again to human love. For love man produces, and for love consumes. Labor is love, and business is love; man must return again to the world of true love.

Society learns production, but forgets to love. Wherefore, economic life has become actually a snare that curses human life.

Love is the supreme economics! Love produces, creates. Love brings forth value, and by consumption is converted into fresh worth. Love, for the sake of growth, never grudges sacrificial investment. Love fertilizes and cultivates.

But the economic experts and the people, who are ignorant of the Copernican world rotation in economics, are still the slaves of money and materials. Hence it is necessary for me to show to men the Copernican theory by analyzing the true essence of economic action. I have already published my views in a rather incomplete work entitled Principles of Subjective Economics; but since then I have become more and more firmly convinced of the correctness of my economic theory. Unfortunately, I have not yet had the time to write it out systematically, but I am confident that the opportunity will come for me to perfect what I term Vital Economics. Then, the love and the soul economics of which I am now writing will be well understood by the people. But I must not wait till that time: it may be a subject somewhat difficult to comprehend, yet I would have society know the intent of my “‘subjective economics.”’

Can it be that economics is so far away from ethics? And what is the nature of its relation to religion? The love that I am discussing, what place does it have in economic action? There is need for me to explain these matters briefly at this point. For, in my view, economic science has been too superficial, too mechanieal, and has completely failed to notice the solid and the psychical aspects of the essence of economic value.

I feel it necessary, therefore, even at the risk of tediousness, to enter into the subject of psychological economics, but to treat it only in a very general way.