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MAN AND MACHINE
What is the cause of the present chaos? It is exploitation, I will not
say, of the weaker nations by the stronger, but of sister nations by sister
nations. And my fundamental objections to machinery rests on the fact
that it is machinery that has enabled these nations to exploit others.
I would destroy that system today, if I had the power. I would use the
most deadly weapons, if I believed that they would destroy it. I refrain
only because the use of such weapons would only perpetuate the system,
though it may destroy its present administrators. Those who seek to destroy
men rather than manners, adopt the latter and become worse than those
whom they destroy under the mistaken belief that the manners will die
with the men. They do not know the root of the evil.
I must confess that I do not draw a sharp line or any distinction between
economics and ethics. Economics that hurt the moral well-being of an individual
or a nation are immoral and, therefore, sinful. Thus, the economics that
permit one country to prey upon another and immoral.
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