The creative desire is an incident or a sort of by-product of the
economics of socialism as it is of classical economics; neither
one nor the other depends on its cultivation. Either is capable of
achieving mass production, but neither insures a democratic control of
industry, neither provides for growth, for education in the productive
process. A democracy of industry requires a people's sustained
interest in the productive enterprise; their interest in the
development of technology, the development of markets, and the release
of man's productive energy.
It happens that in machine production and in the division of labor
there are emotional and intellectual possibilities which were
non-existent in the earlier and simpler methods of production. As
power latent in inorganic matter has been freed and applied to common
needs, an environment has been evolved, filled with situations
incomparably more dramatic than the provincial affairs of detached
people and communities. Although this technological subject matter,
rich in opportunities for associated adventure and infinite discovery,
is not a part of common experience, it exists, and if called out from
its isolation for purposes of common experimentation, it is fit matter
for making science a vital experience in the productive life of the
worker.
Industry under the direction of business will not open up the
adventure with its stimulating factors to its subservient labor force,
unless it happens that the present methods fail, in time, to carry
forward industrial enterprise on a profit-making basis; or unless
labor develops the power which springs from desire for creative
experience, to undertake the direction and control of industry.
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