III. Capitalism and Social Ideas

Certainly people are poorly prepared at the present time to directly relate the social ideas, which are to guide capitalism along a healthy course, with spiritual life. Only economic life is taken into consideration. It is easily seen how, in modern times, commodity production has led to large-scale enterprise, and this in turn to the contemporary form of capitalism. Cooperatives, which work to satisfy the needs of the producers, are supposed to take the place of this economic form. Since modern means of production are obviously to be retained however, the concentration of all enterprises in one great cooperative is called for. In such a system, it is thought, each person would produce on behalf of the community, which could not be exploitive because it would be exploiting itself. And because one must, or wants to, relate to what already exists, one looks to the modern state, which is to be transformed into an all-embracing cooperative.