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Chapter III

Man as an Economic Organism


Man is subject to certain desires and needs that are as natural
to his beingness as they are to that of any other animal.
Man, however, has a propensity to exaggerate some of
these beyond the bounds of reason. This is obvious through the
growth of leisure classes, pseudo-intellectual groups, the ‘petit bourgeoisie’,
Capitalism, and other ills.
It has been said, with truth, that one-tenth of a man’s life is concerned
with politics and nine-tenths with economics. Without food,
the individual dies. Without clothing, he freezes. Without houses
and weapons, he is prey to the starving wolves. The acquisition of
sufficient items to answer these necessities of food, clothing, and
shelter, in reason, is the natural right of a member of an enlightened
State. An excess of such items brings about unrest and disquiet. The
presence of luxury items and materials, and the artificial creation and
whetting of appetites, as in Capitalist advertising, are certain to
accentuate the less desirable characteristics of Man.
The individual is an economic organism, in that he requires a certain
amount of food, a certain amount of water, and he must hold
within himself a certain amount of heat in order to live. When he has
more food than he can eat, more clothing than he needs to protect
him, he then enters upon a certain idleness, which dulls his wits and
awareness and makes him prey to difficulties which, in a less toxic
state, he would have foreseen and avoided. Thus, a glut that is a
menace to the individual.
It is no less different in a group.

Where the group acquires too much, its awareness
of its own fellows and of the environment is
accordingly reduced, and the effectiveness
of the group in general is lost.

The maintaining of a balance between gluttony and need is the
province of Economics proper, and is the fit subject and concern of
the Communist State.
Desire and want are a state of mind. Individuals can be educated
into desiring and wanting more than they can ever possibly obtain,
and such individuals are unhappy. Most of the self-willed characteristics
of the Capitalists come entirely from greed. They exploit the
worker far beyond their own need as Capitalists.
In a nation where economic balances are not controlled, the
appetite of the individual is unduly whetted by enchanting and fanciful
persuasions to desire, and a type of insanity ensues, whereby
each individual is persuaded to possess more than he can use, and to
possess it even at the expense of his fellows.
There is, in economic balances, the other side. Too great and too
long endured privation can bring about unhealthy desires, which, if
allowed to be gratified, lead to the accumulation of more than the
individual can use. Poverty, itself, as carefully cultivated in
Capitalist States, can bring about an imbalance of acquisition. Just as
a vacuum will pull into it masses, in a country where enforced privation
is the lot of the masses, and where desire is artificially whetted,
need turns to greed, and one easily discovers in such states
exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few.
If by the technologies of Psychopolitics one were to dull this excessive
greed in the few workers who possess it, they would be freed to
seek a more natural balance.
Here we have two extremes. Either one of them is an insanity. If
we wish to create an insanity we need only glut or deprive an individual
beyond his ability to tolerate the extremes and we have a mental
imbalance. A simple example of this is the alternation of too low
with too high pressures in a chamber, an excellent psychopolitical
procedure. The rapidly varied pressure brings about a chaos wherein
the individual will cannot act and where other wills then, perforce,
assume control.
Essentially, in an entire country, one must remove the greedy by
whatever means and must then create and sustain a semi-privation
in the masses in order to command and utterly control the nation.


to be continued