wnership to the things that men use, and concentrating in
the producing group the ownership of all productive tools.

When economic rewards are withdrawn from possession and given to
creation, it will pay better to create than it will to own. Furthermore,
since ownership of itself would involve no power over others, another
important incentive to accumulation would be removed.

A producers' society, as a matter of course, would accord the most honor
to those who engaged in productive activity, thus registering the
social opinion in favor of creating rather than of possessing and
exploiting. With the economic and the social rewards going to producers,
the young of each generation would learn that it was more worth while to
be a producer than to be an owner.

Again a producers' society would aim to secure the common participation
in the necessary social tasks--the drudgery and the "dirty-work." With
the essential work performed in part by all able-bodied persons, no
stigma would attach to those who were engaged in it, the class of
economic pariahs would be eliminated, and each participant in the
necessary economic work of the world would feel that he belonged to the
group in which he was playing so important a role.

"But," argues the doubter, "all of this is against human nature. How is
it possible to expect that men will stop possessing, or will lose the
desire for possession?"

They cannot be expected to do either, of course. But it so happens that,
in any industrial society, the group living on its ownership is a very
small one compared with the group living by its labor. The preference,
in an industrial community, can therefore easily incline to labor rather
than to ownership. As for the chief rewards of life going to producers
rather than to owners, this is historically practicable. Greek society
worked out an elaborate system of honors and rewards for those who could
create. Human nature has not been fairly or adequately tested in recent
years. Only certain of its phases have been developed by social demands,
and those phases--the possessive instincts--are among the least socially
advantageous of human qualities.

An emphasis on production rather than on accumulation would have another
important result--more important, in a sense, than any of those named.
It would establish a feeling of self-respect among those who work by
giving them the only conceivable economic basis for self-respect--the
ownership and con