Morale is a large factor in organizing.
An executive is utterly dependent upon the willingness of those who work for him. (How to Live Though an Executive.)
Willingness, while it is also a factor in morale, is also a manifestation of morale.
Morale, the tone of a group, is the target of “do-gooders,” the “one-worlders,” the labor agitator, the commie agent, the local minister and a general mixed company of often well-meaning but nevertheless deadly people.
“You poor fellow. They treat you so badly. . .we will take up this great injustice. . .workers should have everything free. . .communist imperialist aggressors against poor working people. . . . You poor fellow, God will make you welcome in his heaven from this earthly toil. . . . Kill the managers. . . . Down with law and order. . . .”
Well, it all winds up in revolution eventually and mounds of dead workers and a few dead managers.
So let’s look this over.
If you can do something about an ill situation you do. If you can be effective you can at least make the situation easier. If you can’t do that you can sympathize.
Sympathy with the abused apparently not only does no good but winds up in revolt!
How?
You have this young girl, see. She is wearing last year’s dress. No new clothes. So you say, “You poor thing wearing last year’s dress.” Up to now she wasn’t worried about it. Now she says, “I wish I had some new clothes.” And you say, “You poor thing. Doesn’t your mother ever buy you new clothes?” “No.” “The beast!” She goes home and revolts.
Get it?
The UN says, “Every woiker, he got to have job, house, lotsa dough.” Worker says, “Who? Me?” “Yes you poor down-trodden sod.” And the UN says, “United States. You rich. You pay!” US pitches out the foreign aid. The countries take the dough and revolt and elect a military junta that chops off heads every hour on the hour.
The one-world do-gooders in the US say, “US, you pay poor fired woikers!” US puts out sixty-three billions. You can’t walk down a street. Riot and insurrection.
Why?
Sympathy. But not one brain cell worth of organization.
People want to be part of things, part of life.
If the clod heads that pass for modern politicians had the ability to organize and handle an economy (in big countries or small) people could easily be part of things and build the place up. It is in fact a highly skilled activity. And currently quite beyond the heads of nations. Or they wouldn’t have unemployment, riots, inflation and future death.
Take Russia. (You take her, I don’t want her.) She had half a century of growing revolt. The oatmeal brained Romanoffs spent their roubles on war and secret police. Up jumped Lenin, “You poor woikers!” Revolt. Dead Czar. Dead Russia. Their “workers paradise” can’t feed itself. The Czars were supremely awful. Their commissars weren’t even that good. One secret policeman per worker was about the ratio in Stalin’s day.
Let’s be practical. Who is going to build this UN house for the poor worker? Who is going to pay the billions except the worker?
And if, as we so glaringly see, the end product of all this “poor worker” is riot and civil commotion, insurrection and piles of dead workers then mightn’t there be something a bit awry with its morale value?
Sympathy is a morale depressant. And knowingly or not, a morale destroyer.
If the person who sympathized was good enough to do something about it he would.
There’s nothing at all wrong with righting evil conditions. Far from it.
But if you want to better things KNOW HOW TO ORGANIZE.
Don’t just stir up a revolt that will get workers machine gunned.
If the chronic moaner knew how to throw together an organizing board and groove in the lines, as part of the state or the opposition, he could certainly change things for the better.
Organizing is the know-how of changing things.
Good morale is the product of good organization!
If you organize something well and efficiently you will have good morale. You will also have improved conditions.
Wherever morale is bad, organize!
A very careful survey of people shows that their basic protests are against lack of organization. “It doesn’t run right!” is the reason they protest things.
Inequalities of work load, rewards unearned, no havingness, these are some of the things that are snarled about.
They are cured by organizing things.
Russia Siberiaed or shot all her managers, thinking managers and capitalists were the same thing. Then she couldn’t feed her people.
And you can’t even discuss morale as a subject when a country has to be held together with barbed wire frontiers to hold in its own secret policed people!
The only thing I really have against communists is that they know how to make a revolt but not how to make a country.
And the only thing I have against the capitalist do-gooder is that all the com and games in the world will not make a viable country.
Neither system winds up in happiness or high morale.
The physical universe is no rose bed. But it can be confronted and can be lived in by a group.
Whenever you see bad morale, behind it you will see chaotic disorganization.
A nation or an org follows the same laws.
Disorganization from any cause deprives people of wanted beingness, doingness and havingness.
When you deprive people of those things you’re going to have pretty awful morale.
And only organization and very good organization will bring about beingness, doingness and havingness.
All three factors must be served. And purpose and reason must exist.
A bum with a handout sandwich is a bum with a handout sandwich. You can’t change anyone upward with sympathy. It is a witch’s weapon, a devil’s curse. But you can change someone upward with organization.
Bad organization = bad morale.
Good organization equals good morale.
And good organization is something worked on by a group, not ordered under pain of death.
The only tops that get blown when effective organization starts going in are those who don’t want others to have things and take delight in suppression — in other words good organization is only opposed by those who have reason to fear others. For in organization lies the secret of a group’s strength.
A small group thoroughly organized can conquer the disorganized billions. And have excellent morale while they’re doing it!