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But the old morals with their “abstract general principles” must disappear because “the empiricist treats the concrete case on its individual merits.”
“We know the direction in which the world is moving, and we must bow to it or perish.”
To bring about a “return to a more dispersed and generalized world trade . . . by a ‘removal of trade barriers’ or by a resuscitation of the laissez faire principles of the nineteenth century” is “unthinkable.”
war, “the most powerful instrument of social solidarity,” creates.
The influence of these scientist-politicians was of late years not often on the side of liberty: the “intolerance of reason” so frequently conspicuous in the scientific specialist, the impatience with the ways of the ordinary man so characteristic of the expert, and the contempt for anything which was not consciously organized by superior minds according to a scientific blueprint were phenomena familiar in German public life for generations before they became of significance in England.
Apart from the intellectual influences which we have illustrated by two instances, the impetus of the movement toward totalitarianism comes mainly from the two great vested interests: organized capital and organized labor.
They do this through their common, and often concerted, support of the monopolistic organization of industry; and it is this tendency which is the great immediate danger.
Their responsibility is not altered by the fact that their aim is not a totalitarian system but rather a sort of corporative society in which the organized industries would appear as semi-independent and self-governing “estates.”
It is not surprising that entrepreneurs should like to enjoy both the high income which in a competitive society the successful ones among them gain and the security of the civil servant.
it will not be long before they will find, as their German colleagues did, that they are no longer masters but will in every respect have to be satisfied with whatever power and emoluments the government will concede them.
The fatal development was that they have succeeded in enlisting the support of an ever increasing number of other groups and, with their help, in obtaining the support of the state.
In some measure the monopolists have gained this support either by letting other groups participate in their gains or, and perhaps even more frequently, by persuading them that the formation of monopolies was in the public interest.
But, when we have to deal with many different monopolistic industries, there is much to be said for leaving them in different private hands rather than combining them under the single control of the state.
A state which is entangled in all directions in the running of monopolistic enterprise, while it would possess crushing power over the individual, would yet be a weak state in so far as its freedom in formulating policy is concerned.
more identified with the interests of those who run things than with the interests of the people in general.
The fatal turning-point in the modern development was when the great movement which can serve its original ends only by fighting all privilege, the labor movement, came under the influence of anti-competition doctrines and became itself entangled in the strife for privilege.
Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark.
It was men’s submission to the impersonal forces of the market that in the past has made possible the growth of a civilization which without this could not have developed; it is by thus submitting that we are every day helping to build something that is greater than any one of us can fully comprehend.
And it fails to see that, unless this complex society is to be destroyed, the only alternative to submission to the impersonal and seemingly irrational forces of the market is submission to an equally uncontrollable and therefore arbitrary power of other men.
We must now return briefly to the crucial point—that individual freedom cannot be reconciled with the supremacy of one single purpose to which the whole society must be entirely and permanently subordinated.
That no single purpose must be allowed in peace to have absolute preference over all others applies even to the one aim which everybody now agrees comes in the front rank: the conquest of unemployment.
What our generation is in danger of forgetting is not only that morals are of necessity a phenomenon of individual conduct but also that they can exist
only in the sphere in which the individual is free to decide for himself and is called upon voluntarily to sacrifice personal advantage to the observance of a moral rule.
Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value.
A movement whose main promise is the relief from responsibility6 cannot but be antimoral in its effect, however lofty the ideals to which it owes its birth.
injustices inflicted on individuals by government action in the interest of a group are disregarded with an indifference hardly distinguishable from callousness; and the grossest violations of the most elementary rights of the individual,
All this surely indicates that our moral sense has been blunted rather than sharpened.
If the democracies themselves abandon the supreme ideal of the freedom and happiness of the individual, if they implicitly admit that their civilization is not worth preserving, and that they know nothing better than to follow the path along which the Germans have led, they have indeed nothing to offer.
they have learned that neither good intentions nor efficiency of organization can preserve decency in a system in which personal freedom and individual responsibility are destroyed.
Not the latest improvements we may have effected in our social institutions, which count but little compared with the basic differences of two opposed ways of life, but our unwavering faith in those traditions which have made England and America countries of free and upright, tolerant and independent, people is the thing that counts.
Less obvious but by no means less real are the dangers to peace arising out of the artificially fostered economic solidarity of all the inhabitants of any one country and from the new blocs of opposed interests created by planning on a national scale.
It is one of the most fatal illusions that, by substituting negotiations between states or organized groups for competition for markets or for raw materials, international friction would be reduced.
But, as the scale increases, the amount of agreement on the order of ends decreases and the necessity to rely on force and compulsion grows.
If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this justly and equitably.
Planning on an international scale, even more than is true on a national scale, cannot be anything but a naked rule of force, an imposition by a small group on all the rest of that sort of standard and employment which the planners think suitable for the rest.
To the worker in a poor country the demand of his more fortunate colleague to be protected against his low-wage competition by minimum-wage legislation, supposedly in his interest, is frequently no more than a means to deprive him of his only chance to better his conditions by overcoming natural disadvantages by working at wages lower than his fellows in other countries.
An international authority can be very just and contribute enormously to economic prosperity if it merely keeps order and creates conditions in which the people can develop their own life; but it is impossible to be just or to let people live their own life if the central authority doles out raw materials and allocates markets, if every spontaneous effort has to be “approved” and nothing can be done without the sanction of the central authority.
The controller of the supply of any such raw material as gasoline or timber, rubber or tin, would be the master of the fate of whole industries and countries.
While he “protects” the standards of life of those he regards as specially entrusted to his care, he will deprive many who are in a much worse position of their best and perhaps only chance to improve it.
There is so much “realism” in this that by thus camouflaging the planning authorities as “international” it might be easier to achieve the condition under which international planning is alone practicable, namely, that it is in effect done by one single predominant power.
“If the Nazi way with small sovereign states is indeed to become the common form, what is the war about?”
The form of international government under which certain strictly defined powers are transferred to an international authority, while in all other respects the individual countries remain responsible for their internal affairs, is, of course, that of federation.
Federalism is, of course, nothing but the application to international affairs of democracy, the only method of peaceful change man has yet invented.
It is, in fact, one of the main advantages of federation that it can be so devised as to make most of the harmful planning difficult while leaving the way free for all desirable planning.
We shall all be the gainers if we can create a world fit for small states to live in.
But the small can preserve their independence in the international as in the national sphere only within a true system of law which guarantees both that certain rules are invariably enforced and that the authority which has the power to enforce these cannot use it for any other purpose.
We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may also prevent its use for desirable purposes.
An international authority which effectively limits the powers of the state over the individual will be one of the best safeguards of peace.
While we must aim at preventing future wars as much as possible, we must not believe that we can at one stroke create a permanent organization which will make all war in any part of the world entirely impossible.
