The Crossroads - Europe Stumbles Towards Continental Unity
RUSSELL, BERTRANO
The Crossroads — Europe Stumbles Towards Continental Unity Bertrand Russell Discusses Problem of Freedom and Order By BERTRANO RUSSELL JJ&- f!^m^i^akviS& of Itwek M was IT1 the most important...
...Yes, if we accept the major institutions, economic, educational, ethnic, political, that have so far existed in history as permanent features of the social scene...
...Now it stands in the way of the great need for » larger public order...
...True, but in that case, all sorts of controls and restrictions on the glorious freedoms of the agrarian economy would have to be enforced...
...at least mines and railways...
...In other words, the ground on which he,holds it, ultimately, has nothing to do with its instrumental efficacy in preventing war...
...The greater territorial states were aetkinf internal unity against the growing anarchy of the feudal system...
...Sovereignty is depicted as a right inherent in the state, a right to unlimited independence of action over /Sgajnst all other states...
...I In short, we need a journal that has moral courage and mental edge, and that knows how to think, a journal that can cooperate in man's major task of this epoch: to bring the knowledge, the method and the temper of science to bear on social and political problems...
...The traditional and still commonly accepted notion of sovereignty is open to two charges...
...The economically impossible implies a counter concept of economic necessity...
...The only kind of war that is always'profitable is a war against pacifists...
...They are to include the nationalization of "monopolies," i.e...
...Whether tan suspicion is justified I do not know...
...Even if this co-operation involves condoning mud) that we dislike in the internal policies of Buaaia as of other nations, it is worth attempting ai the only way in which the peace, when it comet, can be more than another armistice...
...Sooner or latter must -prepare our minds for the newer w*1* and in doing so we must jettison this mytt sovereignty...
...I will quote his exact words: "One can imagine that under a world institution embodying or representing the United Nations, and some day all nations, there should come into being a Council of Europe and a Council of Asia...
...The notion describes a phantasm, not political reality...
...It will, accordingly, not have complete independence...
...How many more w»ns wars shall we need to teach us the lesson...
...The answer is illuminating...
...If the worid reverts to the old Bshux* of-Power politics, there will be antajronism.oper or latent, between these two, with Great Britain holding the scales, and able to make then incline this way or that...
...It is a relative thing, varying with times and circumstances...
...One might assume that all questions of limitation of armaments, or of contributions to an international armed force, would be decided by the world institution...
...If, like Rousseau, we refer the attribution of sovereignty not to the government but to the people, tire bid language is unrealistic on other counts...
...That is an illustration of what is meant by a historico-economic necessity...
...and might make decisions disagreeable to the United States...
...But the system would not have to be1 left to itself...
...In that case, others, perhaps from countries and regions in which the ideals of pacifism are held in scorn, will discover that it is truly to their interest.to be aggressively militarit and to cut down and enslave the pacifists...
...w« cannot halt the underlying forces...
...It is not a matter of fate that men must war on one another...
...It is these considerations that form the framework of Sidney Hook's articles...
...It uses the language of rights...
...But it is just as unrealistic as if it said that sovereignty is starry-eyed and golden-tongued, arrayed in purple and bearing flamelike wings...
...more want, the more boredom, the more, fear there is in the world, the smaller the chance...
...It is today more • intensely" liberal than when it started out, and it certainly commands the respect of every truth-seeking intellectual and worker...
...W'e are a free people, but we are not independent of others...
...Ever since the sixteenth century the myth has "been retold, repeated by lawyers and philosophers, and generally accepted by the people...
...In regard to the Western hemisphere, most Americans would maintain emphatically that, in any international body, the Monroe Doctrine must be maintained, and that, consequently, North and South America must, for many purposes, form a unit in the world Federation...
...No one must stand aside in his working prime to pursue a life of selfish pleasure...
...We are deluded by it because it claims to be dealing with something abstract and invisible, the "mystery in the soul of state...
...Have we not admitted that a historico-economic necessity is not absolute...
...I imagine, made with this intention, but sc far without any visible success...
...What Dr...
...But even suppose the economically "impossible" happened...
...And young people, when they first go to work in industry, are to be employed on a half-time basis, the remainder of their time being spent in continuing their education...
...What they do concern...
...There arise here, on the one hand, large questions of principle as to the international organization of the world, and, on the other hand, the concrete and pressing question pf the relations between the Soviet government and that of the United States...
...Those who were so fearful of the encroachment of the state on the freedoms of advanced capitalism would have to encroach just as much on the freedom of the agrarian society in order to prevent it from developing in the way it historically did develop...
...The Council of Europe, in Mr...
...It, should not, -on the other hand, confuse idealism with absolutism, or dismiss realistic thinking, and a sense of the relative, as dishonest...
...Why not, then, go back to an earlier economy...
...not single states, but regions consisting of federations of states...
...The philosophy and practice of democ-'racy would be sacrificed, for a standard of living which would be lower than the existing standards, and far lower than the potential living standard of an industrialized culture that has not yet lost its democracy...
...In a Council of Europe, at the end of the war against Germany, Russia and Great Britain would have things all their own way...
...It should teach the younger generation to cease mixing their zeal for the betterment of social life with a contempt for those elementary principles of conduct that hsve msde social life possible...
...An industrial revolution would begin again...
...The reply to such proposals is that they are economically impossible...
...Men were now killing one another for the glory of God as well as for the greater glory of their overlords...
...Its weekly columns today are busy preparing working men anji women for the huge tasks of social reconstruction after the war, and for the special role of Labor in that reconstruction...
...TJJE could not return to an agrarian " economy without destroying oar large -cities, decentralising mass-production industries, 'transforming our banking and transportation systems, producing catastrophic unemployment, making huge plants and many skills obsolescent, and depriving the existing farm population of its market—to mention only, s few things...
...The small cities would become large cities...
...Either they serve us or they crush us...
...All of men's habits can be altered, but not so many of them at the same time...
...HISTORY AND ACTION THIS article is the third of a series by Sidney Hook...
...Some day the world will be forced to »bsado* this outmoded myth...
...On the general question of principle, therefore, I do not think any valid objection can be raised to Churchill's proposed Council of Europe...
...The organized labor movement ia profoundly indebted to The New Leader...
...Equality of opportunity, central to the philosophy and practice of democracy, was'much more in evidence in the agrarian economy of Jefferson's day than in the twentieth-century era of gigantic corporations, trusts, cartels, and monopolies...
...Churchill's words, is to be under a world institution, embodying at first the United Nations, and ultimately all nations...
...It is a scheme of human arrangements, not a God-given or nature-given fact, but something that has resulted historically from the activities of men...
...By all means let us mind our own affairs, keep them to ourselves...
...Personal integrity is more and not less important...
...It is easy for either side to point out just grounds of criticism of the othar^bet no useful purpose is served by doing a& Russia, unfortunately, is obsessed by the fear of a hostile alliance of capitalist powers, and is driven by this fear to claim territory in Europe in order to have a strong strategic frontier...
...The unity of mediaeval religion had been lost with the rii« of protestantism...
...Rights involve a reciprocity of relationships and thus are always relative and limited...
...But the vast majority oif individuals, -pestr arid present, have fought ftr ideals in order to further interests of a more concrete kind, like security, a longer life, or a materially better one...
...Rights exist only in some social order, and therefore they are never absolute and unconditioned, never without corresponding obligations...
...Not only are wage-earners to have the opportunity of work by carefully thought out measures to prevent unemployment, but there are to be no more idle rich...
...This power is limited at various points and by various conditions, both within the state and in the relations of states to one another...
...traditional notion of sovereignty * is so illooscal we may perhaps wonder how it ever came to take such hold of the minds of men...
...From Tom Paine and the American radicals, it should take their superior simplicity and directness of approach to those facts...
...For four hundred years a certain notion of sovereignty has been abroad in the world...
...It is not absolutely excluded that in time the vast majority of men might be won to the position of Tolstoy that to be holy is better than to be, and that to forgive one's enemies is better than to insist on justice from them...
...An expanding market for the products of industry would be set up...
...The creation of any effective world authority will, no doubt, place some limitations on the Monroe Doctrine for the Western hemisphere, end similar limitations wrll have to be allowed in any new Monroe Doctrine...
...If this fear could be allayed, it it probable that an equitable solution of territorial questions would no longer be unacceptable u the Soviet government, and that it would be possible to bring about a more whole-hearted international co-operation than has hitherto existed...
...With this are to come important reforms in education, so that everybody capable of profiting by higher education, however poor, shall be able to obtain it...
...But to say that the Monroe Doctrine is to be valid for America and invalid for Europe would be to set up a form of American imperialism...
...It has been growing more and more irrelevant, more and more incongruous with the needs and with the reali-ties'of the changing times...
...THE concrete question of Russia is more diffi-* cult...
...It is the simplest logic that rights and obligations belong together...
...His speech suggests that he is following a Conservative tradition, which dates from the times of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, and was erected into something like a principle by Disraeli...
...science above philosophy...
...The myth was created by the great need for public order...
...The British government apparently hai com* to the conclusion that it is possible to co-operau with Russia in international questions, eat tbt American government apparently still feelt hesitant, and Russia remains full of suspicion of both the Western democracies...
...To this end it exalted the monarch, investing him with all possible powers...
...Why then should not the universal aceptance of an absolute pacifism like Tolstoy's be the solution to the problem...
...Char-chill's suggestion of a Council of Europe wai...
...It is described in other terms than those that actually apply to the authority that governments own...
...At the very founding of this Republic, faced by another clamant need, the men who framed our constitution defied the tradition and set up a most signal example to show in the clearest possible way that the final authority of the state could.be relative, could be a matter of more and less, could be distributed and divided...
...A right of this sort is a mere absurdity...
...This suggestion • has annoyed many Americans, because they feel that it involves an attempt to deprive the United States of a voice in the post-war settlement of European affairs...
...And that means no self-deception—none of that semi-deliberate wishful thinking, especially about Russian totalitarianism and the Communist infiltration, which has of late muddied and corrupted liberalism in this country to the point of total decay...
...The compounding of improbabilities is so great- in this projected 'return to an earlier economy that we call it an economic impossibility...
...Each of them had the "right" to consult only its own will in its dealings with all the rest...
...This is my birthday greeting to The New Leader: Msy it caat off the last shards (if its birth-shell and become such a national weekly...
...Unable to convince themselves that his philosophy can be modified so as to vivify and redirect the world of modern industrialism, they urge a return to the earlier agrarian economy, to the simpler capitalist way a of yesterday, sa the only material basis upon which the democratic philosophy of life can be restored and defended...
...IF then the...
...and without an audience, Labor is unfy half-effective, both in its t»wn interests ' und in the interest* of society...
...ChuchiB'j "Council of Europe" arouse* suspicion in America partly because it is thought to be a tnovt towards conceding these claims...
...When that is proposed they will exclaim: "We are a sovereign people...
...The notion took form in the sixteenth century and was given currency by a series of political thinkers, and publicists such as Grasaille and Bodin...
...It should honor common sense above "dialectic...
...To what extent is man at the "whim of social forces...
...These are to include, apparently, Sh- William Beveridge's great scheme for insurance from the cradle to the grave, at any rate in its main lines...
...We won't let any international authority dictate our poHc»«*-Keep off the grass...
...For until it is adopted by everyone, it pays those who are not pacifists to reject it...
...So long as human beings did not lose their memories, it is even doubtful whether the devastation produced by an earthquake or war would incline them to return to the economies of the past...
...If it is only some thirty-six hours to the uttermost parts of the earth, it mes»* that there are a lot of affairs common t» ¦s and them, a lot of international affair* that we have neither right nor power t» regelate...
...At this present juncture in world affairs it has become a very dangerous, even a deadly notion...
...It is significant that every absolute pacifist, although he hopes that the propagation of his philosophy wilk prevent war, will never surrender his .philosophy even if he is compelled by:the evidence to admit that it cannot be successful...
...Whenever proposals are put forward for the international regulation of those most important affairs that with the spread of civilization are no longer the exclusive interest of any one state but the common concern of many or of all states, at once the cry is raised that such regulation flouts the inherent rights of national sovereignty, and this cry arouses all the prejudices and emotions that for four hundred years have been clustering round the sacred notion...
...Accept the warmest greetings of the United Hebrew-Trades, and our sincere admiration for your magnificent achievements...
...When the time com** for reconstructing the world, there are man/ who will proclaim it again, and in its name wfll attack any plan for a genuine international order...
...Our relations with cthirs are not solely our affairs...
...Almost every group in the population would have a vested interest immediately imperiled by the change, and with only the promise of an agrarian Utopia to console them...
...THE time has surely come when we must re-vise the notion...
...They would choose sites which they believed less subject to earthquakes, or they would turn their cities into impregnable bomb shelters...
...But what are our affairs...
...It is a fine program, and I believe it is sincerely intended...
...To support the process of political unif> cation the myth of sovereignty was elaborated, in the first instance by French lawyers and philosophers...
...It would require the pro-foundest modification in present human motives, modes of appreciation, standards of living and taste—all once historically acquired but now set and hardened into habit or second nature...
...They cltim also the Baltic States and Bessarabia...
...No European has any desire to question this principle, but only to extend it to other parts of the world...
...Usually, alas, it is the better we are fighting for, not the best And that is especially true in these days when the very conditions of progress are on the defense...
...The notion is as illogical as it is unrealistic...
...Here, there are two things to be distinguished...
...The Illusion of Sovereignty National Power and World Unity By R. M. MacIVER 1I7HEN our notions change the world changes, " and when the world changes we must, at length, change our notions too...
...Consequently, for the pacifist position to be truly effective the vast majority of mankind would have to adopt it at once in order to achieve its universal benefits...
...we are free and independent...
...tliitn ever to the growth of responsible American public opinion...
...If this disaster is to be averted, the mutual suspicions of Russia and America must be allayed...
...It is clear that a world authority, if it is to be in any degree effective, will have to have a federal constitution, and further, that the members of the world federation will have to be...
...It should have clarity and vigor as well as honesty...
...In a world where some fearful men nostalgically hope for the past, the inescapable facts are that no such . return is possible...
...Its readers should have absolute confidence that it is not putting over any political "line...
...so, also, would questions involving the relations of European to non-European powers...
...There can be no right, for men or for states, to do what they please where others are concerned...
...T"HE philosophy and practices of modern democracy to a large extent developed with , the growth of a capitalist society...
...We need an international order within which the ancient tradition of sovereignty is obsolete, a union of nations » which each retains its own integrity *•* belongs to a larger society...
...What we say will apply a fortiori to all proposals which suggest, as a. program of action, a return to earlier systems of economy, whose ideals and values we would keep as integral elements of our own democratic philosophy...
...These articles * on power, politics, and the laws of history are selections from Dr...
...such effort...
...And of all peoples the American people has least excuse for being obsessed by it, in the face of the clamant need of the times...
...Ideals have their function only in a directed effort, and a recognition of unalterable facts is equally important 'to...
...But precisely because an economic system is both a human economy and a historical economy, its basic relations cannot be maae over at will...
...The present crisis mnkes The New Leader nvr.e vita...
...The bonds that had held that system together were breaking...
...Churchill's international * program, which has aroused considerable opposition in the United States, partly, I think, because it has been misunderstood...
...Many who are loyal to Jefferson's democratic philosophy believe that it is dying in the present-day capitalist world sad that it will certainly be dead in the collectivist world of tomorrow...
...But such co-operation would necessitat* reciprocal action on the part of the Soviet government...
...Assuming a complete vktory over both Germany and Japan, the two leading powers will be the Soviet Union and the Unhae States...
...The territorial problem of Russia's Western frontier is part of a larger problem, upot tat solution of which post-war developments an likely to depend...
...There is no right of anarchy outside of a madhouse...
...The capitalist powers, particularly Amrnca, fear Communist propaganda, and this feat will continue to be • serious obstacle to co-opertriot with the Soviet government on international questions until the Comintern is dissolved...
...Before the present war, there were some sixty-odd states that according to "international law" possessed this unilateral right...
...It is both unrealistic and illogical...
...This applies especially to territorial questions, more particularly the western frontiers of the Soviet Unkn As a matter of justice, there were parts of pre-war Poland—notably the Polish Ukraine— to which Russia can lay claim on grounds of race and national feeling...
...Old and New Roads to Freedom By SIDNEY HOOK WN a world where the engines of human de-struction are, becoming more and more deadly, the problem of preventing war must be met before modern civilization goes down into shambles...
...Does this mean that we must accept a law to the effect that there will always be wars between nations and classes in world society...
...It should borrow from Marx his sense of the difference between men's words and ideas and the historic forces that move them—his way of slashing through to the dynamic facts...
...These pewert were summed op under the notios of sovereignty...
...Political restrictions resulted when the state actively intervened in industry, sometimes to co-operate with, and sometimes to curb, monopolistic practices...
...It is one and indivisible, inalienable, omnicompetent, supreme, ultimate, subject to no limits...
...We must therefore declare that, as a practical means of preventing war, absolute pacifism is bound to fail, barring a miraculous change in the natures of men in present-day society...
...This refers to an absolute thing, timeless and unconditioned...
...How could this agrarian - economy be stabilized...
...It should be -a journal of free and honest discussion about real facts...
...What do we understand by economic necessity here, and why is the reply to the agrarian democrats a valid one...
...I do not think any New Dealer in this country would go so far in the direction of Socialism...
...It was a prai matic doctrine directed against the pritstf rights of feudalism, promoting public ord>' against the anarchy of private wars...
...Few people profess to enjoy war, everyone deplores its costs, and although the different sides iose unequally in a war, it is questionable whether any long war is economically profitable to anybody...
...Whenever the demand for any specific reform has grown too strong to be any longer successfully resisted, it has been the practice of the Conservatives to drop their previous opposition and introduce the measure themselves...
...There would be ge labor...
...The pacifist argumentlttfift''lt" pays everyone not to have wars rufjjf^up against the fact that it would pay some pegjile^ln a world where others were pacifists, to make war on the pacifists...
...To whst extent can he shape his future...
...Idlers at the top make idlers at the bottom...
...The free market would still exist...
...True...
...The Crossroads — Europe Stumbles Towards Continental Unity Bertrand Russell Discusses Problem of Freedom and Order By BERTRANO RUSSELL JJ&- f!^m^i^akviS& of Itwek M was IT1 the most important that he has made, both nriS^B^e^n^^^o^he^ptst-war world...
...The economic and social restrictions flowed from the consequences of large-scale industrial organisation under capitalism...
...In My Opinion WHAT America needs most right now is a national weekly of democratic-radical tendency, but net dogmatic and not anchored to a program or a party...
...Through its col--uinns, Labor finds not only expression, but an nujlknce...
...It served "that purpose well...
...It should recognise that we are in a period of cyclonic change, and for that reason truth-telling is more and not less important than it was...
...After all, an economic system is a set of social relationships that regulate the behavior of men...
...The demand for it would make itself felt in the ojlfr df mere-money than could be made on the farm...
...There is the actuality of political power or authority, as possessed and exercised by governments over citizens or subjects...
...By this means they have avoided defeat and mitigated the severity, of political conflict...
...So small that it would be the height of foolishness to rely upon it in order to prevent war....The...
...We shall consider the proposal only from the point of view of its efficacy in bringing about the desired results...
...They would begin to rebuild where they had left off because it would be easier and more "natural" for them to do so...
...In both respects it showed a great advance upon his previous pronouncements...
...But there are so many "laws" of social behavior that would have to be suspended for the doctrine to spread, -that the prospect of its adoption must be dismissed as Utopian...
...In short, the agrarian economy would be booming on its way toward industrial capitalism once more, i Left to itself, the social relationships between human beings would acquire, if not the same, then a similar character to that they had when the eall for a return to the past was sounded...
...Churchill is known as an arch-Conservative, and as regards Imperial matters he deserves this appellation, tat daring his early political career he had a long interlude as a Liberal...
...Some men will risk their lives because of the intrinsic nobility of an ideal or the truth of a doctrine...
...It is logically not inconceivable that enough human beings may be converged to pacifist doctrine to prevent wars in the future...
...This will leave a large number of questions to be settled by subordinate federations, composed of the powers most directly concerned...
...No, if we believe that we can use our knowledge of other laws of human behavior to modify these institutions, to experiment and devise new-ones, and to correct them in the light of their consequences...
...Even if the promise had a hypnotic effect, the disaster attendant upon any effort to carry out such a program would awaken the populace from their trance...
...that it is dedicated without'reserve to the enlightenment, not the manipulation, of public opinion...
...New needs would spring up aeffects of existing manufacture and as causes expanding manufacture...
...But the part that one nation should play in the affairs of other nations should be confined to the preservation of peace, and such measures as are necessary to that end...
...Nowhere in the world, not even in the most totalitarian of states, is the nature of political authority properly expressed by this notion of sovereignty...
...We won't have any foreign powers meddling with our affairs...
...It is unrealistic because the actual authority of government, to which the notion is usually referred, is sometimes divisible, is always relative not absolute,, need not be "above the laws," cannot be omnicompetent, and for good reasons should net be ultimate...
...Hook is exploring here, and in his book, are those areas of social actions where intelligent human choice can prevail and dictate action...
...Such a situation, clearly, will not make tor peace, but will merely usher in a feverish period of waiting for the next great war...
...As a logical possibility we can conceive of any economic system prevailing at any time...
...U7HAT is the chance that everyone, or almost . .everyone, would adopt the pacifist position at once...
...The New Leader, on its 20th^anni-versary, has done neither...
...It would be legally free...
...Small commercial enterprises would exist...
...He proposes that, on the defeat of Germany, without waiting for the defeat of Japan, a new Parliament shall be elected, to which large measures, constituting a "four-year plan," shall be submitted...
...Let us grant that if everyone, or almost everyone, actually adopted the Tolstoyian or Gandhian position, war would be impossible...
...To be concluded) Morris C. Feinstone Qxretary, United Hebrew Trades JN the course of twenty years, a fighting liberal paper either goes conservative or lapses into obscurity...
...The latter will not fight for their own lives and possessions or for the lives and possessions of friends, children, and countrymen...
...Hook's forthcoming book, the Hero in History, published by John Day...
...This sitaatioT is dangerous...
...The human inventive spirit would not remain dormant...
...Against it we must set the notion of sovereignty, as it has been traditionally conceived...
...Nor are men altogether free not to fight when con flirts of basic interest cannot be resolved to their mutual satisfaction through means other than war...
...Polish Ukrainians were very harshly treated by the government of Poland, and there is no good reason why they should be subjected again to similar treatment But the Russians claim more Polish territory than can be claimed on this ground...
...mightily, and what we do concerns them JO** as much...
...Our armaments are not SStdT our affairs nor our cartels nor even our tariff*-The world has grown too small for that...
...I COME now to Mr...
...The frequency and intensity of wars can be diminished in a world society in which through peaceful social processes men can actually get at a lesser cost the things they believe—often mistakenly—that war can win for them...
...MAX EASTMAN...
...But long before enough have been concerted, the situation will enable some unpacififf- men to further their existing Interests by profiting from the nonresisting behavior of those who practice absolute pacifism...
...As according to the forecast I am outlining the war against Japan will still be raging, it is upon the creation of the Council of Europe and the settlement of Europe that the first practical task will be centered...
...As the capitalist economy matured through the phase of industrial capitalism to finance and monopoly capitalism, a great many of the freedoms associated with the democratic philosophy became progressively restricted...
Vol. 26 • April 1943 • No. 15
