Socialism Without Utopia (2)

...In the meantime, however, the magnitude of the catastrophes of the last forty years, the growth of continental world powers, the tendency toward large economic units and the division of the world into two hostile power blocs have combined to limit the scope for national conflicts of the old type...

...As the lessons of the Hitler war were revived by the acute threat of Soviet expansion in 1947 and 1948, it became clear that small and medium-sized nations could not hope to defend themselves effectively by their own forces alone...

...It is therefore also the central issue in the worldwide tasks of the Socialists...

...They are now in retreat before the movements they themselves provoked in the "underdeveloped" countries...

...CAREFUL, FELLOWS Nehru pleased by moderation of language in international dealings.—News item...

...In no case did the participants begin by submitting to unforeseeable majority decisions...

...It is no accident, either, that the totalitarian threat from within has been least serious where constructive Socialist advance has been greatest, as in Scandinavia a*nd Britain...

...With the Second World War, the mutual destruction of the European nations has reached a point where not only Europe's importance in the world but also that of European nationalism has begun to decline...

...It has made truly international Socialism a reality once again...

...But when, in more recent years, it assumed concrete shape, its popularity became confined mainly to Socialist parties which had little prospect of gaining decisive influence on their national economic policy, while those with important social achievements at home resisted all federal schemes...

...But if Socialist achievements are impossible without military security in the vicinity of totalitarian power regimes, the expansion of these regimes cannot be resisted, let alone their territory reduced, by military force alone...

...But even the defeat of Hitler did not end the historical process of totalitarian expansion...

...The expansion of the economic and political power of Western imperialism?which was part of the same uncontrolled and explosive process as capitalist industrialization in the West itself —and the power politics of the nation-states have passed their peak...

...This process can only be halted and ultimately ended if the powerful and highly productive region of the world, which is free to develop according to its own laws, overcomes the crisis of nihilism which has driven millions into the arms of dictatorship, and develops a social order which is both adequate to the technical possibilities of the present age and in harmony with the inalienable rights of free men...

...The immediate danger of an armed attack from the Soviet bloc may be very small...

...Could it be that the present controversy on this matter is partly due to too narrow and rigid a concept of "federalism...

...But it must not be forgotten that even the indirect expansion of totalitarian power always depends upon the twofold effect of propaganda and fear: Even people who think they are immune to the first may easily succumb to the second when they feel defenseless...

...But, far from being a solution of this crisis, it is merely its final negative result: It arises from failure to find a solution, and puts a stop to further creative evolution wherever its power is established...

...In the West, the pressure of common tasks is very powerful today, but on important points no common policies have as yet been worked out, especially in the economic and social spheres...

...In the free part of Europe, the difficulties of economic reconstruction after the war first led to the need to import, for a time, large amounts of foreign capital and to coordinate the national economies to insure its rational use and reduce the overall dependency on non-European imports...

...In contrast to this...

...Pandit Nehru Really hates men To use rough language When they're statesmen...

...even the internal conflict between the party's leaders and Mr...

...As an open forum where the contestants in the cold war confront each other and defend their actions before world opinion, the United Nations is, no doubt, a factor which helps to make war less likely, and hence is worth preserving...

...The release of the Indian subcontinent—historically the greatest achievement of the British Labor Government, however important the economic and social changes wrought by it at home—has given a new and hopeful turn to the whole evolution of Asia and of her relations with Europe, and has shown the way to similar solutions in other parts of the world and in the colonial empires of other powers...

...If the Socialist parties of Europe could work out a common attitude on these lines, they would make an important contribution to the overcoming of nationalism and to the further development of European and Atlantic unity...

...Hence, the Socialists, side by side with their constructive tasks, must resist the spread of totalitarian regimes...

...The tremendous extension of the power of this state, which now enables it to compete for the first time for world domination, reflects the depth of the crisis of our civilization which has been discussed here...

...But even the Socialists in the socially most advanced countries have a vital interest in transcending the limitations of purely national solutions, which are inevitably precarious...

...As long ;as the idea of European federation was discussed in abstract terms (especially during the war), it was popular enough among the Socialists of all countries...

...The attempt to found the United Nations organization after the Second World War on the wartime alliance again led to paralysis—this time not because it failed to comprise enough states, but because it comprised both camps of a deeply divided world...

...Economic exploitation, social oppression and the political awakening of modern mass movements had been linked with a cultural process distinct from, but parallel to, the internal crisis of the West...

...And here the Socialists, after much earlier hesitation, have not failed to rise to the occasion at the decisive moment...

...So watch your language, Diplomats...

...Joint defense planning within the Atlantic alliance, founded in 1949, thus reinforced the trend toward European and Atlantic unity, which assumed concrete forms in a number of federal or semi-federal projects...

...Bevan concerned only the extent, not the principle, of rearmament...

...This problem is rapidly becoming the crucial question for the Western world, or, to be more exact, for the world as a whole...

...This meant that there had to be a search for compromise but, once a compromise had been agreed on, the decisions of the delegates would bind their governments...

...But the opponents of totalitarianism, too, have found it more and more necessary to combine in order to meet its constant pressure...

...The positive achievements of the Labor Government in Britain were attained even though a comprehensive rearmament program had to be paid for at the same time...

...Everywhere permanent common institutions were set up, congresses of delegates for dealing with common tasks, where at first the unanimity rule prevailed...

...Both have understood that the lasting values of their civilization can only be preserved in the upheavals of our time if these values are reinterpreted in the light of the contemporary crisis and society is changed accordingly...

...it merely secures the totalitarian order by the denial of all claims to freedom...

...The Soviet state, once born of a revolution inspired by socialist hopes, is still exploiting socialist slogans to extend its power...

...the old ways of life were here destroyed by the invasion of modern industry and state organization from outside, so that the absence of the West produced a crisis of alien civilizations...

...Confronted as it is with such worldwide tasks by the pressing needs of the moment, does our movement really need a Utopian aim in order to believe in its historical mission...

...I he democratic Socialists have become recognized standard-bearers of the demand for the independent development of the former colonial peoples in regimes of internal and external freedom, and the most coNftNuro os Nr\r nci SOCIALISM determined supporters of unconditional international aid for them...

...The present unarmed resistance of Finland would not be possible without the weighty friendship of well-armed Sweden, nor the unarmed resistance of Berlin without the protection of the Western powers...

...The history of all modern states created by mergers, from Switzerland to the Netherlands and from Germany to the United States, shows uniformly that the advance from a multitude of sovereign states to one federated states (in the Netherlands, even a unified state) was never attained in one fell swoop, but always led through a shorter or longer stage (centuries in some cases) of a league or confederacy...

...Such a solution is the exact opposite of the order based on freedom which would correspond to the fundamental ideas of our civilization...

...The question arises whether these movements must remain hostile to the West to which they owe so much, whether they must serve as so much new explosive material for the destruction of Western civilization (as Soviet strategy would have it), or whether Western society, itself in the throes of socialist transformation and of overcoming its own crisis, can find new ways of cooperation and of joint advance with these countries...

...In this debate on the possibility of federal or similar supra-national institutions for Western Europe, the Socialists have not taken a uniform stand...

...That democratic Socialists are aware of this need they have proved in the forefront of the defense of freedom in recent years at many danger points—in Burma as in Berlin, in Finland as in Austria...

...the reactionary forces, though irrevocably in retreat, are still trying to defend their colonial privileges inch by inch, while the Communist-led "liberation movements" have proved mere forerunners of a new alien rule and the tools for forcible modernization under the whip of totalitarian systems of the Soviet type...

...Yet, the practice of the totalitarian one-party state, with its total extinction of individual rights and freedoms and its total subjection of scientific truth to the changing needs of the powers-that-be, has long been revealed as the deadly enemy of everything that Socialism stands for...

...On the other hand, the problem of the relations between the "old" industrial countries of Western civilization and the former or existing colonial territories has steadily been gaining in importance...

...And also watch your Coats and hats...

...Yet, even while undergoing that transformation, they are trying to preserve their own cultural identity...

...That is the never-ending, ever-new task ahead of us: Socialism without Utopia...

...If the latter were possible, a new and wider meaning could be given to the Western idea of an order based on freedom, while the exploited and oppressed peoples of yesterday would be offered the optimum chance of solving their problems of development in their own way...

...At the same time, the reluctance of the American capitalists to risk their funds in foreign investment, traditional since 1929, was compensated by the readiness of the American Government—then strongly inclined toward economic planning—to raise the necessary amounts by taxation and to make them available, either as loans or in its generous share of Marshall aid...

...From a Western point of view, and indeed from that of a future world order worthy of men, there is yet another side to this problem...

...The field for Socialist action is only where totalitarianism has not conquered, where the chances of a genuine solution of the crisis are still open...

...Todav...

...It is deeply significant that today there are leading Asian Socialists who are convinced Buddhists or pupils of Gandhi, just as there are leading European Socialists who are devout Christians...

...In this outline of the constructive tasks of Socialism in our time, we have only touched in passing on the conflict with Soviet totalitarianism, which keeps the world divided into two camps...

...But it cannot hope to become the recognized arbiter of all conflicts between nations, whose authority could effectively restrain the sovereign egotism of the nation-states...

...The process of economic coordination was not interrupted when most West European countries ceased to be dependent on American aid...

...Under these conditions, a "confederal" interim solution—common organisms empowered to take binding decisions, but on the basis of the unanimity rule—seems the natural way to advance in the formation of common policies, preferable to a reliance on majorities that happen to exist at the time...

...The West had drawn these areas into the process of industrialization, and their national movements had developed in opposition to the West...

...in Bolshevik history, such attacks have been few and not very successful, though they did occur—as in Georgia in 1921, in the Baltic countries and Finland in 1939, in Iran in 1946, and in Korea in 1950...

...But it would be a mistake to conclude from this that such constructive achievements make it unnecessary to be prepared for an armed defense of freedom...

...Within the Soviet camp, the problem of national conflicts is "solved" in exactly the same way as is the problem of internal conflicts of interests?by the forcible subjection of all classes and peoples to the centralized one-party state, and of the Communist parties of the satellite states to the Soviet Party leaders...

...Individual acts of aggression can only be resisted by force...

...This conflict can be fully overcome only by internal progress in those European countries which have so far been lagging behind in the solution of their economic and social problems...

...To resist foreign rule, these nations must assimilate Western economic techniques and forms of power organization, and this implies also the acceptance of certain vital Western modes of thought and action...

...and this, along with the change in the scale of what counts as political and economic power in the world today, has reduced the value of national sovereignty and increased the general willingness to discuss forms for its voluntary restriction...