IN ALMOST all current ideas of the first step towards international
organisation, it is taken for granted that the nations will continue to enjoy their
separate existence and liberties and will only leave to international action
the prevention of war, the regulation of dangerous disputes, the power of
settling great international questions which they cannot settle by ordinary
means. It is impossible that the development should stop there; this first step
would necessarily lead to others which could travel only in one direction.
Whatever authority were established, if it is to be a true authority in any
degree and not a mere concert for palaver, would find itself called upon to act
more frequently and to assume always increasing powers. To avoid preventible
disturbance and friction, to avert hereafter the recurrence of troubles and
disasters which in the beginning the first limitations of its powers had
debarred the new authority from averting by a timely intervention before they
came to a head, to bring about a co-ordination of activities for common ends,
would be the principal motives impelling humanity to advance from a looser to a
closer union, from a voluntary self-subordination in great and exceptional
matters to an obligatory subordination in most matters. The desire of powerful
nations to use it for their own purposes, the utility for weaker nations of
appealing to it for the protection of their interests, the shock of actual or
threatened internal disturbances and revolutions would all help to give the
international authority greater power and provide occasions for extending its
normal action. Science, thought and religion, the three great forces which in
modern times tend increasingly to override national distinctions and point the
race towards unity of life and spirit, would become more impatient of national
barriers, hostilities and divisions and lend their powerful influence to the
change. The great struggle between Capital and
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Labour might become rapidly world-wide, arrive at such
an international organisation as would precipitate the inevitable step or even
present the actual crisis which would bring about the transformation.1
Our supposition for the moment is that a well-unified World-
State with the nations for its provinces would be the final out- come. At
first, taking up the regulation of international disputes and of economic
treaties and relations, the international authority would start as an arbiter
and an occasional executive power and change by degrees into a legislative body
and a standing executive power. Its legislation would be absolutely necessary
in international matters, if fresh convulsions are to be avoided; for it is
idle to suppose that any international arrangement, any ordering of the world
arrived at after the close of the great war and upheaval could be permanent and
definitive. Injustice, in- equalities, abnormalities, causes of quarrel or
dissatisfaction would remain in the relations of nation with nation, continent
with continent which would lead to fresh hostilities and explosions. As these
are prevented in the nation-State by the legislative authority which constantly
modifies the existing system of things in conformity with new ideas, interests,
forces and necessities, so it would have to be in the developing World-State.
This legislative power as it developed, extended, regularised its actions,
powers and processes, would become more complex and would be bound to interfere
at many points and override or substitute its own for the separate national
action. That would imply the growth also of its executive power and the
development of an international executive organisation. At first it might confine
itself to the most important questions and affairs which obviously demanded its
control; but it would tend increasingly to stretch its hand to all or most
matters that could be viewed as having an international effect and importance.
Before long it would invade and occupy. even those fields in which the nations
are now jealous of their own rights and power. And eventually it would permeate
the whole system of the national life and subject it to inter-
1 It might seem that the general spread of
Fascism would prevent this development by abolishing the class war, but it is
still doubtful even in Fascist countries whether this abolition is not a mere
interlude, a suspense and not a definitive solution.
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national control in the interests of the better
co-ordination of the united life, culture, science, organisation, education,
efficiency of the human race. It would reduce the now free and separate nations
first to the position of the States of the American Union or the German Empire
and eventually perhaps to that of geographical provinces or departments of the
single nation of mankind.
The present
obstacle to any such extreme consummation is the still strong principle of
nationalism, the sense of group separateness, the instinct of collective independence,
its pride, its pleasure in itself, its various sources of egoistic
self-satisfaction, its insistence on the subordination of the human idea to the
national idea. But we are supposing that the new-born idea of internationalism
will grow apace, subject to itself the past idea and temper of nationalism,
become dominant and take pos- session of the human mind. As the larger
nation-group has subordinated to itself and tended to absorb all smaller clan,
tribal and regional groups, as the larger empire-group now tends to subordinate
an~ might, if allowed to develop, eventually absorb the smaller nation-groups,
we are supposing that the complete human group of united mankind will
subordinate to itself in the same way and eventually absorb all smaller groups
of separated humanity. It is only by a growth of the international idea, the
idea of a single humanity, that nationalism can disappear, if the old natural
device of an external unification by con- quest or other compulsive force
continues to be no longer possible; for the methods of war have become too
disastrous and no single empire has the means and the strength to overcome,
whether rapidly or in the gradual Roman way, the rest of the world.
Undoubtedly, nationalism is a more powerful obstacle to farther unification
than was the separativeness of the old pettier and less firmly self-conscious
groupings which preceded the developed nation-State. It is still the most
powerful sentiment in the collective human mind, still gives an indestructible
vitality to the nation and is apt to reappear even where it seemed to have been
abolished. But we cannot argue safely from the present balance of tendencies in
the beginning of a great era of transitions. Already there are at work not only
ideas but forces,
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all the more powerful for being forces of the future
and not established powers of the present, which may succeed in subordinating
nationalism to themselves far earlier than we can at pre- sent conceive.
If the
principle of the World-State is carried to its logical conclusion and to its
extreme consequences, the result will be a process analogous, in principle,
with whatever necessary differences in the manner or form or extent of
execution, to that by which in the building of the nation-State the central
government, first as a monarchy, then as a democratic assembly and executive,
gathered up the whole administration of the national life. There will be a
centralisation of all control, military and police, administrative, judicial,
legislative, economic, social and cultural in the one international authority.
The spirit of the centralisation will be a strong unitarian idea and the
principle of uniformity enforced for the greatest practical convenience and the
result a rationalised mechanism of human life and activities throughout the
world - with justice, universal
well-being, economy of effort and scientific efficiency as its principal
objects. Instead of the individual activities of nation-groups each working for
itself with the maximum of friction and waste and conflict, there will be an
effort at co-ordination such as we now see in a well-organised modern State, of
which the complete idea is a thorough-going State socialism, nowhere yet
realised indeed, but rapidly coming into existence.1 If we
glance briefly at each department of the communal activity, we shall see that
this development is inevitable.
We have
seen already that all military power - and in the World-State that would mean
an international armed police - must
be concentrated in the hands of one common authority; otherwise the State
cannot endure. A certain concentration of the final power of decision in
economic matters would be also in time inevitable. And in the end this
supremacy could not stop short of a complete control. For, the economic life of
the world is becoming more and more one and indivisible; but the present
1 Since this was written, this coming into existence has become much more
rapid and thorough-going in three at least of the greatest nations and a more
hesitating and less clearly self-conscious imitation of it is in evidence in
smaller countries.
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state of international relations is an anomalous
condition of opposite principles partly in conflict, partly accommodated to
each other as best they can be, -
but the best is bad and harmful to the common interest. On the one side, there
is the underlying unity which makes each nation commercially dependent on all
the rest. On the other, there is the spirit of national jealousy, egoism and
sense of separate existence which makes each nation attempt at once to assert
its industrial independence and at the same time reach out for a hold of its
outgoing commercial activities upon foreign markets. The interaction of these
two principles is regulated at present partly by the permitted working of
natural forces, partly by tacit practice and understanding, partly by systems
of tariff protection, bounties, State aid of one kind or another on the one
hand and commercial treaties and agreements on the other. Inevitably, as the
World-State grew, this would be felt to be an anomaly, a wasteful and
uneconomical process. An efficient international authority would be compelled
more and more to intervene and modify the free arrangements of nation with
nation. The commercial interests of humanity at large would be given the first
place; the independent proclivities and commercial ambitions or jealousies of
this and that nation would be compelled to subordinate themselves to the human
good. The ideal of mutual exploitation would be replaced by the ideal of a fit
and proper share in the united economic life of the race. Especially, as
socialism advanced and began to regulate the whole economic existence of
separate countries, the same principle would gain ground in the international
field and in the end the World-State would be called upon to take up into its
hands the right ordering of the industrial production and distribution of the
world. Each country might be allowed for a time to produce its own absolute
necessities: but in the end it would probably be felt that this was no more
necessary than for Wales or Scotland to produce all its own necessities
independently of the rest of the British Isles or for one province of India to
be an economic unit independent of the rest of the country; each would produce
and distribute only what it could to the best advantage, most naturally, most
efficiently and most economically, for the common need and demand of mankind in
which
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its own would be inseparably included. It would do this
according to a system settled by the common will of mankind through its State
government and under a method made uniform in its principles, however variable
in local detail, so as to secure the simplest, smoothest and most rational
working of a necessarily complicated machinery.
The
administration of the general order of society is a less pressing matter of
concern than it was to the nation-States in their period of formation, because
those were times when the element of order had almost to be created and
violence, crime and revolt were both more easy and more a natural and general
propensity of mankind. At the present day, not only are societies tolerably
well-organised in this respect and equipped with the absolutely necessary
agreements between country and country, but by an elaborate system of national,
regional and municipal governments linked up by an increasingly rapid power of
communication, the State can regulate parts of the order of life with which the
cruder governments of old were quite unable to deal with any full effect. In
the World-State, it may thought, each country may be left to its own free
action in matters of its internal order, and, indeed, of all its separate
political, social and cultural life. But even here it is probable that the
world-State would demand a greater centralization and uniformity than we can
now easily imagine.
In the
matter, for instance, of the continual struggle of society with the still
ineradicable element of crime which it generates in its own bosom, the crudity
of the present system is sure to be recognised and a serious attempt made to
deal with it in a very radical manner. The first necessity would be the close
observation and supervision of the great mass of constantly re-created corrupt
human material in which the bacillus of crime finds its natural
breeding-ground. This is at present done very crudely and imperfectly and, for
the most part, after the event of actual crime by the separate police of each
nation with extradition treaties and informal mutual aid as a device against
evasion by place-shift. The World-State would insist on an international as
well as a local supervision, not only to deal with the phenomenon of what may
be called international crime and disorder
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which is likely to increase largely under future
conditions, but for the more important object of the prevention of crime.
For the
second necessity it would feel would be the need to deal with crime at its roots
and in its inception. It may attempt this, first by a more enlightened method
of education and moral and temperamental training which would render the growth
of criminal propensities more difficult; secondly, by scientific or eugenic
methods of observation, treatment, isolation, perhaps sterilisation of corrupt
human material; thirdly, by a humane and enlightened gaol system and
penological method which would have for its aim not the punishment but the
reform of the incipient and the formed criminal. It would insist on a certain
uniformity of principle so that there might not be countries that would
persevere in backward and old-world or inferior or erratic systems and so
defeat the general object. For this end centralisation of control would be necessary
or at least strongly advisable. So too with the judicial method. The present
system is still considered as enlightened and civilised, and it is so
comparatively with the mediaeval methods; but a time will surely come when it
will be condemned as grotesque, inefficient, irrational and in many of its
principal features semi-barbaric, a half-conversion at most of the more
confused and arbitrary methods of an earlier state of social thought and
feeling and social life. With the development of a more rational system, the
preservation of the old juridical and judicial principles and methods in any
part of the world would be felt to be intolerable and the World-State would be
led to standardise the new principles and the new methods by a common
legislation and probably a general centralised control.
In all
these matters, it might be admitted, uniformity and centralisation would be
beneficial and to some extent inevitable; no jealousy of national separateness
and independence could be allowed under such conditions to interfere with the
common good of humanity. But at least in the choice of their political system
and in other spheres of their social life the nations might well be left to
follow their own ideals and propensities and to be healthily and naturally
free. It may even be said that the nations would never tolerate any serious
interference in these matters and that the attempt to use the World-State for
such a purpose
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would be fatal to its existence. But, as a matter of
fact, the principle of political non-interference is likely to be much less
admitted in the future than it has been in the past or is at present. Always in
times of great and passionate struggle between conflicting political ideas, - between oligarchy and democracy in
ancient Greece, between the old regime and the ideas of the French Revolution
in modern Europe, - the principle of political non-interference has gone to the
wall. But now we see another phenomenon -
the opposite principle of interference slowly erecting itself into a conscious
rule of international life. There is more and more possible an intervention
like the American interference in Cuba, not on avowed grounds of national
interest, but ostensibly on behalf of liberty, constitutionalism and democracy,
or of an opposite social and political principle, on international grounds
therefore and practically in the force of this idea that the internal
arrangements of a country concern, under certain conditions of disorder or
insufficiency, not only itself, but its neighbours and humanity at large. A
similar principle was put forward by the Allies in regard to Greece during the
war. It was applied to one of the most powerful nations of the world in the
refusal of the Allies to treat with Germany or, practically, to re-admit it
into the comity of nations unless it set aside its existing political system
and principles and adopted the forms of modem democracy, dismissing all remnant
of absolutist rule.1
This
idea of the common interest of the race in the internal affairs of a nation is
bound to increase as the life of humanity becomes more unified. The great
political question of the future is likely to be the challenge of Socialism,
the full evolution of the omnipotent State. And if Socialism triumphs in the
leading nations of the world, it will inevitably seek to impose its rule
everywhere not only by indirect pressure, but even by direct interference in
what it would consider backward countries. An international authority,
Parliamentary or other, in which it
1 The hardly disguised intervention of the Fascist
Powers in Spain to combat and beat down the democratic Government of the
country is a striking example of what is likely to increase in the future.
Since then there has been the interference in an opposite sense with the Franco
regime in the same country and the pressure put upon it, however incomplete and
wavering, to change its method and principle.
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commanded the majority or the chief influence, would be
too ready a means to be neglected. Moreover, a World-State would probably no
more find it possible to tolerate the continuance of certain nations as
capitalist societies, itself being socialistic in major part, than a capitalist
or socialist Great Britain would tolerate a socialist or capitalist Scotland or
Wales. On the other hand, if all nations become socialistic in form, it would
be natural enough for the World-State to co-ordinate all these separate
socialisms into one great system of human life. But Socialism pursued to its
full development means the destruction of the distinction between political and
social activities; it means the socialisation of the common life and its
subjection in all its parts to its own organised government and administration.
Nothing small or great escapes its purview. Birth and marriage, labour and
amusement and rest, education, culture, training of physique and character, the
socialistic sense leaves nothing outside its scope and its busy intolerant
control. Therefore, granting an international Socialism, neither the politics nor
the social life of the separate peoples is likely to escape the centralised
control of the World-State.1
Such a
world-system is remote indeed from our present conceptions and established
habits of life, but these conceptions and habits are already subjected at their
roots to powerful forces of change. Uniformity is becoming more and more the
law of the world; it is becoming more and more difficult, in spite of sentiment
and in spite of conscious efforts of conservation and revival, for local
individualities to survive. But the triumph of uniformity would naturally make
for centralisation; the radical incentive to separateness would disappear. And
centralisation once accomplished would in its turn make for a more complete
uniformity. Such decentralisation as might be indispensable in a uniform
humanity would be needed for convenience of administration, not on the ground
of true separative variations. Once the national sentiment has gone under
before a dominant inter-
1 This
aspect of Socialism in action has received a striking confirmation in the trend
to total governmental control in Germany and Italy. The strife between national
(Fascist) Social- ism and pure Marxist Socialism could not have been foreseen at
the time of writing; but which- ever form prevails. there is an identical
principle.
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nationalism, large questions of culture and race would
be the only grounds left for the preservation of a strong, though subordinate,
principle of separation in the World-State. But difference of culture is quite
as much threatened today as any other more outward principle of group
variation. The differences between the European nations are simply minor
variations of a common occidental culture. And now that Science, that great
power for uniformity of thought and life and method, is becoming more and more
the greater part and threatens to become the whole of culture and life, the
importance of these variations is likely to decrease. The only radical
difference that still exists is between the mind of the Occident and the mind
of the Orient. But here too Asia is undergoing the shock of Europeanism and
Europe is beginning to feel, however slightly, the reflux of Asiatic ism. A
common world-culture is the most probable outcome. The valid objection to
centralisation will then be greatly diminished in force, if not removed
altogether. Race-sense is perhaps a stronger obstacle because it is more
irrational; but this too may be removed by the closer intellectual, cultural
and physical intercourse which is inevitable in the not distant future. 1
The dream of the cosmopolitan
socialist thinker may therefore be realised after all. And given the powerful
continuance of the present trend of world-forces, it is in a way inevitable.
Even what seems now most a chimera, a common language, may become a reality.
For a State naturally tends to establish one language as the instrument of all
its public affairs, its thought, its literature; the rest sink into patois,
dialects, provincial tongues, like Welsh in Great Britain or Breton and
Provencal in France; exceptions like Switzerland are few, hardly more than one
or two in number, and are preserved only by unusually favour- able conditions.
It is difficult indeed to suppose that languages with powerful literatures
spoken by millions of cultured men will allow themselves to be put into a quite
secondary position, much less snuffed out by any old or new speech of man. But
it cannot be quite certainly said that scientific reason, taking possession of
1 Fascist
and Nazi racialism strikes across this probability and, if it remains
irreductible, would make unification impossible, except by conquest or control
of the world by a few dominant nations. It is possible, however, that this is
only a passing phase.
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the mind of the race and thrusting aside separative
sentiment as a barbaric anachronism, may not accomplish one day even this
psychological miracle. In any case, variety of language need be no insuperable
obstacle to uniformity of culture, to uniformity of education, life and
organisation or to a regulating scientific machinery applied to all departments
of life and settled for the common good by the united will and intelligence of
the human race. For that would he what a WorId-State, such as we have imagined,
would stand for, its meaning, its justification, its human object. It is likely
indeed that this and nothing less would come in the end to be regarded as the
full justification of its existence.
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