The Peril
of the World-State
THIS then is the extreme possible form of a World-State,
the form dreamed of by the socialistic, scientific, humanitarian thinkers who
represent the modern mind at its highest point of self-consciousness and are
therefore able to detect the trend of its tendencies, though to the
half-rationalised mind of the ordinary man whose view does not go beyond the
day and its immediate morrow, their speculations may seem to be chimerical and
utopian. In reality they are nothing of the kind; in their essence, not necessarily
in their form, they are, as we have seen, not only the logical outcome, but the
inevitable practical last end of the incipient urge towards human unity, if it
is pursued by a principle of mechanical unification, - that is to say, by the
principle of the State. It is for this reason that we have found it necessary
to show the operative principles and necessities which have underlain the
growth of the unified and finally socialistic nation-State, in order to see how
the same movement in international unification must lead to the same results by
an analogous necessity of development. The State principle leads necessarily to
uniformity, regulation, mechanisation; its inevitable end is socialism. There
is nothing fortuitous, no room for chance in political and social development,
and the emergence of socialism was no accident or a thing that might or might
not have been, but the inevitable result contained in the very seed of the
State idea. It was inevitable from the moment that idea began to be hammered
out in practice. The work of the Alfreds and Charlemagnes and other premature
national or imperial unifiers contained this as a sure result, for men work
almost always without knowing for what they have worked. But in modem times the
signs are so clear that we need not be deceived or imagine, when we begin to
lay a mechanical base for world- unification, that the result contained in the
very effort will not
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insist on developing, however far-off it may seem at
present from any immediate or even any distant possibilities. A strict
unification, a vast uniformity, a regulated socialisation of united man- kind
will be the predestined fruit of our labour.
This result
can only be avoided if an opposite force interposes and puts in its veto, as happened
in Asia where the State idea, although strongly affirmed within its limits,
could never go in its realisation beyond a certain point, because the
fundamental principle of the national life was opposed to its full intolerant
development. The races of Asia, even the most organised, have always been
peoples rather than nations in the modern sense. Or they were nations only in
the sense of having a common soul-life, a common culture, a common social
organisation, a common political head, but not nation-States. The State ma-
chine existed only for a restricted and superficial action; the real life of
the people was determined by other powers with which it could not meddle. Its
principal function was to preserve and protect the national culture and to maintain
sufficient political, social and administrative order - as far as possible an
immutable order - for the real life of the people to function undisturbed in
its own way and according to its own innate tendencies. Some such unity for the
human race is possible in the place of an organised World-State, if the nations
of mankind succeed in pre- serving their developed instinct of nationalism
intact and strong enough to resist the domination of the State idea. The result
would then be not a single nation of mankind and a World-State, but a single
human people with a free association of its nation- units. Or, it may be, the
nation as we know it might disappear, but there would be some other new kind of
group-units, assured by some sufficient machinery of international order in the
peaceful and natural functioning of their social, economical and cultural
relations.
Which then
of these two major possibilities would be preferable? To answer that question
we have to ask ourselves, what would be the account of gain and loss for the
life of the human race which would result from the creation of a unified World-
State. In all probability the results would be, with all allowance for the
great difference between then and now, very much the
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same in essence as those which we observe in the
ancient Roman Empire. On the credit side, we should have first one enormous
gain, the assured peace of the world. It might not be absolutely secure against
internal shocks and disturbances but, supposing certain outstanding questions
to be settled with some approach to permanence, it would eliminate even such
occasional violences of civil strife as disturbed the old Roman imperial
economy and, whatever perturbations there might still be, need not disturb the settled
fabric of civilisation so as to cast all again into the throes of a great
radical and violent change. Peace assured, there would be an unparalleled
development of ease and well-being. A great number of outstanding problems
would be solved by the united intelligence of mankind working no longer in
fragments but as one. The vital life of the race would settle down into an
assured rational order comfortable, well-regulated, well-informed, with a
satisfactory machinery for meeting all difficulties, exigencies and problems
with the least possible friction, disturbance and mere uncertainty of adventure
and peril. At first, there would be a great cultural and intellectual
efflorescence. Science would organise itself for the betterment of human life
and the increase of knowledge and mechanical efficiency. The various cultures
of the world - those that still
exist as separate realities -
would not only exchange ideas more intimately, but would throw their gains into
one common fund, and new motives and forms would arise for a time in thought
and literature and Art. Men would meet each other much more closely and
completely than before, develop a greater mutual understanding rid of many
accidental motives of strife, hatred and repugnance which now exist, and arrive,
if not at brotherhood, - which cannot come by mere political, social and
cultural union, - yet at some
imitation of it, a sufficiently kindly association and interchange. There would
be an unprecedented splendour, ease and amenity in this development of human
life, and no doubt some chief poet of the age, writing in the common or
official tongue - shall we say, Esperanto ? - would sing confidently of the
approach of the golden age or even proclaim its actual arrival and eternal
duration. But after a time, there would be a dying down of force, a static
condition of the human mind and human life, then stagnation, decay,
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disintegration. The soul of man would begin to wither
in the midst of his acquisitions.
This result
would come about for the same essential reasons as in the Roman example. The
conditions of a vigorous life would be lost, liberty, mobile variation and the
shock upon each other of freely developing differentiated lives. It may be said
that this will not happen because the World-State will be a free democratic
State, not a liberty-stifling empire or autocracy and because liberty and
progress are the very principle of modern life and no development would be
tolerated which went contrary to that principle. But in all this, there is not
really the security that seems to be offered. For what is now, need not endure
under quite different circumstances and- the idea that it will is a strange
mirage thrown from the actualities of the present on the possibly quite
different actualities of the future. Democracy is by no means a sure
preservative of liberty; on the contrary, we see today the democratic system of
government march steadily towards such an organised annihilation of individual
liberty as could not have been dreamed of in the old aristocratic and
monarchical systems. It may be that from the more violent and brutal forms of
despotic oppression which were associated with those systems democracy has
indeed delivered those nations which have been fortunate enough to achieve liberal
forms of government and that is no doubt a great gain. It revives now only in
periods of revolution and of excitement often in the forms of mob tyranny or a
savage revolutionary or reactionary repression. But there is a deprivation of
liberty which is more respectable in appearance more subtle and systematised
more mild in its method because it has a greater force at. its back, but for
that very reason more effective and pervading. The tyranny of the majority has
become a familiar phrase and its deadening effects have been depicted with a
great force- of resentment by certain of the modern intellectuals;1 but what the future promises
us is something more formidable still, the tyranny of the whole, of the self-hypnotised
mass over its constituent groups and units.2
1 Ibsen
in his drama, "An Enemy of the People.
2
There was first seen the
drastic beginning of this phenomenon in Fascist Italy and Soviet Russia. At the
time of writing this development could be seen only in speculative pre
vision. It assumed afterwards the proportions of a growing fact and we can now
see its full and formidable body.
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This is a very remarkable development, the more so, as
in the origins of the democratic movement individual freedom was the ideal
which it set in front both in ancient and modern times. The Greeks associated
democracy with two main ideas, first, an effective and personal share by each
citizen in the actual government, legislation, administration of the community,
secondly, a great freedom of individual temperament and action. But neither of
these characteristics can flourish in the modem type of democracy, although in
the United States of America there was at one time a tendency to a certain
extent in this direction. In large States, the personal share of each citizen
in the government cannot be effective; he can only have an equal share -
illusory for the individual although effective in the mass - in the periodical choice of his
legislators and administrators. Even if these have not practically to be
elected from a class which is not the whole or even the majority of the
community, at present almost everywhere the middle class, still these
legislators and administrators do not really represent their electors. The
Power they represent is another, a formless and bodiless entity, which has
taken the place of monarch and aristocracy, that impersonal group-being which assumes
some sort of outward form and body and conscious action in the huge mechanism
of the modern State. Against this power the individual is much more helpless
than he was against old oppressions. When he feels its pressure grinding him
into its uniform moulds, he has no resource except either an impotent anarchism
or else a retreat, still to some extent possible, into the freedom of his soul
or the freedom of his intellectual being.
For this is
one gain of modem democracy which ancient liberty did not realise to the same
extent and which has not yet been renounced, a full freedom of speech and
thought. And as long as this freedom endures, the fear of a static condition of
humanity and subsequent stagnation might seem to be groundless, - especially when it is accompanied by
universal education which provides the largest possible human field for
producing an effectuating force. Freedom of thought and speech
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-the two necessarily go together, since there can be
no, real freedom of thought where a padlock is put upon freedom of speech - is
not indeed complete without freedom of association; for free speech means free
propagandism and propagandism only becomes effective by association for the
realisation of its objects. This third liberty also exists with more or less of
qualifying limitations or prudent safeguards in all democratic States. But it
is a question whether these great fundamental liberties have been won by the
race with an entire security, - apart from their occasional suspensions even in
the free nations and the considerable restrictions with which they are hedged
in subject countries. It is possible that the future has certain surprises for
us in this direction.1
Freedom of
thought would be the last human liberty directly attacked by the all-regulating
State, which will first seek to regulate the whole life of the individual in
the type approved by the communal mind or by its rulers. But when it sees how
all-important is the thought in shaping the life, it will be led to take hold
of that too by forming the thought of the individual through State education
and by training him to the acceptance of the approved communal, ethical,
social, cultural, religious ideas, as was done in many ancient forms of
education. Only if it finds this weapon ineffective, is it likely to limit
freedom of thought directly on the plea of danger to the State and to
civilisation. Already we see the right of the State to interfere with individual
thought announced here and there in a most ominous manner. One would have
imagined religious liberty at least was assured to mankind; but recently we
have. Seen an exponent of "new thought" advancing positively the
doctrine that the State is under no obligation to recognise the religious
liberty of the individual and that even if it grants freedom of religious
thought, it can only be conceded as a matter of expediency, not of right. There
is no obligation, it is contended, to allow freedom of cult; and indeed this
seems logical; for if the State has the right to regulate the whole life of the
individual, it must surely have the right to regulate his religion, which is so
important a
1 A surprise no longer, but more and
more an accomplished fact. At this moment freedom of speech and thought exists
no longer in Russia; it was entirely suspended for a time in Germany and
Southern Europe.
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part of his life, and his thought, which has so
powerful an effect upon his life.1
Supposing an all-regulating
socialistic World-State to be established, freedom of thought under such a
regime would necessarily mean a criticism not only of the details, but of the
very principles of the existing state of things. This criticism, if it is to
look not to the dead past but to the future, could only take one direction, the
direction of anarchism, whether of the spiritual Tolstoian kind or else the
intellectual anarchism which is now the creed of a small minority but still a
growing force in many European countries. It would declare the free development
of the individual as its gospel and denounce government as an evil and no longer
at all a necessary evil. It would affirm the full and free religious, ethical,
intellectual and temperamental growth of the individual from within as the true
ideal of human life and all else as things not worth having at the price of the
renunciation of this ideal, a renunciation which it would describe as the loss
of his soul. It would preach as the ideal of society a free association or
brotherhood of individuals without government or any kind of compulsion.
What would
the World-State do with this kind of free thought? It might tolerate it so long
as it did not translate itself into individual and associated action; but the
moment it spread or turned towards a practical self-affirmation in life, the
whole principle of the State and its existence would be attacked and its very
base would be sapped and undermined and in imminent danger. To stop the
destruction at its root or else consent to its own subversion would be the only
alternatives before the established Power. But even before any such necessity
arises, the principle of regulation of all things by the State would have
extended itself to the regulation of the mental as well as the physical life of
man by the communal mind, which was the ideal of former civilisations. A static
order of society would be the necessary consequence, since without the freedom
of the individual a
1 It was an error of prevision
to suppose that the State would hesitate for a time to suppress freedom of
thought altogether. It has been done at once and decisively by Bolshevist Russia
and the totalitarian States. Religious liberty is not yet utterly destroyed, but
is being sternly ground out in Russia, as it was in Germany, by State pressure.
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society cannot remain progressive. It must settle into
the rut or the groove of a regulated perfection or of something to which it
gives that name because of the rationality of system and symmetrical idea of
order which it embodies. The communal mass is always conservative and static in
its consciousness and only moves slowly in the tardy process of subconscient
Nature. The free individual is the conscious progressive: it is only when he is
able to impart his own creative and mobile consciousness to the mass that a
progressive society becomes possible.
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