The World in Chains
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John Mavrogordato >> The World in Chains
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True nationalism may indeed be differentiated by the absence of this
artificial element of ethnological hatred. True nationalism is simply
the feeling for the small independent community, a movement for the
autonomy of the local group. No true manifestation of the nationalist
movement in Europe is ever opposed to other nationalisms; but all alike
are involved in a desperate political conflict with their common enemy
Imperialism.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 76: Spinoza, _Ethica_, IV, 45.]
[Footnote 77: _Labour Leader_, March 30, 1916, quoting an address by Mr.
Arthur Ponsonby, M.P.--I have not been able to verify these references,
so I give the story only as an example of the method of progressive
distortion, and not as one that actually occurred, though it may have
done so.]
Sec. 5
Imperialism the Enemy
Imperialism, on the other hand, is the feeling for large dominions and
is very often only an unreasoning lust for the possession of
territory:[78] surviving perhaps from the time when the land of the
community was regarded as the reserved hunting-ground of the tribal
chief, or at least as the private estate of the national monarch. But in
so far as this passionate desire for extending the superficial territory
under the central government is a reasoning desire, in so far that is as
attempts have been made to justify by retrospective theories the almost
instinctive achievements of painting the map red, it is fairly clear
(although the issues have been confused by altruistic and Kiplingesque
but not by any means unfounded views about the White Man's Burden) that
Imperialism is based on the insatiable claims of over-productive
commerce. Commerce at any rate is the _ex post facto_ excuse for the
foundation of the British Empire, and if it can no longer be pleaded as
a reason for the maintenance of the British Empire, it is simply because
the British Empire is no longer an empire, but for the most part a
federation of autonomous states.[79] But Imperialism has only been
scotched by the unconscious wisdom of English political development. It
still unhappily survives not only in the intermittent demand for the
acquisition of fresh colonial territory, but also, in its crudest form,
without even the shadow of an excuse commercial or altruistic, in the
continued subjection of Ireland to English rule. We must not be
surprised if the imperialistic elements of the State receive after the
war a new lease of life from the mutual encouragement of commerce and
militarism.
The commercial classes of course support Imperialism because, with an
obtuseness permitted only to our "business men," they believe that the
acquisition of more colonies still means the discovery of new
markets.[80] They have not yet realised that nowadays all markets are
practically open markets, and that no tariff can effectively exclude
goods for which there is any demand, for the simple reason that an
effective demand cheerfully pays an increased price. All nations in fact
stand to share fairly the commercial advantage of each other's colonial
markets: and it might even be shown by a little simple book-keeping that
the particular balance any nation gains from trading with a colony of
its own must be debited with the expense of governing that colony. In
short, the commercial excuse for Imperialism is actually obsolete. Yet
commerce continues to support Imperialism, and although the original
reason for this support is no longer valid, it is still, unconsciously
perhaps but very methodically, serving its own interests by this
support, in so far as Imperialism involves militarism (or "navalism")
and so leads to the probability of war. But even if the commercial
reasons which constitute the only possible excuse for Imperialism were
still valid, it would still remain equally valid and much more important
that Imperialism is bad in itself, the enemy of liberty and the begetter
of arrogance.
Imperialism is bad on general grounds because it implies a
centralisation of authority which violates the natural rights of
nationalities. A nationality, as has already been suggested, means not
necessarily a pure racial enclave, but simply a small local group, in
the formation of which similarity of "race," religion, and culture will
not be ignored but will naturally be considered as modifications of
primarily geographical boundaries. The right of nationalities to local
autonomy, to deal again only with the simplest general reason, is based
on the idea of democracy, the exercise of a political voice being
regarded as a natural and inalienable right of the free citizen.
Democracy means representative government, and representative government
simply does not work in a large and mixed community of more than twenty
millions.[81] Hence the right of nationalities to local autonomy is
fundamental, and is inconsistent with Imperialism as such.
Imperialism is bad because it is based on conquest, implies a "subject
race," and sooner or later will have to be maintained by war. It breeds
a conquering and commercial spirit, which is never satisfied unless it
is carrying some one else's burden (at a high freight). The imperialist
plutocracy will then find itself so much occupied with other people's
affairs that it will be neglecting domestic politics altogether: and
this neglect will be the more disastrous in so far as poverty and
servitude will have increased at the same rate as luxury. The citizens
of an Imperialist state will be unable to control their commercial
masters, and, as Rousseau said of the English, will soon find themselves
a nation of slaves[82]: and that not only because a policy of conquest
is incompatible with democracy; but also because the lust of conquest
and the arrogance of
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 78: H. N. Brailsford (_The War of Steel and Gold_, p. 125)
speaks of an "indifferent democracy." Unhappily our democracy is not
indifferent to Imperialism, for it is misled to believe that mere
expansion is somehow grand and good; the only geography it learns at
school is miscalled "patriotic" because it is designed to encourage this
belief.]
[Footnote 79: I.e. as a real "Empire," the British Empire was a failure,
as all Empires must be. It has been a success since it ceased to be an
Empire about a hundred years ago. Cf. Professor H. E. Egerton's
remark:--
"The British Colonial Empire of to-day is not the Empire which was the
outcome of seventeenth-century methods. So far as the colonists
themselves were concerned, English colonisation (in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries) was a complete success, but from the point of view
of the mother country it was a failure, and the rock on which it
foundered was the same rock which lost America to Spain and caused
Canada to acquiesce in separation from France."]
[Footnote 80: I am ashamed to say that when I wrote these chapters I had
not read Mr. H. N. Brailsford's _War of Steel and Gold_. But Mr.
Brailsford's brilliant examination of the connection between War and
Finance is quite consistent with my supplementary theory of War and
Trade. "Trade supplies no explanation of Imperialism," says Mr.
Brailsford (p. 75). It does, in so far as Traders support Imperialism
because they think it is good for Trade: while financiers, as Mr.
Brailsford shows, support Imperialism because they know it is good for
investments.]
[Footnote 81: "What is vital to any real Democracy in a densely-peopled,
economically-complicated modern State, is that the Government should not
be one. The very concentration of authority which is essential in war
is, in peace, fatally destructive not of freedom alone, but also of that
maximum individual development which is the very end and purpose for
which society exists."--Sidney Webb, _Towards Social Democracy?_,
1916.]
militarism acquire strength with each fresh licence until the community
as a whole is quite unable to control its own baser passions--a
condition which more than any other merits the name of servitude.[83]
Imperialism is a form of political corruption in which a nation is
consoled for its own slavery by the pride of enslaving its neighbours.
The attainment of permanent peace connotes the abandonment of
Imperialism.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 82: "Les Anglais veulent etre conquerants; donc ils ne
tarderont pas d'etre esclaves."--_Political Writings_, C. E. Vaughan, I,
373.]
Sec. 6
Possible Objects of War
If the nations are prepared to abandon the claims of Imperialism there
will be very little else left to fight about. An examination of the
documents connected with any war of the last century shows that the
object of a belligerent in prolonging the agony is usually expressed in
vague language that can be dissolved by a little analysis. Sometimes a
government will propose, in the interests of peace and good government,
to crush the enemy's aggressiveness by a purely defensive aggression, an
excuse for bloodshed which only the most fanatical pacifist could
confuse with Mr. Asquith's blunt watchword of "crushing German
militarism." The logical fallacy of such an excuse which is almost
invariably pleaded by powerful belligerents,[84] a fallacy of which no
one could wish to accuse Mr. Asquith's solid intellect, lies (quite
apart from any question of the priority of aggression) in the fact that
any attempt to crush by force the Will to Conquer inevitably breeds
more militarism. The tag about taking a lesson from the enemy, _fas est
et ab hoste doceri_, is only one half of the unhappy truth that the
fighter is fatally bound to acquire his enemy's worst characteristics.
The object undertaken apparently in the interests of democracy can only
be accomplished by the wholesale suppression of democratic rights, and
involves an organised manufacture of imperialistic emotion which ends by
delegating the authority of the State to a reactionary triumvirate of
bureaucracy, jingoism and vulgarity (or Tory, Landowner and Journalist).
The guarantees of democracy, the rights of free thought and free speech,
every sort of civil liberty and every defence against the servile state,
will all have to be suppressed in the interests of the nation at war. It
is the old story of the conversion of Thais by Paphnutius: the preacher
snatches lovely Thais from the burning, but himself is damned--"si
hideux qu'en passant la main sur son visage, il sentit sa laideur." A is
white and finds it necessary to whitewash B, who is black: after several
years of hopeless grey, A finds that he has indeed put some very
satisfactory daubs of whitewash all over B, but that his own coat has
been blackened in the course of the struggle. It is as if a gardener,
having heard of the cannibalistic habit of earwigs, proposed to
exterminate the earwig in his rose-garden by importing a special army of
five million earwigs collected at great expense from the surrounding
country.
Other belligerent governments will raise the plea of checking the spread
of a hostile and dangerous culture; a plausible because apparently
philosophical justification of war as the only means of extirpating a
heresy that might pervert the whole future of European civilisation.
Unfortunately such a moral effect, such a "conversion by shock," could
only be accomplished by a very sudden, complete and shattering victory;
and it is now beginning to be recognised that spectacular triumphs are
not to be expected in modern warfare. But even if it were as possible by
violence as it might conceivably be desirable to extirpate or even to
limit the propagation of a particular form of mental culture, the
achievement would certainly not be worth the cost to the unhappy
survivors and their posterity. It would indeed be a crime against
humanity to eliminate the better part of the younger generation, the
flower of human brains, in the monstrous pedantry of attempting to
correct an intellectual error. For the risks of modern warfare are not
ordinary. It is not sufficiently realised that in six months of
offensive tactics under modern conditions no man in the front line has
more than one chance in a million of escaping death or mutilation.
There may remain the plea that a prolonged campaign is necessary in
order by exhaustion to compel the enemy to evacuate some territory that
he may have wrongfully occupied. The inevitable answer to such a plea
would be that if a war had arrived at a stage in which there was a clear
possibility of coercing the enemy by a process of exhaustion, that
possibility, if it were well-founded, would certainly not have escaped
the intelligence of the enemy, who would consequently be prepared to
save his face by coming to terms. The evacuation of the occupied
territory, or whatever it is that was to be achieved by the coercive
exhaustion of another year or two of battle, might then be obtained by
negotiation at once, and at the cost of a certain amount of paper and
ink, instead of being forced on a revengeful and embittered opponent by
the expensive process of killing young men, a process which has the
disadvantage of working both ways.
The conclusion of these general considerations seems to be that all the
arguments that are likely to be put forward in the course of a war in
order to excuse and ensure its continuation, are only excuses to gain
time, put forward in hope that the chances of a further campaign may
enable the government concerned to retrieve some apparent advantage out
of the disastrous muddle through which they drifted into the first
declaration of war. Having drawn the sword in a moment of embarrassment,
they have now jolly well got to pretend that it was the right thing to
do, and are not going to sheathe it till they see a chance of proving
that they are glad they drew it. In short, there comes a point in all
modern wars in which the belligerents are fighting for nothing at all,
except for a more or less advantageous position from which to discuss a
way to stop fighting.[85]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 83: Spinoza, _Ethica_, IV, _praefat. ad init._ Humanam
impotentiam in moderandis et coercendis affectibus servitutem voco.]
[Footnote 84: See above, Sec. 2, on "defensive" war, and compare a passage
from Mr. C. Grant Robertson's letter in _The Times_ of August 15,
1916:--
"Bismarck repeatedly and explicitly in the Reichstag justified the wars
of 1864, 1866, and 1870 as 'defensive'--i.e. as not 'willed' by Prussia.
On the contrary, they were wars 'forced' on a peace-loving State denied
its 'rights' by Denmark, Austria, and France. The argument, briefly, on
Bismarckian principles is this. Prussia's policy is an
'_Interessenpolitik_'--a policy of 'interests.' An 'interest' confers a
'right.' The satisfaction of 'national interest' is therefore the
achievement of 'national rights.' If these 'rights' can be achieved by a
compromise--i.e. by the complete surrender of Prussia's opponents to the
demands based on these 'rights'--that is a proof of her peace-loving
nature. But if her opponents refuse, then the war by which the 'rights'
are secured is a war 'forced' on Prussia. She has not 'willed' it. It is
a 'defensive' war to prevent the robbery of her 'rights' by others;
Bismarck, not without difficulty, converted his Sovereign to this
argument. In each case--1864, 1866, 1870--William I was ultimately
convinced that Denmark, Austria, and France were resisting the 'rights'
of Prussia, and that war to secure them was 'defensive,' 'forced' on the
King, and just. The successful issues confirmed William's conscience and
proved that Bismarckian principles had the Divine sanction."]
[Footnote 85: This attitude is well illustrated by the history of the
Crimean War. In January, 1855, "peace seemed impossible until some of
the disgrace was wiped away, and the pacificists, Cobden and Bright,
were burned in effigy.... The prolongation of the war called out no
protest from the public." Yet "the popular war produced an unpopular
peace." When after another year of fighting our French allies finally
insisted on peace, "'there was no indication,' said a Frenchman, 'as to
which was the victor and which the vanquished.' Reviews and
illuminations could not obscure the truth; Britain had sacrificed lives
and treasure and obtained little in return."--Alice Green's Epilogue to
J. R. Green's _Short History of the English People_.]
Sec. 7
Physical Force in a Moral World
The explanation of all this seems to lie in the simple fact that it is
for ever impossible to solve questions of moral or political principle
by the expenditure of physical force. Anyone at all conversant with
philosophical thought, if I may adopt a simile used by Mr. H. G. Wells,
"would as soon think of trying to kill the square root of 2 with a rook
rifle." Physical violence can only solve purely physical problems. But
as man no longer exists, if he ever did exist, in the completely
unsocial "state of nature,"[86] the relations of one individual with
another are no longer purely physical: their position as members of one
society has given them a moral relation, questions affecting which can
only be settled by reference to the judgment of the society as a whole.
Within the limits of the State this fact is already clearly recognised
by the common voice of public opinion. If Smith quarrels with his
neighbour Robinson, because Smith's old English sheep-dog is suspected
of having scratched up Robinson's lawn, and Smith says the poor dog
would never do such a thing, and anyhow Robinson had no business to
leave his back gate open, while Robinson declares that that brute is
becoming a damned nuisance, and so provokes Smith to express a hope that
now perhaps that grass of Robinson's won't want so much godless mowing
on Sunday morning: if two neighbours, in short, have a difference of
opinion they both know perfectly well that the rights of the argument
can never be decided by a free fight in the middle of the road, even if
one of them happens to be a heavy-weight champion. Moreover, if they do
come to blows it is perfectly certain that the opinion of the whole road
will be against them, and that the Law, to which they might have
appealed in the first instance, will intervene as the embodiment of that
opinion. The street fight is clearly recognised as not only futile but
immoral; it not only settles no questions of principle but it
constitutes a breach of the moral relation between two members of one
community; it is become merely a rather sordid exhibition of irrelevant
physical facts. The average citizen of England or Germany would never
think of encouraging a fight between two sides of a street: why does he
not recognise with equal directness the futility and immorality of a
fight between two sides of a continent?[87] It is only because public
opinion has not yet effectively realised that the moral sphere includes
not only the citizens of one city and the cities of one nation, but the
nations of a continent and the continents of the world. But it is a fact
that the moral sphere does include the whole of humanity, who are
colleagues in the task of civilisation, inspired by the
twentieth-century corollary of gloomy nineteenth-century religious
agnosticism, the cheerful corollary that it is Man's duty rather than
God's to improve the habitable earth. The truth of this fact is already
recognised by the better thought of all the nations concerned, and there
is no reason why it should be withheld any longer from the people who
suffer most by its suppression. As soon as public opinion is allowed to
grasp this truth--and it is only too willing to clutch at any
generalisation that is emotionally encouraged by its governors--there
need be no difficulty at all in embodying that opinion in some form of
international government: for, as Rousseau might have said, where
there's a General Will, there's a way. As a matter of fact the way has
already been admirably mapped by several parties of surveyors.[88]
On the constitution of an International Authority, even on the general
aspiration of Europe towards some form of supernational judicature, war
will cease to have any more attraction or justification than the street
brawl. For war is actually in the community of nations what the street
fight is between individual citizens. War is futile, because it can
settle no questions of principle; it is immoral, because it is an
offence against the membership of a moral community. There is abundant
evidence in Blue Books and in the overt acts of Germany that war
releases and encourages the elementary brutality of the individual which
is normally inhibited by the consciousness of social relations. I have
tried to show in a former chapter that war serves the lowest interests
of a parasitic commercial class at the expense of the better part of the
community. War fosters at the same time the basest elements in the
individual, and the basest individuals in the community. War is a crime
against the peace of the people.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 86: _Supra_, I, Sec. 5.]
[Footnote 87: Mr. Gilbert Cannan has noted somewhere that "a 'straight'
fight between Great Britain and Germany will be like a fight between two
drunken women in a slum."]
[Footnote 88: See, for example, the quite definite and complete report
on _International Government_, published by the Fabian Society (1916):
and compare Mr. J. A. Hobson's book _Towards International Government_,
and Mr. H. G. Wells' _The World Set Free_.]
Sec. 8
Imperialism and Capitalism through War and Trade the Enemies: Socialism
to the Rescue
It is the most remarkable fact in political bibliography that all the
Utopias worth mentioning have been written by Socialists. The fact is
not surprising to anyone who has considered that the Socialists are the
only political party in the State who ever attempt to look more than a
dozen years ahead. The ordinary politician steers the ship by keeping a
look-out for rocks and squalls, and does not trouble to make for any
distant landmark. Only the Socialist looks ahead to a harbour attainable
perhaps in a hundred years, from which a happier voyage may be begun.
Only the Socialist seems to realise that in the world conceived, as
modern thought must conceive it, as a continuous process, Government
rather than Trade, Science and Art rather than Industry are the chief
activities of the citizen. Government is nothing less than the
organisation of the State to take its place among the other States of
the world. It includes of course education, being itself a form of
education: for the State must be educated to fulfil its duty to other
States, just as the citizen must be (and more or less is) educated in
duty towards his neighbour. The first task of education is naturally to
eliminate violence, to inhibit, by inducing in the young citizen the
recognition of mutual rights, those acts of ferocity by which primitive
man instinctively expresses his solipsistic passions.
But where, it may well be asked, is the authority which is to begin the
neglected education of the nations of Europe? Where is what Mr. Boon (or
Mr. Bliss) would call "the Mind of the Race"? At present the only body
of doctrine with any conception of the nature of government for the
collective benefit of humanity is International Socialism. It is the
International Socialists who must lead the attack on War, if only
because the only instigators of war themselves form an international
body in so far as the only occasions for war are contrived by the
Imperialists and Capitalists who are to be found in every nation. To
Socialism belongs the duty of educating Europe against Imperialism, as
it has begun to educate the nation against Capitalism; for Imperialism
is only an allotropic form of Capitalism, manifesting itself in the
exploitation of fellow-nations instead of in the exploitation of
fellow-citizens. The first step in that education must be the fight not
only against "private" or profiteering Trade, but against "private" or
profiteering War: and "private war" is every war that is not authorised
by an International Authority and waged by an International army.
I seem to have heard it said before that there is only one way to break
the chains that bind us: and that Amalgamation is the mother of Liberty.
The need for the education of Europe is a call to the Trade Unionists
and Fabians and Collectivists and Guildsmen of every Nation:
SOCIALISTS OF THE WORLD
UNITE.
* * * * *
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III
SOME TYPICAL WAR PROFITS
I. _The Manchester Guardian_, January 3, 1916:
BRITISH INDUSTRY IN WAR
The first full calendar year of war has been a period of unparalleled
industrial activity and, generally speaking, prosperity in this country.
Heavy losses and bad times have been encountered in a few important
industries, but these are balanced by unprecedented profits made by a
large variety of industries, whether directly or indirectly affected by
the war. One frequently finds that the neutral visitor carries away with
him an impression of industrial England as one great living arsenal.
That is not surprising, as since July last the Munitions Ministry has
erected (or improvised) and started a large number (it is not
permissible to say how many) of State munitions works, and it has also
mobilised the whole engineering resources of the nation to such an
extent that in the first week of December no fewer than 2026
manufacturing establishments had been declared "controlled firms."
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