A highly centralized dictatorial state may be smashed by war or overturned by a revolution from below; there is not the smallest reason to suppose that it will wither. Dictatorship of the proletariat is in actual fact dictatorship by a small privileged minority; and dictatorship by a small privileged minority does not lead to liberty, justice, peace and the co-operation of non-attached, but active and responsible individuals. It leads either to more dictatorship, or to war, or to revolution, or (more probably) to all three in fairly rapid succession.
No, the political road to a better society (and do not let us forget that, if we would reach the goal, we must advance along many other roads as well as the political) is the road of decentralization and responsible self-government. Dictatorial short cuts cannot conceivably take us to our destination. We must march directly towards the goal; if we turn our backs to it we shall merely increase the distance which separates us from the place to which we wish to go.
The political road to a better society is, I repeat, the road of decentralization and responsible self-government. But in present circumstances it is extremely improbable that any civilized nation will take that road. It is extremely improbable for a simple reason which I have stated before and which I make no excuse for repeating. No society which is preparing for war can afford to be anything but highly centralized. Unity of command is essential, not only after the outbreak of hostilities, but also (in the circumstances of contemporary life) before. A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive. (Hence the absurdity of talking about the defence of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.)
I have said that a country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive. But, conversely, a country which possesses a highly centralized, all-powerful executive is more likely to wage war than a country where power is decentralized and the population genuinely governs itself. There are several reasons for this. Dictatorships are rarely secure. Whenever a tyrant feels that his popularity is waning, he is tempted to exploit nationalistic passion in order to consolidate his own position. Pogroms and treason trials are the ordinary devices by means of which a dictator revives the flagging enthusiasm of his people. When these fail, he may be driven to war. Nor must we forget that the more absolute the ruler, the more completely does he tend to associate his own personal prestige with the prestige of the nation he rules. ‘L’Etat c’est moi’ is an illusion to which kings, dictators and even such minor members of the ruling clique as bureaucrats and diplomats succumb with a fatal facility. For the victims of this illusion, a loss of national prestige is a blow to their private vanity, a national victory is a personal triumph. Extreme centralization of power creates opportunities for individuals to believe that the state is themselves. To make or to threaten war becomes, for the tyrant, a method of self-assertion. The state is made the instrument of an individual’s manias of persecution and grandeur. Thus we see that extreme centralization of power is not only necessary if war is to be waged successfully; it is also a contributory cause of war.
In existing circumstances the ruling classes of every nation feel that they must prepare for war. This means that there will be a general tendency to increase the power of the central executive. This increase of power of the central executive tends to make war more likely. Hence there will be demands for yet more intensive centralization. And so on, ad infinitum—or, rather, until the crash comes.
So long as civilized countries continue to prepare for war, it is enormously improbable that any of them will pursue a policy of decentralization and the extension of the principle of self-government. On the contrary, power will tend to become more narrowly concentrated than at present, not only in the totalitarian states, but also in the democratic countries, which will therefore tend to become less and less democratic. Indeed, the movement away from democratic forms of government and towards centralization of authority and military tyranny is already under way in the democratic countries. In England such symptoms as the Sedition Bill, the enrolment of an army of ‘air raid wardens,’ the secret but systematic drilling of government servants in the technique of ‘air raid precautions,’ are unmistakable. In France the executive has already taken to itself the power to conscribe everybody and everything in the event of war breaking out.
In Belgium, Holland and the Scandinavian countries, as well as in the more powerful democracies, huge sums are being spent on rearmament. But rearmament is not a mere accumulation of ironmongery. There must be men trained to use the new weapons, a supply of docile labour for their manufacture. An increase in the amount of a country’s armaments implies a corresponding increase in the degree of its militarization. The fire-eaters of the Left who, for the last two years, have been calling for a ‘firm stand’ (i.e. military action) on the part of the democratic countries against Fascist aggression have in effect been calling for an acceleration of the process by which the democratic countries are gradually, but systematically, being transformed into the likeness of those Fascist states they so much detest.
Nothing succeeds like success—even success that is merely apparent. The prevalence of centralization in the contemporary world creates a popular belief that centralization is not what in fact it is—a great evil, imposed upon the world by the threat of war and avoidable only with difficulty and at the price of enormous effort and considerable sacrifices—but intrinsically sound policy. Because in fact political power is being more and more closely concentrated, people have come to be persuaded that the way to desirable change lies through the concentration of power. Centralization is the order of the day; the Zeitgeist commands it; therefore, they argue, centralization must be right. They forget that the Zeitgeist is just as likely to be a spirit of evil as a spirit of good and that the fact that something happens to exist is in no way a guarantee that it ought to exist.
Every dictatorship has its own private jargon. The vocabularies are different; but the purpose which they serve is in all cases the same—to legitimate the local despotism, to make a de facto government appear to be a government by divine right. Such jargons are instruments of tyranny as indispensable as police spies and a press censorship. They provide a set of terms in which the maddest policies can be rationalized and the most monstrous crimes abundantly justified. They serve as moulds for a whole people’s thoughts and feelings and desires. By means of them the oppressed can be persuaded, not only to tolerate, but actually to worship their insane and criminal oppressors.
Significantly enough, one word is common to all the dictatorial vocabularies and is used for purposes of justification and rationalization by Fascists, Nazis and Communists alike. That word is ‘historical.’
Thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat is an ‘historical necessity.’ The violence of Communists is justified because, unlike Fascist violence, it is being used to forward an ineluctable ‘historical’ process.
In the same way, Fascism is said by its supporters to possess a quality of ‘historical’ inevitableness. The Italians have a great ‘historical mission,’ which is to create an empire, in other words to gas and machine-gun people weaker than themselves.
No less ‘historically’ necessary and right are the brutalities of men in brown shirts. As for the ‘historical’ importance of the Aryan race, this is so prodigious that absolutely any wickedness, any folly is permitted to men with fair hair and blue eyes—even to nachgedunkelte Schrumpf-Germanen, like Hitler himself and the swarthy little Goebbels.
The appeal to history is one which the dictators find particularly convenient; for the assumption which underlies it is that, in Hegelian language, the real is the rational—that what happens is ultimately the same as what ought to happen.
For example, it very often happens that might triumphs over right; therefore might is ‘historical’ and deserves to conquer.
Again, absolute power is intoxicatingly delightful. In consequence, those who have seized absolute power are prepared, as a rule, to make use of any means, however disgraceful, in order to retain it. Spying, delation, torture, arbitrary imprisonment and execution—in every dictatorial country these are the ordinary instruments of domestic policy. They occur; they are therefore ‘historical.’ Being historical they are, in some tief, Hegelian way, reasonable and right.
That such a doctrine should be believed and taught by tyrants is not surprising. The odd, the profoundly depressing fact is that it should be accepted as true by millions who are not tyrants, nor even the subjects of tyrants. For ever-increasing numbers of men and women, ‘historicalness’ is coming
