If, then, we wish to make large-scale reforms which will not stultify themselves in the process of application, we must choose our measures in such a way that no violence or, at the worst, very little violence will be needed to enforce them. (It is worth noting in this context that reforms carried out under the stimulus of the fear of violence from foreign neighbours and with the aim of using violence more efficiently in future international wars are just as likely to be self-stultifying in the long run as reforms which cannot be enforced except by a domestic terror. The dictators have made many large-scale changes in the structure of the societies they govern without having had to resort to terrorism.
The population gave consent to these changes because it had been persuaded by means of intensive propaganda that they were necessary to make the country safe against ‘foreign aggression.’ Some of these changes have been in the nature of desirable reforms; but in so far as they were calculated to make the country more efficient as a war-machine, they tended to provoke other countries to increase their military efficiency and so to make the coming of war more probable. But the nature of modern war is such that it is unlikely that any desirable reform will survive the catastrophe. Thus it will be seen that intrinsically desirable reforms, accepted without opposition, may yet be self-stultifying if the community is persuaded to accept them by means of propaganda that plays upon its fear of future violence on the part of others, or stresses the glory of future violence when successfully used by itself.) Returning to our main theme, which is the need for avoiding domestic violence during the application of reforms, we see that a reform may be intrinsically desirable, but so irrelevant to the existing historical circumstances as to be practically useless.
This does not mean that we should make the enormous mistake committed by Hegel and gleefully repeated by every modern tyrant with crimes to justify and follies to rationalize—the mistake that consists in affirming that the real is the rational, that the historical is the same as the ideal. The real is not the rational; and whatever is, is not right. At any given moment of history, the real, as we know it, contains certain elements of the rational, laboriously incorporated into its structure by patient human effort; among the things that are, some are righter than others. Accordingly, plain common sense demands that, when we make reforms, we shall take care to preserve all such constituents of the existing order as are valuable. Nor is this all. Change as such is to most human beings more or less acutely distressing. This being so, we shall do well to preserve even those elements of the existing order which are neither particularly harmful nor particularly valuable, but merely neutral. Human conservatism is a fact in any given historical situation.
Hence it is very important that social reformers should abstain from making unnecessary changes or changes of startling magnitude. Wherever possible, familiar institutions should be extended or developed so as to produce the results desired; principles already accepted should be taken over and applied to a wider field. In this way the amount and intensity of opposition to change and, along with it, the risk of having to use measures of violence would be reduced to a minimum.
Chapter V THE PLANNED SOCIETY
Before the World War only Fabians talked about a planned society. During the War all the belligerent societies were planned, and (considering the rapidity with which the work was done) planned very effectively, for the purpose of carrying on the hostilities. Immediately after the War there was a reaction, natural enough in the circumstance, against planning. The depression produced a reaction against that reaction, and since 1929 the idea of planning has achieved an almost universal popularity. Meanwhile planning has been undertaken, systematically and on a large scale in the totalitarian states, piecemeal in the democratic countries. A flood of literature on social planning pours continuously from the presses. Every ‘advanced’ thinker has his favourite scheme, and even quite ordinary people have caught the infection.
Planning is now in fashion. Not without justification. Our world is in a bad way, and it looks as though it would be impossible to rescue it from its present plight, much less improve it, except by deliberate planning. Admittedly this is only an opinion; but there is every reason to suppose that it is well founded. Meanwhile, however, it is quite certain, because observably a fact, that in the process of trying to save our world or part of it from its present confusion, we run the risk of planning it into the likeness of hell and ultimately into complete destruction. There are cures which are worse than disease.
Some kind of deliberate planning is necessary. But which kind and how much? We cannot answer these questions, cannot pass judgment on any given scheme, except by constantly referring back to our ideal postulates. In considering any plan we must ask whether it will help to transform the society to which it is applied into a just, peaceable, morally and intellectually progressive community of non-attached and responsible men and women. If so, we can say that the plan is a good one. If not, we must pronounce it to be bad.
In the contemporary world there are two classes of bad plans—the plans invented and put into practice by men who do not accept our ideal postulates, and the plans invented and put into practice by the men who accept them, but imagine that the ends proposed by the prophets can be achieved by wicked or unsuitable means. Hell is paved with good intentions, and it is probable that plans made by well-meaning people of the second class may have results no less disastrous than plans made by the evil-intentioned people of the first class. Which only shows, yet once more, how right the Buddha was in classing unawareness and stupidity among the deadly sins.
Let us consider a few examples of bad plans belonging to these two classes. In the first class we must place all Fascist and all specifically militaristic plans. Fascism, in the words of Mussolini, believes that ‘war alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it.’ Again, ‘a doctrine which is founded upon the harmful postulate of peace is hostile to Fascism.’ The Fascist, then, is one who believes that the bombardment of open towns with fire, poison and explosives (in other words, modern war) is intrinsically good. He is one who rejects the teaching of the prophets and believes that the best society is a national society living in a state of chronic hostility towards other national societies and preoccupied with ideas of rapine and slaughter.
He is one who despises the non-attached individual and holds up for admiration the person who, in obedience to the boss who happens at the moment to have grabbed political power, systematically cultivates all the passions (pride, anger, envy, hatred) which the philosophers and the founders of religions have unanimously condemned as the most maleficent, the least worthy of human beings. All Fascist planning has one ultimate aim: to make the national society more efficient as a war-machine. Industry, commerce and finance are controlled for this purpose. The manufacture of substitutes is encouraged in order that the country may be self-sufficient in time of war. Tariffs and quotas are imposed, export bounties distributed, exchanges depreciated for the sake of gaining a momentary advantage or inflicting loss upon some rival.
Foreign policy is conducted on avowedly Machiavellian principles; solemn engagements are entered into with the knowledge that they will be broken the moment it seems advantageous to do so; international law is invoked when it happens to be convenient, repudiated when it imposes the least restraint on the nation’s imperialistic designs. Meanwhile the dictator’s subjects are systematically educated to be good citizens of the Fascist state. Children are subjected to authoritarian discipline that they may grow up to be simultaneously obedient to superiors and brutal to those below them. On leaving the kindergarten, they begin that military training which culminates in the years of conscription and continues until the individual is too decrepit to be an efficient soldier.
In school they are taught extravagant lies about the achievements of their ancestors, while the truth about other peoples is either distorted or completely suppressed. The press is controlled, so that adults may learn only what it suits the dictator that they should learn. Anyone expressing unorthodox opinions is ruthlessly persecuted. Elaborate systems of police espionage are organized to investigate the private life and opinions of even the humblest individual. Delation is encouraged, tale-telling rewarded. Terrorism is legalized. Justice is administered in secret; the procedure is unfair, the penalties barbarously cruel. Brutality and torture are regularly employed.
Such is Fascist planning—the planning of those who reject the ideal postulates of Christian civilization and of the older Asiatic civilizations which preceded it and from which it derived—the planning of men whose intentions are avowedly bad. Let us now consider examples of planning by political leaders who accept the ideal postulates, whose intentions are good. The first thing to notice is that none of these men accepts the ideal postulates whole-heartedly.
