This fact alone would be a sufficient demonstration of the truth that the causes of war are not solely economic, but psychological. People prepare for war, among other reasons, because war is in the great tradition; because war is exciting and gives them certain personal or vicarious satisfactions; because their education has left them militaristically minded; because they live in a society where success, however achieved, is worshipped and where competition seems more ‘natural’ (because, under the present dispensation, it is more habitual) than co-operation. Hence the general reluctance to embark on constructive policies, directed towards the removal at least of the economic causes of war. Hence, too, the extraordinary energy which rulers and even the ruled put into such destructive and war-provoking policies as rearmament, the centralization of executive power and the regimentation of the masses.
I have spoken hitherto of the international consequences of national planning and of the measures which planners should take in order to minimize such consequences. In the ensuing paragraphs I shall deal with planning in its domestic aspects. Others have written, at great length and in minute detail, about the strictly technical problems of planning, and for a discussion of these problems I must refer the readers to the already enormous literature of the subject.[5] In this place I propose to discuss planning in relation to our ideal postulates and to set forth the conditions which must be fulfilled if the plans are to be successful in contributing towards the realization of those ideals.
In the section on Social Reform and Violence I made it clear that most human beings are conservative, that even desirable changes beget opposition, and that no plan which has to be imposed by great and prolonged violence is ever likely to achieve the desirable results expected of it. From this it follows, first, that only strictly necessary reforms should be undertaken; second, that no change to which there is likely to be widespread and violent opposition should be imposed, however intrinsically desirable it may be, except gradually and by instalments; and, thirdly, that desirable changes should be made, wherever possible, by the application to wider fields of methods with which people are already familiar and of which they approve.
Let us apply these general principles to particular examples of social planning, and first of all to the great arch-plan of all reformers: the plan for transforming a capitalist society, in which the profit motive predominates, into a socialist society, in which the first consideration is the common good.
Our first principle is that only strictly necessary changes shall be carried out. If we wish to transform an advanced capitalist society, what are the changes that we cannot afford not to make? The answer is clear: the necessary, the indispensable changes are changes in the management of large-scale production. At present the management of large-scale production is in the hands of irresponsible individuals seeking profit. Moreover, each large unit is independent of all the rest; there is a complete absence of co-ordination between them. It is the unco-ordinated activity of large-scale production that leads to those periodical crises and depressions which inflict such untold hardship upon the working masses of the people in industrialized countries.
Small-scale production carried on by individuals who own the instruments with which they personally work is not subject to periodical slumps. Furthermore, the ownership of the means of small-scale, personal production has none of the disastrous political, economic and psychological consequences of large-scale production—loss of independence, enslavement to an employer, insecurity of the tenure of employment. The advantages of socialism can be obtained by making changes in the management of large-scale units of production. Small units of production need not be touched. In this way, many of the advantages of individualism can be preserved and at the same time opposition to indispensable reforms will be minimized.
Our second principle is that no reform, however intrinsically desirable, should be undertaken if it is likely to result in violent opposition. For example, let us assume (though it may not in fact be true) that collectivized agriculture is more productive than individualized agriculture and that the collectivized farm worker is, socially speaking, a better individual than the small farmer who owns his own land. This granted, it follows that the collectivization of agriculture is an intrinsically desirable policy. But though intrinsically desirable it is not a policy that should be carried out, except perhaps by slow degrees. Carried out at one stroke, it would inevitably arouse violent opposition, which would have to be crushed by yet greater violence. In Russia the rapid collectivization of agriculture could not be effected except by the liquidation, through imprisonment, execution and wholesale starvation, of a very large number of peasant proprietors.
It is probable that a part, at least, of what is now (1937) called the Trotskyite opposition is composed of individuals who bear the government a grudge for this and other pieces of terrorism. To put down opposition, the government has had to resort to further violence, has had to make itself (to use Professor Laski’s euphemistic metallurgical metaphor) even more of an ‘iron dictatorship’ than it was before. This further violence and this, shall we call it, high-speed steel dictatorship can only produce the ordinary results of brutality and tyranny—servitude, militarism, passive obedience, irresponsibility. Among the highly industrialized peoples of the West the collectivization of agriculture would have even more serious results than in Russia. Instead of being in an overwhelming majority, the peasants and farmers of Western Europe and America are less numerous than the town dwellers. Being less numerous, they are more precious. To liquidate, even to antagonize, any large number of this indispensable minority would be fatal to the people of the towns.
A few millions of peasants could be starved in Russia and still, because there were so many millions of other peasants, the urban population could be fed. In countries like France or Germany, England or the United States, a policy of starving even quite a few peasants and farmers would inevitably result in the starving of huge numbers of urban workers.
The last of the three general principles of action enunciated above is to the effect that desirable changes should be made, wherever possible, by the application to wider fields of methods with which people are already familiar and of which they approve. A few concrete examples of the way in which existing institutions might be developed so as to bring about desirable changes in capitalistic societies are given below. The principle of the limitation of profit and of supervision by the state in the public interest has already been admitted and applied in such public utility corporations as the Port of London Authority, the Port of New York Authority, the London Passenger Transport Board, the Electricity Board, the B.B.C.[6]
There should be no insuperable difficulty in extending the application of this already accepted principle to wider fields. Similarly there should be no great difficulty in extending the application of the popularly approved principles of consumer co-operation and producer co-operation. Again, consider the existing forms of taxation. In almost all countries the rich have accepted the principle of income tax and death duties. By any government which so desires, such taxation can be used for the purpose of reducing economic inequalities between individuals and classes, for imposing a maximum wage and for transferring control over large-scale production and finance from private hands to the state.
One last example: the investment trust is a well-known and widely patronized financial convenience. Under the present dispensation the investment trust is a private, profit-making concern. There would, however, be no great technical or political obstacle in the way of transforming it into a publicly controlled corporation, having as its function the rational direction of the flow of investment.
I have spoken of intrinsically desirable reforms; but the phrase is crude and needs qualifying. In practice, no reform can be separated from its administrative, governmental, educational and psychological contexts. The tree is known by its fruits, and the fruits of any given reform depend for their quantity and quality at least as much on the contexts of the reform as upon the reform itself.
For example, collective ownership of the means of production does not have as its necessary and unconditional result the liberation of those who have hitherto been bondmen. Collective ownership of the means of production is perfectly compatible, as we see in contemporary Russia, with authoritarian management of factories and farms, with militarized education and conscription, with the rule of a dictator, supported by an oligarchy of party men and making use of a privileged bureaucracy, a censored press and a huge force of secret police. Collective ownership of the means of production certainly delivers the workers from their servitude to many petty dictators—landlords, money-lenders, factory owners and the like. But if the contexts of this intrinsically desirable reform are intrinsically undesirable, then the result will be, not responsible freedom for the workers, but another form of passive and irresponsible bondage. Delivered from servitude to many small dictators, they will find themselves under the control of the agents of a single centralized dictatorship, more
