{"id":1148,"date":"2013-07-13T01:32:55","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1148"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:32:55","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:32:55","slug":"51-war-and-the-need-of-economic-unity-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15\/51-war-and-the-need-of-economic-unity-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-51_War and the Need of Economic Unity.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nCHAPTER <\/font><\/b>
\nXXV<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nWar and the
\nNeed <\/font> <\/span>
\nof <\/font><\/span>
\nEconomic Unity<\/span><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n                               
\n<\/font>
\nT<\/font><\/span>HE military necessity, the pressure of war between nations and
\nthe need for prevention of war by the assumption of force and authority in the
\nhands of an inter- national body, World-State or Federation or League of Peace,
\nis that which will most directly drive humanity in the end towards some sort of
\ninternational union. But there is behind it another necessity which is much
\nmore powerful in its action on the modern mind, the commercial and industrial,
\nthe necessity born of economic interdependence. Commercialism is a modern
\nsociological phenomenon; one might almost say, that is the whole phenomenon of
\nmodem society. The economic part of life is always important to an organised
\ncommunity and even fundamental; but in former times it was simply the first
\nneed., it was not that which occupied the thoughts of men, gave the whole tone
\nto the social life, stood at the head and was clearly recognised as standing at
\nthe root of social principles. Ancient man was in the group primarily a
\npolitical being, in the Aristotelian sense, – as soon as he ceased to be
\nprimarily religious,- and to this preoccupation he added, wherever he was
\nsufficiently at ease, the preoccupation of thought, art and culture. The
\neconomic impulses of the group were worked out as a mechanical necessity, a
\nstrong desire in the vital being rather than a leading thought in the mind. Nor
\nwas the society regarded or studied as an economic organism except in a very
\nsuperficial aspect. The economic man held an honourable, but still a
\ncomparatively low position in the society; he was only the third caste or
\nclass, the Vaishya. The lead was in the hands of the intellectual and political
\nclasses, –<\/span> the Brahmin, thinker,
\nscholar, philosopher and priest, the Kshatriya, ruler and warrior. It was their
\nthoughts and preoccupations that gave the tone<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-463<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nto society, determined its conscious drift and action,
\ncoloured most powerfully all its motives. Commercial interests entered into the
\nrelations of States and into the motives of war and peace; but they entered as
\nsubordinate and secondary predisposing causes of amity or hostility and only
\nrarely and as it were accidentally came to be enumerated among the overt and
\nconscious causes of peace, alliance and strife. The political consciousness,
\nthe political motive dominated; increase of wealth was primarily regarded as a
\nmeans of political power and greatness and opulence of the mobilisable
\nresources of the State than as an end in itself or a first consideration.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Everything
\nnow is changed. The phenomenon of modern social development is the decline of
\nthe Brahmin and Kshatriya, of the Church, the military aristocracy and the
\naristocracy of letters and culture, and the rise to power or predominance of
\nthe commercial and industrial classes, Vaishya and Shudra, Capital and Labour.
\nTogether they have swallowed up or cast out their rivals and are now engaged in
\na fratricidal conflict for sole possession in which the completion of the
\ndownward force of social gravitation, the ultimate triumph of Labour and the
\nremodelling of all social conceptions and institutions with Labour as the
\nfirst, the most dignified term which will give its value to all others seem to
\nbe the visible writing of Fate. At present, however, it is the Vaishya who
\nstill predominates and his stamp on the world is commercialism, the
\npredominance of the economic man, the universality of the commercial value or
\nthe utilitarian and materially efficient and productive value for everything in
\nhuman life. Even in the outlook on knowledge, thought, science, art, poetry and
\nreligion the economic conception of life overrides all others.1<\/sup> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>For the
\nmodem economic view of life, culture and its products have chiefly a decorative
\nvalue; they are costly and desirable luxuries, not at all indispensable
\nnecessities. Religion is in this view a by-product of the human mind with a
\nvery<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1  <\/font><\/sup>It
\nis noticeable that the bourgeois habit of the predominance of commercialism has
\nbeen taken up and continued in an even larger scale by the new Socialist
\nsocieties though on the basis of a labour, instead of a bourgeois economy, and
\nan attempt at a new distribution of its profits or else, more
\ncharacteristically, a concentration of all in the hands of the State<\/font><\/span>.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-464<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n


\nrestricted<\/font><\/span>
\nutility – if indeed it is not a waste and a hindrance. Education has a recognised
\nimportance but its object and form are no longer so much cultural as
\nscientific, utilitarian and economic, its value the preparation of the
\nefficient individual unit to take his place in the body of the economic
\norganisation. Science is of immense importance not because it discovers the
\nsecrets of Nature for the advancement of knowledge, but because it utilises
\nthem for the creation of machinery and develops and organises the economic
\nresources of the community. The thought-power of the society, almost its
\nsoul-power – if it has any longer so unsubstantial and unproductive a thing as
\na soul- is not in its religion or its literature, although the former<\/span> drags on a feeble existence and
\nthe latter teems and spawns, but in the daily Press primarily an instrument of
\ncommercialism and governed by the political and commercial spirit and not like
\nliterature a direct instrument of culture. Politics, government itself are
\nbecoming more and more a machinery for the development of an industrialised
\nsociety, divided between the service of bourgeois capitalism and the office of
\na half- involuntary channel for the incoming of economic Socialism. Free
\nthought and culture remain on the surface of this great increasing mass of
\ncommercialism and influence and modify it, but are themselves more and more
\ninfluenced, penetrated, coloured, subjugated by the economic, commercial and
\nindustrial view of human life.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This great
\nchange has affected profoundly the character of international relations in the
\npast and is likely to affect them still more openly and powerfully in the
\nfuture. For there is no apparent probability of a turn in a new direction in
\nthe immediate future. Certain prophetic voices announce indeed the speedy
\npassing of the age of commercialism. But it is not easy to see how this is to
\ncome about; certainly, it will not be by a reversion to the predominantly
\npolitical spirit of the past or the temper and forms of the old aristocratic
\nsocial type. The sigh of the extreme conservative mind for the golden age of
\nthe past, which was not so golden as it appears to an imaginative eye in the
\ndistance, is a vain breath blown to the winds by the rush of the car of the
\nTime-Spirit in the extreme velocity of its<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-465<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nprogress. The end of commercialism can only come about
\neither by some unexpected development of commercialism itself or through a
\nreawakening of spirituality in the race and its coming to its own by the
\nsubordination of the political and economic motives of life to the spiritual
\nmotive.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Certain signs
\nare thought to point in this direction. The religious spirit is reviving and
\neven the old discouraged religious creeds and forms are recovering a kind of
\nvigour. In the secular thought of mankind there are signs of an idealism which
\nincreasingly admits a spiritual element among its motives. But all this is as
\nyet slight and superficial; the body of thought and practice, the effective
\nmotive, the propelling impulsion remain untouched and unchanged. That impulsion
\nis still towards the industrialising of the human race and the perfection of
\nthe life of society as an economic and productive organism. Nor is this spirit
\nlikely to die as yet by exhaustion, for it has not yet fulfilled itself and is
\ngrowing, not declining in force. It is aided, moreover, by modern Socialism
\nwhich promises to be the master of the future; for Socialism proceeds on the
\nMarxian principle that its own reign has to be preceded by an age of bourgeois
\ncapitalism of which it is to be the inheritor and seize upon its work and
\norganisation in order to turn it to its own uses and modify it by its own
\nprinciples and methods. It intends indeed to substitute Labour as the Master
\ninstead of Capital;1<\/sup> () <\/span>but this only means that all activities will be valued by the
\nlabour contributed and work produced rather than by the wealth contribution and
\nproduction. It will be a change from one side of economism to the other, but
\nnot a change from economism to the domination of some other and higher motive
\nof human life. The change itself is likely to be one of the chief factors with
\nwhich international unification will have to deal and either its greatest aid
\nor its greatest difficulty.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/font><\/span>In the past, the effect of commercialism has
\nbeen to bind together the human race into a real economic unity behind its<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1 <\/font><\/sup>The connection
\nbetween Socialism and the democratic or equalitarian idea or the revolt of the proletariate
\nis however an accident of its history, not its essence. In Italian Fascism
\nthere arose a Socialism undemocratic and non-equalitarian in its form, idea and
\ntemper. Fascism has gone, but there is no inevitable connection between
\nSocialism and the domination of Labour<\/span>.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-466<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\napparent political separativeness. But this was a
\nsubconscient unity of inseparable interrelations and of intimate mutual dependence,
\nnot any oneness of the spirit or of the conscious organised<\/span> life. Therefore these interrelations produced at once the necessity<\/span> of peace and the
\nunavoidability of war. Peace was necessary<\/span>
\nfor their normal action, war frightfully perturbatory to their whole system of
\nbeing. But because the organised units were politically separate and rival
\nnations, their commercial interrelations became relations of rivalry and strife
\nor rather a confused<\/span> tangle of
\nexchange and interdependence and hostile separatism. Self-defence against each
\nother by a wall of tariffs, a race<\/span>
\nfor closed markets and fields of exploitation, a struggle for place or
\npredominance in markets and fields which could 1’lOt<\/span> be monopolised and an attempt at mutual interpenetration
\nin spite<\/span> of tariff walls have
\nbeen the chief features of this hostility and this separatism. The outbreak of
\nwar under such conditions was only a<\/span>
\nmatter of time; it was bound to come as soon as one nation or else one group of
\nnations felt itself either unable to\u00a0 <\/span>proceed<\/span> farther by pacific means or
\nthreatened with the definite limitation of its expansion by the growing
\ncombination of its rivals. The Franco-German was the last great war dictated by
\npolitical motives. Since then the political motive has been mainly a cover for
\nthe commercial. Not the political subjugation of Serbia which could only be a
\nfresh embarrassment to the Austrian empire, but the commercial possession of
\nthe outlet through Salonika was the motive of Austrian policy. Pan-Germanism
\ncovered the longings of German industry for possession of the great resources
\nand the large outlet into the North Sea offered by the countries along the
\nRhine. To seize African spaces of exploitation and perhaps French coal fields,
\nnot to rule over French territory, was the drift of its real intention. In
\nAfrica, in China, in Persia, in Mesopotamia, commercial motives determined
\npolitical and military action. War is no longer the legitimate child of
\nambition and earth-hunger, but the bastard offspring of wealth-hunger or commercialism
\nwith political ambition as its putative father.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>On the
\nother hand, the effect, the shock of war have been rendered intolerable by the
\nindustrial organisation of human<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-467<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nlife and the commercial interdependence of the nations.
\nIt would be too much to say that it laid that organisation in ruins, but it
\nturned it topsy-turvy, deranged its whole system and diverted it to unnatural
\nends. And it produced a widespread suffering and privation in belligerent and a
\ngene <\/i>and perturbation of life in neutral countries to which the history
\nof the world offers no parallel. The angry cry that this -must not be suffered
\nagain and that the authors of this menace and disturbance to the modem
\nindustrial organisation of the world, self-styled civilisa-tion, must be
\nvisited with condign punishment and remain for some time as international
\noutcastes under a ban and a boycott, showed how deeply the lesson had gone
\nhome. But it showed too, as the post-war mentality has shown, that the real,
\nthe inner truth of it all has not yet been understood or not seized at its
\ncentre. Certainly, from this point of view also, the prevention of war must be
\none of the first preoccupations of a new ordering of international life. But
\nhow is war to be entirely prevented if the old state of commercial rivalry
\nbetween politically separate nations is to be perpetuated? If peace is still to
\nbe a covert war, an organisation of strife and rivalry, how is the physical
\nshock to be prevented? It may be said, through the regulation of the inevitable
\nstrife and rivalry by a state of law as in the competitive commercial life of a
\nnation before the advent of Socialism. But that was only possible, because the
\ncompeting individuals or combines were part of a single social organism subject
\nto a single governmental authority and unable to assert their individual will
\nof existence against it. Such a regulation between nations can therefore have
\nno other conclusion, logically or practically, than the formation of a
\ncentralised World-State.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/font><\/span>But let us suppose that the physical shock of
\nwar is prevented, not by law, but by the principle of enforced arbitration in
\nextreme cases which might lead to war, not by the creation of an international
\nauthority, but by the overhanging threat of international pressure. The state
\nof covert war will still continue; it may even take new and disastrous forms.
\nDeprived of other weapons the nations are bound to have increasing resort to
\nthe weapon of commercial pressure, as did Capital and Labour in their chronic
\nstate of "pacific" struggle within the<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-468<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nlimits of the national life. The instruments would be
\ndifferent, but would follow the same principle, that of the strike and the
\nlockout which are on one side a combined passive resistance by the weaker party
\nto enforce its claims, on the other a passive pressure by the stronger party to
\nenforce its wishes. Between nations, the corresponding weapon to the strike
\nwould be a commercial boycott, already used more than once in an unorganised
\nfashion both in Asia and Europe and bound to be extremely effective and telling
\nif organised even by a politically or commercially weak nation. For the weaker
\nnation is necessary to the stronger, if as nothing else, yet as a market or as
\na commercial and industrial victim. The corresponding weapons to the lockout
\nwould be the refusal of capital or machinery, the prohibition of all or of any
\nneeded imports into the offending
\nor victim country, or even a naval blockade leading, if long maintained, to
\nindustrial ruin or to national starvation. The blockade is a weapon used
\noriginally only in a state of war, but it was employed against Greece as a
\nsubstitute for war, and this use may easily be extended in the future. There is
\nalways too the weapon of prohibitive tariffs.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It is clear
\nthat these weapons need not be employed for commercial purposes or motives
\nonly, they may be grasped at to defend or to attack any national interest, to
\nenforce any claim of justice or injustice between nation and nation. It has
\nbeen shown into how tremendous a weapon commercial pressure can be turned when
\nit is used as an aid to war. If Germany was crushed in the end, the real means
\nof victory was the blockade, the cutting off of money, resources and food and
\nthe ruin of industry, and commerce. For the military debacle was not directly
\ndue to military weakness, but primarily to the diminution and failure of
\nresources, to exhaustion, semi-starvation and the moral depression of an
\nintolerable position cut off from all hope of replenishment and recovery. This
\nlesson also may have in the future considerable application in a time of
\n"peace". Already it was proposed at one time in some quarters to
\ncontinue the commercial war after the political had ceased, in order that
\nGermany might not only be struck off the list of great imperial nations but
\nalso permanently hampered, disabled or even ruined<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-469<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

\nas a commercial and industrial rival. A policy of
\nrefusal of capital and trade relations and a kind of cordon or hostile blockade
\nhas been openly advocated and was for a time almost in force against Bolshevist
\nRussia. And it has been suggested too that a League of Peace1<\/sup> <\/font>
\n <\/font><\/span>\u00a0<\/font><\/span>might use this weapon of
\ncommercial pressure against any recalcitrant nation in place of military force.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But so long
\nas there is not a firm international authority, the use of this weapon would
\nnot be likely to be limited to such occasions or used only for just and
\nlegitimate ends. It might be used by a strong nation, secure of general
\nindifference, to crush and violate the weak; it might be used by a combination
\nof strong imperial Powers to enforce their selfish and evil will upon the
\nworld. Force and coercion of any kind not concentrated in the hands of a just
\nand impartial authority are always liable to abuse and misapplication.
\nTherefore inevitably in the growing unity of mankind the evolution of such an
\nauthority must become an early and pressing need. The World-State even in its
\nearly and imperfect organisation must begin not only to concentrate military
\nforce in its hands, but to commence consciously in the beginning what the
\nnational State only arrived at by a slow and natural development, the ordering
\nof the commercial, industrial, economic life of the race and the control at first,
\nno doubt, only of the principal relations of international commerce,2<\/sup>  but inevitably in the end of its
\nwhole system and principles. Since industry and trade are now five-sixths of
\nsocial life and the economic principle the governing principle of society, a
\nWorld-State which did not control human life in its chief principle and its
\nlargest activity would exist only in name.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1 <\/font><\/sup>Afterwards
\nrealised as the League of Nations.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n2 Some first beginnings of this kind of
\nactivity were trying to appear in the activities of the now almost moribund
\nLeague of Nations. These activities were still only platonic and advisory as in
\nits futile discussions about disarmament and its inconclusive attempts to
\nregulate certain relations of Capital and Labour, but they showed that the need
\nis already felt and were a signpost on the road to the future<\/span>.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-470<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XXV War and the Need of Economic Unity                                   THE military necessity, the pressure of war between nations and the need for prevention…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","wpcat-25-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}