{"id":1172,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:03","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:03","slug":"45-the-drive-towards-centralisation-and-unformity-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\/45-the-drive-towards-centralisation-and-unformity-vol-15-social-and-political-thought-volume-15","title":{"rendered":"-45_The Drive Towards Centralisation and Unformity.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\nCHAPTER <\/font><\/b>
\nXIX<\/font>
\n<\/font>
\nThe Drive towards Centralisation and Uniformity
\n<\/font><\/span>\u2013<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n


\nAdministration
\nand<\/font> <\/font><\/span>
\nControl of Foreign Affairs<\/span><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nS<\/font><\/b>UPPOSING
\nthe free grouping of the nations according to their natural affinities,
\nsentiments, sense of economic and other convenience to be the final basis of a
\nstable world-union, the next question that arises is what precisely would be
\nthe status of these nation-units in the larger and more complex unity of
\nmankind. Would they possess only a nominal separateness and become parts of a
\nmachine or retain a real and living individuality and an effective freedom and
\norganic life?\u00a0 <\/span>Practically, this comes
\nto the question whether the ideal of human unity points to the forcible or at
\nleast forceful fusing and welding of mankind into a single vast nation and
\ncentralised World-State with many provinces or to its aggregation under a more
\ncomplex, loose and flexible system into a world-union of free nationalities. If
\nthe former more rigorous idea or tendency – or need dominated, we must have a
\nperiod of compression, constriction, negation of national and individual
\nliberties as in the second of the three historical stages of national formation
\nin Europe. This process would end, if entirely successful, in a centralised
\nworld-government which would impose its uniform,<\/span> rule and law, uniform administration, uniform economic and
\neducational system, one culture, one social principle, one civilisation,
\nperhaps even one language and one religion on all mankind. Centralised, it
\nwould delegate some of its powers to national authorities and councils, but
\nonly as the centralised French government –<\/span>
\nParliament and bureaucracy –<\/span>
\ndelegate some of their powers to the departmental prefects and councils and
\ntheir subordinate officials and communes.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Such a state of things seems a
\nsufficiently far-off dream and<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-415<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nassuredly not, .except to the rigid doctrinaire, a very
\nbeautiful dream. Certainly, it would take a long time to become entirely
\npracticable and would have to be preceded by a period of loose formation
\ncorresponding to the feudal unity of France or Germany in mediaeval Europe.
\nStill, at the rate of ever accelerated speed with which the world is beginning
\nto progress and with the gigantic revolutions of international thought, outlook
\nand practice which the future promises, we have to envisage it as not only an
\nultimate, but it may very well be a not immeasurably far-off possibility. If
\nthings continued to move persistently, victoriously in one direction and
\nScience still farther to annihilate the obstacles of space and of geographical
\nand mental division which yet exist and to aggrandise its means and powers of
\nvast and close organisation, it might well become feasible within a century or
\ntwo, at the most within three or four. It would be the logical conclusion of
\nany process in which force and constraint or the predominance of a few great
\nnations or the emergence of a king-State, an empire predominant on sea and
\nland, became the principal instrument of unification. It might come about,
\nsupposing some looser unity to be already established, by the triumph
\nthroughout the world of the political doctrine and the coming to political
\npower of a party of socialistic and internationalistic doctrinaires alike in
\nmentality to the unitarian Jacobins of the French Revolution who would have no
\ntenderness for the sentiments of the past or for any form of group
\nindividualism and would seek to crush out of existence all their visible
\nsupports so as to establish perfectly their idea of an absolute human equality
\nand unity.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>A system of
\nthe kind, however established, by whatever forces, governed by the democratic
\nState idea which inspires modern socialism or by the mere State idea
\nsocialistic perhaps, but undemocratic or anti-democratic, would stand upon the
\nprinciple that perfect unity is only to be realised by uniformity. All thought
\nin fact that seeks to establish unity by mechanical or external means is
\nnaturally attracted towards uniformity. Its thesis would seem to be supported
\nby history and the lessons of the past; for in the formation of national unity,
\nthe trend to centralisation and uniformity has been the decisive factor,<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-416<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\na condition of uniformity the culminating point. The
\nprecedent of the formation of diverse and often conflicting elements of a
\npeople into a single national State would naturally be the determining
\nprecedent for the formation of the populations of the earth, the human people,
\ninto a single world-nation and World-State. In modern times there have been
\nsignificant examples of the power of this trend towards uniformity which increases<\/span> as civilisation progresses.
\nThe Turkish movement began with the ideal of toleration for all the heterogeneous
\nelements<\/span> –<\/span> races, languages, religions, cultures – of the ram- shackle
\nTurkish empire, but inevitably the dominant young Turk element was carried away<\/span> by the instinct for establishing,
\neven by coercion, a uniform Ottoman culture and Ottoman nationality. This trend
\nhas found its completion, after the elimination of the Greek element and the
\nloss of the empire, in the small purely Turkish State of today, but curiously
\nthe national uniformity has been topped by the association with it and
\nassimilation of European culture and social forms and habits. Belgium, composed
\nalmost equally of Teutonic Flemings and Gallic Walloons, grew into a
\nnationality under the aegis of a Franco-Belgian culture with French as the
\ndominant language; the Fleming movement which should logically have contented
\nitself with equal rights for the two languages, aimed really at a reversal of
\nthe whole position and not merely the assertion but the dominance of the
\nFlemish language and an indigenous Flemish culture. Germany, uniting her ancient
\nelements into one body, suffered her existing States with their governments and
\nadministrations to continue, but the possibility of considerable diversities
\nthus left open was annulled by the centralisation of national life in Berlin; a
\nnominal separateness existed, but overshadowed by a real and dominant
\nuniformity which all but converted Germany into the image of a larger Prussia
\nin spite of the more democratic and humanistic tendencies and institutions of
\nthe Southern States. There are indeed apparent types of a freer kind of
\nfederation, Switzerland, the United States, Australia, South Africa, but even
\nhere the spirit of uniformity really prevails or tends to prevail in spite of
\nvariation in detail and the latitude of free legislation in minor matters<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-417<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nconceded to the component States. Everywhere unity
\nseems to call for and strive to create a greater or less uniformity as its
\nsecure basis.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The first
\nuniformity from which all the rest takes its start is that of a centralised
\ngovernment whose natural function is to create and ensure a uniform
\nadministration. A central government is necessary to every aggregate which
\nseeks to arrive at an organic unity of its political and economic life.
\nAlthough, nominally or to begin with, this central government may be only an
\norgan created by several States that still claim to be sovereign within their
\nown borders, an instrument to which for convenience’ sake they attribute a few
\nof their powers for common objects, yet in fact it tends always to become
\nitself the sovereign body and desires always to concentrate more and more power
\ninto its hands and leave only delegated powers to local legislatures and
\nauthorities. The practical inconveniences of a looser system strengthen this
\ntendency and weaken gradually the force of the safeguards erected against an
\nencroachment which seems more and more to be entirely beneficial and supported
\nby the logic of general utility. Even in the United States with its strong
\nattachment to its original constitution and slowness in accepting
\nconstitutional innovations on other than local lines, the tendency is
\nmanifesting itself and would certainly have resulted by this time in great and
\nradical changes if there had not been a Supreme Court missioned to nullify any
\nlegislative interference with the original constitution, or if the American
\npolicy of aloofness from foreign affairs and complications had not removed the
\npressure of those necessities that in other nations have aided the central
\ngovernment to engross all real power and convert itself into the source as well
\nas the head or centre of national activities. The traditional policy of the
\nUnited States, its pacificism, its anti-militarism, its aversion to
\nentanglement in European complications or any close touch with the politics of
\nEurope, its jealousy of interference by the European Powers in American affairs
\nin spite of their possession of colonies and interests in the Western
\nhemisphere, are largely due to the instinct that this separateness is the sole
\nsecurity for the maintenance of its institutions and the peculiar type of its<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-418<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nnational life. Once militarised, once cast into the
\nvortex of old-world politics, as it at times threatens to be, nothing could
\nlong protect the States from the necessity of large changes in the direction of
\ncentralisation and the weakening of the federal principle.1<\/sup> Switzerland
\nowes the security of its federal constitution to a similarly self-centred\u00a0 <\/span>neutrality.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>For the
\ngrowth of national centralisation is due to two primary needs of which the
\nfirst and most pressing is the necessity of compactness, single-mindedness, a
\nsingle and concentrated action against other nations, whether for defence
\nagainst external aggression or for aggression upon others in the pursuit of
\nnational interests and ambitions. The centralising effect of war and
\nmilitarism, its call for a concentration of powers, has been a commonplace of
\nhistory from the earliest times. It has been the chief factor in the evolution
\nof centralised and absolute monarchies, in the maintenance of close and
\npowerful aristocracies, in the welding together of disparate elements and the
\ndiscouragement of centrifugal tendencies. The nations which, faced with this
\nnecessity, have failed to evolve or to preserve this concentration of powers,
\nhave always tended to fare ill in the battle of life, even if they have not
\nshared the fate long endured by Italy and Poland in Europe or by India in Asia.
\nThe strength of centralised Japan, the weakness of\u00a0 <\/span>ecentralised China was a standing proof that even in modern conditions
\nthe ancient rule holds good. Only yesterday the free States of Western Europe
\nfound themselves compelled to suspend all their hard-earned liberties and go
\nback to the ancient Roman device of an irresponsible Senate and even to a
\ncovert dictator- ship in order to meet the concentrated strength of a nation
\npowerfully centralised and organised for military defence and attack. If the
\nsense of this necessity could covertly or overtly survive the actual duration
\nof war, there can be no doubt that democracy and liberty would receive the most
\ndangerous and possibly fatal blow they have yet suffered since their
\nre-establishment in modern times.2 <\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1  <\/font><\/sup>The
\nRoosevelt policy and the difficulties it encountered illustrate vividly the
\npower of these two <\/i>conflicting forces in the United States; and the:
\ntrend towards the strengthening of the federal case, however slow, is
\nunmistakable.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n2  <\/font>Even as it is, the direction of the drive
\nof forces tends to be evidently away from democracy towards a more and more
\nrigid State control and regimentation<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n Page-419<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The power
\nof Prussia to take the life of Germany into its grasp was due almost wholly to
\nthe sense of an insecure position between two great and hostile nations and to
\nthe feeling of encirclement and ‘insecurity for its expansion which was imposed
\non the Reich by its peculiar placement in Europe. Another example of the same
\ntendency was the strength which the idea of confederation acquired as a result
\nof war in England and her colonies. So long as’ the colonies could stand aloof
\nand unaffected by England’s wars and foreign policy, this idea had little
\nchance of effectuation; but the experience of the war and its embarrassments
\nand the patent inability to compel a concentration of all the potential strength
\nof the empire under a system of almost total decentralisation seem to have made
\ninevitable a tightening up of the loose and easy make of the British Empire
\nwhich may go very far once the principle has been recognised and put initially
\ninto practice.1<\/sup> A
\nloose federation in one form or another serves well where peace is the rule;
\nwherever peace is insecure or the struggle of life difficult and menacing,
\nlooseness becomes a disadvantage and may turn even into a fatal defect, the opportunity
\nof fate for destruction. The pressure of peril from without and the need of
\nexpansion create only the tendency towards a strong political and military
\ncentralisation; the growth of uniformity arises from the need of a close
\ninternal organisation of which the centre thus created becomes the instrument.
\nThis organisation is partly called for by the same needs as create the
\ninstrument, but much more by the advantages of uniformity for a well- ordered
\nsocial and economic life based upon a convenience of which life is careless,
\nbut which the intelligence of man constantly demands, – a clear, simple and, as
\nfar as the complexity of life will allow, a facile principle of order. The
\nhuman intelligence as soon as it begins to order life according to its own<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1  <\/font><\/sup>As yet this has only gone so far as equality of
\nstatus with close consultation in foreign affairs, attempts at a closer
\neconomic co-operation, but a continuation of large wars might either according
\nto its fortunes dissolve the still loose or compel a more coherent system. At
\npresent, however, this possibility is held back by the arrival of true Dominion
\nStatus and the Westminster Statute which make federation unnecessary for any
\npractical purpose and even perhaps undesirable for the sentiment in favour of a
\npractical independence<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-420<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nfashion and not according to the more instinctively
\nsupple and flexible principle of organic order inherent in life, aims
\nnecessarily at imitating physical Nature in the fixity of her uniform fundamental
\nprinciples of arrangement, but tries also to give to them, as much as may be, a
\nuniform application. It drives at the suppression of all important variations.
\nIt is only when it has enlarged itself and feels more competent to understand
\nand deal with natural complexities that it finds itself at all at ease managing
\nwhat the principle of life seems always to demand, the free variation and
\nsubtly diverse application of uniform principles. First of all in the ordering
\nof a national society, it aims naturally at uniformity in that aspect of it
\nwhich most nearly concerns the particular need of the centre of order which has
\nbeen called into existence, its political and military function. It aims first
\nat a sufficient and then at an absolute unity and uniformity of administration.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The
\nmonarchies which the need of concentration called into being, drove first at a
\npreliminary concentration, a gathering of the main threads of administration
\ninto the hands of the central authority. We see this everywhere, but the
\nstages of the process "I<\/span> are
\nmost clearly indicated in the political history of France; for there the
\nconfusion of feudal separatism and feudal jurisdictions created the most
\nformidable difficulties, and yet by a constant centralising insistence and a
\nfinal violent reaction from their surviving results it was there that they were
\nmost successfully resolved and removed. The centralising monarchy, brought
\nto supreme power by the repeated lessons of the English invasions, the Spanish
\npressure, the civil wars, developed inevitably that absolutism which the great
\nhistoric figure of Louis XIV so strikingly personifies. His famous dictum,
\n"I am the State", expressed really the need felt by the country of
\nthe development of one undisputed sovereign Power which should concentrate in
\nitself all military, legislative and administrative authority as against the
\nloose and almost chaotic organisation of feudal France. The system of the
\nBourbons aimed first at administrative<\/span>
\ncentralisation and unity, secondarily at a certain amount of administrative
\nuniformity. It could not carry this second aim to an entirely successful
\nconclusion because of its dependence on<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-421<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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

\nthe aristocracy which it had replaced, but to which it
\nwas obliged to leave the confused debris of its feudal privileges. The
\nRevolution made short work of this aristocracy and swept away the relics of the
\nancient system. In establishing a rigorous uniformity it did not reverse but
\nrather completed the work of the monarchy. An entire unity and uniformity
\nlegislative, fiscal, economic, judicial, social, was the goal towards which
\nFrench absolutism, monarchical or democratic, was committed by its original
\nimpulse. The rule of the Jacobins and the regime of Napoleon only brought
\nrapidly to fruition what was slowly evolving under the monarchy out of the
\nconfused organism of feudal France.<\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>In other
\ncountries the movement was less direct and the survival of old institutions
\neven after the loss of their original reason for existence more obstinate; but
\neverywhere in Europe, even in Germany1<\/sup> <\/span>and
\nRussia, the trend has been the same and the eventual result is inevitable. The
\nstudy of that evolution is of considerable importance for the future; for the
\ndifficulties to be surmounted were identical in essence, however different in
\nform and extent to those which would stand in the way of the evolution of a
\nWorld-State out of the loose and still confused organism of the modern
\ncivilised world.<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n1  <\/font><\/sup>Note
\nthe absolute culmination of this drive in Germany, in the unprecedented
\ncentralisation, the rigid standardisation and uniformity of the Nationalist
\nSocialist regime under Hitler<\/span> .<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-422<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XIX The Drive towards Centralisation and Uniformity \u2013 Administration and Control of Foreign Affairs   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 SUPPOSING the free grouping of the nations according…<\/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-1172","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\/1172","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=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}