{"id":3052,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3052"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:39","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:39","slug":"46-the-drive-towards-centralisation-and-uniformity-vol-25-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/25-the-human-cycle\/46-the-drive-towards-centralisation-and-uniformity-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-46_The Drive towards Centralisation and Uniformity.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChapter XIX
\n<\/font>
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Drive towards Centralisation and Uniformity \u2014 Administration
\nand Control of Foreign Affairs <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tS<\/font>UPPOSING<\/b> the free grouping of the nations according to their natural affinities, sentiments, sense of economic and
\nother convenience to be the final basis of a stable worldunion, the next question that arises is what precisely would be
\nthe status of these nation-units in the larger and more complex unity of mankind. Would they possess only a nominal
\nseparateness and become parts of a machine or retain a real and living individuality and an effective freedom and organic
\nlife? Practically, this comes to the question whether the ideal of human unity points to the forcible or at least forceful fusing and
\nwelding of mankind into a single vast nation and centralised world-state with many provinces or to its aggregation under a
\nmore complex, loose and flexible system into a world-union of free nationalities. If the former more rigorous idea or tendency
\nor need dominated, we must have a period of compression, constriction, negation of national and individual liberties as in
\nthe second of the three historical stages of national formation in Europe. This process would end, if entirely successful, in
\na centralised world-government which would impose its uniform rule and law, uniform administration, uniform economic
\nand educational system, one culture, one social principle, one civilisation, perhaps even one language and one religion on all
\nmankind. Centralised, it would delegate some of its powers to national authorities and councils, but only as the centralised
\nFrench government \u2014 Parliament and bureaucracy \u2014 delegate some of their powers to the departmental prefects and councils
\nand their subordinate officials and communes. Such a state of things seems a sufficiently far-off dream and
\n \t\t\tassuredly not, except to the rigid doctrinaire, a very beautiful
\n\t\t\tdream. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>437<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tCertainly, it would take a long time to become entirely
\npracticable and would have to be preceded by a period of loose formation corresponding to the feudal unity of France or Germany in mediaeval Europe. Still, at the rate of ever accelerated speed with which the world is beginning to progress and with
\nthe gigantic revolutions of international thought, outlook and practice which the future promises, we have to envisage it as not
\nonly an ultimate, but, it may very well be, a not immeasurably far-off possibility. If things continued to move persistently, victoriously in one direction and Science still farther to annihilate the obstacles of space and of geographical and mental division
\nwhich yet exist and to aggrandise its means and powers of vast and close organisation, it might well become feasible within a
\ncentury or two, at the most within three or four. It would be the logical conclusion of any process in which force and constraint
\nor the predominance of a few great nations or the emergence of a king-state, an empire predominant on sea and land, became the
\nprincipal instrument of unification. It might come about, supposing some looser unity to be already established, by the triumph
\nthroughout the world of the political doctrine and the coming to political power of a party of socialistic and internationalistic
\ndoctrinaires alike in mentality to the unitarian Jacobins of the French Revolution who would have no tenderness for the sentiments of the past or for any form of group individualism and would seek to crush out of existence all their visible supports so
\nas to establish perfectly their idea of an absolute human equality and unity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA system of the kind, however established, by whatever forces, governed by the democratic State idea which inspires
\nmodern socialism or by the mere State idea socialistic perhaps, but undemocratic or anti-democratic, would stand upon the
\nprinciple that perfect unity is only to be realised by uniformity. All thought in fact that seeks to establish unity by mechanical
\nor external means is naturally attracted towards uniformity. Its thesis would seem to be supported by history and the lessons
\nof the past; for in the formation of national unity, the trend to centralisation
\n\t\t\tand uniformity has been the decisive factor, a condition of
\n\t\t\tuniformity the culminating point. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>438<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe precedent of the
\nformation of diverse and often conflicting elements of a people into a single national State would naturally be the determining
\nprecedent for the formation of the populations of the earth, the human people, into a single world-nation and World-State. In
\nmodern times there have been significant examples of the power of this trend towards uniformity which increases as civilisation
\nprogresses. The Turkish movement began with the ideal of toleration for all the heterogeneous elements
\n\t\t\t\u2014 races, languages,
\nreligions, cultures \u2014 of the ramshackle Turkish empire, but inevitably the dominant Young Turk element was carried away
\nby the instinct for establishing, even by coercion, a uniform Ottoman culture and Ottoman nationality.1 Belgium, composed
\nalmost equally of Teutonic Flemings and Gallic Walloons, grew into a nationality under the aegis of a Franco-Belgian culture
\nwith French as the dominant language; the Fleming movement which should logically have contented itself with equal rights
\nfor the two languages, aimed really at a reversal of the whole position and not merely the assertion but the dominance of the
\nFlemish language and an indigenous Flemish culture. Germany, uniting her ancient elements into one body, suffered her existing
\nStates with their governments and administrations to continue, but the possibility of considerable diversities thus left open was
\nannulled by the centralisation of national life in Berlin; a nominal separateness existed, but overshadowed by a real and dominant
\nuniformity which all but converted Germany into the image of a larger Prussia in spite of the more democratic and humanistic
\ntendencies and institutions of the Southern States. There are indeed apparent types of a freer kind of federation, Switzerland,
\nthe United States, Australia, South Africa, but even here the spirit of uniformity really prevails or tends to prevail in spite of
\nvariation in detail and the latitude of free legislation in minor
\nmatters conceded to the component States. Everywhere unity seems to call for and strive to create a greater or less uniformity
\nas its secure basis. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1 <\/sup>This trend has found its completion,
\n\t\t\tafter the elimination of the Greek element and the loss of the
\n\t\t\tempire, in the small purely Turkish State of today, but curiously
\n\t\t\tthe national uniformity has been topped by the association with it
\n\t\t\tand assimilation of European culture and social forms and habits.
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>439<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe first uniformity from which all the rest takes its start
\nis that of a centralised government whose natural function is to create and ensure a uniform administration. A central government is necessary to every aggregate which seeks to arrive at an organic unity of its political and economic life. Although
\nnominally or to begin with this central government may be only an organ created by several States that still claim to be
\nsovereign within their own borders, an instrument to which for convenience’ sake they attribute a few of their powers for
\ncommon objects, yet in fact it tends always to become itself the sovereign body and desires always to concentrate more and more
\npower into its hands and leave only delegated powers to local legislatures and authorities. The practical inconveniences of a
\nlooser system strengthen this tendency and weaken gradually the force of the safeguards erected against an encroachment which
\nseems more and more to be entirely beneficial and supported by the logic of general utility. Even in the United States with its
\nstrong attachment to its original constitution and slowness in accepting constitutional innovations on other than local lines,
\nthe tendency is manifesting itself and would certainly have resulted by this time in great and radical changes if there had
\nnot been a Supreme Court missioned to nullify any legislative interference with the original constitution, or if the American
\npolicy of aloofness from foreign affairs and complications had not removed the pressure of those necessities that in other nations have aided the central government to engross all real power and convert itself into the source as well as the head or centre of
\nnational activities. The traditional policy of the United States, its pacificism, its anti-militarism, its aversion to entanglement in
\nEuropean complications or any close touch with the politics of Europe, its jealousy of interference by the European Powers in
\nAmerican affairs in spite of their possession of colonies and interests in the Western hemisphere, are largely due to the instinct
\nthat this separateness is the sole security for the maintenance of its
\n\t\t\tinstitutions and the peculiar type of its national life. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>440<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOnce militarised, once cast into the vortex of old-world politics, as it at
\ntimes threatens to be, nothing could long protect the States from the necessity of large changes in the direction of centralisation
\nand the weakening of the federal principle.2<\/sup> Switzerland owes the security of its federal constitution to a similarly self-centred
\nneutrality. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tFor the growth of national centralisation is due to two primary
\n\t\t\tneeds of which the first and most pressing is the necessity of
\n\t\t\tcompactness, single-mindedness, a single and concentrated action
\n\t\t\tagainst other nations, whether for defence against external
\n\t\t\taggression or for aggression upon others in the pursuit of national
\n\t\t\tinterests and ambitions. The centralising effect of war and
\n\t\t\tmilitarism, its call for a concentration of powers, has been a
\n\t\t\tcommonplace of history from the earliest times. It has been the
\n\t\t\tchief factor in the evolution of centralised and absolute
\n\t\t\tmonarchies, in the maintenance of close and powerful aristocracies,
\n\t\t\tin the welding together of disparate elements and the discouragement
\n\t\t\tof centrifugal tendencies. The nations which, faced with this
\n\t\t\tnecessity, have failed to evolve or to preserve this concentration
\n\t\t\tof powers, have always tended to fare ill in the battle of life,
\n\t\t\teven if they have not shared the fate long endured by Italy and
\n\t\t\tPoland in Europe or by India in Asia. The strength of centralised
\n\t\t\tJapan, the weakness of decentralised China was a standing proof that
\n\t\t\teven in modern conditions the ancient rule holds good. Only
\n\t\t\tyesterday the free States of Western Europe found themselves
\n\t\t\tcompelled to suspend all their hard-earned liberties and go back to
\n\t\t\tthe ancient Roman device of an irresponsible Senate and even to a
\n\t\t\tcovert dictatorship in order to meet the concentrated strength of a
\n\t\t\tnation powerfully centralised and organised for military defence and
\n\t\t\tattack. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t2 <\/sup>The Roosevelt policy and the difficulties it encountered illustrate vividly the power of these two conflicting forces in the United States; but the trend towards the strengthening
\nof the federal case, however slow, is unmistakable. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>441<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIf the sense of this necessity could covertly or overtly survive the
\n\t\t\tactual duration of war, there can be no doubt that democracy and
\n\t\t\tliberty would
\nreceive the most dangerous and possibly fatal blow they have yet suffered since their re-establishment in modern times.3 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe power of Prussia to take the life of Germany into its grasp was due almost wholly to the sense of an insecure position
\nbetween two great and hostile nations and to the feeling of encirclement and insecurity for its expansion which was imposed on
\nthe Reich by its peculiar placement in Europe. Another example of the same tendency was the strength which the idea of confederation acquired as a result of war in England and her colonies. So long as the colonies could stand aloof and unaffected by
\nEngland’s wars and foreign policy, this idea had little chance of effectuation; but the experience of the war and its embarrassments and the patent inability to compel a concentration of all the potential strength of the empire under a system of
\nalmost total decentralisation seem to have made inevitable 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 into practice.4 A loose federation in one form
\nor another serves well where peace is the rule; wherever peace is insecure or the struggle of life difficult and menacing, looseness
\nbecomes a disadvantage and may turn even into a fatal defect, the opportunity of fate for destruction. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe pressure of peril from without and the need of expansion create only the tendency towards a strong political and
\nmilitary centralisation; the growth of uniformity arises from the need of a close internal organisation of which the centre thus created becomes the instrument. This organisation is partly called for by the same needs as create the instrument, but much more
\nby the advantages of uniformity for a well-ordered social and economic life
\n\t\t\tbased upon a convenience of which life is careless but which the
\n\t\t\tintelligence of man constantly demands, \u2014 a clear, simple and, as
\n\t\t\tfar as the complexity of life will allow, a facile principle of
\n\t\t\torder. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t3<\/sup> Even as it is, the direction of the drive of forces tends to be evidently away from democracy towards a more and more rigid State control and regimentation.
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t4<\/sup> As yet this has only gone so far as equality of status with close consultation in
\nforeign affairs, attempts at a closer economic cooperation, but a continuation of large wars might either according to its fortunes dissolve the still loose or compel a more
\ncoherent system. At present, however, this possibility is held back by the
\n\t\t\tarrival of true Dominion Status and the Westminster Statute which
\n\t\t\tmake federation unnecessary for any practical purpose and even
\n\t\t\tperhaps undesirable for the sentiment in favour of a practical
\n\t\t\tindependence.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>442<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t The human intelligence as soon as it begins to
\norder life according to its own fashion and not according to the more instinctively supple and flexible principle of organic order
\ninherent in life, aims necessarily at imitating physical Nature in the fixity of her uniform fundamental principles of arrangement,
\nbut tries also to give to them, as much as may be, a uniform application. It drives at the suppression of all important variations.
\nIt is only when it has enlarged itself and feels more competent to understand and deal with natural complexities that it finds itself
\nat all at ease in managing what the principle of life seems always to demand, the free variation and subtly diverse application of
\nuniform principles. First of all, in the ordering of a national society, it aims naturally at uniformity in that aspect of it which
\nmost nearly concerns the particular need of the centre of order which has been called into existence, its political and military
\nfunction. It aims first at a sufficient and then at an absolute unity and uniformity of administration. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe monarchies which the need of concentration called into being,
\n\t\t\tdrove first at a preliminary concentration, a gathering of the main
\n\t\t\tthreads of administration into the hands of the central authority.
\n\t\t\tWe see this everywhere, but the stages of the process are most
\n\t\t\tclearly indicated in the political history of France; for there the
\n\t\t\tconfusion of feudal separatism and feudal jurisdictions created the
\n\t\t\tmost formidable difficulties and yet by a constant centralising
\n\t\t\tinsistence and a final violent reaction from their surviving results
\n\t\t\tit was there that they were most successfully resolved and removed.
\n\t\t\tThe centralising monarchy, brought to supreme power by the repeated
\n\t\t\tlessons of the English invasions, the Spanish pressure, the civil
\n\t\t\twars, developed inevitably that absolutism which the great historic
\n\t\t\tfigure of Louis XIV so strikingly personifies. His famous dictum, "I
\n\t\t\tam the State", expressed really the need felt by the country of the
\n\t\t\tdevelopment of one undisputed sovereign power which should
\n\t\t\tconcentrate in itself all military, legislative and administrative
\n\t\t\tauthority as against
\nthe loose and almost chaotic organisation of feudal France. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>443<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe system of the Bourbons aimed first at administrative centralisation and unity, secondarily at a certain amount of administrative uniformity. It could not carry this second aim to an entirely successful conclusion because of its dependence on the aristocracy which it had replaced, but to which it was obliged to leave the
\nconfused debris of its feudal privileges. The Revolution 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 rather completed the work of the monarchy. An
\nentire unity and uniformity legislative, fiscal, economic, judicial, social was the goal towards which French absolutism, monarchical or democratic, was committed by its original impulse. 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 confused organism of feudal France. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn other countries the movement was less direct and the survival of old institutions even after the loss of their original
\nreason for existence more obstinate; but everywhere in Europe, even in Germany5<\/sup> and Russia, the trend has been the same and
\nthe eventual result is inevitable. The study of that evolution is of considerable importance for the future; for the difficulties to
\nbe surmounted were identical in essence, however different in form and extent, to those which would stand in the way of the
\nevolution of a world-state out of the loose and still confused organism of the modern civilised world. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t5<\/sup> Note the absolute culmination of this drive in Germany in the unprecedented centralisation, the rigid standardisation and uniformity of the Nationalist Socialist regime
\n under Hitler.
\n   <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013<\/font>444<\/p>\n

\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

\t<\/p>\n

\t<\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter XIX   The Drive towards Centralisation and Uniformity \u2014 Administration and Control of Foreign Affairs   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":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-25-the-human-cycle","wpcat-58-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3052","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=3052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}