{"id":3090,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:52","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3090"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:52","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:52","slug":"50-forms-of-government-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\/50-forms-of-government-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-50_Forms of Government.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t <\/p>\n

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

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tForms of Government <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE IDEA<\/b> of a world-union of free nations and empires, loose at first, but growing closer-knit with time and experience, seems at first sight the most practicable form
\nof political unity; it is the only form indeed which would be immediately practicable, supposing the will to unity to become
\nrapidly effective in the mind of the race. On the other hand, it is the State idea which is now dominant. The State has been
\nthe most successful and efficient means of unification and has been best able to meet the various needs which the progressive
\naggregate life of societies has created for itself and is still creating. It is, besides, the expedient to which the human mind
\nat present has grown accustomed, and it is too the most ready means both for its logical and its practical reason to work with
\nbecause it provides it with what our limited intelligence is always tempted to think its best instrument, a clear-cut and precise
\nmachinery and a stringent method of organisation. Therefore it is by no means impossible that, even though beginning with a
\nloose union, the nations may be rapidly moved by the pressure of the many problems which would arise from the ever closer interworking of their needs and interests, to convert it into the more stringent form of a World-State. We can found no safe
\nconclusion upon the immediate impracticability of its creation or on the many difficulties which would stand in its way; for past
\nexperience shows that the argument of impracticability is of very little value. What the practical man of today denies as absurd
\nand impracticable is often enough precisely the thing that future generations set about realising and eventually in some form or
\nother succeed in bringing into effective existence. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013465<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tBut a World-State implies a strong central organ of power
\nthat would represent or at least stand for the united will of the nations. A unification of all the necessary powers in the hands of
\n this central and common governing body, at least in their source \u2014 powers military, administrative, judicial, economic, legislative, social, educational
\n\t\t\t\u2014 would be indispensable. And as an almost inevitable result there would be an increasing uniformity
\nof human life throughout the world in all these departments, even perhaps to the choice or creation of one common and
\nuniversal language. This, indeed, is the dream of a unified world which Utopian thinkers have been more and more moved to
\nplace before us. The difficulties in the way of arriving at this result are at present obvious, but they are perhaps not so great
\nas they seem at first sight and none of them are insoluble. It is no longer a Utopia that can be put aside as the impracticable
\ndream of the ideal thinker. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe first difficulty would be the character and composition
\nof this governing body, a problem beset with doubts and perils. In ancient times it was solved readily enough in smaller limits
\nby the absolutist and monarchical solution with the rule of a conquering race as the starting-point, as in the Persian and Roman empires. But that resource is no longer as easily open to us in the new conditions of human society, whatever dreams may
\nin the past have entered into the minds of powerful nations or their Czars and
\n\t\t\tKaisers. The monarchical idea itself is beginning to pass away after
\n\t\t\ta brief and fallacious attempt at persistence and revival. Almost it
\n\t\t\tseems to be nearing its final agony; the seal of the night is upon
\n\t\t\tit. Contemporary appearances are often enough deceptive, but they
\n\t\t\tare less likely to be so in the present instance than in many
\n\t\t\tothers, because the force which makes for the disappearance of the
\n\t\t\tstill-surviving monarchies is strong, radical and ever increasing.
\n\t\t\tThe social aggregates have ripened into self-conscious maturity and
\n\t\t\tno longer stand in need of a hereditary kingship to do their
\n\t\t\tgoverning work for them or even to stand for them \u2014 except perhaps
\n\t\t\tin certain exceptional cases such as the British Empire \u2014 as the
\n\t\t\tsymbol of their unity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013466<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\t Either then the monarchy can only survive in name, \u2014 as in
\n\t\t\tEngland where the king has less power even, if that be possible,
\n\t\t\tthan the French President and infinitely less than the heads of the
\n\t\t\tAmerican republics, \u2014 or else it becomes a source of offence,
\na restraint to the growing democratic spirit of the peoples and to a greater or less degree a centre, a refuge or at least an opportunity for the forces of reaction. Its prestige and popularity tend therefore not to increase but to decline, and at some crisis
\nwhen it comes too strongly into conflict with the sentiment of the nation, it falls with small chance of lasting revival. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMonarchy has thus fallen or is threatened almost everywhere
\n\t\t\t\u2014 and most suddenly in countries where its tradition was
\nonce the strongest. Even in these days it has fallen in Germany and Austria, in China, in Portugal, in Russia; it has been in
\nperil in Greece and Italy;1 and it has been cast out of Spain. In no continental country is it really safe except in some of the
\nsmaller States. In most of them it exists for reasons that already belong to the past and may soon lose if they are not already
\nlosing their force. The continent of Europe seems destined to become in time as universally republican as the two Americas.
\nFor kingship there is now only a survival of the world’s past; it has no deep root in the practical needs or the ideals or the
\ntemperament of present-day humanity. When it disappears, it will be truer to say of it that it has ceased to survive than to say
\nthat it has ceased to live. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe republican tendency is indeed Western in its origin,
\nstronger as we go more and more to the West, and has been historically powerful chiefly in Western Europe and dominant
\nin the new societies of America. It might be thought that with the entrance of Asia into the active united life of the world, when the
\neastern continent has passed through its present throes of transition, the monarchical idea might recover strength and find a new
\nsource of life. For in Asia kingship has been not only a material fact resting upon political needs and conditions, but a spiritual
\nsymbol and invested with a sacrosanct character. But in Asia no less than in Europe, monarchy has been a historical growth,
\nthe result of circumstances and therefore subject to disappearance when those circumstances no longer exist. The true mind
\nof Asia has always remained, behind all surface appearances, not political but
\n\t\t\tsocial, monarchical and aristocratic at the surface but with a
\n\t\t\tfundamental democratic trend and a theocratic spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1<\/sup> Now in Italy too it is gone with practically no hope of return.
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013467<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tJapan with its deep-rooted monarchic sentiment is the one prominent exception to this general rule. Already a great
\ntendency of change is manifest. China, always a democratic country at bottom though admitting in its democratic system
\nan official aristocracy of intellect and a symbolic imperial head, is now definitely republican. The difficulty of the attempt to
\nrevive monarchy or to replace it by temporary dictatorships has been due to an innate democratic sentiment now invigorated
\nby the acceptance of a democratic form for the supreme government, the one valuable contribution of Western experience
\nto the problem at which the old purely social democracies of the East were unable to arrive. In breaking with the last of its
\nlong succession of dynasties China had broken with an element of her past which was rather superficial than at the very centre
\nof her social temperament and habits. In India the monarchical sentiment, which coexisted with but was never able to prevail
\nover the theocratic and social except during the comparatively brief rule of the Moghuls, was hopelessly weakened, though not
\neffaced, by the rule of a British bureaucracy and the political Europeanising of the active mind of the race.2<\/sup> In Western Asia
\nmonarchy has disappeared in Turkey, it exists only in the States which need the monarch as a centralising power or keystone. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAt the two extremes of the Asiatic world in Japan and in Turkey the monarchy after the close of the war still preserved
\nsomething of its old sacrosanct character and its appeal to the sentiment of the race. In Japan, still imperfectly democratised,
\nthe sentiment which surrounds the Mikado is visibly weakened, his prestige survives but his actual power is very limited, and the
\ngrowth of democracy and socialism is bound to aid the weakening and limiting process and may well produce the same results
\nas in Europe. The Moslem Caliphate, originally the head of a theocratic
\n\t\t\tdemocracy, was converted into a political institution by the rapid
\n\t\t\tgrowth of a Moslem empire, now broken into pieces. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t2<\/sup> Now with the liberation of the country
\n\t\t\tand the establishment of a republican and democratic constitution,
\n\t\t\tthe ruling princes have either disappeared or become subordinate
\n\t\t\theads with their small kingdoms becoming partly or wholly
\n\t\t\tdemocratised or destined to melt into a united India<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013468<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tThe Caliphate now abolished could only have survived as a purely religious headship and even in that character its
\nunity was threatened by the rise of new spiritual and national movements in Persia, Arabia and Egypt. But the one real and
\nimportant fact in Asia of today is this that the whole active force of its future is centred not in priesthood or aristocracy,
\nbut, as it was formerly in Russia before the Revolution, in a newly-created intelligentsia, small at first in numbers, but increasing in energy and the settled will to arrive and bound to become exceedingly dynamic by reason of the inherited force of
\nspirituality. Asia may well preserve its ancient spirituality; even in its hour of greatest weakness it has been able to impose its
\nprestige increasingly even on the positive European mind. But whatever turn that spirituality takes, it will be determined by the
\nmentality of this new intelligentsia and will certainly flow into other channels than the old ideas and symbols. The old forms
\nof Asiatic monarchy and theocracy seem therefore destined to disappear; at present there is no chance of their revival in new
\nfigures, although that may happen in the future. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe only apparent chance eventually for the monarchical
\nidea is that its form may be retained as a convenient symbol for the unity of the heterogeneous empires which would be the
\nlargest elements in any unification based upon the present political configuration of the world. But even for these empires
\nthe symbol has not proved to be indispensable. France has done without it, Russia has recently dispensed with it. In Austria
\nit had become odious to some of the constituent races as the badge of subjection and was bound to perish even without the
\ncollapse of the Great War. Only in England and in some small countries is it at once innocuous and useful and therefore upheld by a general feeling. Conceivably, if the British Empire,3<\/sup> even now the leading, the most influential, the most powerful 
\n\t\t\tforce in the world, were to become the nucleus or the pattern of the
\n\t\t\tfuture unification, there might be some chance of the monarchical
\n\t\t\telement surviving in the figure \u2014 and even an empty figure is
\n\t\t\tsometimes useful as a support and centre for future potentialities
\n\t\t\tto grow and fill with life. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t3 <\/sup>Now no longer Empire but Commonwealth.  
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013469<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tBut against this stands the fixed republican sentiment of the whole of America
\nand the increasing spread of the republican form; there is little chance that even a nominal kingship representing one element
\nof a very heterogeneous whole would be accepted by the rest in any form of general unification. In the past, at least, this has only
\nhappened under the stress of conquest. Even if the World-State found it convenient as the result of experience to introduce or
\nto reintroduce the monarchical element into its constitution, it could only be in some quite new form of a democratic kingship.
\nBut a democratic kingship, as opposed to a passive figure of monarchy, the modern world has not succeeded in evolving. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe two determining facts in modern conditions which alter the whole problem are that in this kind of unification nations
\ntake the place of individuals and that these nations are mature self-conscious societies, predestined therefore to pass through
\npronounced forms of social democracy or some other form of socialism. It is reasonable to suppose that the World-State will
\ntend to strive after the same principle of formation as that which obtains in the separate societies which are to constitute it. The
\nproblem would be simpler if we could suppose the difficulties created by conflicting national temperaments, interests and cultures to be either eliminated or successfully subordinated and minimised by the depression of separative nationalistic feeling
\nand the growth of a cosmopolitan internationalism. That solution is not altogether impossible in spite of the serious check to
\ninternationalism and the strong growth of nationalistic feeling developed by the world war. For, conceivably, internationalism
\nmay revive with a redoubled force after the stress of the feelings created by the war has passed. In that case, the tendency of
\nunification may look to the ideal of a world-wide Republic with the nations as provinces, though at first very sharply distinct
\nprovinces, and governed by a council or parliament responsible  to the
\n\t\t\tunited democracies of the world. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013470<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tOr it might be something like the disguised oligarchy of an international council reposing
\nits rule on the assent, expressed by election or otherwise, of what might be called a semi-passive democracy as its first figure.
\nFor that is what the modern democracy at present is in fact; the sole democratic elements are public opinion, periodical elections
\nand the power of the people to refuse re-election to those who have displeased it. The government is really in the hands of the
\nbourgeoisie, the professional and business men, the landholders, \u2014 where such a class still exists,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 strengthened by a number of
\nnew arrivals from the working-class who very soon assimilate themselves to the political temperament and ideas of the governing classes.4 If a World-State were to be established on the present basis of human society, it might well try to develop its
\ncentral government on this principle. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut the present is a moment of transition and a bourgeois
\nWorld-State is not a probable consummation. In each of the more progressive nations, the dominance of the middle class is
\nthreatened on two sides. There is first the dissatisfaction of the intellectuals who find in its unimaginative business practicality
\nand obstinate commercialism an obstacle to the realisation of their ideals. And there is the dissatisfaction of the great and
\ngrowing power of Labour which sees democratic ideals and changes continually exploited in the interests of the middle class,
\nthough as yet it has found no alternative to the Parliamentarism by which that class ensures its rule.5 What changes the alliance
\nbetween these two dissatisfactions may bring about, it is impossible to foresee. In Russia, where it was strongest, we have seen it
\ntaking the lead of the Revolution and compelling the bourgeoisie to undergo its control, although the compromise so effected
\ncould not long outlast the exigencies of the war. Since then the old order there has been “liquidated” and the triumph of the new
\n\t\t\ttendencies has been complete. In two directions it may lead to a new
\n\t\t\tform of modified oligarchy with a democratic basis. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t4<\/sup>This has now changed and the Trade Unions and similar institutions have attained an equal power with the other classes.
\n\t\t\t<\/font> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t5<\/sup>Written before the emergence of the Soviet State in Russia and of the Fascist States. In the latter it is the middle class itself that rose against democracy and established for
\na time a new form of government and society.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013471<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tThe
\ngovernment of a modern society is now growing an exceedingly complicated business in each part of which a special knowledge,
\nspecial competence, special faculties are required and every new step towards State socialism must increase this tendency. The
\nneed of this sort of special training or faculty in the councillor and administrator combined with the democratic tendencies of
\nthe age might well lead to some modern form of the old Chinese principle of government, a democratic organisation of life below,
\nabove the rule of a sort of intellectual bureaucracy, an official aristocracy of special knowledge and capacity recruited from the
\ngeneral body without distinction of classes. Equal opportunity \u00b4
\nwould be indispensable but this governing elite would still form a class by itself in the constitution of the society. On the other
\nhand, if the industrialism of the modern nations changes, as some think it will, and develops into a sort of guild socialism,
\na guild aristocracy of Labour might well become the governing body in the society.6 If any of these things were done, any movement towards a World-State would then take the same direction and evolve a governing body of the same model. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tBut in these two possibilities we leave out of consideration the great factor of nationalism and the conflicting interests and
\ntendencies it creates. To overcome these conflicting interests, it has been supposed, the best way is to evolve a sort of world
\nParliament in which, it is to be presumed, the freely formed and freely expressed opinion of the majority would prevail. Parliamentarism, the invention of the English political genius, is a necessary stage in the evolution of democracy, for without it the
\ngeneralised faculty of considering and managing with the least possible friction large problems of politics, administration, economics, legislation concerning considerable aggregates of men cannot easily be developed. It has also been the one successful
\n\t\t\tmeans yet discovered of preventing the State executive from
\n\t\t\tsuppressing the liberties of the individual and the nation. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t6<\/sup>Something of the kind was attempted in Soviet Russia for a time. The existing conditions were not favourable and a definite form of government not revolutionary and
\n provisional is not anywhere in sight. In Fascist Italy a cooperative State was announced
\nbut this too took no effectual or perfect shape. <\/font>  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013472<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tNations
\nemerging into the modern form of society are therefore naturally and rightly attracted to this instrument of government. But it has
\nnot yet been found possible to combine Parliamentarism and the modern trend towards a more democratic democracy; it has
\nbeen always an instrument either of a modified aristocratic or of a middle-class rule. Besides, its method involves an immense
\nwaste of time and energy and a confused, swaying and uncertain action that “muddles out” in the end some tolerable result. This
\nmethod accords ill with the more stringent ideas of efficient government and administration that are now growing in force
\nand necessity and it might be fatal to efficiency in anything so complicated as the management of the affairs of the world.
\nParliamentarism means too, in practice, the rule and often the tyranny of a majority, even of a very small majority, and the
\nmodern mind attaches increasing importance to the rights of minorities. And these rights would be still more important in
\na World-State where any attempt to override them might easily mean serious discontents and disorders or even convulsions fatal
\nto the whole fabric. Above all, a Parliament of the nations must necessarily be a united parliament of free nations and could not
\nwell come into successful being in the present anomalous and chaotic distribution of power in the world. The Asiatic problem
\nalone, if still left unsolved, would be a fatal obstacle and it is not alone; the inequalities and anomalies are all-pervasive and
\nwithout number. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA more feasible form would be a supreme council of the free and
\n\t\t\timperial nations of the existing world-system, but this also has its
\n\t\t\tdifficulties. It could only be workable at first if it amounted in
\n\t\t\tfact to an oligarchy of a few strong imperial nations whose voice
\n\t\t\tand volume would prevail at every point over that of the more
\n\t\t\tnumerous but smaller non-imperialistic commonwealths and it could
\n\t\t\tonly endure by a progressive and, if possible, a peaceful evolution
\n\t\t\tfrom this sort of oligarchy of actual power to a more just and ideal
\n\t\t\tsystem in which the imperialistic idea would dissolve and the great
\n\t\t\tempires merge their
\nseparate existence into that of a unified mankind. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013473<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\t\t\tHow far national egoism would allow that evolution to take place without
\nvehement struggles and dangerous convulsions, is, in spite of the superficial liberalism now widely professed, a question still
\nfraught with grave and ominous doubts. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tOn the whole, then, whichever way we turn, this question
\nof the form of a World-State is beset with doubts and difficulties that are for the moment insoluble. Some arise from the surviving sentiments and interests of the past; some menace from the rapidly developing revolutionary forces of the future. It does not
\nfollow that they can never or will never be solved, but the way and the line any such solution would take are beyond calculation
\nand can really be determined only by practical experience and experiment under the pressure of the forces and necessities of
\nthe modern world. For the rest, the form of government is not of supreme importance. The real problem is that of the unification
\nof powers and the uniformity which any manageable system of a World-State would render inevitable.
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage <\/font>\u2013474<\/font><\/p>\n

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

Chapter XXIII   Forms of Government   THE IDEA of a world-union of free nations and empires, loose at first, but growing closer-knit with time…<\/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-3090","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\/3090","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=3090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}