{"id":3132,"date":"2013-07-13T01:46:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3132"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:46:13","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:13","slug":"22-the-drive-towards-economic-centralazation-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/the-ideal-of-human-unity\/22-the-drive-towards-economic-centralazation-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","title":{"rendered":"-22_The Drive Towards Economic Centralazation.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE DRIVE TOWARDS ECONOMIC <\/b><\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nCENTRALISATION<\/b><\/font>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nT<\/font>HE<\/font> objective organisation of a national
\n<\/b>unity is not
\n<\/b>yet complete when it has arrived at the possession of a single
\ncentral authority and the unity and uniformity of its political,
\nmilitary and strictly administrative functions. There is another
\nside of its organic life, the legislative and its corollary, the judicial
\nfunction, which is equally important; the exercise of legislative
\npower becomes eventually indeed, although it was not always,
\nthe characteristic sign of the sovereign. Logically, one would suppose that the conscious and organised determination of its own
\nrules of life should be the first business of a society from which
\nall others should derive and on which they should be dependent
\nand therefore it would naturally be the earliest to develop. But
\nlife develops in obedience to its own law and the pressure of forces and not
\naccording to the law and the logic of the self-conscious mind; its first course is determined by the subconscient
\nand is only secondarily and derivatively self-conscious. The development of human society has been no exception to the rule; for man, though in the essence of his nature a mental being,
\nhas practically started with a largely mechanical mentality as
\nthe conscious living being, the self-perfecting Manu. That is the
\ncourse the individual has to follow; the group-man follows in the wake of the
\nindividual and is always far behind the highest individual development. Therefore, the development of the society
\nas an organism consciously and entirely legislating for its own
\nneeds, which should be by the logic of reason the first necessary <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-186 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nstep, is actually in the logic of life the last and culminative step.
\nIt enables the society at last to perfect consciously by means of
\nthe State the whole organisation of its life, military, political,
\nadministrative, economic, social, cultural. The completeness of
\nthe process depends on the completeness of the development by
\nwhich the State and society become, as far as that may be, synonymous. That is the importance of democracy; that is the importance also of socialism. They are the sign that the society is
\npetting ready to be an entirely self-conscious and therefore a
\nfreely and consciously self-regulating organism.* But it must be
\nremarked that modem democracy and modern socialism are only
\na first crude and bungling attempt at that consummation, an inefficient hint and not a freely intelligent realisation. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nAt first, in the early stage of society, there is no such thing
\nas what we understand by law, the Roaman lex;<\/i> there are only a
\nmass of binding habits, nomoi, mores, \u00e2ch\u00e2ra,<\/i> determined by the
\ninner nature of the group-man and according to the action upon
\nit of the forces and the necessities of his environment. They become instituta,<\/i> things that acquire a fixed and formal status,
\ninstitutions, and crystallise into laws. Moreover, they embrace
\nthe whole life of the society; there is no distinction between the
\npolitical and administrative, the social and the religious law; these not only all meet in one system, but run inextricably into
\nand are determined by each other. Such was the type of the ancient Jewish law and of the Hindu Shastra which preserved up
\nto recent times this early principle of society in spite of the tendencies of specialisation and separation which have triumphed
\nelsewhere as a result of the normal development of the analytical
\nand practical reason of mankind. This complex customary law
\nevolved indeed, but by a natural development of the body of
\nsocial habits in obedience to changing ideas and more and more
\ncomplex necessities. There was no single and fixed legislative
\nauthority to determine them by conscious shaping and selection <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n*Fascism, National Socialism have cut out die "freely" in this formula
\nand set about the task of creating the organised self-regulating consciousness by a violent regimentation. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-187 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nor in anticipation of popular consent or by direct ideative action
\nupon the general consensus of need and opinion. Kings and
\nprophets and Rishis and Brahmin jurists might exercise such an
\naction according to their power and influence, but none of these
\nwere the constituted legislative sovereign; the king in India was
\nthe administrator of the Dharma and not at all or only exceptionally and to a hardly noticeable extent the legislator. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nIt is worth noting, indeed, that this customary law was often
\nattributed to an original legislator, a Manu, Moses, Lycurgus; but the historic truth of any such tradition has been discredited
\nby modern inquiry and perhaps rightly, if we consider only the
\nactual ascertainable facts and the ordinary process of the human
\nmind and its development. In fact, if we examine the profound
\nlegendary tradition of India, we see that its idea of the Manu is
\nmore a symbol than anything else. His name means man the
\nmental being. He is the divine legislator, the mental demi-god in
\nhumanity who fixes the lines upon which the race or people has 
\nto govern its evolution. In the Purana<\/i> he or his sons are said to : reign in subtle earths or worlds or, as we may say, they reign in
\nthe larger mentality which to us is subconscient and from there
\nhave power to determine the lines of development of the conscious life of man. His law is the manava-dharma-shastra,<\/i> the
\nscience of the law of conduct of the mental or human being and
\nin this sense we may think of the law of any human society as
\nbeing the conscious evolution of the type and lines which its
\nManu has fixed for it. If there comes an embodied Manu, a living
\nMoses or Mahomed, he is only the prophet or spokesman of the
\nDivinity who is veiled in the fire and the cloud, Jehovah on
\nSinai, Allah speaking through his angels. Mahomed, as we
\nknow, only developed the existing social, religious and administrative customs of the Arab people into a new system dictated to
\nhim often in a state of trance, in which he passed from his conscient into his superconscient self, by the Divinity to his secret
\nintuitive mind. All that may be suprarational or if you will
\nirrational, but it represents a different stage of human development from the government of society by its rational and practical <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-188 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nmind which in contact with life’s changing needs and permanent
\nnecessities demands a created and codified law determined by a
\nfixed legislative authority, the society’s organised brain or centre. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis rational development consists, as we have seen, in the
\ncreation of a central authority,\u2014at first a distinct central force
\nbut afterwards more and more conterminous with the society
\nitself or directly representing it,\u2014which gradually takes over the
\nspecialised and separated parts of the social activity. At first, this
\nauthority was the king, elective or hereditary, in his original
\ncharacter a war leader and at home only the chief, the head of
\nthe elders or the strong men and the convener of the nation and
\nthe army, a nodus of its action, but not the principal determinant: in war only, where entire centralisation of power is the
\nfirst condition of effective action, was he entirely supreme. As
\nhost-leader, strategos, he was also imperator, the giver of the
\nabsolute command. When he extended this combination of
\nheadship and the rule from outside inward, he tended to become
\nthe executive power, not merely the chief instrument of social
\nadministration but the executive ruler. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nIt was naturally easier for him to become thus supreme in
\nforeign than in internal politics. Even now European governments which have in internal affairs to defer to the popular will
\nor to persuade and cajole the nation, are able in foreign politics
\nto act either entirely or very largely according to their own ideas: for they are allowed to determine their acts by a secret diplomacy
\nin which the people can have no voice and the representatives
\nof the nation have only a general power of criticising or ratifying
\nits results. Their action in foreign politics is nominal or at any
\nrate restricted to a minimum, since they cannot prevent secret
\narrangements and treaties; even to such as are made early public
\nthey can only withhold their ratification at the risk of destroying
\nthe sureness and continuity, the necessary uniformity of the external action of the nation and thus destroying too the confidence
\nof foreign governments without which negotiations cannot be
\nconducted nor stable alliances and combinations formed. Nor
\ncan they really withhold their sanction in a crisis, whether for <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-189 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nwar or peace, at the only moment when they are effectively consulted, the last hour or rather the last minute when either has
\nbecome inevitable. Much more necessarily was this the case in
\nthe old monarchies when the King was the maker of war and
\npeace and conducted the external affairs of the country according
\nto his personal idea of the national interests largely affected by
\nhis own passions, predilections and personal and family interests.
\nBut whatever the attendant disadvantages, the conduct of war
\nand peace and foreign politics as well as the conduct of the host
\nin the field of battle had actually been centralised, unified in the
\nsovereign authority. The demand for real parliamentary control
\nof foreign policy and even for an open diplomacy\u2014a difficult
\nmatter to our current notions, yet once practised and perfectly
\ncapable of practice\u2014indicates one more step in the transformation, far from complete in spite of the modern boast of democracy,
\nfrom a monarchical and oligarchic to a democratic system, the
\ntaking over of all sovereign functions from the one sovereign
\nadministrator or the few dominant executive men by the society as a whole organised in the democratic State. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nIn its seizure of the internal functionings the central authority has a more difficult task, because its absorption of them
\nor of their chief control has to reckon with powerful competing
\nor modifying forces and interests and the strength of established
\nand often cherished national habits and existing rights and
\nprivileges; But it is bound in the end to arrive at some unified
\ncontrol of those which are in their nature executive and administrative. This administrative side of the national organisation
\nhas three principal parts, financial, executive proper and official.
\nThe financial power carries with it the control of the public
\npurse and the expenditure of the wealth contributed by the
\nsociety for national purposes, and it is evident that this must
\npass into the hands of whatever authority has taken up the business of organising and making efficient the united action of the
\ncommunity. But that authority in its impulse towards an undivided and uncontrolled gestation, a complete unification or
\npowers must naturally desire not only to determine the expenditure<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-190 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\naccording to its own free will, but to determine also the
\ncontributions of the society to the public purse both in its
\namount and in its repartition over the individuals and classes
\nwho constitute the nation. Monarchy in its impulse towards a
\ndespotic centrality has always sought to engross and struggled
\nto retain this power; for the control over the purse of the nation
\nis the most important sign and the most effective element of
\nreal sovereignty, more essential perhaps than the control over
\nlife and limb. In the most despotic regimes, this control is absolute and extends to the power of confiscation and despoliation
\notherwise than by judicial procedure. On the other hand, a ruler
\nwho has to bargain with his subjects over the amount of their
\ncontribution and the methods of taxation, is at once hedged in
\nin his sovereignty and is not in fact the sole and entire sovereign. A vital power is in the hands of an inferior estate of the
\nrealm and can be turned against him fatally in any struggle for
\nthe shifting of the sovereignty from him to that estate. That is
\nthe reason why the supreme political instinct of the English people fixed in the struggle with the monarchy upon this question
\nof taxation as the first vital point in a conflict for the power of
\nthe purse. Once that was settled in the parliament by the defeat
\nof the Stuarts, the transformation of the monarchical sovereignty into the sovereignty of the people or, more accurately, the
\nshifting of the organic control from the throne to the aristocracy,
\nthence to the bourgeoisie, and again to the whole people,\u2014the
\nlatter two steps comprising the rapid evolution of the last eighty
\nyears,\u2014was only a question of time. In France, the successful
\npractical absorption of this control was the strength of the monarchy; it was its inability to manage with justice and economy
\nthe public purse, its unwillingness to tax the enormous riches
\nof the aristocracy and clergy as against the crushing taxation on
\nthe people and the consequent necessity of deferring again to
\nthe nation which provided the opportunity for the Revolution.
\nIn advanced modern countries we have a controlling authority
\nwhich claims at least to represent more or less perfectly the whole
\nnation; individuals and classes have to submit because there is <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-191 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nno appeal from the will of the whole society. But even so, it is
\nquestions, not of taxation, but of the proper organisation and
\nadministration of the economic life of the society which are preparing the revolutions of the future. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-192 <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XX   THE DRIVE TOWARDS ECONOMIC CENTRALISATION   THE objective organisation of a national unity is not yet complete when it has arrived at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-ideal-of-human-unity","wpcat-63-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132","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=3132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}