{"id":3145,"date":"2013-07-13T01:46:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3145"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:46:18","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:18","slug":"27-war-and-the-need-of-economic-unity-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\/27-war-and-the-need-of-economic-unity-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","title":{"rendered":"-27_War and The Need of Economic Unity.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nWAR AND THE NEED OF
\nECONOMIC UNITY<\/b><\/font> <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n T<\/font>HE<\/font> military necessity, the pressure of war between
\nnations and the need for prevention of war by the assumption
\nof force and authority in the hands of an international body,
\nWorld-State or Federation or League of Peace, is that which will
\nmost directly drive humanity in the end towards some sort of
\ninternational union. But there is behind it another necessity
\nwhich is much more powerful in its action on the modem mind,
\nthe commercial and industrial, the necessity born of economic
\ninterdependence. Commercialism is a modern sociological phenomenon; one might almost say that is the whole phenomenon
\nof modem society. The economic part of life is always important
\nto an organised community and even fundamental; but in former
\ntimes it was simply the first need, it was not that which occupied
\nthe thoughts of men, gave the whole tone to the social life, stood
\nat the head and was clearly recognised as standing at the root of
\nsocial principles. Ancient man was in the group primarily a political being, in the Aristotelian sense,\u2014as soon as he ceased to be
\nprimarily religious,\u2014and to this preoccupation he added, wherever he was sufficiently at ease, the preoccupation of thought,
\nart and culture. The economic impulses of the group were
\nWorked out as a mechanical necessity, a strong desire in the vital
\nbeing rather than a leading thought in the mind. Nor was the
\nsociety regarded or studied as an economic organism except in a very superficial aspect. The economic man held an honourable,
\nbut still a comparatively low position in the society; he was only <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-227 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe third caste or class, the Vaishya. The lead was in the hands
\nof the intellectual and political classes,\u2014the Brahmin, thinker,
\nscholar, philosopher and priest; the Kshatriya, ruler and warrior. It was their thoughts and preoccupations that gave the tone to
\nsociety, determined its conscious drift and action, coloured most
\npowerfully all its motives. Commercial interests entered into the
\nrelations of states and into the motives of war and peace; but
\nthey entered as subordinate and secondary predisposing causes
\nof amity or hostility and only rarely and as it were accidentally
\ncame to be enumerated among the overt and conscious causes
\nof peace, alliance and strife. The political consciousness, the
\npolitical motive dominated; increase of wealth was primarily
\nregarded as a means of political power and greatness and opulence of the mobilisable resources of the State than as an end in
\nitself or a first consideration. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nEverything now is changed. The phenomenon of modem
\nsocial development is the decline of the Brahmin and Kshatriya,
\nof the Church, the military aristocracy and the aristocracy of
\nletters and culture, and the rise to power or predominance of the
\ncommercial and industrial classes, Vaishya and Shudra, capital
\nand labour. Together they have swallowed up or cast out their
\nrivals and are now engaged in a fratricidal conflict for sole possession in which the completion of the downward force of social
\ngravitation, the ultimate triumph of Labour and the remodelling
\nof all social conceptions and institutions with Labour as the first,
\nthe most dignified term which will give its value to all others
\nseem to be the visible writing of fate. At present, however, it is
\nthe Vaishya who still predominates and his stamp on the world
\nis commercialism, the predominance of the economic man, the
\nuniversality of the commercial value or the utilitarian and materially efficient and productive value for everything in human
\nlife. Even in the outlook on knowledge, thought, science, art,
\npoetry and religion the economic conception of life overrides
\nall others.* <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* It is noticeable that the bourgeois habit of the predominance of
\ncommercialism has been taken up and continued in an even larger scale by <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-228 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

  For the modern economic view of life, culture and its products have chiefly a decorative value; they are costly and desirable
\nluxuries, not at all indispensable necessities. Religion is in this
\nview a by-product of the human mind with a very restricted utility\u2014if indeed it is not a waste and a hindrance. Education has a
\nrecognised importance but its object and form are no longer so
\nmuch cultural as scientific, utilitarian and economic, its value
\nthe preparation of the efficient individual unit to take his place
\nin the body of the economic organisation. Science is of immense
\nimportance not because it discovers the secrets of Nature for the
\nadvancement of knowledge, but because it utilises them for the
\ncreation of machinery and develops and organises the economic
\nresources of the community. The thought-power of the society,
\nalmost its soul-power\u2014if it has any longer so unsubstantial and
\nunproductive a thing as a soul,\u2014is not in its religion or its literature, although the former drags on a feeble existence and the
\nlatter teems and spawns, but in the daily Press primarily an
\ninstrument of commercialism and governed by the political and
\ncommercial spirit and not like literature a direct instrument of
\nculture. Politics, government itself are becoming more and more
\na machinery for the development of an industrialised society,
\ndivided between the service of bourgeois capitalism and the office
\nof a half-involuntary channel for the incoming of economic Socialism. Free thought and culture remain on the surface of this
\ngreat increasing mass of commercialism and influence and modify it, but are themselves more and more influenced, penetrated,
\ncoloured, subjugated by the economic, commercial and industrial
\nview of human life. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis great change has affected profoundly the character of
\ninternational relations in the past and is likely to affect them still
\nmore openly and powerfully in the future. For there is no apparent probability of a turn in a new direction in the immediate
\nfuture. Certain prophetic voices announce indeed the speedy <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n______________________________<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nnew Socialist societies though on the basis of a labour, instead of a bourgeois
\neconomy and an attempt at a new distribution of its profits or else, more characteristically, a concentration of all in the hands of the State. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-229 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\npassing of the age of commercialism. But it is not easy to see how
\nthis is to come about; certainly it will not be by a reversion to the
\npredominantly political spirit of the past or the temper and forms
\nof the old aristocratic social type. The sigh of the extreme conservative mind for the golden age of the past, which was not so
\ngolden as it appears to an imaginative eye in the distance, is a
\nvain breath blown to the winds by the rush of the car of the
\nTime-Spirit in the extreme velocity of its progress. The end of
\ncommercialism can only come about either by some unexpected
\ndevelopment of commercialism itself or through a reawakening
\nof spirituality in the race and its coming to its own by the subordination of the political and economic motives of life to the
\nspiritual motive. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nCertain signs are thought to point in this direction. The
\nreligious spirit is reviving and even the old discouraged religious
\ncreeds and forms are recovering a kind of vigour. In the secular
\nthought of mankind there are signs of an idealism which increasingly admits a spiritual element among its motives. But all this is
\nas yet slight and superficial; the body of thought and practice, the
\neffective motive, the propelling impulsion remain untouched
\nand unchanged. That impulsion is still towards the industrialising of the human race and the perfection of the life of society as
\nan economic and productive organism. Nor is this spirit likely to
\ndie as yet by exhaustion, for it has not yet fulfilled itself and is
\ngrowing, not declining in force. It is aided, moreover, by modem
\nSocialism which promises to be the master of the future; for
\nSocialism proceeds on the Marxian principle that its own reign
\nhas to be preceded by an age of bourgeois capitalism of which it
\nis to be the inheritor and seize upon its work and organisation in
\norder to turn it to its own uses and modify it by its own principles and methods. It intends indeed to substitute Labour as the
\nMaster instead of Capital;* but this only means that all activities <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n*The connection between Socialism and the democratic or equalitarian
\nidea or the revolt of the proletariate is, however, an accident of its history,
\nnot
\nits essence. In Italian Fascism there arose a Socialism undemocratic and^non
\nequalitarian in its form, idea and temper. Fascism has gone, but there is
\ninevitable connection between Socialism and the domination of Labour. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-230 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

will be valued by the labour contributed and work produced
\nrather than by the wealth contribution and production. It will be
\na change from one side of economism to the other, but not a
\nchange from economism to the domination of some other and
\nhigher motive of human life. The change itself is likely to be one
\nof the chief factors with which international unification will
\nhave to deal and either its greatest aid or its greatest difficulty. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIn the past, the effect of commercialism has been to bind
\ntogether the human race into a real economic unity behind its
\napparent political separativeness. But this was a subconscient
\nunity of inseparable interrelations and of intimate mutual interdependence, not any oneness of the spirit or of the conscious organised life. Therefore these interrelations produced at once
\nthe necessity of peace and the unavoidability of war. Peace was
\nnecessary for their normal action, war frightfully perturbatory to
\ntheir whole system of being. But because the organised units
\nwere politically separate and rival nations their commercial interrelations became relations of rivalry and strife or rather a
\nconfused tangle of exchange and interdependence and hostile
\nseparatism. Self-defence against each other by a wall of tariffs, a
\nrace for closed markets and fields of exploitation, a struggle for
\nplace or predominance in markets and fields which could not be
\nmonopolised and an attempt at mutual interpenetration in spite
\nof tariff walls have been the chief features of this hostility and
\nthis separatism. The outbreak of war under such conditions was
\nonly a matter of time; it was bound to come as soon as one nation
\nor else one group of nations felt itself either unable to proceed
\nfarther by pacific means or threatened with the definite limitation of its expansion by the growing combination of its rivals.
\nThe Franco-German was the last great war dictated by political
\nmotives. Since then the political motive has been mainly a cover
\nfor the commercial. Not the political subjugation of Serbia,
\nwhich could only be a fresh embarrassment to the Austrian
\nempire, but the commercial possession of the outlet through Salonika was the motive of Austrian policy. Pan-Germanism covered the longings of German industry for possession of the great <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-231 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nresources and the large outlet into the North Sea offered by the
\ncountries along the Rhine. To seize African spaces of exploitation and perhaps French coal fields, not to rule over French
\nterritory, was the drift of its real intention. In Africa, in China,
\nin Persia, in Mesopotamia, commercial motives determined political and military
\naction. War is no longer the legitimate child of ambition and earth-hunger, but
\nthe bastard offspring of
\nwealth-hunger or commercialism with political ambition as its
\nputative father. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nOn the other hand, the effect, the shock of war have been
\nrendered intolerable by the industrial organisation of human life
\nand the commercial interdependence of the nations. It would be
\ntoo much to say that it laid that organisation in ruins, but it
\nturned it topsy-turvy, deranged its whole system and diverted it
\nto unnatural ends. And it produced a widespread suffering and
\nprivation in belligerent and a g\u00eane<\/i> and perturbation of life in
\nneutral countries to which the history of the world offers no
\nparallel. The angry cry that this must not be suffered again and
\nthat the authors of this menace and disturbance to the modem
\nindustrial organisation of the world, self-styled civilisation, must
\nbe visited with condign punishment and remain for some time as
\ninternational outcastes under a ban and a boycott, showed how deeply the lesson
\nhad gone home. But it showed too, as the post-war mentality has shown, that the real, the inner truth of it all
\nhas not yet been understood or not seized at its centre. Certainly,
\nfrom this point of view also, the prevention of war must be one
\nof the first preoccupations of a new ordering of international
\nlife. But how is war to be entirely prevented if the old state of
\ncommercial rivalry between politically separate nations is to be
\nperpetuated? If peace is still to be a covert war, an organisation
\nof strife and rivalry, how is the physical shock to be prevented?
\nIt may be said, through the regulation of the inevitable strife
\nand rivalry by a state of law as in the competitive commercial
\nlife of a nation before the advent of Socialism? But that was only
\npossible, because the competing individuals or combines were
\npart of a single social organism subject to a single governmental <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-232 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nauthority and unable to assert their individual will of existence
\nagainst it. Such a regulation between nations can therefore have
\nno other conclusion, logically or practically, than the formation
\nof a centralised World-State. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nBut let us suppose that the physical shock of war is prevented, not by law, but by the principle of enforced arbitration
\nin extreme cases which might lead to war, not by the creation of
\nan international authority, but by the overhanging threat of international pressure. The state of covert war will still continue; it may even take new and disastrous forms. Deprived of other
\nweapons the nations are bound to have increasing resort to
\nthe weapon of commercial pressure, as did Capital and Labour
\nin their chronic state of "pacific" struggle within the limits of the
\nnational life. The instruments would be different, but would
\nfollow the same principle, that of the strike and the lock-out
\nwhich are on one side a combined passive resistance by the
\nweaker party to enforce its claims, on the other a passive pressure
\nby the stronger party to enforce its wishes. Between nations, the
\ncorresponding weapon to the strike would be a commercial boycott, already used more than once in an unorganised fashion
\nboth in Asia and Europe and bound to be extremely effective
\nand telling if organised even by a politically or commercially
\nweak nation. For the weaker nation is necessary to the stronger,
\nif as nothing else, yet as a market or as a commercial and industrial victim. The corresponding weapons to the lock-out would
\nbe the refusal of capital or machinery, the prohibition of all or
\nof any needed imports into the offending or victim country, or
\neven a naval blockade leading, if long maintained, to industrial
\nruin or to national starvation. The blockade is a weapon used
\noriginally only in a state of war, but it was employed against
\nGreece as a substitute for war, and this use may easily be extended
\nin the future. There is always too the weapon of prohibitive
\ntariffs. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt is clear that these weapons need not be employed for
\ncommercial purposes or motives only, they may be grasped at to
\ndefend or to attack any national interest, to enforce any claim of <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-233 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\njustice or injustice between nation and nation. It has been
\nshown into how tremendous a weapon commercial pressure can
\nbe turned when it is used as an aid to war. If Germany was
\ncrushed in the end, the real means of victory was the blockade,
\nthe cutting off of money, resources and food and the ruin of
\nindustry and commerce. For the military debacle was not directly
\ndue to military weakness, but primarily to the diminution and
\nfailure of resources, to exhaustion, semi-starvation and the moral
\ndepression of an intolerable position cut off from all hope of
\nreplenishment and recovery. This lesson also may have in the
\nfuture considerable applications in a time of "peace." Already it
\nwas proposed at one time in some quarters to continue the commercial war after the political had ceased, in order that Germany
\nmight not only be struck off the list of great imperial nations but
\nalso permanently hampered, disabled or even ruined as a commercial and industrial rival. A policy of refusal of capital and
\ntrade relations and a kind of cordon or hostile blockade has been
\nopenly advocated and was for a time almost in force against Bolshevist Russia. And it has been suggested too that a League of: Peace* might use this weapon of commercial pressure against
\nany recalcitrant nation in place of military force. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut so long as there is not a firm international authority,
\nthe use of this weapon would not be likely to be limited to such
\noccasions or used only for just and legitimate ends. It might be
\nused by a combination of strong imperial powers to enforce their selfish and
\nevil will upon the world. Force and coercion of any kind not concentrated in the
\nhands of a just and impartial authority are always liable to abuse and misapplication. Therefore
\ninevitably in the growing unity of mankind the evolution of such
\nan authority must become an early and pressing need. The
\nWorld-State even in its early and imperfect organisation must
\nbegin not only to concentrate military force in its hands, but to
\ncommence consciously in the beginning what the national State
\nonly arrived at by a slow and natural development,\u2014the ordering
\nof the commercial, industrial, economic life of the race and the <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* Afterwards realised as the League of Nations. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-234 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ncontrol at first, no doubt, only of the principal relations of international commerce,* but inevitably in the end of its whole system and principles. Since industry and trade are now five-sixths
\nof social life and the economic principle the governing principle
\nof society, a World-State which did not control human life in its
\nchief principle and its largest activity would exist only in name. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* Some first beginnings of this kind of activity were trying to appear
\n<\/b>in
\n<\/b>the activities of the now almost moribund League of Nations. These activities
\nwere still only platonic and advisory as in its futile discussions about disarmament and its inconclusive attempts to regulate certain relations of Capital and
\nLabour; but they showed that the need is already felt and were a signpost on
\nthe road to the future. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-235 <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\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":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3145","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\/3145","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=3145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}