{"id":3158,"date":"2013-07-13T01:46:22","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3158"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:46:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:22","slug":"25-forms-of-government-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\/25-forms-of-government-vol-the-ideal-of-human-unity","title":{"rendered":"-25_Forms of Government.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nFORMS OF GOVERNMENT<\/b><\/font>
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n. T<\/font>HE<\/font> idea of a world-union of free nations and empires,
\nloose at first, but growing closer-knit with time and experience,
\nseems at first sight the most practicable form of political unity; it is the only form indeed which would be immediately practicable, supposing the will to unity to become rapidly effective in
\nthe mind of the race. On the other hand, it is the State idea
\nwhich is now dominant. The State has been the most successful
\nand efficient means of unification and has been best able to meet
\nthe various needs which the progressive aggregate life of societies
\nhas created for itself and is still creating. It is, besides, the expedient to which the human mind at present has grown accustomed; and it is, too, the most ready means both for its logical and its
\npractical reason to work with because it provides it with what our limited
\nintelligence is always tempted to think its best instrument, a clear-cut and precise machinery and a stringent
\nmethod of organisation. Therefore it is by no means impossible
\nthat, even though beginning with a loose union, the nations
\nmay be rapidly moved by the pressure of the many problems
\nwhich would arise from the ever closer interworking of their
\nneeds and interests, to convert it into the more stringent form of
\na World-State. We can found no safe conclusion upon the immediate impracticability of its creation or on the many difficulties which would stand in its way; for past experience shows
\nthat the argument of impracticability is of very little value.
\nWhat the practical man of today denies as absurd and impracticable <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-207 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nis often enough precisely the thing that future generations
\nset about realising and eventually in some form or other succeed
\nin bringing into effective existence. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut a World-State implies a strong central organ or power
\nthat would represent or at least stand for the united will of the
\nnations. A unification of all the necessary powers in the hands
\nof this central and common governing body, at least in their
\nsource-powers military, administrative, judicial, economic, legislative, social, educational would be indispensable. And as an
\nalmost inevitable result there would be an increasing uniformity
\nof human life throughout the world in all these departments,
\neven perhaps to the choice or creation of one common and
\nuniversal language. This indeed is the dream of a unified world,
\nwhich Utopian thinkers have been more and more moved to
\nplace before us. The difficulties in the way of arriving at this
\nresult 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
\nno longer an Utopia that can be put aside as the impracticable
\ndream of the ideal thinker. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe first difficulty would be the character and composition of this governing body, a problem beset with doubts and
\nperils. In ancient times, it was solved readily enough in smaller
\nlimits by the absolutist and monarchical solution with the rule
\nof a conquering race as the starting point, as in the Persian and
\nRoman empires. But that resource is no longer as easily open to
\nus in the new conditions of human society, whatever dreams
\nmay in the past have entered into the minds of powerful nations
\nor their Czars and Kaisers. The monarchical idea itself is beginning to pass away after a brief and fallacious attempt at persistence and revival. Almost it seems to be nearing its final agony; the seal of the night is upon it. Contemporary appearances are
\noften enough deceptive, but they are less likely to be so in the
\npresent instance than in many others, because the force which
\nmakes for the disappearance of the still surviving monarchies
\nis strong, radical and ever increasing. The social aggregates have
\nripened into self-conscious maturity and <\/b> no longer stand in need <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-208 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nof a hereditary kingship to do their governing work for them or
\neven to stand for them\u2014except perhaps in certain exceptional
\ncases such as the British Empire\u2014as the symbol of their unity.
\nEither then the monarchy can only survive in name,\u2014as
\n<\/b>in
\n<\/b>England where the king has less power even, if that be possible,
\nthan the French President and infinitely less than the heads of
\nthe American republics,\u2014or else it becomes a source of offence,
\na restraint to the growing democratic spirit of the peoples and
\nto a greater or less degree a centre, a refuge or at least an opportunity for the forces of reaction. Its prestige and popularity tend
\ntherefore not to increase but to decline, and at some crisis when
\nit comes too strongly into conflict with the sentiment of the nation, it falls with small chance of lasting revival. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

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

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

\n
\nThe 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 in
\nthe new societies of America. It might be thought that with the
\nentrance of Asia into the active united life of the world, when
\ndie eastern continent has passed through its present throes of transition, the monarchical idea might recover strength and find <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

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

\nPage-209 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\na new source of life. For in Asia kingship has been not only
\na material fact resting upon political needs and conditions
\nbut a spiritual symbol and invested with a sacrosanct character
\nBut in Asia no less than in Europe, monarchy has been a historical growth, the result of circumstances and therefore subject to
\ndisappearance when those circumstances no longer exist. The
\ntrue mind of Asia has always remained, behind all surface appearances, not political but social, monarchical and aristocratic
\nat the surface but with a fundamental democratic trend and a
\ntheocratic spirit. Japan with its deep-rooted monarchic sentiment
\nis the one prominent exception to this general rule. Already a
\ngreat tendency of change is manifest. China, always a democratic country at bottom though admitting in its democratic
\nsystem an official aristocracy of intellect and a symbolic imperial
\nhead, is now definitely republican. The difficulty of the attempt
\nto revive monarchy or to replace it by temporary dictatorships
\nhas 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 to
\nthe problem at which the old purely social democracies of the
\nEast were unable to arrive. In breaking with the last of its long
\nsuccession of dynasties China had broken with an element of
\nher past which was rather superficial than at the very centre of
\nher social temperament and habits. In India the monarchical
\nsentiment, which coexisted with but was never able to prevail
\nover the theocratic and social except during the comparatively
\nbrief rule of the Moghuls, was hopelessly weakened though not
\neffaced, by the rule of a British bureaucracy and the political
\nEuropeanising of the active mind of the race.* In Western Asia
\nmonarchy has disappeared in Turkey, it exists only in the states
\nwhich need the monarch as a centralising power or keystone. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nAt the two extremes of the Asiatic world, in Japan and in
\nTurkey, the monarchy after the close of the war still preserved <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* Now with the liberation of the country and the establishment of a
\nrepublican and democratic constitution the ruling princes have either disappeared or become subordinate heads with their small kingdoms becoming
\npartly or wholly democratised or destined to melt into a unified India. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-210 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

something of its old sacrosanct character and its appeal to the
\nsentiment of the race. In Japan, still imperfectly democratised,
\nthe sentiment which surrounds the Mikado is visibly weakened,
\nhis prestige survives but his actual power is very limited, and
\ndie growth of democracy and socialism is bound to aid the weakening and limiting process and may well produce the same results as in Europe. The Moslem Caliphate, originally the head
\nof a theocratic government, was converted into a political institution by the rapid growth of a Moslem empire, now broken
\ninto pieces. The Caliphate now abolished could only have survived as a purely religious headship and even in that character
\nits unity was threatened by the rise of new spiritual and national
\nmovements in Persia, Arabia and Egypt. But the one real and
\nimportant fact in Asia of today is this that the whole active force
\nof its future is centred not in priesthood or aristocracy, but, as
\nit was formerly in Russia before the revolution, in a newly-created intelligentsia, small at first in numbers, but increasing in
\nenergy and the settled will to arrive and bound to become exceedingly dynamic by reason of the inherited force of spirituality.
\nAsia may well preserve its ancient spirituality; even in its hour
\nof greatest weakness it has been able to impose its prestige increasingly even on the positive European mind. But whatever
\nturn that spirituality takes, it will be determined by the mentality of this new intelligentsia and will certainly flow into
\nother channels than the old ideas and symbols. The old forms
\nof Asiatic monarchy and theocracy seem therefore destined
\nto disappear; at present there is no chance of their revival in
\nnew figures, although that may happen in the future. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe only apparent chance eventually for the monarchical
\nidea is that its form may be retained as a convenient symbol for
\nthe 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 the
\nsymbol has not proved to be indispensable. France has done
\nWithout it, Russia has recently dispensed with it. In Austria it
\nhad become odious to some of the constituent races as the badge <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-211 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof subjection and was bound to perish even without the collapse
\nof the Great War. Only in England and in some small countries
\nis it at once innocuous and useful and therefore upheld by a
\ngeneral feeling. Conceivably if the British Empire,* even now
\nthe leading, the most influential, the most powerful force in the
\nworld, were to become the nucleus or the pattern of the future
\nunification, there might be some chance of the monarchical
\nelement surviving in the figure\u2014and even an empty figure is
\nsometimes useful as a support and centre for future potentialities
\nto grow and fill with life. But against this stands the fixed republican sentiment of the whole of America and the increasing
\nspread of the republican form; there is a little chance that even
\na nominal kingship representing one element of a very heterogeneous whole would be accepted by the rest in any form of equal
\nunification. In the past, at least, this has only happened under
\nthe stress of conquest. Even if the World-State found it convenient as the result of experience to introduce or to reintroduce
\nthe monarchical element into its constitution, it could only be
\nin some quite new form of a democratic kingship. But a democratic kingship, as opposed to a passive figure of monarchy, the
\nmodern world has not succeeded in evolving. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nThe two determining facts in modern conditions which alter
\nthe whole problem are that in this kind of unification nations
\ntake the place of individuals and that these nations are mature
\nself-conscious societies, predestined therefore to pass through
\npronounced forms of social democracy or some other form of
\nsocialism. It is reasonable to suppose that the World-State will
\ntend to strive after the same principle of formation as that
\nwhich obtains in the separate societies which are to constitute
\nit. The problem would be simpler if we could suppose the difficulties created by conflicting national temperaments, interests
\nand cultures to be either eliminated or successfully subordinated and minimised by the depression of separative nationalistic feeling and the growth of a cosmopolitan internationalism. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* Now no longer Empire but Commonwealth. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-212 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nThat solution is not altogether impossible in spite of the serious
\ncheck to internationalism and the strong growth of nationalistic
\nfeeling developed by the world war. For conceivably, internationalism may revive with a redoubled force after the stress
\nof the feelings created by the war has passed. In that case, the
\ntendency of unification may look to the ideal of a world-wide
\nrepublic with the nations as provinces, though at first very
\nsharply distinct provinces, and governed by a council or parliament responsible to the united democracies of the world.
\n<\/b>Or,
\n<\/b>it might be something like the disguised oligarchy of an international council reposing its rule on the assent, expressed by election or otherwise, of what might be called a semi-passive democracy as its first figure. For that is what the modern democracy
\nat present is in fact; the sole democratic elements are public
\nopinion, periodical elections and the power of the people to refuse re-election to those who have displeased it. The government
\nis really in the hands of the bourgeoisie, the professional and
\nbusiness men, the landholders\u2014where such a class still exists,\u2014
\nstrengthened by a number of new arrivals from the working-class who very soon assimilate themselves to the political temperament and ideas of the governing classes.* If a World-State
\nwere to be established on the present basis of human society, it
\nmight well try to develop its central government on this principle. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nBut the present is a moment of transition and a bourgeois
\nWorld-State is not a probable consummation. In each of the
\nmore progressive nations, the dominance of the middle class is
\nthreatened on two sides. There is first the dissatisfaction of the
\nintellectuals who find in its unimaginative business practicality
\nand obstinate commercialism an obstacle to the realisation of
\ntheir ideals. And there is the dissatisfaction of the great and
\ngrowing power of Labour which sees democratic ideals and
\nchanges continually exploited in the interests of the middle <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n* This has now changed and the Trade Unions and similar institutions
\nhave attained an equal power with the other classes. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-213 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nclass, though as yet it has found no alternative to the Parliamentarism by which that class ensures its rule.* What changes the
\nalliance between these two dissatisfactions may bring about, it is
\nimpossible to foresee. In Russia, where it was strongest, we have
\nseen it taking the lead of the Revolution and compelling the
\nbourgeoisies to undergo its control, although the compromise
\nso effected could not long outlast the exigencies of the war.
\nSince then the old order there has been "liquidated" and the
\ntriumph of the new tendencies has been complete. In two directions it may lead to a new form of modified oligarchy with a
\ndemocratic basis. The government of a modem society is now
\ngrowing an exceedingly complicated business in each part of
\nwhich a special knowledge, special competence, special faculties
\nare required, and every new step towards State socialism must
\nincrease this tendency. The need of this sort of special training
\nor faculty in the councillor and administrator combined with
\nthe democratic tendencies of the age might well lead to some
\nmodern form of the old Chinese principle of government, a
\ndemocratic organisation of life below, above the rule of a sort of
\nintellectual bureaucracy, an official aristocracy of special knowledge and capacity recruited from the general body without distinction of classes. Equal opportunity would be indispensable,
\nbut this governing elite would still form a class by itself in the
\nconstitution of the society. On the other hand, if the industrialism of the modem nations changes, as some think it will, and
\ndevelops into a sort of guild socialism, a guild aristocracy of
\nLabour might well become the governing body in the society!
\nIf any of these things were done any movement towards a World-State would then take the same direction and evolve a governing
\nbody of the same model. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nBut in these two possibilities we leave out of consideration <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n <\/p>\n

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

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

\n\u2020 Something of the kind
\nwas attempted in Soviet Russia for a time.  The
\nexisting conditions were not favourable and a definite form of government
\nrevolutionary and provisional is not anywhere in sight. In Fascist Italy a
\noperative State was announced but this too took no effectual or perfect shape.
\n<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-214 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe 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 Parliament in which, it is to be presumed, the freely formed and
\nfreely expressed opinion of the majority would prevail. Parliamentarism, the invention of the English political genius, is a
\nnecessary stage in the evolution of democracy, for without it the generalised faculty of considering and managing with the least
\npossible friction large problems of politics, administration,
\neconomics, legislation concerning considerable aggregates of men
\ncannot easily be developed. It has also been the one successful
\nmeans yet discovered of preventing the State executive from
\nsuppressing the liberties of the individual and the nation. Nations emerging into the modern form of society are therefore
\nnaturally and rightly attracted to this instrument of government.
\nBut it has not yet been found possible to combine Parliamentarism and the modem trend towards a more democratic democracy; it has been always an instrument either of a modified aristocratic
\nor of a middle class rule. Besides, its method involves an immense
\nwaste of time and energy and a confused swaying and uncertain action that muddle out in the end some tolerable result.
\nThis method accords ill with the more stringent ideas of efficient government and administration that are now growing in
\nforce and necessity and it might be fatal to efficiency in anything
\nso complicated as the management of the affairs of the world.
\nParliamentarism means too in practice the rule and often the
\ntyranny of a majority, even of a very small majority, and the
\nmodern mind attaches increasing importance to the rights of
\nminorities. And these rights would be still more important in a
\nWorld-State where any attempt to override them might easily
\nmean 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
\nnot well come into successful being in the present anomalous and chaotic distribution of power in the world. The Asiatic
\nproblem alone if still left unsolved would be a fatal obstacle <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\nPage-215 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nand it is not alone; the inequalities and anomalies are all-pervasive and without number. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

\n
\nA more feasible form would be a supreme council of the
\nfree and imperial nations of the existing world-system, but this
\nalso has its difficulties. It could only be workable at first if it
\namounted in fact to an oligarchy of a few strong imperial nations
\nwhose voice and volume would prevail at every point over that
\nof the more numerous but smaller non-imperialistic commonwealths and it could only endure by a progressive and, if possible
\npeaceful evolution from this sort of oligarchy of actual power to
\na more just and ideal system in which the imperialistic idea
\nwould dissolve and the great empires merge their separate existence into that of a unified mankind. How far national egoism
\nwould allow that evolution to take place without vehement
\nstruggles and dangerous convulsions, is, in spite of the superficial liberalism now widely professed, a question still fraught
\nwith grave and ominous doubts. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

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

\nPage-216 <\/font>
\n<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/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…<\/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-3158","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\/3158","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=3158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}