The Next Development in Man, page 34
There is no general answer to this question. A deep continuity links the Christian idealist to unitary man, and at that level the historical process may show no sudden change. But the new is none the less sharply distinguished from the old, and the concentration of unitary wills must provoke the consolidation of reaction. At the intellectual level, the contrast is explicit: unitary man thinks in process concepts, achieving his own development by facilitating the general development, while the reaction thinks in static concepts, seeking through its dualistic thought and action to preserve separate privilege from the general process. Other intermediary types will tend to disappear and in some communities this polarization may disrupt the social system while in others it may be concealed within a continuous and widely accepted readjustment.
A gradual development through so profound a transformation is possible because, though the thought-structure of the two types is sharply contrasted, this does not mean that the unitary principle and its predecessor, the European principle, are in fundamental opposition to one another. The unitary and European principles cannot come into pure opposition, because they represent responses to different situations and provide answers to different kinds of questions. They stand for methods appropriate to communities at different stages of development and can never be practical alternatives. The unitary principle accepts the past, but goes further by bringing to man's attention forms which had not previously been noticed. It transcends and does not challenge more primitive attitudes. It is the child of Christianity and exact science, and from its greater strength can tolerate their narrower views so long as they do not frustrate development.
Unitary man recognizes and honors European man, but rejects the sentimental illusion that there can ever be understanding between them. The creation of the unitary world implies a conviction which can only grow where the European ideals have failed. But the fact that the two attitudes correspond to a different condition of man means that unitary man can live beside and co-operate with others who do not share his own conviction. His comprehensive outlook embraces and co-ordinates the special religions and idealisms, not merely tolerating but actively using their more limited aspirations. Only the misuse of the hierarchy of power for sectional interests calls out his challenge.
Violent revolution is not therefore a necessary feature of the transition to the unitary period. To discover whether it is probable in particular countries, we have to neglect the conventional political approach and to recall the form of social development during the European period. We saw that the continuing differentiation of man led society through a sequence of major periods. In the fourth of these, the European period, the main feature of social development was the progressive transformation of the hierarchy of power from religious to political, and from these to economic institutions and persons. The transition to unitary society, which marks the close of the fourth period, is accomplished through the shifting of the hierarchy into the hands of those possessing techniques for facilitating the general development of man. The degree of continuity which is possible in any particular community as it completes this transition can only become evident through a consideration of the relative importance of the different components, family, religious, political, economic, and technical, in its existing social system. The general trend is towards a unitary society, but each great community has a different history and approaches the universal form along its own path.
The following analysis of the social structure of four important communities does not imply any relative valuation of their different systems. Unitary thought is concerned to facilitate the development of each along its proper path within the whole, and not to make ethical or other relative valuations which neglect the differences between the histories and present situations of one country and another. The analysis is a formal study of the role played by the different components in the constitution of the social hierarchy in each community during the 1930s. The term finance is here used to include the separate interests of the great industries.
Great Britain had the most balanced social system. Family, church, politics, finance, and to a less degree technical skill all played an important role in the hierarchy of power. This feature gave British life its characteristic complexity and balance. No one aspect of life was allowed to dominate. There was a place for every element that had contributed to British history, and the balance of British life expressed this deep sense of continuity. We may take the British situation in the 1930s as a standard with which other countries can be compared.
Germany's situation was simpler. Technical skill was valued more, and family, religion, and politics relatively less than in Great Britain. Political forms had never played an important role in the life of the German peoples, and the place of family and religion had been undermined by the strains of the first war and its aftermath. The respect for efficiency, for scientific method, and for novelty for its own sake all contributed to the relative dominance of technical skill. With the seizure of power by the Nazis, the importance of finance probably tended to grow less, and the hierarchy of power passed more and more into the hands of those possessing skills which would serve the aim of war, or were believed to contribute to that end.
In the U.S.S.R. the valuation of skill had for long been even more clearly dominant than in Germany, since family, religion, politics, and finance all counted for less relatively to the overriding national aim. The primitive religious collectivism of the 19th century had provided the basis for a national unity more widely effective than the enforced unity of Germany, and devoted to a constructive purpose, the technical development of the community. A skill applied to this end could, in most circumstances, outweigh the influence of any of the other four components. This singleness of aim gave a religious intensity to the life of the community and the result has been a unique development which, in two decades, has made Russia in certain respects almost the equal of Germany.
The United States always placed a high value on the technical ability which was necessary to develop its virgin land, but in place of the religious collectivism of the Russian tradition, the American community was built by individuals revolting from an older tradition in search of freedom to follow the life of their own choice. Skill was valued for its results, but finance came first, the dollar being the symbol of the individual's success in competition with his fellows. Money was relatively more important than in Great Britain, because of the larger role given in Britain to the family, the church, and political institutions, and more than in Germany, because the United States recognized no uniting national purpose.
In spite of the complexity and subtlety of national characteristics, this definite picture emerges because process thought offers a clue to the form of contemporary social development. Within the special approach of this analysis, Russia has gone furthest in the direction of the trend towards unitary society, though taking a path appropriate only to her own situation. Germany comes next, since after Russia she values techniques most highly. The United States follows, her valuation of skill being restrained, more than it is in Germany, by the continuing power of money. Great Britain is the last of these four, an apparent laggard through her love of continuity and balance.
The pattern may be checked by cross-comparisons. The U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. represent the two sides of the European dualism of individualism and collectivism, each component having had to escape from the other to find its ideal soil outside Europe. The Protestant pride in the responsibility of the individual to develop himself flowered in North America, just as the mystical desire of the individual to lose and find himself in an overriding unity found an extreme expression in the Russian social collectivity. Europe flung its two components apart to the west and to the east.
Another comparison provides a further check. Britain and Germany express two contrasted principles: maximum continuity, variety, and balance in the one; in the other an unbalanced single-component fanaticism. Both countries lack the recognized constructive purpose which gives stability to the Russian system. Britain in the 1930s was stable, because her system rested on many components, Germany was unstable because resting on a single component devoted to an aim which could only be temporary. If both countries ultimately accept the unitary aim, then Germany might represent the model of a pure or "fanatical" unitary society devoted without reserve to a German conception of development, while Britain might provide the antithesis of a unitary society of great richness and variety, in which the other components still play a secondary role. English elasticity would then contrast with the German single-mindedness in pursuit of the development of the areas under her influence. Both would contribute to the variety of the unitary world.
If we compare the state of these four countries, as shown by this analysis, with the forms of unitary society, we can estimate the degree and the direction of the structural change which each must undergo. Each country will retain much of its distinguishing characteristics, since these arise from its geography and history and can find a place within the unitary system. But each must move towards the universal form if it is to share in the common development which lies ahead.
The case of Russia is the simplest. Her internal system is nearest to the unitary, and can form a component of the world system without essential change. The German system requires a radical transformation of aim, and some degree of stabilization from outside, but no fundamental change of structure is necessary. The United States of America will have to control its dollar individualism if it is to provide leadership in world affairs. The technical apparatus is ready, but power has still to pass unequivocally to those who will use it in the main for the development of the world community. This change may be delayed for some years, because the U.S.A. entered both wars relatively late and is distant from the Eurasian land bloc. Moreover a co-operative policy in world affairs might for a time be combined with persisting financial individualism at home. Thus in none of these three countries is an immediate change in the structure of the hierarchy of power to be anticipated. All three value technique highly; two have already in differing degrees subdued the power of private finance and achieved an effective consolidation of social purpose (though in one case antagonistic to the unitary trend) while the other is not yet confronted with the necessity of challenging the existing hierarchy of finance.
But the case is different when we turn to the gracious laggard, Great Britain. This book is not written for British readers in particular, but to establish the unity of unitary minds everywhere. Yet it is written in Britain, and I believe my country still has an important contribution to make in world affairs. In all the realms of quantity, Britain's relative importance will steadily decline during the coming decades. But in matters of geography, experience, and quality Britain can still offer the world something which is unique. Thanks to the fact that her own courage has been supplemented by the aid of her allies, the continuity of Britain's developing tradition is still preserved. But in the coming decade no ally can help her. Britain can only retain her place in the future if she recognizes what the world trend implies for her. I shall therefore consider Britain's position in greater detail.
The world trend implies for Britain a steady decline in relative importance, as compared with the great communities of the future, in most matters susceptible of quantitative measurement. The existing trends already put it almost beyond question that Britain's proportion of the world's total population, economic production, and naval strength, will decline during the critical decades from 1940 to 1960. Britain's tremendous war mobilization is fed from abroad, and is a dramatic climax which has partially obscured the increasing relative importance of the United States, the Dominions, Russia, and China. The war industrialization of the Dominions and the United States will be followed by the peaceful industrialization of the East, and as the thousand millions of Asia begin to apply their new energy, the days of Britain's quantitative supremacy will quickly be forgotten. Britain must now cultivate her imagination, and turn her rich tradition and special experience to better account. The blind courage of 1940 must be followed by a new courage of the imagination, if its fruits are not to be lost. The truth may be painful but Britain must take it, if she is to survive.
In the Britain of the recent past the hierarchy of power was, as we have seen, in the hands of four main elements: the old families, the church, the political organizations, and finance. Beside these, the possessors of skills needed by the community had only a secondary place because the country acknowledged no common purpose. Social development in Britain had normally occurred gradually, by a slow, unconscious process. The British dislike for rational abstractions had saved the country from adopting a rigid, i.e. static, political system which could only change by sudden and violent adjustments. The passion for continuity had not prevented a slow process of unconscious organic development. But today those four pillars of society are inadequate. The process of development which has hitherto been neglected by the national consciousness now demands attention, and the innocent love of continuity must now grow into a conscious acceptance of a course of national development, if it is not to decay into mere reverence for the past. Britain can only retain her soul by transforming it. The British balance can only be maintained if family, religion, politics, and finance (in so far as they are merely traditional in a static sense) admit the superior claims of those who are consciously devoting their skills to the development of Britain within the unitary world. The hierarchy of effective power must in the main pass to those who know how to wield that power for the development of the community.
This transition may come about with little stir, like a long-prepared adjustment. The change in ideas of the first half of the 1940s may be followed by a corresponding change in laws and institutions in the second half. Violence would destroy the British balance, which remains the clue to the special quality which she can offer the world. The British solution to every problem depends on the reduction of contrasts, and not on the choice of one of two or more apparently incompatible methods. Britain will not tolerate either a centralized socialism or an anarchic individualism, but will develop her own method, which may appear to other countries as a non-rational compromise. However perplexing this procedure is to the logical mind or to the fanatical partisan, it is organic and proper, the secret of the British ethos. Moreover, it is also the due to the special role of Britain in the unitary period, which is itself a time of the adjustment of exaggerated contrasts. Thus Britain in remaining true to herself can offer an example to the world in something more important even than heroism. The unitary age expresses the overcoming of quantity by order. The irony of history offers Britain this incomparable opportunity of a renaissance: the hour of her own quantitative decline coincides with the decline of the importance of quantity in men's minds. Between the past and the future, between the west and the east, Britain can play a special organizing role. This, l I submit, is no national conceit; the world needs Keynes, Beveridge, and their successors. May this new tradition prosper.
In the past, Britain has always been coy in the face of the new, hesitating to admit into consciousness a formative principle, a theory of change, or a dynamic idea. While Catholic Europe worshiped being and systems of static ideas, Britain rejected the dominance of ideas and placed the emphasis on the life of action. In the future her contribution will still, as in the past, lie in the practical field, where ideas are inseparable from personal character and life. Neither Asiatic mysticism of process nor Teutonic theories of process ever attracted these islanders. But it is possible that unitary thought, in which ideas are inseparable from life and unity facilitates diversity, may appeal to Britain.
It is easier to foresee the general world trend and the industrialization of Asia than to guess the future of Britain. But the alternatives are clear. Any government that fails to base its policies on a correct reading of the general trend will fail in all its major actions. Any community that continues to tolerate such a government will lose the opportunity to share fully in the benefits of the coming world eccmomic expansion. Britain's future will depend on the extent to which her leaders and her public opinion recognize the meaning of the world trend.
We must now return to the general situation. Our analysis of these four communities from the point of view of the power hierarchy suggests the following conclusions: In Russia little change is necessary to enable her to maintain her role within the unitary world. In a world which had subdued the power of finance, she would find less difficulty in overcoming her relative isolation from the West. In Germany scarcely any change of structure is necessary, but the techniques which occupy the positions of power must be transformed from nationalistic, separatist, and military skills to those which will co-operate in a world development. Such a transformation need be neither difficult nor protracted in a country with so little stability of tradition, but the results of Nazi rule, military defeat, and Allied policy cannot yet be estimated. In Britain a far-going change is necessary from the condition of the 1930s, but this is already in progress. The question remains open whether this change will proceed rapidly enough for Britain properly to assist in post-war international organization, and to recover her appropriate share in the goodwill and trade of the East. Thus Russia need change little; Germany must undergo a revolution of aim without, however, the more difficult change of structure, while Britain has still to prove her ability to place power adequately in the hands of those who accept the world trend and can facilitate the development of Britain within it.
