Alternative Futures

I want to speak about alternative futures. But let me begin by saying that prophecy is futile. Looking back, I find that I missed both Fascism and Russia; and that is a sufficient warning against posing as a prophet. What we can profitably do, I think, is to envisage certain possibilities already implicit in man's present condition. We must therefore begin by analysing today.

How did man gain his present position? Not merely by weapons, but by intelligence and sociality. By intelligence I mean insight together with the power of breaking habit: the power of dealing with novel situations. Consider the spectral tarsier, a small and weak creature, but equipped with hands, forward-looking eyes and a relatively versatile brain. In that equipment we see the beginnings of manipulation, binocular vision and adaptability. Man's equipment carries these capacities much further. First, his sensory discrimination is increased. Secondly, his manipulation is far more delicate. Thirdly, he has much greater versatility, including the power of analysing things and relating them to one another.

The second factor is human sociality. We must distinguish this from mere gregariousness—the will to conform and to enforce conformity. In the herd mentality neither the self nor other selves are properly realised. It resembles what Gerald Heard has called the pre-individual condition. Most human sociality, we have to admit, is still of this type; but there is in it a leaven of something better.

This better sociality depends upon self-consciousness and consciousness of others. I shall neglect the philosophical problem of what the self ultimately is. For our purpose, self-consciousness is awareness of oneself as an enduring conscious centre and as a system of particular needs, with an implicit goal in the fulfilment of one's capacities for knowing, feeling, willing or doing. Correspondingly there may arise an awareness of others as conscious centres also. This awareness extends only to one or two others, and it remains fragmentary and precarious. Yet from it arise genuinely self-conscious love and hate.

From it also arises community, as contrasted with gregariousness and also with individualism. Community includes respect for others precisely as individuals. There are two kinds. First, there is the small community of contact, based upon mutual personal awareness: the community of mates, the family, the intimate group, fraternity. Here individuals may directly enrich one another. Secondly, there is the larger community of principle. This rests upon an established will to treat others as individuals, to respect differences, to encourage diversity for mutual enrichment, and yet to achieve synthesis through a common purpose. The part played by true community in actual societies is slight and precarious, but it is important.

Community has certain prerequisites. There must be at least a modicum of intelligence and sensibility. There must be mutual knowledge and adequate information; education for personality-in-community; freedom of expression; mutual acceptance; and the absence of serious frustration—economic justice, for example.

How, then, does history happen? I do not believe that it happens through dialectical idealism, through some logical necessity inherent in ideas. Does it happen through dialectical materialism? Yes, I should say, if that doctrine is stated cautiously. We must certainly recognise the impact of the environment upon human nature. But human nature itself changes, by the force of tradition.

For our present purpose we may distinguish three factors in human nature. The first is herd mentality or gregariousness: the will to conform and to enforce conformity. The second is individualism, the shrewd pursuit of advantage for oneself, one's family or one's group. The third is the will for community, the true social will—the desire for a society of developed individuals who mutually enrich one another. Its ideal is personality-in-community.

All three may themselves be products of past environmental pressure. Individualism, in particular, has favoured the strongest. Economic determinism operates upon all three factors through the desire for food, comfort and safety. But individualism is normally dominant now. Herd mentality interferes; wars, for example, spring partly from nationalist passions. The will for community also interferes, though rarely and precariously. Something of it appeared in early Christianity, in the French Revolution and in the Russian Revolution.

In estimating the future, therefore, we must bear all three factors in mind, together with their fluctuations. There is, in fact, no hope unless the community-will wins.

In estimating the future, then, we must take three things into account: the course of economic determinism, and of individualism with it; the future of herd mentality—will it increase or decrease?—and the future of the will for community—will it eventually dominate?

Let us now attempt an analysis of today. The cause of all our trouble, stated very broadly, is the impact of science and mechanical power upon a still primitive mentality. Traditional behaviour is no longer adequate to the instruments which we have created. Those instruments demand, first, a planned world economy, whereas ours is haphazard; and, secondly, a real will for community.

Science opens vistas of progress, material and spiritual. And yet it also gives power to reactionaries and to whatever class is dominant. It supplies means of propaganda and oppression. This is what our present struggles are really about. We are trying to achieve at once integration and individuality—unity and diversity.

First, there must be an integration of the human race. Peoples must become organic parts of the whole, and occupational groups must do the same. All the parts must function harmoniously, freely and willingly, for the whole. But we must be careful with the analogy of an organism. Human individuals are not cells. A cell has no developed personality to be respected; a human being has, or may have, such a personality. The integration which we require cannot properly be imposed as mere regimentation.

The second aim is the fulfilment of individuality. This seems to conflict with integration, as the individual is commonly said to conflict with the State. But, rightly understood, community and individuality involve one another. Real community demands high-grade individuality. The genuine conflict is between herd mentality and self-seeking individualism—or, in political language, between the abstract State and the abstract individual.

The temper of our age is marked by the flight from Liberalism, both in policy and in culture. Liberalism arose partly from the bourgeois struggle for power, at first in alliance with the proletariat, and partly from Puritanism and science. Its essentials were four: individualism—keyed egoisms—democracy, free intelligence and Christian morality. It failed, and in some respects deserved to fail. It did not deliver the goods, because there was no equality of bargaining power and because its morality was insincere. Nevertheless, there was good in it.

The workers therefore turned to combination. Isolated individualism was useless to them. Russia represented the triumph of combination, and individualism was discredited. Collectivism rose; but it was herd mentality rather than community that rose with it, while democracy was postponed. And was intelligence harnessed? Tyranny was accepted for good ends. Thus there appeared what I shall call para-Fascism.

Italy and Germany also reject individualism, but there capitalism is harnessed to totalitarianism. We must notice, however, that Fascism is also a rejection of what it calls materialism. It expresses revulsion from licentiousness and from intellectualism, and appeals to mystical cravings through the conception of racial divinity. It rejects democracy and glorifies discipline. It suppresses free intelligence. It also rejects Christian morality in favour of mastery and ruthlessness.

Britain shows the same tendencies in a less violent form. There is, first, a movement towards trustification: cartels within each industry, formed to keep up prices, and perhaps destined for some future coordination resembling a Fascist Grand Council. Secondly, there is the failure of democracy and the futility of Parliament. Thirdly, civil liberties are curtailed by police encroachments, gas drill, physical culture, the Sedition Bill, the Vernon case and other incidents.

Fourthly, there is a growing disgust with intellectualism. One sees various appeals to Eddington, to praxis and to activism. Fifthly, the moral temper is changing. Blood sports and bull-fights are admired, and Hemingway is another instance. Similar tendencies must, of course, be examined in other countries also.

Modern industry is highly specialised, and therefore it must be integrated. Russia's course has been due to armament and attack. Under the threat of inevitable war there is more planning; afterwards, there will be no armament.

Nor should we suppose that Christian ethics has simply disappeared. It turns up again.

Capitalism has made much of private initiative. A collectivist order may sacrifice initiative—cultural initiative—and here the question of the moral standard arises. The problem is to combine centralisation with decentralisation. A local group must have room to act. If local activity is directed from the centre, cultural initiative is sacrificed.

Let me summarise the tendencies of today. Economic determinism appears to lead, first, towards a unification of control, ultimately on a world-wide scale. Secondly, it leads towards the suppression of individuality, freedom and free intelligence. Thirdly, it encourages ruthlessness. In other words, it threatens a loss of intelligence and sociality, the very powers by which man climbed to his present position.

The Marxian replies that the dialectic will breed a strong proletariat and an increasingly rickety capitalism. Trade cycles and wars will weaken the capitalist order until world Communism finally succeeds it. But Marxians tend to overlook three things. First, they underestimate the power of oppression and propaganda in the modern world. Secondly, they underestimate herd mentality. Thirdly, they do not sufficiently ask, after the Revolution, what? The bad side of Russia warns us that revolution may issue not in community but in para-Fascism.

Can the will for true community interfere with this process? My answer is yes: we can interfere, if we keep the essentials steadily in view. Those essentials are intelligence, individuality, mutual respect and the common purpose of personality-in-community.

We must therefore consider the Left Wing mentality of today. There is a heroic aspect of Communism, displayed in Spain. But there is also a glorification of bias. Communist thought is doctrinaire and oversimplified, partisan and ruthless, both in social theory and in philosophy.

Its righteous indignation is well justified against the smug, and indignation is a powerful driving force. But is the goal always kept in view—the goal of personality-in-community? I am thinking here particularly of second-rank Left Wing leaders.

There are certain facts which must be faced. Britain is predominantly middle class. Therefore the appeal must in a real sense be a middle-class appeal: an appeal to the best motives of the middle class and also to its self-interest concerning the future. What the best middle-class people fear, not merely for themselves, is the suppression of kindliness and intelligence. The Left must therefore stress these qualities. It must stress character and integrity.

Huxley's solution has the core of the matter right. He stresses intelligence, individuality and kindliness. But he oversimplifies and idealises human nature. No absolute precept works in every circumstance; this is the difficulty with an absolute theory of non-violence. His economics is vague. His mysticism is too Eastern. Yet his principle of non-attachment is needed, both as a source of strength and as a means of impressing the masses.

What we need, then, is some union of Levy and Huxley—the spirit of Christ joined to the practice of Lenin. Macmurray points in a related direction, though I find his prescription vague.

Now let us set out the alternative futures. Is intelligence and sociality to go up or down? There seem to be at least seven possibilities. First, there may be a catastrophic crash in world war. Secondly, there may be a long succession of trade cycles, wars and general decline. Thirdly, there may be a world Communist revolution; but after it, shall there be community or tyranny? Fourthly, there may be a Fascist future, either through continuing national conflicts or through the eventual establishment of world Fascism.

Fifthly, there is yet another kind of future. Sixthly, there may be a general decline of the West. Seventhly, the population may fall; and that may prove either good or bad.

Trouble is certainly ahead. I see no hope without a revolution of some sort. Beyond the trouble one may perhaps conceive a smaller world population, unified and classless. Its members would be aristocrats.

Such a society might combine full mechanisation with the simple life. Machinery would carry the routine burden, while men and women concentrated upon knowing, feeling and willing. And beyond even this, it might turn outward towards the stars.

Let me recapitulate. I have offered no prophecy, but only an examination of potentialities present today. The future depends upon intelligence and sociality. Man gained his position through the powers foreshadowed in the tarsier and enlarged in himself: discrimination, manipulation and versatility. Human sociality begins with consciousness of self and of others and reaches towards community and personality. But community requires intelligence, sensibility, knowledge, education, freedom, acceptance and economic justice.

History is not a dialectic of ideas, nor is it a purely materialistic dialectic. It is the impact of environment upon a changing human nature. The three relevant factors are herd mentality, individualism and the will for community. Economic forces act upon all three, though individualism is at present strongest through the desire for food, comfort and safety.

The root cause of today's crisis is the impact of science and power. What is at stake is both the integration of the human race and the advance of individuality. The temper of today is a flight from Liberalism, both as doctrine and as mentality. I recalled the causes of Liberalism, and its essentials: it comprised individualism, democracy, free intelligence and Christian morality. It deserved to fall: it did not deliver the goods, it ran contrary to economic determinism, and its morality was insincere. Nevertheless, we must keep what was good in it—above all the workers' combination.

Russia dealt liberalism its death blow: collectivism and materialism, together with intelligence—but regimented intelligence. Italy and Germany are likewise anti-individualist. In the corporate State capitalism is controlled, but the movement is also anti-materialist. It satisfies mystical craving through a racial deity while suppressing tenderness and free intelligence. Britain shows the same drift in cartellisation, the failure of Parliament and the loss of civil liberties.

The real trend of economic determinism, as things now stand, is towards Fascism or para-Fascism: towards bureaucracy, regimentation and ruthlessness, and towards the suppression of individuality and free intelligence. The Marxian replies by pointing to the rise of the proletariat and the decline of capitalism through trade cycles. But he overlooks the power of propaganda and modern oppression, and also ordinary human gullibility—the persistence of herd mentality.

Can we interfere with this economic determinism and reinstate intelligence and individuality? Can Communism do it? The good side of Communism is its devotion and energy. Its bad side is the danger of becoming doctrinaire and narrow. Indignation is not enough. Levy represents one necessary emphasis.

Huxley's gospel represents another important principle, but it too is oversimplified. No absolute precept is adequate to every situation. Its economics is feeble, its mysticism too Eastern, and it idealises human nature. It also tends to ignore the concrete situation. We must somehow unite Levy and Huxley: put the spirit of Christ into the practice of Lenin.

So the final question remains: are intelligence and community to go up or down? The possibilities include a crash in world war; recurring cycles, wars and decline; a Marxian world revolution, followed either by community or tyranny; a Fascist future of national conflict or world Fascism; Huxley's future; the decline of the West; and a falling population.

Trouble, in one form or another, seems unavoidable. And what comes after the trouble?