Our Responsibility Towards the Future

There is abroad to-day a very widespread feeling that we are approaching something like the end of the world. I do not mean, of course, that people seriously expect the planet itself to come to an end. But they do feel that the kind of world in which they have learned to live may very soon collapse. They foresee the end of comfort and security, perhaps the end of liberty, and perhaps even the end of civilisation and culture.

What, then, are we to do? Are we simply to be merry while we may, and refuse to look beyond our own brief span of life? That might be possible if we had only ourselves to consider. But there are our children; and there are the children of the whole community. We cannot honestly regard the future as though it were no concern of ours merely because we ourselves may escape the worst of it.

Let us first try to analyse our plight. In a phrase, the world which man has made has outstripped both his intelligence and his feeling. We have acquired immense power, but not the wisdom to use it. Our economic order, capitalism, is breaking up; and at the same time our inherited morality is breaking down. The upshot is injustice to individuals, war, and futility.

Many solutions are offered. We are told that Britain must lead the world through collective security and gradual reform. We are offered Fascism. We are offered Communist revolution. We are offered a religious revolution, sometimes in the form of absolute pacifism.

Are we forced, then, to say that there is no solution? Must we look forward to the end of civilisation, or even to the end of the human species? Stanley Casson has reminded us how earlier civilisations have perished.

And yet we must not forget man’s most precious assets. The first of these is intelligence, together with imagination: the power to understand what is not immediately before us, to envisage remote consequences and other persons’ experience. The second is sociality. There is an animal sociality which consists largely in conforming to the herd and enforcing conformity upon others. But human sociality, at its best, is something more. It involves respect for other persons and the creation of genuine community, in which persons do not merely submit to one another but enrich one another.

This points to man’s real business on the earth. It is the development of personality in community: not isolated individuality and not the suppression of individuality, but persons awakened and fulfilled through their relations with other persons. It includes also the growth of knowledge and the exercise of creativity.

Consider the sort of world-community which we might have. It would be founded upon social justice. It would provide a full life for all—not merely subsistence, but reasonable comfort, education, travel and significant work. It would make possible world-wide co-operation.

The remarkable fact is that the physical means for such a society are already to hand. We know how to produce food in abundance. We possess means of rapid communication. We have labour-saving machinery which, sensibly used, could release men and women from drudgery. We could provide creative work for all. The deliberate enlistment of science in Russia, whatever we may think of other aspects of the Russian experiment, at least shows something of what organised scientific effort may accomplish. Even the physical means of access to knowledge can now be made available to the whole population.

What, then, stands in the way? Ourselves. We are largely creatures of our environment and of the institutions which have moulded us. Frustration breeds obsession and vindictiveness. Moreover, our ideology is out of date. We are still educated, very largely, for the assumptions of capitalism, or even for surviving habits of feudalism, although the actual world has already passed beyond them.

It seems, therefore, that a miracle is needed. I do not mean a supernatural interruption of events. I mean that we must somehow excel ourselves. Under the pressure of desperation we must wake to a higher degree of lucidity and integrity. We must wake also to the basic values—to personality and community, and to the fact that neither can flourish without the other.

This depends, in the last resort, upon ordinary people. It depends especially upon Englishmen, because Britain still occupies a key position. What is needed is an awakened public opinion. The essentials of the new spirit are individual responsibility, the use of one’s own conscience and one’s own intelligence, and pacifism. Above all, Britain must be willing to sacrifice privileges. We have therefore to consider both immediate and remote policies: what can be done now, and what direction our action must serve in the long run.

The numbered plan begins here at “3.”; sheets carrying sections 1 and 2 of the plan do not survive in the archive file. The synopsis sheet in the previous section is the only record of that earlier ground.

I come, then, to what may rather alarmingly be called the transition to Little Englandism. I do not mean a timid or self-satisfied isolation. I mean the deliberate abandonment of imperial pretensions and the concentration of our strength upon making Britain herself a decent and creative society.

The first task would be to persuade the public to accept the new ideal. The second task would be to bring down the existing Government and form a new National Government whose centre of gravity lay definitely to the Left. It would have to be broad enough to gather together very diverse elements—one thinks, fantastically perhaps, of names as far apart as Churchill, Eden and Pollitt. The whole enterprise would have to be made to look heroic and hopeful.

Thirdly, there would have to be a wholly new foreign policy. Britain should make a solemn declaration that her course had changed. She should call a conference to establish a commission for carrying the change into effect. She should stop rearming; but during the dangerous interval she should give a firm pledge to defend France. India should receive home rule at once. Our other dependencies should progressively be surrendered or granted home rule. We should tell the Dominions frankly that we intended to reduce our imperial responsibilities. We should prepare to withdraw from such positions as Gibraltar, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Fourthly, there must be a corresponding home policy. We should prevent the export of capital. There should be an immense intensification of agriculture, perhaps including experiment with dirtless farming. Home markets should be stimulated. There should be large expenditure upon rehousing, health and cultural provision. Great incomes should be heavily taxed, and education should be expanded.

Fifthly, we should preach the new gospel, and we should not be too proud to give it intelligible slogans. Throughout the whole policy the humanistic ideal must be stressed. We must capture the imagination of the middle class also. We must say frankly that this is a forlorn hope, or that an inward revolution is required and great risks must be taken. We must appeal not to resentment but to intelligence and generosity. This, and not an attempt to restore imperial grandeur, would be Britain’s revolution.

What if we funk the issue? As an imperial Power we shall increasingly find ourselves with many enemies and no true friends. We shall lose the Empire piecemeal, and with it our prestige and honour. There may then be a Fascist attempt to recover by force what has been lost; but such an attempt would be doomed in the long run. We might fall under the dominance of Germany; or, in another fashion, we might find ourselves economically sold up to the United States.

But suppose that we accept our destiny. It is a doubtful hope; I admit that. Yet it is the only one.

We might then provide a supreme example to the world, and such an example would change the whole course of world events. Britain could undertake the cultural leadership of the world—a leadership in the liberal spirit, founded upon intelligence and charity.

We should then set about rebuilding our cities and using labour-saving machinery for the benefit of the whole people. The aim would not be a nation divided between a leisured possessing class and a proletariat. There should be no proletariat. All of us should be workers, in one form or another.

At the same time we should try to become, in the best sense, a population of frugal aristocrats.

We are, I believe, at a turning point, and there may still be a new hope for Britain. But before discussing particular policies we must ask a more fundamental question: What does Britain stand for?

There are two very different answers. Britain may stand for democracy and liberalism. Or she may stand for exploitation and commercial empire. We have to choose.

The issue is deeper than politics. It concerns fundamental values. Liberal civilisation has proclaimed individual rights, and rightly so; but rights cannot be separated from individual responsibilities. At the same time we have exploited science chiefly for private gain, national power and material advantage.

Here we come upon the failure of liberalism. Liberalism has laid great stress upon rights, but too often responsibility has been shirked. The individual has been encouraged to insist upon his freedom without asking what he ought freely to do for the community. Thus a doctrine which began as a defence of personality has sometimes degenerated into a defence of private advantage.

There has naturally been a reaction against liberalism. Men have exalted the community against the individual. But they have failed to distinguish between a genuine community and a herd. A community is composed of persons who respect and enrich one another. A herd demands conformity and obedience. Communism, Fascism and Nazism, in their several ways, have appealed to the need for social unity; but they have too often satisfied that need by reducing persons to instruments of an organisation.

The prose of this section continues from the foot of sheet 4, shown beside the previous section; no separate sheet stands behind it.

Can there, then, be a democratic revival? Only, I think, if democracy will learn from the totalitarian movements. It must learn that personal life needs a central and social aim.

The policy for Britain might perhaps be described as liberal communism, or, as it might also be called, social democracy. The phrase matters less than the conjunction of the two principles. We need the liberal respect for the individual person, and we need the communist insistence that economic life must serve the community.

Such a policy has three main fields: policy at home, policy toward the Empire, and foreign policy.

The prose of this section continues from the compressed jottings at the foot of sheet 4, shown beside the section before last; no separate sheet stands behind it.

We must expect chaos in the transition. A change so deep may properly be called a revolution. It will touch even the family.

One is tempted to ask whether the revolution of the self must come first. Must individuals be inwardly transformed before society can be transformed? Or must institutions first be altered before better individuals can emerge? I should say that the two changes must proceed together. There must be an individual revolution, but it cannot be completed in isolation from social change. And there must be a social revolution, but it will fail unless individuals learn a new integrity and responsibility.

Liberalism must learn this lesson. It must pass over into a liberal communism; but liberal communism itself will be worthless without good values. No economic arrangement can tell us what human beings are for. Here the tradition associated with Kropotkin is relevant; but I will do no more than indicate the allusion.

Economic reconstruction is not sufficient, but it is necessary. We cannot produce sane and generous human beings indefinitely under conditions which breed insecurity, frustration and hatred. On the other hand, economic revolution by itself does not guarantee spiritual advance. We have even to ask whether a revolution may go backward—whether, in some respects, the Russian revolution has gone back upon its promise.

Well, there it is. We must work upon both fronts together.