A Lecture on Political Philosophy
Let us begin by understanding how Britain came to occupy her present position in the world. Our island geography gave us a natural advantage—insularity meant security from invasion, and the early consolidation of royal power brought unity where the continent remained fractured.
With unity came commerce, and with commerce came the impetus for science and industry. By the nineteenth century, Britain had become the workshop of the world—the first nation to harness the power of steam, the first to build a modern industrial economy. Our population swelled, providing abundant cheap labour that could move fluidly to wherever industry demanded.
From this foundation arose economic imperialism. We sold our manufactured goods abroad, lent capital to developing nations, and where necessary enforced order to protect our investments. The interest on those loans flowed back to stimulate home trade. Meanwhile, our workers—through struggle and organization—wrested higher wages from their employers, leading to increased consumption and a rising standard of living for ordinary Britons.
In short, we had a considerable head start in the capitalist race, and for a time it seemed as though our prosperity might continue indefinitely.
But Britain's advantage could not last. Other nations—Germany, the United States, Japan—industrialized later but learned from our example. They entered the field as fierce competitors for the same markets we had dominated.
Imperial rivalries intensified. Economic nationalism spread across the globe, with nations erecting tariff walls to protect their own industries. The colonial world, which had once been our captive market, became a battleground where great powers simultaneously stimulated and repressed what they called "backward peoples"—extracting resources while suppressing any movement toward independence.
The comfortable assumptions of British supremacy began to crack.
And now we come to the present day—March 1938—and we must face facts as they are, not as we might wish them to be. Our trade monopoly is broken. We have an industrial population dependent on exports, yet our markets are declining. Other nations envy our remaining privileges and resent the wealth we still extract from empire.
Our military force is no longer predominant. Our liberal reputation—once our greatest diplomatic asset—is waning as we prop up reactionary regimes abroad and increasingly attack civil liberties at home. Our rulers, trapped by the interests of property and terrified of communism, cling to outworn aims. They play power politics badly and refuse any genuine economic planning.
Look around the empire: India is angry, and the prestige of the Sahib is collapsing—our prison record speaks for itself. Egypt slips from our grasp. Italy challenges us in the Mediterranean; Japan threatens our position in the Far East. Even the Dominions no longer fully trust in British strength or British judgment. In the Crown Colonies we maintain order through oppression.
There is a deep psychological conflict within the British mind: we still cling to imperialism while also desiring peace. Meanwhile our population declines, and with it comes an insidious sense that Britain herself is in decline—that the future belongs to others.
What then are our alternatives? Let me sketch two radically different paths.
The first is to double down on imperialism—to keep the Empire at all costs for the sake of trade and strength. This would require extreme rearmament. It would mean subordinating liberty to strength, and ultimately our culture would slide toward fascism, as any society must when it makes power its supreme value.
We would insulate the Empire behind tariff walls, ruling India and Africa with a firm hand, extracting trade bargains from the Dominions. In Europe we would play naked power politics, abandoning the League of Nations entirely. After all, collective security will never help us keep what are, let us be honest, ill-gotten goods.
This path leads to alienation from the United States and secret bargains with the fascist powers—Germany, Italy, Japan—for a partition of the world among the strong. Make no mistake: this is a possible future. But it is a future of perpetual armament, perpetual conflict, and the death of everything liberal Britain once claimed to represent.
The second alternative is what I shall call "Little Englandism"—though it requires more courage than the first, not less. It begins by facing three facts squarely: first, that we cannot keep the Empire in the long run; second, that empire is morally indefensible; and third, that imperialism leads inevitably to reaction and disaster.
But I will not pretend the alternative is pleasant. It would mean surrendering our imperial possessions to an International Commission, with stipulations for free trade. It would mean accepting decline to the status of a second-class power. It would mean relying on collective security—genuinely this time, not as a fig leaf for imperial interests.
It would mean a fall in our standard of living, at least initially. And therefore it would require radical social reconstruction—communal control of the means of production, so that the burden is shared fairly and the remaining wealth is distributed justly. It would mean deposing our present ruling class, which is wedded to the old order. How this is to be done peacefully, I confess I do not know.
But if we could accomplish this transition, we might create something new: a genuine patriotism not of empire but of justice—a New Jerusalem where every citizen has access to a full life, to sanity and culture. This is the prize on the far side of a very difficult passage.
The alternative to attempting this path is despair, discord, and ultimately chaos.
You may ask: is this ideal even possible? Can human beings actually achieve such a transformation? The question touches on Christianity and social insecurity—on the deepest sources of our anxiety and our hope.
If we move toward genuine international cooperation, practical questions arise. Where would the capital city of a world federation be? How would representatives be chosen? Thinkers like G.D.H. Cole have grappled with these problems of democratic organization at a scale beyond the nation-state.
Perhaps the task requires something superhuman—a transformation of human nature itself. Or perhaps we can only proceed by piecemeal federation: regional groupings first, gradually expanding, learning from mistakes.
Any new order will require a common economic policy. But here we face competing models. America represents one extreme: anarchy in economics, but liberty in politics—freedom for enterprise, freedom for capital, but also freedom for exploitation and inequality.
Russia represents the opposite: economic security through planning and state control, but at the cost of political freedom. The secret police, the purges, the suppression of dissent.
Can we find a synthesis? Economic security without tyranny? Political freedom without chaos? This is the great question of our age, and Britain—with her traditions of liberty and her experience of both capitalism and socialist aspiration—might yet have something to contribute to its answer. But only if we face our situation honestly and choose our future deliberately.