Professor Proser-Toady said we should obtain the clearest conception
of Prince Mechow's views and the best key to his policy in a volume of
correspondence with his cousin General Count Block. Count Block, like
many of his military colleagues, was alarmed at the general confusion.
He declared there was nothing for it but to sweep away all popular
representative institutions, restrict education to the upper classes
and fall back upon the direct rule of the military. Prince Mechow
pointed out that such a policy would fail utterly: it would bring
about the very revolution it sought to avoid. Efficiency could never
be created by the military alone. Industrial efficiency was absolutely
necessary to military power. He agreed in the main with Count Block's
objects, but declared that his means were clumsy and inadequate.
The work of Prince Bludiron must be continued by the creation of a
Super-State. The _term_ had already been coined, but the _thing_ did
not yet exist.
It is in Prince Mechow's clear conception of the Super-State that we
see his intellectual genius, but it is in the steps he took to bring
it into being that we realise his kinship with his famous predecessor,
Prince Bludiron. Prince Bludiron had had to live from hand to mouth
relying upon his statesman's instinct. Prince Mechow, even before he
became Chief Minister, foresaw every detail of the structure he was
determined to erect.
The State, he said, has hitherto done only what is forced upon it by
necessity. It has never attempted to utilise the whole energies of the
Nation. The Super-State will only come into being by uniting in itself
the will, the knowledge, the wisdom, and the multifarious energies,
of the whole people. The State has been merely the strongest organ of
society: the Super-State must be the only organ, uniting all others in
itself.
How was such a conception to be realised concretely? In explaining his
plans he found ample illustration in the circumstances of the recent
Great War. The State had not only controlled everything essential to
the conduct of the war; it had not only regulated the manufacture of
all supplies, including food and clothing for the whole nation, but had
undertaken a thousand activities never previously dreamt of, except by
the Socialists.
He proposed to capture the whole armoury of the Socialists by gradually
seizing everything for the State itself. The motto of the Super-State
must be Efficiency. But to be efficient the State must absorb all the
persons who represented efficiency. The whole conception of Bureaucracy
must be revolutionised by being carried to its logical conclusion.
The efficiency of a business firm depends upon the efficiency of the
persons composing it. The efficiency of the Super-State will depend
upon the efficiency of the new Bureaucracy and the Military Class.
There was no instance in history of an efficient Government being
overthrown by any popular forces.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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