The Fruits of Victory: A Sequel to The Great IllusionAngell, Norman
History
The Fruits of Victory: A Sequel to The Great Illusion
Angell, Norman
Economic history -- 1918-1945; World War, 1914-1918 -- Influence
That the refusal of access will not add to the welfare of the people of
the State that so owns these materials, that, indeed, it will inevitably
lower the standard of living in all States alike, is certainly true. But
so long as there is no real international society organised on the basis
of collective strength and co-operation, the motive of security will
override considerations of welfare. The condition of international
anarchy makes true what otherwise need not be true, that the vital
interests of nations are conflicting.
Parenthetically, it is necessary to say this: the time may have come for
the destruction of the older order. If the individualist order was that
which gave us Armageddon, and still more, the type of mind which
Armageddon and the succeeding 'peace' revealed, then the present writer,
for one, sheds no tears over its destruction. In any case, a discussion
of the intrinsic merits, social and moral, of socialism and
individualism respectively, would to-day be quite academic. For those
who profess to stand for individualism are the most active agents of its
destruction. The Conservative Nationalists, who oppose the socialisation
of wealth and yet advocate the conscription of life; oppose
Nationalisation, yet demand the utmost military preparedness in an age
when effective preparation for war means the mobilisation particularly
of the nation's industrial resources; resent the growing authority of
the State, yet insist that the power of the National State shall be such
as to give it everywhere domination; do, indeed, demand omelets without
eggs, and bricks not only without straw but without clay.
A Europe of competing military nationalisms means a Europe in which the
individual and all his activities must more and more be merged in his
State for the purpose of that competition. The process is necessarily
one of progressively intense socialisation; and the war measures carried
it to very great lengths indeed. Moreover, the point to which our
attention just now should be directed, is the difference which
distinguishes the process of change within the State from that which
marks the change in the international field. Within the State the old
method is automatically replaced by the new (indeed nationalisation is
mostly the means by which the old individualism is brought to an end);
between nations, on the other hand, no organised socialistic
internationalism replaces the old method which is destroyed. The world
is left without any settled international economy.
Let us note the process of destruction of the old economy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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