At
one time it was possible to regard as an eventual possibility the extension
of Socialism to all the nations; an international unity could then have
been created by its innate tendencies which turned naturally towards
an overcoming of the dividing force of the nation-idea with its separatism
and its turn towards competitions and rivalries often culminating in
open strife; this could have been regarded as the natural road and could
have turned in fact into the eventual way towards world-union. But,
in the first place, Socialism has under certain stresses proved to be
by no means immune against infection by the dividing national spirit
and its international tendency might not survive its coming into power
in separate national States and a resulting inheritance of competing
national interests and necessities: the old spirit might very well survive
in the new socialist bodies. But also there might not be or not for
a long time to come an inevitable tide of the spread of Socialism to
all the peoples of the earth: other forces might arise which would dispute
what seemed at one time and perhaps still seems the most likely outcome
of existing world tendencies; the conflict between Communism and the
less extreme socialistic idea which still respects the principle of
liberty, even though a restricted liberty, and the freedom of conscience,
of thought, of personality of the individual, if this difference perpetuated
itself, might create a serious difficulty in the formation of a World-State.
It would not be easy to build a constitution, a harmonised State-law
and practice in which any modicum of genuine freedom for the individual
or any continued existence of him except as a cell in the working of
a rigidly determined automatism of the body of the collectivist State
or a part of a machine would be possible or conceivable. It is not that
the principle of Communism necessitates any such results or that its
system must lead to a termite civilisation or the suppression of the
individual; it could well be, on the contrary, a means at once of the
fulfilment of the individual and the perfect harmony of a collective
being. The already developed systems which go by the name are not really
Communism but constructions of an inordinately rigid State Socialism.
But Socialism itself might well develop away from the Marxist groove
and evolve less rigid modes; a cooperative Socialism, for instance,
without any bureaucratic rigour of a coercive administration, of a Police
State, might one day come into existence, but the generalisation of
Socialism throughout the world is not under existing circumstances easily
foreseeable, hardly even a predominant possibility: in spite of certain
possibilities or tendencies created by recent events in the Far East,
a division of the earth between the two systems, capitalistic and socialistic,
seems for the present a more likely issue. In America the attachment
to individualism and the capitalistic system of society and a strong
antagonism not only to Communism but to even a moderate Socialism remains
complete and one can foresee little possibility of any abatement in
its intensity. The extreme success of Communism creeping over the continents
of the Old World, which we have had to envisage as a possibility, is
yet, if we consider existing circumstances and the balance of opposing
Powers, highlyimprobable and, even if it occurred, some accommodation
would still be necessary, unless one of the two forces gained an overwhelming
eventual victory over its opponent. A successful accommodation would
demand the creation of a body in which all questions of possible dispute
could be solved as they arose without any breaking out of open conflict,
and this would be a successor of the League of Nations and the U.N.O.
and move in the same direction. As Russia and America, in spite of the
constant opposition of policy and ideology, have avoided so far any
step that would make the preservation of the U.N.O. too difficult or
impossible, this third body would be preserved by the same necessity
or imperative utility of its continued existence. The same forces would
work in the same direction and a creation of an effective world-union
would still be possible; in the end the mass of general needs of the
race and its need of self-preservation could well be relied on to make
it inevitable.
There
is nothing then in the development of events since the establishment
of the United Nations Organisation, in the sequel to the great initiation
at San Francisco of the decisive step towards the creation of a world-body
which might end in the establishment of a true world-unity, that need
discourage us in the expectation of an ultimate success of this great
enterprise. There are dangers and difficulties, there can be an apprehension
of conflicts, even of colossal conflicts that might jeopardise the future,
but total failure need not be envisaged unless we are disposed to predict
the failure of the race. The thesis we have undertaken to establish
of the drive of Nature towards larger agglomerations and the final establishment
of the largest of all and the ultimate union of the world's peoples
still remains unaltered: this is evidently the line which the future
of the human race demands and which conflicts and perturbations, however
immense, may delay, even as they may modify greatly the forms it now
promises to take, but are not likely to prevent; for a general destruction
would be the only alternative destiny of mankind. But such a destruction,
whatever the catastrophic possibilities balancing the almost certain
beneficial results, hardly limitable in their extent, of the recent
discoveries and inventions of Science, has every chance of being as
chimerical as any early expectation of final peace and felicity or a
perfected society of the human peoples. We may rely, if on nothing else,
on the evolutionary urge and, if on no other greater hidden Power, on
the manifest working and drift or intention in the World-Energy we call
Nature to carry mankind at least as far as the necessary next step to
be taken, a self-preserving next step: for the necessity is there, at
least some general recognition of it has been achieved and of the thing
to which it must eventually lead the idea has been born and the body
of it is already calling for its creation. We have indicated in this
book the conditions, possibilities, forms which this new creation may
take and those which seem to be most desirable without dogmatising or
giving prominence to personal opinion; an impartial consideration of
the forces that work and the results that are likely to ensue was the
object of this study. The rest will depend on the intellectual and moral
capacity of humanity to carry out what is evidently now the one thing
needful.
We
conclude then that in the conditions of the world at present, even taking
into consideration its most disparaging features and dangerous possibilities,
there is nothing that need alter the view we have taken of the necessity
and inevitability of some kind of world-union; the drive of Nature,
the compulsion of circumstances and the present and future need of mankind
make it inevitable. The general conclusions we have arrived at will
stand and the consideration of the modalities and possible forms or
lines of alternative or successive development it may take. The ultimate
result must be the formation of a World-State and the most desirable
form of it would be a federation of free nationalities in which all
subjection or forced inequality and subordination of one to another
would have disappeared and, though some might preserve a greater natural
influence, all would have an equal status. A confederacy would give
the greatest freedom to the nations constituting the World-State, but
this might give too much room for fissiparous or centrifugal tendencies
to operate; a federal order would then be the most desirable. All else
would be determined by the course of events and by general agreement
or the shape given by the ideas and necessities that may grow up in
the future. A world-union of this kind would have the greatest chances
of long survival or permanent existence. This is a mutable world and
uncertainties and dangers might assail or trouble for a time; the formed
structure might be subjected to revolutionary tendencies as new ideas
and forces nneir effect on the general mind of humanity, but the essential
step would have been taken and the future of the race assured or at
least the present era overpassed in which it is threatened and disturbed
by unsolved needs and difficulties, precarious conditions, immense upheavals,
huge and sanguinary world-wide conflicts and the threat of others to
come. The ideal of human unity would be no longer an unfulfilled ideal
but an accomplished fact and its preservation given into the charge
of the united human peoples. Its future destiny would lie on the knees
of the gods and, if the gods have a use for the continued existence
of the race, may be left to lie there safe
-Sri
Aurobindo
