_ Chapter V - National Independence and Internationalism
In the relations between states, as in the relations of groups within
a single state, what is to be desired is independence for each as
regards internal affairs, and law rather than private force as regards
external affairs. But as regards groups within a state, it is
internal independence that must be emphasized, since that is what is
lacking; subjection to law has been secured, on the whole, since the
end of the Middle Ages. In the relations between states, on the
contrary, it is law and a central government that are lacking, since
independence exists for external as for internal affairs. The stage
we have reached in the affairs of Europe corresponds to the stage
reached in our internal affairs during the Wars of the Roses, when
turbulent barons frustrated the attempt to make them keep the king's
peace. Thus, although the goal is the same in the two cases, the
steps to be taken in order to achieve it are quite different.
There can be no good international system until the boundaries of
states coincide as nearly as possible with the boundaries of nations.
But it is not easy to say what we mean by a nation. Are the Irish a
nation? Home Rulers say yes, Unionists say no. Are the Ulstermen a
nation? Unionists say yes, Home Rulers say no. In all such cases it
is a party question whether we are to call a group a nation or not. A
German will tell you that the Russian Poles are a nation, but as for
the Prussian Poles, they, of course, are part of Prussia. Professors
can always be hired to prove, by arguments of race or language or
history, that a group about which there is a dispute is, or is not, a
nation, as may be desired by those whom the professors serve. If we
are to avoid all these controversies, we must first of all endeavor to
find some definition of a nation.
A nation is not to be defined by affinities of language or a common
historical origin, though these things often help to produce a nation.
Switzerland is a nation, despite diversities of race, religion, and
language. England and Scotland now form one nation, though they did
not do so at the time of the Civil War. This is shown by Cromwell's
saying, in the height of the conflict, that he would rather be subject
to the domain of the royalists than to that of the Scotch. Great
Britain was one state before it was one nation; on the other hand,
Germany was one nation before it was one state.
What constitutes a nation is a sentiment and an instinct, a sentiment
of similarity and an instinct of belonging to the same group or herd.
The instinct is an extension of the instinct which constitutes a flock
of sheep, or any other group of gregarious animals. The sentiment
which goes with this is like a milder and more extended form of family
feeling. When we return to England after being on the Continent, we
feel something friendly in the familiar ways, and it is easy to
believe that Englishmen on the whole are virtuous, while many
foreigners are full of designing wickedness.
Such feelings make it easy to organize a nation into a state. It is
not difficult, as a rule, to acquiesce in the orders of a national
government. We feel that it is our government, and that its decrees
are more or less the same as those which we should have given if we
ourselves had been the governors. There is an instinctive and usually
unconscious sense of a common purpose animating the members of a
nation. This becomes especially vivid when there is war or a danger
of war. Any one who, at such a time, stands out against the orders of
his government feels an inner conflict quite different from any that
he would feel in standing out against the orders of a foreign
government in whose power he might happen to find himself. If he
stands out, he does so with some more or less conscious hope that his
government may in time come to think as he does; whereas, in standing
out against a foreign government, no such hope is necessary. This
group instinct, however it may have arisen, is what constitutes a
nation, and what makes it important that the boundaries of nations
should also be the boundaries of states.
National sentiment is a fact, and should be taken account of by
institutions. When it is ignored, it is intensified and becomes a
source of strife. It can only be rendered harmless by being given
free play, so long as it is not predatory. But it is not, in itself,
a good or admirable feeling. There is nothing rational and nothing
desirable in a limitation of sympathy which confines it to a fragment
of the human race. Diversities of manners and customs and traditions
are, on the whole, a good thing, since they enable different nations
to produce different types of excellence. But in national feeling
there is always latent or explicit an element of hostility to
foreigners. National feeling, as we know it, could not exist in a
nation which was wholly free from external pressure of a hostile kind.
And group feeling produces a limited and often harmful kind of
morality. Men come to identify the good with what serves the
interests of their own group, and the bad with what works against
those interests, even if it should happen to be in the interests of
mankind as a whole. This group morality is very much in evidence
during war, and is taken for granted in men's ordinary thought.
Although almost all Englishmen consider the defeat of Germany
desirable for the good of the world, yet nevertheless most of them
honor a German for fighting for his country, because it has not
occurred to them that his actions ought to be guided by a morality
higher than that of the group.
A man does right, as a rule, to have his thoughts more occupied with
the interests of his own nation than with those of others, because his
actions are more likely to affect his own nation. But in time of war,
and in all matters which are of equal concern to other nations and to
his own, a man ought to take account of the universal welfare, and not
allow his survey to be limited by the interest, or supposed interest,
of his own group or nation.
So long as national feeling exists, it is very important that each
nation should be self-governing as regards its internal affairs.
Government can only be carried on by force and tyranny if its subjects
view it with hostile eyes, and they will so view it if they feel that
it belongs to an alien nation. This principle meets with difficulties
in cases where men of different nations live side by side in the same
area, as happens in some parts of the Balkans. There are also
difficulties in regard to places which, for some geographical reason,
are of great international importance, such as the Suez Canal and the
Panama Canal. In such cases the purely local desires of the
inhabitants may have to give way before larger interests. But in
general, at any rate as applied to civilized communities, the
principle that the boundaries of nations ought to coincide with the
boundaries of states has very few exceptions.
This principle, however, does not decide how the relations between
states are to be regulated, or how a conflict of interests between
rival states is to be decided. At present, every great state claims
absolute sovereignty, not only in regard to its internal affairs but
also in regard to its external actions. This claim to absolute
sovereignty leads it into conflict with similar claims on the part of
other great states. Such conflicts at present can only be decided by
war or diplomacy, and diplomacy is in essence nothing but the threat
of war. There is no more justification for the claim to absolute
sovereignty on the part of a state than there would be for a similar
claim on the part of an individual. The claim to absolute sovereignty
is, in effect, a claim that all external affairs are to be regulated
purely by force, and that when two nations or groups of nations are
interested in a question, the decision shall depend solely upon which
of them is, or is believed to be, the stronger. This is nothing but
primitive anarchy, "the war of all against all," which Hobbes asserted
to be the original state of mankind.
There cannot be secure peace in the world, or any decision of
international questions according to international law, until states
are willing to part with their absolute sovereignty as regards their
external relations, and to leave the decision in such matters to some
international instrument of government.[5] An international government
will have to be legislative as well as judicial. It is not enough
that there should be a Hague tribunal, deciding matters according to
some already existing system of international law; it is necessary
also that there should be a body capable of enacting international
law, and this body will have to have the power of transferring
territory from one state to another, when it is persuaded that
adequate grounds exist for such a transference. Friends of peace will
make a mistake if they unduly glorify the _status quo_. Some nations
grow, while others dwindle; the population of an area may change its
character by emigration and immigration. There is no good reason why
states should resent changes in their boundaries under such
conditions, and if no international authority has power to make
changes of this kind, the temptations to war will sometimes become
irresistible.
[5] For detailed scheme of international government see "International
Government," by L. Woolf. Allen & Unwin.
The international authority ought to possess an army and navy, and
these ought to be the only army and navy in existence. The only
legitimate use of force is to diminish the total amount of force
exercised in the world. So long as men are free to indulge their
predatory instincts, some men or groups of men will take advantage of
this freedom for oppression and robbery. Just as the police are
necessary to prevent the use of force by private citizens, so an
international police will be necessary to prevent the lawless use of
force by separate states.
But I think it is reasonable to hope that if ever an international
government, possessed of the only army and navy in the world, came
into existence, the need of force to enact obedience to its decisions
would be very temporary. In a short time the benefits resulting from
the substitution of law for anarchy would become so obvious that the
international government would acquire an unquestioned authority, and
no state would dream of rebelling against its decisions. As soon as
this stage had been reached, the international army and navy would
become unnecessary.
We have still a very long road to travel before we arrive at the
establishment of an international authority, but it is not very
difficult to foresee the steps by which this result will be gradually
reached. There is likely to be a continual increase in the practice
of submitting disputes to arbitration, and in the realization that the
supposed conflicts of interest between different states are mainly
illusory. Even where there is a real conflict of interest, it must in
time become obvious that neither of the states concerned would suffer
as much by giving way as by fighting. With the progress of
inventions, war, when it does occur, is bound to become increasingly
destructive. The civilized races of the world are faced with the
alternative of cošperation or mutual destruction. The present war
is making this alternative daily more evident. And it is difficult to
believe that, when the enmities which it has generated have had time
to cool, civilized men will deliberately choose to destroy
civilization, rather than acquiesce in the abolition of war.
The matters in which the interests of nations are supposed to clash
are mainly three: tariffs, which are a delusion; the exploitation of
inferior races, which is a crime; pride of power and dominion, which
is a schoolboy folly.
The economic argument against tariffs is familiar, and I shall not
repeat it. The only reason why it fails to carry conviction is the
enmity between nations. Nobody proposes to set up a tariff between
England and Scotland, or between Lancashire and Yorkshire. Yet the
arguments by which tariffs between nations are supported might be used
just as well to defend tariffs between counties. Universal free trade
would indubitably be of economic benefit to mankind, and would be
adopted to-morrow if it were not for the hatred and suspicion which
nations feel one toward another. From the point of view of preserving
the peace of the world, free trade between the different civilized
states is not so important as the open door in their dependencies.
The desire for exclusive markets is one of the most potent causes of
war.
Exploiting what are called "inferior races" has become one of the main
objects of European statecraft. It is not only, or primarily, trade
that is desired, but opportunities for investment; finance is more
concerned in the matter than industry. Rival diplomatists are very
often the servants, conscious or unconscious, of rival groups of
financiers. The financiers, though themselves of no particular
nation, understand the art of appealing to national prejudice, and of
inducing the taxpayer to incur expenditure of which they reap the
benefit. The evils which they produce at home, and the devastation
that they spread among the races whom they exploit, are part of the
price which the world has to pay for its acquiescence in the
capitalist rŽgime.
But neither tariffs nor financiers would be able to cause serious
trouble, if it were not for the sentiment of national pride. National
pride might be on the whole beneficent, if it took the direction of
emulation in the things that are important to civilization. If we
prided ourselves upon our poets, our men of science, or the justice
and humanity of our social system, we might find in national pride a
stimulus to useful endeavors. But such matters play a very small
part. National pride, as it exists now, is almost exclusively
concerned with power and dominion, with the extent of territory that a
nation owns, and with its capacity for enforcing its will against the
opposition of other nations. In this it is reinforced by group
morality. To nine citizens out of ten it seems self-evident, whenever
the will of their own nation clashes with that of another, that their
own nation must be in the right. Even if it were not in the right on
the particular issue, yet it stands in general for so much nobler
ideals than those represented by the other nation to the dispute, that
any increase in its power is bound to be for the good of mankind.
Since all nations equally believe this of themselves, all are equally
ready to insist upon the victory of their own side in any dispute in
which they believe that they have a good hope of victory. While this
temper persists, the hope of international cošperation must remain
dim.
If men could divest themselves of the sentiment of rivalry and
hostility between different nations, they would perceive that the
matters in which the interests of different nations coincide
immeasurably outweigh those in which they clash; they would perceive,
to begin with, that trade is not to be compared to warfare; that the
man who sells you goods is not doing you an injury. No one considers
that the butcher and the baker are his enemies because they drain him
of money. Yet as soon as goods come from a foreign country, we are
asked to believe that we suffer a terrible injury in purchasing them.
No one remembers that it is by means of goods exported that we
purchase them. But in the country to which we export, it is the goods
we send which are thought dangerous, and the goods we buy are
forgotten. The whole conception of trade, which has been forced upon
us by manufacturers who dreaded foreign competition, by trusts which
desired to secure monopolies, and by economists poisoned by the virus
of nationalism, is totally and absolutely false. Trade results simply
from division of labor. A man cannot himself make all the goods of
which he has need, and therefore he must exchange his produce with
that of other people. What applies to the individual, applies in
exactly the same way to the nation. There is no reason to desire that
a nation should itself produce all the goods of which it has need; it
is better that it should specialize upon those goods which it can
produce to most advantage, and should exchange its surplus with the
surplus of other goods produced by other countries. There is no use
in sending goods out of the country except in order to get other goods
in return. A butcher who is always willing to part with his meat but
not willing to take bread from the baker, or boots from the bootmaker,
or clothes from the tailor, would soon find himself in a sorry plight.
Yet he would be no more foolish than the protectionist who desires
that we should send goods abroad without receiving payment in the
shape of goods imported from abroad.
The wage system has made people believe that what a man needs is work.
This, of course, is absurd. What he needs is the goods produced by
work, and the less work involved in making a given amount of goods,
the better. But owing to our economic system, every economy in
methods of production enables employers to dismiss some of their
employees, and to cause destitution, where a better system would
produce only an increase of wages or a diminution in the hours of work
without any corresponding diminution of wages.
Our economic system is topsyturvy. It makes the interest of the
individual conflict with the interest of the community in a thousand
ways in which no such conflict ought to exist. Under a better system
the benefits of free trade and the evils of tariffs would be obvious
to all.
Apart from trade, the interests of nations coincide in all that makes
what we call civilization. Inventions and discoveries bring benefit
to all. The progress of science is a matter of equal concern to the
whole civilized world. Whether a man of science is an Englishman, a
Frenchman, or a German is a matter of no real importance. His
discoveries are open to all, and nothing but intelligence is required
in order to profit by them. The whole world of art and literature and
learning is international; what is done in one country is not done for
that country, but for mankind. If we ask ourselves what are the
things that raise mankind above the brutes, what are the things that
make us think the human race more valuable than any species of
animals, we shall find that none of them are things in which any one
nation can have exclusive property, but all are things in which the
whole world can share. Those who have any care for these things,
those who wish to see mankind fruitful in the work which men alone can
do, will take little account of national boundaries, and have little
care to what state a man happens to owe allegiance.
The importance of international cošperation outside the sphere of
politics has been brought home to me by my own experience. Until
lately I was engaged in teaching a new science which few men in the
world were able to teach. My own work in this science was based
chiefly upon the work of a German and an Italian. My pupils came from
all over the civilized world: France, Germany, Austria, Russia,
Greece, Japan, China, India, and America. None of us was conscious of
any sense of national divisions. We felt ourselves an outpost of
civilization, building a new road into the virgin forest of the
unknown. All cošperated in the common task, and in the interest of
such a work the political enmities of nations seemed trivial,
temporary, and futile.
But it is not only in the somewhat rarefied atmosphere of abstruse
science that international cošperation is vital to the progress of
civilization. All our economic problems, all the questions of
securing the rights of labor, all the hopes of freedom at home and
humanity abroad, rest upon the creation of international good-will.
So long as hatred, suspicion, and fear dominate the feelings of men
toward each other, so long we cannot hope to escape from the tyranny
of violence and brute force. Men must learn to be conscious of the
common interests of mankind in which all are at one, rather than of
those supposed interests in which the nations are divided. It is not
necessary, or even desirable, to obliterate the differences of manners
and custom and tradition between different nations. These differences
enable each nation to make its own distinctive contribution to the sum
total of the world's civilization.
What is to be desired is not cosmopolitanism, not the absence of all
national characteristics that one associates with couriers,
_wagon-lit_ attendants, and others, who have had everything
distinctive obliterated by multiple and trivial contacts with men of
every civilized country. Such cosmopolitanism is the result of loss,
not gain. The international spirit which we should wish to see
produced will be something added to love of country, not something
taken away. Just as patriotism does not prevent a man from feeling
family affection, so the international spirit ought not to prevent a
man from feeling affection for his own country. But it will somewhat
alter the character of that affection. The things which he will
desire for his own country will no longer be things which can only be
acquired at the expense of others, but rather those things in which
the excellence of any one country is to the advantage of all the
world. He will wish his own country to be great in the arts of peace,
to be eminent in thought and science, to be magnanimous and just and
generous. He will wish it to help mankind on the way toward that
better world of liberty and international concord which must be
realized if any happiness is to be left to man. He will not desire
for his country the passing triumphs of a narrow possessiveness, but
rather the enduring triumph of having helped to embody in human
affairs something of that spirit of brotherhood which Christ taught
and which the Christian churches have forgotten. He will see that
this spirit embodies not only the highest morality, but also the
truest wisdom, and the only road by which the nations, torn and
bleeding with the wounds which scientific madness has inflicted, can
emerge into a life where growth is possible and joy is not banished at
the frenzied call of unreal and fictitious duties. Deeds inspired by
hate are not duties, whatever pain and self-sacrifice they may
involve. Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the
deeds of love.
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End of Chapter V - National Independence and Internationalism
[Bertrand Russell's essay: Political Ideals] _