“Those
who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” This was the opinion
of British leader and prime minister of wartime Britain Winston Churchill. Diehard imperialist
though he was, to me it seems that there was much in what he said. Powerful men
and women try to take advantage of the shortness of human memory to manipulate
common people. These days there is talk of ‘The Emergency’ for it was in the
month of June that this dictatorial patch marred Indian democracy. I am sure
those born after 1965 would not remember much about it. But I think this is an
appropriate time to recall an essay written in 1934 by Wilfred Wellock, a
British Labour Party leader, peace activist and Member of Parliament. Following
is the essay which appeared under the title ‘Military And Fascist Madness Or
The Peril of The One-Way Mind’:
Governments are blundering towards
another war, and Fascism threatens to engulf the greater part of the world. The
former would appear to be the victims of forces they are unable to control.
No one imagines that responsible
statesmen want another war, but their mentality is so antiquated that they are
unable to resist the influences which are making for war.
Behind the powerful statesmen are
certain groups of very powerful people, most of whom, unfortunately, possess
one-way minds. It is they who are doing the damage. Among them are the military
castes, and profiteers or Big Business interests.
The former see things professionally,
and are so out of touch with the wider aspects of civilization, so ignorant of
its needs and possibilities, that they are the very last people who ought to
advise Governments. Yet they exercise an enormous influence on most
Governments, our own included.
The primary concern of the business
people is to have their works running full speed and to be making handsome
profits. They think of armaments apart from war, and try to convince themselves
that money spent on armaments is a sound investment and a guarantee of national
security. The desire for profits blinds them to the real facts, and thus causes
them to be as great a danger to the community as professional military men.
This group, also, exercises an enormous
influence upon statesmen, while both groups have great influences with the Press, and are able to secure an alarming
degree of publicity for few politicians are strong enough to combat the
combined influence of professional military men, Big Business, and the Press.
The danger arising from this condition
– and it is world-wide – can scarcely be overestimated, for even now, by reason
of it, most nations – Britain included – are rushing towards their doom.
In other words, we are confronted with
the peril of the one-way mind – the mind that is so carried away by self and
class interest that it overlooks the wider national and international
consequences of its conduct. The one-way is a disease, a species of madness,
and ought to be treated as such. But, like most mad men, our modern militarists
are not aware of their diseased condition. Although economic, military and
psychological conditions have entirely changed within recent years, that fact
has no significance for them. Their minds appear to have reached a dead end,
and in some cases have slipped back several centuries. Material abundance, for
instance, which makes war ridiculous, does not affect their outlook; neither
the fact that another war would shake civilization to the foundations.
A peculiarity of madness is that its
victims become the slaves of a single idea. Our modern militarists, of both
varieties, see in every international event a reason for a bigger air force or
a larger navy. They will refuse an extra loaf of bread to the industrial
outcast, but provide a million bombs with the greatest pleasure. They will
scheme like misers to cut down payments to the unemployed, and gloat like
demons at the prospect of adding 10,000,000 pounds to the expenditure upon
armaments. They are never so happy as when making things to kill people, or
getting their countrymen to think about possible enemies and how to destroy
them.
Mad men always take themselves
seriously, and if by chance they can make others believe in them they can
become highly dangerous. Now it so happens that these one-way mind groups are
highly place socially, and, as already explained, exercise a considerable
influence on affairs. Thus they are able to work up scares and to frighten the
public into panic. They are past masters at publicity stage management, and
know all the tricks of the trade. They like to play the same role in other
countries. Consequently between them they are able to get the peoples of the
world intensely afraid of one another, and in the atmosphere thus created to
persuade their respective Governments to embark on new armaments programmes. At
the end of these mad races all the nations are in the same position relatively
as at the beginning, but have the grim satisfaction of knowing that if fwar
occurred they would kill and be killed at double the former rate. In other
words, the casualty lists, or, more per cent more deaths. Moreover this process
of expanding armaments takes place in all countries at the expense of the
unemployed, of education, working-class housing, etc.
Out of this highly barbaric procedure
the unemployed get their mead of excitement, of course, while those responsible
for it get their mead of limelight and profit. It is wrong to say that the
workers need circuses: what they now need, apparently, is the excitement of
witnessing the preparation for the extermination at the rate of, say, a million
a minute.
It did seem at one time, however, that
certain events would be too much for the one-way battalions. But their madness
saw them through. They were bold. And, of course, it takes a mad man to be
really consistent. The fact of abundance has upset most people, but not the
militarists, nor the Fascists. A sufficiency of goods and foodstuffs to satisfy
the needs of the entire human race obviously reveals the folly of war. Once the
people learned the art of distributing abundance, it would be all up with war,
and also with profiteering – and incidentally, with class domination. The
one-way mind people saw that clearly, so something had to be done. That
millions were in want, in this and most other countries did not affect them.
They also knew that workers were accustomed to want. Thus they said: “If there
is more food than can be sold at a profit, destroy it and produce less, and if
there are too many manufactured goods that people can afford to buy, close down
the factories.” To them the thing was perfectly simple. True there was a
minority of the public who rebelled. But the pure breed specimens of the
one-way mind replied: “Don’t we own the engines of publicity? What we say,
goes, and what we do is accepted as coming from the gods. Don’t dilly-dally. Dogs like strong masters,
and ignorant people leaders who know.”
So they had their way, and strange as
it may seem, it was accepted by the people as the way of salvation.
Still there remained a hard core of
opposition which persisted in saying that abundance ought to mean freedom from
poverty and war. They declared that no such madness as destroying food which
people needed, and closing down factories when the needs of the masses remained
unsatisfied, would be tolerated in Russia. The reply of the one-way mind to
this criticism was that the Soviet leaders were materialists and infidels. To
which was hurled the Scriptural saying: “He that feedeth one of these my little
ones...”
Indeed the unbelievers (in war and
poverty) refused to keep quiet. And in saying that the fish which they constantly
saw being taken out of Billingsgate and dumped into the sea in order to keep up
the prices, would allay the hunger pains
of their underfed children, just as the half-frozen men in food queues of New
York insisted that they knew better uses for the surplus coffee and sugar that
was causing so much trouble to the City, than burning it.
In due course the body of these
unbelievers grew out of all knowledge, and in all lands. This fact was accepted
as a challenge by the one-way mind, which furiously objected to any tampering
with the “foundations of society.” “Civilisation,” it said, “was founded on War, Poverty and Profit, and any attempt
to change that basis would have to be met with the treatment it deserved, since
it was an attack upon religion and all that was sacred. Without poverty there
could be no charity, and without Imperialism how could Christianity triumph
over heathenism? That the Irish and the Indians hated Britain for her
oppression merely exposed the depth of their ignorance. The fact that Britain
was wholly impartial in her dealings with other peoples was proved by the fact
that she was willing to sell her armaments to every Government in the world, a
fact which insured that no matter what enemy Britain might have, British
soldiers could reasonably rely on the armaments which ended their lives being
of good British manufacture.” Indeed the one-way mind never despairs, since it
is fortified by the belief that it can never be wrong.
It is quite true that the one-way mind
got a little restless when the Disarmament Conference refused to come to an
end, as it could not understand why the Imperialist Powers did not tell the
world quite plainly that it was impossible for big Empires to be maintained
without vast armaments, and thus that
disarmament was wholly out of the question. They were rather disquieted at the
thought that it has taken the Conference over two years to pluck up the courage
to tell the pacifists that there can be no disarmament, and indeed that
increased armaments are inevitable.
In another direction the one-way mind
is perfectly happy. It is consoled to know that those wretched people who
believe in the possibility of abolishing poverty are everywhere being put in
their place by Mussolini, Hitler, Dollfuss, Pilsudski, etc. Also it imagines it
sees further victories in prospects. It is hoping for victories everywhere –
except, perhaps in Russia. Russia is the one fly in the ointment, and it is a
very tiresome and threatening fly. It stands for an idea, an idea that
persists in spite of defeat and unspeakable persecution. “But,” say the
hierarchs of the one-way mind, “wait a little, watch that ring of Fascist
Dictatorships around Russia close in and unite, then see!” (In the event, it
was the Fascist Dictatorships that bit the dust and Russia or the Soviet Union
became a super power. But that was another era and another time).
The Idea
has got to be crushed. That is the aim. Immediately after the War (First
World War) it seemed that the Idea was
going to carry all before it, but it eventually succumbed before the forces in
the control of the one-way mind. In the meantime, however, it has gradually
spread, and it is today stronger than ever, notwithstanding its defeat in many
countries. It must spread if civilization is to be saved from the peril of the
one-way mind.
The triumph of Fascism signifies the
setting up of something quite new in the world – one-way mind States: States
with one political Party, one religion, one philosophy, one newspaper and a
one-way mind Dictator at the head of them.
Even God is told to occupy a back seat,
since there can be only one Dictator in a State, one person who is
infallible...
Freedom, variety, individuality,
colour, art, etc., are out of date in the Fascist State; they contradict the
demands of the one-way mind, and so must be crushed out, even at the expense of
the poor, whose poverty Fascism increases.
When the structure of the Fascist or
one-way mind State is complete, we shall have in being the imbecile State: a
nation of mad men, every member of which is condemned to be a Ditto. The
intellectual economies which such a State can effect are apparent. Since there
is only one political theory, one political Party, one economic policy, etc.,
there is no need for a multiplicity of books, pamphlets and newpapers. Accordingly
in Fascist Germany, Italy and Austria thousands of newspapers have ceased
publication, while tens of thousands of books and pamphlets have been burned.
There is no need to answer arguments in a Fascist State. That simplifies things
enormously, and enables the totalitarian State to shine in all its glory. It
used to be said of this country that every child born was either a little
Liberal or a little Conservative. Since then Socialists and Communists have
been added. But in the Fascist State every child born is a Ditto.
In the Fascist or imbecile State the
cardinal sin is to wink at the Idea.
The seven deadly sins are the seven degrees of intimacy with the Idea. Anyone proved guilty of
originating a non-Fascist idea is declared insane and automatically put into a
lunatic asylum.
Where this imbecile State does not
already exist preparations are being made for its advent. These preparations
are being made within the police forces, military forces, and in the Press. The
Press is concentrating on the production of the one-way mind by carrying the
public from stunt to stunt and so destroying the power of thinking. It converts
men and women into racing fans, football fans, cinema fans or what it will. The
British public is being led into the one-way mind by means of horse-racing,
professional sport and startling divorce suits; the French public by means of
sporting events, parliamentary crises and financial scandals; the American
public by means of bank frauds, banditry and other forms of sensation outlawry.
The process of making an imbecile State
being well under way in many countries, the question now is whether it is
possible to make an imbecile world. Imbecility has at last become the condition
of the continuation of Capitalism and the maintenance of the privileges for
which Capitalism stands. Let the fact be made crystal clear that to defend
Capitalism now is to lend a hand, consciously or unconsciously, in establishing
the greatest monstrosity in the history of civilization – a Fascist State – and
eventually an imbecile world.
Though written more than 80 years back about a situation that arose in the world between the two world wars, many of the things mentioned in it sound alarmingly familiar. Maybe the Fascists succeed even though they lost the war and we are already members of an imbecile world with one-way minds!!!
