MAN COULD BREAK OUT OF THE AGE-LONG PRISON HOUSE OF CIVILIZATION AND ENTER A NEW WORLD

We humans have been living for ages with various lifestyles as hunters and fishermen, as herdsmen, as cultivators of the soil, as craftsmen, as traders and merchants, as professionals, as exploiters, as parasites, wreckers and plunderers.  On the whole, our energies have been spent in relatively small, self-sufficient groups, staying close to nature, as a part of nature.

Occasionally we have turned from this “natural” way of life, to build towns and cities, experimenting with large scale mass enterprises and expanded aggregates of population, wealth and centralized authority to which we have given the name of civilizations.

These civilizations, in their turn, have passed through a recognizable life cycle the cycle of growing, developing, maturing, aging, breaking up and disappearing.  One aspect of their civilized life was the keeping of records.  Another aspect was building with baked clay and stone.  Baked clay, some metals and stone, have withstood the wear and tear of time, sheltered in the temples and tombs which we are uncovering, deciphering, translating.

While engaged in these scholarly pursuits, our variant of the pattern western civilization has been passing through the customary life cycle.  If we read the signs correctly, western civilization reached the high point in its cycle toward the end of the last century.  Since then, for seventy-five years, it has been on the decline.

If we accept the cycle of civilization as one of the facts or sequences presented to us by history, we may continue to pass submissively through the successive stages of decline until western civilization is liquidated by the same forces that wiped out preceding civilizations.  This would be the normal course of a cycle of civilization as it appears in recorded history.

Need we follow this course?  Must we follow it?

History answers “yes” and also “no.”

History answers “yes” the record to date reads that way.

But the record of history also shows that men have repeatedly interfered and intervened in the historical process by discovery and invention.  The historical record is subject to change.  Man is not entirely free.  Neither is he helplessly bound on the wheel of necessity, presently known as civilization.

In Chapter 10 we listed a number of discoveries and inventions which have greatly increased man’s control over his own destiny.  As these innovations are embodied in the life styles of planet-wide human society, there is every likelihood that men can deal with the future almost as comprehensibly as they now deal with the past.  Those who take this position argue that humanity has reached a point at which it may break out of the present cycle of civilization and begin a new cycle which will correspond with the possibilities brought to mankind during the great revolution of 1750-1970.

The idea is not new.  It has appeared repeatedly in various forms:  individual withdrawal from the world and its troubles to live solitary, perfected, sin-free existences; the formulation of plans for utopian or ideal communities; the establishment of such communities apart from the workday world; revolutionary mass movements away from the current time of social troubles into a more workable, more acceptable, more basically productive and fundamentally creative life style.

Hermits and reclusive monastic life need not concern us here.  They are to be found in many parts of the existing society.  They live their lives apart from the main currents of human life.  We may make the same comment, with slight modifications, on intentional communities organized within the bounds of surrounding civilizations.  They meet the needs of exceptional individuals who find the existing order intolerable and who wish to move at once into a more congenial community life.  Intentional communities founded to demonstrate particular social or economic theories usually are short-lived, covering, at best, one or two generations.

Intentional communities organized around ethical or social principles are more enduring, lasting through generations and sometimes through centuries.  During their existence they may have considerable influence on the communities of which they are a part.  At best they parallel the life of the civilization against which they protest, while they share its problems.  Religiously oriented intentional communities may be found today in many of the countries composing western civilization.

What concerns us here is the split of western civilization into two broadly divergent groups:  capitalism and socialism-communism.

Capitalism, in its present monopoly form, is the outcome of a thousand years of development.  Throughout its existence it has been politically and economically competitive.  The vehicle of political competition began as the nation, then continued as the empire.  Economically, the vehicle of competition has become the profit-seeking business corporation, backed politically and often subsidized economically by the nation or empire.

As western civilization has developed, nations and empires have tended to form more or less permanent alliances.  Business corporations likewise have tended to establish conglomerates which include widely divergent businesses, some limited to one nation or empire, some international.

Historically, the present-day business community developed out of a segmented European feudal society as a protest against political restrictions.  Its early key-note was laissez-faire freedom of businessmen to make economic policy and accumulate profits.  The practical outcome of laissez-faire economy has been monopoly or finance capitalism functioning through the sovereign state or empire.

Marxian socialism-communism, organized and developed largely since 1848, has grown up as a rebellion against monopoly capitalism.  At it matured, after revolutions in Mexico, China, Tsarist Russia and East Europe, it became an alternative and even a competitive life style.  Marxism has been, at least in theory, cooperative rather than competitive.  Its objective has been not private profit but a higher standard of economic and social life for exploited masses of the business community and of the Third World.  Capitalism has had as its slogan “Every man for himself”.  The slogan of Marxism is “Serve the whole people”.

Until 1917 Marxism was a body of social theory and a program of specific political demands.  In the period from 1848 to 1917 Marxism operated through minority political parties organized in each nation, but linked together internationally in loose federations, except during the brief existence of the Communist International from 1919 to 1943.

Beginning with the Russian Revolution of 1917, Marxism became a basic state doctrine, first in the Soviet Union and subsequently in more than a dozen other nations of East Europe and Asia.  The area of Marxist influence, as expressed in socialist construction, spread slowly from 1917 to 1943 and rapidly during and immediately after the war of 1936-1945.

Today about a billion human beings live in countries of East Europe and Asia calling themselves socialist-communist.  A second billion human beings live chiefly in West Europe, the Americas and Australasia calling themselves capitalist.  A third billion, the remaining segment of mankind, living chiefly in Africa, Asia and Latin America make up the “Third World,” most of which consists of former colonies and dependencies of the 19th century empires.

At the beginning of the great revolution in 1750 the planet was occupied by the European empires, their colonies and dependencies, with a segment under the control of the crumbling Chinese and Turkish empires.  The ensuing two centuries witnessed a political, economic and social transformation that reached across every continent.

The revolutionary process is far from complete in 1975.  Capitalism and Marxism are still pitted against each other ideologically, politically, culturally.  The Marxians form a revolutionary front.  Capitalists retort with counter-revolution.  Nation by nation the third world is taking sides.

The capitalist world is suffering from the rise and fall of the business cycle, from inflation and unemployment, from the scourge of militarism; from the exhaustion of two general wars in one generation; from absence of any positive common program or commonly accepted means of administering public affairs; from its failure to provide its young people with a satisfactory reason for existence, and from the fatal malady of fragmentation which is the logical counterpart of every major effort at coordination, consolidation and unification.  Western civilization, despite repeated efforts, was never able to establish the kind of superficial unity that marked the high point in the Egyptian and Roman civilizations.  The stresses and strains of the current great revolution have introduced into western civilization new disintegrative forces of which the capitalist-Marxist confrontation is the most extensive, divisive and decisive.

The Marxist world, in its spectacular rise during less than a century, offers the only workable alternative to declining and disintegrating western civilization.  It presents an alternative theoretical program for dealing with the transition from the built-in competitiveness of western civilization to the built-in cooperativeness of a planned, coordinated, federated socialist-communist world order.

The Soviet Union and its East European socialist neighbors have survived the wars of 1914 and 1936; have survived the capitalist conspiracy to strangle infant Marxism in its cradle.  In a remarkably brief period the Soviet Union has moved from a position of cultural backwardness to become the number two nation in productivity and perhaps even number one in fire power.

Today Asia’s active development of several variants of Marxism is defended against any repetition of Hitler’s 1941 drive to the East by the massive land barrier of the Soviet Union and its East European Marxist associates.

On the west, Asia is protected by the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean against the determined efforts of the Washington government to check the spread of Marxism.  Washington’s current effort to become The Pacific power and also The Asian power have been blocked and perhaps thwarted by the defeat of General MacArthur and his international forces in the Korean War of 1950-53, and by the unanticipated and unbelievable resistance mounted by the peoples of South East Asia against the repeated efforts made by Washington to replace the French imperial presence there after its overwhelming defeat in 1954.

The decisive political developments in South and East Asia following war’s end in 1945 were first, the expulsion of the British, French and Dutch from their military strongholds in the area; second, the spectacular unification of China and its rapid advance from inferiority and political inconsequence to a place among the three major world powers; third, the meteoric comeback of Japan after its unconditional surrender in 1945; and fourth, the failure of the costly effort mounted by Washington after 1954 to establish itself in a position from which it could dominate the Pacific Ocean and East Asia.

So much we may learn from history.  Turning from the past and looking at the trends of the immediate future, it seems likely that Marxism will continue for at least some years to be the dominant force in Asia.  Furthermore, the Marxian presence in Asia will include both the Soviet Union in Northern Asia and China in South Asia.  Both countries are unquestionably stabilized economically and viable politically.  Both are headed away from capitalist imperialism.  Both are moving toward Marxian forms of socialism-communism.

The wars in South East Asia after the expulsion of the French in 1954 were organized, financed and armed primarily by the Washington government.  They were avowedly aimed at the up-rooting of Marxism from the area.  They not only failed in their main objective but they gave the Soviet Union and the Chinese a chance to pit their advisers, technicians and military equipment against that of the United States as the major capitalist contender in the area.  This phase of the counter-revolutionary drive to reestablish monopoly capitalism and imperialism in the Far East thus far has met with decisive and humiliating defeat.

This defeat marks the end of the capitalist occupation of Far Asia.  It also opens the way for the Marxists to demonstrate the workability of socialism-communism as a lifestyle for Asians and, presumably, for other segments of the Third World.

Success of the Marxists in maintaining and extending their presence in Asia will make it politically and culturally possible for them to take five essential steps: 

First, to extend the developing pattern of collective responsibility and collective action around the earth as rapidly as possible.  If such an extension proves feasible, it should give Marxism a real priority in stabilizing the economy and building up the political vigor of the Far East.

Second, organized counter-revolution could be liquidated and revolutionaries, willing to take on the responsibility, could be provided with necessary authority, leadership and equipment.

Third, moving along with the formulation and fulfillment of carefully developed plans for socialist construction in all of its ramifications, to close the door gradually, step by considered step, on exploitation and profiteering.  In their places, well-laid plans could be drawn up for developing a people’s socialist-communist economy in the more backward areas of Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Fourth, the new economy could be federated as it was established and stabilized, with special attention to the need for a maximum of local self help to balance against pressures toward bureaucracy and the development of overhead costs.

Fifth, with one eye on its need for integration into a socialist-communist collective planetary economy, the other eye must be kept on the planetary chain of which the earth is an essential part.

Life is a process operating through the linking of causes and their effects.  This is as true of social life as it is of individual life.  Reviewing history we check man’s past actions and learn by so doing.  Turning to the future we plan and prepare to set in motion that conglomerate of causes (plans) best calculated to assure a good life individually, socially, cosmically with a strong emphasis on the time honored sequence:  good, better, best.

It is our opportunity, our destiny, and our responsibility to keep on living, constructing, creating.  We must live, not die.  We must not stop.  We must go on.

By such steps we humans could by-pass the restrictions and limitations imposed on human creative genius by the structure and function of civilization.  In its place we could elaborate a substitute inter-planetary culture in which a chastened, improved, rejuvenated humanity could play a creative rôle, in accordance with our capacities and our destiny as an integral part of the joint enterprise to which our sun furnishes light, warmth and vibrant energy.  We have latent among us the talent and genius necessary to play such a part.  Do we also have the imagination, courage and daring to accept the challenge and take our post of duty in the team that is directing the expansion of our expanding universe?