Again, there is so much work to be done by Parliament nowadays, so many complicated questions to be faced, that a practice has grown for Parliament to decide only the general principles of any measure or law, and to leave it to the executive government, or to some department of it, to fill in the details. In this way the executive has got enormous powers and can do what it likes in an emergency. Parliament thus is getting more and more out of touch with important activities of the State. Its chief functions are now being reduced to criticism of government measures, questions, and inquiries, and finally approval of the general policy of government. As Harold J. Laski says: “Our government has become an executive dictatorship tempered by fear of Parliamentary revolt.” The sudden fall of the Labour Government in August 1931 was brought about in a curious way, which shows how little Parliament had to do with the matter. Ordinarily a government in England falls because it is defeated in the House of Commons. In 1931 nothing came before the House; no one knew what was happening, not even most of the members of the Cabinet itself. The Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, had some secret conversations with the leaders of other parties; they saw the King, and the old Cabinet suddenly disappeared and a new one was announced in the newspapers ! Some of the members of the old Cabinet learnt of all this for the first time from these newspapers. All this was an extraordinary and most undemocratic method of procedure, and the fact that the House of Commons ultimately ratified it does not alter this fact. This was the method of dictatorship.
The Labour Government thus overnight gave place to a “National Government” in which the Conservatives predominated and a few Liberals and Labourites tried to give a national colouring. Ramsay MacDonald continued as Prime Minister, although he was repudiated and expelled by the Labour Party. Such “national” governments come into existence when there is fear that far-reaching socialistic changes might shake the position of the owning classes, or cast too great a burden on them. Such a position arose in England in August 1931, when the crisis came which later drove the pound from gold, and the reaction to this was the consolidation of the forces of capitalism against socialism. By playing upon the fears of the middle-class masses that all their savings would go if Labour were to win, the National Government thoroughly frightened this petty bourgeoisie and got returned by a tremendous majority. MacDonald and his supporters said that the only alternative to the National Government was communism.
Thus in England also old-time democracy has broken down and Parliament is on the decline. Democracy fails when vital issues which move people’s passions have to be faced, such as religious clashes, or national and racial (Aryan German versus Jew), and above all economic conflicts (between the Haves and the Have-Nots). You will remember that when such a religio-national issue arose in Ireland between Ulster and the rest in 1914, the British Conservative Party actually refused to accept Parliament’s decision, and even encouraged civil war. Thus so long as an apparently democratic procedure serves the purposes of the possessing classes, they use it to their advantage to protect their own interests. When this comes in their way and challenges these special privileges and interests, then they discard democracy and take to methods of dictatorship. It is quite possible that the British Parliament might in the future get a majority in favour of sweeping social changes. If such a majority attacks vested interests, the owners of these interests may repudiate Parliament itself, and even encourage a revolt against its decision, as they did in 1914 over the Ulster issue.
So we see that parliament and democracy are only considered desirable by the possessing classes so long as they maintain existing conditions. That is, of course, not real democracy; it is the exploitation of the democratic idea for undemocratic purposes. Real democracy has had no chance to exist so far, for there is an essential contradiction between the capitalist system and democracy. Democracy, if it means anything, means equality; not merely the equality of possessing a vote, but economic and social equality. Capitalism means the very opposite: a few people holding economic power and using this to their own advantage. They make laws to keep their own privileged position secure, and anybody who breaks these laws becomes a disturber of law and order whom society must punish. Thus there is no equality under this system, and the liberty allowed is only within the limits of capitalist laws meant to preserve capitalism.
The conflict between capitalism and democracy is inherent and continuous; it is often hidden by misleading propaganda and by the outward forms of democracy, such as parliaments, and the sops that the owning classes throw to the other classes to keep them more or less contented. A time comes when there are no more sops left to be thrown, and then the conflict between the two groups comes to a head, for now the struggle is for the real thing, economic power in the State. When that stage comes, all the supporters of capitalism, who had so far played with different parties, band themselves together to face the danger to their vested interests. Liberals and such-like groups disappear, and the forms of democracy are put aside. This stage has now arrived in Europe and America, and fascism, which is dominant in some form or other in most countries, represents that stage. Labour is everywhere on the defensive, not strong enough to face this new and powerful consolidation of the forces of capitalism. And yet, strangely enough, the capitalist system itself totters and cannot adjust itself to the new world. It seems certain that even if it succeeds in surviving, it will do so in a greatly changed and a harsher form. And this, of course, will be but another stage in the long conflict. For modern industry and modern life itself, under any form of capitalism, are battlefields where armies are continually clashing against each other.
Some people imagine that all this trouble and conflict and misery could be avoided if a few sensible persons were in charge of various governments, and that it is the folly or knavery of politicians and statesmen that is at the bottom of everything. They think that if good people would but get together they could convert the wicked by moral exhortations and pointing out to them the error of their ways. This is a very misleading idea, for the fault does not lie with individuals, but with a wrong system. So long as that system endures, these individuals must act in the way they do. Groups that occupy dominant or privileged positions, either foreign national groups governing another nation, or economic groups within a nation, convince themselves by an amazing self-deception and hypocrisy that their special privileges are a just reward of merit. Anyone who challenges this position seems to them a knave and a scoundrel and an upsetter of settled conditions. It is impossible to convince a dominant group that its privileges are unjust, and that it should give them up. Individuals may sometimes be so convinced, though rarely, but groups never. And so, inevitably, come clashes and conflicts and revolution, and infinite suffering and misery.
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A Final Look Round the World
August 7, 1933
Of the writing of letters there is no end so long as pen and paper and ink hold out. And of writing on world happenings also there is no end, for this world of ours rolls on, and the men and women and children in it laugh and weep, and love and hate, and fight each other unceasingly. It is a story that goes on and on and has no ending. And in the today in which we live, life seems to be flowing faster than ever, its tempo is swifter, and changes come rapidly one after the other. Even as I write it changes, and what I write today may be out of date, distant, and perhaps out of place, tomorrow. The river of life is never still; it flows on, and sometimes, as now, it rushes forward, pitilessly, with a demon energy, ignoring our little wills and desires, making cruel mock of our petty selves, and tossing us about like straws on its turbulent waters, rushing on and on no one knows whither—to a great precipice which will shatter it into a thousand bits, or to the vast and inscrutable, stately and calm, ever-changing and yet changeless sea.
I have written already far more than I ever intended or than I ought to have done. My pen has run on. We have finished our long wandering and have completed the last long stage. We have reached today and stand on t
he threshold of tomorrow, wondering what it will be like when it also, in its turn, becomes today. Let us pause a little and look round the world. How does it stand on this seventh day of August, nineteen hundred and thirty-three?
In India Gandhiji has again been arrested and sentenced and is back in Yeravada Prison. Civil Disobedience has been resumed, though in a restricted form, and our comrades go to gaol again. A brave and dear comrade, a friend whom I first met a quarter of a century ago when I was new at Cambridge, Jatindra Mohan Sen-Gupta, has just left us, dying as a prisoner of the British Government. Life merges into death, but the great work to make life worth living for the people of India goes on. Many thousands of India’s sons and daughters, the most spirited and often the most gifted, lie in prison or internment camps, spending their youth and energy in conflict against the existing system which enslaves India. All this life and energy might have gone in a building up, in construction; there is so much to be done in this world. But before the construction must come destruction, so that the ground may be cleared for the new structure. We cannot put up a fine building on top of the mud walls of a hovel. The state of India today can best be appreciated by the fact that in certain parts of India in Bengal even the manner of dress is regulated by government order, and to dress otherwise means prison. And in Chittagong even little boys (and presumably little girls also) of twelve and upwards have to carry about identity cards with them wherever they go. I do not know if such an extraordinary order has ever been enforced elsewhere, even in Nazi-ridden Germany, or in a war area occupied by enemy troops. We are indeed a ticket-of-leave nation today under British rule. And across our north-west frontier our neighbours are being bombed by British aeroplanes.
Our fellow-countrymen in other countries have little honour shown to them; they are seldom made welcome anywhere. And this is not surprising, for how can they have honour elsewhere when they have no honour at home? They are being turned out of South Africa where they were born and bred, and some parts of which, especially in Natal, they had built up with their labour. Colour prejudice, racial hatred, economic conflict, all combine to make these Indians in South Africa castaways with no home or refuge. They must be shipped away to some other place, to British Guiana, or back to India, where they can but starve, or anywhere else, says the Government of the Union of South Africa, so long as they leave South Africa for good.
In East Africa, Indians have played a great part in building up Kenya and the surrounding territories. But they are no longer welcome there; not because the Africans object, but because the handful of European planters object to them. The best areas, the highlands, are reserved for these planters, and neither African nor Indian may possess land there. The poor Africans are far worse off. Originally all the land was in their possession and was their only source of income. Huge areas of this were confiscated by the government, and free grants of land were made to the European settlers. These settlers or planters are thus big landholders there now. They pay no income-tax and hardly any other tax. Almost the whole burden of taxation falls on the poor down-trodden African. It was not easy to tax the African, for he possesses next to nothing. A tax was put on certain necessaries of life for him, like flour and clothing, and indirectly he had to pay it when he bought them. But the most extraordinary tax of all was a direct poll tax on every male over sixteen years old and his dependants, which included women. The principle of taxation is that people should be taxed out of what they earn or possess. As the African possessed practically nothing else, his body was taxed! But how was he to pay this poll tax of twelve shillings per person per year if he had no money? Therein lay the craftiness of this tax, for it forced him to earn some money by working on the plantations of the European settlers, and thus paying the tax. It was a device not only to get money, but also cheap labour for the plantations. So these unhappy Africans sometimes have to travel enormous distances, coming from the interior 700 or 800 miles away to the plantations near the coast (there are no railways in the interior and just a few near the coast), in order to earn enough wages to pay their poll tax.
There is so much more that I could tell you of these poor exploited Africans who do not even know how to make their voices heard by the outside world. Their tale of misery is a long one, and they suffer in silence. Driven off from their best lands, they had to return to them as tenants of the Europeans, who got the land free at the expense of these Africans. These European landlords are semi-feudal masters, and every kind of activity which they dislike has been suppressed. The Africans cannot form any association even to advocate reforms as the collection of any money is forbidden. There is even an ordinance proscribing dancing, because the Africans sometimes mimicked and made fun of European ways in their songs and dances! The peasantry are very poor, and they are not allowed to grow tea or coffee because this would compete with the European planters.
Three years ago the British Government solemnly announced that they were trustees for the African, and that in future he would not be deprived of his lands. Unfortunately for the Africans, gold was discovered in Kenya last year. The solemn promise was forgotten; the European planters made a rush for this land, turned out the African farmers, and started digging for gold. So much for British promises. We are told that all this will eventually work out for the advantage of the Africans, and that they are quite happy at losing their lands!
This capitalist method of exploiting a gold-bearing area is most extraordinary. People are actually made to run for it from a prescribed place, and each one takes possession of part of the area and then works it. Whether he finds much gold or not in that particular bit depends on his luck. This method is typical of capitalism. The obvious way to deal with a gold-field seems to be for the government of the country to take possession of it and work it for the advantage of the whole State. This is what the Soviet Union is doing with its gold-fields in Tadjikistan and elsewhere.
I have said something about Kenya in this final survey of ours because we have ignored Africa in these letters. Remember it is a vast continent full of the African races who have been cruelly exploited by foreigners for hundreds of years, and are still exploited. They are terribly backward, but they have been kept down, and not given the chance to go ahead. Where this chance has been given them, as recently at a university founded on the west coast, they have made remarkable progress.
Of the countries of western Asia I have told you enough. There, and in Egypt, the struggle for freedom goes on in various forms and in various stages. So also in south-east Asia, in Farther India and Indonesia— Siam, Indo-China, Java, Sumatra and the Dutch Indies, the Philippine Islands. And everywhere, except in Siam, which is independent, the struggle has two aspects: the nationalist urge against foreign domination and the urge of the down-trodden classes for social equality or at least economic betterment.
In the Far East of Asia, giant China lies helpless before her aggressors, and is torn by internal dissension into many bits. One of her faces is turned towards communism, and the other is turned violently away from it, and meanwhile Japan marches forward, almost inexorably, and establishes her hold on large areas of Chinese territory. But China has survived many a mighty invasion and danger in the long course of her history, and there is little doubt that she will survive the Japanese invasion.
Imperialist Japan, semi-feudal, military-ridden, and yet industrially highly advanced, a strange mixture of the past and the present, nurses ambitious dreams of world empire. But behind these dreams lies the reality of threatening economic collapse and terrible misery for her teeming population, which is shut out from America and the vast uninhabited spaces of Australia. And a tremendous check to these dreams also lies in the hostility of the United States, the most powerful of modern nations. Soviet Russia is another powerful check to Japanese expansion in Asia. In Manchuria and over the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean many keen-eyed observers can already see the approaching shadow of a great war.
The whole of northern Asia is part of the Soviet Union, and is
absorbed in planning and building a new world and a new social order. It is strange that these backward countries that civilization had left behind in its march, and where a kind of feudalism still prevailed, should have jumped forward to a stage which is ahead of the advanced nations of the West. The Soviet Union in Europe and Asia stands today a continuing challenge to the tottering capitalism of the Western world. While trade depression and slump and unemployment and repeated crises paralyse capitalism, and the old order gasps for breath, the Soviet Union is a land full of hope and energy and enthusiasm, feverishly building away and establishing the socialist order. And this abounding youth and life, and the success the Soviet has already achieved, are impressing and attracting thinking people all over the world.
The United States of America, another vast area, is typical of the failure of capitalism. In the midst of great difficulties, crises, labour strikes, and unexampled unemployment, she is making a brave effort to pull together and preserve the capitalist system. The result of this great experiment remains to be seen. But whatever that may be, nothing can take away from America the great advantages that she possesses in her wide territories, rich in almost everything that man requires, and in her technical resources, which are greater than those of any other country, and in her skilled and highly-trained people. The United States, as also the Soviet Union, is bound to play a vastly important part in the world affairs of the future.
And the great continent of South America, with its Latin nations so entirely different from the north? Unlike the north, there is little racial prejudice here and a great melting of different races—southern Europeans, Spanish, Portuguese, Italians, and Negroes and the so-called Red Indians, the original inhabitants of the American continents. These Red Indians have almost died out in Canada and the United States, but here in the South they still exist in large numbers, especially in Venezuela. They live mostly away from the great cities. You may be surprised to learn that some of these South American cities, like Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, are not only very big, but very beautiful, with magnificent boulevards. Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, has a population of two and a half millions, and Rio de Janeiro, the capital of Brazil, has nearly two millions.
Glimpses of World History Page 139
