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Limits to the Stability of a Scientific
World Empire
Brent Jessop
Knowledge
Driven Revolution.com
Tuesday January 22, 2008
"I do not believe that dictatorship is a lasting
form of scientific society - unless (but this proviso is important)
it can become world-wide."- Bertrand Russell, 1952 (p67)
According to Bertrand Russell's 1952 book The Impact
of Science on Society* empires of the past were unable to sustain
their control over ever distant regions of their dominion mostly due
to the difficulty of maintaining effective centralized control over
the actions of their subordinates. Scientific technique has removed
this limitation. The only remaining obstacle to the creation of a
truly worldwide empire is the establishment of a unifying principle
to replace the fear of war.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (1872-1970) was
a renowned British philosopher and mathematician who was an adamant
internationalist and worked extensively on the education of young
children. He was the founder of the Pugwash
movement which used the spectre of Cold War nuclear annihilation
to push for world government. Among many other prizes, Russell was
awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1950 and UNESCO’s (United Nations Educational,
Scientific, and Cultural Organization) Kalinga
prize in 1957.
As previously
discussed, The Impact of Science on Society described the
increase in organization and centralization of power that resulted
from the use of scientific
technique.
Limits to the Size of an Empire
From The Impact of Science on Society:
"In any given state of technique there is a limit to
size. The Roman Empire was stopped by German forests and African
deserts... And before the telegraph large empires tended to break
up because they could not be effectively controlled from the centre.
Communications have been hitherto the chief factor limiting the
size of empires... This difficulty was diminished by railways and
the telegraph, and is on the point of disappearing with the improvement
of the long-range bomber. There would now be no technical difficulty
about a single world-wide Empire. Since war is likely to become
more destructive to human life than it has been in recent centuries,
unification under a single world government is probably necessary
unless we are to acquiesce in either a return to barbarism or the
extinction of the human race." [emphasis mine] - 36
"I think the evils that have grown up in Soviet Russia will exist,
in a greater or less degree, wherever there is a scientific government
which is securely established and is not dependent upon popular
support. It is possible nowadays for a government to be very much
more oppressive than any government could be before there was scientific
technique. Propaganda makes persuasion easier for the government;
public ownership of halls and paper makes counter-propaganda more
difficult; and the effectiveness of modern armaments makes popular
risings impossible. No revolution can succeed in a modern country
unless it has the support of at least a considerable section of
the armed forces. But the armed forces can be kept loyal by being
given a higher standard of life than that of the average worker,
and this is made easier by every step in the degradation of ordinary
labour. Thus the very evils of the system help to give it stability.
Apart from external pressure, there is no reason why such a regime
should not last for a very long time." [emphasis mine] - 61
(Article continues below)
War, the Chief Source of Social Cohesion
"What stands in the way [of world government]? Not physical
or technical obstacles, but only the evil passions in human minds..."
- 108
"...so long as there is imminent risk of war it is impossible to
escape from the authority of the State except to a very limited
degree. It is mainly war that has caused the excessive power of
modern States, and until the fear of war is removed it is inevitable
that everything should be subordinated to short-term efficiency.
But I have thought it worth while to think for a moment of the world
as it may be when a world government has ended the present nightmare
dread of war." - 75
"War has been, throughout history, the chief source of social cohesion;
and since science began, it has been the strongest incentive to
technical progress. Large groups have a better chance of victory
than small ones, and therefore the usual result of war is to make
States larger...
There is, it must be confessed, a psychological difficulty about
a single world government. The chief source of social cohesion
in the past, I repeat, has been war: the passions that inspire a
feeling of unity are hate and fear. These depend upon the existence
of an enemy, actual or potential. It seems to that a world government
could only be kept in being by force, not by the spontaneous loyalty
that now inspires a nation at war." [emphasis mine] - 36
World Government
"As regards war, the principle of unrestricted national
sovereignty, cherished by liberals in the nineteenth century and
by the Kremlin in the present day, must be abandoned. Means must
be found of subjecting the relations of nations to the rule of law,
so that a single nation will no longer be, as at present, the judge
in its own cause. If this is not done, the world will quickly return
to barbarism. In that case, scientific technique will disappear
along with science, and men will be able to go on being quarrelsome
because their quarrels will no longer do much harm. It is, however,
just possible that mankind may prefer to survive and prosper rather
than to perish in misery, and, if so, national liberty will have
to be effectively restrained." - 50
"In the past, there were many sovereign States, any two of which
might at any time quarrel. Attempts in the line of the League of
Nations were bound to fail, because, when a dispute arose, the disputants
were too proud to accept outside arbitration, and the neutrals were
too lazy to enforce it. Now there are only two sovereign States:
Russia (with satellites) and the United States (with satellites).
If either becomes preponderant, either by victory or by an obvious
military superiority, the preponderant Power can establish a single
Authority over the whole world, and thus make future wars impossible.
At first this Authority will , in certain regions, be based on force,
but if the Western nations are in control, force will as soon as
possible give way to consent. When that has been achieved, the most
difficult of world problems will have been solved, and science can
become wholly beneficent." - 106
"There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable
as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second
that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and third that
of general misery except for a powerful minority. All these
methods have been practised... the third in the world as some
Western internationalists hope to make it and in Soviet Russia."
[emphasis mine] - 117
"... a scientific world society cannot be stable unless there is
a world government... unless there is a world government which secures
universal birth control, there must from time to time be great wars,
in which the penalty of defeat is widespread death by starvation...
Unless, at some stage, one power or group of powers emerges victorious
and proceeds to establish a single government of the world with
a monopoly of armed forces, it is clear that the level of civilization
must decline until scientific warfare becomes impossible - that
is until science is extinct." - 117
This last point is very important because the exact same
theme was described by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book The Grand
Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives
(1997). Brzezinski outlines his case for how current American global
supremacy should be used to unify the world under the dictates of
the United Nations. For more about The Grand Chessboard read
this.
From The Grand Chessboard:
"Meeting these challenges is America's burden as well
as its unique responsibility. Given the reality of American democracy,
an effective response will require generating a public understanding
of the continuing importance of American power in shaping a widening
framework of stable geopolitical cooperation, one that simultaneously
averts global anarchy and successfully deters the emergence of a
new power challenge. These two goals-- averting global anarchy and
impeding the emergence of a power rival-- are inseparable from the
longer-range definition of the purpose of America's global engagement,
namely, that of forging an enduring framework of global geopolitical
cooperation." [emphasis mine] - 214
"In brief, the U.S. policy goal must be unapologetically twofold:
to perpetuate America's own dominant position for at least a generation
and preferably longer still; and to create a geopolitical framework
that can absorb the inevitable shocks and strains of social-political
change while evolving into the geopolitical core of shared responsibility
for peaceful global management. A prolonged phase of gradually
expanding cooperation with key Eurasian partners, both stimulated
and arbitrated by America, can also help to foster the preconditions
for an eventual upgrading of the existing and increasingly antiquated
UN [United Nations] structures. A new distribution of responsibilities
and privileges can then take into account the changed realities
of global power, so drastically different from those of 1945." [emphasis
mine] - 215
Conclusion
The next article will examine Bertrand Russell's views on population
control and the scientific breeding of humans. The fourth and
final part in this series will explore the use of education
as the most powerful form of government propaganda.
*Quotes from Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society
(1952). ISBN0-415-10906-X
Note: I first heard about this book from talks given by Alan Watt
at Cutting Through
The Matrix.com, an individual well worth looking into.
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