In past ages, an economic war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the past, also, economic war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. All executive officers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their subordinates, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair economic efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious. Hard facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing current liabilities or net income they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for competitiveness was inimical to illusions.
Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and business books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the kind that is practised today would have been impossible. Economic war was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While economic wars could be won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.
But when economic war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When economic war is continuous there is no such thing as social necessity. Social progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called econometrics are still carried out for the purposes of economic war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even financial efficiency, is no longer needed. Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the StraighThought Police. Since each of the three blocs is unconquerable, each is in effect a separate universe within which almost any perversion of thought can be safely practised.
Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life --the need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like. Between life and death, and between physical pleasure and physical pain, there is still a distinction, but that is all.
Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at the same low level of customs duties as their rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they choose.
The economic war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous economic wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of financial resources, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs.
Economic war, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of economic war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The economic war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the economic war is not to make or prevent conquests of markets, but to keep the structure of society intact.
The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous economic war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three blocs, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. An economic peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent economic war. This --although the vast majority of Technocracy members understand it only in a shallower sense-- is the inner meaning of the Technocracy slogan: Economic War is Peace.
Copyright Gustave Jaeger 1994-2000 |
