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“Inevitable” War: A Problem in the Control of Long-Range Expectations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

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Belief in the inevitability of World War III may well be a factor in bringing on that catastrophe. Certainly the way the crisis is expected to end will affect in some degree the course and outcome of the struggle between the Russian and non-Russian world. On the Soviet side there is dogmatic and unanimous assertion that world communism will “inevitably” triumph. The expectations prevailing in the other camp are strikingly different. In place of dogma and uniformity there are doubt, variety, and confusion. No single voice commands enough authority to speak for everyone, but there is extensive doubt of the “inevitable” spread and eventual triumph of the liberal outlook. Confidence in the inevitability of progress has been shaken, but the expectation of progress remains as a working hypothesis or at least as a declaration of faith, hope, and purpose. In other words, neither victory nor defeat of the liberal outlook is inevitable, and the shape of things to come depends in large measure on how the leaders of the liberal world shape them. Part of the shaping, if it is to be successful, will include the adoption of policies toward the Soviet Union which will modify Soviet expectations of inevitable progress through catastrophe. What are some of the practical means of accomplishing this end? If the non-Soviet world is to take practical steps, what modifications must be made in its own long-range expectations?

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1949

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References

1 The point is not to be overlooked that assertions of the inevitability of peace can also make for war to the extent that aggression is invited.

2 Merton, Robert K. discusses “The Self-fulfilling Prophecy” in The Antioch Review, Summer, 1948.Google Scholar

3 The Rise of the Common Man, 1830–1850, New York, Macmillan, 1927, pp. 3–4.

4 Panorama, Medieval; The English Scene from Conquest to Reformation, New York, Macmillan, 1944, p. 558.Google Scholar One need not accept Arnold Toynbee's metronome theory of regularly recurring periods in the history of civilization in order to recognize the clarity with which Toynbee states the important part played by expectations in the history of civilizations and classes. See especially Volume VI of A Study of History, Oxford University Press, 1939.

5 The analysis of the self follows the lines laid down by Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead. Data from experimental and field studies are found in Cantril, Hadley and Sherif, Muzafer, The Psychology of Ego-involvements, Social Attitudes and Identifications, New York, Wiley, 1947.Google Scholar

6 Among the most discerning descriptions of concentration camp behavior are Kogon, Eugen, Der SS-Staat; das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager, Munich, 1946Google Scholar; Rousset, David, The Other Kingdom, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947.Google Scholar

7 A penetrating account of traditional patterns is by Yueh-hwa, Lin, The Golden Wing; A Sociological Study of Chinese Familism, New York, Oxford, 1947Google Scholar (International Libraryof Sociology and Social Reconstruction).

8 Grazia, Sebastian de made effective use of what is known about “separation anxieties”during infancy and childhood in analyzing The Political Community; A Study of Anomie, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1948.Google Scholar

9 For descriptive purposes it is convenient to use a short list of “value” terms to classify “desired events.” The terms power, respect, rectitude, affection, well–being, wealth, skill, and enlightenment are used by the present writer and Abraham Kaplan in “Power and Society” (forthcoming). See the appendix to Lasswell, , Power and Personality, New York, Norton, 1948Google Scholar (The Thomas W. Salmon Memorial Lectures, New York Academy of Medicine). The basic patterns in the shaping and sharing of the values can be referred to as “institutions.” Thus “government” is the term for the institutions of the value called “power.”

10 In psychoanalysis a line is drawn between “manifest” and “latent” psychic content for Kluckhohn's point, see “The Concept of Culture” (with William H. Kelley) in Man in the World Crisis, Ralph Linton, editor, New York, Columbia University Press, 1945.

11 Concerning the method see Lasswell, Harold D., World Politics and Personal Insecurity, New York, McGraw–Hill, 1935Google Scholar, Chapter 1. For an application see the writer's “The Prospects of Cooperation in a Bipolar World,” University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Summer, 1948), pp. 877–901.

12 For further elaboration see the chapters by Leites, Nathan and Pool, Ithiel in Language of Politics; Studies in Quantitative Semantics, by Lasswell, Harold D., Leites, Nathan and associates, New York, George W. Stewart, 1949.Google Scholar

13 The changing ratio of national and universal slogans in the Soviet Union is described by Serge Yakobson and Harold D. Lasswell in The Language of Politics; Studies in Quantitative Semantics, cited above.

14 See Ebenstein, William, The Nazi State, New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1943.Google Scholar

15 The sense of sacrifice for the future is a recurring theme in Soviet literature, and indicates how at least some elements of the population find it necessary to stress great expectation in order to overcome more pluralistic tendencies. Ufa Ehrenburg, for instance, wrote in 1919 that “into the ages we have scattered the sparks of our extinguished life.” See his poem “The Sons of Our Sons” in A Treasury of Russian Verse, edited by Avraham Yarmolinsky, New York, Macmillan, 1949, pp. 225–26.

16 Robert Michels often spoke of the “accordion rhythm” of such parties.

17 Neatly expressed in the cult of hating Goldstein in Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1949.Google Scholar

18 For some conception of the measures used by the Church to stamp out dangerous thoughts, the classical work of Henry Charles Lea is always valuable. See especially A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, New York, Harpers, 1887–88, 3 vols., and A History of the Inquisition of Spain, New York, Macmillan, 1922. G. C. Coulton discusses the essential soundness of Lea's work in the volume cited in footnote 4. See the notes to Chapter XIV at p. 736, and to Chapter XXXV at p. 746. Abundant detail on the controversies between orthodoxy and heterodoxy are in Sir Carlyle, R. W. and Carlyle, A. J., A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, Third Edition, Edinburgh and London, 19301936, 6 vols.Google Scholar

19 During the Bela Kun period Georg Lukács gave a brilliant statement of the creative significance of Marxist method in a series of lectures in Budapest, , Geschichte und Klas-senbewusstsein; Studien über Marxistische Dialektik, Berlin, 1923.Google Scholar The verve of this precocious outpouring may be compared with the decorous scholarship of his recent Der Junge Hegel, lieber die Beziehungen von Dialektik und Oekonomie, Zurich and Vienna, 1948.

20 Just as socialism has typically been state socialism, planning has typically been national planning. On the nationalization of socialism and the socialization of nationalism see Mitrany, David, “The Political Consequences of Economic Planning,” Sociological Review (London), XXVI (1934), pp. 321–45.Google Scholar

21 For a contextual view see Myres Smith McDougal and Haber, David, Property, Wealth, Land: Allocation, Planning and Development; Selected Cases and Other Materials on the Law of Real Property, an Introduction, Charlottesville, Va., Michie Casebook Corporation, 1948.Google Scholar A classical treatise is Berle, Adolf A. Jr, and Means, Gardiner C., The Modern Corporation and Private Property, New York, Macmillan, 1939.Google Scholar

22 See the original and important work of Abba Lerner, P., The Economics of Control, New York, Macmillan, 1944.Google Scholar

23 See in this connection the valuable discussion so greatly stimulated by Lange, Oscar, On the Economic Theory of Socialism, edited by Lippincott, Benjamin E., Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 1938.Google Scholar Consult also Schumpeter, J. A., Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (2nd ed.), New York, Harpers, 1947.Google Scholar

24 The leaders of the countries caught between communism and capitalism have sought feverishly after a “middle way.” This healthy trend was early manifest in The Three Principles of Sun Yat-sen, and is currently expressed in Jawaharlal Nehru and a host of lesser lights.

25 See footnote 11 above.

26 Autopsies on Nazi Germany should prove valuable in estimating the factors affecting realistic intelligence. The most general hypothesis, perhaps, is that pure power calculators try to calculate what their superiors want to hear, and believe that they dislike reports which appear to be incompatible with basic preferences. Personal, factional, and organizational rivalries are such, however, that much “truth leaks up.” The degree to which Hitler and his inner circle were correctly informed (up to the final days) is still in doubt; and as yet we know less than we need to know about other apex elites to provide a suitable basis of comparison.