THE PLANNED SOCIETY
for the sake of the farmers, they can also control it in the
interests of world peace. Even if 'dirtless farming* should
not turn out to be a commercial proposition, nations, in
Dr. Willcox's phrase, can still 'live at home/ and live
(if the birth-rate does not sharply rise) in a hitherto un-
precedented plenty. It is profoundly significant that no
government has hitherto made any serious effort to apply
modern agro-biological methods on a large scale, for the
purpose of raising the standard of material well-being
among its subjects and of rendering imperialism and
foreign conquest superfluous. This fact alone would be
a sufficient demonstration of the truth that the causes of
war are not solely economic, but psychological. People
prepare for war, among other reasons, because war is in
the great tradition; because war is exciting and gives them
certain personal or vicarious satisfactions; because their
education has left them militaristically minded; because
they live in a society where success, however achieved, is
worshipped and where competition seems more * natural'
(because, under the present dispensation, it is more habitual)
than co-operation. Hence the general reluctance to embark
on constructive policies, directed towards the removal at
least of the economic causes of war. Hence, too, the
extraordinary energy which rulers and even the ruled put
into such destructive and war-provoking policies as re-
armament, the centralization of executive power and the
regimentation of the masses.
I have spoken hitherto of the international consequences
of national planning and" of the measures which planners
should take in order to minimize such consequences. In
the ensuing paragraphs I shall deal with planning in its
domestic aspects. Others have written, at great length
and in minute detail, about the strictly technical problems
of planning, and for a discussion of these problems I must
refer the readers to the already enormous literature of the
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