Man In The Modern World

ON LIVING IN A REVOLUTION
that it is a closed world, still organized in the form of independent
nation-states, but with those states brought into constant contact and
constant friction. What application of democratic principle will these
conditions bring out and emphasize?
Nationalist self-determination leads, in this closed world, to com-
petition and war; but cultural self-determination (as practised, for
instance, to a notable extent in the U.S.S.R., where regional cultures
are encouraged to develop fully and freely) is perhaps the best expres-
sion of Liberty in to-morrow's internationalism. The principle of
Fraternity may be broadly translated as co-operation: co-operation
for defence, for trade, for increased general consumption. This at
once rules out punitive tariffs, purely national armies, and imperi-
alist domination, and suggests the lines for new world-scale economic
and political organizations, both international, transnational, and
supernational.
In the new international sphere the most difficult of the three
democratic principles to translate into the relevant concrete terms is
Equality, since at the present time the world is composed of peoples
at such manifestly unequal levels of cultural and economic develop-
ment. However, we find a general principle to hand in that of
Potential Equality. Our aim with backward peoples will then be to
raise them to a position where they can take their international place
on a footing of actual equality. This does not imply that all peoples
are potentially identical culturally or that there may not be real differ-
ences in innate temperament or capacity. Cultural diversity is as
desirable as individual diversity. As with individuals, peoples and
nations contain vast reservoirs of untapped potentiality, and the demo-
cratic approach demands in both cases that they should be provided
with equality of opportunity to develop that potentiality.
We are beginning to realize the implications of these ideas in
relation to China: the Chinese people must be treated on a footing
of equality if the war is to be won and if we are to have a stable peace
in the Far East. The same realization is dawning with regard to
India. In the case of politically dependent peoples, the United States
adopted the principle of potential equality in its encouragement of
the Filipino's development toward independence. This was in strong
contrast with the British attitude in Malaya—with appropriate results
in the military sphere.
The general implications of this principle are twofold. First, a re-
definition of the status of colonies and dependent peoples, with a
formal pronouncement to the effect that the goal of colonial admin-
istration is preparation for self-government at the earliest possible
161