Bertrand Russell
HAS MAN A FUTURE?
(First published in 1961)
CHAPTER IV
Liberty or Death?
Patrick Henry, an American patriot who rose to eminence during the War of Independence, is now chiefly remembered for his exclamation: ‘Give me Liberty, or give me Death.’ In the mouths of fanatical anti-Communists, this has become a slogan purporting to mean that a world without human beings would be preferable to a Communist world. As Patrick Henry meant it, however, it had a quite different significance. He was advocating a just cause, and, owing to British hostility, the cause could not triumph without the loss of American lives. Consequently, his death might promote liberty. In such circumstances, it is right and proper that his slogan should be approved.
When, however, this same slogan is used to justify a nuclear war, the situation is very different. We do not know what would be the outcome of a nuclear war. It might be the end of the human species. It might be the survival of a few scattered bands of anarchic plunderers in a world that had lost aII social cohesion. It might, in the most favourable circumstances imaginable, result in very tight governmental despotisms with rigid rationing of all the necessaries of life. Herman Kahn, who is concerned to justify nuclear war in certain circumstances, admits that, at the best, it would result in what he calls ‘disaster socialism’ (p. 438). The one thing in which it (could not possibly result is ordered liberty such as Patrick Henry wanted and his modern admirers pretend to want. 1
To die for a cause is noble if the cause is good and your death promotes it. If it is practically certain that your death will not promote it, your action shows merely fanaticism. It is particularly obvious in the case of those who say explicitly that they would prefer the extinction of our species to a Communist victory, or, alternatively, to an anti-Communist victory. Assuming Communism to be as bad as its worst enemies assert, it would nevertheless be possible for improvement to occur in subsequent generations. Assuming anti-Communism to be as bad as the most excessive Stalinists think it, the same argument applies. There have been many dreadful tyrannies in past history, but, in time, they have been reformed or swept away. While men continue to exist, improvement is possible; but neither Communism nor anti-Communism can be built upon a world of corpses.
Those who talk about the ‘free world’ and are the most active in promoting hatred of Communism show, in a number of ways, that they are not quite sincere in their professed policy. The British Government has lately gone out of its way to show friendship to Portugal, although Portugal is engaged in a brutal suppression of the non-white population of Angola. Spain, under Franco, has nearly, if not quite, as little liberty as Russia under Khrushchev, yet the West befriends Spain in every possible way. The Anglo-French Suez expedition was not much less wicked in intention than the Russian suppression of the Hungarian rebellion, though it did infinitely less harm because it was unsuccessful. In Cuba, Guatemala, and British Guiana, Western Powers have displayed their determination to thwart the wishes of the inhabitants, provided this was possible and was necessary in order to keep them in the Western campo Membership of the Communist Party has recently been made criminal in the United States, except in the case of those who can prove that they did not know Communism to be subversive. All thesc are crimes against liberty. And the more tense the situation becomes, the more such crimes will be thought justified in the cause of liberty.
There is in the West much more regimentation and much more misleading propaganda by the Establishment than is generally known. Nor is it admitted that all such restrictions diminish the difference between East and West, and make the claim of the West to be called ‘The Free World’ derisory.
Consider, for example, the question of American bases in Britain. How many people know that within each of them there is a hard kernel consisting of the airmen who can respond to an alert and are so highly trained that they can be in the air within a minute or two? This kernel is kcpt entirely isolated from the rest of the camp, which is not admitted to it. It has its own mess, dormitories, libraries, cinemas, etc., and there are armed guards to prevent other Americans in the base camp from having access to it. Every month or two, everybody in it, including the Commander, is flown back to America and replaced by a new group. The men in this inner kernel are allowed almost no contact with the other Americans in the base camp and no contact whatever with any of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood.
It seems clear that the whole purpose is to keep the British ignorant and to preserve, among the personncl of the kernel, that purely mechanical response to orders and propaganda, for which the whole of their training is designed. Moreover, orders to this group do not come from the Commandant, but direct from Washington. To suppose that at a crisis the British Government can have any control over the orders sent from Washington is pure fantasy. It is obvious that at any moment orders might be sent from Washington which would lead to reprisals by the Soviet forces and to the extermination of the population of Britain within an hour.
An extraordinarily interesting case which illustrates the power of the Establishment, at any rate in America, is that of Claude Eatherly, who gave the signal for the dropping of the bomb at Hiroshima. His case also illustrates that in the modern world it often happens that only by breaking the law can a man escape from committing atrocious crimes. He was not told what the bomb would do and was utterly horrified when he discovered the consequences of his acto He devoted himself throughout many years to various kinds of civil disobedience with a view to calling attention to the atrocity of nuclear weapons and to expiating the sense of guilt which, if he did not act, would weigh him down. The Authorities decided that he was to be considered mad, and a board of remarkably conformist psychiatrists endorsed that official view. Eatherly was repentant and certified; Truman was unrepentant and uncertified. I have seen a number of Eatherly’s statements explaining his motives. These statements are entirely sane. But such is the power of mendacious publicity that almost everyone, including myself, believed that he had become a lunatic.
Quite recently, as a result of publicity about Eatherly’s case, the Attorney General in Washington intervened, and Eatherly, who had been locked up in the maximum security ward for half a year, was transferred to a section of the hospital where he enjoyed unusual privileges and had been told that he would be released without any fresh hearing in the near future. He was not released, but for the moment has escaped.
Consider, again, the sort of thing that happens in an investigation by the House Committee on un-American Activities. If some middle-aged man, whom this Committee happens to dislike, comes before it, something of the following kind is apt to occur:2
Question:
‘Thirty years ago, when you were a student, did you know any Communists?’
Answer: ‘Yes.’
Question: ‘Will you give their names?’
Answer : ‘No.’
The unfortunate man who is being interrogated is then liable to be sent to gaol for contempt of Congress unless, on reflection, he decides to win the respect of the Committee by giving his friends away or, better still, by inventing false accusations against his friends. This procedure also is supposed to be justified in the sacred name of liberty.
I do not mean what I have been saying as a defence or the USSR. The USSR, especially in Hungary and Eastern Germany, has shown a horrifying contempt of, and cruelty towards, those whom it has been oppressing. And it has been no more free from hypocrisy than the West: the Government of Eastern Germany, restored solely by Russian military power, is called ‘The German Democratic Republic”. But the fact that the East has been guilty of crimes does not prove the innocence of the West. Self-righteousness is prevalent on both sides, and on both sides is equally odious.
One of the dreadful things about nuclear weapons is that, if they are employed on a large scale, they will do immense harm, not only to the belligerents, but also to neutrals. The neutrals have, therefore, the elementary right of self-preservation in trying to prevent a nuclear war. Whatever right a country may have to preserve its own form of government in the face of foreign opposition, it cannot, with any justice, claim the right to exterminate many millions in countries which wish to keep out of the quarrel. How can it be maintained that, because many of us dislike Communism, we have a right to inflict death on innumerable inhabitants of India and Africa who wish only to be let alone? Can it be maintained that this is democracy? Would not democracy demand that uncommitted nations should not be involved without their own consent? ,
Consider, for example, the problem of Berlin. I observe with dismay that both the United States and the USSR have expressed their readiness for nuclear war rather than submit to a solution which they dislike. Such pronouncements, involving unimaginable horror for the whole world, are intolerable, and only seem justifiable as a result of mutual melodrama. The wickedness of the Kremlin or of Wall Street, as the case may be, is a fundamental dogma with fanatics on both sides, which blinds them to their common interest. In negotiations between East and West, both sides, if they were sane, would not regard each other as the enemy, but would view the H-bomb as the common enemy of both. Both East and West have a common interest, which is to escape the common destruction threatened by modern weapons. Both sides are blinded to this common interest by mutual hatred. In negotiations there is no genuine wish on either side to reach agreement, but only to avoid any semblance of a diplomatic victory by the other side.
Behind this mutual enmity, there lie certain human passions, of which the chief are pride, suspicion, fear and love of power. Negotiators consider that they have reason to feel pride when they resist even reasonable concessions, and in this they are usually supported by the public opinion of their own country. Suspicion-which is by no means groundless while the present temper remains unchanged on both sides-makes each side view what the other side says as probably containing some trap enticing our innocent negotiators by the diabolical cunning of the other side. Fear-which, again, is by no means irrational under present circumstances-has the effect which fear often has, of producing irrational reactions which increase the danger that is feared. This is a common phenomenon in private life, well known to psychiatrists. In a state of terror, most people do not think sanely but react in an instinctively animal manner. I once had a donkey which was kept in an outhouse. The outhouse caught fire, and it required the utmost efforts of several strong men to drag the donkey to safety. Left to itself, it would have been immobilized by terror and would have been burnt to death. The situation of the Great Powers in the present day is closely similar. This applies especially to the question of disarmament. Each side is terrified of lhe nuclear weapons of the other side, and seeks safety by increasing its own nuclear armaments. The other side naturally responds by a new increase on its side. In consequence, all the steps taken to diminish the nuclear peril, increase it.
Love of power is, perhaps, an even stronger motive than fear in enticing nations to pursue irrational policies. Although individual boastfulness is considered to be bad manners, national boastfulness is admired-at any rate, by the compatriots of those who practise it. Throughout history, great nations have been led to disaster by unwillingness to admit that their power had limits. World conquest has been a will-o’ -the-wisp by which one nation after another has been led to its downfall. Hitler’s Germany is the most recent example. Going backwards in time, we find many other examples, of which Napoleon, Genghis Khan, and Attila are the most noteworthy. Those who regard Genesis as authentic history may take Cain as the first example: he may well have thought that, with Abel out of the way, he could rule over coming generations. When Khrushchev threatens to obliterate the West, and when Dulles said, ‘We might win the hot war’, I am reminded of past examples of a similar folly.
And it is an utter folly, even from the narrowest point of view of self-interest. To spread ruin, misery and death throughout one’s own country as well as that of the enemy is the act of madmen. If East and West could cease their enmity, they could devote their scientific skill to their own welfare, to living without the burden of fear that only their own silliness has caused. For it is in the hearts of men that the evil lies. The vast instruments of terror that have been built up are external monuments to our own evil passions. Nothing in the non-human world affords any ground for existing hostilities. The trouble lies in the minds often, and it is in enlightening the minds ofmen that the cure must be sought.
There are those who say: ‘War is part of human nature, and human nature cannot be changed. If war means the end of man, we must sigh and submit.’ This is always said by those whose sigh is hypocritical. It is undeniable that there are men and nations to whom violence is attractive, but it is not the case that anything in human nature makes it impossible to restrain such men and nations. Individuals who have a taste for homicide are restrained by the criminal law, and most of us do not find life intolerable because we are not allowed to commit murders. The same is true of nations, however disinclined war-mongers may be to admit it. Sweden has never been at war since 1814. None of the Swedes that I have known has shown any sign of suffering from thwarted instinct for lack of war. There are many forms of peaceful competition which are not to be deplored, and, in these, men’s combative instincts can find full satisfaction. Political contests in a civilized country often raise just the kind of issues that would lead to war if they were between different nations. Democratic politicians grow accustomed to the limitations imposed by law. The same would be true in international affairs if there were political machinery for settling disputes and if men had become accustomed to respecting it. Not long ago, private disputes were often settled by duels, and those who upheld duelling maintained that its abolition would be contrary to human nature. They forgot, as present upholders of war forget, that what is called ‘human nature’ is, in the main, Ihe-The result of custom and tradition and education, and, in civilized men, only a very tiny fraction is due to primitive instinct. If the world could live for a few generations without war, war would come to seem as absurd as duelling has come to seem to us. No doubt there would still be some homicidal maniacs, but they would no longer be heads of Governments.
1 It is somewhat ironic that those who are most apt to quote Patrick Henry on Liberty or Death regard anybody who appeals to the First or Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, both of which were carried mainly by the efforts of Patrick Henry, as ipso facto a traitor.
2 There is an impression that this sort of thing ceased with the death of Senator McCarthy. This is not the case. The latest instance known to me occurred on April 4, 1961, when Pete Seeger, a folk singer, was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for just such an offence.
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