Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

As we have mentioned, Fascism is the adoption by the vested interests in a society of an authoritarian form of government in order to maintain their vested interests and prevent the reform of the society. In the twentieth century in Europe, the vested interests usually sought to prevent the reform of the economic system (a reform whose need was made evident by the long-drawn-out depression) by adopting an economic program whose chief element was the effort to fill the deflationary gap by rearmament.

The Pluralist Economy and World Blocs

The economic disasters of two wars, a world depression, and the postwar fluctuations showed clearly by 1960 that a new economic organization of society was both needed and available. The laissez-faire competitive system had destroyed itself, and almost destroyed civilization as well, by its inability to distribute the goods it could produce. The system of monopoly capitalism had helped in this disaster, and clearly showed that its efforts, in Fascist countries, to protect its profits and privileges by authoritarian government and ultimately by war were unsuccessful because it could not combine conservatism in economic and social life with the necessary innovation and freedom in military and intellectual life to win the wars it could start. Moreover, Communism, on the winning side of the war, nonetheless showed that it, like any authoritarian system, failed to produce innovations, flexibility, and freedom; it could make extensive industrial advances only by copying freer peoples, and could not raise its standards of living substantially because it could not combine lack of freedom and force in political life and in the utilization of economic resources with the increased production of food and spiritual or intellectual freedom which were the chief desires of its own peoples.

This almost simultaneous failure of laissez faire, of economic Fascism, and of Communism to satisfy the growing popular demand both for rising standards of living and for spiritual liberty has forced the mid-twentieth century to seek some new economic organization. This demand has been intensified by the arrival on the scene of new peoples, new nations, and new tribes who by their demands for these same goods have shown their growing awareness of the problems, and their determination to do something about them. As this new group of underdeveloped peoples look about, they have been struck by the conflicting claims of the two great super-Powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. The former offered the goods the new peoples wanted (rising standards of living and freedom), while the latter seemed to offer methods of getting these goods (by state accumulation of capital, government direction of the utilization of economic resources, and centralized methods of over-all social planning) which might tend to smother these goals. The net result of all this has been a convergence of all three systems toward a common, if remote, system of the future.

The ultimate nature of that new system of economic and social life is not yet clear, but we might call it the “pluralist economy,” and characterize its social structure as one which provides prestige, rewards, and power to managerial groups of experts whose contributions to the system are derived from their expertise and “know-how.” These managers and experts, who clearly are a minority in any society, are recruited from the society as a whole, can be selected only by a process of “careers open to talent” on a trial-and-error basis, and require freedom of assembly, discussion, and decision in order to produce the innovations needed for the future success, or even the survival, of the system in which they function. Thus the pluralist economy and the managerial society, from the early 1940’s, have forced the growth of a new kind of economic organization which will be totally unlike the four types of pre-1939 (American laissez faire, Stalinist Communism, authoritarian Fascism, and underdeveloped areas).

The chief characteristics of the new pluralist managerial system are five in number:

1. The central problem of decision-making in the new system will be concerned with the allotment of resources among three claimants: (a) consumers’ goods to provide rising standards of living; (b) investment in capital goods to provide the equipment to produce consumers’ goods; (c) the public sector covering defense, public order, education, social welfare, and all the central care of administrative activities associated with the young, the old, and public welfare as a whole.

2. The process of decision-making among these three claimants will take the form of a complex, multilateral struggle among a number of interested groups. These groups, which differ from one society or area to another, are in constant flux in each society or area. In general, however, the chief blocs or groups involved will be: (a) the defense forces, (b) labor, (c) the farmers, (d) heavy industry, (e) light industry, (f ) transport and communication groups, (g) finance, fiscal, and banking groups, (h) commercial, real-estate, and construction interests, (i) scientific, educational, and intellectual groups, (j) political party and government workers, and (k) consumers in general.

3. The process of decision-making operates by the slow and almost imperceptible shifts of the various blocs, one by one, from support to neutralism to opposition toward the existing division of resources among the three claimant sectors by the central managerial elite. If, for example, there is excess allotment of resources to the defense or governmental sector, the farming groups, consumers, commercial groups, intellectuals, and others will become increasingly dissatisfied with the situation and gradually shift their pressures toward a reduction of the resources for defense and an increase of the resources for the consumer or the capital-investment sectors. Such shifts are complex, gradual, reversible, and continuous.

4. The working out of these shifts of resources to achieve the more concrete goals of the diverse interest blocs in the society will be increasingly dominated by rationalist and scientific methods emphasizing analytical and quantitative techniques. This means that emotional and intuitive forces will play, as always, a considerable role in the shifting of interest blocs which dominate the allotment of resources among the three sectors, but that rational rather than emotional methods, on quantitative rather than qualitative bases, will dominate the utilization of such resources within each sector for more specific objectives. This will require considerable freedom of discussion in such utilization even where, as in Communist states or in underdeveloped areas, authoritarian and secretive methods are used in reference to the allotments among sectors. And, in general, there will be a very considerable modification of the areas and objectives of freedom in all societies of the world, with gradual reduction of numerous personal freedoms of the past accompanied by the gradual increase of other fundamental freedoms, especially intellectual, which will provide the technical innovations, the clash of ideas, and the release of personal energy necessary for the success, or even the survival, of modern state systems.

5. The details of the operations of this new system will inevitably differ from area to area and even from state to state. In the Western bloc of states the shifts of public opinion continue to be reflected very largely in shifting political parties. Within the Communist bloc these shifts will take place, as they have in the past, among a smaller group of insiders and on a much more personal basis, so that shifts of targets and direction of policy will be revealed to the public by shifts of personnel in the state’s bureaucratic structure. And in the underdeveloped countries, where possession of power is frequently associated with support from the armed forces, the process may be reflected by changes in policy and direction by the existing elite and rulers who retain their power in spite of changing policies.