"The proposition is to form a union of nations, to enter into a firm and lasting peace for the settlement of difficulties of whatever nature, which may arise among any of them hereafter, through the medium of a World Court backed by adequate force, to compel, if necessary, obedience to the Court's mandates."
— Jacob H. Schiff, 1916, senior partner of Kuhn-Loeb, financier of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and 1917.
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"In plain terms we have to re-transfer the prestige and the prerogatives of sovereignty from the fifty or sixty fragments of contemporary society.
"I will merely repeat that we are at present working, discreetly, but with all our might, to wrest this mysterious political force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of our world. And all the time we are denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands."
— Dr. Arnold Toynbee, Director of Royal Institute of International Affairs, speaking at Copenhagen, 1931.
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“World Government is single monopoly government; it is monopoly of power. Its avowed object is the concentration of such absolute power that it can prevent any single national government from waging war. If it has power to stop a government waging war by monopoly control of raw materials, monopoly control of armed forces and the establishment of an international police force, it has obviously got power to control everything that single national governments and their peoples can or want to do. Has there ever at any time in history been a single instance of centralized power resulting other than in tyranny for the meek?"
— VOICE (England), Mar. 20, 1954
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"All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
— Lord Acton.
"So many of the world betterment schemes have involved the "full employment" idea. It sounds innocuous enough until one looks behind the label. One of the best descriptions of what is meant by "full employment" can be found in a report published by the UN in 1949 entitled "National and International Measures for Full Employment". In this report we find that unnecessary unemployment is due to the deficiency in effective demand. And how is it to be corrected? "The attainment of full employment and its maintenance may therefore require sustained action, purposely directed to that end; and while numerous agencies may cooperate, the central role must be assumed by government."
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"...the policy of the world economic system amounts to a philosophy of life. There are really only three alternative policies in respect to a world economic organization:
“The first is that it is an end in itself for which man exists.
"The second is that while it is not an end in itself, it is the most powerful means of constraining the individual to do things he does not want to do; e.g., it is a system of Government. This implies a fixed ideal of what the world ought to be.
"And the third is that the economic activity is simply a functional activity of men and women in the world, that the end of men, while unknown, is something towards which most rapid progress is made by the free expansion of individuality, and that, therefore, economic organization is most efficient when it most easily and rapidly supplies economic wants without encroaching on the other functional activities."
— C. H. Douglas, Swanwick Address, 1924
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"Speaking to a brief which appeared to have been largely provided by P.E.P. (Political and Economic Planning, an organ of the Fabian Society, responsible for infiltration of socialistic ideas into the British Government during the last 30 years), the President of the Institution of Production Engineers, Sir Walter Puckey, said... that he wanted 'to dispel an erroneous impression that the main purpose of Automation is to displace labour.'... Sir Walter Puckey urged his hearers to devote their attention to the development and production of novelty."
— VOICE, July 16, 1955
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That is, there is concerted action to see that Automation is not allowed to lead to a logical and natural end — more leisure for more individuals and the national dividend. In place of that more modern models of automobiles are to be made and the old ones, scrapped. More, flimsier clothing is to be made. Government departments to expand more. Partly, it is inherent in the faultiness of the system. But along with it there is a big idea.
"Specially interesting in this connection is a Platonic dialogue on self-government written by Santayana and included in his "Dialogues in Limbo." Here is involved the character of the members of society — self-government and the character of social control in its incidence on the members. The issue centres around the nature of self-government in the world where "right governments rests on the will of the governed." The "Stranger" visiting Socrates in Limbo states his problem:
“Our tragedy is an old one, of which you drew the moral long ago; it is the tragedy of those who do as they wish, but do not get what they want. It is the tragedy of self-government."
"Socrates comments that it would be a terrible tragedy if so excellent a thing as self-government came to a sad end. This cannot be, for a people who learned self-government — governing himself and himself only would be a race of philosophers. Then in characteristic steps Socrates draws forth the comment of the "Stranger."
"Of course by self-government we do not mean the government of self. We mean that the people collectively issue the orders which they must obey individually."
"And adds Socrates:
"How surprising! Am I to understand that under self-government as you practise it, no man governs himself in anything, but that each is governed in everything by all the others?"
"And concludes this exchange:
"Then your democracy, which I suppose intends to express the autonomy of the individual, in effect entirely abolishes that autonomy?"
"This dialogue will serve very well as a criticism of the contemporary inversion of the relation of the individual and society, wether it is called communism, fascism, socialism, or totalitarianism (or ballot box democracy). It is strangely enough an incisive criticism of much of the literature of the National Education Association. It is at the basis of much of the social interpretation... The objective of the social process and the social milieu is a self-governing individual..."
— Dr. E. A. Fitzpatrick, Philosophy of Education, (Bruce Publishing Co., Milwaukee, 1953).
- D. H.