The Movement of World Revolution

5. The Spread of Western Ideologies

62 5 The Spread of Western Ideologies The four great civilizations which constituted the world that we know were all spiritual communities that owed their unity to a common religion. In China, India, Islam and Christendom alike, political citizenship and racial origins were secondary to religious belief and practice. The Indian who ceased to observe the laws of caste and the worship of the gods and accepted the teaching of Mohammed ceased to be a Hindu and became a Moslem. And, in the same way, the western Moslem who became a Christian did not merely change his religion; he passed over from one civilization to another and acquired rights of citizenship in a new society. During the last two centuries this situation has gradually changed. Nationality has taken the place of religion as the ultimate principle of social organization, and ideology has taken the place of theology as the creator of social ideals and the guide of public opinion. All over the world, beginning in Western Europe and extending gradually to the most remote regions of Asia and Africa, a change has taken place in the conditions of human existence and in the ways of social thought. The world has been made one, first by European trade, conquest and colonization, and later by Western science and technology. And behind the railway, the motor lorry and the airplane, there has spread a wave of secular ideas which had their origins in Europe in the age of the Enlightenment of the French Revolution, and which have communicated the ideas of political liberty and social equality, of nationality and selfdetermination , from one people to another until they have become literally world-wide. Although these ideas all had a common origin, during the nine- The Spread of Western Ideologies 63 teenth century they became differentiated into a number of distinct ideologies which were regarded as mutually exclusive and tended to become embodied in political parties and regimes. Thus Liberalism and Nationalism, Democracy and Socialism, Communism and Fascism all acquired this ideological form, although they were rarely found in a pure state. For example, we find National Liberalism and National Socialism in Germany, Liberal Democracy and Social Democracy in France and other similar compounds in other countries. At the present time there is a tendency for Liberal Democracy of the American type and Communist Socialism of the Russian type to become the opposite poles round which all the other ideologies and political regimes range themselves. Thus we have two distinct ideological complexes, Western Democracy and Eastern Soviet Communism, which threaten to divide the world between them. Both of them are European, and even Western European, in origin, but neither of them has its centre in Europe; one is Eurasian and the other is Euramerican. Both of them are secular ideologies as contrasted with the religious ideologies on which the four ancient world civilizations were based. Yet neither of them is entirely secular; Western Democracy is tending more and more to regard itself as the ally and protector of religion, while Soviet Communism, in spite of its avowedly anti-religious character, has always owed much of its success to its quasi-religious appeal. This is especially true in Asia, where Communism appears in the guise of a new religious or social way of salvation which promises to liberate men from oppression and suffering, on condition that they accept its authority and discipline by an act of unconditional surrender and obedience. How does Europe stand in the face of this situation? Its position differs from both that of America and that of Asia. America has grown up with the new ideology. It can hardly conceive of a society which is not secular and democratic, since this is the only society it has known. In Asia, on the other hand, the movement of secularization is very recent and very alien to the traditions of Asiatic culture; indeed, it was only with the coming of Communism that the secular ideologies reached the masses and imparted a revolutionary momentum to the movement of social change. Even today in India, and even more in 64 The Movement of World Revolution the Islamic world, the life of the people is still governed by religious beliefs and practices rather than by the secular ideologies. In Europe, the ideologies are a native growth and have exercised a profound influence on European culture for at least two centuries. Nevertheless they have never completely...