The new internationalism: the fact and the response.

• Author: Galbraith, John Kenneth

The most common and perhaps the most serious error in modern political and social comment comes from overestimating the power of political and public action. We rejoice in believing that for better, and not too infrequently for worse, leaders--people--are in charge. All but invariably there is a deeper force to which the oratory and the action respond. I do not wish to deny or denigrate the role of political leadership; I will have something to urge in this regard later in this paper. I do wish to suggest that much, indeed most, political action is shaped by deeper change, by independently controlling trends. So it is with the greatest of political conflicts of our time, that of national interest as opposed to international, transnational concern and responsibility. Here, the history, not the public action, is indeed the controlling force.

The history begins with agriculture and the two primary essentials of life--food and textiles--which it provided. For both of these, land is essential; from both came the primal role of those who owned or worked the land. Commonly this awarded power to the landed aristocracy; this in turn held dominance over a peasant population distributed over the realm.

Subject to some exceptions, this was the basis for a strongly nationalist response. Territory was the essence of economic position and political power; it was strongly sought and defended. A peasantry was amply available for both defense and aggression, which often had a distinctly recreational aspect. This situation was most extreme in Europe and Asia. The United States, Canada and in some measure Latin America were spared because land was essentially a free good. But the United States, as recently as the last century, endured a bitter conflict with its agricultural and feudal South.

WITH the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution came a major change. Power passed from the landlord to the capitalist. Here too there was a strong economic foundation for nationalism. Markets, including those of the new arrivals on the industrial scene, needed, sought and received tariff protection on national grounds. And as the landed classes once brought nationalism and patriotism to the support of landed interests, so the new industrialists made it the hallmark and servant of their economic interests. As war once protected or expanded landed territory, so it now returned revenue to those who directly or indirectly armed the military forces. And war, as ever, deepened and was used to deepen nationalist passion. Here in microcosm was the history of the first half of the present century with its two infinitely cruel and devastating conflicts. Here is the situation which in the second half of the century we escaped. Here too there are underlying economic forces. In these days, we do not speak of economic determinism; there is a grave Marxist overtone which the careful scholar avoids. However, the reality intrudes.

In the last 50 years, those since the Second World War, there has been a massive and again controlling economic and social change. This has been...