GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

CRITICISM OF IDEALIST THEORY 745
cxclusiveness ofthe Nation-State, as idealist theory conceives
it. Sir Norman Angell has conclusively shown that "it
pays men better to think and feel as members of the universal
society's to behave, that is to say, as if territorial State
boundaries did not exist, or would shortly be superseded,
than to behave as if these boundaries were unsurmountable
and irremovable. "In banking, and for that matter in
other economic things also," he continues, "the world is one
Society. Politically it is several distinct societies tending to
compete with one another. Of these two facts the former is
more important, and determines action to a greater extent/ 9
When it- is remembered that these associations 9
economic
purposes cut right across the boundaries of the Nation-
State, the possibility of a new division of mankind on the
basis of community of economic interests, in place of the
existing political division based on territorial proximity,
is one that cannot be overlooked. Marxist theory, as we
have seen, regards the economic division between class and
class as fundamental. The typical effect produced by die
new economic stratification of mankind is exemplified by
the fact that the member of a company whose object is the
production and importation of oranges from Brazil tends
to be more concerned in the interests and welfare of the
Brazilians who export the oranges, than in those of his
next-door neighbour in a London suburb whom he probably
does not know. In other words, there is substituted
an economic international bond based on money-malting,
for the old local and national bond based on the chances of
birth in the same square mile; such substitutions are
hostile to the power and cohesion of the Nation-State.
(IV) That the Existing Political Organization of Society
is already to some extent an Anachronism
The foregoing considerations introduce a new factor into
the situation which bids fair to destroy many of the pre-
suppositions upon which the idealist theory of the State is
based. On a previous page I drew attention to the fact that
the national State is a particular organizational mould into
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