... Hesitations of Social Democracy, and the likely future of Social Democracy "These hesitations of social democracy, its uneasy mental poise between two opposing principles, socialistic regimentation and democratic liberty may be the root cause of the failure of socialism to make good in so many countries even when it had every chance on its side and its replacement by Page 13 the more vigorous... reason of man will no longer permit." Socialism must do away with individual liberty, even if it professes to respect it "Neither can it be done, it seems, on the basis of individual liberty; for that has broken down in the practice. Socialism therefore must do away with the democratic basis of individual liberty, even if it professes to respect it or to be marching towards a more rational freedom... its completeness the liberty of the individual will have to be destroyed or reduced to an almost vanishing quantity, it might be answered that the right of the individual to any kind of egoistic freedom as against the State which represents the mind, the will, the good and interest of the whole community, sarvam brahma, is a dangerous fiction, a baneful myth. Individual liberty of life and action - ...
... ble in theory but in practice it becomes a rule by force, an iron levelling-down, a rigid Page 106 regimentation: liberty suffers enormously and a dictatorship is created steam-rollering both social and intellectual life. Fraternity suffers too, for where liberty is not guaranteed there is always the Secret Police and no man can trust his neighbour and all live in fear and suspicion... on the world. Liberty, equality, fraternity - these are intended to be embodied most vividly by India. They have never been materialised in the full sense because either their true order has not quite been understood or else, if it has been understood, the ultimate conno-tation of them has been elusive. The French Revolution and its Napoleonic consolidation laid the stress on liberty Indeed this was... democratic peoples of the West are still fumbling after. Our Independence and Sri Aurobindo The way to fulfilment is by stressing neither liberty nor Page 107 equality but fraternity. Given genuine fraternity, liberty and equality follow. More than any other country India is equipped for building the democratic order on a fraternal basis. For, above all countries it ...
... × These hesitations of social democracy, its uneasy mental poise between two opposing principles, socialistic regimentation and democratic liberty, may be the root cause of the failure of socialism to make good in so many countries even when it had every chance on its side and its replacement by the more vigorous and ruthlessly... rather than formal liberty and equality upon fraternal comradeship in a free community, the ideal of intellectual as of spiritual Anarchism. 2 In fact the claim to equality like the thirst for liberty is Page 202 individualistic in its origin,—it is not native or indispensable to the essence of the collectivist ideal. It is the individual who demands liberty for himself, a free... those in which both liberty and equality are discarded as noxious democratic chimeras. But comradeship without liberty and equality can be nothing more than the like association of all—individuals, functional classes, guilds, syndicates, soviets or any other units—in common service to the life of the nation under the absolute control of the collectivist State. The only liberty left at the end would ...
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