Principles of Social Reconstruction — Chapter-by-Chapter Outline

Author: Bertrand Russell

First published: 1916

Edition covered: Routledge Classics edition, 1997 (ISBN 978-0-415-14349-3, with an introduction by Richard A. Rempel). The Routledge text follows the first edition published in 1916 by George Allen & Unwin, London, whose printed contents page was verified directly against a scan of the first impression (Internet Archive, principlesofsoci00russiala). The chapter titles and order were cross-verified against the full text of the 1917 American edition, published by The Century Company, New York, under the title Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel (Project Gutenberg #55610, from a 1920 printing), and against the Routledge product page's table of contents. All eight chapters were confirmed identical across the two editions; the only discrepancy found anywhere is Wikipedia's plural rendering of the first chapter ("The Principles of Growth"), which no printed edition examined uses. The book's chapters were originally delivered as lectures in early 1916, while Russell was a pacifist opponent of the First World War; for that opposition he was fined £100 and dismissed from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1916, and imprisoned in 1918.

Central thesis

Principles of Social Reconstruction argues that the traditional individualistic liberalism, which built its politics on economic desire and rational self-interest, collapsed in 1914 — and that the war revealed the true springs of human action to lie in impulse, not desire, and in a deep principle of growth in every individual that institutions either free or thwart. Russell holds that war grew out of ordinary human nature, not German wickedness or diplomatic blunder, and that it therefore cannot be ended by reason alone or by treaties, but only by a fundamental reconstruction of the institutions that mold impulse: the State, private property, education, marriage, and the Churches.

The book's political program is the redirection, not the repression, of the vital impulses. Russell divides human activity into creative and possessive impulses, and proposes as the supreme principle of politics that all that is creative be promoted and all that centers on possession be diminished. Each institution is then judged by this standard: the State, as organized force, promotes war and dwarfs the individual; private property fosters the worship of money and starves the instinct of constructiveness; education is used as a weapon of creed and nationalism instead of reverence for the child's growth; the marriage law and the economics of children degrade the quality of the race; the endowed Churches and their creeds stifle the life of the spirit. Against all of these Russell recommends devolution, industrial democracy, liberty, and a new religion based on liberty, justice, and love — what the last chapter condenses into two principles: promote the growth and vitality of individuals and communities, and let no one's growth be at another's expense.

If the world is to be saved from the collective madness of war, from what springs of human action must a new political philosophy be built, and what institutions would make men's creative impulses prevail over their possessive ones?

Chapter 1 — The Principle of Growth

Central question

What really drives human action — reason and desire, or something deeper — and what does the answer imply for political philosophy after the war?

Main argument

The war as the test of political theory. Russell opens by declaring that the war taught him "a certain view of the springs of human action," and that this view offers "a basis for political philosophy more capable of standing erect in a time of crisis than the philosophy of traditional Liberalism has shown itself to be." He rejects both common explanations of the war — that it is due to the wickedness of the Germans, or (as pacifists say) to diplomatic tangle and governmental ambition. Both fail to see "the extent to which war grows out of ordinary human nature." What men believe without grounds is an index of their impulses: "Unfounded beliefs are the homage which impulse pays to reason."

Impulse versus desire. All human activity springs from two sources, impulse and desire. Political philosophy has been built almost entirely on desire: desire involves an interval between need and satisfaction, and will is the pursuit of distant objects. But desire governs only the more conscious, explicit, civilized part of our nature; "in all the more instinctive part of our nature we are dominated by impulses to certain kinds of activity, not by desires for certain ends." Children run and shout for the impulse; dogs bay the moon from an impulse to bark. An impulse is blind and purposeless; desire arises when an impulse is restrained and we imagine its consequences. A man may write a book believing he desires praise, but the creative impulse moves him, and once the work is finished it grows uninteresting to him.

Only passion can control passion. The natural first thought is that men should be more under the dominion of reason. Russell answers that this is true but insufficient: "It is only those in whom the desire to think truly is itself a passion who will find this desire adequate to control the passions of war. Only passion can control passion, and only a contrary impulse or desire can check impulse." Reason as preached by traditional moralists is "too negative, too little living, to make a good life. It is not by reason alone that wars can be prevented, but by a positive life of impulses and passions antagonistic to those that lead to war."

Impulses for life and impulses for death. Blind impulse is "the source of war, but it is also the source of science, and art, and love." The aim is not the weakening of impulse — that is death — but "the direction of impulse towards life and growth rather than towards death and decay." Russell analyzes the correlative impulses of aggression and resistance to aggression, each producing its harvest of beliefs: the aggressor's conviction of being a chosen people (Bernhardi, the early Mohammedan conquerors, the Book of Joshua), the resister's belief in the peculiar wickedness of the feared enemy. The three classes who stood outside the war's impulses were: men of oppressed nations (who merely differ in circumstances), the impulse-atrophied (passive pacifists, rightly decried — "lack of impulse is death"), and active pacifists, who are not passionless but moved by some impulse hostile to war strong enough to overcome the impulses that lead to it. Three forces on the side of life need no exceptional endowment: love, the instinct of constructiveness, and the joy of life — all three checked and enfeebled by institutions that "rest upon injustice and authority."

The principle of growth. Each human being has a "central principle of growth, an instinctive urgency leading them in a certain direction, as trees seek the light." "The utmost that social institutions can do for a man is to make his own growth free and vigorous: they cannot force him to grow according to the pattern of another man." Men, like trees, need the right soil and freedom from oppression; and impulses injurious to others tend to result from thwarted growth. The principle of growth in modern men is hampered by institutions inherited from a simpler age.

From authority to liberty and back. All our institutions have their historic basis in Authority — the Oriental despot, the Creator, Emperor and Pope, feudal kings and nobles, the paterfamilias. Medieval society was organic because its authority was genuinely believed; it broke down through its failure to satisfy the demands for justice and liberty, beginning with Luther's right of private judgment. The result was extreme individualism, then strife, then the hope of a new reintegration. Nationalism shows the pattern: a nation wins freedom by the doctrine of rights, then oppresses a smaller nation with the same arguments its oppressors once used. "When the oppressed win freedom they are as oppressive as their former masters."

Instinctive liking and common purpose. The two sources of good relations between individuals are instinctive liking and common purpose. Carlyle and Walt Whitman are the opposite poles: Carlyle's repugnance for most men produced his worship of force and contempt for the weak; Whitman's expansive liking produced his optimism and democracy. "There is no objective reason to be given to show that one of these attitudes is essentially more rational than the other" — but a world of Walt Whitmans would be happier, and "this is perhaps the most important of all the effects by which political institutions ought to be judged." A nation rests on a faint instinctive liking for compatriots and a common instinctive aversion from foreigners. Political institutions must therefore embody common purposes and foster instinctive liking.

Human nature can be changed. The commonplace "that human nature cannot be changed is untrue": instincts are profoundly modified by beliefs, material and social circumstances, and institutions. A Dutchman has much the same native disposition as a German, but different instincts "owing to the absence of militarism and of the pride of a Great Power." Institutions outlast the circumstances that made them a "fit garment for instinct": the State, private property, the patriarchal family, the Churches, armies and navies "have become in some degree oppressive, in some measures hostile to life." Politics assumes that men's only needs are economic — an inadequate theory, since the war's economic motives are "to a great extent mythical." Socialism as a panacea is mistaken: men need "more freedom, more self-direction, more outlet for creativeness, more opportunity for the joy of life, more voluntary coöperation, and less involuntary subservience to purposes not their own."

Key ideas

• Human activity springs from two sources, impulse and desire, and impulse is the more instinctive, more vital part of our nature.
• Beliefs are an index to impulses; "unfounded beliefs are the homage which impulse pays to reason."
• Only passion can control passion; reason alone is too negative to prevent war.
• Blind impulse is the source of war but also of science, art, and love; the task is to direct impulse toward life and growth, not to weaken it.
• Every person has a central principle of growth, like a tree seeking light; institutions can free or thwart it but cannot impose a pattern.
• All institutions rest historically on authority; the fight for justice and liberty dissolved authority into isolated self-assertion, and reintegration requires institutions embodying the new respect for the individual.
• Good relations rest on instinctive liking and common purpose; increasing the amount of instinctive liking in the world is the most important test of political institutions.
• Instincts are malleable: human nature can be changed by circumstances and institutions, and the claim that it cannot is false.

Key takeaway

Political reconstruction must begin from a psychology of impulse and growth rather than a politics of economic desire, because the war itself grew out of the impulsive side of human nature — and institutions, not reason, are what redirect that impulse toward life.

Chapter 2 — The State

Central question

Is the immense power of the modern State necessary and beneficial, and what harm does it do to life and liberty?

Main argument

The State as organized force. The essence of the State "is that it is the repository of the collective force of its citizens." That force takes two forms: internal — the law and the police — and external — the Army and Navy. In a civilized State force is employed against its own citizens only according to previously laid-down rules (the criminal law); against foreigners it is not regulated by any code, and proceeds according to real or fancied national interest. Russell distinguishes the State's essential functions (law, police, army, navy — the subject of his attack) from its nonessential ones (Post Office, elementary education), where the socialism-individualism debate properly belongs.

The extent of State power. "The power of the State is only limited internally by the fear of rebellion and externally by the fear of defeat in war. Subject to these restrictions, it is absolute." It can seize property by taxation, determine marriage and inheritance, punish opinions it dislikes, put men to death for wishing to belong to another State, and order all able-bodied males to risk their lives in battle. Universal military service is "the supreme illustration of the difference between its attitude to its own citizens and its attitude to the citizens of other States": "The State punishes, with impartial rigor, both those who kill their compatriots and those who refuse to kill foreigners." Russell's example of the French artist and the German musician, each called upon to shoot the other or be shot by their own countrymen, is "the politics of Bedlam," "a wholly evil thing, quite as evil as the power of the Church which in former days put men to death for unorthodox thought." In democracies the State adds a further instrument: manufactured public opinion, "a tyrannous public opinion is as great an enemy to liberty as tyrannous laws."

Why men acquiesce. Four sources of obedience: (1) personal loyalty to the sovereign — decayed, "probably now counts for little except in Japan"; (2) tribal feeling — nations as enlargements of the family, now triumphant since the universal disbelief in creeds has left nationalism "stronger than at any previous period of the world's history"; (3) two reasonable fears — of crime and anarchy within, of aggression from without, each feeding the other through armaments; (4) patriotism in its religious aspect — worship, willing sacrifice, joyful merging of the individual life in the life of the nation, reinforced by an education that teaches each nation its own merits. As a religion, patriotism is unsatisfactory "because of its lack of universality": "A world full of patriots may be a world full of strife."

The harm done by the State. The chief harm is "promotion of efficiency in war" — a race in which all States gain strength and none gains security, while the means of offense, once built, are sooner or later used. "It is of the essence of the State to suppress violence within and to facilitate it without." Second, the vastness of the modern State produces "the resulting sense of individual helplessness": even in the United States, "most men have a sense of almost complete impotence in regard to all large issues," with something of the weariness of the Roman Empire. Third, the chief end of almost all great States is power, especially power in war; hence the wickedness attributed to secession (Ireland, Poland), and the pride and fear that make negotiation impossible — the habit of authority, as in head masters' conferences, unfits men for friendly negotiation. The class bias of governments is shown in labor disputes: soldiers are ordered out against strikers, never against employers; "the men composing [Governments] belong, by their success if not by their origin, to the same class as the great employers of labor."

The one good purpose of the State. The State has one purpose which is on the whole good: "the substitution of law for force in the relations of men." But this can only be fully achieved by a world-State, without which international relations cannot be subjected to law. And law is "too static, too much on the side of what is decaying, too little on the side of what is growing" — so a world authority must decide questions "as far as possible in the same sense in which they would be decided by war": "The function of authority should be to render the appeal to force unnecessary, not to give decisions contrary to those which would be reached by force." Against the objection that this sacrifices justice, Russell answers that "it is sheer cant to speak of a contest of might against right": right is a factor in the balance of force, and a legislature should decide "in a way which is felt to make an appeal to force unnecessary."

What the State ought to do. Two principles: first, where the welfare of the whole community depends on the practically universal attainment of a minimum, the State has the right to insist on it — sanitation and the prevention of infectious diseases, compulsory education, the care of children, and the encouragement of scientific research (in which "Great Britain lags behind all other civilized countries"). Second, the State must diminish economic injustice: the law creates and facilitates monopolies, the most glaring being private ownership of land; "the State ought to be the primary recipient of rent." But justice, like law, is too static to be the supreme principle.

Liberty through organization. The way to combine organization and liberty is "securing power for voluntary organizations" — trade unions, cooperative societies, professions, universities — and devolving positive initiative to them, leaving the State "in the position of a federal authority or a court of arbitration," insisting on some settlement while tolerating exceptions and resisting uniformity. The objection to every imperium in imperio "is only the jealousy of the tyrant": Lloyd George's fight with the medical profession, the Welsh miners routing "the whole power of the State," and the financiers whom no Government would dream of fighting show what strong bodies can do. "The essential merit of the State is that it prevents the internal use of force by private persons. Its essential demerits are, that it promotes the external use of force, and that, by its great size, it makes each individual feel impotent even in a democracy." The chapter's last sentence: "In internal as in external affairs, the worst enemy of freedom is war."

Key ideas

• The State is the repository of the collective force of its citizens: law and police within, army and navy without.
• State power is nearly absolute, limited only by fear of rebellion and fear of defeat; conscription is its supreme symbol.
• Men acquiesce through tribal feeling, the twin fears of anarchy and invasion, and the religious element in patriotism.
• Patriotism as a religion fails because it lacks universality: it stops sacrifice at the national frontier.
• The State suppresses violence within and facilitates it without; its chief harm is the promotion of efficiency in war.
• The State's one essentially good purpose — law instead of force — requires a world-State, and law must be tempered to allow growth.
• The State should enforce universal minima (sanitation, education, children's welfare) and curb economic injustice, including taking rent.
• Liberty can be combined with organization only by devolving initiative to voluntary associations; war is the worst enemy of freedom.

Key takeaway

The State has grown harmful through excess of power — internally oppressive, externally warlike, and dwarfing the individual — and must be reduced from an absolute master to a federal authority that keeps the peace, while its positive functions are devolved to voluntary organizations.

Chapter 3 — War as an Institution

Central question

Why do men tolerate war as a permanent institution, and how could it be abolished if they wished to abolish it?

Main argument

War springs from impulse, not calculation. War is a conflict between two groups, each trying to kill and maim as many as possible of the other "in order to achieve some object which it desires" — generally power or wealth. But "war, like all other natural activities, is not so much prompted by the end which it has in view as by an impulse to the activity itself": "the ends to be achieved by war appear in prospect far more important than they will appear when they are realized, because war itself is a fulfilment of one side of our nature." If actions sprang from calculations of happiness, "the purely rational arguments against war would have long ago put an end to it."

War and police force. War differs from police action in that the police act under a neutral authority, whereas "in war it is the parties to the dispute themselves who set force in motion." International practice forbids intervention unless national interests are involved: "The case would be analogous in internal affairs if the police would only interfere with murder when it happened that a policeman had been killed." A similar use of neutral force internationally is "the best hope of permanent peace."

Pride and envy: the German example. Two forces cooperate to produce war in every civilized country: a small bellicose minority in ordinary times, and a "war fever" that seizes the whole population at crisis. The German policy of 1914 shows the state of mind: patriotic exclusiveness (German interests the only ones to consider), a competitive conception of national welfare ("the destruction of good things abroad appears to them almost as desirable as the creation of good things in Germany"), envy of English wealth, power, and empire, and hot hatred of English pride — Farinata's contempt in the Inferno. England and Germany at the outbreak stand as "almost mythical representatives of pride and envy — cold pride and hot envy."

The psychology of war fever. The ordinary wage-earner has insured against sickness and death and found a safe employment; but "security, once achieved, brings a Nemesis of ennui." In the crisis he discovers that his nation can take risks: "The long years of private caution are avenged by a wild plunge into public madness... the wild man of the woods emerges from the mental prison in which he has been confined." There is also a quasi-rational element: a nation rarely catches war fever when defeat is obviously probable — Holland did not fight for Belgium. So aggressive war would become unlikely "if its chances of success were very small" — an argument for a strong peace-loving alliance. "The fundamental problem for the pacifist is to prevent the impulse towards war which seizes whole communities from time to time," and this requires changes in education, in the economic structure, and in the moral code.

Vigor without war. Many impulses that lead to war — imagination, adventure, the joy of conflict, solidarity — "are in themselves essential to any vigorous or progressive life." "All Utopias that have hitherto been constructed are intolerably dull": happiness depends on activity, not passive enjoyment. The same vital energy that produced the Athens of Pericles also made it warlike; the Roman Empire was pacific and unproductive. William James's "Moral Equivalent of War" (1898) stated the problem better than anyone, but his solution is not adequate; the problem is one of degree. Every vigorous man needs "some sense of resistance overcome": the men who make great fortunes desire the sense of power through a contest, not the money — hence American millionaires who give it away. Some pacifists and all militarists deprecate political conflict; the pacifists are mistaken — party conflict, class conflict, and political life generally give "a peaceful outlet to some of the impulses which lead to war."

Peace, status quo, and hegemony. Peace cannot be secured by insisting on the status quo: "In a world where nations grow and decay... it is not possible or desirable to maintain the status quo for ever." England's insistence on it shared the responsibility for the war; Germany had as good a right to an Empire as any Great Power. If war is to cease, "there will have to be political methods of achieving the results which now can only be achieved by successful fighting." Russell weighs peace by hegemony (the Roman Empire, the Pax Britannica, the case for a Pax Germanica): England's resistance to revolutionary France in 1793 was wrong — French conquest would have made Europe "happier, more civilized, and more free" — while resistance to Philip II was right; everything turns on the degree of interference with liberty. A mild German hegemony would have satisfied Germany before the war; the war itself increased immeasurably the dangers it was meant to avert.

The world-State. "So long as there are many sovereign States, each with its own Army, there can be no security that there will not be war. There will have to be in the world only one Army and one Navy before there will be any reason to think that wars have ceased." This means one world-wide military State, and no reason for the civil and military State to coincide: "The greater modern States are already too large for most civil purposes, but for military purposes they are not large enough." A large military State's advantage is enlarging the area of internal peace (England and Canada, Manchester and Liverpool would never fight); its disadvantages are larger wars (Belgium devastated over a dispute between Austria and Serbia) and facilitated oppression (England and Russia in Persia). But why is world federation so remote? "The ultimate fact from which war results... is the fact that a large proportion of mankind have an impulse to conflict rather than harmony, and can only be brought to coöperate with others in resisting or attacking a common enemy." Yet the same impulse abolished duelling: "If political contest within a World-State were substituted for war, imagination would soon accustom itself to the new situation." The sixpence example: to shoot a friend for sixpence is criminal absurdity, but "if I can get sixty-five million accomplices to join me in this criminal absurdity, I become one of a great and glorious nation."

The glamour of war. War is surrounded with glamour — "by tradition, by Homer and the Old Testament, by early education, by elaborate myths," by the heroism and self-sacrifice the myths call out: Jephthah sacrificing his daughter would have let her live if not deceived by a myth. "Devotion to the nation is perhaps the deepest and most widespread religion of the present age... it demands its persecutions, its holocausts, its lurid heroic cruelties." Men must learn "to be noble without being cruel, to be filled with faith and yet open to truth" — which requires facing "the terrible realization that the gods before whom they have bowed down were false gods and the sacrifices they have made were vain."

Key ideas

• War is a permanent institution of all free communities, sustained by impulse rather than by calculation of advantage.
• Unlike police force, war is force set in motion by the parties to the dispute themselves; international force under neutral authority is the only hope of peace.
• War fever seizes ordinary, cautious people because the nation's adventure compensates for the dullness of private life.
• The same vital energy produces civilization and war; pacifism must find the vigor a peaceful outlet — the problem William James posed in "The Moral Equivalent of War."
• Peace is not served by the status quo; nations must be able to accept adverse changes without humiliation.
• Permanent peace requires a single world-wide military State — one army and one navy under a federal authority.
• The ultimate obstacle is the native impulse to conflict, but institutions and habits already abolished duelling and can abolish war.
• War's glamour — tradition, Homer, the Old Testament, education, myths — sanctifies cruelty and sacrifice.

Key takeaway

Because war grows out of impulses for adventure and conflict rather than calculated interest, it can only be abolished by institutions — above all a world federation with a single military force — that give those impulses a peaceful political outlet.

Chapter 4 — Property

Central question

How does the worship of money cripple vitality, and on what principles should the economic order be reconstructed?

Main argument

The worship of money. Russell opens with Gissing, "the most full of gloom" of the realistic novelists, living "under the weight of a great oppression: the power of the fearful and yet adored idol of Money." The worship of money — "the belief that all values may be measured in terms of money, and that money is the ultimate test of success in life" — is "both an effect and a cause of diminishing vitality." The man who worships money has ceased to hope for happiness through his own activities; the artist or lover does not worship money in his moments of ardor. What is in question is not the desire for money as a means to definite ends (the struggling artist's desire is finite) but the worship of money as the measure of all success.

National forms of the religion. America shows the worship in its most perfect form: the well-to-do man "continues to work at his office with an assiduity which would only be pardonable if starvation were the alternative." In England it takes the form of snobbish social status: men postpone marriage until they can keep the right number of rooms and servants, learn "a cautious habit of mind," and "their ancestors were not restrained from passion by the fear of hell-fire, but they are restrained effectually by a worse fear, the fear of coming down in the world"; the same motives limit families and send sons to expensive public schools. In France it takes the form of thrift: the rentier strengthens France in diplomacy and weakens it in war, the family is made small and powerful for the sake of the dot, and the population is stationary. In Germany it is recent (post-1870) and associated with the State — Liszt's national economics, the businessman as a servant of the State — and Germany "adopted our worst faults, [and] made them far worse by a system, a thoroughness, and a unanimity of which we are happily incapable."

Four tests of an industrial system. (1) maximum of production; (2) justice in distribution; (3) a tolerable existence for producers; (4) "the greatest possible freedom and stimulus to vitality and progress." The present system aims only at the first; socialism aims at the second and third; "the fourth is much the most important of the objects to be aimed at, that the present system is fatal to it, and that orthodox socialism might well prove equally fatal." The mania for production is fanatical and ruthless: Central African natives, happy until European influence reaches them, are compelled into wage labor by a hut tax; "when we are fed and clothed and housed, further material goods are needed only for ostentation." The pursuit of maximum production also fails on its own terms: industrialism wastes human material, the best workers have small families, "every great city is a center of race-deterioration," and minerals and forests are exhausted recklessly.

The four sources of property rights. "These form a crescendo of respectability: capital is more respectable than labor, land is more respectable than capital, and any form of wealth is more respectable when it is inherited than when it has been acquired by our own exertions." (1) A man's right to what he has made himself has never had more than limited recognition, is insoluble in modern industry (the goods porters' share of railway goods; the surgeon's claim on the patient's future produce), and is not specially just even if solvable — natural inequalities need not be increased by artificial ones. (2) Interest on capital arises naturally but "the power of lending money gives such great wealth and influence to private capitalists that unless strictly controlled it is not compatible with any real freedom for the rest of the population." (3) "Private property in land has no justification except historically through power of the sword" — the feudal conquests, the Kimberley diamond and Rand gold mines — and "no good to the community, of any sort or kind, results from the private ownership of land"; rent should be paid to the State or divided among the population. (4) Inheritance has "no basis outside the instincts of possession and family pride": it creates "an idle and exceptionally fortunate class" whose timidity "poisons" the outlook of educated people; the best work is done for the interest of the work itself, not for founding a family.

Against socialism as a panacea. Socialism aims chiefly at justice, and the present distribution is grossly unjust. But "I do not think justice alone is a sufficient principle upon which to base an economic reconstruction": "Justice would be secured if all were equally unhappy, as well as if all were equally happy. Justice, by itself, when once realized, contains no source of new life." The Marxian millennium is a fairy story. Modern socialists still think "that what is of most political importance to a man is his income" — too passive a conception of happiness: "Very few of the well-to-do classes have a good life at present." The labor movement is "morally irresistible," but must be guarded against three dangers: hostility to the life of the mind (its leaders softened by the sympathy of educated men, the rank and file distrustful of leaders), conservatism about methods of production (the cure is to give labor "the direct interest in economical processes which now belongs to the employers"), and the narrow claims of justice (mental work requires more comfort and rest than physical work).

Creativeness as the test. "The most important purpose that political institutions can achieve is to keep alive in individuals creativeness, vigor, vitality, and the joy of life" — as in Elizabethan England. "What is wanted in order to keep men full of vitality is opportunity, not security. Security is merely a refuge from fear; opportunity is the source of hope." The instinct of constructiveness — "a wish to make something" — is almost universal in boys; without it "the world would sink to the level of Tibet." "The chief defect of the present capitalistic system is that work done for wages very seldom affords any outlet for the creative impulse": the worker has no choice as to what he shall make, the creativeness concentrates in the employer, and the work becomes a mere means to wages. Socialism would not cure this: the State would be the employer, control still indirect. "The whole wage-earning system is an abomination," because it separates the man from the purpose of the work: "the purpose of the wage-earner is not the produce, but the wages."

Industrial democracy. The remedy is the cooperative movement and syndicalism: cooperation amalgamates consumer and capitalist, syndicalism amalgamates producer and capitalist; a mixture of both would cure most of the evils of industrialism. "All large businesses must become democratic and federal in their government." Membership of an organization ought to be voluntary and to carry a voice in management; uninteresting work could be done for a few hours a day at a low wage, leaving leisure for the artists and intellectuals whom the market does not support. The scheme is "hardly more than a framework for energy and initiative" — unlike socialism, "it is not a static or final system." "There is no reason why all governmental units should be geographical." It requires the abolition of the landowner and the restriction of the capitalist, but does not entail equality of earnings.

Key ideas

• The worship of money — money as the measure of all value — is both an effect and a cause of diminishing vitality.
• An industrial system must be judged by four tests: production, distributive justice, tolerable existence, and freedom and stimulus to vitality; the last is the most important and the one both capitalism and socialism fail.
• Once men are fed, clothed, and housed, further material goods are wanted only for ostentation.
• The four sources of property rights form a crescendo of respectability; private property in land rests only on the sword, and inheritance creates an idle, corrupting class.
• Justice alone is too static to be the supreme principle: socialism would leave the creative life starved.
• The wage system separates the worker from the purpose of his work and starves the instinct of constructiveness.
• What men need is opportunity, not security; security is a refuge from fear, opportunity is the source of hope.
• Cooperation and syndicalism, industrial democracy in a federal form, are the right direction of reform.

Key takeaway

The economic order must be judged by whether it leaves the creative impulse unimpeded, and since both wage-capitalism and orthodox socialism fail that test, the way forward is industrial democracy — cooperation and syndicalism — giving every worker a voice and a purpose.

Chapter 5 — Education

Central question

What would education be like if the child's own growth, rather than the purposes of States and Churches, were its end?

Main argument

Education as a political weapon. "Education is, as a rule, the strongest force on the side of what exists and against fundamental change": threatened institutions possess themselves of the educational machine and instill respect for their excellence into the young. Reformers retort by trying to seize the machine. "The children themselves are not considered by either party; they are merely so much material, to be recruited into one army or the other." If children were considered, education would aim "at making them able to think, not at making them think what their teachers think." "Education as a political weapon could not exist if we respected the rights of children."

Justice, liberty, and reverence. Justice (equal rights) is not wholly possible with children, and liberty is essentially negative — it condemns interference without giving a positive principle of construction, while education is essentially constructive. Some authority in education is unavoidable; the question is how to exercise it "in accordance with the spirit of liberty." The answer is reverence: "A man who is to educate really well, and is to make the young grow and develop into their full stature, must be filled through and through with the spirit of reverence." The teacher without reverence is "the potter with the clay," molding the child into an unnatural shape that hardens with age, producing cruelty and envy. The man with reverence "feels in all that lives, but especially in human beings, and most of all in children, something sacred, indefinable, unlimited... the growing principle of life, an embodied fragment of the dumb striving of the world." He equips the child "for the ends which the child's own spirit is obscurely seeking."

What education currently does. What is considered is "the maintenance of the existing order" and worldly success — "the art of getting on." History is taught "so as to magnify that country": the battle of Waterloo, known with minute accuracy, is taught differently in England, France, and Germany — the English boy thinks the Prussians hardly played a part, the German boy thinks Wellington was practically defeated until Blücher retrieved the day. "If the facts were taught accurately in both countries, national pride would not be fostered to the same extent," and the willingness to fight would diminish; Russell proposes "an international commission" to produce neutral history textbooks. Religion is taught as dogma: religious schools prevent the young from discovering that their beliefs are contested, and militantly secular schools (France, where "the word 'God' must not be mentioned in a French elementary school") are as dogmatic as the Churches. In higher education the same evils take subtler forms: "Eton and Oxford set a certain stamp upon a man's mind, just as a Jesuit College does," producing a worship of "good form" that is "as destructive to life and thought as the medieval Church" — perfect assurance of its own rightness plus contempt for the angularities of great mental power.

The mental habits instilled. Education instills: obedience and discipline; ruthlessness in the struggle for worldly success; contempt towards opposing groups; and credulity, passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom. The cure: instead of obedience and discipline, "independence and impulse"; instead of ruthlessness, "justice in thought"; instead of contempt, reverence and the attempt at understanding; instead of credulity, "constructive doubt, the love of mental adventure." Beneath all the immediate causes is one fundamental: "the fact that education is treated as a means of acquiring power over the pupil, not as a means of nourishing his own growth."

Obedience and discipline. Obedience is necessary in some measure, but far less than is thought: what makes it seem indispensable is "the large classes and overworked teachers demanded by a false economy." "If we took education seriously, and thought it as important to keep alive the minds of children as to secure victory in war, we should conduct education quite differently... even if the expense were a hundredfold greater than it is." The desirable discipline is the kind that comes from within — "the power of pursuing a distant object steadily, foregoing and suffering many things on the way." External discipline, in contrast, is largely an evil. The one great merit of traditional higher education is mental discipline — "the power of concentrating the attention at will" — which is why Montessori's method, though "full of wisdom" for young children, cannot be applied after childhood: it gives spontaneous attention but not control of attention by the will; for most boys an external inducement is needed to learn any subject thoroughly, though a good teacher should be able to supply it by awakening ambition.

Ruthlessness and examinations. Middle-class schools depend on the good opinion of parents and advertise the successes of pupils; the examination system makes the young regard knowledge "as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom," and it presses hardest on those with the strongest intellectual interests. "The most intelligent, at the end, are disgusted with learning." Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom makes men "seek a leader" in later life, and delivers them to Churches, Governments, and party caucuses.

The joy of mental adventure. "Above all, there would be an endeavor to rouse and stimulate the love of mental adventure": the same love of adventure that takes men to the South Pole or welcomes war "can find in creative thought an outlet which is neither wasteful nor cruel." It is common in children but "everything is done to kill it during education." "Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary... thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits." The opponents of thought argue in the depths of their souls: "Should the working man think freely about property? Then what will become of us, the rich? Should soldiers think freely about war? Then what will become of military discipline?" — and so they act "in their churches, their schools, and their universities."

Hope, not fear. "No institution inspired by fear can further life. Hope, not fear, is the creative principle in human affairs." Modern education is inspired by "the wish to preserve the past rather than the hope of creating the future." It should be inspired "by a shining vision of the society that is to be, of the triumphs that thought will achieve in the time to come."

Key ideas

• Education as a political institution exists to make one set of opinions inevitable; respecting the rights of children would make it aim at enabling them to think.
• Justice and liberty are not sufficient principles for education; authority, where unavoidable, must be exercised in the spirit of reverence.
• Reverence means serving the child's own growing principle, not molding it like clay.
• History and religion are taught by distortion and suppression to inflame nationalism and dogma — the Waterloo example shows the same facts taught differently in each country.
• "Good form," the examination system, and training for livelihood atrophy mind and spirit.
• The only valuable discipline is self-discipline, the power of pursuing a distant object; external discipline is an evil made necessary by false economy.
• Education should foster constructive doubt and the joy of mental adventure; "men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth."
• Hope, not fear, is the creative principle; education should be inspired by the future it creates.

Key takeaway

Education must stop being a weapon of the State and the Churches and become an act of reverence — the nourishment of each child's growth through free thought and mental adventure, inspired by hope rather than fear.

Chapter 6 — Marriage and the Population Question

Central question

How do the marriage law, public opinion, and the economics of child-rearing damage both the race and the individual, and on what principles should they be rebuilt?

Main argument

Marriage as a political institution. The Christian religion has decayed throughout Europe, "but there is one social institution which is still profoundly affected by the Christian tradition — I mean the institution of marriage." Russell considers marriage as a political institution — what the community does about it — not as a matter of private morality. Two questions must be asked of any marriage system: "first, how it affects the development and character of the men and women concerned; secondly, what is its influence on the propagation and education of children." A system may be desirable from one point of view and undesirable from the other.

The present English law. Marriage can only be dissolved for adultery, and a husband must also prove cruelty or desertion; "in practice only the well-to-do can be divorced, because the expense is very great." Insanity, crime, cruelty, desertion, and mutual consent are no grounds; the King's Proctor prevents collusive divorce. The law rests on four propositions: "(1) that sexual intercourse outside marriage is sin; (2) that resentment of adultery by the 'innocent' party is a righteous horror of wrong-doing; (3) that his resentment, but nothing else, may be rightly regarded as making a common life impossible; (4) that the poor have no right to fine feelings." The penalty for infringement is mainly public opinion: a doctor, lawyer, or tradesman in a country town, or a politician, cannot survive being publicly branded "immoral." The result is "a widespread but very flimsy hypocrisy": "What has to be sacrificed to propitiate the holders of strict views is not pleasure, but only children and a common life and truth and honesty." Honest or child-bearing relations are punished; clandestine childless ones pass.

The selective birth-rate. The expense of children limits families most among "those who have most sense of parental responsibility"; women's growing inward freedom reinforces the limitation — "Very large numbers of women, when they are sufficiently free to think for themselves, do not desire to have children." The result is "a selective birth-rate of a very singular kind": France's population is stationary, England's nearly so, while "the sections that are increasing are the very poor, the shiftless and drunken, the feeble-minded," and the actively Catholic (the Irish and Bretons). Within the dwindling classes it is the best elements that dwindle fastest: scholarship boys rise into the professional class, marry late, and have small families — "the best elements are extracted from the working classes and artificially sterilized"; the ablest young women marry late or not at all. If an average sample of English children were examined, "it would be found that prudence, energy, intellect, and enlightenment were less common among the parents than in the population in general." Unless things change, "there will be, in the next two or three generations, a rapid change for the worse in the character of the population in all civilized countries" — and possibly a repetition of the mysterious decay of the Roman Empire.

What is to be desired. There is no importance in an increasing population: "if the population of Europe were stationary, it would be much easier to promote economic reform and to avoid war." The regrettable fact is the selectiveness. The feared results are three: absolute decline in the numbers of English, French, and Germans; their subjugation by less civilized races; and their revival "on a much lower plane of civilization" after generations of selection of those without intelligence or foresight. A rational solution, if ever adopted, will likely come from international rivalry — "if one State — say Germany — adopted a rational means of dealing with the matter, it would acquire an enormous advantage over other States."

The remedy. "The first and most pressing necessity is the removal of the economic motives for limiting families": the expense of children "ought to be borne wholly by the community"; food, clothing, and education should be provided to all classes "as a matter of public interest"; a woman who abandons wage-earning for motherhood should receive from the State nearly what she would have earned. The only condition: both parents physically and mentally sound. The law "should be indifferent to what is called 'morality'": it is concerned with marriage only through children; the excess women who must remain unmarried should be able to have children; divorce should require no more than mutual consent; the State has the right, on eugenic grounds, to know the paternity and demand a certain stability — but "there is no reason to demand or expect a lifelong stability." The scheme could begin with "exceptionally desirable sections of the community." One difficulty is "insurmountable" in England: the scheme is "anti-democratic, since it regards some men as better than others" — "Something of the sort may well be done in Germany, and if so, it will assure German hegemony as no merely military victory could do."

The dissolving bond. All the traditional bonds were based on authority — king, feudal baron, priest, father, husband — and all are dissolving; "the creation of other bonds to take their place is as yet very incomplete," leaving human relations "an unusual triviality." The old marriage — the wife as willing slave, the husband's fiat final — was satisfactory while its authority was believed: "Only one will, the husband's, had to be taken into account." The old order was destroyed by the ideals of justice and liberty, reaching at last the family: once the question "Why should a woman submit to a man?" is asked, "the rights of women are precisely the same as the rights of men." Mutual liberty is now demanded, but no new form has been developed: "The wish for mastery is an ingredient in most men's sexual passions," and the result is "a fight for liberty on the one side and for life on the other," leaving men and women "hard, separate units." There is no cheap solution; Russell doubts "if there is any radical cure except in some form of religion... based upon liberty, justice, and love, not upon authority and law and hell-fire."

Love and children. The romantic movement made love the purpose of relations when it should be "an incidental good": "Love is what gives intrinsic value to a marriage," but "the best marriages have a purpose which goes beyond love" — love alone is "too circumscribed, too separate from the community," and becomes "retrospective, a tomb of dead joys." "The only adequate purposes are those which stretch out into the future." For most people seriousness comes through children, who are "rather a need than a desire"; the economic obstacles to having them are therefore a mutilation. The summary: the present law, public opinion, and economic system "are tending to degrade the quality of the race"; a new system is required — children as a service to the State, the law indifferent to private relations except where children are concerned, divorce as the best preventive for failed monogamy. "Here, as elsewhere, liberty is the basis of political wisdom."

Key ideas

• Any marriage system must be judged by two independent tests: its effect on the development of the men and women, and its effect on the propagation and education of children.
• The English marriage law embodies a Church doctrine of sin and righteous resentment, enforced mainly by public opinion and against the poor.
• The selective birth-rate sterilizes the best elements of the population while the shiftless, the feeble-minded, and the actively superstitious reproduce most.
• A stationary population would promote reform and peace; the evil is the selectivity, not the decline in numbers.
• The economic burdens of children should fall on the community, with State maintenance of mothers and children.
• The law should touch the relations of men and women only where children are concerned, and divorce should require no more than mutual consent.
• The old marriage rested on the authority of the husband; with equality demanded, a new form of union must be created.
• Love gives a marriage its intrinsic value, but only children and a common life, linked to purposes that stretch into the future, give it seriousness.

Key takeaway

The marriage law, public opinion, and the economics of child-rearing are degrading the quality of the race and cramping the lives of men and women; the cure is liberty — the community bearing the cost of children, the law indifferent to private relations except where children are concerned.

Chapter 7 — Religion and the Churches

Central question

What is religion, what has the Church done to it, and what would a living religion require?

Main argument

The decay of dogma. Almost all change since the Middle Ages is due to new knowledge — the primary cause of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the industrial revolution, and "also, very directly, the cause of the decay of dogmatic religion": classical texts, Copernican astronomy, Darwinian biology, comparative anthropology each battered down part of the edifice of Catholic dogma. The Churches' political conservatism spread free thought into classes that might have remained orthodox for centuries. "The decay of dogmatic religion is, for good or evil, one of the most important facts in the modern world."

The medieval synthesis. Religion is partly personal, partly social — Protestant primarily personal, Catholic primarily social; only their blending makes religion a powerful force. The Catholic Church from Constantine to the Reformation "represented... the blending of Christ and Cæsar, of the morality of humble submission with the pride of Imperial Rome" — St. Francis and Innocent III as its two sides. It achieved "the most organic society and the most harmonious inner synthesis of instinct, mind, and spirit, that the Western world has ever known." "But the perfection which had been achieved was a narrow perfection": instinct, mind, and spirit all suffered curtailment, the Church used its power for rapacity and oppression, and "the perfect synthesis was an enemy to new growth."

The clerical profession. Clergymen suffer from the convention that they are more virtuous than other men ("Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average") and from endowments, which warp judgment. "It is not so much that the creed of the Church is the wrong one. What is amiss is the mere existence of a creed": once income, position, and power depend on acceptance of a creed, "intellectual honesty is imperiled." Religion, in a world of rapid change, must be carried on "like the Society of Friends, by men who have other occupations during the week, who do their religious work from enthusiasm, without receiving any payment." Sincere believers who preach peace in wartime deserve all praise, but "it is not through even the most sincere and courageous believers in the traditional religion that a new spirit can come into the world": the Gospels are "quite inadequate for many of the social and spiritual issues of modern life" — art, intellect, and government are ignored in them, and Tolstoy's effort to take them as a guide ends in "an extreme and impracticable anarchism."

A religion of initiative. If a religious view of life is to reconquer free men, "the first and greatest change that is required is to establish a morality of initiative, not a morality of submission, a morality of hope rather than fear, of things to be done rather than of things to be left undone." "It is not the whole duty of man to slip through the world so as to escape the wrath of God. The world is our world, and it rests with us to make it a heaven or a hell."

Instinct, mind, and spirit. Human activity derives from three sources. The life of instinct is "all that man shares with the lower animals" — self-preservation, reproduction, vanity, love of possessions, love of family, much of love of country. The life of the mind is the pursuit of knowledge — "thought which is wholly or partially impersonal," springing from curiosity. The life of the spirit centers on impersonal feeling — art, reverence, worship, the sense of an obligation to mankind, "the sense of a mystery half revealed... a thin veil behind which the ultimate truth of the world is dimly seen": "It is such feelings that are the source of religion, and if they were to die most of what is best would vanish out of life." Each has its own excellence and its own corruption: uncivilized men have instinct alone; educated men develop mind "at the expense of both instinct and spirit," producing "a curious inhumanity and lifelessness... which leads to cynicism"; ascetics develop spirit at the expense of the other two. Instinct is the source of vitality and of union with others; mind liberates us from the bondage of instinct but is "merely critical" and apt to breed cynicism; "spirit is an antidote to the cynicism of mind: it universalizes the emotions that spring from instinct, and by universalizing them makes them impervious to mental criticism." "It is instinct that gives force, mind that gives the means of directing force to desired ends, and spirit that suggests impersonal uses for force."

The instinct of creation. The instinctive cycles of life (desire → act → completion) are interrupted by purposes and by the pursuit of pleasure, which "picks out the most agreeable part of the cycle and avoids the rest." The men of science, who can satisfy the creative instinct, "are the happiest of intelligent men in the modern world": "In them a beginning is to be seen of the new way of life which is to be sought." The rest have their creative impulses thwarted: "Out of its defeat grows envy, and out of envy grows the impulse to destroy the creativeness of more fortunate men."

The universalizing of instinct by spirit. Patriotism, rooted in instinctive feelings (love of home, pride in one's group), is exclusive and becomes a source of hatred of other countries unless spirit generalizes it: "Mind can only show us that it is irrational to love our own country best; it can weaken patriotism, but cannot strengthen the love of all mankind. Spirit alone can do this, by extending and universalizing the love that is born of instinct." The same is true of married love — the romantic view dies "on a peregrination down a street of suburban villas" — and of parental love, which unchecked is "exclusive, ruthless, and unjust." The religion of thought — "Better the world should perish than that I or any other human being should believe a lie" — must complete its work of destruction, "but it is not all that man has need of. New growth must come after the destruction, and new growth can come only through the spirit." The life of the spirit "brings with it the joy of vision... the joy of universal love," liberates from the prison of personal passion, and "restores harmony between mind and instinct."

Key ideas

• The decay of dogmatic religion, driven by new knowledge and hastened by the Churches' political conservatism, is one of the most important facts of the modern world.
• The medieval Church was the most organic society the West has known — a narrow perfection that became the enemy of new growth.
• The professional priesthood, whose income and power depend on accepting a creed, imperils intellectual honesty; religion should be carried on by unpaid enthusiasts like the Quakers.
• The new religion needs a morality of initiative and hope, not of submission and fear.
• Human activity flows from three sources — instinct, mind, and spirit — each corrupted when it suppresses the others; a full life coordinates all three.
• Instinct gives force and union with others; mind gives direction but breeds cynicism when unchecked; spirit universalizes the emotions of instinct.
• Thwarted creative instinct turns to destruction and envy; the men of science show the germ of the new way of life.
• Spirit alone can universalize instinctive loves — patriotism, married love, parental love — without destroying their force.

Key takeaway

Religion is the life of the spirit — impersonal feeling that universalizes instinct — and it must be freed from the creed-bound, endowed Churches so that a religion of initiative and hope, coordinating instinct, mind, and spirit, can generate new growth.

Chapter 8 — What We Can Do

Central question

What can individuals do, while the war rages and the State's power seems overwhelming, to bring about a better world?

Main argument

The power of thought. The first thing to do "is to be clear in our own minds as to the kind of life we think good and the kind of change that we desire in the world." The ultimate power of vital thought is far greater than it seems: religious toleration was once "the solitary speculation of a few bold philosophers"; democracy arose among a handful of men in Cromwell's army and came to fruition in the American War of Independence; socialism owes its origin to a very small number of isolated theorists; the movement against the subjection of women began with "a few impracticable idealists — Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley, John Stuart Mill." "The power of thought, in the long run, is greater than any other human power." But those who would gain the world by thought "must be content to lose it as a support in the present": new thought requires "a certain willingness to be lonely," combined with a refusal of aloofness and contempt — "it is hard to be intellectually detached yet not aloof."

Two principles. What is wanted is not the invention of a Utopia "but the discovery of the best direction of movement," under two always-applicable principles: "(1) The growth and vitality of individuals and communities is to be promoted as far as possible. (2) The growth of one individual or one community is to be as little as possible at the expense of another." The second principle, applied privately, is reverence — "that the life of another has the same importance which we feel in our own life"; applied impersonally in politics, it is liberty — which is negative, and therefore needs the first principle as its constructive complement.

The integration of life. Both principles are satisfied by integration — of the individual life, of the community, of the world — "without sacrifice of individuality." What integrates an individual life "is a consistent creative purpose or unconscious direction": an ambition, a desire for scientific or artistic creation, a religious principle, strong and lasting affections. The professions crush it at the outset — the journalist who must write for a paper whose politics he dislikes, the doctor who cannot succeed without humbug, the politician who must swallow the party program and pretend to be a saint. "The things that crush growth are those that produce a sense of impotence in the directions in which the vital impulse wishes to be effective. The worst things are those to which the will assents": the artist who produces shoddy work to please the public is the stereotype, but "something of the artist's definiteness of impulse exists in very many men who are not artists." In the moment of consenting to be a tool "something dies within him. He can never again become a whole man." Outward prohibitions are less harmful than the subtler inducements that seduce the will: "A serious disappointment in love... will not do the same inward damage as is done by marrying for money." In a good community Napoleon could not have been a conqueror, but he "might have found happiness as a pioneer in Western America... no tolerable organization of society would compel him to become a City clerk."

Creative and possessive impulses. The integration of a community requires that "the different creative impulses of different men and women should work together towards some common life." Vital activities have two parts, "one creative, which furthers one's own life and that of others... and one possessive, which hinders the life of some group with a different kind of impulse or circumstances" — Puritanism and nationalism are vitality gone wrong. "War, at its outset, integrates the life of a nation, but it disintegrates the life of the world," so "any really powerful movement of reform will have to be international." Then comes the book's supreme principle: "The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that center round possession." The typical creative impulse is the artist's; the typical possessive impulse is property. "The best life is that in which creative impulses play the largest part and possessive impulses the smallest." The State and Property "are the great embodiments of possessiveness"; education, marriage, and religion are essentially creative but vitiated by possessive motives — education by the instillation of prejudice, marriage by jealousy, religion by repression. "It is the possessive impulses that involve conflict": "what one man creates cannot be a hindrance to what another is wishing to create." Yet creative and possessive impulses pass easily into each other, "according to the accidents of circumstance and opportunity," which is exactly why education and institutions matter.

Will, inward and outward. Outward will — against external obstacles — is an expression of strong impulse and necessary to achievement. Inward will — against one's own impulses — is only needed where there is inner conflict; better institutions would make it less necessary, because "a life full of inhibitions is likely not to remain a very vigorous life," and impulses constantly checked "work underground, and issue in some form much worse than that in which it has been checked." Consistency should spring "from consistency of impulse rather than from control of impulse by will."

Subjectivism. A good life cannot be built on amusement, which "consists in a series of moments without any essential continuity"; a purpose which unifies life "is like building a monument rather than a child's castle in the sand." Subjectivism — directing thought and desire to our own states of mind — has other forms: the lover "more interested in his own emotion than in the object of his love," the Protestant attention to sin and the state of the soul. "The pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of virtue alike suffer from subjectivism: Epicureanism and Stoicism are infected with the same taint" — Marcus Aurelius, "enacting good laws in order that he might be virtuous, is not an attractive figure." Thought must be active, "directed towards achieving some purpose," in intimate union with impulses.

The political force and the philosophy. Thought remains barren "unless we can bring it into relation with some powerful political force": "The only powerful political force from which any help is to be expected... is Labor," whose post-war discontent will provide the vehicle of reconstruction. Economic systems and philosophies of life promote or destroy life: "Except slavery, the present industrial system is the most destructive of life that has ever existed"; "industrial federal democracy is probably the best direction for reform to take." The accepted philosophy — that what matters most is income — is harmful; more refined philosophies fix attention on the past and on correct behavior. "The world has need of a philosophy, or a religion, which will promote life. But in order to promote life it is necessary to value something other than mere life": "Life devoted only to life is animal... it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life... such as God or truth or beauty." Contact with this eternal world — "even if it be only a world of our imagining" — brings "a strength and a fundamental peace"; it is what Spinoza calls "the intellectual love of God... the key of wisdom."

The conclusion. What we must do is different for each of us, but "if we have the life of the spirit within us, what we must do and what we must avoid will become apparent to us." Those who begin the regeneration "must face loneliness, opposition, poverty, obloquy," living "by truth and love, with a rational unconquerable hope." When the Goths sacked Rome, St. Augustine wrote the City of God, "putting a spiritual hope in place of the material reality that had been destroyed" — and the hope lived while Rome sank to a village of hovels. "For us, too, it is necessary to create a new hope." The book ends with Russell's students — young men of many nations swept into the war, and the teachers who "prove that these young men have been sacrificed unavoidably for some coldly abstract end," in whom "the life of the spirit is dead." Their cry should be: "It is we, the old, who have sinned; we have sent these young men to the battlefield for our evil passions, our spiritual death... Their very ghosts have more life than we: they hold us up for ever to the shame and obloquy of all the ages to come. Out of their ghosts must come life, and it is we whom they must vivify."

Key ideas

• The first task is clarity about the good life; thought is ultimately the most powerful human force, and history's great changes began with a handful of theorists.
• Two principles govern all reform: promote the growth and vitality of individuals and communities; let no one's growth be at another's expense — reverence privately, liberty politically.
• Unity of life comes from a consistent creative purpose; the professions and conventional success crush the creative impulse at its outset, and the worst defeats are those to which the will assents.
• Community integration requires creative impulses to work together; war integrates the nation by disintegrating the world, so reform must be international.
• The supreme principle: promote all that is creative and diminish the impulses centered on possession; the State and Property are possessiveness embodied, while education, marriage, and religion have been vitiated by possessive motives.
• Creative impulses are harmonious; possessive impulses involve conflict; each passes easily into the other according to circumstances.
• Subjectivism — amusement, self-absorbed love, Stoic virtue — fragments life; thought must be active and directed to objective ends.
• Labor is the one powerful political force for reconstruction; the world needs a philosophy or religion that promotes life by serving something beyond life, like God, truth, or beauty.

Key takeaway

Individuals can change the world by thinking the thoughts that will become common, living by creative rather than possessive impulses, and allying with Labor to rebuild institutions — "a supreme fire of thought and spirit" is the only thing that can save future generations.

The book's overall argument

1. Chapter 1 (The Principle of Growth) — establishes the psychology on which everything rests: human action springs from impulse and desire, each person has a central principle of growth, instincts are malleable, and institutions are to be judged by whether they free or thwart growth.
2. Chapter 2 (The State) — the State, the repository of organized force, has become harmful through excess of power and must be demoted to a federal authority that keeps the peace while positive initiative is devolved to voluntary organizations.
3. Chapter 3 (War as an Institution) — war is a permanent institution fed by the impulse to conflict, not by calculation, and can only be ended by a world federation with a single military force.
4. Chapter 4 (Property) — the worship of money and the wage system starve the creative impulse, so the economic order must be rebuilt as industrial democracy through cooperation and syndicalism.
5. Chapter 5 (Education) — education is used as a political weapon to instill creed and nationalism, and must become a work of reverence for the child's growth, fostering free thought and the joy of mental adventure.
6. Chapter 6 (Marriage and the Population Question) — the marriage law, public opinion, and the economics of children degrade the quality of the race and cramp individuals; the cure is liberty, with the community bearing the cost of children.
7. Chapter 7 (Religion and the Churches) — the endowed Churches and their creeds have stifled the life of the spirit, which must be reborn as the harmonious coordination of instinct, mind, and spirit in a religion of initiative and hope.
8. Chapter 8 (What We Can Do) — the individual's power lies in thinking the thoughts the future will hold, keeping creative impulses alive against possessive ones, and carrying the reconstruction forward through Labor and an international movement.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: The book is simply a pacifist war protest.

Only one of the eight chapters deals directly with war. The book is a complete political philosophy, arguing that war revealed the true springs of human action and that the State, property, education, marriage, and religion must all be reconstructed on the principle of growth.

Misunderstanding: Russell preaches the rule of reason over passion.

The book's argument is the opposite: "Only passion can control passion." Russell criticizes reason as preached by moralists as "too negative, too little living," and holds that wars are prevented only by positive impulses and passions antagonistic to those that lead to war.

Misunderstanding: Russell is a socialist.

Russell repeatedly criticizes socialism as a panacea: it aims only at justice in distribution, justice is a static principle ("Justice would be secured if all were equally unhappy"), and a socialist State would still be an employer that starves the creative impulse. His positive economic program is industrial democracy — cooperation and syndicalism.

Misunderstanding: Russell wants to abolish the State.

He wants the State's powers curtailed and its positive initiative devolved to voluntary organizations, but he explicitly grants the State essential functions and argues that some of its powers should be extended (sanitation, the care of children, scientific research, the receipt of rent). The State's essential merit — law instead of private force — is preserved.

Misunderstanding: The first chapter is called "The Principles of Growth."

Every printed edition examined — the 1916 Allen & Unwin first edition, the 1917 Century Co. American edition, and the Routledge Classics table of contents — titles it "The Principle of Growth" (singular). The plural form appears only in the Wikipedia article, which contradicts the editions themselves.

Misunderstanding: Russell advocates abolishing marriage.

He argues that lifelong monogamy "is best when it is successful" and that love, children, and a common life make the best relation. His proposals are that the community bear the cost of children, that the law be indifferent to private relations except where children are concerned, and that divorce require no more than mutual consent.

Misunderstanding: The book is anti-religious.

Russell is anti-Church — the endowed priesthood and creed-bound institutions — but the book's last chapters argue that religion, as the life of the spirit, is indispensable, and that the world needs a new religion based on liberty, justice, and love to promote life.

Misunderstanding: Russell thinks human nature is fixed and impulses must be suppressed.

He argues the reverse: "the commonplace that human nature cannot be changed is untrue"; instincts are profoundly modified by circumstances and institutions. The task is to direct impulse toward life, not to weaken or repress it — a life full of inhibitions is listless, and suppressed impulses work underground and issue worse.

Central paradox / key insight

The book's most counterintuitive idea is that war and the best of civilization spring from the same blind impulse, so the cure for war is not the repression of impulse but its redirection through institutions. Russell's second paradox follows from the first: the State, which exists to suppress internal force, is the greatest promoter of external force — so peace requires concentrating military force in exactly one world-wide State. And his final paradox is the most radical: life is only fully human when it serves something beyond itself — "life devoted only to life is animal."

"Blind impulse is the source of war, but it is also the source of science, and art, and love. It is not the weakening of impulse that is to be desired, but the direction of impulse towards life and growth rather than towards death and decay."

Important concepts

Impulse

The blind, purposeless spring of activity that dominates the instinctive part of our nature — children running and shouting, dogs baying the moon. Impulse is erratic and anarchical, "the source of war, but... also the source of science, and art, and love"; it is the basis of activity much more than desire.

Desire

Activity directed to an end through an interval of time — the conscious, explicit, civilized part of human action on which political philosophy has been almost entirely based. Desires are often "a mere garment for the impulse": fictitious ends imagined as the grounds of what impulse alone moves us to do.

The principle of growth

The "central principle of growth, an instinctive urgency" in each human being, "as trees seek the light," which determines the type of excellence of which each person is capable. "The utmost that social institutions can do for a man is to make his own growth free and vigorous: they cannot force him to grow according to the pattern of another man." Thwarted growth produces malevolence and the impulses that injure others.

Creative and possessive impulses

The book's master distinction: creative impulses "create what would not otherwise exist" (the typical example is the artist); possessive impulses "acquire or retain what exists already" (the typical example is property). "The best life is that in which creative impulses play the largest part and possessive impulses the smallest"; creative impulses are harmonious, possessive impulses involve conflict; "the supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that center round possession."

The love of power

The desire for dominion that Russell identifies as the real motive behind much that is credited to wealth — the energetic men who make great fortunes "desire the sense of power through a contest, and the joy of successful activity," and the chief end of almost all great States is power, especially power in war. (The theme Russell would develop fully in Power: A New Social Analysis, 1938.)

The State as organized force

"The essence of the State is that it is the repository of the collective force of its citizens" — law and police internally, army and navy externally. Internally limited only by fear of rebellion, externally only by fear of defeat, its power is otherwise absolute; it "suppresses violence within and... facilitates it without."

War fever

The collective seizure that descends on a population at crisis, when the cautious private man discovers that his nation can take risks: "The long years of private caution are avenged by a wild plunge into public madness." It has a quasi-rational element — nations rarely catch it when defeat is obviously probable — and can only be prevented by changes in education, economic structure, and the moral code.

Reverence

"The life of another has the same importance which we feel in our own life" — the private form of the book's second principle, and the quality that must govern the unavoidable authority of parents and teachers: "the man who is to educate really well... must be filled through and through with the spirit of reverence." The reverent man equips the child "for the ends which the child's own spirit is obscurely seeking."

Instinctive liking and common purpose

The two sources of good relations between individuals. Instinctive liking is the pleasure in another's company, from love down to its faintest political forms; common purpose is the bond of unions, parties, and marriage-with-children. "Nothing is so destructive of instinctive liking as thwarted purposes and unsatisfied needs." Increasing the amount of instinctive liking in the world is "perhaps the most important of all the effects by which political institutions ought to be judged."

Instinct, mind, and spirit

The three sources of human activity: instinct is what man shares with the animals, the source of vitality and union; mind is impersonal thought, the pursuit of knowledge, which liberates from instinct's bondage but is merely critical and breeds cynicism; spirit is impersonal feeling — art, reverence, worship, the sense of mystery — which universalizes the emotions of instinct and makes them impervious to mental criticism. A full life coordinates all three; each is corrupted when it suppresses the others.

Authority and liberty

The historical poles of the book's political history: all our institutions had their historic basis in authority (despot, Creator, Emperor, Pope, king, baron, paterfamilias), which was organic so long as genuinely believed; the claims of justice and liberty dissolved it into self-assertion; the task now is institutions that embody the new respect for the individual and are "based as far as possible upon voluntary combination."

Subjectivism

The habit of directing thought and desire to our own states of mind rather than to objective ends — amusement, love of one's own emotion, Stoic self-cultivation. It "inevitably makes life fragmentary and unprogressive"; only a life springing from dominant impulses directed to objective ends can be a satisfactory whole.

Industrial federal democracy

Russell's positive economic program: cooperative production (which amalgamates consumer and capitalist) and syndicalism (which amalgamates producer and capitalist), with voluntary membership, a voice in management, and the State as arbitrator — "hardly more than a framework for energy and initiative," unlike the static millennium of socialism.

References and Web Links

Primary texts and editions

• Bertrand Russell. Principles of Social Reconstruction. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1916 (first edition, 8 chapters).
  • Internet Archive scan of the 1916 first edition, whose full text and contents page were used to verify the chapter list and arguments
  • Project Gutenberg eBook #55610: the full text of the American edition, Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel (The Century Co., 1917; 1920 printing), used to verify the chapter contents chapter by chapter
  • Plain-text download of the same edition at Project Gutenberg
  • Wikisource transcription of the 1917 American edition, with its table of contents

Edition information

• Routledge Classics edition (1997) product page, with the publisher's table of contents, the description of the Richard A. Rempel introduction, and ISBN details
• Open Library record for the work Principles of Social Reconstruction, listing its 32 editions, first published 1916

Overview and background

• Wikipedia article on Why Men Fight, with the book's chapter list, publication history, and context
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entry on Bertrand Russell (section 7, "Russell's Social and Political Philosophy," treats the wartime political writings, including the 1916 fine and dismissal from Trinity College)

Supplementary study resources

These are secondary sources and should be used alongside, rather than instead of, the original book.

• The Wikipedia article above provides the chapter list and basic context, but note that it prints the first chapter's title as "The Principles of Growth," which no printed edition examined uses; the editions themselves read "The Principle of Growth."
• Richard A. Rempel's introduction to the Routledge Classics edition (1997) situates the book among Russell's wartime writings; it is part of the print edition linked above.