Page:Neurath O. (1942) International Planning for Freedom.pdf/10

Rh prepared to do things 'against their conscience'. The social body which takes care of the security of society will sometimes fight the 'conscientious' persons more than others who may be prepared to change their attitude for pay. Remember what a hard aggressor was a completely 'convinced' Assassin, obeying the commands of the Old Man of the Mountains.

Taking all arguments into account, we may discuss freedom as a pattern of habits and behavior, characterized by a certain multiplicity and disparity of actions, and ask how a society, a single state or a world commonwealth, may 'produce' this pattern of Freedom.

Before the first World War, one could, by many analogies, make it likely that the anticipated World War would lead the governments, by trial and error, to comprehensive planning of a 'war economy', as a presumable forerunner of world-wide planning in the future.

It was a matter of course for the general staffs before the first World War to have a good knowledge of former strategic experience ('antiquarian method') and a good training in constructing alternative war plans ('scientific utopianism'), but there was no group occupied with social engineering which had an analogous knowledge of all the experience in 'war economy' and some training in this field. Planning was gradually introduced during the first World War.

After great wars 'economic crises', particularly in victorious states, were usual. Joseph Lowe and others had very carefully described the difficulties from which Great Britain suffered after the Napoleonic war. Nevertheless these and other experiences did not make people prepare any specific plans for avoiding 'economic collapses' after the first World War - on the contrary, not only the directors of factories, bankers and shareholders but also the masses, who resented rationing, wanted the destruction of all war organizations based on planning. Only in the Soviet Union did planning become the characteristic feature of the new pattern of society. We know the gigantic commercial depressions between the two World Wars in the other countries, to which depressions the rise of Fascism is related.

'Planning for war' is now a triviality - to speak of 'Planning for Peace'