Page:Neurath O. (1942) International Planning for Freedom.pdf/11

432 seems to have become a new fashion. But what will happen after the second world war? Will an order be re-established which is ruled by profit with its mass unemployment and its intentional restriction of production? The Atlantic Charter does not stress the point of planning, but recognises the importance of 'social security' as an international problem, and many people are now busily discussing this matter seriously.

In the various countries different things will happen - there are many intermediate steps between a give-and-take policy and an open civil war. It is perhaps symptomatic that there are countries in which churchmen also now talk of some planning.

As 'war economy' teaches us, even a rather fragmentary planning is sufficient to overcome unemployment and the intentional destruction of goods. Many understand now that by a simple continuation of this war pattern, amenities of life, schools and hospitals, settlements and libraries could be procured; instead of producing war materials, one would improve the standard of living. We know that the fragmentary character of war planning in the western countries, with all the concern for post-war competition, has not up to the present fully utilized all reservoirs of society - here is not the place to discuss this highly-complicated problem.

What 'societas societatum' might be expected after this war? (I suggest the 'neutral' expression  'societas societatum'  because it avoids the terminological anticipation of any determined solution.) Discussions start with questions of the future formal regulations ('legal apparatus', etc), constitutions, etc., and do not put into the foreground the essential problem that 'societal' patterns will determine the 'inter-national' and 'intra-national' relations, production and distribution of goods throughout the world.

Some people predict a kind of state called 'Europe' with a parliament composed of representatives of the continental nations outside the Soviet Union. There are people who try to create a 'Socialist Europe' as a peaceful member of the ' societas societatum' . Others imagine many states such as existed before the second World War, counter-balancing Italy and Germany or the parts of Germany which will perhaps form separate states. These and other possibilities might be fruitfully discussed, but we could as social engineers also think of new types of patterns just as technical engineers discuss machines which do not exist up to the present.