Page:Neurath O. (1942) International Planning for Freedom.pdf/13

434 other groups which are concerned with production and distribution. Just when the colonial territories are getting more freedom, an international control, e.g., of rubber production, seems hardly to be avoidable, if any reconstruction of international relations is seriously intended. Should, e.g., the Malays get 'common ownership' of the rubber plantations? It would mean that they could receive rent for permitting other people to work in the plantations for international purposes. They would hardly be distinguishable from private shareholders, who own rubber plantations and get their rent.

This example shows us that 'common ownership' in itself is no medicine at all; what it can perform depends essentially upon the pattern in which= such a 'common ownership' works. Without a kind of major international planning it could happen that a great number of local bodies (called 'states') would fight one another on the world market as monopolists did before the war, and these states would presumably destroy coffee, or cattle, or vegetables, or reduce the production of rubber or copper, as happened before.

The big rivers with their banks could be 'internationalized' but to a wider extent than, e.g., the Rhine after the first World War. Such a new Rhine authority's territory would perhaps be overlapped by authorities dealing with all matters which depend upon language (Dutch, French and German). The railroad authority may overlap all those together; that church organizations should overlap is more in accordance with tradition. Some projects dealing with such solutions have been put forward before, but it would be useful to re-test them from a 'societal' point of view.

By their existence alone these 'overlapping' institutions would reduce the possibilities of creating powerful new military bodies, because the whole pattern would help to change the loyalties and later on to loosen the ties between citizens and a particular militaristic organization. As far as such a pattern rules vast parts of our  'societas societatum'  a kind of substitute for the internationalism of the 'money order' would be created. Until now, e.g., rubber production depended upon shareholders of various countries and partly upon governments. Territorial planning does not help to rebuild this important part of international relations as a substitute for the relations created by the 'money order'.

The reduction of social tensions presumably will depend essentially