Page:The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism - Russell - 1920.djvu/164

 itself, appalling cruelties are practised for private profit. Economic and political organizations become more and more vast, leaving less and less room for individual development and initiative. It is this sacrifice of the individual to the machine that is the fundamental evil of the modern world.

To cure this evil is not easy, because efficiency is promoted, at any given moment, though not in the long run, by sacrificing the individual to the smooth working of a vast organization, whether military or industrial. In war and in commercial competition, it is necessary to control individual impulses, to treat men as so many "bayonets" or "sabres" or "hands," not as a society of separate people with separate tastes and capacities. Some sacrifice of individual impulses is, of course, essential to the existence of an ordered community, and this degree of sacrifice is, as a rule, not regretable even from the individual's point of view. But what is demanded in a highly militarized or industrialized nation goes far beyond this very moderate degree. A society which is to allow much freedom to the individual must be strong enough to be not anxious about home defence, moderate enough to refrain from difficult external conquests, and rich enough to value leisure and a