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本篇选自BBC Reith Lectures，是1948年讲座开篇邀请到的英国哲学家、数学家伯特兰·罗素（Bertrand Russell）就“权威与个体”所做的演讲的第五讲。全篇长近半小时，为方便朋友利用零星时间收听，我把这篇分成上下两部分，这样文章也不会显得太长。每周放出上下两篇，这样就是完整的一场讲座，一周能够把这场讲座听好、听透，高级英语学习就有了基本保障。另外，请您把本篇文章分享到您朋友圈，让更多的朋友看到，这也是对我最大的支持。感谢！
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REITH LECTURES 1948: Authority and the Individual
Bertrand Russell
Lecture 5: Control and Initiative: Their Respective Spheres
TRANSMISSION: 23 January 1949 -Home Service
A healthy and progressive society requires both central control and individual and group initiative: without control there is anarchy, and without initiative there is stagnation. I want in this lecture to arrive at some general principles as to what matters should be controlled and what should be left to private or semi-private initiative. Some of the qualities that we should wish to find in a community are in their essence static, while others are by their very nature dynamic. Speaking very roughly, we may expect the static qualities to be suitable for governmental control, while the dynamic qualities should be promoted by the initiative of individuals or groups. But if such initiative is to be possible, and if it is to be fruitful rather than destructive, it will need to be fostered by appropriate institutions, and the safeguarding of such institutions will have to be one of the functions of government. It is obvious that in a state of anarchy there could not be universities or scientific research or publication of books, or even such simple things as seaside holidays. In our complex world there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.
Three Primary Aims of Government
The primary aims of government, I suggest, should be three: security, justice and conservation. These are things of the utmost importance to human happiness, and they are things which only government can bring about. At the same time, no one of them is absolute; each may, in some circumstances, have to be sacrificed in some degree for the sake of a greater degree of some other good. I shall say something about each in turn.
Security, in the sense of protection of life and property, has always been recognised as one of the primary purposes of the state. Many states, however, while safeguarding law-abiding citizens against other citizens, have not thought it necessary to protect them against the state. Wherever there is arrest by administrative order, and punishment without due process of law, private people have no security, however firmly the state may be established. And even insistence on due process of law is insufficient, unless the judges are independent of the executive. This order of ideas was to the fore in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under the slogan ‘liberty of the subject’ or ‘rights of man’. But the ‘liberty’ and the ‘rights’ that were sought could only be secured by the state, and then only if the state was of the kind that is called ‘liberal ‘. It is only in the west that this liberty and these rights have been secured.
To us in the present day, a more interesting kind of security is security against attacks by hostile states. This is more interesting because it has not been secured, and because it becomes more important year by year as methods of warfare develop. This kind of security will only become possible when there is a single world government with a monopoly of all the major weapons of war. I shall not enlarge upon this subject, since it is somewhat remote from my theme. I will only say, with all possible emphasis, that unless and until mankind has achieved the security of a single government for the world, everything else of value, of no matter what kind is precarious, and may at any moment be destroyed by war.
Economic security has been one of the most important aims of modern British legislation. Insurance against unemployment, sickness, and destitution in old age, hs removed from the lives of wage-earners a great deal of painful uncertainty as to their future. Medical security has been promoted by measures which have greatly increased the average length of life and diminished the amount of illness. Altogether, life in western countries, apart from war, is very much less dangerous than it was in the eighteenth century, and this change is mainly due to various kinds of governmental control.
Security, though undoubtedly a good thing, may be sought excessively and become a fetish. A secure life is not necessarily a happy life; it may be rendered dismal by boredom and monotony. Many people, especially while they are young, welcome a spice of dangerous adventure, and may even find relief in war as an escape from humdrum safety. Security by itself is negative aim inspired by fear; a satisfactory life must have a positive aim inspired by hope. This sort of adventurous hope involves risk and therefore fear. But fear deliberately chosen is not such an evil thing as fear forced upon a man by outward circumstances. We cannot therefore be content with security alone, or imagine that it can bring the millennium.
And now as to justice. Justice, especially economic justice, has become, in quite recent times, a governmental purpose. Justice has come to be interpreted as equality, except where exceptional merit is thought to deserve an exceptional but still moderate reward. Political justice, i.e. democracy, has been aimed at since the American and French revolutions, but economic justice is a newer aim, and requires a much greater amount of governmental control. It is held by socialists— rightly in my opinion—to involve state ownership of key industries and a considerable regulation of foreign trade. Opponents of socialism may argue that economic justice can be too dearly bought, but no one can deny that, if it is to be achieved, a very large amount of state control over industry and finance is essential. There are, however, limits to economic justice which are, at least tacitly, acknowledged by even the most ardent of its western advocates. An attempt to bring about economic equality between western nations and south-east Asia, except by very gradual methods, would drag the more prosperous nations down to the level of the less prosperous, without any appreciable advantage to the latter.
Justice, like security, but to an even greater degree, is a principle which is subject to limitations. There is justice where all are equally poor as well as where all are equally rich, but it would seem fruitless to make the rich poorer if this was not going to make the poor richer. The case against justice is even stronger if, in the pursuit of equality, it is going to make even the poor poorer than before. And this might well happen if a general lowering of education and a diminution of fruitful research were involved. If there had not been economic injustice in Egypt and Babylon, the art of writing would never have been invented. There is however no necessity, with modern methods of production, to perpetuate economic injustice in industrially developed nations in order to promote progress in the arts of civilisation. There is only a danger to be borne in mind, not, as in the past, a technical impossibility.
Preserving the World’s Natural Resources
I come now to my third head: conservation. Conservation, like security and justice, demands action by the state. I mean by ‘conservation’ not only the preservation of ancient monuments and beauty spots, the upkeep of roads and public utilities, and so on. These things are done at present, except in time of war. What I have chiefly in mind is the preservation of the world’s natural resources. This is a matter of enormous importance, to which very little attention has been paid. During the past hundred and fifty years mankind has used up the raw materials of industry and the soil upon which agriculture depends, and this wasteful expenditure of natural capital has proceeded with ever-increasing velocity. In relation to industry, the most striking example is oil. The amount of accessible oil in the world is unknown, but is certainly not unlimited; already the need for it has reached the point at which there is a risk of its contributing to bringing about a third world war. When oil is no longer available in large quantities, a great deal will have to be changed in our way of life. If we try to substitute atomic energy, that will only result in exhaustion of the available supplies of uranium and thorium. Industry as it exists at present depends essentially upon the expenditure of natural capital, and cannot long continue in its present prodigal fashion.
Even more serious, according to some authorities, is the situation in regard to agriculture, as set forth with great vividness in Mr. Vogt’s Road to Survival. Except in a few favoured areas (of which Western Europe is one), the prevailing methods of cultivating the soil rapidly exhaust its fertility. The growth of the dust bowl in America is the best known example of a destructive process which is going on in most parts of the world. As, meantime, the population increases, a disastrous food shortage is inevitable within the next fifty years unless drastic steps are taken. The necessary measures are known to students of agriculture, but only governments can take them, and then only if they are willing and able to face unpopularity. This is a problem which has received far too little attention. It must be faced by anyone who hopes for a stable world without internecine wars—wars which, if they are to ease the food shortage, must be far more destructive than those we have already endured, for during both the world wars the population of the world increased. This question o a reform in agriculture is perhaps the most important that the governments of the near future will have to face, except the prevention of war.
I have spoken of security, justice, and conservation as the most essential of governmental functions, because these are things that only governments can bring about. I have not meant to suggest that governments should have no other functions. But in the main their functions in other spheres should be to encourage non-governmental initiative, and to create opportunities for its exercise in beneficent ways. There ate anarchic and criminal forms of initiative which cannot 1e tolerated in a civilised society. There are other forms of initiative, such as that of the well-established inventor, which everybody recognises to be useful. But there is a large intermediate class of innovators of whose activities it cannot be known in advance whether the effects will be good or bad. It is particularly in relation to this cIa-. that it is necessary to urge the desirability of freedom to experiment, for this uncertain class includes all that has been best in the history of human achievement.
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