THE CONSERVATIVE MAN
401
understood by those who are most affected by it. When the eco–
nomic position of Conservative Man is threatened, he appeals to
the national state and demands that the government rescue him.
This is the hour of the rise of authoritarian dictatorships. But how
can a national government re-establish the international privileges
which once made Western society wealthy and conservative? The
national state may try to find remedies on a national scale. The
vested interests on which the Conservative Man relied, however, are
international investments and a world economy in which the mother
country enjoyed a supremacy over the rest of the world. The
national state might try, and did try, to resume the struggle for
world supremacy, but this had sinister results for Conservative
Man, by further undermining the foundations of his existence.
Yet the conservative man in the Western world who realized that
his position had become desperate had no alternative but to ask
for the help of a power which completely crushed him out of
existence.
In a unique way, Western Europe has revolutionized the
world by spreading capitalism; it has connected all countries and
peoples on earth in a world economy; it has settled and cultivated
areas which were arid wastes before the arrival of Western Man.
Western capitalism has created both the most productive and the
most destructive forces. It has experienced a long era of prosperity
and the rise of the most solid bourgeois order; but at the same time
it has created forces trying to organize a final struggle for Western
world rule, using new forms, new means, new techniques, but
applying European methods of destruction and suppression known
only during the first era of colonial conquests of "backward" coun–
tries. This "final struggle for world power" is destined to destroy
the very bases on which the age-old Western society relied, and to
give birth to revolutionary forces with effects which still have to be
seen. This kind of Western-totalitarian-society has a peculiar
explosive nature and forms an astounding contrast to the Western
World which used to be the comfortable garden homestead of
Conservative Man.
