SOCIALISM AND COLD WAR
711
It has often been stated that the whole future of Western free–
dom depends upon the amount of aid which the Western democra–
cies are prepared to give to the Indian nation in its effort to modern–
ize and industrialize itself while retaining the political forms of
Western democracy. What is not so often stated is that the chances
of the Indian Government succeeding in this attempt depend very
largely upon the role which the nationalized industries are permitted
to play in the Indian economy.
If
the price of large-scale Western
aid is that the Indian Government should increase the proposed size
of the private and decrease that of the public sector of the economy,
then the aid we give may actually decrease the chances of success.
Political democracy, in fact, can only be assured in this overpopu–
lated and under-developed sub-continent in the kind of Socialist
planned economy which would be condemned by Top People in
London, Washington, Paris and Bonn as totalitarian.
Nor can we assume that public opinion in these countries will
always prefer Western democracy to the Communist way of life. For
whereas we can still claim that life in Western Europe is much more
comfortable and much freer for the masses than it is in Eastern
Europe, the same is not true when we compare Eastern Europe with,
for example, the Middle East or South East Asia. Many Poles who
visit both London and Moscow are deeply envious of our way of
life; but an Iraqi, Egyptian, Burmese or Siamese who makes the
same two-way trip could reach a rather different conclusion. Instead
of preferring Western freedom to Communist totalitarianism, he
may well feel he has more to learn in Moscow, East Berlin and
Prague than in Washington, London or Bonn about the task of
rapidly modernizing a backward country and raising the living stan–
dards of the masses. The luxuries, gadgets, entertainments and pack–
aged foodstuffs which so many workers enjoy in our Affluent Socie–
ties may strike him as irrelevant and even vulgar and immoral, com–
pared with the solid respectability of the Communist way of life. It
is,
indeed, a most dangerous assumption that, even if they could
be
given a truly free choice between the "Roundhead" standards of
Communist collectivism and the "Cavalier" luxuries of Western in–
dividualism, all the peoples of Asia and Africa would be bound to
prefer our Restoration. And, anyway, such a free choice will not be
given them. In the next twenty years the big decisions will be taken
