Draft Chapter I -- Overall Report

October 29, 1957

# CHAPTER I

## AMERICAN HORIZONS TODAY

### I

Throughout history, nations have had difficulty in understanding the transformations through which they were living. For history appears as a series of continuous occurrences, and the perspective which will give it a pattern and a meaning is lacking to contemporaries. Each generation must strive amidst the confusion of its present to establish a continuity with the past and a sense of direction into the future. It must seek to distinguish the momentous from that which is merely of the moment; to single out that which is critical from the multiplicity of events by which it is assailed.

Nothing is more difficult than to exercise this sense of historical discrimination. The past often gives the impression of an inevitable progression because each accomplished action sets in motion a train of events which soon obscures the alternative courses of any moment. The present, on the other hand, is desperately aware of the complexity of its alternatives and often at a loss for the sense of direction which alone can resolve them. History records only the final choice, not the anguish which preceded it. It is only when a society contemplates its own future that it comes to realize that there was nothing foreordained about its past. Its achievement reflected the strength of its purpose. Its ability to master its challenge derived from the strength of its convictions.

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As the twentieth century nears the end of its sixth decade, America confronts a world in swift and often turbulent change. Both within our borders and beyond, enormous transformations -- in human aspirations, in the structure of society, in economic development, in scientific knowledge -- are reshaping the pattern of existence at a speed without parallel in history. And these upheavals occur not only in the form of big, dramatic events, but also and perhaps predominantly as a series of almost imperceptible changes -- as a slow social drift, the final impact of which may nevertheless affect our destiny and that of the rest of the world as profoundly as the moments of terrible crisis.

It is as much in dealing with the challenge of these unclear and ambiguous trends of evolution as in coping with the explosions of revolution that we will be tested in the future. Indeed in terms of understanding and so mastering the flux of events, the challenge of the seemingly small may pose more of a problem to our sense of historic identity and purpose than that of the big. For fate has not prepared us for the subtle nature of much of the contemporary challenge. Inhabiting a vast continent immensely endowed with natural wealth, we have concentrated our domestic efforts on a prodigious struggle to tame our environment. Protected until yesterday by the great oceans, our international security has been satisfied by a temporary mustering of interest to meet recurrent but passing overt threats. And having subdued our environment and bested the international threats,

October 29, 1957.

we are tempted to believe that any crisis can be resolved by sheer force of
effort.

The task before us is to understand that even though national power
will never be more important, the challenges henceforth may defy the simple
exercise of effort and power. Indeed the recognition of a challenge may be
as important as and even more difficult than the solution of it. For the
problems ahead do not involve material considerations alone. They are,
instead, preeminently problems whose complexities lie in their non-material
aspects. At home, the task of the future no longer lies so much in conquering
the physical environment as in giving meaning to this conquest. Abroad, the
challenge is not merely that of war, trade, or even international prosperity,
but that of a world seeking new values, new purposes and new institutions.

Thus the overriding problem of the future will be our ability to select
the proper challenges and to meet them with determination, dignity and purpose.
For the characteristic feature of a revolutionary period such as the present is
the disintegration of many traditional ways and beliefs of life. The recurrent
shock of our age is the realization that concepts and patterns of action of a
more secure past no longer have their accustomed dependability or even
relevance. We live in an age in which choices are not only crucially important
but agonizingly uncertain. But choice without purpose leads to paralysis or to
fitful or erratic behavior. And power without a sense of direction may drain
our life of its meaning if it does not destroy humanity altogether. Our problems

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therefore require for their solution not only great effort and skill, but even
more importantly great conviction. And our opportunities -- which are the
other side of our problems -- depend not only on a state of fact, but also
on a state of mind.

It may seem a strange proposition that America can master its future
only by searching its soul. To many peoples in other lands America appears
to stand on a pinnacle of wealth and power, and to be occupied only with the
material problems of each. Even to many Americans, the great issues of
the future seem essentially those of practical management rather than of
philosophic or spiritual inquiry. But we would be wise to regard our material
achievement with humility and to consider that it defines a duty, rather than
offering a respite. No society can rest on its accomplishments. History
bears witness to the decay of many great nations who sought their future in
their past or their present in the material triumphs. It is the tragedy of
history and its glory that no exertion can ever be final, that no society can
ever be spared the task of learning anew the meaning of its existence.

II

What then are some of the prospects before us?

Let us look first at our domestic situation. As we examine the broad
outlines of the American domestic future of the next two to three decades

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a paradox strikes us: where most of the world remains still oppressed by
the gulf between its aspirations and reality, the U.S. faces the problem that
in many areas of national life reality has caught up with its aspirations.
Today the overwhelming majority of Americans are, or soon can be, com-
fortably fed, clothed and housed. The steady increase in American produc-
tivity has not only eliminated much of the physical misery with which our
forefeathers had to cope, but has endowed us with a hitherto unimaginable
amount of leisure and opportunity for education and creative effort.

And the achievements of the past point the way to still greater
accomplishments to come. For our economy has been growing at an explo-
sive rate. Since 1950, American business enterprise has been adding to its
productive equipment at the rate of approximately $25 billion a year, a feat
equivalent to reproducing annually all the assets of General Motors, Stand-
ard Oil (N.J.), Ford, U.S. Steel and General Electric. If the American
business community continues to grow at this rate for another two decades
it will add over half a trillion dollars to its plant and equipment -- a figure
which rivals the estimated value of our present entire stock of national
wealth -- the land, machines, houses, cars and grain which comprise our
economic riches.

The effect of this huge addition to our physical capital will be to
exert an enormous leverage on our production. Looking backwards at the
leverage of past capital growth, we find that while our total labor force is

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is now eight times greater than it was a century ago, the national income
is 25 times greater. In the past half-century, the average output per man
hour has tripled each decade. By 1975, the effect of our present rate of
accumulation can be to boost our gross national product from $390 billions
in 1955 to $814 billions.

This forecast, it must be clearly stated, is not a prediction of what
will be, but of what can be. It outlines the opportunity that lies well within
our capabilities; it provides the blueprint for an economy for which we have
all the necessary material, energy and skills. Our task is to convert this
possibility into an actuality.

But what does this opportunity mean to the individual citizen? By
1975 our population is likely to have reached a level of 220 millions. Despite
this tremendous increase in the number of people who must share in our out-
put, if our present rate of growth continues, the average income per family
or household will be approximately $7,500 in terms of today's dollar evalu-
ation. This figure must be regarded not merely as a crude increase over our
corresponding average income of about $5,500 today; it must also be con-
sidered in the light of other expected characteristics of the 1975 economy.
There is no doubt, for example, that it will be earned in a work week of 35
hours or less, for the trend of worktime has shown a steady decline in the
past six or seven decades. It may further be assumed that it will be under-
pinned by a greater amount of welfare services, and that it will be more

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dependable than present incomes by virtue of more effective public control
over economic fluctuations.

But what is significant here is not just the quantitative aspect of
these figures. It is the qualitative value of the level of life which such fig-
ures make possible. For this potential income for the typical American family
must be viewed against the background of the fact that in 1954, the average
income for all _professional_ and _semiprofessional_ families in the U.S. was
just slightly more than $7,300, and that of so-called _managerial_ families was
slightly less than $7,500. Thus the promise of 1975 is the elevation of the
American people to an economic level where the average family will enjoy
an income comparable to that of the upper middle class today. It is the first
approach to a society in which the average person may enjoy not merely the
perquisites of civilized existence but a modest share of its luxuries as well.
Such a social environment has never before existed save for a limited sector
of any community. Its realization will add a new dimension to social experi-
ence.

This extraordinary possibility, we must again point out, is our tar-
get, not our assured terminus. For reasons with which other chapters of this
report will concern themselves, it may not be reached. Yet however great
the difficulties of attainment, it remains the true measure of the _opportunity_
before us. It is not, let us hasten to say, a vision of Utopia which we pro-
ject. Even if our goals are reached, 1975 will be far from a perfect society.

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Laggard sections of the community will undoubtedly remain. Great and necessary works will still need to be performed. Troublesome, perhaps even grave problems of economic policy will assuredly assert themselves. Nevertheless these hard realities at best obscure the underlying achievement. If the American economy performs according to its capacities, we shall have created a society different in kind, as well as degree, from any heretofore.

Yet, it may well be that the gravest problem of all lies not in a failure to achieve our objective but in the problems inherent in success itself. There is a danger in the natural feelings of national pride and self-satisfaction which the vision of a society of near-universal well-being inspires. This is the peril of failing to understand that in a world of poverty our wealth can be justified only by the moral concern with which we employ it. It is the danger that we may confuse _more_ with _better_, and assume that because we have brought about an environment of relative plenty, that this is an end in itself.

It will not be. Indeed, if the prospect of a society of well-being "solves" some age-old questions of economics it opens new questions of a still deeper nature. There is not, in a society of abundance, the same easy rationale for the single-minded pursuit of private gain, or for the high estimation of economic activity itself, which prevails in a society still coping with the exigencies of want and need. In the past, America has not had to ask itself the purpose for which it worked so hard, saved so much, built so

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furiously: the answer was apparent in the needs of the people themselves.
But when those needs have been met and more than met, when additional
economic effort no longer administers to the satisfaction of basic wants,
but caters increasingly to trivial ones, the question of the purpose of eco-
nomic activity itself cannot so easily be evaded.

For the real justification of our domestic achievement is not the mere
creation of wealth for wealth's sake, but the bringing into being of a society
in which each individual may realize to the full whatever capacities for self-
expression he may possess. The material mechanism of American society
must be made the servant of life and not its master; it cannot be the goal
of our striving, but the tool which gives this effort meaning both here and
abroad. Otherwise, we will inevitably succumb to the nemesis of too much
leisure, too much prosperity, too few challenges. Our transcendent domes-
tic challenge, therefore, is to our imagination and vision. Henceforth the
question of *quality* will assume a higher degree of importance than quantity;
the meaningfulness of work will be worth more than its monetary tag. With
the solution of many of the problems of want, we will have the means and
the motive to turn our attention away from an absorption in wealth. America's
internal need at mid-century is to define a new concept of frontier, to find
new scope for the national genius heretofore directed to the economic conquest
of its environment.

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III

And yet our domestic problems and opportunities are dwarfed by
the challenges of the world beyond our shores. Our domestic environ-
ment is fast changing, but the continuities of the past give it stability.
Abroad even more rapid changes are taking place in a fearful absence of
continuity. In some nations standards and institutions which have re-
mained unchanged for centuries are now disintegrating. In others, mil-
lions whose lives have hitherto been zeros are now restively clamoring
for a new and meaningful existence. Thus Western Europe, the fountain-
head of our civilization and for centuries the arena of world affairs, has
lost its position of pre-eminence and is painfully readjusting to its new
circumstance of diminished influence. Across the great land mass of
Eurasia and on the continent of Africa, new nations are rising in the place
of colonial empires.

These transformations raise issues of philosophical even more
than of political import: every such great change requires an adjustment
of the theoretical framework of ideas. For Europe the philosophic task is
to find a new dignity and historic purpose in a world where it can no longer
entirely command its own destiny, much less that of its past empires. For
the newer nations, the philosophic task is to replace the exhilaration of
the struggle for independence with less dramatic but more permanent

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the motivations capable of perpetuating freedoms so hardly won. In any age such transformations of national attitude would be difficult and the inevitable tensions which must accompany them would be dangerous. But in our times the difficulties and dangers are compounded by a truly formidable set of new conditions.

First and most apparent of these is that the world's quest for values and purposes is taking place on a stage over-hung by the shadow of two dark realities: the existence of the powerful and hostile Soviet bloc, which is eager to exploit all dissatisfactions for its own ends; and the deadly peril presented by the new weapons technology, which is literally capable of obliterating all civilization.

A second and no less complicating factor is that the problems of the current international transformations have gained urgency as distances have shrunk and states have grown increasingly interdependent. For the first time in history, international relations are truly global. Until relatively recent times, for example, the hemispheres were sharply divided. The ancient civilizations of India and the Far East developed independently of western culture; they were virtually unknown to the classical Greeks and Romans, and in the Middle Ages impinged only slightly on the occidental consciousness. Indeed, it was not until the outbreak of World War II that "history" ceased to be made almost exclusively by the major European and American powers. Today the hemispheres are inseparable and isolated states no longer exist

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anywhere on earth. The crucial fact is that every country on earth is a part of something bigger than itself. When ideas can circle the globe in a matter of minutes, when missiles are being designed to carry destruction to distant targets thousands of miles away, when self-sufficient economies are extinct, it is evident that no national state can stand alone -- not even the United States of America. Henceforth the foreign policy of every state must begin with the premise that its degree of international involvement and vulnerability is total.

Yet another factor which has altered the character of international relations throughout the world is that the conduct of diplomacy is no longer exercised as the privileged activity of an elite social or professional group. Foreign policy has become democratic; its implications reach into every aspect of national existence; the nature of its objectives and the effectiveness with which they are pursued are determined by the strength and dynamism of the popular support behind them. In its deepest sense the foreign policy of any great nation stands as a symbol of that nation's total purpose and character. Even when its avowed objectives are limited, its unavowed objectives are the hearts and minds of mankind.

For our American nation the effect of this far more dangerous, more interdependent, more democratically responsive climate of international life is to heighten the importance of something which is anterior even to our international policy. This is our international philosophy. Before we can

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hope to assist in the transformations now gripping the world we must under-
stand the basic issues which those processes of change involve.

Thus we must recognize, for example, that the "revolution of rising expectations" which is sweeping vast areas of the globe is far more than an economic phenomenon. It is the quest of man for independence, the demand for participation in decisions that affect his own destiny, the stirring of political, economic and social aspirations within hitherto dependent and underdeveloped lands. In such countries the collapse of colonialism and the swift transition from an agricultural or a tribal society has been a disrupting process. Like all successful revolutionaries the leaders of the newly independent states find that the overthrow of the previous system is not the end of their task but the beginning, and that the effort to build a new state requires purposes and skills different from those which achieved independence. A revolution breeds habits of opposition which can sometimes be channeled only with difficulty into tasks of construction. It creates the illusion that all problems can be dealt with by the same impatient methods which proved so useful in overcoming the early obstacles to independence. This impatience may create a psychological climate in which the promise of immediate solutions may seem more important than the safeguarding of freedom. Unless the newly independent peoples recognize the relevance of democratic principles to their lives, it may require the harsh reality of communist enslavement

Draft Chapter I -- Overall Report
October 29, 1957.

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to bring home the fact that material progress soon becomes hollow and meaningless unless coupled with respect for the dignity of the individual. By then of course it will be too late, either for the victims or the rest of the world.

What we must also recognize, in the delicate and sometimes disheartening task of assisting the transformation of the formerly colonial states, is that their revolution is the outgrowth of our own traditional concepts regarding freedom and the dignity of man. Most of the leaders of these states were educated in the West and drew their inspiration from the tenets of the British, French and American revolutionaries who preached the doctrine of the inalienable "right" of self-government. Thus the upheavals in the newly independent states and in those still under colonial rule represent one of the greatest conversions in history. As the political principles of the colonizers regarding the nature of human liberty became diffused, the basis was laid for the destruction of colonialism itself. The challenge now presented by the newly independent countries to the West is for the West to live up to its own values. They are playing a role drawn from a Western script.

We must understand that the communist challenge is not merely a military threat but an attack on the very basis of these values. The danger of Communism is not that of an alternative economic system; this is a matter about which intelligent men can agree to disagree. Rather, the menace of Communism concerns the values of Western liberalism and libertarianism. For Communism

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uses the traditional terms of freedom and human dignity as the rhetorical tools of slavery. What is worse, communism is itself a slave to a dogma which recognizes no lasting peace between differing economic and social systems. Its intervals of peaceful coexistence have always been conceived as tactical pauses wherein to disarm resistance and to prepare positions for the inevitable showdown. While the revolution of the colonial states represents an effort to enter the international system in full recognition of the variety of wants and needs and preferences of different peoples, the communist revolution is an attempt to subvert this system and to impose a single stamp of ideas and institutions on every people. Thus with respect to the newly independent states we can hope to build a community based on shared aspirations and on mutual toleration of differences. With respect to the communist challenge our security resides in our strength and in our ability to help bring about conditions in the free world which minimize the appeal of communist dogma.

It is a terrible characteristic of our age that the world is rent by conflict at a time when peace was never more necessary. It is fragmented at the critical moment when all the pressures of history and technology urge integration into ever larger units. Through the tens of thousands of years that man has been dominant on earth the structures of society have grown ever larger -- from family to clan, to tribe, to feudal aggregates, to nations, to coalitions of nations. At the present time man's loyalties are governed by entities called nations. He has not yet reached the point where his perspective can encompass the larger community of mankind.

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Yet in spite of the existence of hostile ideologies and the effort
by one group of states to achieve world domination, the forces of tech-
nology as well as the demands of the human spirit insist that man must
arrive at this perspective, and this realization as well must enter our na-
tional consciousness. For many of our most urgent problems can be solved
only on a far greater, if not yet a truly global, scale. As the population of
our planet increases, it is likely that existing arable lands, even when
supplemented by those which may yet be developed by irrigation and ferti-
lization, will prove inadequate to supply man with food. We will then have
to exploit the richness of the oceans -- to cultivate or even domesticate
the flora and fauna that live within the great watery mantle that covers most
of our planet. But in so doing we will be faced with the choice between
strife and cooperation. Who will define the limits of territorial waters?
Who will own the great untouched pastures of the seas? What access to
whose sea will the landlocked nations seek?

Other problems will present themselves as the nuclear age unfolds.
Vexing international issues have already arisen in connection with the
fallout of radioactive particles from the testing of hydrogen bombs. It is
less generally recognized that the peaceful use of atomic energy will pre-
sent as many international difficulties as its military employment. For ex-
ample, there is the question of the disposal of radioactive wastes in the

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ocean. No less serious is the crisis that may arise as the result of an
accident in a nuclear reactor -- or in the dismantling of a nuclear reactor
-- which could spread lethal radioactivity in the midst of populated civil-
ized areas. Since the winds of earth recognize no man-made frontiers, it
is inevitable that the development of atomic energy for peace, as well as
for war, will make standards of safety a matter for regional and perhaps
global concern. We have today examples of international cooperations
imposed by technology: i.e., the assignment of wave lengths for broad-
casting or the agreements governing international aviation. An ever larger
array of such agreements will become necessary as science evolves.

With the launching of earth satellites, the control of outer space
has already become of momentous international import. Our developing
knowledge of meteorology may make this issue even more critical. Long-
range weather forecasts now require the assembling of data from observa-
tion posts around the entire planet. In the future it is likely that we will
be able not only to predict but to control -- or at least influence -- the
weather. Such developments are less implausible today than the unleash-
ing of nuclear energy appeared two decades ago. If man should succeed
in extending his control of the weather beyond his local environs to the
higher reaches of the atmosphere -- if he should for example, find ways
to direct and canalize the flow of currents from the permanent air mass