Lack of these prerequisites compels Asian lands to depart from the road of traditional capitalism, which even if they wished it is not open to them, and to plan the transformation of their societies under some form of state direction and control. Hence the adoption of a mixed economy which includes free enterprise and governmental planning.
Thus the Asian picture resolves itself as a battle for the survival of peoples and ideas. Communism believes it can win through by the process of the double squeeze, by legal and illegal methods, by persuasion and violence, by identifying nationalism with Communism and simultaneously by invoking the example of Russia and China, by the promise of jobs to the unemployed and the bait of dictatorial power to the politically frustrated. Behind all this is the formidable power of the Russo-Chinese bloc. For Communism's first and last weapon is force.
The virtue of Communism in Asian eyes is its promise of economic security; its vice consists in its denial of individual freedom. Based on force, its sanction is force, the violence incarnate in a system motivated primarily by fear and hate. Communism, therefore, can offer the new independent countries of Asia neither democracy in the form of individual freedom nor peace as an assurance against violence, fear and hatred. But it does seek to delude the vast, rapidly growing masses of the underdeveloped world with the promise of economic security, and by using parliamentary instruments for the capture of political power it assumes the garb of democracy while simultaneously attempting to equate nationalism with Communism.
What have the democrats of Asia and the West to offer against this? Political freedom means much to the renascent countries of Asia, but the value of individual liberty has still to be fully understood and respected. In Asia's eyes independence symbolises the self-respect which for centuries it had lost with the loss of its freedom. The nations of Europe have enjoyed political freedom long enough to take it for granted and to elevate the value of other ideas such as democracy, free enterprise and individual freedom above it.