THE STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL
We have seen something of the principle underlying the Liberal idea and
of its various applications. We have now to put the test question. Are
these different applications compatible? Will they work together to make
that harmonious whole of which it is easy enough to talk in abstract
terms? Are they themselves really harmonious in theory and in practice?
Does scope for individual development, for example, consort with the
idea of equality? Is popular sovereignty a practicable basis of personal
freedom, or does it open an avenue to the tyranny of the mob? Will the
sentiment of nationality dwell in unison with the ideal of peace? Is the
love of liberty compatible with the full realization of the common will?
If reconcilable in theory, may not these ideals collide in practice? Are
there not clearly occasions demonstrable in history when development in
one direction involves retrogression in another? If so, how are we to
strike the balance of gain and loss? Does political progress offer us
nothing but a choice of evils, or may we have some confidence that, in
solving the most pressing problem of the moment, we shall in the end be
in a better position for grappling with the obstacles that come next in
turn?
I shall deal with these questions as far as limits of space allow, and I
will take first the question of liberty and the common will upon which
everything turns. Enough has already been said on this topic to enable
us to shorten the discussion. We have seen that social liberty rests on
restraint. A man can be free to direct his own life only in so far as
others are prevented from molesting and interfering with him. So far
there is no real departure from the strictest tenets of individualism.
We have, indeed, had occasion to examine the application of the doctrine
to freedom of contract on the one hand, and to the action of
combinations on the other, and have seen reason to think that in either
case nominal freedom, that is to say, the absence of legal restraint,
might have the effect of impairing real freedom, that is to say, would
allow the stronger party to coerce the weaker. We have also seen that
the effect of combination may be double edged, that it may restrict
freedom on one side and enlarge it on the other. In all these cases our
contention has been simply that we should be guided by real and not by
verbal considerations,--that we should ask in every case what policy
will yield effective freedom--and we have found a close connection in
each instance between freedom and equality. In these cases, however, we
were dealing with the relations of one man with another, or of one body
of men with another, and we could regard the community as an arbiter
between them whose business it was to see justice done and prevent the
abuse of coercive power. Hence we could treat a very large part of the
modern development of social control as motived by the desire for a more
effective liberty. The case is not so clear when we find the will of the
individual in conflict with the will of the community as a whole. When
such conflict occurs, it would seem that we must be prepared for one of
two things. Either we must admit the legitimacy of coercion, avowedly
not in the interests of freedom but in furtherance, without regard to
freedom, of other ends which the community deems good. Or we must admit
limitations which may cramp the development of the general will, and
perchance prove a serious obstacle to collective progress. Is there any
means of avoiding this conflict? Must we leave the question to be fought
out in each case by a balance of advantages and disadvantages, or are
there any general considerations which help us to determine the true
sphere of collective and of private action?
Let us first observe that, as Mill pointed out long ago, there are many
forms of collective action which do not involve coercion. The State may
provide for certain objects which it deems good without compelling any
one to make use of them. Thus it may maintain hospitals, though any one
who can pay for them remains free to employ his own doctors and nurses.
It may and does maintain a great educational system, while leaving every
one free to maintain or to attend a private school. It maintains parks
and picture galleries without driving any one into them. There is a
municipal tramway service, which does not prevent private people from
running motor 'buses along the same streets, and so on. It is true that
for the support of these objects rates and taxes are compulsorily
levied, but this form of compulsion raises a set of questions of which
we shall have to speak in another connection, and does not concern us
here. For the moment we have to deal only with those actions of State
which compel all citizens, or all whom they concern, to fall in with
them and allow of no divergence. This kind of coercion tends to
increase. Is its extension necessarily an encroachment upon liberty, or
are the elements of value secured by collective control distinct from
the elements of value secured by individual choice, so that within due
limits each may develop side by side?
We have already declined to solve the problem by applying Mill's
distinction between self-regarding and other-regarding actions, first
because there are no actions which may not directly or indirectly affect
others, secondly because even if there were they would not cease to be
matter of concern to others. The common good includes the good of every
member of the community, and the injury which a man inflicts upon
himself is matter of common concern, even apart from any ulterior
effect upon others. If we refrain from coercing a man for his own good,
it is not because his good is indifferent to us, but because it cannot
be furthered by coercion. The difficulty is founded on the nature of the
good itself, which on its personal side depends on the spontaneous flow
of feeling checked and guided not by external restraint but by rational
self-control. To try to form character by coercion is to destroy it in
the making. Personality is not built up from without but grows from
within, and the function of the outer order is not to create it, but to
provide for it the most suitable conditions of growth. Thus, to the
common question whether it is possible to make men good by Act of
Parliament, the reply is that it is not possible to compel morality
because morality is the act or character of a free agent, but that it is
possible to create the conditions under which morality can develop, and
among these not the least important is freedom from compulsion by
others.
The argument suggests that compulsion is limited not by
indifference--how could the character of its members be matter of
indifference to the community?--but by its own incapacity to achieve
its ends. The spirit cannot be forced. Nor, conversely, can it prevail
by force. It may require social expression. It may build up an
association, a church for example, to carry out the common objects and
maintain the common life of all who are like-minded. But the association
must be free, because spiritually everything depends not on what is done
but on the will with which it is done. The limit to the value of
coercion thus lies not in the restriction of social purpose, but in the
conditions of personal life. No force can compel growth. Whatever
elements of social value depend on the accord of feeling, on
comprehension of meaning, on the assent of will, must come through
liberty. Here is the sphere and function of liberty in the social
harmony.
Where, then, is the sphere of compulsion, and what is its value? The
reply is that compulsion is of value where outward conformity is of
value, and this may be in any case where the non-conformity of one
wrecks the purpose of others. We have already remarked that liberty
itself only rests upon restraint. Thus a religious body is not, properly
speaking, free to march in procession through the streets unless people
of a different religion are restrained from pelting the procession with
stones and pursuing it with insolence. We restrain them from disorder
not to teach them the genuine spirit of religion, which they will not
learn in the police court, but to secure to the other party the right of
worship unmolested. The enforced restraint has its value in the action
that it sets free. But we may not only restrain one man from obstructing
another--and the extent to which we do this is the measure of the
freedom that we maintain--but we may also restrain him from obstructing
the general will; and this we have to do whenever uniformity is
necessary to the end which the general will has in view. The majority of
employers in a trade we may suppose would be willing to adopt certain
precautions for the health or safety of their workers, to lower hours or
to raise the rate of wages. They are unable to do so, however, as long
as a minority, perhaps as long as a single employer, stands out. He
would beat them in competition if they were voluntarily to undertake
expenses from which he is free. In this case, the will of a minority,
possibly the will of one man, thwarts that of the remainder. It coerces
them, indirectly, but quite as effectively as if he were their master.
If they, by combination, can coerce him no principle of liberty is
violated. It is coercion against coercion, differing possibly in form
and method, but not in principle or in spirit. Further, if the community
as a whole sympathizes with the one side rather than the other, it can
reasonably bring the law into play. Its object is not the moral
education of the recusant individuals. Its object is to secure certain
conditions which it believes necessary for the welfare of its members,
and which can only be secured by an enforced uniformity.
It appears, then, that the true distinction is not between
self-regarding and other-regarding actions, but between coercive and
non-coercive actions. The function of State coercion is to override
individual coercion, and, of course, coercion exercised by any
association of individuals within the State. It is by this means that it
maintains liberty of expression, security of person and property,
genuine freedom of contract, the rights of public meeting and
association, and finally its own power to carry out common objects
undefeated by the recalcitrance of individual members. Undoubtedly it
endows both individuals and associations with powers as well as with
rights. But over these powers it must exercise supervision in the
interests of equal justice. Just as compulsion failed in the sphere of
liberty, the sphere of spiritual growth, so liberty fails in the
external order wherever, by the mere absence of supervisory restriction,
men are able directly or indirectly to put constraint on one another.
This is why there is no intrinsic and inevitable conflict between
liberty and compulsion, but at bottom a mutual need. The object of
compulsion is to secure the most favourable external conditions of
inward growth and happiness so far as these conditions depend on
combined action and uniform observance. The sphere of liberty is the
sphere of growth itself. There is no true opposition between liberty as
such and control as such, for every liberty rests on a corresponding act
of control. The true opposition is between the control that cramps the
personal life and the spiritual order, and the control that is aimed at
securing the external and material conditions of their free and
unimpeded development.
I do not pretend that this delimitation solves all problems. The
"inward" life will seek to express itself in outward acts. A religious
ordinance may bid the devout refuse military service, or withhold the
payment of a tax, or decline to submit a building to inspection. Here
are external matters where conscience and the State come into direct
conflict, and where is the court of appeal that is to decide between
them? In any given case the right, as judged by the ultimate effect on
human welfare, may, of course, be on the one side, or on the other, or
between the two. But is there anything to guide the two parties as long
as each believes itself to be in the right and sees no ground for
waiving its opinion? To begin with, clearly the State does well to avoid
such conflicts by substituting alternatives. Other duties than that of
military service may be found for a follower of Tolstoy, and as long as
he is willing to take his full share of burdens the difficulty is fairly
met. Again, the mere convenience of the majority cannot be fairly
weighed against the religious convictions of the few. It might be
convenient that certain public work should be done on Saturday, but mere
convenience would be an insufficient ground for compelling Jews to
participate in it. Religious and ethical conviction must be weighed
against religious and ethical conviction. It is not number that counts
morally, but the belief that is reasoned out according to the best of
one's lights as to the necessities of the common good. But the
conscience of the community has its rights just as much as the
conscience of the individual. If we are convinced that the inspection of
a convent laundry is required in the interest, not of mere official
routine, but of justice and humanity, we can do nothing but insist upon
it, and when all has been done that can be done to save the individual
conscience the common conviction of the common good must have its way.
In the end the external order belongs to the community, and the right of
protest to the individual.
On the other side, the individual owes more to the community than is
always recognized. Under modern conditions he is too much inclined to
take for granted what the State does for him and to use the personal
security and liberty of speech which it affords him as a vantage ground
from which he can in safety denounce its works and repudiate its
authority. He assumes the right to be in or out of the social system as
he chooses. He relies on the general law which protects him, and
emancipates himself from some particular law which he finds oppressive
to his conscience. He forgets or does not take the trouble to reflect
that, if every one were to act as he does, the social machine would come
to a stop. He certainly fails to make it clear how a society would
subsist in which every man should claim the right of unrestricted
disobedience to a law which he happens to think wrong. In fact, it is
possible for an over-tender conscience to consort with an insufficient
sense of social responsibility. The combination is unfortunate; and we
may fairly say that, if the State owes the utmost consideration to the
conscience, its owner owes a corresponding debt to the State. With such
mutual consideration, and with the development of the civic sense,
conflicts between law and conscience are capable of being brought within
very narrow limits, though their complete reconciliation will always
remain a problem until men are generally agreed as to the fundamental
conditions of the social harmony.
It may be asked, on the other hand, whether in insisting on the free
development of personality we have not understated the duty of society
to its members. We all admit a collective responsibility for children.
Are there not grown-up people who stand just as much in need of care?
What of the idiot, the imbecile, the feeble-minded or the drunkard? What
does rational self-determination mean for these classes? They may injure
no one but themselves except by the contagion of bad example. But have
we no duty towards them, having in view their own good alone and leaving
every other consideration aside? Have we not the right to take the
feeble-minded under our care and to keep the drunkard from drink, purely
for their own good and apart from every ulterior consideration? And, if
so, must we not extend the whole sphere of permissible coercion, and
admit that a man may for his own sake and with no ulterior object, be
compelled to do what we think right and avoid what we think wrong?
The reply is that the argument is weak just where it seeks to
generalize. We are compelled to put the insane under restraint for
social reasons apart from their own benefit. But their own benefit
would be a fully sufficient reason if no other existed. To them, by
their misfortune, liberty, as we understand the term, has no
application, because they are incapable of rational choice and therefore
of the kind of growth for the sake of which freedom is valuable. The
same thing is true of the feeble-minded, and if they are not yet treated
on the same principle it is merely because the recognition of their type
as a type is relatively modern. But the same thing is also in its degree
true of the drunkard, so far as he is the victim of an impulse which he
has allowed to grow beyond his own control; and the question whether he
should be regarded as a fit object for tutelage or not is to be decided
in each case by asking whether such capacity of self-control as he
retains would be impaired or repaired by a period of tutelar restraint.
There is nothing in all this to touch the essential of liberty which is
the value of the power of self-governance where it exists. All that is
proved is that where it does not exist it is right to save men from
suffering, and if the case admits to put them under conditions in which
the normal balance of impulse is most likely to be restored. It may be
added that, in the case of the drunkard--and I think the argument
applies to all cases where overwhelming impulse is apt to master the
will--it is a still more obvious and elementary duty to remove the
sources of temptation, and to treat as anti-social in the highest degree
every attempt to make profit out of human weakness, misery, and
wrong-doing. The case is not unlike that of a very unequal contract. The
tempter is coolly seeking his profit, and the sufferer is beset with a
fiend within. There is a form of coercion here which the genuine spirit
of liberty will not fail to recognize as its enemy, and a form of injury
to another which is not the less real because its weapon is an impulse
which forces that other to the consent which he yields.
I conclude that there is nothing in the doctrine of liberty to hinder
the movement of general will in the sphere in which it is really
efficient, and nothing in a just conception of the objects and methods
of the general will to curtail liberty in the performance of the
functions, social and personal, in which its value lies. Liberty and
compulsion have complementary functions, and the self-governing State
is at once the product and the condition of the self-governing
individual.
Thus there is no difficulty in understanding why the extension of State
control on one side goes along with determined resistance to
encroachments on another. It is a question not of increasing or
diminishing, but of reorganizing, restraints. The period which has
witnessed a rapid extension of industrial legislation has seen as
determined a resistance to anything like the establishment of doctrinal
religious teaching by a State authority,[10] and the distinction is
perfectly just. At bottom it is the same conception of liberty and the
same conception of the common will that prompts the regulation of
industry and the severance of religious worship and doctrinal teaching
from the mechanism of State control.
So far we have been considering what the State compels the individual to
do. If we pass to the question what the State is to do for the
individual, a different but parallel question arises, and we have to
note a corresponding movement of opinion. If the State does for the
individual what he ought to do for himself what will be the effect on
character, initiative, enterprise? It is a question now not of freedom,
but of responsibility, and it is one that has caused many searchings of
heart, and in respect of which opinion has undergone a remarkable
change. Thus, in relation to poverty the older view was that the first
thing needful was self-help. It was the business of every man to provide
for himself and his family. If, indeed, he utterly failed, neither he
nor they could be left to starve, and there was the Poor Law machinery
to deal with his case. But the aim of every sincere friend of the poor
must be to keep them away from the Poor Law machine. Experience of the
forty years before 1834 had taught us what came of free resort to public
funds by way of subvention to inadequate wages. It meant simply that the
standard of remuneration was lowered in proportion as men could rely on
public aid to make good the deficiency, while at the same time the
incentives to independent labour were weakened when the pauper stood on
an equal footing with the hard-working man. In general, if the attempt
was made to substitute for personal effort the help of others, the
result would only sap individual initiative and in the end bring down
the rate of industrial remuneration. It was thought, for example--and
this very point was urged against proposals for Old Age Pensions--that
if any of the objects for which a man will, if possible, provide were
removed from the scope of his own activity, he would in consequence be
content with proportionally lower wages; if the employer was to
compensate him for accident, he would fail to make provision for
accidents on his own account; if his children were fed by the
ratepayers, he would not earn the money wherewith to feed them. Hence,
on the one hand, it was urged that the rate of wages would tend to adapt
itself to the necessities of the wage earner, that in proportion as his
necessities were met from other sources his wages would fall, that
accordingly the apparent relief would be in large measure illusory,
while finally, in view of the diminished stimulus to individual
exertion, the productivity of labour would fall off, the incentives to
industry would be diminished, and the community as a whole would be
poorer. Upon the other hand, it was conceived that, however deplorable
the condition of the working classes might be, the right way of raising
them was to trust to individual enterprise and possibly, according to
some thinkers, to voluntary combination. By these means the efficiency
of labour might be enhanced and its regular remuneration raised. By
sternly withholding all external supports we should teach the working
classes to stand alone, and if there were pain in the disciplinary
process there was yet hope in the future. They would come by degrees to
a position of economic independence in which they would be able to face
the risks of life, not in reliance upon the State, but by the force of
their own brains and the strength of their own right arms.
These views no longer command the same measure of assent. On all sides
we find the State making active provision for the poorer classes and not
by any means for the destitute alone. We find it educating the children,
providing medical inspection, authorizing the feeding of the necessitous
at the expense of the ratepayers, helping them to obtain employment
through free Labour Exchanges, seeking to organize the labour market
with a view to the mitigation of unemployment, and providing old age
pensions for all whose incomes fall below thirteen shillings a week,
without exacting any contribution. Now, in all this, we may well ask, is
the State going forward blindly on the paths of broad and generous but
unconsidered charity? Is it and can it remain indifferent to the effect
on individual initiative and personal or parental responsibility? Or may
we suppose that the wiser heads are well aware of what they are about,
have looked at the matter on all sides, and are guided by a reasonable
conception of the duty of the State and the responsibilities of the
individual? Are we, in fact--for this is really the question--seeking
charity or justice?
We said above that it was the function of the State to secure the
conditions upon which mind and character may develop themselves.
Similarly we may say now that the function of the State is to secure
conditions upon which its citizens are able to win by their own efforts
all that is necessary to a full civic efficiency. It is not for the
State to feed, house, or clothe them. It is for the State to take care
that the economic conditions are such that the normal man who is not
defective in mind or body or will can by useful labour feed, house, and
clothe himself and his family. The "right to work" and the right to a
"living wage" are just as valid as the rights of person or property.
That is to say, they are integral conditions of a good social order. A
society in which a single honest man of normal capacity is definitely
unable to find the means of maintaining himself by useful work is to
that extent suffering from malorganization. There is somewhere a defect
in the social system, a hitch in the economic machine. Now, the
individual workman cannot put the machine straight. He is the last
person to have any say in the control of the market. It is not his fault
if there is over-production in his industry, or if a new and cheaper
process has been introduced which makes his particular skill, perhaps
the product of years of application, a drug in the market. He does not
direct or regulate industry. He is not responsible for its ups and
downs, but he has to pay for them. That is why it is not charity but
justice for which he is asking. Now, it may be infinitely difficult to
meet his demand. To do so may involve a far-reaching economic
reconstruction. The industrial questions involved may be so little
understood that we may easily make matters worse in the attempt to make
them better. All this shows the difficulty in finding means of meeting
this particular claim of justice, but it does not shake its position as
a claim of justice. A right is a right none the less though the means of
securing it be imperfectly known; and the workman who is unemployed or
underpaid through economic malorganization will remain a reproach not to
the charity but to the justice of society as long as he is to be seen in
the land.
If this view of the duty of the State and the right of the workman is
coming to prevail, it is owing partly to an enhanced sense of common
responsibility, and partly to the teaching of experience. In the earlier
days of the Free Trade era, it was permissible to hope that self-help
would be an adequate solvent, and that with cheap food and expanding
commerce the average workman would be able by the exercise of prudence
and thrift not only to maintain himself in good times, but to lay by for
sickness, unemployment, and old age. The actual course of events has in
large measure disappointed these hopes. It is true that the standard of
living in England has progressively advanced throughout the nineteenth
century. It is true, in particular, that, since the disastrous period
that preceded the Repeal of the Corn Laws and the passing of the Ten
Hours' Act, social improvement has been real and marked. Trade Unionism
and co-operation have grown, wages upon the whole have increased, the
cost of living has diminished, housing and sanitation have improved, the
death rate has fallen from about twenty-two to less than fifteen per
thousand. But with all this improvement the prospect of a complete and
lifelong economic independence for the average workman upon the lines of
individual competition, even when supplemented and guarded by the
collective bargaining of the Trade Union, appears exceedingly remote.
The increase of wages does not appear to be by any means proportionate
to the general growth of wealth. The whole standard of living has risen;
the very provision of education has brought with it new needs and has
almost compelled a higher standard of life in order to satisfy them. As
a whole, the working classes of England, though less thrifty than those
of some Continental countries, cannot be accused of undue negligence
with regard to the future. The accumulation of savings in Friendly
Societies, Trade Unions, Co-operative Societies, and Savings Banks shows
an increase which has more than kept pace with the rise in the level of
wages; yet there appears no likelihood that the average manual worker
will attain the goal of that full independence, covering all the risks
of life for self and family, which can alone render the competitive
system really adequate to the demands of a civilized conscience. The
careful researches of Mr. Booth in London and Mr. Rowntree in York, and
of others in country districts, have revealed that a considerable
percentage of the working classes are actually unable to earn a sum of
money representing the full cost of the barest physical necessities for
an average family; and, though the bulk of the working classes are
undoubtedly in a better position than this, these researches go to show
that even the relatively well-to-do gravitate towards this line of
primary poverty in seasons of stress, at the time when the children are
still at school, for example, or from the moment when the principal
wage-earner begins to fail, in the decline of middle life. If only some
ten per cent. of the population are actually living upon the poverty
line at any given time,[11] twice or three times that number, it is
reasonable to suppose, must approach the line in one period or other of
their lives. But when we ascend from the conception of a bare physical
maintenance for an average family to such a wage as would provide the
real minimum requirements of a civilized life and meet all its
contingencies without having to lean on any external prop, we should
have to make additions to Mr. Rowntree's figure which have not yet been
computed, but as to which it is probably well within the mark to say
that none but the most highly skilled artisans are able to earn a
remuneration meeting the requirements of the case. But, if that is so,
it is clear that the system of industrial competition fails to meet the
ethical demand embodied in the conception of the "living wage." That
system holds out no hope of an improvement which shall bring the means
of such a healthy and independent existence as should be the birthright
of every citizen of a free state within the grasp of the mass of the
people of the United Kingdom. It is this belief slowly penetrating the
public mind which has turned it to new thoughts of social regeneration.
The sum and substance of the changes that I have mentioned may be
expressed in the principle that the individual cannot stand alone, but
that between him and the State there is a reciprocal obligation. He owes
the State the duty of industriously working for himself and his family.
He is not to exploit the labour of his young children, but to submit to
the public requirements for their education, health, cleanliness and
general well-being. On the other side society owes to him the means of
maintaining a civilized standard of life, and this debt is not
adequately discharged by leaving him to secure such wages as he can in
the higgling of the market.
This view of social obligation lays increased stress on public but by no
means ignores private responsibility. It is a simple principle of
applied ethics that responsibility should be commensurate with power.
Now, given the opportunity of adequately remunerated work, a man has the
power to earn his living. It is his right and his duty to make the best
use of his opportunity, and if he fails he may fairly suffer the penalty
of being treated as a pauper or even, in an extreme case, as a criminal.
But the opportunity itself he cannot command with the same freedom. It
is only within narrow limits that it comes within the sphere of his
control. The opportunities of work and the remuneration for work are
determined by a complex mass of social forces which no individual,
certainly no individual workman, can shape. They can be controlled, if
at all, by the organized action of the community, and therefore, by a
just apportionment of responsibility, it is for the community to deal
with them.
But this, it will be said, is not Liberalism but Socialism. Pursuing the
economic rights of the individual we have been led to contemplate a
Socialistic organization of industry. But a word like Socialism has many
meanings, and it is possible that there should be a Liberal Socialism,
as well as a Socialism that is illiberal. Let us, then, without sticking
at a word, seek to follow out the Liberal view of the State in the
sphere of economics. Let us try to determine in very general terms what
is involved in realizing those primary conditions of industrial
well-being which have been laid down, and how they consort with the
rights of property and the claims of free industrial enterprise.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] The objection most often taken to "undenominationalism" itself is
that it is in reality a form of doctrinal teaching seeking State
endowment.
[11] I do not include those living in "secondary poverty," as defined by
Mr. Rowntree, as the responsibility in this case is partly personal. It
must, however, be remembered that great poverty increases the difficulty
of efficient management.