THE STATE
The leading theories of the state should be kept in view for comparison
with the ethical theory here set forth—the theories of Aristotle
and Plato, St. Augustine and the mediæval schoolmen, Rousseau’s
contract theory, and the German conceptions of the state propounded by
Kant, Fichte, Hegel. Moreover, since the ideas actually embodied in
governments, in the Persian monarchy, for instance, in the Greek City
State, Venice, etc., are not identical with the constructions of the
philosophers, the leading facts of the history of politics should be
borne in mind as well as the leading theories.
The state has two aspects: (1) It is the balance wheel of the
vocational groups included within it. (2) It is the political
expression of the national character, and its ethical purpose is to
develop this empirical national character into a spiritual character. I
shall speak of the first aspect in this chapter.
1. The state exists in order to furnish increasingly from age to age
the conditions under which the reactions between the groups described
above can take place effectually. In concentrating attention upon the
vocational groups as the entities to be harmonized with one another,
account is taken by implication of the family and of the individual.
The sub-organisms are embraced within the superior organisms. A
more general statement would be that the state supplies the external
conditions required for development towards ethical personality by
those who pass through the institutions of the family, of the vocation,
etc.
The state possesses a spiritual character in so far as it supplies
these conditions, and in as much as it has a spiritual character it
is not merely justified but ethically required to use force. Force is
spiritualized when employed to establish the conditions indispensable
to spiritual life. The conditions enforced must be such as in the
opinion of the preponderant number of citizens indisputably make
for the development of personality. Examples of such conditions are
protection of life, property, reputation, compulsory education, the
maintenance of the monogamic family, protection against foreign
invasion, etc. All the functions of the state commonly enumerated
follow from the ethical principle. But over and above the recognized
ones, new and nobler functions of the state will appear.
The redeeming thought with respect to the use of force by the state
consists in regarding _force as ethical discipline_, and in making the
extent to which it is favorable to spiritual freedom the measure and
test of its rightful use.[85] When men are compelled to spend the major
part of their time in the protection of bare life, as was the case,
for instance, in the early days of feudalism, they are to that extent
unfree. Freedom consists in energizing the highest and most distinctive
human faculties.
_The development of the state_ should proceed in two directions. It
should withdraw from many functions exercised by it in the past,
notably from such as properly belong to the sub-organisms. At the
same time, it should lay its coercive hands upon new matters,
imposing new limitations on capricious freedom in the interest of
spiritual freedom, as soon as the pertinency of such limitations
to the ethical end becomes clear. For instance, the state may, and
doubtless will, interfere with marriage to a far greater extent
than it has yet done. It will forbid the marriage of the unsound.
If a study of character-types should ever become advanced enough—a
hazardous conjecture—to make it predictable that the union of certain
character-types will lead to infelicitous marriage, the state will be
justified in prohibiting such unions.
_Law_, ideally defined, is the sum total of conditions, capable of
being enforced, which are necessary or favorable to the development
of personality. The purpose of law is two-fold: to maintain the more
developed members of society at the level they have reached, and, by
educative penalties, to bring the backward up to the same level. In
the article on “Force and Freedom” referred to above, law is compared
to such bodily actions as walking, which at first are superintended by
consciousness, and then become automatic, thereby setting consciousness
free to attend to new and more important business. Similarly, law is
designed to render the conditions favorable to personality so explicit
that their observance shall become automatic, and that mankind shall be
at liberty to discover new and more significant conditions which in
their turn are again to become automatic.
Because of the lack of the ethical point of view, the exercise of force
by the state has seemed purely arbitrary, and has given rise to a
perverted and disastrous conception of _sovereignty_. The sovereignty
of the state has two aspects: the one internal, the other external.
Sovereignty means supremacy. The state is sovereign, within limits,
however, with respect to its citizens. The state is also sovereign,
within limits, however, with respect to other outside states.
With respect to the internal aspect of sovereignty some writers hold
that citizens have no rights as against the state—only rights accorded
by the state. But this from the ethical point of view is a wholly
untenable position. There are rights of the individual, rights of
the family, rights of the vocational group, which the state does not
create but is bound to acknowledge and which its power cannot properly
infringe. As against the state the individual has, for instance, the
right which is commonly designated as “the freedom of conscience.” The
family has rights against the state; the law cannot interfere with
the intimacies of the marriage and parental relations. The vocational
group likewise is only partially subject to public reglementation. I
have defined law as the sum total of the conditions. The state can
prescribe the conditions, but cannot trace the ways of freedom within
the conditions. The state prescribes the enforceable conditions; it has
no concern with unenforceable inner processes.
It thus appears that sovereignty or supremacy is an attribute not
peculiar to the state, although it looms up larger and more impressive
when exercised by the state. Supremacy belongs to the individual in
his private sphere, to the family in its proper province, to the
vocation, etc. Sovereignty or supremacy belongs to each of the social
institutions within its precincts, in so far as the supremacy within
that precinct is requisite for the accomplishment of the ethical end
to be therein attained. But sovereignty is not absolute in any sphere;
neither in that of the individual, nor of the family, nor yet of the
state. _The absolute conception of sovereignty is the result of the
lack of an ethical conception of the social institutions._ The state is
sovereign only so far as the exercise of its supremacy is necessary to
the spiritual end of citizenship. On this account and for this purpose
it may rightfully constrain the sub-organisms within it, and may also
pronounce its _noli me tangere_ as against the larger group of states
encompassing it. But so far as the spiritual ends to be achieved in
the international relations are concerned, the state with respect to
these is subject to international sovereignty,—a new conception which
mankind is striving to bring to the birth today. The false notion of
state sovereignty as arbitrary and absolute, is admittedly today a
chief stumbling-block in the way of the formation of an international
organization of peoples.
_The System of Representation Which Is Required to Give Expression to
the Organic Idea of the State._
The ethical aim of political reformation and reconstruction may be
put in a single word, Organization. _The state and especially the
democratic state must be organized._[86] This means practically that
the basis of representation shall be the vocational group, that
vocational representation shall replace representation by geographical
districts.[87] The law-making body on this basis will consist of
representatives or delegates of the agricultural, the commercial, the
industrial, the scientific group, etc. Women belonging to these groups
will exercise the franchise within them. There will also be a distinct
group of home-makers; motherhood will be recognized as a vocation.
Attention may be called to certain practical advantages of the
proposed rearrangement of the representative system. It will tend to
bring forward in political life the best citizens, instead of the
mediocre or the base. This is likely to come about because there is no
distinction that men more ardently covet than that of being considered
_primus inter pares_; as, for instance, the first or one of the first
of the city’s merchants, or one of the most eminent scientists, or an
artist whom his fellow-artists select as the fittest to represent them
in the great council of city, state, or nation. And if only this much
can be gained by the new representative system, that the law-making
body shall consist of the most experienced, the most enlightened, the
wisest, the actual leaders in the various walks of life, in brief,
that the elected shall be the elect, certainly one of the principal
evils with which individualistic democracy is afflicted will tend to be
removed.
But other advantages will accrue. This, in particular, that the
constituencies, instead of merely delegating their powers, will
share in the business of law-making, will be in vital touch with
their leaders or representatives, while the latter conversely will
politically educate the constituencies. The mode of procedure under the
system here sketched will be somewhat as follows:
Take, as an illustration, the group of industrial laborers. They will
first meet in a primary assembly, and discuss measures deemed by them
important in the interests of their group. The leader who represents
them in the legislature will take part in the initial discussions, and
exercise no doubt a strong influence in bringing matter finally to a
head. He will then carry into the law-making body,—which consists of
representatives of the various social groups,—the sifted-out demands
of the laborers, the measures which they desire to have enacted into
law. He will bring forward these measures in the legislature. But
there objections are likely to be raised. The representatives of the
other groups will discover what the laborers naturally failed to
note, that the proposed law or laws, if enacted, will have certain
injurious effects on the interests of the other groups. The sifting-out
process, therefore, will now begin anew and be carried on on a higher
level in the legislature. The representatives of all the various
groups will separate the wheat from the chaff in what is proposed
by any one group. The next stop will be that the representative of
the laborers, returning to his constituency, will communicate to
them the difficulties that were raised, the decisions reached, and
will thus impart to them the wider vision which he himself gained
in the discussions of the law-making body. In this way he will be
the instructor, the political teacher of his constituents. And the
principle by which the value of any new measure will finally be judged
will be simply this: that the supposed interests of one group cannot be
its true interests unless they are found to promote the interests of
all the other vocational groups.[88]
The law-making body should be a council of the groups. It should not be
a “Parliament,” or “talking body,” but a sifting body. Nor yet a body
of mandatories commissioned to merely give effect to a public opinion
or a public sentiment already existing. In fact, public opinion or
public sentiment in the raw is apt to be a poor index of what is really
for the public good. Public opinion is apt to be unripe, haphazard,
impulsive rather than reflective. Besides, it is often contaminated
at its very source, the facts on which the public depend for their
opinions being deliberately falsified or placed in false perspective;
while the opinions furnished in newspaper editorials are almost
inevitably biased. Only on great occasions, when simple moral issues
are presented, can the common sense and moral sense of the people be
wholly depended on. But such occasions are episodical; and the orderly
business of government cannot be carried on by spurts. Government by
public opinion may be and in some respects is better indeed than class
government; in other important respects it is worse. A class at the
head of the state at least as a rule knows what it wants, and proceeds
methodically to carry out its purposes. Public opinion, on the other
hand, like all opinion, is unsure, unsafe, as Plato has long since
made dialectically clear. And public sentiment, like all sentiment, is
fluctuating. To build the state on public opinion and public sentiment,
as many of our writers on politics would have us do, is after all a
good deal like building a house on sand.[89]
Instead of “public opinion” and “public sentiment” let us say public
reason and public will!—reason and will to discover in conjunction
what the public good really is. For what it really is no one as yet
knows. The “public good” is a problem to be approximately solved. The
public good will be consummated when the conditions are furnished
necessary and favorable to the development of personality in each of
the constituent groups of the social body. To study these conditions is
the office of the law-making body, and therefore that body must be so
constituted as to include these groups in their capacity as groups.
Another advantage to be expected from vocational representation is that
the different interests of society,—I stress the fact that they are
different, and often temporarily conflicting,—will be compelled under
this plan to come out into the open. An industry, for instance, may
require the assistance of a protective tariff, in its infant stages,
and the agricultural group may rightly be asked to make the necessary
sacrifices.
In the long run there will be compensation. The agriculturists will
eventually benefit by the diversification of the national life.
But “in the long run” means that the next generation will benefit,
not the present agriculturists, a distinction sometimes somewhat
cavalierly ignored. The present generation will be called upon to make
a sacrifice, precisely as in the family some of the members may have
to sacrifice a part of their income to provide for a weaker member.
But the circumstance that the sacrifice is recognized as a sacrifice
will serve to put an end to the protection when the special need for it
has ceased. Under the present system, on the other hand, the state is
supposed to have no concern with the special interests of any group.
All the same, there are the special interests, and in consequence
that which is for the interest of one group has to be advocated as
if it were for the general interest of the entire community. And
since general interest is easily mistaken for perpetual interest, the
protection is apt to be continued long after its particular usefulness
has ceased.[90]
I am earnestly concerned that vocational representation shall not
be regarded as a mere device in the mechanism of politics, like the
substitution of the long for the short ballot, or the initiative
and referendum. Innovations of the latter kind leave the prevalent
conception of democracy untouched, they are merely intended to improve
the machinery by which that conception is to be worked out in practice;
they are mechanical contrivances, not fundamental reconstructions.
Vocational representation, in my view of it, is the appropriate
expression of the organic idea of the state. The state is the soul. The
soul must have a body. Vocational representation is that body.
Two remarks may here be added. One relates to a question which has
given rise to considerable discussion, namely, the question where
the state resides? In a monarchy it seems to reside visibly in the
person of the king. Louis XIV is said to have declared “I am the
state.” But where does it reside in a democracy? The chief executive,
the law-making body, and even the constituencies, are organs of the
state. But where does the state itself have its habitation? The state
has no separate domicile. So far as it truly exists at all it exists
in the minds of the individuals who truly conceive of it. The object
of political life is to educate the citizen so that he may more and
more truly conceive of the state, so that he may give birth to the
state idea within himself. To do this is to pass through one of
the necessary phases on the road to personality. In the family the
individual is in reactive relations with a few, in the vocation with
a larger number. In the state or nation he may be one of a hundred
millions or more. Yet it is not the numerical extension as such that
constitutes the enlargement. It is rather the diversity of the points
of contact, and the complexity of the relations by which the spiritual
ideal is more fully illustrated in the finite world in proportion as
the circle widens. To engender the idea of the state in oneself is to
place oneself ideally into reactive relations with the diverse groups
embraced within one’s nation. And to do this is a spiritual achievement
of no mean order. I should prefer to use the word “stateship” instead
of citizenship. Stateship is attained by one who brings to birth
within himself the idea of the state, and in whom that idea becomes a
controlling ethical force.
A second remark concerns the perplexed subject of the conflict of
duties. The nearer duties are sometimes preferred to the more remote,
and at other times we are asked to sacrifice everything to the larger
whole. We owe our first devotion, it is said, to the members of our
family; but then again we must be willing to sacrifice life itself and
the welfare of our family to our country when it calls upon us in its
need. Largeness alone certainly does not serve as an ethical ground for
preference. The quantitative standard implied in such phrases as “the
greatest good of the greatest number” is out of place when we deal with
ethical relations, which in their very nature are qualitative. Now
the account of the social institutions given in previous chapters as
successive stations on the road to the spiritual goal may throw some
light on this difficult subject. Normally, the claims of the anterior
stations are to be preferred—the claims of the family for instance
to those of the vocation, because the family is the matrix of the
three-fold reverence, and the individual must pass under the ethical
influence of family life before he is fit to use vocational life
ethically to good purpose. The anterior groups are not merely smaller,
they are germinal. The training received in them is the condition on
which spiritual progress depends later on. On the other hand, the later
groups are the more complete and more explicated expressions of the
spiritual ideal; hence if the very existence of one of the later groups
is threatened, or is in danger of being denatured of its spiritual use,
then the later group is to be preferred to the earlier, the _terminus
ad quem_, precisely because it is the _terminus ad quem_, to the
_terminus a quo_.
To give a familiar illustration. In our time, which is a time of
transition and doubt, many a religious teacher finds himself in sore
straits to decide between the claims of the vocation and the family.
As a religious teacher he is pledged to teach only what in his heart
of hearts he believes to be true; he is especially under obligation to
use words in such a way as to convey to others the same meaning that
he attaches to them himself. But this may mean exposing his family to
serious privations. The situation is full of perplexity and pain, but
the line of choice is plain enough. The claims of his high vocation
must in this case take precedence. In like manner, when the existence
or the integrity of the state is at issue, the claims of the state as
the _terminus ad quem_ override those of the vocation, the family, and
the state, and may even demand the sacrifice of the physical existence
of the individual himself.
NOTES
1. The idea of democracy is often neatly put—all too neatly, into the
following formula: In antiquity the individual existed for the sake of
the state, in modern democracy the state exists for the sake of the
individual. Both of these statements as they stand are mischievous
and misleading and require to be qualified. It is not true that in
antiquity the individual existed for the sake of the state in the
sense that his separate existence was extinguished. The citizen class
in Aristotle’s state, the rulers in Plato’s state, and even a member
of one of the inferior classes, each in his own way fulfilled a
distinct function. He was not suppressed in the state, he expressed
his function by the action appropriate to his station. The philosophic
rulers might do the thinking and governing. They were the head of the
body politic—others the hands and feet. The underlying conception was
what may be called spuriously organic, borrowed more or less from the
animal type of organism.
The second limb of the formula is no less superficial. In no modern
nation does the state exist, or at bottom is it supposed to exist, for
the benefit of the individuals who at any time compose it. If this
were the ruling conception, how could the democratic state require its
citizens to give up their lives in its defense? If the state existed
for the benefit of the individuals, the state would be the means, and
the so-called good of the individual the end. And in that case it
would surely be irrational to sacrifice the end for the sake of the
means, in other words to put an end to one’s life in defense of the
state, a mere instrument for the protection and prosperity of one’s
own life.
To reply that the state exists for the sake not of one individual but
of all (observe however that the formula says “the individual,” and is
ambiguous and slippery at this point), nor even only for the sake of
all the individuals now living, but also for the sake of the millions
yet unborn—to say this is once more to introduce an ideal entity which
it was the very object of the formula as quoted to banish. The formula
was intended to give us, in place of “the metaphysical entities” of
the Greeks and the Germans, a very palpable thing—the good of the
individual. The good of the individual seemed to be a palpable thing,
though in truth it is the most impalpable thing in the world. And by
defining the state in this wise we were supposed to come onto solid
ground. But now, behold, it is the good of unborn millions which is to
be the object of our devotion, and who can imagine what this good of
unborn millions is likely to be?
The fact is that without ideal entities the conception of the state
in any noble shape cannot be construed at all. The organic conception
must now take the place of the individualistic. The organic conception
indeed as it was worked out in antiquity, or as it lived on in the
theories of mediæval writers, or as it survives in the works of
certain German publicists, who use it to defend the feudalistic
structure of society, has rightly fallen into discredit,—not because
it is organic, but because it is pseudo-organic, that is, based on the
type of the animal organism. The individualistic conception of the
state at present current in America and in all modern democracies,
is a violent reaction against this false idea of organization. The
inestimable germ of truth individualism contains is that no such
distinction can be allowed as between head and hands or feet in
political life, that all the multitudes of “hands” who work in the
factories, for instance, must be respected as personalities having
not only hands but also heads and hearts. But individualism, though
it affirms this idea, belies it in practice, as the actual state of
society in America and elsewhere abundantly proves. And it is bound
to do so, because personality implies more than material well-being,
either for a single individual or for all individuals now living
or for all future individuals. Personality implies truly organic
relations to other fellow-beings—and this can only be achieved by
organizing the society in which men live.
The way taken has been, by reaction from pseudo-organization, to
extreme individualism and concomitant materialism. The way out lies in
the direction of genuine organization.
2. Certain evils observable in the workings of American democracy may
be traced to the following causes:
(a) The people as a whole are still in the pioneer stage. A country
enormously rich in material resources stimulates wealth-production.
A host of immigrants escaped from poverty abroad are stung into
wealth-getting here. The frontier line is now far to the West, but the
influence of the pioneer movement still in progress flows back upon
the Eastern states.
(b) More important still are the evils due to the crude
individualistic idea of democracy just characterized. If the state
exists for the good of the individual, and if the good of the
individual is conceived to be the acquisition of wealth, then private
business will take precedence of the public business. Yet under the
democratic system of frequent elections the public business demands
constant attention. In consequence, a special class of professional
politicians arises, comprising a minority of disinterestedly
patriotic men, and a majority of persons whose private business
is not sufficiently remunerative to divert them from the public
service. The appearance of the political dictator called “boss” is
the inevitable outcome of these conditions. This army of professional
politicians, and in particular the vulgar figure at their hand, is the
chief disgrace of the American democracy, and has been the target of
incessant invective by American writers. But it is idle to stigmatize
the effect and overlook the cause, to squander invective upon the
symptom and at the same time to leave the malady untouched. The malady
itself is the individualistic conception of democracy, and until this
is replaced by a better one, the evil in question may be modified in
form but will certainly not disappear.
A way must be found for the citizen to attend to his private business,
which is coming to be more and more exacting, and to the public
business at the same time. The system of vocational representation
offers an opportunity in this direction. Citizens will be voting
in their vocational groups for measures intended to advance their
vocational interests, but will be taught to advance them in such a way
that the related interests of other groups, or the public interest,
shall be thereby promoted.
3. Proportional representation, which is at present being tested
abroad, and earnestly considered in France, England and Germany, may
be a bridge leading over from the present plan of geographical to that
of vocational representation. The proportional system itself, it is
true, is still based on the individualistic idea. It is a movement
on behalf of submerged minorities. It quarrels with the present
arrangement for the reason that the will of the greater number of
individuals, but not of all individuals, is brought to bear on public
decisions. But if adopted it may well offer, without violent change, a
way for the collective representation of vocational groups.
4. Citizenship should be graded. A youth of twenty-one is scarcely
prepared to exercise the duties of the citizen intelligently. As
long as the view prevails that the functions of the state are to be
restricted to a minimum, it is perhaps not wholly absurd to admit a
mere stripling to a share in the conduct of government. But the sphere
of government is steadily enlarging, and its problems are becoming
more and more intricate. Twenty-five would certainly be a better
minimum age. Under vocational representation there is likely to be an
Upper House consisting of members who have served in the Lower House.
Citizens who have attained the age of twenty-five might be empowered
to vote for members of the Lower House, those who have attained the
age of thirty-five for members of the Upper House, but these are
details upon which it is unfitting to expatiate here. The point I have
in mind is that citizenship should be graded.
FOOTNOTES:
[85] _Vide_ Appendix II, on _Force and Freedom_.
[86] I use the word Organize in its spiritual sense. The empirical,
animal organism is commonly taken as the type upon which the notion of
organism is modeled. The animal organism, however, fails to express
the implicit idea, for the following reasons: The number of members
is limited; the combination of organs is, so far as we can know,
accidental, and the relation is hierarchical,—there are inferior and
superior organs. The spiritual conception differs in each of these
points. The number of members is infinite; the relation is necessary;
and they are equal, that is, of equal worth. To distinguish the
spiritual pattern from the animal type the term metorganic may be used
for the former, in analogy to such terms as metempirical, metaphysical,
etc., and the system of ethics expounded in this volume may be called
the _metorganic system of ethics_.
[87] Representation by geographical districts is the logical outcome
of the individualistic conception of democracy. Where this prevails,
the state is supposed to take account only of the common interests,
those in respect to which all individuals are alike, such as security
of life and property, those interests being ignored in respect to
which the groups that constitute society, the farmers, the merchants,
the industrial laborers, etc., differ. Hence any convenient number
of citizens, pursuing their life purposes side by side within a
certain geographical area, may serve as a constituency. The absence
of regard for the real diversity, and often the clash of interests,
between persons belonging to such constituencies, is due to the
atomistic, individualistic notion of democracy just mentioned. But
sheer individualism is everywhere on the wane, and is bound to become
less and less dominant in the degree that the industrial evolution
of society proceeds, and the various groups stand out distinctly as
different against one another in their functions and in the conditions
subservient to those functions. Society is in fact not an aggregate of
human atoms. It is already an imperfect organism, destined to become
more and more adequately organized. And the system of representation
has got to be remodeled and adjusted to this fact and this ideal.
[88] By “interests” I understand fulfilment of the social function with
which the group is charged.
[89] And, as a matter of fact, because this is so, there is no state,
no democracy, in which public opinion or public sentiment actually
does rule, save by fits and starts. Government is usually in the hands
of more or less selfish coteries, who operate behind the scenes, who
do know what they want and who, like the Piper of Hamelin, are past
masters of the art of leading the political children whither they will.
[90] I am not of course discussing the merits or demerits of the
protective tariff as such, but am using it as illustration. As such it
will serve the purpose.
The practice of “log-rolling” may at first sight seem to resemble the
proposed plan. But, in reality, the two are diametrical opposites. By
“log-rolling” is meant the kind of concessions made by the shipping
interests to the manufacturers by the manufacturers to the farmers, or
to the workingmen when the latter happen to be strong enough to enforce
their demands. Each group persists in pursuing its selfish aims; only,
in order to achieve them it makes concessions to the selfishness of the
others. Each follows the path into the Hades of egotism, and throws the
necessary sops to Cerberus on the way. The plan outlined in the text,
on the other hand, has for its object the interlocking of the various
social interests, the fitting them reciprocally into one another; or
better, the object is to cure each group as far as possible of its
selfishness by so modifying its claims, that the granting of them shall
become beneficial to the rest.