capital is to be abolished?" Very well, there have been ruling classes
before in history who did not enjoy the privilege of owning private
property. The clergy of the Middle Ages was such a class, and their
dominance was quite as effective and as enduring as is that of our
commercial classes today. But let us not deceive ourselves; in a soviet
republic there would be opportunity aplenty for exploitation. As the
solidarity of labor vanished, each important trade-group would enter
into rivalry with the others for leadership in the co-operative
commonwealth. Every economic advantage which any group possessed would
be used in order to lord it over the rest.
For instance, let us suppose that the workers in a strategic industry,
such as the railways, or coal mines, should make the discovery that by
going on a strike they could starve the community as a whole into
submission and gain practically anything they might demand. Loyalty to
the rest of labor would act no more as a check to such ambitions than
does loyalty to humanity in general now. As we have seen, the crowd is
always formed for the unconscious purpose of relaxing the social control
by mechanisms which mutually justify such antisocial conduct on the part
of members of the crowd. There is every reason, both economic and
psychological, why the workers in each industry would become organized
crowds seeking to gain for their particular groups the lion's share of
the spoils of the social revolution. What would there be, then, to
prevent the workers of the railroads or some other essential industry
from exploiting the community quite as mercilessly as the capitalists
are alleged to do at present? Nothing but the rivalry of other crowds
who were seeking the same dominance. In time a _modus vivendi_ would
doubtless be reached whereby social control would be shared by a few of
the stronger unions--and their leaders.
The strike has already demonstrated the fact that in the hands of a
well-organized body of laborers, especially in those trades where the
number of apprentices may be controlled, industrial power becomes a much
more effective weapon than it is in the hands of the present
capitalistic owners.
A new dictatorship, therefore, must inevitably follow the social
revolution, in support of which a favored minority will make use of the
industrial power of the community, just as earlier privileged classes
used military power and the power of private property. And this new
dominance would be just as predatory, and would justify itself, as did
the others, by the platitudes of crowd-thinking. The so-called
dictatorship turns out, on examination, to be the dictatorship of one
section of the proletariat over the rest of it. The dream of social
redemption by such means is a pure _crowd-idea_.
IX
FREEDOM AND GOVERNMENT BY CROWDS
The whole philosophy of politics comes down at last to a question of
four words. Who is to govern? Compared with this question the problem of
the form of government is relatively unimportant. Crowd-men, whatever
political faith they profess, behave much the same when they are in
power. The particular forms of political organization through which
their power is exerted are mere incidentals. There is the same
self-laudation, the same tawdry array of abstract principles, the same
exploitation of under crowds, the same cunning in keeping up
appearances, the same preference of the charlatan for positions of
leadership and authority. Machiavelli's Prince, or Dostoievsky's Grand
Inquisitor, would serve just as well as the model for the guidance of a
Cæsar Borgia, a leader of Tammany Hall, a chairman of the National
Committee of a political party, or a Nicolai Lenin.
Ever since the days of Rousseau certain crowds have persisted in the
conviction that all tyrannies were foisted upon an innocent humanity by
a designing few. There may have been a few instances in history where
such was the case, but tyrannies of that kind have never lasted long.
For the most part the tyrant is merely the instrument and official
symbol of a dominant crowd. His acts are his crowd's acts, and without
his crowd to support him he very soon goes the way of the late Sultan of
Turkey. The Cæsars were hardly more than "walking delegates,"
representing the ancient Roman Soldiers' soviet. They were made and
unmade by the army which, though Cæsars might come and Cæsars might go,
continued to lord it over the Roman world. While the army was pagan,
even the mild Marcus Aurelius followed Nero's example of killing
Christians. When finally the army itself became largely Christian, and
the fiction that the Christians drank human blood, worshiped the head of
an ass, and were sexually promiscuous was no longer good patriotic
propaganda, the Emperor Constantine began to see visions of the Cross in
the sky. The Pope, who is doubtless the most absolute monarch in the
Occident, is, however, "infallible" only when he speaks
_ex-cathedra_--that is, as the "Church Herself." His infallibility is
that of the Church. All crowds in one way or another claim
infallibility. The tyrant Robespierre survived only so long as did his
particular revolutionary crowd in France.
The fate of Savonarola was similar. From his pulpit he could rule
Florence with absolute power just so long as he told his crowd what it
wished to hear, and so long as his crowd was able to keep itself
together and remain dominant. The Stuarts, Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs, and
Romanoffs, with all their claims to divine rights, were little more than
the living symbols of their respective nation-crowds. They vanished when
they ceased to represent successfully the crowd-will.
In general, then, it may be said that _where the crowd is, there is
tyranny_. Tyranny may be exercised through one agent or through many,
but it nearly always comes from the same source--the crowd. Crowd-rule
may exist in a monarchical form of government, or in a republic. The
personnel of the dominant crowd will vary with a change in the form of
the state, but the spirit will be much the same. Conservative writers
are in the habit of assuming that democracy is the rule of crowds pure
and simple. Whether crowd-government is more absolute in a democracy
than in differently constituted states is a question. The aim of
democratic constitutions like our own is to prevent any special crowd
from intrenching itself in a position of social control and thus
becoming a ruling class. As the experiment has worked out thus far it
can hardly be said that it has freed us from the rule of crowds. It has,
however, multiplied the number of mutually suspicious crowds, so that no
one of them has for long enjoyed a sufficiently great majority to make
itself clearly supreme, though it must be admitted that up to the
present the business-man crowd has had the best of the deal. The story
of the recent Eighteenth Amendment shows how easy it is for a determined
crowd, even though in a minority, to force its favorite dogmas upon the
whole community. We shall doubtless see a great deal more of this sort
of thing in the future than we have in the past. And if the various
labor groups should become sufficiently united in a "proletarian" crowd
there is nothing to prevent their going to any extreme.
We are passing through a period of socialization. All signs point to the
establishment of some sort of social state or industrial commonwealth.
No one can foresee the extent, to which capital now privately owned is
to be transferred to the public. It is doubtful if anything can be done
to check this process. The tendency is no sooner blocked along one
channel than it begins to seep through another. In itself there need be
nothing alarming about this transition. If industry could be better
co-ordinated and more wisely administered by non-crowd men for the
common good, the change might work out to our national advantage.
It is possible to conceive of a society in which a high degree of social
democracy, even communism, might exist along with a maximum of freedom
and practical achievement. But we should first have to get over our
crowd-ways of thinking and acting. People would have to regard the state
as a purely administrative affair. They would have to organize for
definite practical ends, and select their leaders and administrators
very much as certain corporations now do, strictly on the basis of their
competency. Political institutions would have to be made such that they
could not be seized by special groups to enhance themselves at the
expense of the rest. Partisanship would have to cease. Every effort
would have to be made to loosen the social control over the individual's
personal habits. The kind of people who have an inner gnawing to
regulate their neighbors, the kind who cannot accept the fact of their
psychic inferiority and must consequently make crowds by way of
compensation, would have to be content to mind their own business.
Police power would have to be reduced to the minimum necessary to
protect life and keep the industries running. People would have to
become much more capable of self-direction as well as of voluntary
co-operation than they are now. They would have to be more resentful of
petty official tyranny, more independent in their judgments and at the
same time more willing to accept the advice and authority of experts.
They would have to place the control of affairs in the hands of the type
of man against whose dominance the weaker brethren have in all ages
waged war--that is, the free spirits and natural masters of men. All pet
dogmas and cult ideas that clashed with practical considerations would
have to be swept away.
Such a conception of society is, of course, wholly utopian. It could not
possibly be realized by people behaving and thinking as crowds. With our
present crowd-making habits, the process of greater socialization of
industry means only increased opportunities for crowd-tyranny. In the
hands of a dominant crowd an industrial state would be indeed what
Herbert Spencer called the "coming slavery."
As it is, the state has become overgrown and bureaucratic. Commissions
of all sorts are being multiplied year by year. Public debts are piled
up till they approach the point of bankruptcy. Taxes are increasing in
the same degree. Statutes are increased in number until one can hardly
breathe without violating some decree, ordinance, or bit of sumptuary
legislation. Every legislative assembly is constantly besieged by the
professional lobbyists of a swarm of reformist crowds. Busybodies of
every description twist the making and the enforcement of law into
conformity with their peculiar prejudices. Censorships of various kinds
are growing in number and effrontery. Prohibition is insincerely put
forth as a war measure. Ignorant societies for the "suppression of vice"
maul over our literature and our art. Parents of already more children
than they can support may not be permitted lawfully to possess
scientific knowledge of the means of the prevention of conception. The
government, both state and national, takes advantage of the war for
freedom to pass again the hated sort of "alien and sedition" laws from
which the country thought it had freed itself a century ago. A host of
secret agents and volunteer "guardians of public safety" are ready to
place every citizen under suspicion of disloyalty to the government. Any
advocacy of significant change in established political practices is
regarded as sedition. An inquisition is set up for the purpose of
inquiring into people's private political opinions. Reputable citizens
are, on the flimsiest hearsay evidence or rumor that they entertain
nonconformist views, subjected to public censure by notoriety-seeking
"investigation commissions"--and by an irresponsible press. Only members
of an established political party in good standing are permitted to
criticize the acts of the President of the United States. Newspapers and
magazines are suppressed and denied the privilege of the mails at the
whim of opinionated post-office officers or of ignorant employees of the
Department of Justice. An intensely patriotic weekly paper in New York,
which happened to hold unconventional views on the subject of religion,
has had certain issues of its paper suppressed for the offense of
publishing accounts of the alleged misconduct of the Y. M. C. A.
The stupidity and irresponsibility of the Russian spy-system which has
grown up in this country along with our overweening state is illustrated
by an amusing little experience which happened to myself several months
after the signing of the armistice with Germany. All through the trying
months of the war the great audience at Cooper Union had followed me
with a loyalty and tolerance which was truly wonderful. Though I knew
that many had not always been in hearty accord with my rather
spontaneous and outspoken Americanism, the Cooper Union Forum was one of
the few places in America where foreign and labor elements were present
in large numbers in which there was no outbreak or demonstration of any
kind which could possibly be interpreted as un-American. We all felt
that perhaps the People's Institute with its record of twenty years'
work behind it had been of some real service to the nation in adhering
strictly to its educational method and keeping its discussions wholly
above the level of any sort of crowd-propaganda.
However, in the course of our educational work, it became my task to
give to a selected group of advanced students a course of lectures upon
the Theory of Knowledge. The course was announced with the title, "How
Free Men Think," and the little folder contained the statement that it
was to be a study of the Humanist logic, with Professor F. C. S.
Schiller's philosophical writings to be used as textbooks. The
publication of this folder announcing the course was held up by the
printer, and we learned that he had been told not to print it by some
official personage whose identity was not revealed. Notwithstanding the
fact that Schiller is professor of philosophy in Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, and is one of the best-known philosophical writers in the
English-speaking world, and holds views practically identical with what
is called the "American School," led by the late William James, it
developed that the government agents--or whoever they were--objected to
the publication of the announcement on the ground that they _thought
Schiller was a German_. Such is our intellectual freedom regarding
matters which have no political significance whatever, in a world made
"safe for democracy." But we must not permit ourselves to despair or
grow weary of life in this "safety first" world--waves of
pseudo-patriotic panic often follow on the heels of easily won victory.
Crowd-phenomena of such intensity are usually of short duration, as
these very excesses soon produce the inevitable reaction.
The question, however, arises, is democracy more conducive to freedom
than other forms of political organization? To most minds the terms
"liberty" and "democracy" are almost synonymous. Those who consider that
liberty consists in having a vote, in giving everyone a voice regardless
of whether he has anything to say, will have no doubts in the matter.
But to those whose thinking means more than the mere repetition of
eighteenth-century crowd-ideas, the question will reduce itself to this:
Is democracy more conducive to crowd-behavior than other forms of
government? Le Bon and those who identify the crowd with the masses
would answer with an _a priori_ affirmative. I do not believe the
question may be answered in any such off-hand manner. It is a question
of fact rather than of theory. Theoretically, since we have
demonstrated I think that the crowd is not the common people as such,
but is a peculiar form of psychic behavior, it would seem that there is
no logical necessity for holding that democracy must always and
everywhere be the rule of the mob. And we have seen that other forms of
society may also suffer from crowd-rule. I suspect that the repugnance
which certain aristocratic, and bourgeois writers also, show for
democracy is less the horror of crowd-rule as such, than dislike of
seeing control pass over to a crowd other than their own. Theoretically
at least, democracy calls for a maximum of self-government and personal
freedom. The fact that democracy is rapidly degenerating into tyranny of
all over each may be due, not to the democratic ideal itself, but the
growing tendency to crowd-behavior in modern times. It may be that
certain democratic ideals are not so much causes as effects of
crowd-thinking and action. It cannot be denied that such ideals come in
very handy these days in the way of furnishing crowds with effective
catchwords for their propaganda and of providing them with ready-made
justifications for their will to power. I should say that democracy has
_indirectly permitted_, rather than directly caused, an extension in the
range of thought and behavior over which the crowd assumes
dictatorship.
In comparing democracy with more autocratic forms of government, this
extent or range of crowd-control over the individual is important. Of
course, human beings will never permit to one another a very large
degree of personal freedom. It is to the advantage of everyone in the
struggle for existence to reduce his neighbors as much as possible to
automatons. In this way one's own adjustment to the behavior of others
is made easier. If we can induce or compel all about us to confine their
actions to perfect routine, then we may predict with a fair degree of
accuracy their future behavior, and be prepared in advance to meet it.
We all dread the element of the unexpected, and nowhere so much as in
the conduct of our neighbors. If we could only get rid of the humanly
unexpected, society would be almost fool-proof. Hence the resistance to
new truths, social change, progress, nonconformity of any sort; hence
our orthodoxies and conventions; hence our incessant preaching to our
neighbors to "be good"; hence the fanaticism with which every crowd
strives to keep its believers in line. Much of this insistence on
regularity is positively necessary. Without it there could be no social
or moral order at all. It is in fact the source and security of the
accepted values of civilization, as Schiller has shown.
But the process of keeping one another in line is carried much farther
than is necessary to preserve the social order. It is insisted upon to
the extent that will guarantee the survival, even the dominance, of the
spiritually sick, the morally timid, the trained-animal men, those who
would revert to savagery, or stand utterly helpless the moment a new
situation demanded that they do some original thinking in the place of
performing the few stereotyped tricks which they have acquired; the
dog-in-the-manger people, who because they can eat no meat insist that
all play the dyspeptic lest the well-fed outdistance them in the race of
life or set them an example in following which they get the stomach
ache; the people who, because they cannot pass a saloon door without
going in and getting drunk, cannot see a moving-picture, or read a
modern book, or visit a bathing beach without being tormented with their
gnawing promiscuous eroticism, insist upon setting up their own
perverted dilemmas as the moral standard for everybody.
Such people exist in great numbers in every society. They are always
strong for "brotherly love," for keeping up appearances, for removing
temptation from the path of life, for uniform standards of belief and
conduct. Each crowd, in its desire to become the majority, to hold the
weaker brethren within its fold, and especially as everyone of us has a
certain amount of this "little brother" weakness in his own nature,
which longs to be pampered if only the pampering can be done without
hurting our pride--the crowd invariably plays to this sort of thing and
bids for its support. As the little brother always expresses his
survival-values in terms of accepted crowd-ideas, no crowd can really
turn him down without repudiating its abstract principles. In fact, it
is just this weakness in our nature which, as we have seen, leads us to
become crowd-men in the first place. Furthermore, we have seen that any
assertion of personal independence is resented by the crowd because it
weakens the crowd-faith of all.
The measure of freedom granted to men will depend, therefore, upon how
many things the crowd attempts to consider its business. There is a law
of inertia at work here. In monarchical forms of government, where the
crowd-will is exercised through a single human agent, the monarch may be
absolute in regard to certain things which are necessary to his own and
his crowd's survival. In such matters "he can do no wrong"; there is
little or no appeal from his decisions. But the very thoroughness with
which he hunts down nonconformity in matters which directly concern his
authority, leaves him little energy for other things. Arbitrary power
is therefore usually limited to relatively few things, since the
autocrat cannot busy himself with everything that is going on. Within
the radius of the things which the monarch attempts to regulate he may
be an intolerable tyrant, but so long as he is obeyed in these matters,
so long as things run on smoothly on the surface, there are all sorts of
things which he would prefer not to have brought to his attention, as
witness, for instance, the letter of Trajan to the younger Pliny.
With a democracy it is different. While the exercise of authority is
never so inexorable--indeed democratic states frequently pass laws for
the purpose of placing the community on record "for righteousness,"
rather than with the intention of enforcing such laws--the number of
things which a democracy will presume to regulate is vastly greater than
in monarchical states. As sovereignty is universal, everybody becomes
lawmaker and regulator of his neighbors. As the lawmaking power is
present everywhere, nothing can escape its multieyed scrutiny. All sorts
of foibles, sectional interests, group demands, class prejudices become
part of the law of the land. A democracy is no respecter of persons and
can, under its dogma of equality before the law, admit of no exceptions.
The whole body politic is weighed down with all the several bits of
legislation which may be demanded by any of the various groups within
it. An unusual inducement and opportunity are thus provided for every
crowd to force its own crowd-dilemmas upon all.
The majority not only usurps the place of the king, but it tends to
subject the whole range of human thought and behavior to its
authority--everything, in fact, that anyone, disliking in his neighbors
or finding himself tempted to do, may wish to "pass a law against."
Every personal habit and private opinion becomes a matter for public
concern. Custom no longer regulates; all is rationalized according to
the logic of the crowd-mind. Public policy sits on the doorstep of every
man's personal conscience. The citizen in us eats up the man. Not the
tiniest personal comfort may yet be left us in private enjoyment. All
that cannot be translated into propaganda or hold its own in a
legislative lobby succumbs. If we are to preserve anything of our
personal independence, we must organize ourselves into a crowd like the
rest and get out in the streets and set up a public howl. Unless some
one pretty soon starts a pro-tobacco crusade and proves to the
newspaper-reading public that the use of nicotine by everybody in equal
amount is absolutely necessary for the preservation of the American
home, for economic efficiency and future military supremacy, we shall
doubtless all soon be obliged to sneak down into the cellar and smoke
our pipes in the dark.