think, a psychological principle which helps us to decide what should be
in a constitution and what should not. The aim of a constitution is to
put a limit to the number of things concerning which a majority-crowd
may lord it over the individual. I am aware that the appeal to the
Constitution is often abused by predatory interests which skulk behind
its phraseology in their defense of special economic privilege. But,
nevertheless, people in a democracy may be free only so long as they
submit to the dictation of the majority in _just and only those few
interests concerning which a monarch, were he in existence, would take
advantage of them for his personal ends_. There are certain political
and economic relations which cannot be left to the chance exploitation
of any individual or group that happens to come along. Some one is sure
to come along, for you may be sure that if there is a possible
opportunity to take advantage, some one will do it sooner or later.
Now because people have discovered that there is no possible individual
freedom in respect to certain definite phases of their common life which
are always exposed to seizure by exploiters, democrats have substituted
a tyranny of the majority for the tyranny of the one or the favored few
which would otherwise be erected at these points. Since it is necessary
to give up freedom in these regions anyway, there is some compensation
in spreading the tyrannizing around so that each gets a little share of
it. But every effort should be made to _limit the tyranny of the
majority to just these points_. And the line limiting the number of
things that the majority may meddle with must be drawn as hard and fast
as possible, since every dominant crowd, as we have seen, will squeeze
the life out of everything human it can get its hands on. The minute a
majority finds that it can extend its tyranny beyond this strictly
constitutionally limited sphere, nothing remains to stop it; it becomes
worse than an autocracy. Tyranny is no less abhorrent just because the
number of tyrants is increased. A nation composed of a hundred million
little tyrants snooping and prying into every corner may be democratic,
but, personally, if that ever comes to be the choice I think I should
prefer one tyrant. He might occasionally look the other way and leave me
a free man, long enough at least for me to light my pipe.
True democrats will be very jealous of government. Necessary as it is,
there is no magic about government, no saving grace. Government cannot
redeem us from our sins; it will always require all the decency we
possess to redeem the government. Government always represents the moral
dilemmas of the worst people, not the best. It cannot give us freedom;
it can give or grant us nothing but what it first takes from us. It is
we who grant to the government certain powers and privileges necessary
for its proper functioning. We do not exist for the government; it
exists for us. We are not its servants; it is our servant. Government at
best is a useful and necessary machine, a mechanism by which we protect
ourselves from one another. It has no more rights and dignities of its
own than are possessed by any other machine. Its laws should be obeyed,
for the same reason that the laws of mechanics should be
obeyed--otherwise the machine will not run.
As a matter of fact it is not so much government itself against which
the democrat must be on guard, but the various crowds which are always
seeking to make use of the machinery of government in order to impose
their peculiar tyranny upon all and invade the privacy of everyone. By
widening the radius of governmental control, the crowd thus pinches down
the individuality of everyone with the same restrictions as are imposed
by the crowd upon its own members.
Conway says:
Present-day Democracy rests on a few organized parties. What
would a democracy be like if based on millions of independent
Joneses each of whom decided to vote this or that way as he
pleased? The dominion of the crowd would be at an end, both for
better and for worse. We shall not behold any such revolution in
the world as we know it....
Thus we must conclude that the crowd by its very nature tends,
and always must tend, to diminish (if possible, to the vanishing
point) the freedom of its members, and not in one or two
respects alone, but in all. The crowd's desire is to swallow up
the individuality of its members and reduce them one and all to
the condition of crowd units whose whole life is lived according
to the crowd-pattern and is sacrificed and devoted to
crowd-interests....
An excellent illustration of this crowd-dominance crops up in my
afternoon paper.... It appears that in certain parts of the
country artisans, by drinking too much alcohol, are reducing
their capacity of doing their proper work, which happens at the
moment to be of great importance to the country at war. Many
interferences with liberty are permitted in war time by general
consent. It is accordingly proposed to put difficulties in the
way of these drinkers by executive orders. One would suppose
that the just way to do this would be to make a list of the
drinkers and prohibit their indulgence. But this is not the way
the crowd works. To it everyone of its constituent members is
like another, and all must be drilled and controlled alike....
Whatever measure is adopted must fall evenly on all classes,
upon club, restaurant and hotel as upon public house. Could
anything be more absurd? Lest a gunmaker or a shipbuilder in
Glasgow should drink too much, Mr. Asquith must not take a glass
of sherry with his lunch at the Athenæum!...
We live in days when crowd dominion over individuals has been
advancing at a headlong pace.... If he is not to drink in London
lest a Glasgow engineer should get drunk, why should not his
eating be alike limited? Why not the style and cut of his
clothes? Why not the size and character of his house? He must
cause his children to be taught at least the minimum of muddled
information which the government calls education. He must insure
for his dependents the attention of an all-educated physician,
and the administration of drugs known to be useless. If the
crowd had its way every mother and infant would be under the
orders of inspectors, regardless of the capacity of the parent.
We should all be ordered about in every relation of life from
infancy to manhood.... Freedom would utterly vanish, and this,
not because the crowd can arrange things better than the
individual. It cannot. It lacks the individual's brains. The
ultimate reason for all this interference is the crowd's desire
to swallow up and control the unit. The instinct of all crowds
is to dominate, to capture and overwhelm the individual, to make
him their slave, to absorb all his life for their service.
The criticism has often been made of democracy that it permits too much
freedom; the reverse of this is nearer the truth. It was de Tocqueville,
I think, who first called attention to the "tyranny of the majority" in
democratic America. Probably one of the most comprehensive and
discriminating studies that have ever been made of the habits and
institutions of any nation may be found in the work of this observing
young Frenchman who visited our country at the close of its first half
century of political independence. De Tocqueville's account of Democracy
in America is still good reading, much of it being applicable to the
present. This writer was in no sense an unfriendly critic. He praised
much that he saw, but even in those days (the period of 1830) he was not
taken in by the fiction that, because the American people live under
laws of their own making, they are therefore free. Much of the following
passages taken here and there from Chapters XIV and XV is as true today
as it was when it was written:
America is therefore a free country in which, lest anybody be
hurt by your remarks, you are not allowed to speak freely of
private individuals, of the State, or the citizens, or the
authorities, of public or private undertakings, in short of
anything at all, except perhaps the climate and the soil, and
even then Americans will be found ready to defend both as if
they had concurred in producing them.
The American submits without a murmur to the authority of the
pettiest magistrate. This truth prevails even in the trivial
details of national life. An American cannot converse--he speaks
to you as if he were addressing a meeting. If an American were
condemned to confine himself to his own affairs, he would be
robbed of one-half of his existence; his wretchedness would be
unbearable....
The moral authority of the majority in America is based on the
notion that there is more intelligence and wisdom in a number of
men united than in a single individual.... The theory of
equality is thus applied to the intellects of men.
The French, under the old regime, held it for a maxim that the
King could do no wrong. The Americans entertain the same opinion
with regard to the majority.
In the United States, all parties are willing to recognize the
rights of the majority, because they all hope at some time to be
able to exercise them to their own advantage. The majority
therefore in that country exercises a prodigious actual
authority and a power of opinion which is nearly as great (as
that of the absolute autocrat). No obstacles exist which can
impair or even retard its progress so as to make it heed the
complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path. This state of
things is harmful in itself and dangerous for the future.
As the majority is the only power which it is important to
court, all its projects are taken up with the greatest ardor;
but no sooner is its attention distracted than all this ardor
ceases.
There is no power on earth so worthy of honor in itself, or
clothed with rights so sacred, that I would admit its
uncontrolled and all-predominant authority.
In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic
institutions of the United States does not arise, as is so often
asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their
irresistible strength.... I am not so much alarmed by the
excessive liberty which reigns in that country, as by the
inadequate securities which one finds against tyranny. When an
individual or party is wronged in the United States, to whom can
he apply for redress?
It is in the examination of the exercise of thought in the
United States that we clearly perceive how far the power of the
majority surpasses all the powers with which we are acquainted
in Europe. At the present time the most absolute monarchs in
Europe cannot prevent certain opinions hostile to their
authority from circulating in secret through their dominions and
even in their courts.
It is not so in America. So long as the majority is undecided,
discussion is carried on, but as soon as its decision is
announced everyone is silent....
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of
mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. In America
the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of
opinion. Within these barriers an author may write what he
pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. Not that he is
in danger of an _auto-da-fe_, but he is exposed to continued
obloquy and persecution. His political career is closed for
ever. Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity, is
refused him. Those who think like him have not the courage to
speak out, and abandon him to silence. He yields at length,
overcome by the daily effort which he has to make, and subsides
into silence as if he felt remorse for having spoken the truth.
Fetters and headsmen were coarse instruments ... but
civilization has perfected despotism itself. Under absolute
despotism of one man, the body was attacked to subdue the soul,
but the soul escaped the blows and rose superior. Such is not
the course adopted in democratic republics; there the body is
left free, but the soul is enslaved....
The ruling power in the United States is not to be made game of.
The smallest reproach irritates its sensibilities. The slightest
joke which has any foundation in truth renders it indignant.
Everything must be the subject of encomium. No writer, whatever
his eminence, can escape paying his tribute of adoration to his
fellow citizens.
The majority lives in the perpetual utterance of self-applause,
and there are certain truths which Americans can only learn from
strangers, or from experience. If America has not yet had any
great writers, the reason is given in these facts--there can be
no literary genius without freedom of opinion, and freedom of
opinion does not exist in America.
Such passages as the above, quoted from the words of a friendly student
of American democracy, show the impression which, notwithstanding our
popular prattle about freedom, thoughtful foreigners have since the
beginning received. And de Tocqueville wrote long before crowd-thinking
had reached anything like the development we see at present. To-day the
tyrannizing is not confined to the majority-crowd. All sorts of
minority-crowds, impatient of waiting until they can by fair means
persuade the majority to agree with them, begin to practice coercion
upon everyone within reach the minute they fall into possession of some
slight advantage which may be used as a weapon. From the industrial side
we were first menaced by the "invisible government" of organized vested
interests; now, by a growing tendency to government by strikes.
Organized gangs of all sorts have at last learned the amusing trick of
pointing a pistol at the public's head and threatening it with
starvation, and up go its hands, and the gang gains whatever it wants
for itself, regardless of anyone else. But this "hold-up game" is by no
means confined to labor. Capitalistic soviets have since the beginning
of the war taken advantage of situations to enhance their special
crowd-interests. The following, quoted from a letter written during the
war to the _Atlantic Monthly_, by a thoroughly American writer, Charles
D. Stewart, describes a type of mob rule which existed in almost every
part of the nation while we were fighting for freedom abroad:
Carlyle said that "Of all forms of government, a government of
busybodies is the worst." This is true. It is worse than
Prussianism, because that is one form of government, at least;
and worse than Socialism, because Socialism would be run by law,
anyway. But government by busybodies has neither head nor tail;
working outside the law, it becomes lawless; and having no law
to support it, it finally depends for its enforcement upon
hoodlums and mob rule. When the respectable and wealthy elements
are resorting to this sort of government, abetted by the
newspapers and by all sorts of busybody societies intent upon
"government by public sentiment," we finally have a new thing in
the world and a most obnoxious one--mob rule by the rich; with
the able assistance of the hoodlums--always looking for a
chance.
It starts as follows:
The government wishes a certain amount of money. It therefore
appeals to local pride; it sets a "quota," which has been
apportioned to each locality, and promises of a fine
"over-the-top" flag to be hoisted over the courthouse. All well
and good; local pride is a very fine thing, competition is
wholesome.
But the struggle that ensues is not so much local pride as it
looks to be.
Milwaukee, for instance, a big manufacturing center, is noted
for its German population. This, the local proprietors fear, may
affect its trade. It may be boycotted to some extent. A
traveling man comes back and says that a certain dealer in
stoves refuses to buy stoves made in Milwaukee!
Ha!--Milwaukee must redeem its reputation; it must always go
over the top: it must be able to affix this stamp to all its
letters.
Now, as the state has a quota, and the county and city has each
its quota, so each individual must have his quota. Each
individual must be "assessed" to buy a certain quota [government
war loan] of bonds. Success must be made sure: the manufacturers
must see the honor of Milwaukee, and Wisconsin, maintained.
It is not compulsory to give a certain "assessed" amount to the
Y. M. C. A.; and the government does not make a certain quota of
bonds compulsory on citizens--oh, no! it is not compulsory, only
you must abide by your assessment. And we will see that you do.
No excuse accepted....
Picture to yourself the following "collection committee"
traveling out of the highly civilized, "kultured" city of
Milwaukee.
Twenty-five automobiles containing sixty to seventy respectable
citizens of Milwaukee.
One color guard (a flag at the head) with two home guardsmen in
citizens' clothes.
Two deputy sheriffs.
One "official" photographer.
One "official" stenographer.
One banker (this personage to make arrangements to lend a farmer
the money in case he protests that he has subscribed too much
already).
This phalanx, entirely lawless, moves down upon a farmer who is
urging two horses along a cloddy furrow, doing his fall plowing.
They form a semicircle about him; the speechmaker says, "Let us
salute the flag" (watching him to see that he does it promptly);
and while his horses stand there the speechmaker delivers a
speech. He must subscribe his "assessed" amount--no excuses
accepted. If he owes for the farm, and has just paid his
interest, and has only fifteen dollars to go on with, it makes
no difference. He must subscribe the amount of his "assessment,"
and "sign here."
If not, what happens? The farmer all the time, of course, is
probably scared out of his wits, or does not know what to make
of this delegation of notables bearing down upon his solitary
task in the fields. But if he argues too much, he finds this.
They have a large package of yellow placards reading:
THE OCCUPANT OF THESE PREMISES HAS REFUSED TO TAKE
HIS JUST SHARE OF LIBERTY BONDS.
And they put them all over his place. He probably signs.
Now bear in mind that this method is not practiced merely
against farmers who have made unpatriotic remarks, or have
refused to support the war. It is practiced against a farmer who
has taken only one hundred dollars when he was assessed a
hundred and fifty--and this is to make him "come across" with
the remainder.
You might ask, Is this comic opera or is it government?
And now we come to the conclusion. Imagine yourself either a
workman in Milwaukee, or a farmer out in the country. You are
dealt with in this entirely Prussian manner--possibly the
committee, which knows little of your financial difficulties in
your home, has just assessed you arbitrarily.
Your constitutional rights do not count. There is no remedy. If
you are painted yellow, the District Attorney will pass the
buck--he knows what the manufacturer expects of him, and the
financier. The state officers of these drives, Federal
representatives, are always Milwaukee bankers.
But for you there is no remedy if you are "assessed" too high.
With the Y. M. C. A., and other religious society drives, the
same assessment scheme is worked. You cannot give to the
Y. M. C. A. You are told right off how much you are to pay.
It would seem that in our democracy freedom consists first of freedom to
vote; second, of freedom to make commercial profit; third, of freedom to
make propaganda; fourth, of freedom from intellectual and moral
responsibility. Each of these "liberties" is little more than a
characteristic form of crowd-behavior. The vote, our most highly prized
modern right, is nearly always so determined by crowd-thinking that as
an exercise of individual choice it is a joke. Men are herded in droves
and delivered by counties in almost solid blocks by professional traders
of political influence. Before each election a campaign of crowd-making
is conducted in which every sort of vulgarity and insincerity has
survival value, in which real issues are so lost in partisan propaganda
as to become unrecognizable. When the vote is cast it is commonly a
choice between professional crowd-leaders whose competency consists in
their ability to Billy Sundayize the mob rather than in any marked
fitness for the office to which they aspire--also between the horns of a
dilemma which wholly misstates the issue involved and is trumped up
chiefly for purposes of political advertising. Time and again the
franchise thus becomes an agency by which rival crowds may fasten their
own tyrannies upon one another.
Freedom to make commercial profit, to get ahead of others in the race
for dollars, is what democracy generally means by "opportunity." Nothing
is such a give-away of the modern man as the popular use of the word
"individualism." It is no longer a philosophy of _becoming_ something
genuine and unique, but of _getting_ something and using it according to
your own whims and for personal ends regardless of the effect upon
others. This pseudo-individualism encourages the rankest selfishness and
exploitation to go hand in hand with the most deadly spiritual
conformity and inanity. Such "individualism" is, as I have pointed out,
a crowd-idea, for it is motivated by a cheaply disguised ideal of
personal superiority through the mere fact of possessing things.
Paradoxical as it may appear at first sight, this is really the old
crowd notion of "equality," for, great as are the differences of wealth
which result, every man may cherish the fiction that he possesses the
sort of ability necessary for this kind of social distinction. Such
superiority thus has little to do with personal excellence; it is the
result of the external accident of success. One man may still be "as
good as another."
Against this competitive struggle now there has grown up a counter-crowd
ideal of collectivism. But here also the fiction of universal spiritual
equality is maintained; the competitive struggle is changed from an
individual to a gang struggle, while the notion that personal worth is
the result of the environment and may be achieved by anyone whose belly
is filled still persists. Proletarians for the most part wish,
chinch-bug fashion, to crawl into the Elysian fields now occupied by the
hated capitalists. The growing tendency to industrial democracy will
probably in the near future cut off this freedom to make money, which
has been the chief "liberty" of political democracy until now, but
whether liberty in general will be the gainer thereby remains to be
seen. One rather prominent Socialist in New York declares that liberty
is a "myth." He is correct, in so far as the democratic movement, either
political or social, is a crowd-phenomenon. Socialist agitators are
always demanding "liberty" nevertheless, but the liberty which they
demand is little more than freedom to make their own propaganda. And
this leads us to the third liberty permitted by modern democracy.