I
RECONSTRUCTION; ITS CONDITIONS AND PURPOSES
The best method of approaching a critical reconstruction of American
political ideas will be by means of an analysis of the meaning of
democracy. A clear popular understanding of the contents of the
democratic principle is obviously of the utmost practical political
importance to the American people. Their loyalty to the idea of
democracy, as they understand it, cannot be questioned. Nothing of any
considerable political importance is done or left undone in the United
States, unless such action or inaction can be plausibly defended on
democratic grounds; and the only way to secure for the American people
the benefit of a comprehensive and consistent political policy will be
to derive it from a comprehensive and consistent conception of
democracy.
Democracy as most frequently understood is essentially and exhaustively
defined as a matter of popular government; and such a definition raises
at once a multitude of time-honored, but by no means superannuated,
controversies. The constitutional liberals in England, in France, and in
this country have always objected to democracy as so understood, because
of the possible sanction it affords for the substitution of a popular
despotism in the place of the former royal or oligarchic despotisms.
From their point of view individual liberty is the greatest blessing
which can be secured to a people by a government; and individual liberty
can be permanently guaranteed only in case political liberties are in
theory and practice subordinated to civil liberties. Popular political
institutions constitute a good servant, but a bad master. When
introduced in moderation they keep the government of a country in close
relation with well-informed public opinion, which is a necessary
condition of political sanitation; but if carried too far, such
institutions compromise the security of the individual and the integrity
of the state. They erect a power in the state, which in theory is
unlimited and which constantly tends in practice to dispense with
restrictions. A power which is theoretically absolute is under no
obligation to respect the rights either of individuals or minorities;
and sooner or later such power will be used for the purpose of opposing
the individual. The only way to secure individual liberty is,
consequently, to organize a state in which the Sovereign power is
deprived of any national excuse or legal opportunity of violating
certain essential individual rights.
The foregoing criticism of democracy, defined as popular government, may
have much practical importance; but there are objections to it on the
score of logic. It is not a criticism of a certain conception of
democracy, so much as of democracy itself. Ultimate responsibility for
the government of a community must reside somewhere. If the single
monarch is practically dethroned, as he is by these liberal critics of
democracy, some Sovereign power must be provided to take his place. In
England Parliament, by means of a steady encroachment on the royal
prerogatives, has gradually become Sovereign; but other countries, such
as France and the United States, which have wholly dispensed with
royalty, cannot, even if they would, make a legislative body Sovereign
by the simple process of allowing it to usurp power once enjoyed by the
Crown. France did, indeed, after it had finally dispensed with
Legitimacy, make two attempts to found governments in which the theory
of popular Sovereignty was evaded. The Orleans monarchy, for instance,
through the mouths of its friends, denied Sovereignty to the people,
without being able to claim it for the King; and this insecurity of its
legal framework was an indirect cause of a violent explosion of
effective popular Sovereignty in 1848. The apologists for the Second
Empire admitted the theory of a Sovereign people, but claimed that the
Sovereign power could be safely and efficiently used only in case it
were delegated to one Napoleon III--a view the correctness of which the
results of the Imperial policy eventually tended to damage. There is in
point of fact no logical escape from a theory of popular
Sovereignty--once the theory of divinely appointed royal Sovereignty is
rejected. An escape can be made, of course, as in England, by means of a
compromise and a legal fiction; and such an escape can be fully
justified from the English national point of view; but countries which
have rejected the royal and aristocratic tradition are forbidden this
means of escape--if escape it is. They are obliged to admit the doctrine
of popular Sovereignty. They are obliged to proclaim a theory of
unlimited popular powers.
To be sure, a democracy may impose rules of action upon itself--as the
American democracy did in accepting the Federal Constitution. But in
adopting the Federal Constitution the American people did not abandon
either its responsibilities or rights as Sovereign. Difficult as it may
be to escape from the legal framework defined in the Constitution, that
body of law in theory remains merely an instrument which was made for
the people and which if necessary can and will be modified. A people, to
whom was denied the ultimate responsibility for its welfare, would not
have obtained the prime condition of genuine liberty. Individual freedom
is important, but more important still is the freedom of a whole people
to dispose of its own destiny; and I do not see how the existence of
such an ultimate popular political freedom and responsibility can be
denied by any one who has rejected the theory of a divinely appointed
political order. The fallibility of human nature being what it is, the
practical application of this theory will have its grave dangers; but
these dangers are only evaded and postponed by a failure to place
ultimate political responsibility where it belongs. While a country in
the position of Germany or Great Britain may be fully justified from the
point of view of its national tradition, in merely compromising with
democracy, other countries, such as the United States and France, which
have earned the right to dispense with these compromises, are at least
building their political structure on the real and righteous source of
political authority. Democracy may mean something more than a
theoretically absolute popular government, but it assuredly cannot mean
anything less.
If, however, democracy does not mean anything less than popular
Sovereignty, it assuredly does mean something more. It must at least
mean an expression of the Sovereign will, which will not contradict and
destroy the continuous existence of its own Sovereign power. Several
times during the political history of France in the nineteenth century,
the popular will has expressed itself in a manner adverse to popular
political institutions. Assemblies have been elected by universal
suffrage, whose tendencies have been reactionary and undemocratic, and
who have been supported in this reactionary policy by an effective
public opinion. Or the French people have by means of a plebiscite
delegated their Sovereign power to an Imperial dictator, whose whole
political system was based on a deep suspicion of the source of his own
authority. A particular group of political institutions or course of
political action may, then, be representative of the popular will, and
yet may be undemocratic. Popular Sovereignty is self-contradictory,
unless it is expressed in a manner favorable to its own perpetuity and
integrity.
The assertion of the doctrine of popular Sovereignty is, consequently,
rather the beginning than the end of democracy. There can be no
democracy where the people do not rule; but government by the people is
not necessarily democratic. The popular will must in a democratic state
be expressed somehow in the interest of democracy itself; and we have
not traveled very far towards a satisfactory conception of democracy
until this democratic purpose has received some definition. In what way
must a democratic state behave in order to contribute to its own
integrity?
The ordinary American answer to this question is contained in the
assertion of Lincoln, that our government is "dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal." Lincoln's phrasing of the
principle was due to the fact that the obnoxious and undemocratic system
of negro slavery was uppermost in his mind when he made his Gettysburg
address; but he meant by his assertion of the principle of equality
substantially what is meant to-day by the principle of "equal rights for
all and special privileges for none." Government by the people has its
natural and logical complement in government for the people. Every state
with a legal framework must grant certain rights to individuals; and
every state, in so far as it is efficient, must guarantee to the
individual that his rights, as legally defined, are secure. But an
essentially democratic state consists in the circumstance that all
citizens enjoy these rights equally. If any citizen or any group of
citizens enjoys by virtue of the law any advantage over their
fellow-citizens, then the most sacred principle of democracy is
violated. On the other hand, a community in which no man or no group of
men are granted by law any advantage over their fellow-citizens is the
type of the perfect and fruitful democratic state. Society is organized
politically for the benefit of all the people. Such an organization may
permit radical differences among individuals in the opportunities and
possessions they actually enjoy; but no man would be able to impute his
own success or failure to the legal framework of society. Every citizen
would be getting a "Square Deal."
Such is the idea of the democratic state, which the majority of good
Americans believe to be entirely satisfactory. It should endure
indefinitely, because it seeks to satisfy every interest essential to
associated life. The interest of the individual is protected, because of
the liberties he securely enjoys. The general social interest is equally
well protected, because the liberties enjoyed by one or by a few are
enjoyed by all. Thus the individual and the social interests are
automatically harmonized. The virile democrat in pursuing his own
interest "under the law" is contributing effectively to the interest of
society, while the social interest consists precisely in the promotion
of these individual interests, in so far as they can be equally
exercised. The divergent demands of the individual and the social
interest can be reconciled by grafting the principle of equality on the
thrifty tree of individual rights, and the ripe fruit thereof can be
gathered merely by shaking the tree.
It must be immediately admitted, also, that the principle of equal
rights, like the principle of ultimate popular political responsibility
is the expression of an essential aspect of democracy. There is no room
for permanent legal privileges in a democratic state. Such privileges
may be and frequently are defended on many excellent grounds. They may
unquestionably contribute for a time to social and economic efficiency
and to individual independence. But whatever advantage may be derived
from such permanent discriminations must be abandoned by a democracy. It
cannot afford to give any one class of its citizens a permanent
advantage or to others a permanent grievance. It ceases to be a
democracy, just as soon as any permanent privileges are conferred by its
institutions or its laws; and this equality of right and absence of
permanent privilege is the expression of a fundamental social interest.
But the principle of equal rights, like the principle of ultimate
popular political responsibility, is not sufficient; and because of its
insufficiency results in certain dangerous ambiguities and
self-contradictions. American political thinkers have always repudiated
the idea that by equality of rights they meant anything like equality of
performance or power. The utmost varieties of individual power and
ability are bound to exist and are bound to bring about many different
levels of individual achievement. Democracy both recognizes the right of
the individual to use his powers to the utmost, and encourages him to do
so by offering a fair field and, in cases of success, an abundant
reward. The democratic principle requires an equal start in the race,
while expecting at the same time an unequal finish. But Americans who
talk in this way seem wholly blind to the fact that under a legal system
which holds private property sacred there may be equal rights, but there
cannot possibly be any equal opportunities for exercising such rights.
The chance which the individual has to compete with his fellows and take
a prize in the race is vitally affected by material conditions over
which he has no control. It is as if the competitor in a Marathon cross
country run were denied proper nourishment or proper training, and was
obliged to toe the mark against rivals who had every benefit of food and
discipline. Under such conditions he is not as badly off as if he were
entirely excluded from the race. With the aid of exceptional strength
and intelligence he may overcome the odds against him and win out. But
it would be absurd to claim, because all the rivals toed the same mark,
that a man's victory or defeat depended exclusively on his own efforts.
Those who have enjoyed the benefits of wealth and thorough education
start with an advantage which can be overcome only in very exceptional
men,--men so exceptional, in fact, that the average competitor without
such benefits feels himself disqualified for the contest.
Because of the ambiguity indicated above, different people with
different interests, all of them good patriotic Americans, draw very
different inferences from the doctrine of equal rights. The man of
conservative ideas and interests means by the rights, which are to be
equally exercised, only those rights which are defined and protected by
the law--the more fundamental of which are the rights to personal
freedom and to private property. The man of radical ideas, on the other
hand, observing, as he may very clearly, that these equal rights cannot
possibly be made really equivalent to equal opportunities, bases upon
the same doctrine a more or less drastic criticism of the existing
economic and social order and sometimes of the motives of its
beneficiaries and conservators. The same principle, differently
interpreted, is the foundation of American political orthodoxy and
American political heterodoxy. The same measure of reforming
legislation, such as the new Inter-state Commerce Law, seems to one
party a wholly inadequate attempt to make the exercise of individual
rights a little more equal, while it seems to others an egregious
violation of the principle itself. What with reforming legislation on
the one hand and the lack of it on the other, the once sweet air of the
American political mansion is soured by complaints. Privileges and
discriminations seem to lurk in every political and economic corner. The
"people" are appealing to the state to protect them against the
usurpations of the corporations and the Bosses. The government is
appealing to the courts to protect the shippers against the railroads.
The corporations are appealing to the Federal courts to protect them
from the unfair treatment of state legislatures. Employers are fighting
trades-unionism, because it denies equal rights to their employers. The
unionists are entreating public opinion to protect them against the
unfairness of "government by injunction." To the free trader the whole
protectionist system seems a flagrant discrimination on behalf of a
certain portion of the community. Everybody seems to be clamoring for a
"Square Deal" but nobody seems to be getting it.
The ambiguity of the principle of equal rights and the resulting
confusion of counsel are so obvious that there must be some good reason
for their apparently unsuspected existence. The truth is that Americans
have not readjusted their political ideas to the teaching of their
political and economic experience. For a couple of generations after
Jefferson had established the doctrine of equal rights as the
fundamental principle of the American democracy, the ambiguity resident
in the application of the doctrine was concealed. The Jacksonian
Democrats, for instance, who were constantly nosing the ground for a
scent of unfair treatment, could discover no example of political
privileges, except the continued retention of their offices by
experienced public servants; and the only case of economic privilege of
which they were certain was that of the National Bank. The fact is, of
course, that the great majority of Americans were getting a "Square
Deal" as long as the economic opportunities of a new country had not
been developed and appropriated. Individual and social interest did
substantially coincide as long as so many opportunities were open to the
poor and untrained man, and as long as the public interest demanded
first of all the utmost celerity of economic development. But, as we
have seen in a preceding chapter, the economic development of the
country resulted inevitably in a condition which demanded on the part of
the successful competitor either increasing capital, improved training,
or a larger amount of ability and energy. With the advent of comparative
economic and social maturity, the exercise of certain legal rights
became substantially equivalent to the exercise of a privilege; and if
equality of opportunity was to be maintained, it could not be done by
virtue of non-interference. The demands of the "Higher Law" began to
diverge from the results of the actual legal system.
Public opinion is, of course, extremely loth to admit that there exists
any such divergence of individual and social interest, or any such
contradiction in the fundamental American principle. Reformers no less
than conservatives have been doggedly determined to place some other
interpretation upon the generally recognized abuses; and the
interpretation on which they have fastened is that some of the victors
have captured too many prizes, because they did not play fair. There is
just enough truth in this interpretation to make it plausible, although,
as we have seen, the most flagrant examples of apparent cheating were
due as much to equivocal rules as to any fraudulent intention. But
orthodox public opinion is obliged by the necessities of its own
situation to exaggerate the truth of its favorite interpretation; and
any such exaggeration is attended with grave dangers, precisely because
the ambiguous nature of the principle itself gives a similar ambiguity
to its violations. The cheating is understood as disobedience to the
actual law, or as violation of a Higher Law, according to the interests
and preconceptions of the different reformers; but however it is
understood, they believe themselves to be upholding some kind of a Law,
and hence endowed with some kind of a sacred mission.
Thus the want of integrity in what is supposed to be the formative
principle of democracy results, as it did before the Civil War, in a
division of the actual substance of the nation. Men naturally disposed
to be indignant at people with whom they disagree come to believe that
their indignation is comparable to that of the Lord. Men naturally
disposed to be envious and suspicious of others more fortunate than
themselves come to confuse their suspicions with a duty to the society.
Demagogues can appeal to the passions aroused by this prevailing sense
of unfair play for the purpose of getting themselves elected to office
or for the purpose of passing blundering measures of repression. The
type of admirable and popular democrat ceases to be a statesman,
attempting to bestow unity and health on the body politic by prescribing
more wholesome habits of living. He becomes instead a sublimated
District Attorney, whose duty it is to punish violations both of the
actual and the "Higher Law." Thus he is figured as a kind of an avenging
angel; but (as it happens) he is an avenging angel who can find little
to avenge and who has no power of flight. There is an enormous
discrepancy between the promises of these gentlemen and their
performances, no matter whether they occupy an executive office, the
editorial chairs of yellow journals, or merely the place of public
prosecutor; and it sometimes happens that public prosecutors who have
played the part of avenging angels before election, are, as Mr. William
Travers Jerome knows, themselves prosecuted after a few years of office
by their aggrieved constituents. The truth is that these gentlemen are
confronted by a task which is in a large measure impossible, and which,
so far as possible, would be either disappointing or dangerous in its
results.
Hence it is that continued loyalty to a contradictory principle is
destructive of a wholesome public sentiment and opinion. A wholesome
public opinion in a democracy is one which keeps a democracy sound and
whole; and it cannot prevail unless the individuals composing it
recognize mutual ties and responsibilities which lie deeper than any
differences of interest and idea. No formula whose effect on public
opinion is not binding and healing and unifying has any substantial
claim to consideration as the essential and formative democratic idea.
Belief in the principle of equal rights does not bind, heal, and unify
public opinion. Its effect rather is confusing, distracting, and at
worst, disintegrating. A democratic political organization has no
immunity from grievances. They are a necessary result of a complicated
and changing industrial and social organism. What is good for one
generation will often be followed by consequences that spell deprivation
for the next. What is good for one man or one class of men will bring
ills to other men or classes of men. What is good for the community as a
whole may mean temporary loss and a sense of injustice to a minority.
All grievances from any cause should receive full expression in a
democracy, but, inasmuch as the righteously discontented must be always
with us, the fundamental democratic principle should, above all, counsel
mutual forbearance and loyalty. The principle of equal rights encourages
mutual suspicion and disloyalty. It tends to attribute individual and
social ills, for which general moral, economic, and social causes are
usually in large measure responsible, to individual wrong-doing; and in
this way it arouses and intensifies that personal and class hatred,
which never in any society lies far below the surface. Men who have
grievances are inflamed into anger and resentment. In claiming what they
believe to be their rights, they are in their own opinion acting on
behalf not merely of their interests, but of an absolute democratic
principle. Their angry resentment becomes transformed in their own minds
into righteous indignation; and there may be turned loose upon the
community a horde of self-seeking fanatics--like unto those soldiers in
the religious wars who robbed and slaughtered their opponents in the
service of God.
II
DEMOCRACY AND DISCRIMINATION
The principle of equal rights has always appealed to its more patriotic
and sensible adherents as essentially an impartial rule of political
action--one that held a perfectly fair balance between the individual
and society, and between different and hostile individual and class
interests. But as a fundamental principle of democratic policy it is as
ambiguous in this respect as it is in other respects. In its traditional
form and expression it has concealed an extremely partial interest under
a formal proclamation of impartiality. The political thinker who
popularized it in this country was not concerned fundamentally with
harmonizing the essential interest of the individual with the essential
popular or social interest. Jefferson's political system was intended
for the benefit only of a special class of individuals, viz., those
average people who would not be helped by any really formative rule or
method of discrimination. In practice it has proved to be inimical to
individual liberty, efficiency, and distinction. An insistent demand for
equality, even in the form of a demand for equal rights, inevitably has
a negative and limiting effect upon the free and able exercise of
individual opportunities. From the Jeffersonian point of view democracy
would incur a graver danger from a violation of equality than it would
profit from a triumphant assertion of individual liberty. Every
opportunity for the edifying exercise of power, on the part either of an
individual, a group of individuals, or the state is by its very nature
also an opportunity for its evil exercise. The political leader whose
official power depends upon popular confidence may betray the trust. The
corporation employing thousands of men and supplying millions of people
with some necessary service or commodity may reduce the cost of
production only for its own profit. The state may use its great
authority chiefly for the benefit of special interests. The advocate of
equal rights is preoccupied by these opportunities for the abusive
exercise of power, because from his point of view rights exercised in
the interest of inequality have ceased to be righteous. He distrusts
those forms of individual and associated activity which give any
individual or association substantial advantages over their associates.
He becomes suspicious of any kind of individual and social distinction
with the nature and effects of which he is not completely familiar.
A democracy of equal rights may tend to encourage certain expressions of
individual liberty; but they are few in number and limited in scope. It
rejoices in the freedom of its citizens, provided this freedom receives
certain ordinary expressions. It will follow a political leader, like
Jefferson or Jackson, with a blind confidence of which a really free
democracy would not be capable, because such leaders are, or claim to be
in every respect, except their prominence, one of the "people."
Distinction of this kind does not separate a leader from the majority.
It only ties them together more firmly. It is an acceptable assertion of
individual liberty, because it is liberty converted by its exercise into
a kind of equality. In the same way the American democracy most
cordially admired for a long time men, who pursued more energetically
and successfully than their fellows, ordinary business occupations,
because they believed that such familiar expressions of individual
liberty really tended towards social and industrial homogeneity. Herein
they were mistaken; but the supposition was made in good faith, and it
constitutes the basis of the Jeffersonian Democrat's illusion in
reference to his own interest in liberty. He dislikes or ignores
liberty, only when it looks in the direction of moral and intellectual
emancipation. In so far as his influence has prevailed, Americans have
been encouraged to think those thoughts and to perform those acts which
everybody else is thinking and performing.
The effect of a belief in the principle of "equal rights" on freedom is,
however, most clearly shown by its attitude toward Democratic political
organization and policy. A people jealous of their rights are not
sufficiently afraid of special individual efficiency and distinction to
take very many precautions against it. They greet it oftener with
neglect than with positive coercion. Jeffersonian Democracy is, however,
very much afraid of any examples of associated efficiency. Equality of
rights is most in clanger of being violated when the exercise of rights
is associated with power, and any unusual amount of power is usually
derived from the association of a number of individuals for a common
purpose. The most dangerous example of such association is not, however,
a huge corporation or a labor union; it is the state. The state cannot
be bound hand and foot by the law, as can a corporation, because it
necessarily possesses some powers of legislation; and the power to
legislate inevitably escapes the limitation of the principle of equal
rights. The power to legislate implies the power to discriminate; and
the best way consequently for a good democracy of equal rights to avoid
the danger of discrimination will be to organize the state so that its
power for ill will be rigidly restricted. The possible preferential
interference on the part of a strong and efficient government must be
checked by making the government feeble and devoid of independence. The
less independent and efficient the several departments of the government
are permitted to become, the less likely that the government as a whole
will use its power for anything but a really popular purpose.
In the foregoing type of political organization, which has been very
much favored by the American democracy, the freedom of the official
political leader is sacrificed for the benefit of the supposed freedom
of that class of equalized individuals known as the "people," but by the
"people" Jefferson and his followers have never meant all the people or
the people as a whole. They have meant a sort of apotheosized
majority--the people in so far as they could be generalized and reduced
to an average. The interests of this class were conceived as inimical to
any discrimination which tended to select peculiarly efficient
individuals or those who were peculiarly capable of social service. The
system of equal rights, particularly in its economic and political
application _has_ worked for the benefit of such a class, but rather in
its effect upon American intelligence and morals, than in its effect
upon American political and economic development. The system, that is,
has only partly served the purpose of its founder and his followers, and
it has failed because it did not bring with it any machinery adequate
even to its own insipid and barren purposes. Even the meager social
interest which Jefferson concealed under cover of his demand for equal
rights could not be promoted without some effective organ of social
responsibility; and the Democrats of to-day are obliged, as we have
seen, to invoke the action of the central government to destroy those
economic discriminations which its former inaction had encouraged. But
even so the traditional democracy still retains its dislike of
centralized and socialized responsibility. It consents to use the
machinery of the government only for a negative or destructive object.
Such must always be the case as long as it remains true to its
fundamental principle. That principle defines the social interest merely
in the terms of an indiscriminate individualism--which is the one kind
of individualism murderous to both the essential individual and the
essential social interest.
The net result has been that wherever the attempt to discriminate in
favor of the average or indiscriminate individual has succeeded, it has
succeeded at the expense of individual liberty, efficiency, and
distinction; but it has more often failed than succeeded. Whenever the
exceptional individual has been given any genuine liberty, he has
inevitably conquered. That is the whole meaning of the process of
economic and social development traced in certain preceding chapters.
The strong and capable men not only conquer, but they seek to perpetuate
their conquests by occupying all the strategic points in the economic
and political battle-field--whereby they obtain certain more or less
permanent advantages over their fellow-democrats. Thus in so far as the
equal rights are freely exercised, they are bound to result in
inequalities; and these inequalities are bound to make for their own
perpetuation, and so to provoke still further discrimination. Wherever
the principle has been allowed to mean what it seems to mean, it has
determined and encouraged its own violation. The marriage which it is
supposed to consecrate between liberty and equality gives birth to
unnatural children, whose nature it is to devour one or the other of
their parents.
The only way in which the thorough-going adherent of the principle of
equal rights can treat these tendencies to discrimination, when they
develop, is rigidly to repress them; and this tendency to repression is
now beginning to take possession of those Americans who represent the
pure Democratic tradition. They propose to crush out the chief examples
of effective individual and associated action, which their system of
democracy has encouraged to develop. They propose frankly to destroy, so
far as possible, the economic organization which has been built up under
stress of competitive conditions; and by assuming such an attitude they
have fallen away even from the pretense of impartiality, and have come
out as frankly representative of a class interest. But even to assert
this class interest efficiently they have been obliged to abandon, in
fact if not in word, their correlative principle of national
irresponsibility. Whatever the national interest may be, it is not to be
asserted by the political practice of non-interference. The hope of
automatic democratic fulfillment must be abandoned. The national
government must stop in and discriminate; but it must discriminate, not
on behalf of liberty and the special individual, but on behalf of
equality and the average man.
Thus the Jeffersonian principle of national irresponsibility can no
longer be maintained by those Democrats who sincerely believe that the
inequalities of power generated in the American economic and political
system are dangerous to the integrity of the democratic state. To this
extent really sincere followers of Jefferson are obliged to admit the
superior political wisdom of Hamilton's principle of national
responsibility, and once they have made this admission, they have
implicitly abandoned their contention that the doctrine of equal rights
is a sufficient principle of democratic political action. They have
implicitly accepted the idea that the public interest is to be asserted,
not merely by equalizing individual rights, but by controlling
individuals in the exercise of those rights. The national public
interest has to be affirmed by positive and aggressive fiction. The
nation has to have a will and a policy as well as the individual; and
this policy can no longer be confined to the merely negative task of
keeping individual rights from becoming in any way privileged.
The arduous and responsible political task which a nation in its
collective capacity must seek to perform is that of selecting among the
various prevailing ways of exercising individual rights those which
contribute to national perpetuity and integrity. Such selection implies
some interference with the natural course of popular notion; and that
interference is always costly and may be harmful either to the
individual or the social interest must be frankly admitted. He would be
a foolish Hamiltonian who would claim that a state, no matter how
efficiently organized and ably managed, will not make serious and
perhaps enduring mistakes; but he can answer that inaction and
irresponsibility are more costly and dangerous than intelligent and
responsible interference. The practice of non-interference is just as
selective in its effects as the practice of state interference. It means
merely that the nation is willing to accept the results of natural
selection instead of preferring to substitute the results of artificial
selection. In one way or another a nation is bound to recognize the
results of selection. The Hamiltonian principle of national
responsibility recognizes the inevitability of selection; and since it
is inevitable, is not afraid to interfere on behalf of the selection of
the really fittest. If a selective policy is pursued in good faith and
with sufficient intelligence, the nation will at least be learning from
its mistakes. It should find out gradually the kind and method of
selection, which is most desirable, and how far selection by
non-interference is to be preferred to active selection.
As a matter of fact the American democracy both in its central and in
its local governments has always practiced both methods of selection.
The state governments have sedulously indulged in a kind of interference
conspicuous both for its activity and its inefficiency. The Federal
government, on the other hand, has been permitted to interfere very much
less; but even during the palmiest days of national irresponsibility it
did not altogether escape active intervention. A protective tariff is,
of course, a plain case of preferential class legislation, and so was
the original Inter-state Commerce Act. They were designed to substitute
artificial preferences for those effected by unregulated individual
action, on the ground that the proposed modification of the natural
course of trade would contribute to the general economic prosperity. No
less preferential in purpose are the measures of reform recently enacted
by the central government. The amended Inter-state Commerce Law largely
increases the power of possible discrimination possessed by the Federal
Commission. The Pure Food Bill forbids many practices, which have arisen
in connection with the manufacture of food products, and discriminates
against the perpetrators of such practices. Factory legislation or laws
regulating the hours of labor have a similar meaning and justification.
It is not too much to say that substantially all the industrial
legislation, demanded by the "people" both here and abroad and passed in
the popular interest, has been based essentially on class
discrimination.
The situation which these laws are supposed to meet is always the same.
A certain number of individuals enjoy, in the beginning, equal
opportunities to perform certain acts; and in the competition resulting
there from some of these individuals or associations obtain advantages
over their competitors, or over their fellow-citizens whom they employ
or serve. Sometimes these advantages and the practices whereby they are
obtained are profitable to a larger number of people than they injure.
Sometimes the reverse is true. In either event the state is usually
asked to interfere by the class whose economic position has been
compromised. It by no means follows that the state should acquiesce in
this demand. In many cases interference may be more costly than
beneficial. Each case must be considered on its merits. But whether in
any particular case the state takes sides or remains impartial, it most
assuredly has a positive function to perform on the promises. If it
remains impartial, it simply agrees to abide by the results of natural
selection. If it interferes, it seeks to replace natural with artificial
discrimination. In both cases it authorizes discriminations which in
their effect violate the doctrine of "equal rights." Of course, a
reformer can always claim that any particular measure of reform proposes
merely to restore to the people a "Square Deal"; but that is simply an
easy and thoughtless way of concealing novel purposes under familiar
formulas. Any genuine measure of economic or political reform will, of
course, give certain individuals better opportunities than those they
have been recently enjoying, but it will reach this result only by
depriving other individuals of advantages which they have earned.
Impartiality is the duty of the judge rather than the statesman, of the
courts rather than the government. The state which proposes to draw a
ring around the conflicting interests of its citizens and interfere only
on behalf of a fair fight will be obliged to interfere constantly and
will never accomplish its purpose. In economic warfare, the fighting can
never be fair for long, and it is the business of the state to see that
its own friends are victorious. It holds, if you please, itself a hand
in the game. The several players are playing, not merely with one
another, but with the political and social bank. The security and
perpetuity of the state and of the individual in so far an he is a
social animal, depend upon the victory of the national interest--as
represented both in the assurance of the national profit and in the
domination of the nation's friends. It is in the position of the bank at
Monte Carlo, which does not pretend to play fair, but which frankly
promulgates rules advantageous to itself. Considering the percentage in
its favor and the length of its purse, it cannot possibly lose. It is
not really gambling; and it does not propose to take any unnecessary
risks. Neither can a state, democratic or otherwise, which believes in
its own purpose. While preserving at times an appearance of impartiality
so that its citizens may enjoy for a while a sense of the reality of
their private game, it must on the whole make the rules in its own
interest. It must help those men to win who are most capable of using
their winnings for the benefit of society.
III
CONSTRUCTIVE DISCRIMINATION
Assuming, then, that a democracy cannot avoid the constant assertion of
national responsibility for the national welfare, an all-important
question remains as to the way in which and the purpose for which this
interference should be exercised. Should it be exercised on behalf of
individual liberty? Should it be exercised on behalf of social equality?
Is there any way in which it can be exercised on behalf both of liberty
and equality?
Hamilton and the constitutional liberals asserted that the state should
interfere exclusively on behalf of individual liberty; but Hamilton was
no democrat and was not outlining the policy of a democratic state. In
point of fact democracies have never been satisfied with a definition of
democratic policy in terms of liberty. Not only have the particular
friends of liberty usually been hostile to democracy, but democracies
both in idea and behavior have frequently been hostile to liberty; and
they have been justified in distrusting a political régime organized
wholly or even chiefly for its benefit. "La Liberté," says Mr. Emile
Faguet, in the preface to his "Politiques et Moralistes du Dix-Neuvième
Siècle"--"La Liberté s'oppose à l'Égalité, car La Liberté est
aristocratique par essence. La Liberté ne se donne jamais, ne s'octroie
jamais; elle se conquiert. Or ne peuvent la conquérir que des groupes
sociaux qui out su se donne la cohérence, l'organisation et la
discipline et qui par conséquent, sont des groupes aristocratiques."
The fact that states organized exclusively or largely for the benefit
of liberty are essentially aristocratic explains the hostile and
suspicious attitude of democracies towards such a principle of political
action.
Only a comparatively small minority are capable at any one time of
exercising political, economic, and civil liberties in an able,
efficient, or thoroughly worthy manner; and a régime wrought for the
benefit of such a minority would become at best a state, in which
economic, political, and social power would be very unevenly
distributed--a state like the Orleans Monarchy in France of the
"Bourgeoisie" and the "Intellectuals." Such a state might well give its
citizens fairly good government, as did the Orleans Monarchy; but just
in so far as the mass of the people had any will of its own, it could
not arouse vital popular interest and support; and it could not
contribute, except negatively, to the fund of popular good sense and
experience. The lack of such popular support caused the death of the
French liberal monarchy; and no such régime can endure, save, as in
England, by virtue of a somewhat abject popular acquiescence. As long as
it does endure, moreover, it tends to undermine the virtue of its own
beneficiaries. The favored minority, feeling as they do tolerably sure
of their position, can scarcely avoid a habit of making it somewhat too
easy for one another. The political, economic, and intellectual leaders
begin to be selected without any sufficient test of their efficiency.
Some sort of a test continues to be required; but the standards which
determine it drift into a condition of being narrow, artificial, and
lax. Political, intellectual, and social leadership, in order to
preserve its vitality needs a feeling of effective responsibility to a
body of public opinion as wide, as varied, and as exacting as that of
the whole community.
The desirable democratic object, implied in the traditional democratic
demand for equality, consists precisely in that of bestowing a share of
the responsibility and the benefits, derived from political and economic
association, upon the whole community. Democracies have assumed and have
been right in assuming that a proper diffusion of effective
responsibility and substantial benefits is the one means whereby a
community can be supplied with an ultimate and sufficient bond of union.
The American democracy has attempted to manufacture a sufficient bond
out of the equalization of rights: but such a bond is, as we have seen,
either a rope of sand or a link of chains. A similar object must be
achieved in some other way; and the ultimate success of democracy
depends upon its achievement.
The fundamental political and social problem of a democracy may be
summarized in the following terms. A democracy, like every political and
social group, is composed of individuals, and must be organized for the
benefit of its constituent members. But the individual has no chance of
effective personal power except by means of the secure exercise of
certain personal rights. Such rights, then, must be secured and
exercised; yet when they are exercised, their tendency is to divide the
community into divergent classes. Even if enjoyed with some equality in
the beginning, they do not continue to be equally enjoyed, but make
towards discriminations advantageous to a minority. The state, as
representing the common interest, is obliged to admit the inevitability
of such classifications and divisions, and has itself no alternative but
to exercise a decisive preference on behalf of one side or the other. A
well-governed state will use its power to promote edifying and desirable
discriminations. But if discriminations tend to divide the community,
and the state itself cannot do more than select among the various
possible cases of discrimination those which it has some reason to
prefer, how is the solidarity of the community to be preserved? And
above all, how is a democratic community, which necessarily includes
everybody in its benefits and responsibilities, to be kept well united?
Such a community must retain an ultimate bond of union which counteracts
the divergent effect of the discriminations, yet which at the same time
is not fundamentally hostile to individual liberties.
The clew to the best available solution of the problem is supplied by a
consideration of the precise manner, in which the advantages derived
from the efficient exercise of liberties become inimical to a wholesome
social condition. The hostility depends, not upon the existence of such
advantageous discriminations for a time, but upon their persistence for
too long a time. When, either from natural or artificial causes, they
are properly selected, they contribute at the time of their selection
both to individual and to social efficiency. They have been earned, and
it is both just and edifying that, in so far as they have been earned,
they should be freely enjoyed. On the other hand, they should not, so
far as possible, be allowed to outlast their own utility. They must
continue to be earned. It is power and opportunity enjoyed without being
earned which help to damage the individual--both the individuals who
benefit and the individuals who consent--and which tend to loosen the
ultimate social bond. A democracy, no less than a monarchy or an
aristocracy, must recognize political, economic, and social
discriminations, but it must also manage to withdraw its consent
whenever these discriminations show any tendency to excessive endurance.
The essential wholeness of the community depends absolutely on the
ceaseless creation of a political, economic, and social aristocracy and
their equally incessant replacement.
Both in its organization and in its policy a democratic state has
consequently to seek two different but supplementary objects. It is the
function of such a state to represent the whole community; and the whole
community includes the individual as well as the mass, the many as well
as the few. The individual is merged in the mass, unless he is enabled
to exercise efficiently and independently his own private and special
purposes. He must not only be permitted, he must be encouraged to earn
distinction; and the best way in which he can be encouraged to earn
distinction is to reward distinction both by abundant opportunity and
cordial appreciation. Individual distinction, resulting from the
efficient performance of special work, is not only the foundation of all
genuine individuality, but is usually of the utmost social value. In so
far as it is efficient, it has a tendency to be constructive. It both
inserts some member into the social edifice which forms for the time
being a desirable part of the whole structure, but it tends to establish
a standard of achievement which may well form a permanent contribution
to social amelioration. It is useful to the whole community, not because
it is derived from popular sources or conforms to popular standards, but
because it is formative and so helps to convert the community into a
well-formed whole.
Distinction, however, even when it is earned, always has a tendency to
remain satisfied with its achievements, and to seek indefinitely its own
perpetuation. When such a course is pursued by an efficient and
distinguished individual, he is, of course, faithless to the meaning and
the source of his own individual power. In abandoning and replacing him
a democracy is not recreant to the principle of individual liberty. It
is merely subjecting individual liberty to conditions which promote and
determine its continued efficiency. Such conditions never have been and
never will be imposed for long by individuals or classes of individuals
upon themselves. They must be imposed by the community, and nothing less
than the whole community. The efficient exercise of individual power is
necessary to form a community and make it whole, but the duty of keeping
it whole rests with the community itself. It must consciously and
resolutely preserve the social benefit, derived from the achievements of
its favorite sons; and the most effective means thereto is that of
denying to favoritism of all kinds the opportunity of becoming a mere
habit.
The specific means whereby this necessary and formative favoritism can
be prevented from becoming a mere habit vary radically among the
different fields of personal activity. In the field of intellectual work
the conditions imposed upon the individual must for the most part be the
creation of public opinion; and in its proper place this aspect of the
relation between individuality and democracy will receive special
consideration. In the present connection, however, the relation of
individual liberty to democratic organization and policy can be
illustrated and explained most helpfully by a consideration of the
binding and formative conditions of political and economic liberty.
Democracies have always been chiefly preoccupied with the problems
raised by the exercise of political and economic opportunities, because
success in politics and business implies the control of a great deal of
physical power and the consequent possession by the victors in a
peculiar degree of both the motive and the means to perpetuate their
victory.
The particular friends of freedom, such as Hamilton and the French
"doctrinaires," have always believed that both civil and political
liberty depended on the denial of popular Sovereignty and the rigid
limitation of the suffrage. Of course, a democrat cannot accept such a
conclusion. He should doubtless admit that the possession of absolute
Sovereign power is always liable to abuse; and if he is candid, he can
hardly fail to add that democratic favoritism is subject to the same
weakness as aristocratic or royal favoritism. It tends, that is, to make
individuals seek distinction not by high individual efficiency, but by
compromises in the interest of useful popularity. It would be vain to
deny the gravity of this danger or the extent to which, in the best of
democracies, the seekers after all kinds of distinction have been
hypnotized by an express desire for popularity. But American statesmen
have not always been obliged to choose between Hamilton's unpopular
integrity and Henry Clay's unprincipled bidding for popular favor. The
greatest American political leaders have been popular without any
personal capitulation; and their success is indicative of what is
theoretically the most wholesome relation between individual political
liberty and a democratic distribution of effective political power. The
highest and most profitable individual political distinction is that
which is won from a large field and from a whole people. Political, even
more than other kinds of distinction, should not be the fruit of a
limited area of selection. It must be open to everybody, and it must be
acceptable to the community as a whole. In fact, the concession of
substantially equal political rights is an absolute condition of any
fundamental political bond. Grave as are the dangers which a democratic
political system incurs, still graver ones are incurred by a rigidly
limited electoral organization. A community, so organized, betrays a
fundamental lack of confidence in the mutual loyalty and good faith of
its members, and such a community can remain well united only at the
cost of a mixture of patronage and servility.
The limitation of the suffrage to those who are individually capable of
making the best use of it has the appearance of being reasonable; and it
has made a strong appeal to those statesmen and thinkers who believed in
the political leadership of intelligent and educated men. Neither can it
be denied that a rigidly restricted suffrage might well make in the
beginning for administrative efficiency and good government. But it must
never be forgotten that a limited suffrage confines ultimate political
responsibility, not only to a number of peculiarly competent
individuals, but to a larger or smaller class; and in the long run a
class is never to be trusted to govern in the interest of the whole
community. A democracy should encourage the political leadership of
experienced, educated, and well-trained men, but only on the express
condition that their power is delegated and is to be used, under severe
penalties, for the benefit of the people as a whole. A limited suffrage
secures governmental efficiency, if at all, at the expense of the
political education and training of the disfranchised class, and at the
expense, also, of a permanent and radical popular political grievance. A
substantially universal suffrage merely places the ultimate political
responsibility in the hands of those for whose benefit governments are
created; and its denial can be justified only on the ground that the
whole community is incapable of exercising the responsibility. Such
cases unquestionably exist. They exist wherever the individuals
constituting a community, as at present in the South, are more divided
by social or class ambitions and prejudices than they are united by a
tradition of common action and mutual loyalty. But wherever the whole
people are capable of thinking, feeling, and acting as if they
constituted a whole, universal suffrage, even if it costs something in
temporary efficiency, has a tendency to be more salutary and more
formative than a restricted suffrage.
The substantially equal political rights enjoyed by the American people
for so many generations have not proved dangerous to the civil liberties
of the individual and, except to a limited extent, not to his political
liberty. Of course, the American democracy has been absolutely opposed
to the delegation to individuals of official political power, except
under rigid conditions both as to scope and duration; and the particular
friends of liberty have always claimed that such rigid conditions
destroyed individual political independence and freedom. Hamilton, for
instance, was insistent upon the necessity of an upper house consisting
of life-members who would not be dependent on popular favor for their
retention of office. But such proposals have no chance of prevailing in
a sensible democracy. A democracy is justified in refusing to bestow
permanent political power upon individuals, because such permanent
tenure of office relaxes oftener than it stimulates the efficiency of
the favored individual, and makes him attach excessive importance to
mere independence. The official leaders of a democracy should, indeed,
hold their offices under conditions which will enable them to act and
think independently; but independence is really valuable only when the
officeholder has won it from his own followers. Under any other
conditions it is not only peculiarly liable to abuse, but it deprives
the whole people of that ultimate responsibility for their own welfare,
without which democracy is meaningless. A democracy is or should be
constantly delegating an effective share in this responsibility to its
official leaders, but only on condition that the power and
responsibility delegated is partial and is periodically resumed.
The only Americans who hold important official positions for life are
the judges of the Federal courts. Radical democrats have always
protested against this exception, which, nevertheless, can be permitted
without any infringement of democratic principles. The peculiar position
of the Federal judge is symptomatic of the peculiar importance in the
American system of the Federal Constitution. A senator would be less
likely to be an efficient and public-spirited legislator, in case he
were not obliged at regular intervals to prove title to his distinction.
A justice of the Supreme Court, on the other hand, can the better
perform his special task, provided he has a firm and permanent hold upon
his office. He cannot, to be sure, entirely escape responsibility to
public opinion, but his primary duty is to expound the Constitution as
he understands it; and it is a duty which demands the utmost personal
independence. The fault with the American system in this respect
consists not in the independence of the Federal judiciary, but in the
practical immutability of the Constitution. If the instrument which the
Supreme Court expounds could be altered whenever a sufficiently large
body of public opinion has demanded a change for a sufficiently long
time, the American democracy would have much more to gain than to fear
from the independence of the Federal judiciary.
The interest of individual liberty in relation to the organization of
democracy demands simply that the individual officeholder should possess
an amount of power and independence adequate to the efficient
performance of his work. The work of a justice of the Supreme Court
demands a power that is absolute for its own special work, and it
demands technically complete independence. An executive should, as a
rule, serve for a longer term, and hold a position of greater
independence than a legislator, because his work of enforcing the laws
and attending to the business details of government demands continuity,
complete responsibility within its own sphere, and the necessity
occasionally of braving adverse currents of public opinion. The term of
service and the technical independence of a legislator might well be
more restricted than that of an executive; but even a legislator should
be granted as much power and independence as he may need for the
official performance of his public duty. The American democracy has
shown its enmity to individual political liberty, not because it has
required its political favorites constantly to seek reëlection, but
because it has since 1800 tended to refuse to its favorites during their
official term as much power and independence as is needed for
administrative, legislative, and judicial efficiency. It has been
jealous of the power it delegated, and has tried to take away with one
hand what it gave with the other.
Taking American political traditions, ideals, institutions, and
practices as a whole, there is no reason to believe that the American
democracy cannot and will not combine sufficient opportunities for
individual political distinction with an effective ultimate popular
political responsibility. The manner in which the combination has been
made hitherto is far from flawless, and the American democracy has much
to learn before it reaches an organization adequate to its own proper
purposes. It must learn, above all, that the state, and the individuals
who are temporarily responsible for the action of the state, must be
granted all the power necessary to redeem that responsibility.
Individual opportunity and social welfare both depend upon the learning
of this lesson; and while it is still very far from being learned, the
obstacles in the way are not of a disheartening nature.
With the economic liberty of the individual the case is different. The
Federalists refrained from protecting individual political rights by
incorporating in the Constitution any limitation of the suffrage; but
they sought to protect the property rights of the individual by the most
absolute constitutional guarantees. Moreover, American practice has
allowed the individual a far larger measure of economic liberty than is
required by the Constitution; and this liberty was granted in the
expectation that it would benefit, not the individual as such, but the
great mass of the American people. It has undoubtedly benefited the
great mass of the American people; but it has been of far more benefit
to a comparatively few individuals. Americans are just beginning to
learn that the great freedom which the individual property-owner has
enjoyed is having the inevitable result of all unrestrained exercise of
freedom. It has tended to create a powerful but limited class whose
chief object it is to hold and to increase the power which they have
gained; and this unexpected result has presented the American democracy
with the most difficult and radical of its problems. Is it to the
interest of the American people as a democracy to permit the increase or
the perpetuation of the power gained by this aristocracy of money?
A candid consideration of the foregoing question will, I believe, result
in a negative answer. A democracy has as much interest in regulating for
its own benefit the distribution of economic power as it has the
distribution of political power, and the consequences of ignoring this
interest would be as fatal in one case as in the other. In both
instances regulation in the democratic interest is as far as possible
from meaning the annihilation of individual liberty; but in both
instances individual liberty should be subjected to conditions which
will continue to keep it efficient and generally serviceable. Individual
economic power is not any more dangerous than individual political
power--provided it is not held too absolutely and for too long a time.
But in both cases the interest of the community as a whole should be
dominant; and the interest of the whole community demands a considerable
concentration of economic power and responsibility, but only for the
ultimate purpose of its more efficient exercise and the better
distribution of its fruits.
That certain existing American fortunes have in their making been of the
utmost benefit to the whole economic organism is to my mind
unquestionably the fact. Men like Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, Mr. Andrew
Carnegie, Mr. James J. Hill, and Mr. Edward Harriman have in the course
of their business careers contributed enormously to American economic
efficiency. They have been overpaid for their services, but that is
irrelevant to the question immediately under consideration. It is
sufficient that their economic power has been just as much earned by
substantial service as was the political power of a man like Andrew
Jackson; and if our country is to continue its prosperous economic
career, it must retain an economic organization which will offer to men
of this stamp the opportunity and the inducement to earn distinction.
The rule which has already been applied to the case of political power
applies, also, to economic power. Individuals should enjoy as much
freedom from restraint, as much opportunity, and as much responsibility
as is necessary for the efficient performance of their work. Opinions
will differ as to the extent of this desirable independence and its
associated responsibility. The American millionaire and his supporters
claim, of course, that any diminution of opportunity and independence
would be fatal. To dispute this inference, however, does not involve the
abandonment of the rule itself. A democratic economic system, even more
than a democratic political system, must delegate a large share of
responsibility and power to the individual, but under conditions, if
possible, which will really make for individual efficiency and
distinction.
The grievance which a democrat may feel towards the existing economic
system is that it makes only partially for genuine individual economic
efficiency and distinction. The political power enjoyed by an individual
American rarely endures long enough to survive its own utility. But
economic power can in some measure at least be detached from its
creator. Let it be admitted that the man who accumulates $50,000,000 in
part earns it, but how about the man who inherits it? The inheritor of
such a fortune, like the inheritor of a ducal title, has an opportunity
thrust upon him. He succeeds to a colossal economic privilege which he
has not earned and for which he may be wholly incompetent. He rarely
inherits with the money the individual ability possessed by its maker,
but he does inherit a "money power" wholly independent of his own
qualifications or deserts. By virtue of that power alone he is in a
position in some measure to exploit his fellow-countrymen. Even though a
man of very inferior intellectual and moral caliber, he is able vastly
to increase his fortune through the information and opportunity which
that fortune bestows upon him, and without making any individual
contribution to the economic organization of the country. His power
brings with it no personal dignity or efficiency; and for the whole
material and meaning of his life he becomes as much dependent upon his
millions as a nobleman upon his title. The money which was a source of
distinction to its creator becomes in the course of time a source of
individual demoralization to its inheritor. His life is organized for
the purpose of spending a larger income than any private individual can
really need; and his intellectual point of view is bounded by his narrow
experience and his class interests.
No doubt the institution of private property, necessitating, as it does,
the transmission to one person of the possessions and earnings of
another, always involves the inheritance of unearned power and
opportunity. But the point is that in the case of very large fortunes
the inherited power goes far beyond any legitimate individual needs, and
in the course of time can hardly fail to corrupt its possessors. The
creator of a large fortune may well be its master; but its inheritor
will, except in the case of exceptionally able individuals, become its
victim, and most assuredly the evil social effects are as bad as the
evil individual effects. The political bond which a democracy seeks to
create depends for its higher value upon an effective social bond. Gross
inequalities in wealth, wholly divorced from economic efficiency on the
part of the rich, as effectively loosen the social bond as do gross
inequalities of political and social standing. A wholesome social
condition in a democracy does not imply uniformity of wealth any more
than it implies uniformity of ability and purpose, but it does imply the
association of great individual economic distinction with responsibility
and efficiency. It does imply that economic leaders, no less than
political ones, should have conditions imposed upon them which will
force them to recognize the responsibilities attached to so much power.
Mutual association and confidence between the leaders and followers is
as much a part of democratic economic organization as it is of
democratic political organization; and in the long run the inheritance
of vast fortunes destroys any such relation. They breed class envy on
one side, and class contempt on the other; and the community is either
divided irremediably by differences of interest and outlook, or united,
if at all, by snobbish servility.
If the integrity of a democracy is injured by the perpetuation of
unearned economic distinctions, it is also injured by extreme poverty,
whether deserved or not. A democracy which attempted to equalize wealth
would incur the same disastrous fate as a democracy which attempted to
equalize political power; but a democracy can no more be indifferent to
the distribution of wealth than it can to the distribution of the
suffrage. In a wholesome democracy every male adult should participate
in the ultimate political responsibility, partly because of the
political danger of refusing participation to the people, and partly
because of the advantages to be derived from the political union of the
whole people. So a wholesome democracy should seek to guarantee to every
male adult a certain minimum of economic power and responsibility. No
doubt it is much easier to confer the suffrage on the people than it is
to make poverty a negligible social factor; but the difficulty of the
task does not make it the less necessary. It stands to reason that in
the long run the people who possess the political power will want a
substantial share of the economic fruits. A prudent democracy should
anticipate this demand. Not only does any considerable amount of
grinding poverty constitute a grave social danger in a democratic state,
but so, in general, does a widespread condition of partial economic
privation. The individuals constituting a democracy lack the first
essential of individual freedom when they cannot escape from a condition
of economic dependence.
The American democracy has confidently believed in the fatal prosperity
enjoyed by the people under the American system. In the confidence of
that belief it has promised to Americans a substantial satisfaction of
their economic needs; and it has made that promise an essential part of
the American national idea. The promise has been measurably fulfilled
hitherto, because the prodigious natural resources of a new continent
were thrown open to anybody with the energy to appropriate them. But
those natural resources have now in large measure passed into the
possession of individuals, and American statesmen can no longer count
upon them to satisfy the popular hunger for economic independence. An
ever larger proportion of the total population of the country is taking
to industrial occupations, and an industrial system brings with it much
more definite social and economic classes, and a diminution of the
earlier social homogeneity. The contemporary wage-earner is no longer
satisfied with the economic results of being merely an American citizen.
His union is usually of more obvious use to him than the state, and he
is tending to make his allegiance to his union paramount to his
allegiance to the state. This is only one of many illustrations that the
traditional American system has broken down. The American state can
regain the loyal adhesion of the economically less independent class
only by positive service. What the wage-earner needs, and what it is to
the interest of a democratic state he should obtain, is a constantly
higher standard of living. The state can help him to conquer a higher
standard of living without doing any necessary injury to his employers
and with a positive benefit to general economic and social efficiency.
If it is to earn the loyalty of the wage-earners, it must recognize the
legitimacy of his demand, and make the satisfaction of it an essential
part of its public policy.
The American state is dedicated to such a duty, not only by its
democratic purpose, but by its national tradition. So far as the former
is concerned, it is absurd and fatal to ask a popular majority to
respect the rights of a minority, when those rights are interpreted so
as seriously to hamper, if not to forbid, the majority from obtaining
the essential condition of individual freedom and development--viz. the
highest possible standard of living. But this absurdity becomes really
critical and dangerous, in view of the fact that the American people,
particularly those of alien birth and descent, have been explicitly
promised economic freedom and prosperity. The promise was made on the
strength of what was believed to be an inexhaustible store of natural
opportunities; and it will have to be kept even when those natural
resources are no longer to be had for the asking. It is entirely
possible, of course, that the promise can never be kept,--that its
redemption will prove to be beyond the patience, the power, and the
wisdom of the American people and their leaders; but if it is not kept,
the American commonwealth will no longer continue to be a democracy.
IV
THE BRIDGE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY AND NATIONALITY
We are now prepared, I hope, to venture upon a more fruitful definition
of democracy. The popular definitions err in describing it in terms of
its machinery or of some partial political or economic object. Democracy
does not mean merely government by the people, or majority rule, or
universal suffrage. All of these political forms or devices are a part
of its necessary organization; but the chief advantage such methods of
organization have is their tendency to promote some salutary and
formative purpose. The really formative purpose is not exclusively a
matter of individual liberty, although it must give individual liberty
abundant scope. Neither is it a matter of equal rights alone, although
it must always cherish the social bond which that principle represents.
The salutary and formative democratic purpose consists in using the
democratic organization for the joint benefit of individual distinction
and social improvement.
To define the really democratic organization as one which makes
expressly and intentionally for individual distinction and social
improvement is nothing more than a translation of the statement that
such an organization should make expressly and intentionally for the
welfare of the whole people. The whole people will always consist of
individuals, constituting small classes, who demand special
opportunities, and the mass of the population who demand for their
improvement more generalized opportunities. At any particular time or in
any particular case, the improvement of the smaller classes may conflict
with that of the larger class, but the conflict becomes permanent and
irreconcilable only when it is intensified by the lack of a really
binding and edifying public policy, and by the consequent stimulation of
class and factional prejudices and purposes. A policy, intelligently
informed by the desire to maintain a joint process of individual and
social amelioration, should be able to keep a democracy sound and whole
both in sentiment and in idea. Such a democracy would not be dedicated
either to liberty or to equality in their abstract expressions, but to
liberty and equality, in so far as they made for human brotherhood. As
M. Faguet says in the introduction to his "Politiques et Moralistes du
Dix-Neuvième Siècle," from which I have already quoted: "Liberté et
Égalité sont donc contradictoires et exclusives l'une et l'autre; mais
la Fraternité les concilierait. La Fraternité non seulement concilierait
la Liberté et l'Égalité, mais elle les ferait gêneratrices l'une et
l'autre." The two subordinate principles, that is, one representing the
individual and the other the social interest, can by their subordination
to the principle of human brotherhood, be made in the long run mutually
helpful.
The foregoing definition of the democratic purpose is the only one which
can entitle democracy to an essential superiority to other forms of
political organization. Democrats have always tended to claim some such
superiority for their methods and purposes, but in case democracy is to
be considered merely as a piece of political machinery, or a partial
political idea, the claim has no validity. Its superiority must be based
upon the fact that democracy is the best possible translation into
political and social terms of an authoritative and comprehensive moral
idea; and provided a democratic state honestly seeks to make its
organization and policy contribute to a better quality of individuality
and a higher level of associated life, it can within certain limits
claim the allegiance of mankind on rational moral grounds.
The proposed definition may seem to be both vague and commonplace; but
it none the less brings with it practical consequences of paramount
importance. The subordination of the machinery of democracy to its
purpose and the comprehension within that purpose of the higher
interests both of the individual and society, is not only exclusive of
many partial and erroneous ideas, but demands both a reconstructive
programme and an efficient organization. A government by the people,
which seeks an organization and a policy beneficial to the individual
and to society, is confronted by a task as responsible and difficult as
you please; but it is a specific task which demands the adoption of
certain specific and positive means. Moreover it is a task which the
American democracy has never sought consciously to achieve. American
democrats have always hoped for individual and social amelioration as
the result of the operation of their democratic system; but if any such
result was to follow, its achievement was to be a happy accident. The
organization and policy of a democracy should leave the individual and
society to seek their own amelioration. The democratic state should
never discriminate in favor of anything or anybody. It should only
discriminate against all sorts of privilege. Under the proposed
definition, on the other hand, popular government is to make itself
expressly and permanently responsible for the amelioration of the
individual and society; and a necessary consequence of this
responsibility is an adequate organization and a reconstructive policy.
The majority of good Americans will doubtless consider that the
reconstructive policy, already indicated, is flagrantly socialistic both
in its methods and its objects; and if any critic likes to fasten the
stigma of socialism upon the foregoing conception of democracy, I am not
concerned with dodging the odium of the word. The proposed definition of
democracy is socialistic, if it is socialistic to consider democracy
inseparable from a candid, patient, and courageous attempt to advance
the social problem towards a satisfactory solution. It is also
socialistic in case socialism cannot be divorced from the use, wherever
necessary, of the political organization in all its forms to realize the
proposed democratic purpose. On the other hand, there are some doctrines
frequently associated with socialism, to which the proposed conception
of democracy is wholly inimical; and it should be characterized not so
much socialistic, as unscrupulously and loyally nationalistic.
A democracy dedicated to individual and social betterment is necessarily
individualist as well as socialist. It has little interest in the mere
multiplication of average individuals, except in so far as such
multiplication is necessary to economic and political efficiency; but it
has the deepest interest in the development of a higher quality of
individual self-expression. There are two indispensable economic
conditions of qualitative individual self-expression. One is the
preservation of the institution of private property in some form, and
the other is the radical transformation of its existing nature and
influence. A democracy certainly cannot fulfill its mission without the
eventual assumption by the state of many functions now performed by
individuals, and without becoming expressly responsible for an improved
distribution of wealth; but if any attempt is made to accomplish these
results by violent means, it will most assuredly prove to be a failure.
An improvement in the distribution of wealth or in economic efficiency
which cannot be accomplished by purchase on the part of the state or by
a legitimate use of the power of taxation, must be left to the action of
time, assisted, of course, by such arrangements as are immediately
practical. But the amount of actual good to the individual and society
which can be effected _at any one time_ by an alteration in the
distribution of wealth is extremely small; and the same statement is
true of any proposed state action in the interest of the democratic
purpose. Consequently, while responsible state action is an essential
condition of any steady approach to the democratic consummation, such
action will be wholly vain unless accompanied by a larger measure of
spontaneous individual amelioration. In fact, one of the strongest
arguments on behalf of a higher and larger conception of state
responsibilities in a democracy is that the candid, courageous, patient,
and intelligent attempt to redeem those responsibilities provides one of
the highest types of individuality--viz. the public-spirited man with a
personal opportunity and a task which should be enormously stimulating
and edifying.
The great weakness of the most popular form of socialism consists,
however, in its mixture of a revolutionary purpose with an international
scope. It seeks the abolition of national distinctions by revolutionary
revolts of the wage-earner against the capitalist; and in so far as it
proposes to undermine the principle of national cohesion and to
substitute for it an international organization of a single class, it is
headed absolutely in the wrong direction. Revolutions may at times be
necessary and on the whole helpful, but not in case there is any other
practicable method of removing grave obstacles to human amelioration;
and in any event their tendency is socially disintegrating. The
destruction or the weakening of nationalities for the ostensible benefit
of an international socialism would in truth gravely imperil the bond
upon which actual human association is based. The peoples who have
inherited any share in Christian civilization are effectively united
chiefly by national habits, traditions, and purposes; and perhaps the
most effective way of bringing about an irretrievable division of
purpose among them would be the adoption by the class of wage-earners
of the programme of international socialism. It is not too much to say
that no permanent good can, under existing conditions, come to the
individual and society except through the preservation and the
development of the existing system of nationalized states.
Radical and enthusiastic democrats have usually failed to attach
sufficient importance to the ties whereby civilized men are at the
present time actually united. Inasmuch as national traditions are
usually associated with all sorts of political, economic, and social
privileges and abuses, they have sought to identify the higher social
relation with the destruction of the national tradition and the
substitution of an ideal bond. In so doing they are committing a
disastrous error; and democracy will never become really constructive
until this error is recognized and democracy abandons its former
alliance with revolution. The higher human relation must be brought
about chiefly by the improvement and the intensification of existing
human relations. The only possible foundation for a better social
structure is the existing order, of which the contemporary system of
nationalized states forms the foundation.
Loyalty to the existing system of nationalized states does not
necessarily mean loyalty to an existing government merely because it
exists. There have been, and still are, governments whose ruin is a
necessary condition of popular liberation; and revolution doubtless
still has a subordinate part to play in the process of human
amelioration. The loyalty which a citizen owes to a government is
dependent upon the extent to which the government is representative of
national traditions and is organized in the interest of valid national
purposes. National traditions and purposes always contain a large
infusion of dubious ingredients; but loyalty to them does not
necessarily mean the uncritical and unprotesting acceptance of the
national limitations and abuses. Nationality is a political and social
ideal as well as the great contemporary political fact. Loyalty to the
national interest implies devotion to a progressive principle. It
demands, to be sure, that the progressive principle be realized without
any violation of fundamental national ties. It demands that any national
action taken for the benefit of the progressive principle be approved
by the official national organization. But it also serves as a ferment
quite as much as a bond. It bids the loyal national servants to fashion
their fellow-countrymen into more of a nation; and the attempt to
perform this bidding constitutes a very powerful and wholesome source of
political development. It constitutes, indeed, a source of political
development which is of decisive importance for a satisfactory theory of
political and social progress, because a people which becomes more of a
nation has a tendency to become for that very reason more of a
democracy.
The assertion that a people which becomes more of a nation becomes for
that very reason more of a democracy, is, I am aware, a hazardous
assertion, which can be justified, if at all, only at a considerable
expense. As a matter of fact, the two following chapters will be devoted
chiefly to this labor of justification. In the first of these chapters I
shall give a partly historical and partly critical account of the
national principle in its relation to democracy; and in the second I
shall apply the results, so achieved, to the American national principle
in its relation to the American democratic idea. But before starting
this complicated task, a few words must be premised as to the reasons
which make the attempt well worth the trouble.
If a people, in becoming more of a nation, become for that very reason
more of a democracy, the realization of the democratic purpose is not
rendered any easier, but democracy is provided with a simplified, a
consistent, and a practicable programme. An alliance is established
thereby between the two dominant political and social forces in modern
life. The suspicion with which aggressive advocates of the national
principle have sometimes regarded democracy would be shown to have only
a conditional justification; and the suspicion with which many ardent
democrats have regarded aggressive nationalism would be similarly
disarmed. A democrat, so far as the statement is true, could trust the
fate of his cause in each particular state to the friends of national
progress. Democracy would not need for its consummation the ruin of the
traditional political fabrics; but so far as those political bodies were
informed by genuinely national ideas and aspirations, it could await
confidently the process of national development. In fact, the first duty
of a good democrat would be that of rendering to his country loyal
patriotic service. Democrats would abandon the task of making over the
world to suit their own purposes, until they had come to a better
understanding with their own countrymen. One's democracy, that is, would
begin at home and it would for the most part stay at home; and the cause
of national well-being would derive invaluable assistance from the loyal
coöperation of good democrats.
A great many obvious objections will, of course, be immediately raised
against any such explanation of the relation between democracy and
nationality; and I am well aware that these objections demand the most
serious consideration. A generation or two ago the European democrat was
often by way of being an ardent nationalist; and a constructive relation
between the two principles was accepted by many European political
reformers. The events of the last fifty years have, however, done much
to sever the alliance, and to make European patriots suspicious of
democracy, and European democrats suspicious of patriotism. To what
extent these suspicions are justified, I shall discuss in the next
chapter; but that discussion will be undertaken almost exclusively for
obtaining, if possible, some light upon our domestic situation. The
formula of a constructive relation between the national and democratic
principles has certain importance for European peoples, and particularly
for Frenchmen: but, if true, it is of a far superior importance to
Americans. It supplies a constructive form for the progressive solution
of their political and social problems; and while it imposes on them
responsibilities which they have sought to evade, it also offers
compensations, the advantage of which they have scarcely expected.
Americans have always been both patriotic and democratic, just as they
have always been friendly both to liberty and equality, but in neither
case have they brought the two ideas or aspirations into mutually
helpful relations. As democrats they have often regarded nationalism
with distrust, and have consequently deprived their patriotism of any
sufficient substance and organization. As nationalists they have
frequently regarded essential aspects of democracy with a wholly
unnecessary and embarrassing suspicion. They have been after a fashion
Hamiltonian, and Jeffersonian after more of a fashion; but they have
never recovered from the initial disagreement between Hamilton and
Jefferson. If there is any truth in the idea of a constructive relation
between democracy and nationality this disagreement must be healed. They
must accept both principles loyally and unreservedly; and by such
acceptance their "noble national theory" will obtain a wholly
unaccustomed energy and integrity. The alliance between the two
principles will not leave either of them intact; but it will necessarily
do more harm to the Jeffersonian group of political ideas than it will
to the Hamiltonian. The latter's nationalism can be adapted to democracy
without an essential injury to itself, but the former's democracy cannot
be nationalized without being transformed. The manner of its
transformation has already been discussed in detail. It must cease to be
a democracy of indiscriminate individualism; and become one of selected
individuals who are obliged constantly to justify their selection; and
its members must be united not by a sense of joint irresponsibility, but
by a sense of joint responsibility for the success of their political
and social ideal. They must become, that is, a democracy devoted to the
welfare of the whole people by means of a conscious labor of individual
and social improvement; and that is precisely the sort of democracy
which demands for its realization the aid of the Hamiltonian
nationalistic organization and principle.