A glance at the past rôles of dominance, competition, and coöperation
in the institutions of government, religion, and commerce and industry,
will aid us to consider coöperation in relation to present
international problems.
Primitive tribal life had elements of each of the three principles we
have named. But with discovery by some genius of the power of
organization for war the principle of dominance won, seemingly at a
flash, a decisive position. No power of steam or lightning has been so
spectacular and wide-reaching as the power which Egyptian, Assyrian,
Macedonian, Roman, and their modern successors introduced and
controlled. Political states owing their rise to military means
naturally followed the military pattern. The sharp separation between
ruler or ruling group and subject people, based on conquest, was
perpetuated in class distinction. Gentry and simple, lord and villein,
were indeed combined in exploitation of earth's resources, but
coöperation was in the background, mastery in the fore. And when
empires included peoples of various races and cultural advance the
separation between higher and lower became intensified. Yet though
submerged for long periods, the principle of coöperation has asserted
itself, step by step and it seldom loses ground. Beginning usually in
some group which at first combined to resist dominance, it has made its
way through such stages as equality before the law, abolition of
special privileges, extension of suffrage, influence of public
sentiment, interchange of ideas, toward genuine participation by all in
the dignity and responsibility of political power. It builds a Panama
Canal, it maintains a great system of education, and has, we may easily
believe, yet greater tasks in prospect. It may be premature to predict
its complete displacement of dominance in our own day as a method of
government, yet who in America doubts its ultimate prevalence?
Religion presents a fascinating mixture of coöperation with dominance
on the one hand, and exclusiveness on the other. The central fact is
the community, which seeks some common end in ritual, or in beneficent
activity. But at an early period leaders became invested, or invested
themselves, with a sanctity which led to dominance. Not the power of
force, but that of mystery and the invisible raised the priest above
the level of the many. And, on another side, competition between rival
national religions, like that between states, excluded friendly
contacts. Jew and Samaritan had no dealings; between the followers of
Baal and Jehovah there was no peace but by extermination. Yet it was
religion which confronted the _Herrenmoral_ with the first reversal of
values, and declared, "So shall it not be among you. But whosoever will
be great among you let him be your minister." And it was religion which
cut across national boundaries in its vision of what Professor Royce so
happily calls the Great Community. Protest against dominance resulted,
however, in divisions, and although coöperation in practical activities
has done much to prepare the way for national understanding, the
hostile forces of the world to-day lack the restraint which might have
come from a united moral sentiment and moral will.
In the economic field the story of dominance, coöperation, and
competition is more complex than in government and religion. It
followed somewhat different courses in trade and in industry. The
simplest way to supply needs with goods is to go and take them; the
simplest way to obtain services is to seize them. Dominance in the
first case gives piracy and plunder, when directed against those
without; fines and taxes, when exercised upon those within; in the
second case, it gives slavery or forced levies. But trade, as a
voluntary exchange of presents, or as a bargaining for mutual
advantage, had likewise its early beginnings. Carried on at first with
timidity and distrust, because the parties belonged to different
groups, it has developed a high degree of mutual confidence between
merchant and customer, banker and client, insurer and insured. By its
system of contracts and fiduciary relations, which bind men of the most
varying localities, races, occupations, social classes, and national
allegiance, it has woven a new net of human relations far more
intricate and wide-reaching than the natural ties of blood kinship. It
rests upon mutual responsibility and good faith; it is a constant force
for their extension.
The industrial side of the process has had similar influence toward
union. Free craftsmen in the towns found mutual support in guilds, when
as yet the farm laborer or villein had to get on as best he could
unaided. The factory system itself has been largely organized from
above down. It has very largely assumed that the higher command needs
no advice or ideas from below. Hours of labor, shop conditions, wages,
have largely been fixed by "orders," just as governments once ruled by
decrees. But as dominance in government has led men to unite against
the new power and then has yielded to the more complete coöperation of
participation, so in industry the factory system has given rise to the
labor movement. As for the prospects of fuller coöperation, this may be
said already to have displaced the older autocratic system within the
managing group, and the war is giving an increased impetus to extension
of the process.
Exchange of goods and services is indeed a threefold coöperation: it
meets wants which the parties cannot themselves satisfy or cannot well
satisfy; it awakens new wants; it calls new inventions and new forces
into play. It thus not only satisfies man's existing nature, but
enlarges his capacity for enjoyment and his active powers. It makes not
only for comfort, but for progress.