THE ORGANISATION OF GOVERNMENT.
“The people of England were then, as they are now, called upon to
make Government strong. They thought it a great deal better to make
it wise and honest.”—BURKE.
“We may need and we may be moving towards a new conception of the
state, and more especially a new conception of sovereignty.... We
may have to regard every state, not only the federal state proper,
but also the state which professes to be unitary, as in its nature
federal. We may have to recognise that sovereignty is not single and
indivisible, but multiple and multicellular.”—ERNEST BARKER.
“We find the true man only through group organisation. The
potentialities of the individual remain potentialities until they
are released by group life. Man discovers his true nature, gains his
true freedom only through the group. Group organisation must be the
new method of politics, because the modes by which the individual
can be brought forth and made effective are the modes of practical
politics.”—MARY P. FOLLETT.
THE war has given the _coup de grace_ to the Sovereign State. It was on
its last legs before the war. It is certain that Mr. Combes’ affirmation
of state absolutism during the debates on the disestablishment of the
Catholic Church in France, was the last serious stand of this doctrine
in democratic communities. In England the doctrine was never securely
rooted; certainly it has not gained an unquestioned ascendency over
political thought for any considerable period of time; and the exploit
of Austinian legalism which (in the Scottish Churches’ case) denied to a
church the right to govern itself had virtually to be annulled by a
special Act of Parliament. During the war the claim of the State upon
the individual has naturally attained a point which in normal times
would have been unthinkable; but this was confessedly the result of an
emergency and not a rule for ordinary conditions of life. The German
performance during the war has revealed the logic of state-absolutism in
far too vivid a fashion for any of the somewhat turgid exaltation of the
state by academic people in the days previous to the war to survive on
any terms. To rebut the doctrine of state-absolutism at this time would
be merely to flog a dead horse.
But long before the war the absolutist theory was being undermined. In
the region of law and political theory the criticism of F. W. Maitland,
Nevill Figgis, Duguit, and others had raised a very definite challenge
to the doctrine of state-omnicompetency. But of much greater influence
in the actual business of modifying the current conception of the state
was the growing tendency to form independent foci of authority within
the commonwealth. One obvious case of the kind is the institution of the
Bank Clearing House which represents the last stage in the process by
which the business of exchange has passed from the state into the hands
of an independent body which exercises in its own sphere an authority
which is hardly to be resisted; and the present movement for the
amalgamation of large banking concerns makes it not impossible that
should the banking interest come into collision with the State, there
would be a very exciting tug-of-war. The medical profession took up an
attitude of organised opposition to the State in the matter of the
British Health Insurance Act; and other professional associations are
to-day so highly organised that in the event of a collision with the
State, it is at least doubtful how the issue would be decided. In the
case of the Taff Vale decision which rendered a Trade Union liable to
prosecution for illegal action by its members, so threatening a protest
ensued that the legal decision had virtually to be reversed by special
legislation; and the growing solidarity of organised labour again
creates a problem of state authority which is not easily soluble, and
which (it is not inconceivable) may at last have to be solved by a trial
of strength.[37] It is no longer possible to assume that the philosophy
of government can be stated in terms of the state and the individual; it
will have to take increasing account of the relation of the state to the
powerful voluntary organisations of citizens within the
state—organisations which, because they are voluntary, may exercise a
more powerful influence upon their members than the state can possibly
do. On the economic side this tendency toward the breaking up and the
distribution of centralised authority among functional and professional
groups, takes the form of Guild Socialism; and, while Syndicalism has
not yet succeeded in gaining a wide footing in Europe, its challenge to
the state has added a good deal to the minimising influences already
afoot. It is worth while observing that these independent organisations
are already so powerful that the British Government found it advisable
to administer its National Insurance Act through Labour Unions and
Friendly Societies.
Footnote 37:
Since these words were written, they have received very clear
confirmation in the recent activities of the “Triple Alliance.”
But it is not the growth of powerful organisations _within_ the
Commonwealth alone that is making for the disintegration of
state-sovereignty. We are living in a period when great international
bodies are coming into being, and while most of these are at present of
a cultural and professional type, it is evident that one at least is of
a character which involves a very profound challenge to the sovereignty
of the national state. The Socialist International has not been
destroyed by the war; it has only been interrupted; and if the signs are
not wholly misleading, we may look for a steady and wide extension of
the international proletarian movement. In 1914 it proved too immature
to resist the pressure of nationalism, but it is likely that in the
future it will increasingly arm itself against a like collapse. As yet
it is only in the case of the Socialist International that there is a
direct challenge to the national state; but it would require
considerable hardihood to deny the possibility that other international
professional and functional associations may find themselves at variance
with the constituted authorities of national states. For instance, the
problem of hygiene is becoming more and more an international affair;
and it is no unthinkable thing that a medical international may find
itself at odds with the state authorities just as the British Medical
Association found itself in conflict with its own national Government.
One has only to add in this connection that the project of a League of
Nations will require an abdication of the claim to absolute sovereignty
on the part of the states constituting it.[38]
Footnote 38:
This cession of sovereignty may be hidden by a formal _camouflage_;
but there can be no real League of Nations without it.
So that both from within and without, the march of events is
disintegrating the dogma of state-sovereignty. The traditional political
acceptances are rapidly becoming obsolete. In the main this would appear
to be due to the new situation created by the swift development of the
means of communication during the last century. The territorial factor
in the delimitation of states and in their own internal economy, has
ceased to have the importance it possessed in days when distance set
sharp limits to the intercourse of men. Those days are now past; and
national frontiers and county boundaries are being gradually effaced by
steam, and the sea has been bridged by the electric current and the
aeroplane.
II
The problem created in this way is not in its essence a new one. Since
the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the conflict between the
national state and the church—whether conceived as an independent
association within the commonwealth or as an international society—has
provided some of the most significant passages of political history. The
struggle for religious freedom in England (which in the event proved the
spring of other liberties) was essentially a struggle to secure the
right of voluntary religious associations to determine their own
religious life and practices; and while the legal decision in the
Scottish Churches’ case was a revival of the Austinian doctrine of
state-sovereignty, and an assertion on the part of the state of its own
right to sit in judgment upon the religious proceedings of a church, the
ensuing situation proved so impossible (as has already been pointed out)
that the legal decision had to be annulled by a special piece of
legislation. Since that decision most of the “free” churches in England
have taken steps to safeguard themselves against similar intrusions on
the part of the state. In the present situation, however, such security
cannot be absolute since the state still has something to say to the
legal instruments under which the churches hold their temporalities. But
the entire episode shows how clear is the British sense that the
omnicompetency of the state does not extend into the sphere of religious
life and practice; and the “Life and Liberty” movement in the
Established Church of England is an indication that the control of the
state even over a state church is not beyond challenge.
The success with which the independent religious association has
established its right to live in the face of the state is probably due
to the circumstance that the region in which it claimed freedom was
strictly defined; and it may be argued that the state has been on the
whole more successful in resisting the claims of the church as an
international society because those claims were allowed to enter regions
in which the church’s competency could be reasonably denied. The case of
Lamennais’ illustrates the point. Lamennais began life as a fervent
monarchist and Catholic. He held strongly to the doctrine of the “two
societies,” the temporal and the spiritual of which the King and the
Pope respectively were the heads.[39] These two societies were distinct
and within their own sphere, independent of each other. But when the
monarchy encroached upon the freedom of the spiritual society, Lamennais
broke with it, and when later the papacy insisted upon a withdrawal of
his opinion that it had no rights outside the spiritual sphere, he broke
with the papacy also. He acknowledged the existence of a borderland in
which the interests of both were commingled—“that undiscovered country,”
as Lord Acton has put it, “where church and state are parted”; but the
broad configurations of the frontier were plain enough. For the most
part the relations of church and state as institutional authorities have
consisted of assaults and intrigues and forays in this “no man’s land”;
and it has not been historically to the advantage of either. And the
whole history of this conflict in France and out of it points to the
moral that without some clear definition of function, the relation of
the state to other associations within and without itself must be one of
continual conflict—that is to say, of course, so long as the state and
the other associations speak in terms of right and authority. Granted a
measure of good-will, the task of delimiting frontiers should not be
insuperable; but if a church or a labour union insists on its rights
while the state insists upon its authority, the natural result will be
confusion.
Footnote 39:
“Toute declaration qui supposerait de mon part, meme implicitement,
l’abandon de la doctrine traditionelle de deux societés distinctes,
independante chacune dans son ordre, serait non pas un acte de vertu,
mais un acte coupable. La conscience ne le permet pas—.” This was
Lamennais’ reply to a papal demand for retractation in 1833. See
Boutard, _Lamennais_ II., 387.
III
At the same time that these independent nucleations of authority are
increasingly afoot within the body politic, we observe in recent times a
seemingly opposite tendency to impute competency to the state in regions
where hitherto its writ was not supposed to run. To a purist political
philosophy, the function of the state is broadly twofold—the
preservation of domestic order and the safeguarding of national
interests with reference to other nations. But it has latterly more and
more stretched out its tabernacle to cover other matters; even going so
far as to assume that a positive and comprehensive culture of national
life came legitimately within its domain. That this should be so in a
dynastic state like the German is easily understood; for the security
and pretensions of the dynasty are dependent upon an intense development
of human and material resources for military defence and offence. But
even where such particularist designs have not been so obtrusively
present, the state has tended more and more to absorb into itself the
control and organisation of national life in all its important phases.
It has, for instance, taken upon its shoulders almost the entire burden
of public education; it has conspicuously concentrated its thought and
wisdom upon measures designed to increase the material prosperity of the
nation—though in point of fact this has worked out chiefly as the
prosperity of a few favourably situated persons. The care of the
destitute, old age pensions, health and unemployment insurance have been
included within its competency; and its apparently insatiable absorbent
proclivity is drawing into its capacious hands the control and operation
of the means of communication, the postal service, the railways,
telegraph and telephones. Plainly this extension of its office has been
accompanied by a large and indefinite increment of authority.
For this movement, two circumstances appear to be accountable. Of these
the first is the growth of an ill-defined and only partially understood
sense of collective responsibility for the well-being of the social
whole. Old Age Pensions, for instance, appear to constitute the proper
alternative to the precarious charity or the degrading “poor relief” to
which a less self-respecting social past committed the industrial
veteran. The means of communication similarly appear to a reasonably
educated community to be a public service rather than a gold-mine for
private individuals or concerns. The second circumstance is the prestige
which accrued to the state from the reaction of the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries from the bankrupt individualism of the
preceding generations. In their recoil from the anarchy of _laissez
faire_ and industrial competition men sought sanctuary in the state; and
in the event the state gained a repute for competency which led to a
facile transference to it of all those interests that appear to bear
materially upon the life of the community as a whole. But without
prejudice to the question of public ownership, it may be observed that
while the impulse which led to this regard for the state was natural and
admirable, it had the effect of concentrating in the state a volume of
power which was entirely ominous to the liberties of the individual.
Indeed, it may be said without much hesitation that the logic of
state-absolutism was revealed by the Germans only in time to save their
neighbours from the like tragedy of incontinent subjection to the state.
And the sense of personal responsibility was in danger of atrophy under
the pleasing and soporific influence of the popular idea that the state
was a sort of fairy god-mother who could be trusted to step in and make
good individual derelictions and delinquencies—which frame of mind
accorded well with the related drift towards unquestioning submission to
the state.
IV
In democratic communities the sovereignty of the state is a residuum
left over from the period of dynastic government; and though the divine
right of kings is obsolete, we have not yet out-grown the derivative
dogma of the divine right of governments. There still gathers around the
state an odour of sanctity; and in minds that have a turn for
abstraction it is apt to take shape as a sacrosanct objective reality.
But soon or late the democratic peoples will have to look upon the state
with a cold and business-like realism if they are to be delivered from
the dangers that lurk in all quasi-religious and sentimental abasement
to conventional idols. It is just this vague political devoutness that
makes it easy for the common people to be stampeded into invidious
commercial and military enterprises by statesmen schooled in a tradition
either frankly dynastic or still deriving its main presuppositions from
the dynastic period. There is no security for democracy except in a
persistent posture of criticism towards its institutions; and there is
no immediate hope of a sane restoration of our somewhat shattered
fortunes except as we strip the halo away from the state and discuss it
dispassionately in terms of its functions.
Its police responsibilities remain with it as a matter of course, so
long as human nature needs policing; and it must provisionally remain
the organ of the community in its intercourse across its frontiers. With
this latter we are not for the moment concerned; what falls to be
considered is the problem of the state’s function in respect of, first,
the present tendency to form extraneous and independent (and on occasion
conceivably hostile and intractable) centres of authority, and second,
the recent process of investing the state with a sort of proprietorship
and pastorate at large. Summarily it may be said that the office of the
state in respect of these two developments is that it should be on the
one hand the clearing house of the increasing functional and
professional associations among which its ancient sovereignty is being
distributed, and on the other, the trustee of the public in the matter
of producing and distributing the goods that are essential to life. The
state of the case and the course of events indicate a doctrine of public
ownership with democratic functional control, with the necessary
machinery for the due co-ordination of the centres of control.
It seems a fairly safe risk to say that the movement toward the public
ownership of a certain range of utilities will suffer no abatement with
the passing of time. That the means of communication should be public
property should be as axiomatic as that a man’s nervous system should
belong to himself; and no serious question can be raised as to the
certainty of ultimate common proprietorship in this region. With respect
to the means of production the case is less clear; but it is a fair
assumption, that if a reasonable security of the maintenance of life and
health is to be achieved, there must be an increasing public ownership
of the sources of raw material and of the means of production so far as
the essential commodities are concerned. That there is a range of
industrial production beyond this limit which is quite legitimate but
which is nevertheless not a matter of universal concern is obvious; and
it seems very questionable whether it is the business of the state to do
more than to secure that the conditions under which these industries are
conducted are of a piece with those obtaining in the primary industries.
Objects of differential and selective interest do not appear to enter
into the province of the state; it has to do only with those for which
the demand is universal because they correspond to a general need. It is
a question (as has been previously suggested) whether in this region of
production it should not be the general rule that every member of the
community should share; in which case there would be ample time and
occasion for the production of the secondary and more selective goods
for life. There is nothing in this argument which should be construed
into a suggestion that the things called in this connection secondary
are unimportant. On the contrary they are very important; and with the
cultural development of society their importance is likely to grow. The
production of books and objects of æsthetic interest is likely to be
stimulated very materially by any advance in the right sort of
education. But (with the exception of a very narrow margin) these are
probably things which are not suitably and fruitfully produced except as
they are free from central regulation.
Within the limits so indicated, therefore, the trend of affairs is
rightly in the direction of public ownership—in which case we shall
require an organ in which this ownership shall be vested. For this
purpose the state is already to hand, and is indeed, already assuming
the office. Its first domestic office will consequently be that of a
public trustee. But this raises the question whether the trustee is to
be manager as well.
It is of course plain that the trust would be a pure fiction if some
measure of control in the disposition of the property were not implied
in it. Certainly the last word in such matters should belong to the
state. This, however, appears to bring us back to that very doctrine of
sovereignty from which, on our premises, it is our business to escape;
and, indeed, if we have no different sort of state organisation in mind
from that now current we should be starting out on a new cycle of
authoritarianism, were we to vest in the state so much authority. But
already the specifications of a new type of state-structure are being
indicated by the course of events.
V
It is of some significance at this point to observe that of the
functional associations within the commonwealth to which reference has
been made, the most powerful are those which are concerned with the
production of the primary commodities, and the means of their
distribution. This is no doubt chiefly due to the fact that these
associations represent the most numerous sections of the community. Coal
miners, engineers, transport workers, clothing makers—it is among these
classes that the movement toward combination has been most effectual.
One notable exception—namely, agricultural workers—is to be observed
here, the significance of which exception will come up for discussion
presently. It does not, however, affect the general run of the present
argument. The constitution and activity of the labour unions are
sufficiently well known to require no exposition here—the main point to
be emphasised being that here within the commonwealth are large, growing
and powerful groups formed around a particular interest; and that this
interest is deemed to be vital is evident from the steady growth of the
groups. But we may further infer that the existence of these groups is
due chiefly to the fact that the particular interest which concerns them
was not effectually regarded in the councils of the commonwealth at
large. The interests of the workers were presumably neglected to such a
degree that the class concerned deemed it necessary to organise itself
in order to safeguard and to enforce these interests. Indeed on the
workers’ showing the case was even worse. They argued that not only were
their peculiar interests neglected by the existing powers, but that
these powers were weighted in favour of those against whom more
specifically the worker had to defend his interests. The formation and
growth of the Non-partisan League in America is a recent instance of a
class nucleation under the pressure of circumstances largely parallel to
those here outlined.
The interests here discussed are of an economic kind, but they are vital
and essential. It is to be observed, however, that these particular
associations are not confined either to the worker or to interests
purely economic. Reference has already been made to the Bank Clearing
House. This is an instance of the formation of a powerful group to
promote the common interests of its members, though in this case its
formation was less due to the neglect of those interests by the state
than to the fact that the interests concerned have become so extensive
in range and so complex in character that the state was palpably
incompetent to handle them profitably. In certain cases where the state
has assumed liabilities of this kind (as in railway control) experience
has not in the long run endorsed the competency of the state for the
job. That, however, is less to the point than that we should observe the
tendency to form voluntary associations for the protection and promotion
of presumably necessary interests, and in some cases assuming (as in the
case of the Bank Clearing House) a kind of police authority within its
own field. Besides these economic and financial associations, there are
also large and powerful professional associations which exist likewise
to promote certain special interests. The British Medical Association
affords an instance of such association; and here again we have an
association which in the exercise of its office also assumes a function
of discipline. Just as the Bank Clearing House can put a recalcitrant
bank out of business, so the British Medical Association can “unfrock” a
doctor who has offended against the professional code. It is true that
the excommunicated culprit may in either case appeal to the civil courts
for redress; but the rarity of such appeals shows how nearly complete is
the authority exercised by these professional associations within their
own province. With certain modifications the same general rule obtains
in Teachers’ Unions, the Bar, the Co-operative Societies, Churches and
other voluntary associations of persons, that gather around the nucleus
of a special interest. The case is not so plain in regard to societies
of a specially cultural character which do not so directly abut upon the
general conduct of life, though the place of the Universities, Academies
of Art, Author’s Associations and the like, in the total scheme of
social life, makes it impossible to exclude them from consideration in
any discussion which looks to the integration of all the legitimate
interests of life in an organic full-growing social whole.
Such integration must, from the nature of the case, be a long and
tedious process; and the difficulties involved in its extension to such
distant and shadowy regions as Art and Authorship may be left for
solution until they become more imminent. It is in any case doubtful
whether the interests involved in these and similar cases are such as
would be served by any formal connection with the machinery of
government, except as regards certain narrow legal points (_e.g._
copyright). This is also true of the Churches whose sole point of
contact with the State is in the matter of their temporalities.
Fortunately for the moment the task need not take account of these
remoter complexities; and it will be a matter for legitimate argument
how far associations of a cultural kind are to enter into the
organisation of government, when those associations which are already
abutting on the province of the state and shearing it of some of its
powers have been successfully co-ordinated in a scheme of political
management.
VI
At this point it is important to bear in mind two things. First of all,
the real interests which go to make up the sum of our life are precisely
those which lead us to form ourselves into associations independent of
the state. Indeed, the particular interest which binds a given
individual to the state is generally fortuitous in its origin and
largely imaginary in character. A man chances to be born into a certain
geographical area, and in the great majority of cases that circumstance
fixes his state affiliation for his entire life. An emigrant may
transfer his affiliation to another state; but his case is exceptional.
Moreover, the nature of the interests which bind him to the state is of
a dubiously sentimental and imaginary order. This is not the place to
discuss the significance of that temper of attachment to a particular
political unity which is called patriotism; but it would appear to have
comparatively little to do with any essential purpose of life. This must
not be taken to mean that patriotism is to be decried as an evil or a
futile thing. On the contrary, in so far as it represents a feeling of
loyalty to a social group, it is admirable and of great value. Its value
is, however, compromised by the invidious and divisive colour which it
habitually appears to wear; and its historical uses—which chiefly
consist in its exploitation by astute statesmen—constitute a record
which is hardly flattering to human intelligence. In the main it plays
comparatively little part in the sum total of the ordinary man’s life;
and indeed it is hardly ever heard of in normal times until it is played
up by politicians who want a national backing for a selfish enterprise
at the expense of some other community. Its chief significance seems to
be that it provides a reserve of sentimental devotion which may be drawn
upon without limit in the cause of national prestige or national
defence. Outside war-time, the state appears to touch the ordinary man’s
life directly only when it requires him to pay the expenses of its
upkeep or when he provokes the attention of the police. But on the other
hand, when a man joins a Trade Union or a religious society it is
because the new association bears some sort of vital and immediate
relation to his life. The most authentic interests of life are those
which move men to join together voluntarily for their defence and
promotion; and for the purpose of social development, the associations
that grow in this fashion are at least of no less importance to the
common run of men than the state. It is no longer tolerable, therefore,
that in the general management of the affairs of a community these
associations should be virtually ignored in deference to a doctrine
which presupposes that the state and the individual are the sole terms
of political theory and practice, and that such associations exist
within the commonwealth only on sufferance of the state.
Second, it has some bearing upon our present argument that these
associations may conceivably come at any time into conflict with the
interests of the social whole. A trade union may, for instance, make
claims which are incongruous with the well-being of the general public;
churches have been known to claim advantages which are inconsistent with
the freedom and welfare of other religious societies. With the
multiplication of societies within the commonwealth, and especially in
view of the prospective great increase of strength in the case of trade
unions, it is entirely essential that such bodies should be required
directly to participate in the responsibility of promoting the general
social good. They should—in their character of associations charging
themselves with certain vital though particular interests—be introduced
into the official management of public affairs. So long as they live
more or less isolated and unco-ordinated lives they remain in danger of
becoming antisocial in effect; and the only remedy is to provide for
them a clearing-house in the conduct of which they are directly
implicated; and once more, the state is already to hand and its
machinery should be so ordered as to enable it to discharge this office.
Theoretically our movement is away from the “amoeba” conception of the
national state, which regards it as an independent unicellular affair
with the central state organisation as its nucleus, to a conception of
it as multicellular, and finding a practical unity in the contribution
of all its cells to the activity of a common brain. This may be bad
biology but that is no argument against its political soundness.
A difficult question arises when we come to consider what associations
are entitled to this treatment; and it is plain that no association
which cannot prove a genuine social worth has a claim for recognition.
Some associations are powerful enough to claim and to receive
recognition without formal scrutiny of their credentials; but their
power is itself a presumptive proof that they correspond to a real
social need; and in the early stages of state-reconstruction, it will be
naturally such associations as can validate their claims by the volume
of authority with which they make them that will enter into the
arrangement. For the rest, we shall have to take the risk of being able
to cross the bridges when we come to them.
VII
Discontent with the existing method of assembling the machinery of
government has been growing rapidly in recent years. The progress of the
proportional representation movement is the measure of this discontent;
and it is difficult to conceive any valid objection to the scheme on the
part of those who desire to give to the personnel of the governing body
a more genuinely representative character than it possesses at present.
At the same time, the transferable vote does not and from the nature of
the case cannot secure a completely representative government—at any
rate while we continue to elect parliamentary representatives on a
territorial basis.
We shall no doubt continue to elect representatives on a territorial
basis, for it would appear to be the only effectual method of
representing the chief interests which all individuals in the
commonwealth have in common, namely their interests as consumers (or
enjoyers). But the territorial unit is more or less arbitrary in
definition, and it does not coincide with the other interests that make
up the business of life. And these other interests have assumed a
commanding importance in the conduct of the business of life in recent
times. Reference was made in a previous paragraph to the fact that the
one great industry which was not adequately organised was agriculture.
The reason for this circumstance is to be found in the greater
difficulty which the farmers and the farm workers have had in getting
together. The other great industries are located in urban areas where
facilities of communication and meeting are comparatively easy. The
result of facilitating communication among the farmers is already
evident. The Non-partisan League was brought to birth by the Ford car
and the rural telephone. It is true that the farm-workers still lack the
opportunity of easy assembly; but what has happened in the case of the
farmers has the peculiar interest of being a graphic and simple object
lesson in the processes which have transformed modern life. Our present
political methods and acceptances date back to the period before the
railroad; and not only in politics, but in ethics and religion, we have
yet to take on the task of revising our traditional concepts in the
light of the vast transformation wrought by the swift advance in methods
of communication. The main result is that there are very few men who do
not belong to professional and trade organisations which stretch out
beyond their county boundaries, and there is a growing number to whom
these ultra-territorial associations are more vital and significant than
the local association of citizens in which the accident of their habitat
places them. The new fact for the problem of government consists in the
actual existence and multiplication of these professional and vocational
constituencies; and it is evident that that representative government is
unworthy the name which does not represent these large embodiments of
living opinion and interest.
If for the moment then, we consider the economic aspects of the life of
the community alone, it is evident that two main sources of
representation have to be provided for—the consumer and the producer;
and every man should have a vote in each capacity. The defect of the
Soviet organisation in Russia is that, as it is at present constituted,
it appears to provide the consumer with no direct representation. The
Russian Soviet is a council of workers. But it is evident that the
provision supply, carriage and distribution of commodities to a village
is the concern of the whole village independently of the share which the
villagers may have in the actual production of these commodities. So
that the consumer _qua_ consumer must be represented. The physician and
the teacher[40] may not be producers in a strict and direct sense; but
they are directly interested in the problem of consumption and are
interested in it in the same way as the village blacksmith and the
shoemaker. Moreover, there are problems of sanitation and road-keeping
in which they are all also equally concerned. The village and the city
ward are therefore proper units of representation. But they still remain
only one type of unit. The agricultural labourers who live in the
village may be members of a labour union which charges itself with the
oversight of the conditions of the agricultural labourer’s work. The
physician will also be a member of an association which is concerned
with the special interests of his profession. Here then we have another
type of unit. For our present purpose we are concerned with these units
only as they are industrial and productive.
Footnote 40:
Of course there may be physicians’ and teachers’ soviets; but they
will operate provincially rather than parochially, while the village
soviet would appear usually to consist of peasants.
In Russia the problem of representing these “professional” or
“industrial” constituencies has been solved with greater ease than is
likely to be the case elsewhere. In many cases the owners of industrial
plants have been expropriated and a “shop-council” is in control. This
shop-council sees to it that none but members of the labour union
concerned are employed in the shop; it is free to hire what expert help
it requires to carry on production; and in general it rules the roost.
But it is an elected body, and it forms the cell-unit out of which,
through a hierarchy of local and provincial bodies, the All-Russian
Congress of Soviets is at last constituted. Naturally this scheme is not
yet in universal operation. Some employers are still tolerated to remain
in possession, and a single rule has not yet been established in the
tenure of land. But that is the general principle; and while it must
necessarily admit in practice of all sorts of exceptions, there is no
clear reason why it should not become effective throughout Russia.
But this simplicity is not likely to obtain elsewhere. The forcible
immediate expropriation of the employer is not a probable contingency in
England or America so far as one may judge from present signs. But this
need constitute no insuperable obstacle to the institution of
shop-councils such as for instance have been set up in the woollen
trades at Bradford. And just as in this instance, the shop-council would
be generally the unit out of which an ascending scale of superior bodies
would be formed, reaching at last to what the Russians call the “supreme
council of public economy.” The outline of such an organisation is to be
found already in Mr. Malcolm Sparkes’ scheme (referred to in another
chapter) of a “national industrial parliament”; and all that need be
added to the plan is that this industrial parliament should be
recognised as the actual legislative body within its own sphere, subject
to the review and veto of a final body which would be charged with the
oversight of all the interests of the commonwealth.[41]
Footnote 41:
This “National Industrial Parliament” has come very near taking
practical form in the proposal of the recent National Industrial
Conference for a “National Industrial Council” in England.
Still confining ourselves to the economic interests, we should find it
necessary to secure that the labour unions shall find effective
representation in the legislative organisation; and so long as private
ownership of industrial plant is permitted, the same thing is true of
employers’ associations as well. But it is plain that while industry is
subject to this antagonism of interests within itself, it is not likely
to minister to the public interest as effectually as we have a right to
require of it. Ultimately we shall be compelled to establish the
doctrine that industrial production is a community-interest and to
institute the principle of national Guilds as the ground plan of
industrial organisation. Some approach to this plan has been made during
the war in the interests of increased productivity; and the situation
consequent upon the war in the belligerent countries is likely to
aggravate rather than abate the acuteness of the problem of
productivity. On this account it would be a grave misfortune if industry
were permitted to relapse into its pre-war inefficiency. Thorstein
Veblen, in a shrewd analysis of the working of the capitalistic system
in America, estimates that it “lowers the actual output of the country’s
industry by something near fifty per cent. of its ordinary capacity when
fully employed.” “But” he adds, “it is at the same time plain enough
that this, in the larger sense, untoward discrepancy between productive
capacity and current productive output can readily be corrected, in some
appreciable degree at least, by any sufficient authority that shall
undertake to control the country’s industrial forces without regard to
pecuniary profit and loss. Any authority competent to take over the
control and regulate the conduct of the community’s industry with a view
to maximum output as counted by weight and tale, rather than by net
aggregate price income over price cost can readily effect an appreciable
increase in the effectual productive capacity.... The several
belligerent nations of Europe are showing that it can be done, and they
are also showing that they are all aware, and have always been aware,
that the conduct of industry on business principles is incompetent to
bring the largest practical output of goods and service; incompetent to
such a degree indeed as not to be tolerable in a season of desperate
need when the nation requires the full use of its productive forces,
equipment and man power, regardless of the pecuniary claims of
individuals.”[42] The course of events seem to point to the institution
of the “sufficient authority” which Professor Veblen indicates. It is
clear that this authority must be of a character to ignore the
exigencies of the profit-system, and to operate with an eye single to
the welfare of the community; in which case, soon or late, there must be
eliminated from it those who would desire to turn it to a personal or
sectional advantage. Or at least their possible advantage from industry
shall be so rigorously abridged as to make it cease to be worth their
while to rig the business in such a way as to retard or otherwise to
interfere with output. But, inasmuch as this rigging has been done in
the past chiefly at the expense of the workers, they in their turn armed
themselves for defence, by joining into unions. With the elimination of
the private profit motive from industry, the character of the trade
union as a fighting body would largely if not wholly lapse; and the need
for its direct representation in industrial control would cease to be
urgent or even important. Especially would this be true when a minimum
standard of life had been fixed and universally applied. The union would
merge into the guild which would include not the operatives alone but
the entire effective personnel of the industry. Out of these guilds,
themselves functioning through a hierarchy of bodies from the single
shop upward, would be formed the national industrial parliament which
would be the effectual economic authority of the community.
Footnote 42:
Thorstein Veblen. _The Nature of Peace_, pp. 173, 174.
VIII
That this in its turn should be subject to a still higher court goes
without saying. For in this capacity our industrial parliament
represents the community only as producing. The general interests of the
common man who has to eat, drink, clothe himself, find a roof over his
head, marry, bring up children, are not subordinate to his interest as a
producer; nor are they covered by a parliament which supervises the
productive interests alone.[43] The standard of life must be fixed by
the common will of the community; and it will be the business of the
industrial parliament to see that the volume, quality and conditions of
production shall correspond to this standard; and somewhere there must
be a body which also sees to it that the industrial parliament is
discharging its task efficiently. It must even be in a position to veto
the acts of the industrial parliament should that course become
necessary; and this position could be secured by vesting the purchase
and control of raw material in the hands of this superior body. At the
same time it is evident that there are functions which this superior
body is not efficient to discharge simply on the ground of its being
representative of the general consumer. The problems of education and
public health, for instance, are highly specialised affairs which a
purely representative assembly on the traditional lines has proved
itself incompetent to handle—and it is notorious how both education and
national hygiene have had their development governed and deflected from
its proper course by the too great ascendency of trade and business
interests in the legislature. Just as the industrial affairs of the
community are committed to the charge of those who are directly engaged
in them, so the education of the country should be in the hands of a
self-governing body of teachers, and the public health to a
self-governing medical association—in both cases the personnel being
regarded as members of a public service serving under standardised
conditions, and their representative and executive body being like the
guild parliament answerable to the supreme national assembly.
Footnote 43:
It has been suggested that associations of _Consumers_, e.g. the
Co-operative Societies, should be represented in the National
Industrial Parliament.
It would be palpably beyond the province of this writing to do more than
thus roughly indicate the general direction in which the organisation of
government should and is likely to go; and there are conspicuous
questions—such as national finance and the administration of law—which
would enter deeply into a detailed discussion but have here to be passed
by with no more than this cursory mention. It is now desired only to
emphasise the fact that the actual conditions of modern life have made
the existing legislative machinery obsolete, and that moreover they
point to the nature of the changes which are required to make the
machinery to fit the facts of the case. Summarily, therefore, it may be
said that there are two types of social unit which must be recognised,
the one being of the geographical, the other of the vocational order.
Somewhere these two sources of representation must meet in a supreme
common assembly; and the picture which passes through the mind—say in
England—is of a joint house of county and municipal representatives
chosen by way of ward and village and district councils, and of
representatives of accredited national industrial and professional
associations. Yet, insomuch as this process of delegation would make the
sense of connection between the individual citizen and the supreme
assembly somewhat weak and faint, it would appear to be necessary to
provide for some measure of direct popular representation in the
assembly. So that we should have a house drawing its personnel from
three sources—from the people directly, and by delegation from the two
types of social constituency, local and functional. In this body would
be vested the supreme and final control of national affairs; and to this
body the Guild-parliament and other departmental bodies would render
account of their stewardship. It is only in some such way as this that
remedy is to be found for a state of things, in which, apart from paid
experts in administrative departments, the vital interests of industry,
education and national health are committed to a body to which the
chances of a general election may return not one single person competent
to speak to these matters at first hand.
IX
It is not necessary to extend this discussion into further detail since
we are concerned only to indicate a direction rather than to describe a
finished product. It may, moreover, be justly questioned whether the
business of government can range to any fruitful purpose beyond the
common economic, hygienic and educational concerns of the community, and
such derivative and concomitant operations as they require for their
effectual conduct. In any case it would appear that the remaining
interests of life abut on the legitimate province of government only at
minor and somewhat special points. These particular interests are for
the most part of the “spiritual” order—religious and cultural; and from
the nature of the case it were best to leave them to go their own way in
peace so long as they may not equitably be charged with encroaching upon
the general welfare. Such matters as the property of a religious society
or an author’s copyright represent the kind of point at which the
spiritual interests come into some sort of relation with the state; and
these are essentially matters in the state-regulation of which the chief
care should be to avoid anything that may interfere with independence
and freedom of thought.
For when all is said and done, it is in this particular region that we
must look for the actual and characteristic fruits of a democratic
order. The real wealth of a community consists in the capacity it
possesses and acquires for activity of a creative kind; its true riches
are “the riches of the mind.” And in a sense we may say that the
business of government is to set the house-keeping machinery moving so
smoothly and efficiently that there will be real wayleave for the
spiritual business of life. Just as the best physical condition of a man
is that in which he is least aware of his body, so the best government
is that which makes the governed least conscious of its operation. Here
as elsewhere, _magna ars celare artem_. But is there any guarantee that
such a state-organisation as is here pleaded for will be any more
friendly to freedom of thought than the existing type? So far as the
traditional state is concerned, it regards freedom of thought largely as
a concession which is not quite congruous with the postulates upon which
it habitually acts. Freedom of thought has been wrested from the state
by main force; and then only with the understood proviso that the state
is empowered on due occasion to withdraw the concession. The habit of
free thought has however become so ingrained in the idea of democratic
progress that there is now only one due occasion on which the state can
interfere with it with any prospect of success—that is, in the event of
war. Still from the standpoint of the state, freedom of thought is a
regrettable, though, as things are, unavoidable defect in its machinery.
It interferes sadly with the uniformitarian programme of the typical
governmental mind. But this grudging toleration of freedom of thought is
an inheritance from the dynastic period when it was necessary to have a
population easily mobilisable for whatever adventure the dynast might
plan, or whatever necessity of defence might be laid on him. The
dynastic tradition required a regimentated people; and we have outgrown
the dynastic tradition without discarding all its characteristic modes
of working. This is in part to be accounted for by the fact that the
continued existence of dynastic pretensions and the consequent danger of
dynastic adventures of a predatory kind has necessitated the survival of
dynastic ideas and practices as a measure of insurance even in
communities that have discarded the dynastic principle. There will be no
secure freedom of thought anywhere so long as the world contains any
powerful survival of the dynastic tradition.
Latterly the dynastic tradition has (for patent reasons) been the enemy;
but it is not unlikely that the downfall of the dynastic tradition may
do no more than clear the decks for another more recent predatory
institution, not less ominous for human well-being, which may secure the
reversion of all the stock-in-trade and goodwill of its predecessor in
the matter of national prestige and honour and the like. This is that
commercial imperialism which has already insinuated itself into the
folds of whatever mantle the dynastic tradition is still able to wear—so
much so that it is popularly believed to be impossible to define the
frontier at which dynastic pretensions end and commercial chauvinism
begins. In any case it is sure that as the dynastic institution falls
into desuetude, this commercial imperialism will make a strenuous effort
to step into its shoes and arm itself with its weapons. There may be
some difference between the person who seeks to gobble up the face of
the earth and his brother who seeks to gobble up the markets of the
earth. But for practical purposes they belong to the same class and will
use the same methods. The nations will be persuaded to maintain
sufficient military establishments to protect national capital when it
is sent upon profitable adventures beyond the frontier; and the prospect
of national prosperity and jealousy for national prestige will be worked
for all that they are worth in support of these projects. With the net
result that the attention of the state will be chiefly directed in the
future as in the past to the furtherance of particularist national
interests, and the consequent need of centralised power in the state for
the easy regimentation of the people in case of emergency will remain as
a permanent arrest on democratic development. And all this is the more
tragic in that the “national” interests alleged to be engaged are in
point of fact the interests only of the capitalist class. The rest of
the nation stands to gain nothing material from these operations.
This latter danger can, however, be dealt with by the simple expedient
of declaring that the capital goes out of the country at its own risk.
It is, anyhow, preposterous to assume that capital has any inherent
right to seek national protection when it travels abroad on private
ventures of its own. That should be as clear as daylight; and its
recognition would remove one of the main sources of international
trouble. But it would also release the community from a good deal of the
present wasteful and distracting preoccupation with the business
incidental to the chances of international trouble, and leave it free to
concern itself with the more vital matters of its inner life. And most
of all, with the passing of the dynastic danger, this refusal to
under-write the risks of profit-seeking capitalistic adventures abroad
would remove the chief reason for that residual embargo on utter freedom
of thought which must exist in a community which has to be held in
readiness for swift regimentation. Men will never be wholly free until
the possibility of war has disappeared from the earth.
With the diminution of the chances of international friction, the
urgency of domestic uniformity will in great part disappear; and
democratic life may be counted upon to express itself in a free and
unlimited variation of thought and interest. At the same time it is
obvious that the present doctrine of property-rights within the
community entails a serious limitation upon the freedom of the mind.
Notice has already been taken of the effect of the property-privilege as
it operates in the hands of the capitalist employer upon the freedom of
the worker; but the hindrance to freedom ranges far beyond this region.
In domestic legislation, the rights of property have virtually been “the
law and the prophets”; and modern states have shown themselves more
jealous for the defence of vested interests than the culture of the
national life. It may be indeed that they have not perceived that these
two things were different, not to say opposed. But how far these vested
interests enter into the counsels of the state is evident from the fact
that it has tended to treat any doctrine which assails them as criminal;
and crimes against property are almost invariably treated with greater
severity than crimes against the person. While these class rights are
still recognised as entitled to the corporate protection of the
community, there will be a region within which freedom of thought will
be still frowned upon and so far as may be denied. The sun is too high
in the heavens to permit of persecution save in sporadic cases; and it
would seem that this is the last ditch in which privilege is still
entrenched in its retreat before the advance of freedom. _Lese-majesté_
has ceased to be a dangerous crime; the heretic in religion enjoys his
heresies unmolested; and the accident of noble birth has ceased to
confer a privilege. The “divine rights” of property will presently go
the way of the divine right of kings; and then democracy will have all
its enemies under its feet, unless there may be lurking beyond the
frontier some unforeseen and unforeseeable enemy. Yet this enemy too the
spirit of democracy may be trusted to subdue.
Entire freedom of thought is contingent upon the ultimate disappearance
of all forms of special and exclusive privilege, whether it appertains
to monarchy, aristocracy or property; and freedom of thought is still
tolerated grudgingly because government is contaminated by a survival of
habits of thought derived from the doctrine of special inherent and
sacred rights. The type of government pleaded for in these pages is one
which assumes that no special interest shall have precedence over the
good of the social whole, and which requires that every separate
interest shall be subordinated to and co-ordinated into a general scheme
of social welfare. The rights of property will be subject to such
curtailment as the common good requires. And since therefore the main
causes of existing limitations on freedom of thought will have
disappeared, there seems to be no reason why this type of government
should at any time take it upon itself to repress or to control thought.
To this statement one exception may require to be made parenthetically,
namely, that the continuance of sources of international trouble that
may eventuate in war will probably necessitate occasional interference
with freedom of thought and action. This matter we shall consider in
more detail presently. Meantime, it is not rash to believe that in a
state of the type here indicated, there will not only be any disposition
to set bounds upon independent thought but a definite tendency to
encourage it. It may conceivably come to conceive of national “prestige”
in terms of perfect and untrammelled intellectual freedom.
Three conditions seem to be necessary to such an end. The first has to
do with national education the aim of which should be to make every
individual capable of thinking for himself and imparting to him a social
vision which will discipline and fructify his thought. To this matter
also we shall need to return at a later point.
The second condition is the provision of opportunities of free public
discussion. To this subject some reference has already been made; and
nothing more extended need now be added, save only, perhaps, the thought
that the encouragement of free public discussion is the proper safeguard
against the vagaries and dangers of a suppressed and inarticulate
dissent. Let the new thing be brought into the Agora as it was in old
Athens; and the daylight will declare whether it be gold or stubble.
The third condition is the full and unconditional recognition of the
right of association,—the only proviso being that no association shall
have private or occult or undeclared purposes. A strong tendency to the
formation of social groups of various kinds, political, cultural,
religious, recreational, should be hailed as a sign of life in the
community. And even if the association be formed for the promulgation of
the view of a dissenting minority, it should be as frankly encouraged as
any other. For no view ever gains a considerable following which does
not embody some fact or truth of experience which is necessary to the
wholeness of life.
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