THE COMPETITIVE SPIRIT
ADVANTAGES OF COMPETITION—WHY MODERN CIVILIZATION DOES NOT
ENERVATE—COMPETITION AND SYMPATHY—HIGHER AND LOWER COMPETITIVE
SPIRIT—THE PECUNIARY MOTIVE—IS EMULATION IN SERVICE
PRACTICABLE?—LOWER MOTIVES INEFFICIENT—THE “ECONOMIC MAN”
There used to be much condemnation of our present state of society based
on the idea that competition is a bad thing in itself, a state of war
where we want a state of peace, generating hostile passions where we
need sympathy and love. It seems, however, that we are coming to
recognize that all life is struggle, that any system which is alive and
progressive must be, in some sense, competitive, and that the real
question at issue is that of the _kind_ of competition, whether it is
free, just, kindly, governed by good rules and worthy objects, or the
reverse.
The diffusion of personal opportunity, and of the competition through
which alone it can be realized, has a remarkable effect in awakening
energy and inciting ambition. In so far as a man can and does live
without any exacting test of himself he fails to achieve significant
character and self-reliant manhood. It is by permitting this and so
relaxing the tissue of personal character that static societies and
classes have decayed in the past. On the contrary, one who has made his
way in a competitive society has learned to choose his course, to select
and develop one class of influences and reject others, to measure the
result in practice, and so to gain self-knowledge and an effective will.
The simplest workman, accustomed to make his way, becomes something of a
diplomatist, a student of character, a man of the world.
It has been thought rather a mystery that modern civilization does not
enervate men as the ancient is believed to have done. In the case of the
Roman and earlier empires the natural course of things, apparently, was
for a vigorous nation, after a career of conquest, to become rich,
luxurious, degenerate, and finally to be conquered by tribes emerging
from savagery and hardihood to follow a similar course. In our days it
seems that a people may remain civilized for centuries without loss of
their militant energy, and, roughly speaking, the nations who have
advanced most in the arts of peace display also the most prowess in war.
The main reason for this I take to be that modern civilization preserves
within itself that element of conflict which gives the training in
courage and hardihood that was formerly possible only in a savage state.
The ancient civilizations were in their nature repressive; they could
achieve order and industry over wide areas only by imposing a mechanical
and coercive discipline, which left little room for individual
development and accustomed the mass of men to routine and servility.
Thus we read, regarding Rome, that “The despotic imperial administration
upheld for a long while the Roman Empire, and not without renown; but it
corrupted, enervated, and impoverished the Roman populations, and left
them, after five centuries, as incapable of defending themselves as they
were of governing.”[32]
Much has been said of the need of a moral equivalent for war, in order
that we may dispense with the latter without losing our virile traits;
but it may well be thought that as a sphere for individual
combativeness, for daring, resolution, self-reliance and pertinacity,
our civil life is, on the whole, far superior to war, which requires a
strict and somewhat mechanical type of discipline, putting only a
limited responsibility on the soldier. Indeed the attractiveness to the
imagination of military service lies largely in this very fact, that it
is non-competitive, that it promises to take one out of the turmoil of
individualistic struggle and give him a moral rest. It offers the repose
of subordination, the “peace of the yoke,” and many have enlisted, very
much as many others have sought the cloister, to escape from harassing
responsibilities and live under rule.
The idea that competition is always destructive of sympathy will not
bear examination. It may be destructive or it may not, depending, among
other things, on whether it is fair, whether the rules are well
understood and enforced, whether the objects striven for are ennobling
or otherwise, and whether the competitor has been properly trained to
run his course. Injustice, lack of standards, low aims and unfitness
generate bad feeling, because the individual has not the sense of doing
his part in a worthy whole. A good kind of competition will be felt to
be also a kind of co-operation, a working out, through selection, of
one’s special function in the common enterprise.
Indeed it is chiefly through competition that we come to know the world,
to get a various insight into peoples’ minds, and so to achieve a large
kind of sympathy; while those who lead a protected life generally lack a
robust breadth of view and sense of justice. A man, like Abraham
Lincoln, who has worked his way from bottom to top of a society
everywhere competitive, may still be, as he was, a man of notable
tenderness, as well as of a reach of sympathy which only this experience
could develop.
I take it, then, that real progress in this regard consists not in
abolishing the competitive spirit but in raising it to higher levels,
and that the questions just what this means, and whether it is
practicable, and how, are the ones we need to discuss.
Suppose that we make a rough division between _the lower self-seeking_
and _emulation in service_. The distinction is based mainly on whether
the self-assertion, present in both cases, is or is not suffused and
dominated by devotion to the common good. The lower spirit would include
all merely sensual impulses, as hunger, cold, and the like, and also
more imaginative motives, such as the fear of want, the greed of
acquisition, the love of power, the passion for display, the excitement
of rivalry, even the love of honor and renown, so long as these are
merely personal, and include no conscious loyalty and service to a
common ideal. It is lower, of course, not in the sense that it is always
morally wrong, but from the point of view of a higher or lower appeal to
human nature. In this respect we must regard as lower even the struggles
of a man to provide for his family, so long as he, with his family, form
a mere self-asserting unit with no sense of co-operation with other
units.
Emulation in service does not displace other impulses, but suffuses them
with a sense of devotion to a larger whole, so that they are modified,
elevated, controlled, or even suppressed by the immanence of this
greater idea. Rivalry and the pursuit of honor will remain, but under
the discipline of “team-work” so that the individual will always, at
need, prefer the good of the whole to his personal glory. A man will
strive to meet the wants of himself and his family, but along with
these, and more present to his imagination because larger and more
animating, will be the sense of service to some public and enduring
ideal.
I do not wish to overlook or depreciate the pecuniary motive. As a
symbol of control over the more tangible goods of life money rightly
plays a large part in guiding and stimulating our efforts. The motive
back of such efforts is in no way revealed by the fact that they seek to
work themselves out through pecuniary acquisition, but may be very
selfish or quite the opposite. A man may want money for drink, or opium,
or for a good book, or to help a friend, or to save the life of a sick
child. The money is rather a derivative than an original motive, except
as we may come to love it for its own sake; it is a mechanism
indispensable to the organization of life. And the precise measurement
and adjustment of pecuniary reward and service, in the more tangible
kinds of production, with increased pay for increased efficiency—such as
is attempted in the new science of management—is a logical development
of the price system and should have good results.
But this sort of motivation is wholly inadequate to the higher
incitement of human nature. It takes hold of us, for the most part, in a
somewhat superficial way, and if allowed to guide rather than follow the
deeper currents of character, it degrades us into avarice and
materialism. Certainly that is a poor sort of man to whom it offers the
only or the chief inducement to endeavor. He is not fully alive in his
higher parts, a mercenary recruit in the social army rather than a
patriot fighting for love and honor. The best men choose their
occupation because they love it, and believe they can do something
worthy and lasting in it, though, like nearly all of us, they are much
guided as to details by the pecuniary market.
We may, then, take for granted the working of this inducement, in its
proper sphere, and go on to consider the motives that lie deeper.[33]
I suppose most of us would admit that emulation in service is desirable
and is actually operative in some quarters, but would question whether
it is not too high to be generally practicable.
It does not appear, however, to be limited to exceptionally high kinds
of persons. It quite generally prevails in school and college athletics,
where much hard work and self-denial is undergone without inducement of
any kind except a collective enthusiasm which makes each one feel that
the success of the team is more than any glory that may come to himself.
Yet no one will claim that human nature in college students is much
above the average. And what shall we say of soldiers, who are ordinary
men, drawn from all classes of society, but who soon learn to value the
honor of their company or regiment so high that they are eager to risk
their lives for it, and that without any hope of private reward? Public
spirit is congenial to human nature, and we may expect everything from
it, even the utmost degree of self-sacrificing service, if only the
public cause is brought home to our hearts.
Even in our present confused and selfish scheme of economic life the
best work is largely done under the impulse of service emulation. This
is the case, for example, in most of the professions. Teachers are glad
to get as much money for their work as they can, but what all good
teachers are thinking about in the course of their labors, and what
sustains and elevates them, is the service they hope they are doing to
the common life. The same is true of doctors, engineers, men of science,
and, let us hope, lawyers, journalists, and public officials. The
library service has aptly been cited as an example of the energy and
efficiency which may be attained under the higher emulation with little
or no appeal to pecuniary ambition. Librarians are paid by salaries,
which are moderate at most, and not at all sure to increase with
success, yet in no social function, perhaps, has there been displayed
more zeal, devotion, and initiative, or more remarkable progress in
serving the public. I may add that the good books, to disseminate which
the library exists, were produced in a spirit of honor and service and
not, chiefly, for gain.
Nor can there be much doubt that a great part of mechanical workmen,
having a skilled trade into which it is possible to put interest and a
progressive spirit, are animated by the sense of sharing in a great
productive whole. Perhaps, like most of us, they need at times the spur
of knowing that they _must_ work, but this is not what is most present
to their imaginations or elicits their best endeavors. The wage
question, as the focus of controversy, is kept before our minds and
leads us, I believe, to exaggerate the part which pecuniary calculations
play in the mind of the handicraftsman. For the most part he resembles
the teacher or doctor in that he wishes to think no more about money in
connection with his work than he feels he has to. The mechanics I see
about me—plumbers, masons, furnace-men and the like—are as full of the
zest of life as any class; they like the struggle, the sense of hope and
power and honest service.
How far the same is true of business men I shall not attempt to say;
certainly more than theories of the “economic man” would lead us to
expect; yet here, without doubt, we have the class in which a pecuniary
individualism is most rife and in which there is most need to foster a
higher spirit.
There is a trend throughout society to substitute higher motives for
lower, and this is not only because the former are more agreeable, but
because they are more effectual. It was formerly thought that school
children would not learn to read, write, and spell without constant fear
and frequent experience of the rod; but now good schools dispense
entirely with this incentive, and find emulation and the pleasure of
achievement more efficacious. In the church the fear of hell fire is
being supplanted by appeals to love, loyalty, and service. Even those
convicted of crime, it is believed, can be more easily managed and with
better results to themselves by a discipline which appeals to their
self-respect and gives them a chance to show that they are men like the
rest of us. Fear is a poor motive, because it does not evoke those
energies that are bound up with ambition, sympathy, social imagination,
and hope.
It is gratifying to find that the organizers of industry are coming to
ascribe more and more value to human sympathy and the golden rule. In an
article by a manufacturer, published in a business magazine, I read that
the aim in handling men is to bring about a “family feeling.” “The best
way to hold them is to know them.... It is important not to drive. Fear
of the boss never inspired any real team-work, and no good working force
was ever built up without team-work. The men in positions of
responsibility must make the men under them really want to work with and
for them.”[34] Another manufacturer, a man of phenomenal success, says:
“It is the easiest thing in the world to inspire this loyalty, but it is
not to be done by any trick. It’s simply a matter of honest and sincere
understanding of the workman’s interests, a recognition of his ambitions
as a human being. If your men feel that is your attitude toward them
they will do their best every hour of the day.”[35]
In so far, then, as our social order fails to cultivate the sense of
willing service in a worthy whole it is failing in higher efficiency. In
great part the actual working is as if we formed an army of intelligent
and high-spirited men, and proceeded to drive them to their duty by the
lash, as was formerly done, instead of appealing to patriotism and the
emulation of regiments and companies, as in modern armies. It operates
on a low plane of discipline and without the spiritual co-operation of
the agent.
No doubt there are workers, under existing conditions, who take no pride
in their work and will not work at all, perhaps, except when they are
driven to it by the fear of want. But there is reason to think that
these are chiefly those who have had a brutalizing and discouraging
experience. A good military officer will recruit a company of just such
men, and after a few months of discipline have them eager to excel in
their duty and ready to face death. It is all a matter of how they are
appealed to. And is it not the case, also, that there is a large class
in industry who display more pride in their work and sense of duty and
service regarding it, than could reasonably be expected, in view of the
inconsiderate, mechanical, and selfish way in which they are commonly
treated? If a man finds that he is hired when he is a source of gain and
turned off when he is not; treated usually without personal appreciation
and often with harshness, and set at monotonous work whose value to the
world is not easy to feel; it would hardly be supposed that he would
show much loyalty or spirit of service, and yet many do, under just such
conditions. The truth is that human nature needs to believe in life, and
even as we see that people cling to the goodness of God when he seems to
send them nothing but misfortunes, so they often show more loyalty to
the economic order than it appears to deserve.
It is almost certain that the grosser forms of economic want and terror,
like corporal punishment in the schoolroom, paralyze rather than
stimulate the energies of society. This liability to starvation and
freezing, degradation and contempt for not having money in one’s pocket,
with no inquiry why, this nightmare of evil to be averted not by service
but by money, and only money, no matter how you get it—this is overdoing
the pecuniary motive. It brutalizes the imagination and creates an
unhuman dread that impels to sensuality and despair.
I do not deny that there will be shirkers under any system, but it seems
plain that their numbers are rather increased than diminished by
harshness and neglect, and will be reduced in proportion as we make the
whole life, from infancy onward, one that develops self-respect, hope
and ambition.
The argument for savagery—_facilis descensus Averni_—is much the same in
all spheres of life. A parent beats a child, and, finding him still
recalcitrant, thinks he needs more beating; a teacher whose suspicious
methods and appeals to fear have alienated his scholars is all for more
suspicion and intimidation; an employer who, having made no effort to
gain the confidence of his men, finds that they are disloyal, is
convinced that nothing but repression can solve the labor question; the
people that are trying to control the negro by terrorism and lynching
believe that more of these methods is the remedy for increasing negro
crime; governments exasperate each other into war by ill will and
hostile preparations, and then argue that, war being inevitable, ill
will and hostile preparations are the only rational course to take. We
shall never get out of these vicious circles until we take our stand on
the higher possibilities of human nature, as shown by experience under
right conditions, and proceed to develop these by faith and common
sense.
One of the main forces in keeping economic motive on a low moral level
has been the doctrine that selfishness is all we need or can hope to
have in this phase of life. Economists have too commonly taught that if
each man seeks his private interest the good of society will take care
of itself, and the somewhat anarchic conditions of the time have
discouraged a better theory. In this way we have been confirmed in a
pernicious state of belief and practice, for which discontent,
inefficiency, and revolt are the natural penalty. A social system based
on this doctrine deserves to fail.
When pressed regarding this matter economists have not denied that their
system rests on a partial and abstract view of human nature; but they
have held that this view is practically adequate in the economic field,
and have often seemed to believe that it sufficed for all but a
negligible part of human life. On the contrary, it is false even as
economics, and we shall never have an efficient system until we have one
that appeals to the imagination, the loyalty, and the self-expression of
the men who serve it.