We are told every day that great social problems stand before us and
demand a solution, and we are assailed by oracles, threats, and
warnings in reference to those problems. There is a school of writers
who are playing quite a _rôle_ as the heralds of the coming duty and
the coming woe. They assume to speak for a large, but vague and
undefined, constituency, who set the task, exact a fulfillment, and
threaten punishment for default. The task or problem is not
specifically defined. Part of the task which devolves on those who are
subject to the duty is to define the problem. They are told only that
something is the matter: that it behooves them to find out what it is,
and how to correct it, and then to work out the cure. All this is more
or less truculently set forth.
After reading and listening to a great deal of this sort of assertion I
find that the question forms itself with more and more distinctness in
my mind: Who are those who assume to put hard questions to other
people and to demand a solution of them? How did they acquire the right
to demand that others should solve their world-problems for them? Who
are they who are held to consider and solve all questions, and how did
they fall under this duty?
So far as I can find out what the classes are who are respectively
endowed with the rights and duties of posing and solving social
problems, they are as follows: Those who are bound to solve the
problems are the rich, comfortable, prosperous, virtuous, respectable,
educated, and healthy; those whose right it is to set the problems are
those who have been less fortunate or less successful in the struggle
for existence. The problem itself seems to be, How shall the latter be
made as comfortable as the former? To solve this problem, and make us
all equally well off, is assumed to be the duty of the former class;
the penalty, if they fail of this, is to be bloodshed and destruction.
If they cannot make everybody else as well off as themselves, they are
to be brought down to the same misery as others.
During the last ten years I have read a great many books and articles,
especially by German writers, in which an attempt has been made to set
up "the State" as an entity having conscience, power, and will
sublimated above human limitations, and as constituting a tutelary
genius over us all. I have never been able to find in history or
experience anything to fit this concept. I once lived in Germany for
two years, but I certainly saw nothing of it there then. Whether the
State which Bismarck is moulding will fit the notion is at best a
matter of faith and hope. My notion of the State has dwindled with
growing experience of life. As an abstraction, the State is to me only
All-of-us. In practice--that is, when it exercises will or adopts a
line of action--it is only a little group of men chosen in a very
haphazard way by the majority of us to perform certain services for all
of us. The majority do not go about their selection very rationally,
and they are almost always disappointed by the results of their own
operation. Hence "the State," instead of offering resources of wisdom,
right reason, and pure moral sense beyond what the average of us
possess, generally offers much less of all those things. Furthermore,
it often turns out in practice that "the State" is not even the known
and accredited servants of the State, but, as has been well said, is
only some obscure clerk, hidden in the recesses of a Government bureau,
into whose power the chance has fallen for the moment to pull one of
the stops which control the Government machine. In former days it often
happened that "The State" was a barber, a fiddler, or a bad woman. In
our day it often happens that "the State" is a little functionary on
whom a big functionary is forced to depend.
I cannot see the sense of spending time to read and write observations,
such as I find in the writings of many men of great attainments and of
great influence, of which the following might be a general type: If the
statesmen could attain to the requisite knowledge and wisdom, it is
conceivable that the State might perform important regulative functions
in the production and distribution of wealth, against which no positive
and sweeping theoretical objection could be made from the side of
economic science; but statesmen never can acquire the requisite
knowledge and wisdom.--To me this seems a mere waste of words. The
inadequacy of the State to regulative tasks is agreed upon, as a matter
of fact, by all. Why, then, bring State regulation into the discussion
simply in order to throw it out again? The whole subject ought to be
discussed and settled aside from the hypothesis of State regulation.
The little group of public servants who, as I have said, constitute the
State, when the State determines on anything, could not do much for
themselves or anybody else by their own force. If they do anything,
they must dispose of men, as in an army, or of capital, as in a
treasury. But the army, or police, or _posse comitatus_, is more or
less All-of-us, and the capital in the treasury is the product of the
labor and saving of All-of-us. Therefore, when the State means
power-to-do it means All-of-us, as brute force or as industrial force.
If anybody is to benefit from the action of the State it must be
Some-of-us. If, then, the question is raised, What ought the State to
do for labor, for trade, for manufactures, for the poor, for the
learned professions? etc., etc.--that is, for a class or an
interest--it is really the question, What ought All-of-us to do for
Some-of-us? But Some-of-us are included in All-of-us, and, so far as
they get the benefit of their own efforts, it is the same as if they
worked for themselves, and they may be cancelled out of All-of-us. Then
the question which remains is, What ought Some-of-us to do for
Others-of-us? or, What do social classes owe to each other?
I now propose to try to find out whether there is any class in society
which lies under the duty and burden of fighting the battles of life
for any other class, or of solving social problems for the satisfaction
of any other class; also, whether there is any class which has the
right to formulate demands on "society"--that is, on other classes;
also, whether there is anything but a fallacy and a superstition in the
notion that "the State" owes anything to anybody except peace, order,
and the guarantees of rights.
I have in view, throughout the discussion, the economic, social, and
political circumstances which exist in the United States.