GOVERNMENT AS PUBLIC WILL
GOVERNMENT NOT THE ONLY AGENT OF PUBLIC WILL—THE RELATIVE POINT OF
VIEW; ADVANTAGES OF GOVERNMENT AS AN AGENT—MECHANICAL TENDENCY OF
GOVERNMENT—CHARACTERISTICS FAVORABLE TO GOVERNMENT ACTIVITY—MUNICIPAL
SOCIALISM—SELF-EXPRESSION THE FUNDAMENTAL DEMAND OF THE PEOPLE—ACTUAL
EXTENSION OF STATE FUNCTIONS.
In the growth of public will any agency amenable to public opinion
may serve as an instrument; and this means, of course, any sort of
rational activity, personal as well as institutional. Thus the work of
a secluded scientist, like Pasteur or Edison, taken together with the
general acceptance and application of his results, is as much an act of
public will as the proceedings of a legislature, and often more—because
they may show a more public spirit and a wider knowledge and foresight.
What is necessary is that somewhere there shall be effectual purpose
and endeavor based on a large grasp of the situation. In short,
public will is simply a matter of the more efficient organization
of the general mind: whatever in the way of leadership or mechanism
contributes to the latter has a share in it; and we may naturally
expect it to progress rather by the quickening and coördination of many
agencies than by the aggrandizement of any particular one.[174]
The view which many hold that public will must be chiefly if not wholly
identified with the institution of government is a just one only in a
certain narrow sense. That is to say, the mechanism of government is
indeed the most definite and authoritative expression of public choice,
and if public will is to be limited to what is decided by a count of
voices and carried out, if necessary, by force, then the government
is its only agent. But only a small part of the will of society is
of this sort. In a larger sense it is a diversified whole, embracing
the thought and purpose of all institutions and associations, formal
and informal, that have any breadth of aim, and even, as I have said,
of secluded individuals. Surely the true will of humanity never has
been and is not likely to be concentrated in a single agent, but works
itself out through many instruments, and the unity we need is something
much more intricate and flexible than could be secured through the
state alone. Like other phases of organization, government is merely
one way of doing things, fitted by its character for doing some things
and unfitted for doing others.
As to what these things are, we must, of course, take the relative
point of view and hold that the sphere of government operations is
not, and should not be, fixed, but varies with the social condition at
large. Hard-and-fast theories of what the state may best be and do,
whether restrictive or expansive, we may well regard with distrust. It
is by no means impossible that the whole character of the political
state and of its relation to the rest of life is undergoing change of
an unforeseeable kind which will eventually make our present dogmas on
this point quite obsolete.
The most evident advantage of government as a social instrument—that
which makes it the logical recourse of those who seek a short way to
regeneration—is its power and reach. It is the strongest and most
extensive of our institutions, with elaborate machinery ready to
undertake almost anything, and power limited, in the long run, only by
public opinion.
Moreover, under a democratic system, it is _definitely_ responsible
to the people. Not that it always serves them: we know too well how
apt it is to respect particular rather than general interests: but
there is always a definite means of bringing it into line with public
thought, always reins which the people may grasp if they will. This
has the momentous effect that there is less jealousy of a democratic
government, other things equal, than of any other form of power.
Feeling that it is potentially at least their own, the people will
endure from it with patience abuses that would be intolerable from
any other source. The maddening thing about the oppression of private
monopolies is the personal subjection, the humiliation of being unable
to assert oneself, while in public life the free citizen has always a
way of regular and dignified protest. He appeals not to an alien but to
a larger self.
The most general defect of government is that which goes with its good
qualities. Just because it is the most ancient and elaborate machine
we have, it is apt to be too mechanical, too rigid, too costly and
unhuman. As the most institutional of institutions it has a certain
tendency toward formalism, and is objectionable on grounds of red-tape,
lack of economy and remoteness from the fresher needs of the people.
It is easy, however, for one impressed with this idea to be too
indiscriminate in its application. Much depends upon the kind of
government actually in question, upon the interest the people take in
it, and many other conditions.
In the United States, for instance, each of us lives under three
somewhat distinct kinds of government—federal, state and local—each
of which has a large measure of practical independence of the
others, and may be treated as a separate agent of public will.
Moreover, it is often the case that the larger systems—say the
federal post-office—allow a great deal of local autonomy in their
administration, making it flexible to local opinion.
Under this system, a township, village or small city is no unwieldy
machine, but pretty much what the people see fit to make it, and the
fact that it is a phase of government is no sufficient reason why any
affairs it may choose to undertake may not be as humanly and flexibly
administered as those of a non-political association of equal extent.
They often are so administered, and the same is true of great cities
wherever a vigorous civic consciousness exists and has had time to work
out its instruments. The question is only one of organization, and
this confronts non-political associations as well as political; large
private incorporations having notoriously about the same experience of
formalism, extravagance and malfeasance as the state.
There are certain characteristics whose presence in a given function
is favorable to state activity, though they cannot be said to indicate
clearly where it should begin or end.
One of these, naturally, is the inadequacy or harmfulness of other
agencies. The fact that a work is deemed necessary and that there is
no other adequate way of doing it is the real basis of most state
functions; not only the primary ones of waging war and keeping order,
but of issuing money, building roads, bridges and harbors, collecting
statistics, instituting free schools, controlling monopolies, and so on.
Another is that the work in question should be susceptible of
comparatively simple and uniform methods; since the more various and
intricate a function is, the more difficulty will be found in getting
it properly done by the powerful but usually somewhat clumsy mechanism
of the state. The reasons that may justify a state post or telegraph,
for instance, do not necessarily suffice for the assumption of the far
more complicated business of the railways.
Again, whatever the state undertakes should be something likely to be
watched by public opinion; not necessarily by the whole public, but
at least by some powerful group steadfastly interested in efficiency
and capable of judging whether it is attained. In the United States,
certainly, the successes or failures of government are largely
explicable on this ground. Public education works well, in spite of
a constant leaning toward formalism, because the people take a close
and jealous interest in it, while the monetary and financial functions
are in like manner safeguarded by the scrutiny of the commercial
world. But in the matter of tariffs the scrutiny of the latter,
inadequately balanced by that of any other interest, has produced what
is practically class legislation; and something similar may be said of
many phases of government action.[175]
From such considerations it seems that local government, because it is
on a small scale and because the people will presumably be more able
and willing to watch the details of its operation, should be the sphere
in which extension of functions has the most chance of success. The
more the citizen feels that government is close to him and amenable
to his will, the more, other things equal, he should be inclined to
trust it and to put himself into it. In spite of much disappointing
experience, it seems reasonable to expect that small units, dealing
with the every-day interests of the people, will, in the long run,
enlist an ample share of their capacity and integrity.
And yet the nearness of the whole to the will of the member is
psychical, not spatial, so that if the citizen for some reason feels
closer to the central government and trusts it more, he may be more
willing to aggrandize it. In the United States the people often have
more interest and confidence in the federal system than in their
particular states and cities; one reason being that the constant
enlargement of private organization—as in the case of railways and the
so-called trusts—puts it beyond the power of local control. Of course
there is a natural sphere of development for each of the various phases
of government.
Municipal socialism has the great advantage over other sorts of state
extension of being optional by small units, and of permitting all sorts
of diversity, experiment and comparison. There is nothing in it of
that deadening uniformity and obliteration of alternatives involved in
the blanket socialism of the central state. The evils we suffer from
private monopolies—against which we may always invoke the state if not
other competitors—are as nothing compared with those to be feared from
an all-embracing state-monopoly; and I feel sure that common-sense,
a shrewd attachment to the principle of “checks and balances,” and
the spirit of local individuality will preserve the English-speaking
nations, at least, from serious danger of the latter. In countries like
France, where there is a great traditional preponderance of the central
authority, it may be among the possibilities, though the probable
decline of war—the main cause of mechanical consolidation—should work
in the opposite direction.
There are few things that would be more salutary to the life of our
people than a lively and effective civic consciousness in towns,
villages and rural communities. I trust this is growing and feel no
dread of any socialism which it may prove to involve. One of the
best things I have known Ann Arbor to do was to hold a public-school
carnival on the occasion of the opening of a new high school. There
were all sorts of performances by the children, largely of their own
devising, and the people were interested and brought together as never,
perhaps, before. It was communal, it was _ours_, and the social spirit
it evoked was a common joy. Enterprises of the same nature on a larger
and more permanent scale, such as the recreation centres of Chicago,
are beginning to arise in various parts of the country.
It seems probable that the plain citizen must look largely to the
communal life to supply that chance for self-expression which town
residence and the specialized nature of modern industry have so largely
restricted. Urban life is inevitable, and instead of regretting
the country the city-dwellers had better make the most of the new
situation, through playgrounds, public amusements, socialized schools,
recreation centres, and, in general, a more vital and human civic
organization.[176]
The fundamental need of men is for self-expression, for making their
will felt in whatever they feel to be close to their hearts; and they
will use the state in so far and in such a manner as they find it
helpful in gratifying this need.
The more self-expression, therefore, there is in other spheres of
life, the less need, relatively, people will feel of acting through
government—a principle which should remind those who dread the growth
of the latter that the only sure way to restrict it is by developing
a real, affirmative freedom in other relations. Political democracy
plus social and economic oppression is pretty sure to equal state
socialism, because men will look to political control as a refuge. But
if general conditions are free and open, men will be the more sensible,
by contrast, of the unfree aspects of state activity.
A lack of economy in government will not much check its aggrandizement
if the need of it is strongly felt on other grounds, since human
nature, on the whole, cares very little for economy in comparison with
freedom and justice. One will more willingly pay a water-tax of twenty
dollars to a city government in which he has a voice than of ten to an
alien and overbearing corporation.
In our day there is a tendency toward extension of state functions
which after all is perhaps no more than symmetrical in view of the
general expansion of larger structures in every sphere. It does not
seem to outstrip the growth, for instance, of private corporations, or
labor unions, or of individual wealth. It is easy to see a tendency to
state socialism if you look only at the new functions of the state;
easy to see an opposite tendency if you fix your attention on private
organization. Whether or not the state is _relatively_ increasing its
sphere is not easy to decide. The new conditions of life bring men
closer together, creating a general need of wider organization; and,
so far as now appears, this need is to be met by the simultaneous
development of various structures already well begun; such as
popular government and education, private industrial and commercial
corporations, labor unions, mutual-aid societies, philanthropical
associations, and so on.
The special demand for state extension seems to spring chiefly from
two conditions: the need to control the exorbitant power of private
economic associations, and the need of meeting novel problems arising
from life in great cities. In these and similar directions an
intelligent and practised democracy will proceed tentatively, “with
the firm foot below,” always balancing the loss against the gain.
Experiments in political socialism are sure to be tried, which will
prove instructive and perhaps beneficial. How far they will be carried
no man can say, but I see no special reason to fear that they will go
to any pernicious extreme.
FOOTNOTES:
[174] If the reader is not clear as to what I mean by public will, I
beg to refer him to chapters I, XII and XXXIV.
[175] These principles are much the same as those put forth by W. S.
Jevons. See his Methods of Social Reform, 355.
[176] Compare Simon N. Patten, The New Basis of Civilization, 124.