It will appear to the idealist who has contemplated the heavens more
closely than the earth that the policy I advocate is one which only
tardily could be put into operation, and would be paltry and inadequate
as a basis for society. The idealist with the Golden Age already in his
heart believes he has only to erect the Golden Banner and display it for
multitudes to array themselves beneath its folds; therefore he advocates
not, as I do, a way to the life, but the life itself. I am sympathetic
with idealists in a hurry, but I do not think the world can be changed
suddenly by some heavenly alchemy, as St. Paul was smitten by a light
from the overworld. Such light from heaven is vouchsafed to individuals,
but never to nations, who progress by an orderly evolution in society.
Though the heart in us cries out continually, "Oh, hurry, hurry to the
Golden Age," though we think of revolutions, we know that the patient
marshalling of human forces is wisdom. We have to devise ways and means
and light every step clearly before the nation will leave its footing
in some safe if unattractive locality to plant itself elsewhere. The
individual may be reckless. The race never can be so, for it carries too
great a burden and too high destinies, and it is only when the gods
wish to destroy or chastise a race that they first make it mad. Not by
revolutions can humanity be perfected. I might quote from an old oracle,
"The gods are never so turned away from man as when he ascends to them
by disorderly methods." Our spirits may live in the Golden Age, but our
bodily life moves on slow feet, and needs the lantern on the path and
the staff struck carefully into the darkness before us to see that the
path beyond is not a morass, and the light not a will o' the wisp.
Other critics may say I would destroy the variety of civilization by the
inflexible application of a single idea. Well, I realize that the net
which is spread for Leviathan will not capture all the creatures of the
deep; and the complexity of human nature is such that it is impossible
to imagine a policy, however fitting in certain spheres of human
activity, which could be applied to the whole of life. What I think we
should aim at is making the co-operative idea fundamental in Irish life.
But to say fundamental is not to say absolute. Always there will be
enter rising persons--men of creative minds--who will break away from
the mass and who will insist, perhaps rightly, on an autocratic control
of the enterprises they found, which were made possible alone by
their genius, and which would not succeed unless every worker in the
enterprise was malleable by their will. It is unlikely that State action
will cease, or that any Government we may have will not respond to the
appeal of the people to do this, that, or the other for them which they
are too indolent to do for themselves, or which by the nature of things
only governments can undertake. For a principle to be fundamental in
a country does not mean that it must be absolute. I hope society in
Ireland will be organized that the idea of democratic control of its
economic life will so pervade Irish thought that it will be in the body
politic what the spinal column is to the body--the pillar on which it
rests, the strongest single factor in the body. Another illustration
may make still clearer my meaning. In a red sunsetting the glow is so
powerful that green hills, white houses, and blue waters, touched by
its light, assume a ruddy color, partly a local color, and partly a
reflected light from the sun. Now in the same way, what is most powerful
in society multiplies images and shadows of itself, and produces
harmonies with itself which are yet not identities. It is by a
predominating idea that nations achieve the practical unity of their
citizens, and national progress becomes possible. In the future
structure of society I have no doubt there will be elements to which the
socialist, the syndicalist, the capitalist, and the individualist will
have contributed. By degrees it will be discovered what enterprises
are best directed by the State, by municipalities, by groups, or by
individuals. But if the idea of democratic control is predominant, those
enterprises which are otherwise directed will yet meet the prevalent
mood by adopting the ideas of the treatment of the workers enforced in
democratically controlled enterprises, and will in every respect, except
control, make their standards equal. All the needles of being point to
the centres where power is most manifested. The effects of the French
revolution--a democratic upheaval--invaded men's minds everywhere. Even
the autocratically ruled States, hitherto careless about the people in
their underworlds, had to make advances to democracy, and give it some
measure of the justice democracy threatened to deal to itself. Without
demanding absolutism I do desire a predominant democratic character in
our national enterprises, rather than a confused muddle or struggle of
interests where nothing really emerges except the egoism of those who
struggle.
It will be noticed that in all that has preceded I have referred little
to action by government, though it is on governments that democracies
over the world are now fixing all their hopes. They believe the State
is the right agency to bring about reforms and changes in society. And
I must here explain why I do not share their hopes. My distrust of the
State in economic reform is based on the belief that governments in
great nation-states, even representative governments, are not malleable
by the general will. They are too easily dominated by the holders of
economic power, are, in fact, always dominated by aristocracies with
land or by the aristocracies of wealth. It is the hand at the helm
guides the ship. The larger the State is the more easily do the holders
of economic power gain political power. The theory of representative
government held good in practice, I think, so long as parliaments were
engaged in formulating general rights, the right, for example, of the
individual to think or profess any religion he pleased; his right not
to be deprived of liberty or life without open trial by his
fellow-citizens. So long as legislatures were affirming or maintaining
these rights, which rich and poor equally desired, they were justified.
But when legislatures began to intervene in economic matters, in the
struggles between rich and poor, between capital and labor, it became
at once apparent the holders of economic power had also political power;
and that the institution which operated fairly where universal rights
were considered did not operate fairly when there was a conflict between
particular interests.
The jury of the nation was found to be packed. At least nine-tenths of
the population in Great Britain, for example, belong to the wage-earning
class. At least nine-tenths of the members of legislatures belong to
the classes possessing land or capital. Now, why any member of the
wage-earning class should look with hope to such assemblies I cannot
understand. Their ideal is, or should be, economic freedom, together
with democratic control of industries, an ideal in every way opposed
to the ideal of the majority of the members of the legislatures. The
fiction that representative assemblies will work for the general good is
proclaimed with enthusiasm; but the moment we examine their actions
we see it is not so, and we discover the cause. Where the nation is
capitalist and capitalism is the dominant economic factor, legislatures
invariably act to uphold it, and legislation tends to fix the system
more securely. We see in Great Britain that wage-earners are now openly
regarded by the legislatures as a class who must not be allowed the same
freedom in life as the wealthy. They must be registered, inspected,
and controlled in a way which the wealthy would bitterly resent if the
legislation referred to themselves. After economic inferiority has been
enforced on them by capital, the stigma of human inferiority is attached
to the wage-earners by the legislature. But I must not be led away from
my theme by the bitter reflections which arise in one who lives in the
Iron Age and knows it is Iron, who feels at times like the lost wanderer
on trackless fields of ice, which never melt and will not until earth
turns from its axis.
I wish to see society organized so that it shall be malleable to the
general will. But political and economic progress are obstructed because
existing political and economic organizations are almost entirely
unmalleable by the general will. Public opinion does not control the
press. The press, capitalistically controlled, creates public opinion.
Our legislators have grown so secure that they confess openly they have
passed measures which they knew would be hateful to the majority of
citizens, and which, if they had been voted on, would never have been
passed. The theory of representative government has broken down. To tell
the truth, the life of the nation is so complicated that it is difficult
for the private citizen to have any intelligent opinion about national
policies, and we can hardly blame the politician for despising the
judgment of the private citizen. Government departments are still less
malleable by public opinion than the legislature. For an individual to
attack the policy of a Government department is almost as hopeless a
proceeding as if a laborer were to take pickaxe and shovel and
determine to level a mountain which obstructed his view. Yet Government
departments are supposed to be under popular control. The Castle in
Ireland, theoretically, was under popular control, but it was adamantine
in policy. If the cant about popular control of legislation and
Government departments is obviously untrue, how much more is it
in regard to public services like railways, gas works, mines, the
distribution of goods, manufacture, purchase and sale, which are almost
entirely under private control and where public interference is bitterly
resented and effectively opposed. What chance has the individual who is
aggrieved against the great carrying companies? To come lower down,
let us take the farmer in the fairs. What way has he of influencing the
jobbers and dealers to act honestly by him--they who have formed rings
to keep down the prices of cattle? Are they malleable to public opinion?
The farmers who have waited all day through a fair know they are not.
When we consider the agencies through which people buy we find the same
thing. The increase of multiple shops, combines, and rings makes the use
of the limited power a man had to affect a dealer by transferring his
custom to another merchant to dwindle yearly. Everywhere we turn we
find this adamantine front presented by the legislature, the State
departments, by the agencies of production, distribution, or credit, and
it is the undemocratic organization of society which is responsible for
nine-tenths of our social troubles. All the vested interests backed up
by economic and political power conflict with the public welfare, and
the general will, which intends the good of all, can act no more than
a paralyzed cripple can walk. We would all choose the physique of the
athlete, with his swift, unfettered, easy movements, rather than the
body of the cripple if we could, and we have this choice before us in
Ireland.
If we concentrate our efforts mainly on voluntary action, striving
to make the co-operative spirit predominant, the general will would
manifest itself through organizations malleable to that will, flexible
and readily adjusting themselves to the desires of the community.
To effect reforms we have not first to labor at the gigantic task of
affecting national opinion and securing the majorities necessary for
national action. In any district a hundred or two hundred men can at
any time form co-operative societies for production, purchase, sale, or
credit, and can link themselves by federation with other organizations
like their own to secure greater strength and economic efficiency. By
following this policy steadily we simplify our economic system, and
reduce to fewer factors the forces in conflict in society. We beget the
predominance of one principle, and enable that general will for good,
which Rousseau theorized about, to find agencies through which it can
manifest freely, so changing society from the static condition begot
by conflict and obstruction to a dynamic condition where energies and
desires manifest freely.
The general will, as Rousseau demonstrated, always intends the good, and
if permitted to act would act in a large and noble way. The change from
static to dynamic, from fixed forms to fluid forms, has been coming
swiftly over the world owing to the liberation of thought, and this in
spite of the obstruction of a society organized, I might almost say,
with egomania as the predominant psychological factor. The ancient
conception of Nature as a manifestation of spirit is incarnating anew
in the minds of modern thinkers, and Nature is not conceived of as
material, but as force and continual motion; and they are trying to
identify human will with this arcane energy, and let the forces of
Nature have freer play in humanity. We begin to catch glimpses of
civilizations as far exceeding ours as ours surpasses society in the
Stone Age. In all our democratic movements, in these efforts towards
the harmonious fusion of human forces, humanity is obscurely intent
on mightier collective exploits than anything conceived of before. The
nature of these energies manifesting in humanity I shall try to indicate
later on. But to let the general will have free play ought to be the
aim of those who wish to build up national organizations for whatever
purpose; and to let the general will have free play we require something
better than the English invention of representative government, which,
as it exists at present, is simply a device to enable all kinds of
compromises to be made on matters where there should be no compromise,
as if right and wrong could come to an agreement honestly to let things
be partly right and partly wrong. We are importing into Ireland some
political machinery of this antiquated pattern. I have written the
foregoing because I dread Irish people becoming slaves of this machine.
I fear the importers of this machinery will desire to make it do things
it can only do badly, and will set it to work with the ferocity of the
new broom and will make it an obstruction, so that the real genius of
the Irish people will be unable freely to manifest itself. The less we
rely on this machinery at present, and the more we desire a machinery of
progress, at once flexible and efficient, the better will it be for us
later on. What must be embodied in State action is the national will
and the national soul, and until that giant being is manifested it is
dangerous to let the pygmies set powers in motion which may enchain us
for centuries to come.