purposes and objects, tactics and methods, of the various
forces now at work in the United States, and particularly
within the state of New York, which are seeking to undermine
and destroy, not only the government under which we live, but
also the very structure of American society. It also seeks to
analyze the various constructive forces which are at work
throughout the country counteracting these evil influences,
and to present the many industrial and social problems that
these constructive forces must meet and are meeting.
The plan is executed with laborious comprehensiveness, and one
unacquainted with the vast and varied range of so-called "radical"
utterances will be overwhelmed by the mass brought together. But our
aim here is to consider the attitude of mind and assumptions of the
editors and their sympathizers.
They admit the existence of "real grievances and natural demands of
the working classes for a larger share in the management and use of
the common wealth". It is these grievances and demands which the
agitators use as a basis of their machinations. Those bent on a social
revolution fall into two classes--socialists and anarchists. But while
the groups differ in detail, these details are not worth considering.
"Anyone who studies the propaganda of the various groups which we have
named will learn that the arguments employed are the same; that the
tactics advocated cannot be distinguished from one another, and that
articles, or speeches made on the question of tactics or methods by
anarchists, could, with propriety, be published in socialist, or
communist newspapers without offending the membership of these
organizations." So, fortunately for the reader, it is unnecessary to
make any distinctions between socialists, anarchists, communists, and
Bolsheviki. They all have the common purpose of overthrowing existing
society and "general strikes and sabotage are the direct means
advocated". The object is to drive business into bankruptcy by
reducing production and raising costs.[24]
But it would be a serious mistake to assume that the dangers are
confined to our industrial system. "The very first general fact that
must be driven home to Americans is that the pacifist movement in this
country, the growth and connections of which are an important part of
this report, is an absolutely integral and fundamental part of
international socialism." European socialism, from which ours is
derived, has had for one of its main purposes "the creation of an
international sentiment to supersede national patriotism and effort,
and this internationalism was based upon pacificism, in the sense that
it opposed all wars between nations and developed at the same time
class consciousness that was to culminate in relentless class warfare.
In other words, it was not really peace that was the goal, but the
abolition of the patriotic, warlike spirit of nationalities".
In view of the necessity of making head against this menace the
Criminal Anarchy statute of the State of New York was invoked, search
warrants issued, "large quantities of revolutionary, incendiary and
seditious written and printed matter were seized". After the refusal
of Governor Smith to sign them, the so-called Lusk educational bills
were repassed and signed by the Republican Governor Miller. No teacher
in the schools shall be licensed to teach who "has advocated, either
by word of mouth or in writing, a form of government other than the
government of the United States or of this state". Moreover, "No
person, firm, corporation, association, or society shall conduct,
maintain, or operate any school, institute, class, or course of
instruction in any subject without making application for and being
granted a license from the University of the State of New York [_i.
e_. the Regents]." The Regents shall have the right to send inspectors
to visit classes and schools so licensed and to revoke licenses if
they deem that an overthrow of the existing government by violence is
being taught.[25]
But the safe and sane philosophy by no means stops with the convenient
and compendious identification of socialists of all kinds, anarchists,
pacificists and internationalists, as belonging to one threatening
group united in a like-minded attempt to overthrow society as we now
know it. This class includes, it may be observed, such seemingly
distinguishable personalities as Trotzky and Miss Jane Addams, who are
assumed to be in essential harmony upon the great issue. But there are
many others who are perhaps the innocent tools of the socialists.
These include teachers, lecturers, writers, clergymen, and editors to
whom the Lusk report devotes a long section on "the spread of socialism
in educated circles". It is the purpose of this section
... to show the use made by members of the Socialist Party of America
and other extreme radicals and revolutionaries of pacifist sentiment
among people of education and culture in the United States as a
vehicle for the promotion of revolutionary socialistic propaganda.
The facts here related are important because they show that these
socialists, playing upon the pacifist sentiment in a large body of
sincere persons, were able to organize their energies and capitalize
their prestige for the spread of their doctrines. [P. 969.]
An instance of this is an article in the _New Republic_ which:
... includes more or less open attacks on Attorney-General Palmer,
Mr. Lansing, the House Immigration Committee, the New York _Times_,
Senator Fall, this Committee, etc. It also quotes the dissenting
opinions in the Abrams case of Justices Holmes and Brandeis, and
ends by making light of the danger of revolution in America: ...
This belittling of the very real danger to the institutions of this
country, as well as the attempted discrediting of any investigating
group (or individual), has become thoroughly characteristic of our
"Parlor Bolshevik" or "Intelligentsia". [P. 1103.]
So it comes about, as might indeed have been foreseen from the first,
that one finds himself, if not actually violating the criminal anarchy
statute, at least branded as a Bolshevik if he speaks slightingly of
the New York _Times_ or recalls the dissenting opinion of two judges
of the Supreme Court.
Moreover, as might have been anticipated, the issues prove to be at
bottom not so much economic as moral and religious, for "Materialism
and its formidable sons, Anarchy, Bolshevism, and Unrest, have thrown
down the gauge of battle" to all decency.
... What is of the greatest importance for churchmen to understand,
in order that they may not be led astray by specious arguments of
so-called Christian Socialists and so-called liberals and
self-styled partisans of free speech, is that socialism as a system,
as well as anarchism and all its ramifications, from high-brow
Bolshevism to the Russian Anarchist Association, are all the
declared enemies of religion and all recognized moral standards
and restraints. [P. 1124.]
We must not be misled by "false, specious idealism masquerading as
progress". The fight is one for God as well as country, in which all
forms of radicalism, materialism, and anarchy should be fiercely and
promptly stamped out.[26]
NOTES.
[21] Keynes, _The Economic Consequences of the Peace_, pp. 11-12.
[22] Tawney, R. H., _The Acquisitive Society_, pp. 183-184. The
original title of this admirable little work, a Fabian tract, was,
_The Sickness of an Acquisitive Society_, but the American publishers
evidently thought it inexpedient to stress the contention of the
author that modern society has anything fundamentally the matter with
it.
[23] _Revolutionary Radicalism, Its History, Purpose, and Tactics:
with an exposition and discussion of the steps being taken and
required to curb it, being the report of the Joint Legislative
Committee investigating seditious activities, filed April 24, 1920, in
the Senate of the state of New York._ This comprises four stout
volumes (over 4,200 pages in all) divided into two parts, dealing,
respectively, with "Revolutionary and Subversive Movements at Home and
Abroad" and "Constructive Movements and Measures in America". Albany,
1920.
[24] "While the nature of this investigation has led the committee to
lay its emphasis upon the activities of subversive organizations, it
feels that this report would not be complete if it did not state
emphatically that it believes that those persons in business and
commercial enterprise and certain owners of property who seek to take
advantage of the situation to reap inordinate gain from the public
contribute in no small part to the social unrest which affords the
radical a field of operation which otherwise would be closed to him."
(P. 10.)
[25] The general history throughout the United States of these and
similar measures, the interference with public meetings, the trials,
imprisonments, and censorship, are all set forth in Professor
Chaffee's _Freedom of Speech_, 1920.
[26] During the summer of 1921 the Vice-President of the United States
published in _The Delineator_ a series of three articles on "Enemies
of the Republic", in which he considers the question, "Are the 'reds'
stalking our college women?" He finds some indications that they are,
and warns his readers that, "Adherence to radical doctrines means the
ultimate breaking down of the old, sturdy virtues of manhood and
womanhood, the insidious destruction of character, the weakening of
the moral fiber of the individual, and the destruction of the
foundations of society." It may seem anomalous to some that the
defenders of the old, sturdy virtues should so carelessly brand honest
and thoughtful men and women, of whose opinions they can have no real
knowledge, as "enemies of the Republic"--but there is nothing whatever
anomalous in this. It has been the habit of defenders of the sturdy,
old virtues from time immemorial to be careless of others'
reputations.
* * * * *
VIII
Dans les sciences politiques, il est un ordre de vérités qui,
surtout chez les peuples libres ... ne peuvent être utiles, que
lorsqu'elles sont généralement connues et avouées. Ainsi,
l'influence du progrês de ces sciences sur la liberté, sur la
prospérité des nations, doivent en quelque sorts se mesurer sur
le nombre de ces vérités qui, par l'effet d'une instruction
élémentaire, deviennent commune à tous les esprits; ainsi les
progrès toujours croissants de cette instruction élémentaire,
liés eux mêmes aux progrès nécessaires de ces sciences, nous
répondent d'une amélioration dans les destinées de l'espèce
humaine qui peut être regardée comme indéfinie, puisqu'elle n'a
d'autres limites que celles de ces progrès mêmes.--CONDORCET.
16. SOME HISTORICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF REPRESSION
Of course the kind of reasoning and the presuppositions described in
the previous section will appeal to many readers as an illustration of
excessive and unjustifiable fear lest the present order be disturbed
--a frenzied impulse to rush to the defense of our threatened
institutions. Doubtless the Lusk report may quite properly be classed
as a mere episode in war psychology. Having armed to put down the
Germans and succeeded in so doing, the ardor of conflict does not
immediately abate, but new enemies are sought and easily discovered.
The hysteria of repression will probably subside, but it is now a
well-recognized fact that in disease, whether organic or mental, the
abnormal and excessive are but instructive exaggerations and
perversions of the usual course of things. They do not exist by
themselves, but represent the temporary and exaggerated functioning of
bodily and mental processes. The real question for us here is not
whether Senator Lusk is too fearful and too indiscriminate in his
denunciations, but whether he and his colleagues do not merely furnish
an overcharged and perhaps somewhat grotesque instance of man's
natural and impulsive way of dealing with social problems. It seems to
me that enough has already been said to lead us to suspect this.
At the outset of this volume the statement was hazarded that if only
men could come to look at things differently from the way they now
generally do, a number of our most shocking evils would either remedy
themselves or show themselves subject to gradual elimination or
hopeful reduction. Among these evils a very fundamental one is the
defensive attitude toward the criticism of our existing order and the
naïve tendency to class critics as enemies of society. It was argued
that a fuller understanding of the history of the race would
contribute to that essential freedom of mind which would welcome
criticism and permit fair judgments of its merits. Having reviewed the
arguments of those who would suppress criticism lest it lead to
violence and destruction, we may now properly recall in this
connection certain often neglected historical facts which serve to
weaken if not to discredit most of these arguments.
Man has never been able to adapt himself very perfectly to his
civilization, and there has always been a deal of injustice and
maladjustment which might conceivably have been greatly decreased by
intelligence. But now it would seem that this chronic distress has
become acute, and some careful observers express the quite honest
conviction that unless thought be raised to a far higher plane than
hitherto, some great setback to civilization is inevitable.
Yet instead of subjecting traditional ideas and rules to a
thoroughgoing reconsideration, our impulse is, as we have seen, to
hasten to justify existing and habitual notions of human conduct.
There are many who flatter themselves that by suppressing so-called
"radical" thought and its diffusion, the present system can be made to
work satisfactorily on the basis of ideas of a hundred or a hundred
thousand years ago.
While we have permitted our free thought in the natural sciences to
transform man's old world, we allow our schools and even our
universities to continue to inculcate beliefs and ideals which may or
may not have been appropriate to the past, but which are clearly
anachronisms now. For, the "social science" taught in our schools is,
it would appear, an orderly presentation of the conventional
proprieties, rather than a summons to grapple with the novel and
disconcerting facts that surround us on every side.
At the opening of the twentieth century the so-called sciences of man,
despite some progress, are, as has been pointed out, in much the same
position that the natural sciences were some centuries earlier. Hobbes
says of the scholastic philosophy that it went on one brazen leg and
one of an ass. This seems to be our plight to-day. Our scientific leg
is lusty and grows in strength daily; its fellow member--our thought
of man and his sorry estate--is capricious and halting. We have not
realized the hopes of the eighteenth-century "illumination", when
confident philosophers believed that humanity was shaking off its
ancient chains; that the clouds of superstition were lifting, and that
with the new achievements of science man would boldly and rapidly
advance toward hitherto undreamed-of concord and happiness. We can no
longer countenance the specious precision of the English classical
school of economics, whose premises have been given the lie by further
thought and experience. We have really to start anew.
The students of natural phenomena early realized the arduous path they
had to travel. They had to escape, above all things, from the past.
They perceived that they could look for no help from those whose
special business it was to philosophize and moralize in terms of the
past. They had to look for light in their own way and in the
directions from which they conjectured it might come. Their first
object was, as Bacon put it, _light_, not _fruit_. They had to learn
before they could undertake changes, and Descartes is very careful to
say that philosophic doubt was not to be carried over to daily
conduct. This should for the time being conform to accepted standards,
unenlightened as they might be.
Such should be the frame of mind of one who seeks insight into human
affairs. His subject matter is, however, far more intricate and
unmanageable than that of the natural scientist. Experiment on which
natural science has reared itself is by no means so readily applicable
in studying mankind and its problems. The student of humanity has even
more inveterate prejudices to overcome, more inherent and cultivated
weaknesses of the mind to guard against, than the student of nature.
Like the early scientists, he has a scholastic tradition to combat. He
can look for little help from the universities as now constituted. The
clergy, although less sensitive in regard to what they find in the
Bible, are still stoutly opposed, on the whole, to any thoroughgoing
criticism of the standards of morality to which they are accustomed.
Few lawyers can view their profession with any considerable degree of
detachment. Then there are the now all-potent business interests,
backed by the politicians and in general supported by the
ecclesiastical, legal, and educational classes. Many of the newspapers
and magazines are under their influence, since they are become the
business man's heralds and live off his bounty.
Business indeed has almost become our religion; it is defended by the
civil government even as the later Roman emperors and the mediaeval
princes protected the Church against attack. Socialists and communists
are the Waldensians and Albigensians of our day, heretics to be cast
out, suppressed, and deported to Russia, if not directly to hell as of
old.
The Secret Service seems inclined to play the part of a modern
Inquisition, which protects our new religion. Collected in its
innumerable files is the evidence in regard to suspected heretics who
have dared impugn "business as usual", or who have dwelt too lovingly
on peace and good will among nations. Books and pamphlets, although no
longer burned by the common hangman, are forbidden the mails by
somewhat undiscerning officials. We have a pious vocabulary of high
resentment and noble condemnation, even as they had in the Middle
Ages, and part of it is genuine, if unintelligent, as it was then.
Such are some of the obstacles which the student of human affairs must
surmount. Yet we may hope that it will become increasingly clear that
the repression of criticism (even if such criticism becomes
fault-finding and takes the form of a denunciation of existing habits
and institutions) is inexpedient and inappropriate to the situation in
which the world finds itself. Let us assume that such people as really
advocate lawlessness and disorder should be carefully watched and
checked if they promise to be a cause of violence and destruction. But
is it not possible to distinguish between them and those who question
and even arraign with some degree of heat the standardized unfairness
and maladjustments of our times?
And there is another class who cannot by any exaggeration be
considered agitators, who have by taking thought come to see that our
conditions have so altered in the past hundred years and our knowledge
so increased that the older ways of doing and viewing things are not
only unreasonable, but actually dangerous. But so greatly has the
hysteria of war unsettled the public mind that even this latter class
is subject to discreditable accusations and some degree of
interference.
We constantly hear it charged that this or that individual or group
advocates the violent overthrow of government, is not loyal to the
Constitution, or is openly or secretly working for the abolition of
private property or the family, or, in general, is supposed to be
eager to "overturn everything without having anything to put in its
place".
The historical student may well recommend that we be on our guard
against such accusations brought against groups and individuals. For
the student of history finds that it has always been the custom to
charge those who happened to be unpopular, with holding beliefs and
doing things which they neither believed nor did. Socrates was
executed for corrupting youth and infidelity to the gods; Jesus for
proposing to overthrow the government; Luther was to the officials of
his time one who taught "a loose, self-willed life, severed from all
laws and wholly brutish".
Those who questioned the popular delusions in regard to witchcraft
were declared by clergymen, professors, and judges of the seventeenth
century to be as good as atheists, who shed doubt on the devil's
existence in order to lead their godless lives without fear of future
retribution. How is it possible, in view of this inveterate habit of
mankind, to accept at its face value what the police or Department of
Justice, or self-appointed investigators, choose to report of the
teachings of people who are already condemned in their eyes?
Of course the criticism of accepted ideas is offensive and will long
remain so. After all, talk and writing are forms of conduct, and, like
all conduct, are inevitably disagreeable when they depart from the
current standards of respectable behavior. To talk as if our
established notions of religion, morality, and property, our ideas of
stealing and killing, were defective and in need of revision, is
indeed more shocking than to violate the current rules of action. For
we are accustomed to actual crimes, misdemeanors, and sins, which are
happening all the time, but we will not tolerate any suspected attempt
to palliate them in theory.
It is inevitable that new views should appear to the thoughtless to be
justifications or extenuations of evil actions and an encouragement of
violence and rebellion, and that they will accordingly be bitterly
denounced. But there is no reason why an increase of intelligence
should not put a growing number of us on our guard against this
ancient pitfall.
If we are courageously to meet and successfully to overcome the
dangers with which our civilization is threatened, it is clear that we
need _more mind_ than ever before. It is also clear that we can have
indefinitely more mind than we already have if we but honestly desire
it and avail ourselves of resources already at hand. Mind, as
previously defined, is our "conscious knowledge and intelligence, what
we know and our attitude toward it--our disposition to increase our
information, classify it, criticize it, and apply it". _It is obvious
that in this sense the mind is a matter of accumulation and that it
has been in the making ever since man took his first step in
civilization._ I have tried to suggest the manner in which man's long
history illuminates our plight and casts light on the path to be
followed. And history is beginning to take account of the knowledge of
man's nature and origin contributed by the biologist and the
anthropologist and the newer psychologists.
Few people realize the hopeful revolution that is already beginning to
influence the aims and methods of all these sciences of man. No
previous generation of thinkers has been so humble on the whole as is
that of to-day, so ready to avow their ignorance and to recognize the
tendency of each new discovery to reveal further complexities in the
problem. On the other hand, we are justified in feeling that at last
we have the chance to start afresh. We are freer than any previous age
from the various prepossessions and prejudices which we now see
hampered the so-called "free" thinking of the eighteenth century.
The standards and mood of natural science are having an increasing
influence in stimulating eager research into human nature, beliefs,
and institutions. With Bacon's recommendations of the study of common
_things_ the human mind entered a new stage of development. Now that
historic forces have brought the common _man_ to the fore, we are
submitting him to scientific study and gaining thereby that elementary
knowledge of his nature which needs to be vastly increased and spread
abroad, since it can form the only possible basis for a successful and
real democracy.