DISCOVERY OF THE STATE
If we look in the wrong place for the public we shall never locate
the state. If we do not ask what are the conditions which promote
and obstruct the organization of the public into a social group with
definite functions, we shall never grasp the problem involved in the
development and transformation of states. If we do not perceive that
this organization is equivalent to the equipment of the public with
official representatives to care for the interests of the public, we
shall miss the clew to the nature of government. These are conclusions
reached or suggested by the discussion of the last hour. The wrong
place to look, as we saw, is in the realm of alleged causal agency,
of authorship, of forces which are supposed to produce a state by an
intrinsic _vis genetrix_. The state is not created as a direct result
of organic contacts as offspring are conceived in the womb, nor by
direct conscious intent as a machine is invented, nor by some brooding
indwelling spirit, whether a personal deity or a metaphysical absolute
will. When we seek for the origin of states in such sources as these,
a realistic regard for facts compels us to conclude in the end that we
find nothing but singular persons, you, they, me. We shall then be
driven, unless we have recourse to mysticism, to decide that the public
is born in a myth and is sustained by superstition.
There are many answers to the question: What is the public?
Unfortunately many of them are only restatements of the question.
Thus we are told that the public is the community as a whole,
and a-community-as-a-whole is supposed to be a self-evident and
self-explanatory phenomenon. But a community as a _whole_ involves
not merely a variety of associative ties which hold persons together
in diverse ways, but an organization of all elements by an integrated
principle. And this is precisely what we are in search of. Why should
there be anything of the nature of an all-inclusive and regulative
unity? If we postulate such a thing, surely the institution which alone
would answer to it is humanity, not the affairs which history exhibits
as states. The notion of an inherent universality in the associative
force at once breaks against the obvious fact of a plurality of states,
each localized, with its boundaries, limitations, its indifference and
even hostility to other states. The best that metaphysical monistic
philosophies of politics can do with this fact is to ignore it. Or,
as in the case of Hegel and his followers, a mythical philosophy of
history is constructed to eke out the deficiencies of a mythical
doctrine of statehood. The universal spirit seizes upon one temporal
and local nation after another as the vehicle for its objectification
of reason and will.
Such considerations as these reinforce our proposition that the
perception of consequences which are projected in important ways
beyond the persons and associations directly concerned in them is
the source of a public; and that its organization into a state is
effected by establishing special agencies to care for and regulate
these consequences. But they also suggest that actual states exhibit
traits which perform the function that has been stated and which serve
as marks of anything to be called a state. Discussion of these traits
will define the nature of the public and the problem of its political
organization, and will also operate to test our theory.
We can hardly select a better trait to serve as a mark and sign of
the nature of a state than a point just mentioned, temporal and
geographical localization. There are associations which are too narrow
and restricted in scope to give rise to a public, just as there are
associations too isolated from one another to fall within the same
public. Part of the problem of discovery of a public capable of
organization into a state is that of drawing lines between the too
close and intimate and the too remote and disconnected. Immediate
contiguity, face to face relationships, have consequences which
generate a community of interests, a sharing of values, too direct and
vital to occasion a need for political organization. Connections within
a family are familiar; they are matters of immediate acquaintance and
concern. The so-called blood-tie which has played such a part in
demarcation of social units is largely imputed on the basis of sharing
immediately in the results of conjoint behavior. What one does in the
household affects others directly and the consequences are appreciated
at once and in an intimate way. As we say, they “come home.” Special
organization to care for them is a superfluity. Only when the tie has
extended to a union of families in a clan and of clans in a tribe
do consequences become so indirect that special measures are called
for. The neighborhood is constituted largely on the same pattern of
association that is exemplified in the family. Custom and measures
improvised to meet special emergencies as they arise suffice for its
regulation.
Consider the village in Wiltshire so beautifully described by Hudson:
“Each house has its center of human life with life of bird and beast,
and the centers were in touch with one another, connected like a row
of children linked together by their hands; all together forming
one organism, instinct with one life, moved by one mind, like a
many-colored serpent lying at rest, extended at full length upon the
ground. I imagined the case of a cottager at one end of the village
occupied in chopping up a tough piece of wood or stump and accidentally
letting fall his heavy sharp axe on to his foot, inflicting a grievous
wound. The tidings of the accident would fly from mouth to mouth to
the other extremity of the village, a mile distant; not only would
each villager quickly know of it, but have at the same time a vivid
mental image of his fellow villager at the moment of his misadventure,
the sharp glittering axe falling on to his foot, the red blood flowing
from the wound; and he would at the same time feel the wound in his
own foot and the shock to his system. In like manner all thoughts and
feelings would pass freely from one to another, though not necessarily
communicated by speech; and all would be participants in virtue of
that sympathy and solidarity uniting the members of a small isolated
community. No one would be capable of a thought or emotion which
would seem strange to the others. The temper, the mood, the outlook
of the individual and the village, would be the same.”[1] With such a
condition of intimacy, the state is an impertinence.
For long periods of human history, especially in the Orient, the state
is hardly more than a shadow thrown upon the family and neighborhood
by remote personages, swollen to gigantic form by religious beliefs.
It rules but it does not regulate; for its rule is confined to receipt
of tribute and ceremonial deference. Duties are within the family;
property is possessed by the family. Personal loyalties to elders
take the place of political obedience. The relationships of husband
and wife, parent and children, older and younger children, friend and
friend, are the bonds from which authority proceeds. Politics is not a
branch of morals; it is submerged in morals. All virtues are summed up
in filial piety. Wrongdoing is culpable because it reflects upon one’s
ancestry and kin. Officials are known but only to be shunned. To submit
a dispute to them is a disgrace. The measure of value of the remote
and theocratic state lies in what it does _not_ do. Its perfection is
found in its identification with the processes of nature, in virtue of
which the seasons travel their constant round, so that fields under
the beneficent rule of sun and rain produce their harvest, and the
neighborhood prospers in peace. The intimate and familiar propinquity
group is not a social unity within an inclusive whole. It is, for
almost all purposes, society itself.
At the other limit there are social groups so separated by rivers, seas
and mountains, by strange languages and gods, that what one of them
does--save in war--has no appreciable consequences for another. There
is therefore no common interest, no public, and no need nor possibility
of an inclusive state. The plurality of states is such a universal and
notorious phenomenon that it is taken for granted. It does not seem to
require explanation. But it sets up, as we have noted, a test difficult
for some theories to meet. Except upon the basis of a freakish
limitation in the common will and reason which is alleged to be the
foundation of the state, the difficulty is insuperable. It is peculiar,
to say the least, that universal reason should be unable to cross a
mountain range and objective will be balked by a river current. The
difficulty is not so great for many other theories. But only the theory
which makes recognition of consequences the critical factor can find in
the fact of many states a corroborating trait. Whatever is a barrier
to the spread of the consequences of associated behavior by that very
fact operates to set up political boundaries. The explanation is as
commonplace as is the thing to be explained.
Somewhere between associations that are narrow, close and intimate and
those which are so remote as to have only infrequent and casual contact
lies, then, the province of a state. We do not find and should not
expect to find sharp and fast demarcations. Villages and neighborhoods
shade imperceptibly into a political public. Different states may pass
through federations and alliances into a larger whole which has some of
the marks of statehood. This condition, which we should anticipate in
virtue of the theory, is confirmed by historical facts. The wavering
and shifting line of distinction between a state and other forms of
social union is, again, an obstacle in the way of theories of the
state which imply as their concrete counterpart something as sharply
marked off as is the concept. On the basis of empirical consequences,
it is just the sort of thing which should occur. There are empires
due to conquest where political rule exists only in forced levies of
taxes and soldiers, and in which, though the word state may be used,
the characteristic signs of a public are notable for their absence.
There are political communities like the city-states of ancient Greece
in which the fiction of common descent is a vital factor, in which
household gods and worship are replaced by community divinities,
shrines, and cults: states in which much of the intimacy of the vivid
and prompt personal touch of the family endures, while there has been
added the transforming inspiration of a varied, freer, fuller life,
whose issues are so momentous that in comparison the life of the
neighborhood is parochial and that of the household dull.
Multiplicity and constant transformation in the forms which the state
assumes are as comprehensible upon the hypothesis proposed as is
the numerical diversity of independent states. The consequences of
conjoint behavior differ in kind and in range with changes in “material
culture,” especially those involved in exchange of raw materials,
finished products and above all in technology, in tools, weapons and
utensils. These in turn are immediately affected by inventions in
means of transit, transportation and intercommunication. A people
that lives by tending flocks of sheep and cattle adapts itself to
very different conditions than those of a people which ranges freely,
mounted on horses. One form of nomadism is usually peaceful; the other
warlike. Roughly speaking, tools and implements determine occupations,
and occupations determine the consequences of associated activity.
In determining consequences, they institute publics with different
interests, which exact different types of political behavior to care
for them.
In spite of the fact that diversity of political forms rather than
uniformity is the rule, belief in _the_ state as an archetypal entity
persists in political philosophy and science. Much dialectical
ingenuity has been expended in construction of an essence or intrinsic
nature in virtue of which any particular association is entitled to
have applied to it the concept of statehood. Equal ingenuity has been
expended in explaining away all divergencies from this morphological
type, and (the favored device) in ranking states in a hierarchical
order of value as they approach the defining essence. The idea that
there is a model pattern which makes a state a _good_ or true state
has affected practice as well as theory. It, more than anything else,
is responsible for the effort to form constitutions offhand and impose
them ready-made on peoples. Unfortunately, when the falsity of this
view was perceived, it was replaced by the idea that states “grow” or
develop instead of being made. This “growth” did not mean simply that
states alter. Growth signified an evolution through regular stages to
a predetermined end because of some intrinsic nisus or principle. This
theory discouraged recourse to the only method by which alterations
of political forms might be directed: namely, the use of intelligence
to judge consequences. Equally with the theory which it displaced, it
presumed the existence of a single standard form which defines _the_
state as the essential and true article. After a false analogy with
physical science, it was asserted that only the assumption of such
a uniformity of process renders a “scientific” treatment of society
possible. Incidentally, the theory flattered the conceit of those
nations which, being politically “advanced,” assumed that they were so
near the apex of evolution as to wear the crown of statehood.
The hypothesis presented makes possible a consistently empirical
or _historical_ treatment of the changes in political forms and
arrangements, free from any overriding conceptual domination such as is
inevitable when a “true” state is postulated, whether that be thought
of as deliberately made or as evolving by its own inner law. Intrusions
from non-political internal occurrences, industrial and technological,
and from external events, borrowings, travel, migrations, explorations,
wars, modify the consequences of preëxisting associations to such an
extent that new agencies and functions are necessitated. Political
forms are also subject to alterations of a more indirect sort.
Developments of better methods of thinking bring about observation of
consequences which were concealed from a vision which used coarser
intellectual tools. Quickened intellectual insight also makes possible
invention of new political devices. Science has not indeed played a
large rôle. But intuitions of statesmen and of political theorists
have occasionally penetrated into the operations of social forces
in such a way that a new turn has been given to legislation and to
administration. There is a margin of toleration in the body politic
as well as in an organic body. Measures not in any sense inevitable
are accommodated to after they have once been taken; and a further
diversity is thereby introduced in political manners.
In short, the hypothesis which holds that publics are constituted by
recognition of extensive and enduring indirect consequences of acts
accounts for the relativity of states, while the theories which define
them in terms of specific causal authorship imply an absoluteness which
is contradicted by facts. The attempt to find by the “comparative
method” structures which are common to antique and modern, to
occidental and oriental states, has involved a great waste of industry.
The only constant is the function of caring for and regulating the
interests which accrue as the result of the complex indirect expansion
and radiation of conjoint behavior.
We conclude, then, that temporal and local diversification is a prime
mark of political organization, and one which, when it is analyzed,
supplies a confirming test of our theory. A second mark and evidence
is found in an otherwise inexplicable fact that the quantitative
scope of results of conjoint behavior generates a public with need
for organization. As we already noted, what are now crimes subject
to public cognizance and adjudication were once private ebullitions,
having the status now possessed by an insult proffered by one to
another. An interesting phase of the transition from the relatively
private to the public, at least from a limited public to a larger one,
is seen in the development in England of the King’s Peace. Justice
until the twelfth century was administered mainly by feudal and shire
courts, courts of hundreds, etc. Any lord who had a sufficient number
of subjects and tenants decided controversies and imposed penalties.
The court and justice of the king was but one among many, and primarily
concerned with royalty’s tenants, servants, properties and dignities.
The monarchs wished, however, to increase their revenues and expand
their power and prestige. Various devices were invented and fictions
set up by means of which the jurisdiction of kingly courts was
extended. The method was to allege that various offenses, formerly
attended to by local courts, were infractions of the king’s peace. The
centralizing movement went on till the king’s justice had a monopoly.
The instance is significant. A measure instigated by desire to increase
the power and profit of the royal dynasty became an impersonal public
function by bare extension. The same sort of thing has repeatedly
occurred when personal prerogatives have passed into normal political
processes. Something of the same sort is manifested in contemporary
life when modes of private business become “affected with a public
interest” because of quantitative expansion.
A converse instance is presented in transfer from public to private
domain of religious rites and beliefs. As long as the prevailing
mentality thought that the consequences of piety and irreligion
affected the entire community, religion was of necessity a public
affair. Scrupulous adherence to the customary cult was of the highest
political import. Gods were tribal ancestors or founders of the
community. They granted communal prosperity when they were duly
acknowledged and were the authors of famine, pestilence and defeat in
war if their interests were not zealously attended to. Naturally when
religious acts had such extended consequences, temples were public
buildings, like the agora and forum; rites were civic functions and
priests public officials. Long after theocracy vanished, theurgy was a
political institution. Even when disbelief was rife, few there were who
would run the risk of neglecting the ceremonials.
The revolution by which piety and worship were relegated to the
private sphere is often attributed to the rise of personal conscience
and assertion of its rights. But this rise is just the thing to be
accounted for. The supposition that it was there all the time in a
submerged condition and finally dared to show itself reverses the
order of events. Social changes, both intellectual and in the internal
composition and external relations of peoples, took place so that men
no longer connected attitudes of reverence or disrespect to the gods
with the weal and woe of the community. Faith and unbelief still had
serious consequences, but these were now thought to be confined to the
temporal and eternal happiness of the persons directly concerned.
Given the other belief, and persecution and intolerance are as
justifiable as is organized hostility to any crime; impiety is the most
dangerous of all threats to public peace and well-being. But social
changes gradually effected as one of the new functions of the life of
the community the rights of private conscience and creed.
In general, behavior in intellectual matters has moved from the public
to the private realm. This radical change was, of course, urged and
justified on the ground of intrinsic and sacred private right. But,
as in the special case of religious beliefs, it is strange, if this
reason be accepted, that mankind lived so long in total unawareness of
the existence of the right. In fact, the idea of a purely private area
of consciousness, where whatever goes on has no external consequences,
was in the first instance a product of institutional change, political
and ecclesiastic, although, like other beliefs, once it was established
it had political results. The observation that the interests of the
community are better cared for when there is permitted a large measure
of personal judgment and choice in the formation of intellectual
conclusions, is an observation which could hardly have been made until
social mobility and heterogeneity had brought about initiation and
invention in technological matters and industry, and until secular
pursuits had become formidable rivals to church and state. Even yet,
however, toleration in matters of judgment and belief is largely a
negative matter. We agree to leave one another alone (within limits)
more from recognition of evil consequences which have resulted from
the opposite course rather than from any profound belief in its
positive social beneficence. As long as the latter consequence is not
widely perceived, the so-called natural right to private judgment will
remain a somewhat precarious rationalization of the moderate amount of
toleration which has come into being. Such phenomena as the Ku Klux
and legislative activity to regulate science show that the belief in
liberty of thought is still superficial.
If I make an appointment with a dentist or doctor, the transaction
is primarily between us. It is my health which is affected and his
pocket-book, skill and reputation. But exercise of the professions
has consequences so widespread that the examination and licensing of
persons who practice them becomes a public matter. John Smith buys or
sells real estate. The transaction is effected by himself and some
other person. Land, however, is of prime importance to society, and the
private transaction is hedged about with legal regulations; evidence
of transfer and ownership has to be recorded with a public official in
forms publicly prescribed. The choice of a mate and the act of sexual
union are intimately personal. But the act is the condition of bearing
of offspring who are the means of the perpetuation of the community.
The public interest is manifested in formalities which are necessary
to make a union legal and for its legal termination. Consequences, in
a word, affect large numbers beyond those immediately concerned in
the transaction. It is often thought that in a socialistic state the
formation and dissolution of marriages would cease to have a public
phase. It is possible. But it is also possible that such a state would
be even more alive than is the community at present to the consequences
of the union of man and woman not only upon children but upon its
own well-being and stability. In that case certain regulations would
be relaxed, but there might be imposed stringent rules as to health,
economic capacity and psychologic compatibility as preconditions of
wedlock.
No one can take into account all the consequences of the acts he
performs. It is a matter of necessity for him, as a rule, to limit his
attention and foresight to matters which, as we say, are distinctively
his own business. Any one who looked too far abroad with regard to
the outcome of what he is proposing to do would, if there were no
general rules in existence, soon be lost in a hopelessly complicated
muddle of considerations. The man of most generous outlook has to
draw the line somewhere, and he is forced to draw it in whatever
concerns those closely associated with himself. In the absence of some
objective regulation, effects upon them are all he can be sure of in
any reasonable degree. Much of what is called selfishness is but the
outcome of limitation of observation and imagination. Hence when
consequences concern a large number, a number so mediately involved
that a person cannot readily prefigure how they are to be affected,
that number is constituted a public which intervenes. It is not merely
that the combined observations of a number cover more ground than those
of a single person. It is rather that the public itself, being unable
to forecast and estimate all consequences, establishes certain dikes
and channels so that actions are confined within prescribed limits, and
insofar have moderately predictable consequences.
The regulations and laws of the state are therefore misconceived when
they are viewed as commands. The “command” theory of common and statute
law is in reality a dialectical consequence of the theories, previously
criticized, which define the state in terms of an antecedent causation,
specifically of that theory which takes “will” to be the causal force
which generates the state. If a will is the origin of the state, then
state-action expresses itself in injunctions and prohibitions imposed
by its will upon the wills of subjects. Sooner or later, however,
the question arises as to the justification of the will which issues
commands. Why should the will of the rulers have more authority than
that of others? Why should the latter submit? The logical conclusion
is that the ground of obedience lies ultimately in superior force. But
this conclusion is an obvious invitation to trial of forces to see
where superior force lies. In fact the idea of authority is abolished,
and that of force substituted. The next dialectical conclusion is that
the will in question is something over and above any private will or
any collection of such wills: is some overruling “general will.” This
conclusion was drawn by Rousseau, and under the influence of German
metaphysics was erected into a dogma of a mystic and transcendent
absolute will, which in turn was not another name for force only
because it was identified with absolute reason. The alternative to one
or other of these conclusions is surrender of the causal authorship
theory and the adoption of that of widely distributed consequences,
which, when they are perceived, create a common interest and the need
of special agencies to care for it.
Rules of law are in fact the institution of conditions under which
persons make their arrangements with one another. They are structures
which canalize action; they are active forces only as are banks which
confine the flow of a stream, and are commands only in the sense in
which the banks command the current. If individuals had no stated
conditions under which they come to agreement with one another, any
agreement would either terminate in a twilight zone of vagueness
or would have to cover such an enormous amount of detail as to be
unwieldy and unworkable. Each agreement, moreover, might vary so from
every other that nothing could be inferred from one arrangement as
to the probable consequences of any other. Legal rules state certain
conditions which when met make an agreement a contract. The terms of
the agreement are thereby canalized within manageable limits, and it
is possible to generalize and predict from one to another. Only the
exigencies of a theory lead one to hold that there is a command that
an agreement be made in such and such a form.[2] What happens is that
certain conditions are set such that _if_ a person conform to them, he
can count on certain consequences, while if he fails to do so he cannot
forecast consequences. He takes a chance and runs the risk of having
the whole transaction invalidated to his loss. There is no reason
to interpret even the “prohibitions” of criminal law in any other
way. Conditions are stated in reference to consequences which may be
incurred if they are infringed or transgressed. We can similarly state
the undesirable results which will happen if a stream breaks through
its banks; if the stream were capable of foreseeing these consequences
and directing its behavior by the foresight, we might metaphorically
construe the banks as issuing a prohibition.
This account explains both the large arbitrary and contingent element
in laws and their plausible identification with reason, dissimilar
as are the two considerations. There are many transactions in which
the thing of chief importance is that consequences be determinate in
_some_ fashion rather than that they be determined by some inherent
principle to be just such and such. In other words, within limits it
is indifferent what results are fixed by the conditions settled upon;
what is important is that the consequences be certain enough to be
predictable. The rule of the road is typical of a large number of
rules. So is the fixing of sunset or of a specified hour as the exact
time when the felonious entering of the premises of another takes on a
more serious quality. On the other hand, rules of law are reasonable
so that “reason” is appealed to by some as their fount and origin on
the ground pointed out by Hume.[3] Men are naturally shortsighted,
and the shortsightedness is increased and perverted by the influence
of appetite and passion. “The law” formulates remote and long-run
consequences. It then operates as a condensed available check on the
naturally overweening influence of immediate desire and interest over
decision. It is a means of doing for a person what otherwise only his
own foresight, if thoroughly reasonable, could do. For a rule of law,
although it may be laid down because of a special act as its occasion,
is formulated in view of an indefinite variety of other possible
acts. It is necessarily a generalization; for it is generic as to the
predictable consequences of a _class_ of facts. If the incidents of a
particular occasion exercise undue influence upon the content of a rule
of law, it will soon be overruled, either explicitly or by neglect.
Upon this theory, the law as “embodied reason” means a formulated
generalization of means and procedures in behavior which are adapted
to secure what is wanted. Reason expresses a function, not a causal
origin. Law is reasonable as a man is sensible who selects and arranges
conditions adapted to produce the ends he regards as desirable. A
recent writer, who regards “reason” as that which generates laws, says,
“A debt does not in reason cease to be a debt because time has passed,
but the law sets up a limitation. A trespass does not cease in reason
to be a trespass because it is indefinitely repeated, yet the law shows
a tendency to admit an unresisted trespass in time to the status of
right. Time, distance and chance are indifferent to pure reason; but
they play their part in the legal order.”[4] But if reasonableness is
a matter of adaptation of means to consequences, time and distance are
things to be given great weight; for they effect both consequences and
the ability to foresee them and to act upon them. Indeed, we might
select statutes of limitation as excellent examples of the kind of
rationality the law contains. Only if reason is looked upon as “pure,”
that is as a matter of formal logic, do the instances cited manifest
limitation of reason.
A third mark of the public organized as a state, a mark which also
provides a test of our hypothesis, is that it is concerned with modes
of behavior which are old and hence well established, engrained.
Invention is a peculiarly personal act, even when a number of persons
combine to make something new. A novel idea is the kind of thing
that has to occur to somebody in the singular sense. A new project
is something to be undertaken and set agoing by private initiative.
The newer an idea or plan, the more it deviates from what is already
recognized and established in practice. By the nature of the case an
innovation is a departure from the customary. Hence the resistance it
is likely to encounter. We, to be sure, live in an era of discoveries
and inventions. Speaking generically, innovation itself has become a
custom. Imagination is wonted to it; it is expected. When novelties
take the form of mechanical appliances, we incline to welcome them. But
this is far from always having been the case. The rule has been to look
with suspicion and greet with hostility the appearance of anything new,
even a tool or utensil. For an innovation _is_ a departure, and one
which brings in its train some incalculable disturbance of the behavior
to which we have grown used and which seems “natural.” As a recent
writer has clearly shown, inventions have made their way insidiously;
and because of some immediate convenience. If their effects, their
long-run consequences, in altering habits of behavior had been
foreseen, it is safe to say that most of them would have been destroyed
as wicked, just as many of them were retarded in adoption because they
were felt to be sacrilegious.[5] In any case, we cannot think of their
invention being the work of the state.[6]
The organized community is still hesitant with reference to new ideas
of a non-technical and non-technological nature. They are felt to
be disturbing to social behavior; and rightly so, as far as old and
established behavior is concerned. Most persons object to having
their habits unsettled, their habits of belief no less than habits
of overt action. A new idea _is_ an unsettling of received beliefs;
otherwise, it would not be a new idea. This is only to say that the
production of new ideas is peculiarly a private performance. About the
most we can ask of the state, judging from states which have so far
existed, is that it put up with their production by private individuals
without undue meddling. A state which will organize to manufacture and
disseminate new ideas and new ways of thinking may come into existence
some time, but such a state is a matter of faith, not sight. When it
comes it will arrive because the beneficial consequences of new ideas
have become an article of common faith and repute. It may, indeed, be
said that even now the state provides those conditions of security
which are necessary if private persons are to engage effectually
in discovery and invention. But this service is a by-product; it
is foreign to the grounds on which the conditions in question are
maintained by the public. And it must be offset by noting the extent to
which the state of affairs upon which the public heart is most set is
unfavorable to thinking in other than technical lines. In any case, it
is absurd to expect the public, because it is called in no matter how
eulogistic a sense the state, to rise above the intellectual level of
its average constituents.
When, however, a mode of behavior has become old and familiar, and when
an instrumentality has come into use as a matter of course, provided
it is a prerequisite of other customary pursuits, it tends to come
within the scope of the state. An individual may make his own track in
a forest; but highways are usually public concerns. Without roads which
one is free to use at will, men might almost as well be castaways on
a desert island. Means of transit and communication affect not only
those who utilize them but all who are dependent in any way upon what
is transported, whether as producers or consumers. The increase of easy
and rapid intercommunication means that production takes place more and
more for distant markets and it puts a premium upon mass-production.
Thus it becomes a disputed question whether railroads as well as
highways should not be administered by public officials, and in any
case some measure of official regulation is instituted, as they become
settled bases of social life.
The tendency to put what is old and established in uniform lines
under the regulation of the state has psychological support. Habits
economize intellectual as well as muscular energy. They relieve the
mind from thought of means, thus freeing thought to deal with new
conditions and purposes. Moreover, interference with a well-established
habit is followed by uneasiness and antipathy. The efficiency of
liberation from attention to whatever is regularly recurrent is
reënforced by an emotional tendency to get rid of bother. Hence there
is a general disposition to turn over activities which have become
highly standardized and uniform to representatives of the public. It
is possible that the time will come when not only railways will have
become routine in their operation and management, but also existing
modes of machine production, so that business men instead of opposing
public ownership will clamor for it in order that they may devote
their energies to affairs which involve more novelty, variation and
opportunities for risk and gain. They might conceivably, even under
a régime of continued private property in general, no more wish to
be bothered with routinized operations than they would want to take
over the care of public streets. Even now the question of the public’s
taking charge of the machinery of the manufacture of goods is less a
matter of wholesale “individualism” versus “socialism” than it is of
the ratio of the experimental and novel in their management to the
habitual and matter-of-course; of that which is taken for granted as
a condition of other things to that which is significant in its own
operation.
A fourth mark of the public is indicated by the idea that children and
other dependents (such as the insane, the permanently helpless) are
peculiarly its wards. When the parties involved in any transaction are
unequal in status, the relationship is likely to be one-sided, and the
interests of one party to suffer. If the consequences appear serious,
especially if they seem to be irretrievable, the public brings to bear
a weight that will equalize conditions. Legislatures are more ready to
regulate the hours of labor of children than of adults, of women than
of men. In general, labor legislation is justified against the charge
that it violates liberty of contract on the ground that the economic
resources of the parties to the arrangement are so disparate that
the conditions of a genuine contract are absent; action by the state
is introduced to form a level on which bargaining takes place. Labor
unions often object, however, to such “paternalistic” legislation on
the ground that voluntary combinations to ensure collective bargaining
is better for those concerned than action taken without the active
participation of laborers. The general objection that paternalism tends
to keep those affected by it permanently in the status of children,
without an impetus to help themselves, rests on the same basis.
The difference here is nevertheless not as to the principle that
inequality of status may call for public intervention, but as to the
best means of securing and maintaining equality.
There has been a steady tendency for the education of children to be
regarded as properly a state charge in spite of the fact that children
are primarily the care of a family. But the period in which education
is possible to an effective degree is that of childhood; if this time
is not taken advantage of the consequences are irreparable. The neglect
can rarely be made up later. In the degree, then, that a certain
measure of instruction and training is deemed to have significant
consequences for the social body, rules are laid down affecting the
action of parents in relation to their children, and those who are not
parents are taxed--Herbert Spencer to the contrary notwithstanding--to
maintain schools. Again, the consequences of neglect of safeguards in
industries involving machines which are dangerous and those presenting
unhygienic conditions, are so serious and irretrievable that the modern
public has intervened to maintain conditions conducive to safety and
health. Movements which aim at insurance against illness and old-age
under governmental auspices illustrate the same principle. While public
regulation of a minimum wage is still a disputed matter, the argument
in behalf of it appeals to the criterion stated. The argument in effect
is that a living wage is a matter of such serious indirect consequences
to society that it cannot be safely left to the parties directly
concerned, owing to the fact that immediate need may incapacitate one
party to the transaction from effective bargaining.
In what has been said there is no attempt to lay down criteria to be
applied in a predetermined way to ensure just such and such results. We
are not concerned to predict the special forms which state action will
take in the future. We have simply been engaged in pointing out the
marks by which public action as distinct from private is characterized.
Transactions between singular persons and groups bring a public into
being when their indirect consequences--their effects beyond those
immediately engaged in them--are of importance. Vagueness is not
eliminated from the idea of importance. But at least we have pointed
out some of the factors which go to make up importance: namely, the
far-reaching character of consequences, whether in space or time; their
settled, uniform and recurrent nature, and their irreparableness. Each
one of these matters involves questions of degree. There is no sharp
and clear line which draws itself, pointing out beyond peradventure,
like the line left by a receding high tide, just where a public comes
into existence which has interests so significant that they must be
looked after and administered by special agencies, or governmental
officers. Hence there is often room for dispute. The line of
demarcation between actions left to private initiative and management
and those regulated by the state has to be discovered experimentally.
As we shall see later, there are assignable reasons why it will be
drawn very differently at different times and places. The very fact
that the public depends upon consequences of acts and the perception
of consequences, while its organization into a state depends upon the
ability to invent and employ special instrumentalities, shows how and
why publics and political institutions differ widely from epoch to
epoch and from place to place. To suppose that an _a priori_ conception
of the intrinsic nature and limits of the individual on one side and
the state on the other will yield good results once for all is absurd.
If, however, the state has a definite nature, as it should have if it
were formed by fixed causal agencies, or if individuals have a nature
fixed once for all apart from conditions of association, a final and
wholesale partitioning of the realms of personal and state activity is
the logical conclusion. The failure of such a theory to reach practical
solutions is, therefore, a further confirmation of the theory which
emphasizes the consequences of activity as the essential affair.
In conclusion, we shall make explicit what has been implied regarding
the relation to one another of public, government and state.[7] There
have been two extreme views about this point. On one hand, the state
has been identified with government. On the other hand, the state,
having a necessary existence of its own, _per se_, is said then to
proceed to form and employ certain agencies forming government, much
as a man hires servants and assigns them duties. The latter view is
appropriate when the causal agency theory is relied upon. Some force,
whether a general will or the singular wills of assembled individuals,
calls the state into being. Then the latter as a secondary operation
chooses certain persons through whom to act. Such a theory helps those
who entertain it to retain the idea of the inherent sanctity of the
state. Concrete political evils such as history exhibits in abundance
can be laid at the door of fallible and corrupt governments, while
the state keeps its honor unbesmirched. The identification of the
state with government has the advantage of keeping the mind’s eye
upon concrete and observable facts; but it involves an unaccountable
separation between rulers and people. If a government exists by itself
and on its own account, why should there be government? Why should
there persist the habits of loyalty and obedience which permit it to
rule?
The hypothesis which has been advanced frees us from the perplexities
which cluster about both of these two notions. The lasting, extensive
and serious consequences of associated activity bring into existence a
public. In itself it is unorganized and formless. By means of officials
and their special powers it becomes a state. A public articulated and
operating through representative officers is the state; there is no
state without a government, but also there is none without the public.
The officers are still singular beings, but they exercise new and
special powers. These may be turned to their private account. Then
government is corrupt and arbitrary. Quite apart from deliberate graft,
from using unusual powers for private glorification and profit, density
of mind and pomposity of behavior, adherence to class-interest and its
prejudices, are strengthened by position. “Power is poison” was the
remark of one of the best, shrewdest and most experienced observers
of Washington politicians. On the other hand, occupancy of office may
enlarge a man’s views and stimulate his social interest so that he
exhibits as a statesman traits foreign to his private life.
But since the public forms a state only by and through officials
and their acts, and since holding official position does not work
a miracle of transubstantiation, there is nothing perplexing nor
even discouraging in the spectacle of the stupidities and errors of
political behavior. The facts which give rise to the spectacle should,
however, protect us from the illusion of expecting extraordinary change
to follow from a mere change in political agencies and methods. Such
a change sometimes occurs, but when it does, it is because the social
conditions, in generating a new public, have prepared the way for it;
the state sets a formal seal upon forces already in operation by giving
them a defined channel through which to act. Conceptions of “The State”
as something _per se_, something intrinsically manifesting a general
will and reason, lend themselves to illusions. They make such a sharp
distinction between _the_ state and _a_ government that, from the
standpoint of the theories, a government may be corrupt and injurious
and yet The State by the same idea retain its inherent dignity and
nobility. Officials may be mean, obstinate, proud and stupid and
yet the nature of the state which they serve remain essentially
unimpaired. Since, however, a public is organized into a state through
its government, the state is as its officials are. Only through
constant watchfulness and criticism of public officials by citizens can
a state be maintained in integrity and usefulness.
The discussion also returns with some added illumination to the problem
of the relation of state and society. The problem of the relation of
individuals to associations--sometimes posed as the relation of _the_
individual to society--is a meaningless one. We might as well make
a problem out of the relation of the letters of an alphabet to the
alphabet. An alphabet is letters, and “society” is individuals in their
connections with one another. The mode of combination of letters with
one another is obviously a matter of importance; letters form words
and sentences when combined, and have no point nor sense except in
some combination. I would not say that the latter statement applies
literally to individuals, but it cannot be gainsaid that singular
human beings exist and behave in constant and varied association with
one another. These modes of conjoint action and their consequences
profoundly affect not only the outer habits of singular persons, but
their dispositions in emotion, desire, planning and valuing.
“Society,” however, is either an abstract or a collective noun. In
the concrete, there are societies, associations, groups of an immense
number of kinds, having different ties and instituting different
interests. They may be gangs, criminal bands; clubs for sport,
sociability and eating; scientific and professional organizations;
political parties and unions within them; families; religious
denominations, business partnerships and corporations; and so on
in an endless list. The associations may be local, nationwide and
trans-national. Since there is no one _thing_ which may be called
society, except their indefinite overlapping, there is no unqualified
eulogistic connotation adhering to the term “society.” Some societies
are in the main to be approved; some to be condemned, on account of
their consequences upon the character and conduct of those engaged
in them and because of their remoter consequences upon others. All
of them, like all things human, are mixed in quality; “society” is
something to be approached and judged critically and discriminatingly.
“Socialization” of some sort--that is, the reflex modification of
wants, beliefs and work because of share in a united action--is
inevitable. But it is as marked in the formation of frivolous,
dissipated, fanatical, narrow-minded and criminal persons as in that
of competent inquirers, learned scholars, creative artists and good
neighbors.
Confining our notice to the results which are desirable, it appears
that there is no reason for assigning all the values which are
generated and maintained by means of human associations to the
work of states. Yet the same unbridled generalizing and fixating
tendency of the mind which leads to a monistic fixation of society
has extended beyond the hypostatizing of “society” and produced a
magnified idealization of The State. All values which result from any
kind of association are habitually imputed by one school of social
philosophers to the state. Naturally the result is to place the state
beyond criticism. Revolt against the state is then thought to be the
one unforgivable social sin. Sometimes the deification proceeds from
a special need of the time, as in the cases of Spinoza and Hegel.
Sometimes it springs from a prior belief in universal will and reason
and a consequent need of finding some empirical phenomena which may
be identified with the externalization of this absolute spirit. Then
this is employed, by circular logic, as evidence for the existence of
such a spirit. The net import of our discussion is that a state is a
distinctive and secondary form of association, having a specifiable
work to do and specified organs of operation.
It is quite true that most states, after they have been brought into
being, react upon the primary groupings. When a state is a good state,
when the officers of the public genuinely serve the public interests,
this reflex effect is of great importance. It renders the desirable
associations solider and more coherent; indirectly it clarifies their
aims and purges their activities. It places a discount upon injurious
groupings and renders their tenure of life precarious. In performing
these services, it gives the individual members of valued associations
greater liberty and security: it relieves them of hampering conditions
which if they had to cope with personally would absorb their energies
in mere negative struggle against evils. It enables individual members
to count with reasonable certainty upon what others will do, and thus
facilitates mutually helpful coöperations. It creates respect for
others and for one’s self. A measure of the goodness of a state is the
degree in which it relieves individuals from the waste of negative
struggle and needless conflict and confers upon him positive assurance
and reënforcement in what he undertakes. This is a great service, and
there is no call to be niggardly in acknowledging the transformations
of group and personal action which states have historically effected.
But this recognition cannot be legitimately converted into the
monopolistic absorption of all associations into The State, nor of all
social values into political value. The all-inclusive nature of the
state signifies only that officers of the public (including, of course,
law-makers) may act so as to fix conditions under which _any_ form of
association operates; its comprehensive character refers only to the
impact of its behavior. A war like an earthquake may “include” in its
consequences all elements in a given territory, but the inclusion is
by way of effects, not by inherent nature or right. A beneficent law,
like a condition of general economic prosperity, may favorably affect
all interests in a particular region, but it cannot be called a whole
of which the elements influenced are parts. Nor can the liberating and
confirming results of public action be construed to yield a wholesale
idealization of states in contrast with other associations. For state
activity is often injurious to the latter. One of the chief occupations
of states has been the waging of war and the suppression of dissentient
minorities. Moreover, their action, even when benign, presupposes
values due to non-political forms of living together which are but
extended and reënforced by the public through its agents.
The hypothesis which we have supported has obvious points of contact
with what is known as the pluralistic conception of the state. It
presents also a marked point of difference. Our doctrine of plural
forms is a statement of a fact: that there exist a plurality of social
groupings, good, bad and indifferent. It is not a doctrine which
prescribes inherent limits to state action. It does not intimate that
the function of the state is limited to settling conflicts among other
groups, as if each one of them had a fixed scope of action of its own.
Were that true, the state would be only an umpire to avert and remedy
trespasses of one group upon another. Our hypothesis is neutral as to
any general, sweeping implications as to how far state activity may
extend. It does not indicate any particular polity of public action.
At times, the consequences of the conjoint behavior of some persons
may be such that a large public interest is generated which can be
fulfilled only by laying down conditions which involve a large measure
of reconstruction within that group. There is no more an inherent
sanctity in a church, trade-union, business corporation, or family
institution than there is in the state. Their value is also to be
measured by their consequences. The consequences vary with concrete
conditions; hence at one time and place a large measure of state
activity may be indicated and at another time a policy of quiescence
and _laissez-faire_. Just as publics and states vary with conditions of
time and place, so do the concrete functions which should be carried on
by states. There is no antecedent universal proposition which can be
laid down because of which the functions of a state should be limited
or should be expanded. Their scope is something to be critically and
experimentally determined.