THE DEMOCRATIC STATE
Singular persons are the foci of action, mental and moral, as well
as overt. They are subject to all kinds of social influences which
determine _what_ they can think of, plan and choose. The conflicting
streams of social influence come to a single and conclusive issue
only in personal consciousness and deed. When a public is generated,
the same law holds. It arrives at decisions, makes terms and executes
resolves only through the medium of individuals. They are officers;
they represent a Public, but the Public acts only through them. We
say in a country like our own that legislators and executives are
elected by the public. The phrase might appear to indicate that the
Public acts. But, after all, individual men and women exercise the
franchise; the public is here a collective name for a multitude of
persons each voting as an anonymous unit. As a citizen-voter each one
of these persons is, however, an officer of the public. He expresses
his will as a representative of the public interest as much so as
does a senator or sheriff. His vote may express his hope to profit in
private purse by the election of some man or the ratification of some
proposed law. He may fail, in other words, in effort to represent the
interest entrusted to him. But in this respect he does not differ
from those explicitly designated public officials who have also been
known to betray the interest committed to them instead of faithfully
representing it.
In other words, every officer of the public, whether he represents it
as a voter or as a stated official, has a dual capacity. From this fact
the most serious problem of government arises. We commonly speak of
some governments as representative in contrast with others which are
not. By our hypothesis all governments are representative in that they
purport to stand for the interests which a public has in the behavior
of individuals and groups. There is, however, no contradiction here.
Those concerned in government are still human beings. They retain
their share of the ordinary traits of human nature. They still have
private interests to serve and interests of special groups, those of
the family, clique or class to which they belong. Rarely can a person
sink himself in his political function; the best which most men attain
to is the domination by the public weal of their other desires. What is
meant by “representative” government is that the public is definitely
organized with the intent to secure this dominance. The dual capacity
of every officer of the public leads to conflict in individuals between
their genuinely political aims and acts and those which they possess in
their non-political rôles. When the public adopts special measures to
see to it that the conflict is minimized and that the representative
function overrides the private one, political institutions are termed
representative.
It may be said that not until recently have publics been conscious
that they were publics, so that it is absurd to speak of their
organizing themselves to protect and secure their interests. Hence
states are a recent development. The facts are, indeed, fatally
against attribution of any long history to states provided we use a
hard and fast conceptual definition of states. But our definition is
founded on the exercise of a function, not on any inherent essence
or structural nature. Hence it is more or less a verbal matter just
what countries and peoples are called states. What is of importance is
that the facts which significantly differentiate various forms from
one another be recognized. The objection just urged points to a fact
of great significance, whether the word “state” be used or not. It
indicates that for long stretches of time the public rôle of rulers has
been incidental to other ends for which they have used their powers.
There has been a machinery of government, but it has been employed for
purposes which in the strict sense are non-political, the deliberate
advancement of dynastic interests. Thus we come upon the primary
problem of the public: to achieve such recognition of itself as will
give it weight in the selection of official representatives and in
the definition of their responsibilities and rights. Consideration of
this problem leads us, as we shall see, into the discussion of the
democratic state.
Taking history as a whole, the selection of rulers and equipment of
them with powers has been a matter of political accident. Persons have
been selected as judges, executives and administrators for reasons
independent of capacity to serve public interests. Some of the Greek
states of antiquity and the examination system of China stand out for
the very reason that they are exceptions to this statement. History
shows that, in the main, persons have ruled because of some prerogative
and conspicuous place which was independent of their definitively
public rôle. If we introduce the idea of the public at all, we are
bound to say that it was assumed without question that certain persons
were fit to be rulers because of traits independent of political
considerations. Thus in many societies the male elders exercised such
rule as obtained in virtue of the mere fact that they were old men.
Gerontocracy is a familiar and widespread fact. Doubtless there was a
presumption that age was a sign of knowledge of group traditions and
of matured experience, but it can hardly be said that this presumption
was consciously the influential factor in giving old men a monopoly of
rule. Rather they had it _ipso facto_, because they had it. A principle
of inertia, of least resistance and least action, operated. Those who
were already conspicuous in some respect, were it only for long gray
beards, had political powers conferred upon them.
Success in military achievement is an irrelevant factor which has
controlled the selection of men to rule. Whether or no “camps are the
true mothers of cities,” whether or no Herbert Spencer was right in
declaring that government originated in chieftainship for war purposes,
there is no doubt that, in most communities, the ability of a man to
win battles has seemed to mark him out as a predestined manager of
the civil affairs of a community. There is no need to argue that the
two positions demand different gifts, and that achievement in one is
no proof of fitness for the other. The fact remains. Nor do we have
to look at ancient states for evidence of its effective operation.
States nominally democratic show the same tendency to assume that a
winning general has some quasi-divine appointment to political office.
Reason would teach that oftentimes even the politicians who are most
successful in instigating the willingness of the civilian population
to support a war are by that very fact incapacitated for the offices
of making a just and enduring peace. But the treaty of Versailles is
there to show how difficult it is to make a shift of personnel even
when conditions radically alter so that there is need for men of a
changed outlook and interests. To those who have, it shall be given. It
is human nature to think along the easiest lines, and this induces men
when they want conspicuous leaders in the civil function to fasten upon
those who are already conspicuous, no matter what the reason.
Aside from old men and warriors, medicine men and priests have had
a ready-made, predestined vocation to rule. Where the community
welfare is precarious and dependent upon the favor of supernatural
beings, those skilled in the arts by which the wrath and jealousy
of the gods are averted and their favor procured, have the marks of
superior capacity to administer states. Success in living to an old
age, in battle and in occult arts, have, however, been most signalized
in the _initiation_ of political régimes. What has counted most in
the long run is the dynastic factor. _Beati possidentes._ The family
from which a ruler has been taken occupies in virtue of that fact a
conspicuous position and superior power. Preëminence in status is
readily taken for excellence. Divine favor _ex officio_ attends a
family in which rule has been exercised for enough generations so that
the memory of original exploits has grown dim or become legendary. The
emoluments, pomp and power which go with rule are not thought to need
justification. They not only embellish and dignify it, but are regarded
as symbols of intrinsic worthiness to possess it. Custom consolidates
what accident may have originated; established power has a way of
legitimizing itself. Alliances with other potent families within and
without the country, possession of large landed estates, a retinue of
courtiers and access to revenues of the state, with a multitude of
other things irrelevant to the public interest, establish a dynastic
position at the same time that they divert the genuine political
function to private ends.
An additional complication is introduced because the glory, wealth
and power of rulers constitutes in itself an invitation to seize and
exploit office. The causes which operate to induce men to strive
for any shining object operate with increased appeal in the case of
governmental power. The centralization and scope of functions which
are needed in order to serve the interests of the public become, in
other words, seductions to draw state officials into subserving private
ends. All history shows how difficult it is for human beings to bear
effectually in mind the objects for the nominal sake of which they are
clothed with power and pomp; it shows the ease with which they employ
their panoply to advance private and class interests. Were actual
dishonesty the only, or even chief, foe, the problem would be much
simpler. The ease of routine, the difficulty of ascertaining public
needs, the intensity of the glare which attends the seat of the mighty,
desire for immediate and visible results, play the larger part. One
often hears it said by socialists justly impatient with the present
economic régime that “industry should be taken out of private hands.”
One recognizes what they intend: that it should cease to be regulated
by desire for private profit and should function for the benefit of
producers and consumers, instead of being sidetracked to the advantage
of financiers and stockholders. But one wonders whether those who
so readily utter this saying have asked themselves into whose hands
industry is to pass? Into those of the public? But, alas, the public
has no hands except those of individual human beings. The essential
problem is that of transforming the action of such hands so that it
will be animated by regard for social ends. There is no magic by which
this result can be accomplished. The same causes which have led men to
utilize concentrated political power to serve private purposes will
continue to act to induce men to employ concentrated economic power
in behalf of non-public aims. This fact does not imply the problem
is insoluble. But it indicates where the problem resides, whatever
guise it assumes. Since officers of the public have a dual make-up and
capacity, what conditions and what technique are necessary in order
that insight, loyalty and energy may be enlisted on the side of the
public and political rôle?
These commonplace considerations have been adduced as a background for
discussion of the problems and prospects of democratic government.
Democracy is a word of many meanings. Some of them are of such a broad
social and moral import as to be irrelevant to our immediate theme.
But one of the meanings is distinctly political, for it denotes a
mode of government, a specified practice in selecting officials and
regulating their conduct as officials. This is not the most inspiring
of the different meanings of democracy; it is comparatively special in
character. But it contains about all that is relevant to _political_
democracy. Now the theories and practices regarding the selection and
behavior of public officials which constitute political democracy have
been worked out against the historical background just alluded to. They
represent an effort in the first place to counteract the forces that
have so largely determined the possession of rule by accidental and
irrelevant factors, and in the second place an effort to counteract the
tendency to employ political power to serve private instead of public
ends. To discuss democratic government at large apart from its historic
background is to miss its point and to throw away all means for an
intelligent criticism of it. In taking the distinctively historical
point of view we do not derogate from the important and even superior
claims of democracy as an ethical and social ideal. We limit the topic
for discussion in such a way as to avoid “the great bad,” the mixing of
things which need to be kept distinct.
Viewed as a historical tendency exhibited in a chain of movements which
have affected the forms of government over almost the entire globe
during the last century and a half, democracy is a complex affair.
There is a current legend to the effect that the movement originated
in a single clear-cut idea, and has proceeded by a single unbroken
impetus to unfold itself to a predestined end, whether triumphantly
glorious or fatally catastrophic. The myth is perhaps rarely held in
so simple and unmixed a form. But something approaching it is found
whenever men either praise or damn democratic government absolutely,
that is, without comparing it with alternative polities. Even the
least accidental, the most deliberately planned, political forms do not
embody some absolute and unquestioned good. They represent a choice,
amid a complex of contending forces, of that particular possibility
which appears to promise the most good with the least attendant evil.
Such a statement, moreover, immensely oversimplifies. Political forms
do not originate in a once for all way. The greatest change, once it
is accomplished, is simply the outcome of a vast series of adaptations
and responsive accommodations, each to its own particular situation.
Looking back, it is possible to make out a trend of more or less steady
change in a single direction. But it is, we repeat, mere mythology
to attribute such unity of result as exists (which is always easy to
exaggerate) to single force or principle. Political democracy has
emerged as a kind of net consequence of a vast multitude of responsive
adjustments to a vast number of situations, no two of which were alike,
but which tended to converge to a common outcome. The democratic
convergence, moreover, was not the result of distinctively political
forces and agencies. Much less is democracy the product _of_ democracy,
of some inherent nisus, or immanent idea. The temperate generalization
to the effect that the unity of the democratic movement is found in
effort to remedy evils experienced in consequence of prior political
institutions realizes that it proceeded step by step, and that each
step was taken without foreknowledge of any ultimate result, and, for
the most part, under the immediate influence of a number of differing
impulses and slogans.
It is even more important to realize that the conditions out of which
the efforts at remedy grew and which it made possible for them to
succeed were primarily non-political in nature. For the evils were
of long standing, and any account of the movement must raise two
questions: Why were efforts at improvement not made earlier, and, when
they were made, why did they take just the form which they did take?
The answers to both questions will be found in distinctive religious,
scientific and economic changes which finally took effect in the
political field, being themselves primarily non-political and innocent
of democratic intent. Large questions and far-ranging ideas and ideals
arose during the course of the movement. But theories of the nature
of the individual and his rights, of freedom and authority, progress
and order, liberty and law, of the common good and a general will, of
democracy itself, did not produce the movement. They reflected it in
thought; after they emerged, they entered into subsequent strivings and
had practical effect.
We have insisted that the development of political democracy
represents the convergence of a great number of social movements, no
one of which owed either its origin or its impetus to inspiration of
democratic ideals or to planning for the eventual outcome. This fact
makes irrelevant both pæans and condemnations based upon conceptual
interpretations of democracy, which, whether true or false, good or
bad, are reflections of facts in thought, not their causal authors. In
any case, the complexity of the historic events which have operated is
such as to preclude any thought of rehearsing them in these pages, even
if I had a knowledge and competency which are lacking. Two general and
obvious considerations need, however, to be mentioned. Born in revolt
against established forms of government and the state, the events which
finally culminated in democratic political forms were deeply tinged by
fear of government, and were actuated by a desire to reduce it to a
minimum so as to limit the evil it could do.
Since established political forms were tied up with other institutions,
especially ecclesiastical, and with a solid body of tradition and
inherited belief, the revolt also extended to the latter. Thus it
happened that the intellectual terms in which the movement expressed
itself had a negative import even when they seemed to be positive.
Freedom presented itself as an end in itself, though it signified in
fact liberation from oppression and tradition. Since it was necessary,
upon the intellectual side, to find justification for the movements
of revolt, and since established authority was upon the side of
institutional life, the natural recourse was appeal to some inalienable
sacred authority resident in the protesting individuals. Thus
“individualism” was born, a theory which endowed singular persons in
isolation from any associations, except those which they deliberately
formed for their own ends, with native or natural rights. The revolt
against old and limiting associations was converted, intellectually,
into the doctrine of independence of any and all associations.
Thus the practical movement for the limitation of the powers of
government became associated, as in the influential philosophy of
John Locke, with the doctrine that the ground and justification of
the restriction was prior non-political rights inherent in the very
structure of the individual. From these tenets, it was a short step to
the conclusion that the sole end of government was the protection of
individuals in the rights which were theirs by nature. The American
revolution was a rebellion against an established government, and
it naturally borrowed and expanded these ideas as the ideological
interpretation of the effort to obtain independence of the colonies.
It is now easy for the imagination to conceive circumstances under
which revolts against prior governmental forms would have found its
theoretical formulation in an assertion of the rights of groups, of
other associations than those of a political nature. There was no logic
which rendered necessary the appeal to the individual as an independent
and isolated being. In abstract logic, it would have sufficed to
assert that some primary groupings had claims which the state could
not legitimately encroach upon. In that case, the celebrated modern
antithesis of the Individual and Social, and the problem of their
reconciliation, would not have arisen. The problem would have taken the
form of defining the relationship which non-political groups bear to
political union. But, as we have already remarked, the obnoxious state
was closely bound up in fact and in tradition with other associations,
ecclesiastic (and through its influence with the family), and economic,
such as gilds and corporations, and, by means of the church-state, even
with unions for scientific inquiry and with educational institutions.
The easiest way out was to go back to the naked individual, to sweep
away all associations as foreign to his nature and rights save as they
proceeded from his own voluntary choice, and guaranteed his own private
ends.
Nothing better exhibits the scope of the movement than the fact that
philosophic theories of knowledge made the same appeal to the self, or
ego, in the form of personal consciousness identified with mind itself,
that political theory made to the natural individual, as the court
of ultimate resort. The schools of Locke and Descartes, however much
they were opposed in other respects, agreed in this, differing only
as to whether the sentient or rational nature of the individual was
the fundamental thing. From philosophy the idea crept into psychology,
which became an introspective and introverted account of isolated
and ultimate private consciousness. Henceforth moral and political
individualism could appeal to “scientific” warrant for its tenets and
employ a vocabulary made current by psychology:--although in fact
the psychology appealed to as its scientific foundation was its own
offspring.
The “individualistic” movement finds a classic expression in the great
documents of the French Revolution, which at one stroke did away with
all forms of association, leaving, in theory, the bare individual
face to face with the state. It would hardly have reached this point,
however, if it had not been for a second factor, which must be noted.
A new scientific movement had been made possible by the invention and
use of new mechanical appliances--the lens is typical--which focused
attention upon tools like the lever and pendulum, which, although
they had long been in use, had not formed points of departure for
scientific theory. This new development in inquiry brought, as Bacon
foretold, great economic changes in its wake. It more than paid its
debt to tools by leading to the invention of machines. The use of
machinery in production and commerce was followed by the creation of
new powerful social conditions, personal opportunities and wants. Their
adequate manifestation was limited by established political and legal
practices. The legal regulations so affected every phase of life which
was interested in taking advantage of the new economic agencies as
to hamper and oppress the free play of manufacture and exchange. The
established custom of states, expressed intellectually in the theory of
mercantilism against which Adam Smith wrote his account of “The (True)
Wealth of Nations,” prevented the expansion of trade between nations,
a restriction which reacted to limit domestic industry. Internally,
there was a network of restrictions inherited from feudalism. The
prices of labor and staples were not framed in the market by higgling
but were set by justices of the peace. The development of industry
was hampered by laws regulating choice of a calling, apprenticeship,
migration of workers from place to place,--and so on.
Thus fear of government and desire to limit its operations, because
they were hostile to the development of the new agencies of production
and distribution of services and commodities, received powerful
reënforcement. The economic movement was perhaps the more influential
because it operated, not in the name of the individual and his inherent
rights, but in the name of Nature. Economic “laws,” that of labor
springing from natural wants and leading to the creation of wealth, of
present abstinence in behalf of future enjoyment leading to creation
of capital effective in piling up still more wealth, the free play
of competitive exchange, designated the law of supply and demand,
were “natural” laws. They were set in opposition to political laws as
artificial, man-made affairs. The inherited tradition which remained
least questioned was a conception of Nature which made Nature something
to conjure with. The older metaphysical conception of Natural Law
was, however, changed into an economic conception; laws of nature,
implanted in human nature, regulated the production and exchange of
goods and services, and in such a way that when they were kept free
from artificial, that is political, meddling, they resulted in the
maximum possible social prosperity and progress. Popular opinion is
little troubled by questions of logical consistency. The economic
theory of _laissez-faire_, based upon belief in beneficent natural laws
which brought about harmony of personal profit and social benefit, was
readily fused with the doctrine of natural rights. They both had the
same practical import, and what is logic between friends? Thus the
protest of the utilitarian school, which sponsored the economic theory
of natural law in economics, against natural right theories had no
effect in preventing the popular amalgam of the two sides.
The utilitarian economic theory was such an important factor in
developing the theory, as distinct from the practice, of democratic
government that it is worth while to expound it in outline. Each person
naturally seeks the betterment of his own lot. This can be attained
only by industry. Each person is naturally the best judge of his
own interests, and, if left free from the influence of artificially
imposed restrictions, will express his judgment in his choice of work
and exchange of services and goods. Thus, barring accident, he will
contribute to his own happiness in the measure of his energy in work,
his shrewdness in exchange and his self-denying thrift. Wealth and
security are the natural rewards of economic virtues. At the same
time, the industry, commercial zeal, and ability of individuals
contribute to the social good. Under the invisible hand of a beneficent
providence which has framed natural laws, work, capital and trade
operate harmoniously to the advantage and advance of men collectively
and individually. The foe to be dreaded is interference of government.
Political regulation is needed only because individuals accidentally
and purposely--since the possession of property by the industrious
and able is a temptation to the idle and shiftless--encroach upon
one another’s activities and properties. This encroachment is the
essence of injustice, and the function of government is to secure
justice--which signifies chiefly the protection of property and of
the contracts which attend commercial exchange. Without the existence
of the state men might appropriate one another’s property. This
appropriation is not only unfair to the laborious individual, but by
making property insecure discourages the forthputting of energy at
all and thus weakens or destroys the spring of social progress. On
the other hand, this doctrine of the function of the state operates
automatically as a limit imposed to governmental activities. The state
is itself just only when it acts to secure justice--in the sense just
defined.
The political problem thus conceived is essentially a problem of
discovering and instating a technique which will confine the operations
of government as far as may be to its legitimate business of protecting
economic interests, of which the interest a man has in the integrity
of his own life and body is a part. Rulers share the ordinary cupidity
to possess property with a minimum of personal effort. Left to
themselves they take advantage of the power with which their official
position endows them to levy arbitrarily on the wealth of others. If
they protect the industry and property of private citizens against the
invasions of other private citizens, it is only that they may have
more resources upon which to draw for their own ends. The essential
problem of government thus reduces itself to this: What arrangements
will prevent rulers from advancing their own interests at the expense
of the ruled? Or, in positive terms, by what political means shall the
interests of the governors be identified with those of the governed?
The answer was given, notably by James Mill, in a classic formulation
of the nature of political democracy. Its significant features were
popular election of officials, short terms of office and frequent
elections. If public officials were dependent upon citizens for
official position and its rewards, their personal interests would
coincide with those of people at large--at least of industrious and
property-owning persons. Officials chosen by popular vote would find
their election to office dependent upon presenting evidence of their
zeal and skill in protecting the interests of the populace. Short
terms and frequent elections would ensure their being held to regular
account; the polling-booth would constitute their day of judgment. The
fear of it would operate as a constant check.
Of course in this account I have oversimplified what was already
an oversimplification. The dissertation of James Mill was written
before the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832. Taken pragmatically,
it was an argument for the extension of the suffrage, then largely in
the hands of hereditary landowners, to manufacturers and merchants.
James Mill had nothing but dread of pure democracies. He opposed the
extension of the franchise to women.[8] He was interested in the new
“middle-class” forming under the influence of the application of
steam to manufacture and trade. His attitude is well expressed in his
conviction that even if the suffrage were extended downwards, the
middle-class “which gives to science, art and legislation itself its
most distinguished ornaments, and which is the chief source of all
that is refined and exalted in human nature, is that portion of the
community of which the influence would ultimately decide.” In spite,
however, of oversimplification, and of its special historic motivation,
the doctrine claimed to rest upon universal psychological truth;
it affords a fair picture of the principles which were supposed to
justify the movement toward democratic government. It is unnecessary to
indulge in extensive criticism. The differences between the conditions
postulated by the theory and those which have actually obtained with
the development of democratic governments speak for themselves. The
discrepancy is a sufficient criticism. This disparity itself shows,
however, that what has happened sprang from no theory but was inherent
in what was going on not only without respect to theories but without
regard to politics: because, generally speaking, of the use of steam
applied to mechanical inventions.
It would be a great mistake, however, to regard the idea of the
isolated individual possessed of inherent rights “by nature” apart from
association, and the idea of economic laws as natural, in comparison
with which political laws being artificial are injurious (save when
carefully subordinated), as idle and impotent. The ideas were something
more than flies on the turning wheels. They did not originate the
movement toward popular government, but they did profoundly influence
the forms which it assumed. Or perhaps it would be truer to say
that persistent older conditions, to which the theories were more
faithful than to the state of affairs they professed to report, were
so reënforced by the professed philosophy of the democratic state, as
to exercise a great influence. The result was a skew, a deflection
and distortion, in democratic forms. Putting the “individualistic”
matter in a gross statement, which has to be corrected by later
qualifications, we may say that “the individual,” about which the new
philosophy centered itself, was in process of complete submergence
in fact at the very time in which he was being elevated on high in
theory. As to the alleged subordination of political affairs to natural
forces and laws, we may say that actual economic conditions were
thoroughly artificial, in the sense in which the theory condemned the
artificial. They supplied the man-made instrumentalities by which the
new governmental agencies were grasped and used to suit the desires of
the new class of business men.
Both of these statements are formal as well as sweeping. To acquire
intelligible meaning they must be developed in some detail. Graham
Wallas prefixed to the first chapter of his book entitled “The Great
Society” the following words of Woodrow Wilson, taken from _The New
Freedom_: “Yesterday and ever since history began, men were related to
one another as individuals.... To-day, the everyday relationships of
men are largely with great impersonal concerns, with organizations, not
with other individuals. Now this is nothing short of a new social age,
a new age of human relationships, a new stage-setting for the drama of
life.” If we accept these words as containing even a moderate degree
of truth, they indicate the enormous ineptitude of the individualistic
philosophy to meet the needs and direct the factors of the new age.
They suggest what is meant by saying the theory of an individual
possessed of desires and claims and endued with foresight and prudence
and love of bettering himself was framed at just the time when the
individual was counting for less in the direction of social affairs, at
a time when mechanical forces and vast impersonal organizations were
determining the frame of things.
The statement that “yesterday and even since history began, men were
related to one another as individuals” is not true. Men have always
been associated together in living, and association in conjoint
behavior has affected their relations to one another as individuals.
It is enough to recall how largely human relations have been permeated
by patterns derived directly and indirectly from the family; even the
state was a dynastic affair. But none the less the contrast which Mr.
Wilson had in mind is a fact. The earlier associations were mostly of
the type well termed by Cooley[9] “face-to-face.” Those which were
important, which really counted in forming emotional and intellectual
dispositions, were local and contiguous and consequently visible. Human
beings, if they shared in them at all, shared directly and in a way
of which they were aware in both their affections and their beliefs.
The state, even when it despotically interfered, was remote, an agency
alien to daily life. Otherwise it entered men’s lives through custom
and common law. No matter how widespread their operation might be,
it was not their breadth and inclusiveness which counted but their
immediate local presence. The church was indeed both a universal and
an intimate affair. But it entered into the life of most human beings
not through its universality, as far as their thoughts and habits
were concerned, but through an immediate ministration of rites and
sacraments. The new technology applied in production and commerce
resulted in a social revolution. The local communities without intent
or forecast found their affairs conditioned by remote and invisible
organizations. The scope of the latter’s activities was so vast
and their impact upon face-to-face associations so pervasive and
unremitting that it is no exaggeration to speak of “a new age of human
relations.” The Great Society created by steam and electricity may be
a society, but it is no community. The invasion of the community by
the new and relatively impersonal and mechanical modes of combined
human behavior is the outstanding fact of modern life. In these ways
of aggregate activity the community, in its strict sense, is not
a conscious partner, and over them it has no direct control. They
were, however, the chief factors in bringing into being national and
territorial states. The need of some control over them was the chief
agency in making the government of these states democratic or popular
in the current sense of these words.
Why, then, was a movement, which involved so much submerging of
personal action in the overflowing consequences of remote and
inaccessible collective actions, reflected in a philosophy of
individualism? A complete answer is out of the question. Two
considerations are, however, obvious and significant. The new
conditions involved a release of human potentialities previously
dormant. While their impact was unsettling to the community, it was
liberating with respect to single persons, while its oppressive
phase was hidden in the impenetrable mists of the future. Speaking
with greater correctness, the oppressive phase affected primarily
the elements of the community which were also depressed in the
older and semi-feudal conditions. Since they did not count for much
anyway, being traditionally the drawers of water and hewers of wood,
having emerged only in a legal sense from serfdom, the effect of new
economic conditions upon the laboring masses went largely unnoted. Day
laborers were still in effect, as openly in the classic philosophy,
underlying conditions of community life rather than members of it.
Only gradually did the effect upon them become apparent; by that time
they had attained enough power--were sufficiently important factors in
the new economic régime--to obtain political emancipation, and thus
figure in the forms of the democratic state. Meanwhile the liberating
effect was markedly conspicuous with respect to the members of the
“middle-class,” the manufacturing and mercantile class. It would be
short-sighted to limit the release of powers to opportunities to
procure wealth and enjoy its fruits, although the creation of material
wants and ability to satisfy them are not to be lightly passed over.
Initiative, inventiveness, foresight and planning were also stimulated
and confirmed. This manifestation of new powers was on a sufficiently
large scale to strike and absorb attention. The result was formulated
as the discovery of the individual. The customary is taken for granted;
it operates subconsciously. Breach of wont and use is focal; it forms
“consciousness.” The necessary and persistent modes of association
went unnoticed. The new ones, which were voluntarily undertaken,
occupied thought exclusively. They monopolized the observed horizon.
“Individualism” was a doctrine which stated what was focal in thought
and purpose.
The other consideration is akin. In the release of new powers singular
persons were emancipated from a mass of old habits, regulations and
institutions. We have already noted how the methods of production and
exchange made possible by the new technology were hampered by the
rules and customs of the prior régime. The latter were then felt to
be intolerably restrictive and oppressive. Since they hampered the
free play of initiative and commercial activity, they were artificial
and enslaving. The struggle for emancipation from their influence was
identified with the liberty of the individual as such; in the intensity
of the struggle, associations and institutions were condemned wholesale
as foes of freedom save as they were products of personal agreement and
voluntary choice. That many forms of association remained practically
untouched was easily overlooked, just because they were matters of
course. Indeed, any attempt to touch them, notably the established
form of family association and the legal institution of property, were
looked upon as subversive, as license, not liberty, in the sanctified
phrase. The identification of democratic forms of government with this
individualism was easy. The right of suffrage represented for the mass
a release of hitherto dormant capacity and also, in appearance at
least, a power to shape social relations on the basis of individual
volition.
Popular franchise and majority rule afforded the imagination a picture
of individuals in their untrammeled individual sovereignty making the
state. To adherents and opponents alike it presented the spectacle of a
pulverizing of established associations into the desires and intentions
of atomic individuals. The forces, springing from combination and
institutional organization which controlled below the surface the acts
which formally issued from individuals, went unnoted. It is the essence
of ordinary thought to grasp the external scene and hold it as reality.
The familiar eulogies of the spectacle of “free men” going to the polls
to determine by their personal volitions the political forms under
which they should live is a specimen of this tendency to take whatever
is readily seen as the full reality of a situation. In physical matters
natural science has successfully challenged this attitude. In human
matters it remains in almost full force.
The opponents of popular government were no more prescient than its
supporters, although they showed more logical sense in following the
assumed individualistic premise to its conclusion: the disintegration
of society. Carlyle’s savage attacks upon the notion of a society
held together only by a “cash-nexus” are well known. Its inevitable
terminus to him was “anarchy plus a constable.” He did not see that
the new industrial régime was forging social bonds as rigid as those
which were disappearing and much more extensive--whether desirable ties
or not is another matter. Macaulay, the intellectualist of the Whigs,
asserted that the extension of suffrage to the masses would surely
result in arousing the predatory impulses of the propertyless masses
who would use their new political power to despoil the middle as well
as upper class. He added that while there was no longer danger that the
civilized portions of humanity would be overthrown by the savage and
barbarous portions, it was possible that in the bosom of civilization
would be engendered the malady which would destroy it.
Incidentally we have trenched upon the other doctrine, the idea that
there is something inherently “natural” and amenable to “natural law”
in the working of economic forces, in contrast with the man-made
artificiality of political institutions. The idea of a natural
individual in his isolation possessed of full-fledged wants, of
energies to be expended according to his own volition, and of a
ready-made faculty of foresight and prudent calculation is as much a
fiction in psychology as the doctrine of the individual in possession
of antecedent political rights is one in politics. The liberalist
school made much of desires, but to them desire was a conscious
matter deliberately directed upon a known goal of pleasures. Desire
and pleasure were both open and above-board affairs. The mind was
seen as if always in the bright sunlight, having no hidden recesses,
no unexplorable nooks, nothing underground. Its operations were like
the moves in a fair game of chess. They are in the open; the players
have nothing up their sleeves; the changes of position take place by
express intent and in plain sight; they take place according to rules
all of which are known in advance. Calculation and skill, or dullness
and inaptitude, determine the result. Mind was “consciousness,” and the
latter was a clear, transparent, self-revealing medium in which wants,
efforts and purposes were exposed without distortion.
To-day it is generally admitted that conduct proceeds from conditions
which are largely out of focal attention, and which can be discovered
and brought to light only by inquiries more exacting than those which
teach us the concealed relationships involved in gross physical
phenomena. What is not so generally acknowledged is that the underlying
and generative conditions of concrete behavior are social as well as
organic: much more social than organic as far as the manifestation
of _differential_ wants, purposes and methods of operation is
concerned. To those who appreciate this fact, it is evident that
the desires, aims and standards of satisfaction which the dogma of
“natural” economic processes and laws assumes are themselves socially
conditioned phenomena. They are reflections into the singular human
being of customs and institutions; they are not natural, that is,
“native,” organic propensities. They mirror a state of civilization.
Even more true, if possible, is it that the form in which work is
done, industry carried on, is the outcome of accumulated culture, not
an original possession of persons in their own structure. There is
little that can be called industry and still less that constitutes a
store of wealth until tools exist, and tools are the results of slow
processes of transmission. The development of tools into machines,
the characteristic of the industrial age, was made possible only by
taking advantage of science socially accumulated and transmitted. The
technique of employing tools and machines was equally something which
had to be learned; it was no natural endowment but something acquired
by observing others, by instruction and communication.
These sentences are a poor and pallid way of conveying the outstanding
fact. There are organic or native needs, of course, as for food,
protection and mates. There are innate structures which facilitate
them in securing the external objects through which they are met.
But the only kind of industry they are capable of giving rise to is
a precarious livelihood obtained by gathering such edible plants and
animals as chance might throw in the way: the lowest type of savagery
just emerging from a brute condition. Nor, strictly speaking, could
they effect even this meager result. For because of the phenomenon
of helpless infancy even such a primitive régime depends upon the
assistance of associated action, including that most valuable form of
assistance: learning from others. What would even savage industry be
without the use of fire, of weapons, of woven articles, all of which
involve communication and tradition? The industrial régime which the
authors of “natural” economy contemplated presupposed wants, tools,
materials, purposes, techniques and abilities in a thousand ways
dependent upon associated behavior. Thus in the sense in which the
authors of the doctrine employed the word “artificial,” these things
were intensely and cumulatively artificial. What they were really after
was a changed direction of custom and institutions. The outcome of
the acts of those who were engaged in forwarding the new industry and
commerce was a new set of customs and institutions. The latter were as
much extensive and enduring conjoint modes of life as were those which
they displaced; more so in their sweep and force.
The bearing of this fact upon political theory and practice is evident.
Not only were the wants and intentions which actually operated
functions of associated life, but they re-determined the forms and
temper of this life. Athenians did not buy Sunday newspapers, make
investments in stocks and bonds, nor want motor cars. Nor do we to-day
want for the most part beautiful bodies and beauty of architectural
surroundings. We are mostly satisfied with the result of cosmetics and
with ugly slums, and oftentimes with equally ugly palaces. We do not
“naturally” or organically need them, but we _want_ them. If we do not
demand them directly we demand them none the less effectively. For they
are necessary consequences of the things upon which we have set our
hearts. In other words, a community wants (in the only intelligible
sense of wanting, effective demand) either education or ignorance,
lovely or squalid surroundings, railway trains or ox-carts, stocks and
bonds, pecuniary profit or constructive arts, according as associated
activity presents these things to them habitually, esteems them, and
supplies the means of attaining them. But that is only half the tale.
Associated behavior directed toward objects which fulfill wants not
only produces those objects, but brings customs and institutions
into being. The indirect and unthought-of consequences are usually
more important than the direct. The fallacy of supposing that the
new industrial régime would produce just and for the most part
only the consequences consciously forecast and aimed at was the
counterpart of the fallacy that the wants and efforts characteristic
of it were functions of “natural” human beings. They arose out of
institutionalized action and they resulted in institutionalized
action. The disparity between the results of the industrial revolution
and the conscious intentions of those engaged in it is a remarkable
case of the extent to which indirect consequences of conjoint
activity outweigh, beyond the possibility of reckoning, the results
directly contemplated. Its outcome was the development of those
extensive and invisible bonds, those “great impersonal concerns,
organizations,” which now pervasively affect the thinking, willing and
doing of everybody, and which have ushered in the “new era of human
relationships.”
Equally undreamed of was the effect of the massive organizations and
complicated interactions upon the state. Instead of the independent,
self-moved individuals contemplated by the theory, we have standardized
interchangeable units. Persons are joined together, not because they
have voluntarily chosen to be united in these forms, but because
vast currents are running which bring men together. Green and red
lines, marking out political boundaries, are on the maps and affect
legislation and jurisdiction of courts, but railways, mails and
telegraph-wires disregard them. The consequences of the latter
influence more profoundly those living within the legal local units
than do boundary lines. The forms of associated action characteristic
of the present economic order are so massive and extensive that
they determine the most significant constituents of the public and
the residence of power. Inevitably they reach out to grasp the
agencies of government; they are controlling factors in legislation
and administration. Not chiefly because of deliberate and planned
self-interest, large as may be its rôle, but because they are the most
potent and best organized of social forces. In a word, the new forms
of combined action due to the modern economic régime control present
politics, much as dynastic interests controlled those of two centuries
ago. They affect thinking and desire more than did the interests which
formerly moved the state.
We have spoken as if the displacement of old legal and political
institutions was all but complete. That is a gross exaggeration. Some
of the most fundamental of traditions and habits have hardly been
affected at all. It is enough to mention the institution of property.
The naïveté with which the philosophy of “natural” economics ignored
the effect upon industry and commerce of the legal status of property,
the way in which it identified wealth and property in the legal form
in which the latter had existed, is almost incredible to-day. But the
simple fact is that technological industry has not operated with any
great degree of freedom. It has been confined and deflected at every
point; it has never taken its own course. The engineer has worked in
subordination to the business manager whose primary concern is not with
wealth but with the interests of property as worked out in the feudal
and semi-feudal period. Thus the one point in which the philosophers of
“Individualism” predicted truly was that in which they did not predict
at all, but in which they merely clarified and simplified established
wont and use: when, that is, they asserted that the main business of
government is to make property interests secure.
A large part of the indictments which are now drawn against
technological industry are chargeable to the unchanged persistence
of a legal institution inherited from the pre-industrial age. It is
confusing, however, to identify in a wholesale way this issue with the
question of private property. It is conceivable that private property
may function socially. It does so even now to a considerable degree.
Otherwise it could not be supported for a day. The extent of its social
utility is what blinds us to the numerous and great social disutilities
that attend its present working, or at least reconcile us to its
continuation. The real issue or at least the issue to be first settled
concerns the conditions under which the institution of private property
legally and politically functions.
We thus reach our conclusion. The same forces which have brought about
the forms of democratic government, general suffrage, executives and
legislators chosen by majority vote, have also brought about conditions
which halt the social and humane ideals that demand the utilization
of government as the genuine instrumentality of an inclusive and
fraternally associated public. “The new age of human relationships”
has no political agencies worthy of it. The democratic public is still
largely inchoate and unorganized.