.dt The Unfinished Programme of Democracy, by Richard Roberts-A\
Project Gutenberg eBook
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THE|UNFINISHED|PROGRAMME OF|DEMOCRACY
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BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
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The Renascence of Faith
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The Highroad to Christ
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Christ and Ourselves
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Personality and Nationality
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The Church in the Commonwealth
(<I>New Commonwealth Books</I>)
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The Red Cap on the Cross
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<fs=300%>THE UNFINISHED PROGRAMME OF DEMOCRACY</fs>


BY
<xl>RICHARD ROBERTS</xl>
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[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
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NEW YORK:
B. W. HUEBSCH
Mcmxx
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<sc>To “Mine Own,”</sc>

<sc>N., P., D., and G.</sc>
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CONTENTS
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<sc>CHAPTER</sc> |                          | <sc>PAGE</sc>
I.    | THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY             | #9:ch01#
II.   | THE TESTS OF DEMOCRATIC PROGRESS    | #39:ch02#
III.  | THE PECUNIARY STANDARD              | #64:ch03#
IV.   | THE REDEMPTION OF WORK              | #93:ch04#
V.    | THE ACHIEVEMENT OF LIBERTY          | #131:ch05#
VI.   | THE PRACTICE OF FELLOWSHIP          | #160:ch06#
VII.  | THE ORGANISATION OF GOVERNMENT      | #210:ch07#
VIII. | A DEMOCRATISED WORLD                | #251:ch08#
IX.   | EDUCATION INTO DEMOCRACY            | #295:ch09#
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PREFACE
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.dc 0.3 0.67
THESE pages embody the attempt of a plain
man to thread a way through the social confusion
of our time. The book sets out with a
profound faith in the validity of the democratic
principle; and its object is to trace the path along
which the logic of this principle appears to lead.
No claim is made to expert knowledge of economics
or political science; but the writer has endeavoured
to acquaint himself with the recent literature of
the subject and to understand the main currents
of prevailing opinion and feeling.

Events are moving so rapidly at the
present time that certain passages became
impertinent before the book was finished. It is
probable that before it finally leaves the writer’s
hands, other passages may suffer in the same way.
But the main drift of the argument remains
unaffected.

.tb

No attempt has been made in the body of the
book to discuss the methods by which the social
and economic changes which are impending should
be carried through. It has been assumed that in
the English-speaking world, the traditional respect
for constitutional processes would avail to prevent
resort to what has come to be known as “direct
action.” It is now clear that this assumption was
ill-founded and that there is a considerable
// 008.png
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movement of opinion toward industrial or “direct”
action. The writer would venture to state his
conviction that recourse to this method would be
unspeakably disastrous and would carry with it
consequences which its present advocates cannot
foresee. It will be no easy task to restore the normal
constitutional and economic processes when once
they have been scrapped in the pursuit of some
immediate object; and it is as sure as anything
can very well be that the first step in direct action
will have to be followed by others and must end
in a confusion out of which the forty years it took
to deliver Israel out of Egypt would be all too
short to extricate us.

At the same time it should in fairness be acknowledged
that if organised labour decides to use this
dubious weapon, it will be under great provocation.
The tardiness of governments to fulfil their promises,
their too obvious tenderness toward the vested
interests, the blind and obstinate bourbonism of
the privileged classes over against the new proletarian
awakening—all these things combine to
create a situation which labour may feel intolerable
and may resolve to end by a summary process. It
is indeed only the most resolute and speedy
mobilisation of all the resources of practical goodwill
and reasonableness that can avert a great
catastrophe. Organised labour has proved itself
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to be neither vindictive nor unreasonable when it
has been met with fair and square dealing; and
if we are plunged into the chaos of a general strike
or perhaps worse, the larger responsibility will
rest with those who, possessed of power and
privilege, either could or would not see that the
clock had moved onward a great space—and,
during the years of war, with great rapidity—and
so were unwilling or unready to adapt themselves
to the new circumstances.

.tb

One subject of fundamental importance is
touched upon but incidentally in these pages—namely,
the land. What is said herein concerning
property in general applies with even more point
to land; and the plea which is made for the
standardisation of the price of staple commodities
clearly leads to the public ownership of land,
which is indeed on every ground the only reasonable
solution of the land question. But adequate
discussion of the matter would carry the argument
of the book too far afield. In these pages,
attention is primarily directed to the situation
which has been created by modern industrialism.

.tb

The obligations of the writer to friends and
writers are legion; it would be hopeless to
enumerate them. Some items of this indebtedness
// 010.png
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may be inferred from the footnotes. The writer
in particular regrets that Mr. Laski’s <i>Authority
in the Modern State</i> did not fall into his hands
sooner; but he is glad to find himself in substantial
agreement with the argument and conclusions
of that notable work.
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<i>Ty’n-y-coed,
  Capel Curig,
    North Wales.</i>
<i>July 15th, 1919.</i>
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Chapter I.|THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY
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“What is democracy? Sometimes, it is the name for a form
of government by which the ultimate control of the machinery
of government is committed to a numerical majority of the
community. Sometimes, and incorrectly, it is used to denote
the numerical majority itself, the poor or the multitude existing
in a state. Sometimes, and still more loosely, it is the name for
a policy, directed exclusively or mainly to the advantage of
the labouring class. Finally, in its broadest and deepest, most
comprehensive and most interesting sense, democracy is the
name for a certain general condition of society, having historic
origins, springing from circumstances and the nature of things,
not only involving the political doctrine of popular sovereignty
but representing a cognate group of corresponding tendencies
over the whole field of moral, social and even spiritual life
within the democratic community.”—<sc>Lord Morley.</sc>

“I speak the password primeval, I give the sign of Democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their
counterpart of on the same terms.”—<sc>Walt Whitman.</sc>

“To be a democrat is not to decide on a certain form of human
association, it is to learn how to live with other men.”—<sc>Mary P.
Follett.</sc>
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THE inherent logic of the democratic idea
calls for a society which will provide for
all its members those conditions of equal
opportunity that are within human control. It
denies all forms of special and exclusive privilege,
and affirms the sovereignty of the common man.

In practice, however, democracy has gone no
further than the achievement of a form of government;
and in popular discussion the word has
usually a connotation exclusively political. It is
even yet but slowly becoming clear that a democratic
form of government is no more than the bare
framework of a democratic society; and democracy
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as we know it is justly open to the criticism that
it has not seriously taken in hand the task of clothing
the political skeleton with a body of living social
flesh.

Modern democracy is, of course, historically
very young; and it may be reasonably maintained
that it is premature to speak of its failure to realise
its full promise. Nevertheless, it is of some
consequence that already that part of the democratic
programme which has been achieved and put to
the proof is being exposed to heavy fire of destructive
criticism. During the past few years, we
have become familiar with the idea of a world
made safe for democracy; and in the minds of
many people democracy (which in this connection
means representative popular government) stands
as a sort of ultimate good which it is impious to
challenge or to criticise. Yet this democracy,
for which the world has been presumably made
safe at so great and sorrowful a price, is by some
roundly declared to be radically unsafe for the
world and a hindrance to social progress. The
syndicalists, for instance, believe the democratic
state to be no more than the citadel of bourgeois
and plutocratic privilege, and have decreed its
destruction, proposing to substitute for it a modified
anarchism. Others, like Paul Bourget and
Brunetiere, so far from finding it the sanctuary
of the privileged, fear it as a source of anarchy and
social confusion, and invite us to retrace our steps
to happier days when authority being less diffused
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was more speedily and effectually exercised.
Neither the syndicalist nor the authoritarian
criticism is wholly baseless; yet it is true that in
neither case does it arise from an inherent defect
in the democratic principle. The one arises from
the circumstance that political democracy still lacks
its logical economic corollary; the other from the
fact that democracy is not sustained by its proper
ethical coefficient.

These, however, are not the only grounds for
the increasing scepticism of the validity of democratic
institutions. The democratic state, like
its predecessors, has proved itself to be voracious of
authority; and in the exercise of its presumed
omnicompetency it has increasingly occupied itself
with matters, which—both in respect of extent and
content—it is incapable of handling adequately.
It has become palpably impossible to submit all
the concerns of government to parliamentary
discussion; and in consequence there has been a
tendency on the one hand to invest administrative
departments with virtual legislative power, and on
the other to convert representative assemblies into
mere instruments for registering the decisions of
the executive government. The recent proposal
for the establishment of a permanent statutory
National Industrial Council in England has been
evoked by the palpable inability of Parliament
to deal effectually with the problems of industrial
production. Even before the War, it was becoming
plain that the congestion of parliamentary business
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in England called for some drastic remedy if
parliament was to be saved from futility and
discredit. But here again, the failure has been
due to no inherent defect in the democratic principle
but rather to the fact that the unitary and
absolutist doctrine and practice of the state has
hindered the proper development of democracy.

In a word, the trouble with democracy is that
there is not enough of it. The remedy for the ills
of democracy is more democracy. Politically, it is
still incomplete; its economic applications have yet
to be made; and while we do lip service to its
ethical presuppositions, they are far from being a
rule of life. Yet lacking these things, democracy is
condemned to arrest, and through arrest to decay.

Meantime the dynastic principle has fallen—has
indeed fallen under circumstances which
make its revival seem exceedingly remote. Nevertheless,
if democracy suffers arrest at this point
in its history, if the peoples fail to work out its
logic, society may lapse into an anarchy out of
which dynasticism or something like it may once
more emerge. It is no hyperbole to speak of the
crisis of democracy; and it is only to be saved as
the democratic peoples set themselves earnestly
to the business of strengthening its stakes and
lengthening its cords.
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I
.sp 2
Few British people of liberal mind are able to
look back upon that period of their history which
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gathers around the Boer War without a certain
humiliation. Professor L. T. Hobhouse ascribes
the popular defection of the British people from
the democratic principle and temper during that
time to four causes: (<i>a</i>) the decay of profound and
vivid religious belief; (<i>b</i>) the diffusion of a stream
of German idealism “which has swelled the
current of retrogression from the plain rationalistic
way of looking at life and its problems,” and
which has stimulated the growth of the doctrine of
the absolute state and its imperialistic corollaries;
(<i>c</i>) the career of Prince Bismarck, and (<i>d</i>) “by
far the most potent intellectual support of the
reaction ... the belief that physical science
has given its verdict (for it came to this) in favour of
violence against social justice.” This provides us
with an instance (so plain that another were superfluous)
of the inability of an unfulfilled democratic
order to resist alien and hostile influences that may
be “in the air,” and of its consequent perversion
to ends which belie its own first principles. It is
the permanent danger of democracy when it is
not sustained and inspired by a generous moral
impulse to be prostituted to undemocratic ends.
“It is at best” (to quote Mr. Hobhouse again)
“an instrument with which men who hold by
the ideal of social justice and human progress
can work; but when these ideals grow cold, it
may, like other instruments, be turned to base
uses.” Lord Morley, with a similar sensitiveness
to the perils of democracy asks whether we mean
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by it “a doctrine or a force; constitutional parchment
or a glorious evangel; perfected machinery
for the wire-puller, the party-tactician, the spoils-man
and the boss, or the high and stern ideals
of a Mazzini or a Tolstoi.” It may, indeed, be
reasonably held that worse has befallen it than
Lord Morley’s fears. We have evidence how
frequently democracy has in practice become the
tool of strong and unscrupulous men and gangs of
such men seeking selfish and corrupt ends; and
how, for Lincoln’s famous formula, we have had
government of the people by a well-to-do oligarchy
in the interest of the privileged classes.

Nor have we any guarantee against this kind of
degradation and degeneracy except in the perpetual
reaffirmation and revitalising of the spiritual
and moral grounds of democracy. It may indeed
be possible to create political safeguards against
the exploitation of the people and their government
in the interest of individuals and classes;
but there is no such safeguard against democracy,
as it were, exploiting itself for undemocratic ends
or sinking into undemocratic practices except in
its continued education in the purposes for which
it exists, in its extension into every region of life,
and in its repeated solemn submission of itself
to its principles and ideals. Until democracy
becomes and is felt to be a personal and collective
vocation, it is forever liable to corruption and
apostasy. Democracy can only live and thrive
while men remain sincerely and consciously
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democratic. Liberty and Equality are doubtful
and precarious boons, and may—as they often
have—become positive dangers without Fraternity.
Democracy without its appropriate moral coefficient
must be a vain and short-lived thing. So long as,
while professing to give a fair field to every man,
it does no more than provide an open field for the
strong man, it will inevitably lead to the exploitation
of the multitude and to the creation of new
forms of privilege; and that in the main has been
its recent history.

Not less than by the loss or the absence of moral
impulse, is democracy endangered by ignorance or
forgetfulness of what it exists for. Two words are
usually taken to describe the characteristics of
democracy, <i>liberty</i> and <i>equality</i>; and the atmosphere
of a particular democracy depends upon
whether it lays the larger emphasis on one or on
the other of these. In England, for instance, the
type is libertarian. The Briton has cared less for
political equality than for what he calls freedom,
the right of self-determination, the opportunity to
live out his own life in his own way. He has been
less doctrinaire than his French neighbours and
has not been much troubled by the logical anomaly
of an aristocracy so long as the aristocracy left him
reasonable elbow-room. When the aristocracy
was found to be obstructive, its pretensions were
suitably abridged. In general, the idea of formal
equality has played a less important part in England
than it has in France or the United States.
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Democracy in the two latter countries is more
specifically egalitarian. This difference is, however,
mainly a difference of stress upon two
aspects of the same thing, the egalitarian emphasis
having to do with the formal status of the citizen,
the libertarian with the personal independence
which should belong to the status.

Yet the inadequate co-ordination of the two
ideas may, and indeed does, lead to certain unhappy
consequences. In Great Britain, an insufficient
attention to equality has led to a too prolonged
survival of the idea of a “governing class”; and
social prestige still possesses an inordinate influence
upon the distribution of political power. In
France, on the other hand, an insufficient stress
on liberty has tended to make Frenchmen <i>étatistes</i>.
According to Emile Faguet, they are accustomed
to submit to despotism and are eager in turn to
practise it. They are liberals only when they are
in a minority. In the United States, egalitarianism
produces a kind of compulsory uniformitarianism.
It is significant that, while in a state of war all
nations are intolerant of dissent and free discussion,
in the United States where the doctrine of political
equality has reached its completest expression,
dissent from the common view has been much
more harshly treated than in any other belligerent
country. The cardinal sin appears to be that of
breaking the ranks. Liberty, according to Lord
Acton, is “the assurance that every man shall be
protected in doing what he believes to be his duty
// 019.png
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against the influence of authority and majorities,
custom, and opinion;” and if that be true, it
does not necessarily follow that democracy is
the home of liberty. An egalitarian democracy
may indeed become the tomb of liberty. “Democracy,”
says the same learned authority, “no less
than monarchy or aristocracy sacrifices everything
to maintain itself, and strives with an energy and a
plausibility that kings and nobles cannot attain
to override representation, to annul all the forces
of resistance and deviation, and to secure by
plebiscite, referendum, or caucus, free play for
the will of the majority. The true democratic
principle that none shall have power over the people
is taken to mean that none shall be able to restrain
or to evade its power; the true democratic
principle that the people shall not be made to do
what it does not like, is taken to mean that it shall
not be required to tolerate what it does not like.
The true democratic principle that every man’s
free-will shall be as unfettered as possible is taken
to mean that the free will of the sovereign people
shall be fettered in nothing.... Democracy
claims to be not only supreme, without authority
above, but absolute, without independence below,
to be its own master and not a trustee. The old
sovereigns of the world are exchanged for a new
one, who may be flattered and deceived but whom
it is impossible to corrupt or to resist; and to
whom must be rendered the things that are
Cæsar’s, and also the things that are God’s.”
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Democracy appeared in order to deliver the individual
from a dehumanising subjection; but
it may become a dehumanising tyranny itself. A
sovereign people may become as harsh and merciless
as a sovereign lord.

The democratic idea is the corollary of the
doctrine of the equal intrinsic worth of every
individual soul. The modern democratic movement
has started from a recognition of this
principle; and the principle is meaningless unless
it implies the prescriptive right of the individual
to self-determination. Lord Acton’s definition
of liberty is inadequate because he approaches it
from the standpoint of one who was in a permanent
religious minority in his own country, and in a
permanent intellectual minority in his church.
Liberty is surely the assurance that a man may have
full opportunity to live out his own life and to
grow to the full stature of his manhood, to be true
to himself through everything. This requires the
recognition of real personal independence and a
definite minimum of obligatory uniformity. In
another connection, Acton insists that “liberty is
not a means to a higher political end; it is itself
the highest political end. It is not for the sake
of a good public administration that it is required,
but for security in the pursuit of the highest
objects of civil society and of private life.” It is
so frequently assumed that the function of government
is the establishment and preservation of
order that it is well to remember that it is a
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.pn +1
comparatively easy thing to secure some kind of
order. The real difficulty is to establish and to
secure liberty. We are far too ready to assume that
liberty is capable of looking after itself and that
the fragile plant which needs our solicitude is
social order. But liberty stands in jeopardy every
hour, not less in a democracy than in an autocracy.
And in so far as a democracy, which was born of
the craving for liberty fails to preserve and to
extend liberty, it proves itself bankrupt.

And just as democracy is only made safe from
corruption and subordination to undemocratic ends
by repeated solemn affirmation of its moral and
spiritual foundations, so it is only made safe from
declining into absolutism and tyranny by constant
return upon its metaphysical centre—the sanctity
of the individual. In the modern world, the
multitude is not in danger; our chief pre-occupation
must be to save the individual from
being swamped by the multitude. We are apt
not to see the trees for the wood; we must be for
ever reminding ourselves that the wood is made
up of the trees. Democracy that tends to authority
and uniformity is foreordained to decay; the
democracy of life is one of freedom and infinite
variety. Democracy has yet to solve the problem
of setting the individual free without opening
the door to individualism and anarchy.
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II
.sp 2
It may be with some reason pleaded that the
defects of modern democracy spring from the
conditions under which it emerged as a historical
fact. It has appeared with an aspect altogether
too negative, as though the abolition of monarchy
or aristocracy or any form of privilege were
sufficient to bring it to birth. The democratic
principle has implications which are not exhausted
with the destruction of autocracy or aristocracy or
even with the formal affirmation of popular
sovereignty and the institution of a universal and
equal franchise. Historically, democracy is the
product, direct or indirect, of popular risings
against political privilege whether vested in a person
or in a class. Probably we should have to seek a
still anterior cause in the power of economic
exploitation which political power confers upon
him who holds it. The mainspring of revolution
is the sense of disinheritance rendered intolerable
by injustice and exploitation and the consequent
demand of the disinherited class for its appointed
share in the common human inheritance of light
and life. But the tragedy of revolution (despite
the conventional historical judgment) is that it
has never gone far enough. The records of
revolution are filled chiefly with its negative and
destructive performances because its impulse, not
having been sustained by an adequate social vision,
ran out before it completed its work or before it
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could swing on to the business of construction. It
was too readily assumed that the one thing needful
was to break down the one palpable disabling
barrier of privilege. That done, the rest would
follow; the golden age would at once materialise.
But it has never done so. It was not perceived
that the logic of revolution required and
pointed to a sequel of positive and creative social
action.

This was essentially Lamennais’ plea in 1831.
A revolution, he told his fellow countrymen,
is only the beginning of things. You have
cleared the ground; upon that cleared ground,
you have to raise the fabric of a living society.
France did, indeed, already provide the instance
of the danger of an uncompleted revolution. The
political equality established by the Revolution of
1789, was intended to give a fair field to every
man; but because it went no further, in effect it
opened the door to the strong man. The strong
man appeared presently in the person of Napoleon;
and with Napoleon came the Empire and all that that
episode cost Europe in blood and treasure. The
same kind of miscarriage (in another region and
on a larger scale) has befallen the wider historical
development of the French Revolution. Because
it was not seen that the “natural right” of
property might no less than the “divine right”
of noble birth become a source of disinheritance,
the door was opened to a movement which in the
nineteenth century produced a new type of
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privilege and a new manner of disinheritance.
That Jack’s vote has been declared to be as good
as his master’s has not saved Jack from an exploitation
as real and burdensome as that under which
his father groaned. But it is of a different kind.
The older disability was chiefly agrarian; the new
is industrial. The doctrine of political liberty
(interpreted in the light of Adam Smith) received
an economic translation in the doctrine of “laissez-faire”;
and this combined, first, with the restrictions
imposed upon the power of the territorial aristocracy,
second, with the new commercial
civilisation which began at the Industrial Revolution,
and third, with the advantage with which
the propertied classes, especially the rich merchant
class, started in the new order, has brought about
a new kind of disability. The common people
have exchanged the old master for a new, a feudal
aristocracy for an industrial plutocracy, land barons
for trade barons; they have been released from
agrarian serfdom only to be tied to the wheel of
industrial wage-slavery. Political emancipation
did not bring with it real freedom.

It was characteristic of Lamennais’ insight that
he saw that political liberty without safeguards
against economic exploitation would prove a
vain thing. Writing to the working men of Paris
in 1847, he said that, with them he “should
demand that in accordance with justice and
reason, the question should be gone into, how it is
possible, in the distribution of the fruits of labour,
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to do away with the revolting anomalies which crush
under their weight the most numerous portion of
the human family.”[#] Emile Faguet justly observes
that Lamennais saw that the coming enemy was
“<i>le pouvoir d’argent</i>,” and that he did what he
could to choke it off before it could establish itself.
Nor was Lamennais alone in his sense of the
inadequacy of political change to meet the needs
of the common people. Robert Owen reached
a similar conclusion, and, indeed, was so sceptical
of the value of political action for social improvement
that during one period of his life he preached
outright to the working classes a doctrine of political
indifferentism. The working-class movements
which came into being early in the nineteenth
century—the Co-operative Societies and the Trade
Unions—originated in the need of countervailing
the economic disadvantage under which the new
order had placed the worker and which the
endeavour to establish political equality and
liberty had been powerless to prevent. The
growth of Socialism and Syndicalism represents
a revolt from a social order in which the privilege
of noble birth has been superseded by the privilege
of property, and the disinherited class has but
suffered a new disinheritance.

.pm fn-start // A
This view was shared by Mazzini, whose gospel was at many
points identical with that of Lamennais. See <i>The Duties of
Man</i>, ch. xi.
.pm fn-end

It is by now abundantly evident that the next
stage in the evolution of democracy will consist of
// 026.png
.pn +1
a movement of the proletarian masses to remove
the economic disabilities under which they believe
themselves to be suffering. The revolutionary
movement in Europe is directed not only against
the dynastic tradition but against the modern
institution of private capitalism; and while the
influences of change that have now overwhelmed
Russia and Germany were afoot long before the war,
it is not to be questioned that their liberation was
due to the War. Beneath the outward calm of
empire there was a seething mass of unrest; and
once the crust of empire was cracked, this lava
of human passion rushed through. The worker has
come to believe that the origins of the war are to be
traced to economic causes, direct products of the
capitalist system of industry, which is also the
source of his disabilities in times of peace; and
whether in peace or in war, the worker has at last
to pay the bill. It is not to the point here to discuss
whether the premises from which the worker
argues or the conclusions he has reached are valid
or not. We are concerned only to note the state
of the case at the present moment. We observe
that the failure of dynastic imperialism has become
the occasion of economic revolution; and in this
circumstance we are to look for the clue to the
course of the democratic movement in the immediate
future.

The movement seems indeed to be historically
due. The first great turning point in modern
history was the Protestant Reformation with its
// 027.png
.pn +1
insistence upon religious liberty as against
ecclesiastical authority. The second turning point
was the French Revolution, which was the first
act in the drama of establishing political liberty
as against the power of aristocracy. It may well
turn out that the Russian Revolution marks the
beginning of the third crisis in the modern period,
the first act in the drama of economic emancipation.
The Protestant Reformation affirmed the liberty of
the layman against a privilege resting upon an
alleged monopoly of the means of grace; the
French Revolution affirmed the liberty of the
citizen against privilege resting upon the fact of
noble birth; the Revolution now in progress will
affirm the liberty of the worker as against
privilege resting upon the presumed rights of
property. Perhaps we are about to realise the
long delayed economic corollary of the French
Revolution.

Several circumstances of war-experience have
given a powerful stimulus to the movement for
radical economic change. Before the war, men
were still haunted by the fear that the revolutionary
changes advocated by the more advanced spirits
might turn out to be a transition from the frying
pan into the fire. But the cynical readiness of the
“big business” interests in all the belligerent
countries to turn the nation’s necessity to their own
advantage; and the now demonstrated incompetency
and wastefulness of the system of private
capitalist enterprise have served to remove from
// 028.png
.pn +1
among the workers any lingering sense that the
good of the nation is bound up with the existing
industrial order. In Great Britain in particular
the close industrial organisation required by the
war has provided a revelation of hitherto unexplored
and even unsuspected possibilities of
production, proving “big” business to have been
uncommonly bad business. The immense increase
of output in all industries, through the proper
co-ordination and standardisation of processes,
the systematic use of scientific investigation, and
the more adequate oversight of the physical
condition of the workers has made it plain that
private capitalism either would not or could not
make proper use of the productive resources of the
British people. For instance, the ignorant
opposition of the average employer to the movement
for reducing the hours of labour has convicted him
of a stupid incapacity to handle men, especially in
view of such findings as those recorded by Lord
Henry Bentinck, who shows conclusively (from
data drawn from the engineering, printing and
textile trades) that “in every case in which experiments
have been tried, the result in output has
been favourable to a shortening of the working
day.”[#]

.pm fn-start // A
<i>Contemporary Review</i>, February, 1918.
.pm fn-end

Moreover, the war-time emphasis upon the
idea of democracy has greatly stimulated the
demand for its extension into the field of industry.
This demand was assuming definite shape before
// 029.png
.pn +1
the war; but what was at that time the propaganda
of a comparatively small group has now become
the faith of a multitude; and this faith is becoming
more and more articulate as a demand for a socially
intensive as well as geographically extensive
application of the democratic principle. The
argument runs in some such fashion as this.
Broadly speaking, the democratic idea has three
notes; first, the institution of those conditions
of equal opportunity which are within human
control; second, the participation of the community
as a whole in the creation of these conditions,
which means a universal franchise and
equal ungraded partnership in affairs; and
third, the absence of any privileged class which is
able to impose its will upon the rest or any part of
the rest. Some rough approximation to this state
of things has been made in the political region;
there it is accounted good and right. Why, then
should not the same process be good and right in
other regions of life? For instance, the greater
part of a man’s life gathers around and is governed
by his work; yet this democratic principle which
is so estimable in politics is taboo in industry.
To begin with, there is no such thing as a
condition of equal opportunity in the industrial
region. Certain antecedent advantages of birth,
possession, and education have created a privileged
class; and the rest are under a corresponding
handicap. There was a time when the ranker
could rise out of the ranks and make a field for
// 030.png
.pn +1
himself; but in these days of trusts, combines,
chain-stores and the like, the opportunity of the
ranker to quit the ranks has dwindled almost to
vanishing point. In the second place, industry
is under class government. The persons engaged
in it are divided into masters and servants, employers
and employees; and the hired man has
hardly a word to say in determining the conditions
of his work. The only freedom he possesses lies
in the choice of a master; and even this, under the
régime of large corporations, is steadily disappearing.
For the rest, he is confined to a choice between
working under conditions imposed by the employer
and not working at all, which means starvation. In
industry there is a rule of privilege as real as that
of the old territorial aristocracy; and the modern
practice of investment has served to perpetuate
this privilege within the bounds of a single class
by the simple operation of the accident of birth,
just as feudal landownership in another age
became the foundation of aristocratic power.
The one qualification which requires to be made
here is that the concentration of large multitudes
of workers in urban centres, as the result of the
machine industry, has enabled the workers to
join together in self-defence; and the Trade
Union has to some extent mitigated the insolence
of plutocratic power.

The argument, however, does not end here. It
proceeds to the analysis of the causes of this
privilege; and it finds it in the doctrine of property-rights.
// 031.png
.pn +1
It would take us too far afield to trace
this doctrine to its origins. Apparently the French
thinkers who laid the train of the Revolution
believed that the “natural right” of property was
the necessary check upon the natural right of
freedom; but they could not foresee the developments
of the Industrial Revolution. Otherwise
it is questionable whether they would have found
the solution of their problem so easy. For it is not
open to argument that the presumed sanctity
of property rights has, under the conditions created
by the Industrial Revolution furnished the foundation
of the modern capitalist order and its corollaries.
The capitalist owes his power to his
possession of property in the shape of industrial
plant or of money. Yet it is plain to anyone who
analyses the position with any degree of realism
that the mere possession of a number of things
should no more entitle or enable an individual to
lord it over his fellows than an inheritance of blue
blood. Nevertheless, in point of cold fact, that
is the present position; there is, however, a
prospect that the divine right of property may
presently go the same way as the divine right of
kings.

But it will go not under the pressure of a theory.
It will disappear under the strain of economic
necessity. In England the proposal of a “levy
on capital” has been widely and seriously discussed.
It is asserted that it will be impossible to raise
by taxation a revenue sufficient to pay the interest
// 032.png
.pn +1
on the war debt after providing for indispensable
national services; and there appears to be no way
out of this <i>impasse</i> save by making a levy upon the
accumulated wealth of the country. A levy equal
to the debt would require to take something like
two-fifths of the estimated total of the private
capital. The methods by which this might be
done do not now concern us; nor does it matter
very much for our argument that the industrial and
commercial magnates, and the <i>ancien régime</i>
economists are declaiming vehemently against it.
Even the fact that the levy may not be carried out
in the form now advocated is not of great moment.
What is important is that the serious discussion
evoked by the proposal has shown that the traditional
doctrine of property-rights is in liquidation.
There has not been, so far as the present writer
has been able to discover, any lifting-up of hands
in horror at this suggestion of a sacrilegious
invasion upon this ancient sanctity; the discussion
has been conducted on the plane of expediency and
utility. This marks a very considerable movement—for
to many, the Reform Bill of 1831 looked
like the end of the world, since it was (as a politician
of the time said) “a maxim that every government
which tends to separate property from constitutional
government must be liable to perpetual revolution.”[#]
Property was the chief cornerstone
of the social structure; and even as late as 1888,
Lord Acton wrote to Mr. Gladstone that he hears
// 033.png
.pn +1
that “the skilled artisans of London are hostile
to the clergy but not to property,” which latter
circumstance he plainly regards as a sign of grace.
Yet to-day, under the exigencies of public need,
it is seriously discussed whether the state should
not lay its hands on anything up to a half of the
private wealth of the country.

.pm fn-start // A
Quoted in Laski, <i>Problems of Sovereignty</i>, p. 70—note.
.pm fn-end

This is essentially a return to the view of a saner
age. The mediæval doctrine was that right in
property was not absolute, but that it was of
the nature of a trust. This is the view that
underlies the project of a levy. Professor Hobhouse
draws a distinction between “property
for use” and “property for power.” The right
to possess property can hardly be denied. It is
essential to a man’s freedom and growth that he
should have absolute control over a certain number
of things. But it should be restricted to what is
necessary for personal freedom and growth. A
man may have, that is, property for use but not
for power. He may not have so much property
as would enable him to control or virtually to own
the life and labour of others. It is to some such
doctrine of property as this that the mind of
progressive labour is tending. Property is in
prospect of socialisation; and perhaps only such
socialised property will in future be available as
capital. Under economic pressure, the doctrine of
property is being ethicised; and to ethicise the
doctrine is simply to declare property to be
wholly subordinate to social ends.
// 034.png
.pn +1

The first step in modern democracy was the
socialisation of political power; the second without
which the first cannot be complete, will be the
socialisation of economic power.
.sp 2
.h3
III
.sp 2
We should, however, be deluding ourselves if
we suppose that radical economic change will of
itself bring about the kind of world that we want.
The miscarriage which has followed political
revolution in the past may no less disastrously
follow economic revolution. Economic change
is of itself powerless to secure us from the appearance
of new types of privilege; and there is not a
little danger that the present tendencies of some
advanced thought may lead to bureaucratic
government. Between a proletarian bureaucracy
and an industrial plutocracy there is little to
choose; and the tyranny of the expert may become
as galling as that of a despot. “In the socialistic
presentment,” says Professor Hobhouse, “the
expert sometimes looks strangely like the powers
that be—in education for instance, a clergyman
under a new title, in business that very captain
of industry who at the outset was the socialist’s
chief enemy. Be that as it may, as the expert
comes to the front and efficiency becomes the
watchword of administration, all that was human
in socialism vanishes out of it. Its tenderness for
the losers in the race, its protests against class-tyranny,
its revolt against commercial materialism,
// 035.png
.pn +1
all the sources of inspiration under which socialist
leaders have faced poverty and prison, are gone
like a dream and instead of them we have a conception
of society as a perfect piece of machinery,
pulled by wires radiating from a single centre,
and all men are either experts or puppets. Humanity,
Liberty, Justice are expunged from the banner
and the single word <i>efficiency</i> replaces them.” This
is, indeed, a sufficiently dismal prospect, for which
it is hardly worth while to change our present state.
It should be said, however, that this particular
peril is greatly minimised by the current emphasis
upon democratic control in industry. The danger
remains real notwithstanding. Nor is it the only
danger inherent in a purely economic change.
Indeed, it may be questioned whether any economic
change has elements of permanence, while it is
only economic.

The word <i>efficiency</i> betrays the mind of the age
which gave it its current connotation. It was a
machine-governed mind; and mechanistic conceptions
of life and progress are from the nature
of the case unfriendly to the democratic spirit.
The appearance of the “efficiency engineer”
showed the low estate into which man had fallen—man
made once a little lower than the angels
but now treated as a little lower than the machine.
The business of efficiency engineering was the
closer subordination of the man to the machine by
methods alleged to be scientific. Nothing could
show more plainly than this does the absence of
// 036.png
.pn +1
that broad humanism which is the very breath of
democracy; and even the generous intention
of the socialist ideal was vitiated by the mechanistic
character of socialist doctrine. Statecraft
itself became an affair of efficiency-engineering on
a large scale; and the logic of the mechanistic habit
of thought reached its fine flower in the merciless
regimentation of the German people and the
enthronement of the “Great God Gun.” From
this pernicious heresy, we may hopefully expect
that reflection on our war-experience may deliver
us. Already there are manifest signs of a reaction
to a healthier and kindlier conception of life and
its meaning. The excessive and artificial centralisation
of power in the State is being challenged
by a demand for the revival of regional culture and
such a redistribution of the functions of government
as a recognition of the “region” would require.[#]
The business of “unscrambling” the egg, will
indeed be long and difficult; but it is clear that
any advance in the essential humanities is bound up
with a release of life from the artificial integrations
forced upon it by the machine civilisation. Mr.
Delisle Burns has shown us that the essential note
of Greek life was its sociability;[#] and this is
indeed a pole to which normal human nature ever
swings true. But in the Greek city, sociability was
vitiated and ultimately destroyed by the tragic
// 037.png
.pn +1
schism of a slave-system; while in modern civilisation
it has been poisoned by the dominion of the
machine. The swamping of the “region” by the
state has enfeebled the natural social bonds
of a less sophisticated age; and somehow or other
democracy must thread its way back to a simpler
and more spontaneous sociability. For the
artificial synthesis of “the individual and the state,”
we must restore the natural order of “myself and
my neighbours.”

.pm fn-start // A
Upon this subject, see <i>The Coming Polity</i>, by Geddes
and Branford. (Williams and Norgate.)
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start // B
In his <i>Greek Ideals</i>.
.pm fn-end

But we have travelled so far from the simple
amenities of the “region” and our minds have
become so sophisticated in artificial and mechanical
modernity that our recovery must begin in something
akin to a spiritual renewal, in a new perception
of essential human values. Economic
change will not deliver us from the mechanistic
obsession; and we shall only be saved from the
inherent dangers of economic change under present
conditions by a fresh recognition of the central
principle of democracy. That every soul has
equal worth carries with it the corollary that
personality must be conceived as an end in itself
and not merely as a means. It is our quarrel with
the Junker classes wherever we find them, that they
deliberately relegate large masses of their fellowmen
into a sub-human category. Democracy is
the direct denial of this posture. It affirms on
the contrary that every man has a prescriptive
right to stand on his feet unashamed, and to
have full opportunity to become the whole man he
// 038.png
.pn +1
may be. It ascribes to him certain liberties and
a certain inalienable status among his fellows; and
the employer who regards his men as “hands”
denies democracy as directly as does the autocrat
who regards his subjects as serfs or cannonfodder.
In other words, democracy requires a
specific type of personal relationship between men;
and perhaps, its troubles are chiefly due to the fact
that while it preached liberty and equality with
no uncertain sound, it neglected to lay a corresponding
emphasis upon fraternity. In truth,
democracy is beset more perilously and more
persistently by the inward enemy than the foe
without—the inner enemy that lurks in men’s
souls. For though there be a democrat in every
man, there is also a potential aristocrat. The
ultimate battle-ground of the democratic ideal is
in men’s hearts. After the external enemies of
democracy are defeated on land and on sea,
democracy will have to go on fighting for its life
in our souls. In this as in all things else, “the
kingdom of heaven is within you.”

The personal practice of democracy is comparatively
simple, as its central doctrine is. The
equal worth of souls does not of course imply
equal capacity; nor does the fact of unequal
natural capacity do away with the truth of equal
worth. It simply indicates the kind of world we
live in. It is a world in which capacity is the
measure not of worth but of obligation; and the
law of life is mutual service. In one of the very
// 039.png
.pn +1
few political allusions which Jesus made, He
stated this point with much plainness. “Ye know
that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them and
they that have authority over them are called
‘benefactors’” (as it was in the beginning, and has
been ever since, when autocrats and their like have
conceded to their subjects some fragment of the
natural rights of which they have despoiled them
and then have posed as “benefactors,” and when
imperialists talk of conferring their peculiar
<i>Kultur</i> on the “lesser breeds without the law”),
“but,” said Jesus, “it shall not be so among you.
He that is greatest among you, let him be the
servant of all.” This is the authentic democratic
spirit and the personal practice without which
democracy cannot live.

It is not enough to pay lip service to democratic
ideals—the sanctity of personality and the obligation
of mutual service; or even to accept them
in a spirit of pious sentimentalism. That kind of
thing is already common enough. To the idealistic
temper, we must attach the pragmatic habit,
and translate our doctrines into concrete programmes
of emancipation and co-operation. The
city of God is not to be built with good intentions.
Fraternity must be rendered into a polity. Yet
even fraternity may perish in formality except
it be sustained by a living brotherliness. <i>It is the
spirit that quickeneth.</i> Democracy like every
living thing must either grow or decay. If it
stops at a political form or an economic scheme,
// 040.png
.pn +1
then it must decline and die. It is only as its
essential spirit captures our consciences and wills
and its central principle is consistently and continuously
applied that it can survive the perversity
of our nature and the vicissitudes of history. It
must become a crusade and a holy war.
// 041.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch02
Chapter II.|THE TESTS OF DEMOCRATIC PROGRESS
.sp 1
.pm letter-start
“The fundamental reform for which the times call is rather
a reconsideration of the ends for which all civilised government
exists, in a word, the return to a saner measure of social values.”—<sc>Lord
Morley.</sc>
.pm letter-end
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.67
THE next stage in the realisation of the
democratic ideal would appear to be
tolerably clear. We are moving toward an
extension of the democratic principle into the
economic and industrial sphere; but is the movement
governed by an understanding of the goal
we have in view? Are we sure that our immediate
policies are consistent with the “far gain” which
we should seek? Or are we to regard progress
purely as a somewhat blind experimental affair,
largely beyond control? We are obviously
moving—somewhere; the movement indeed
promises to be an improvement. But are there
any tests which can be applied to it in order that
we may satisfy ourselves that the course we are on
will land us safely in port?
.sp 2
.h3
I
.sp 2
Mr. Thorstein Veblen has rendered an important
service to this generation by showing how the
technology of the machine industry has invaded
our minds and led us to an almost exclusive pre-occupation
with <i>processes</i>. It is this intellectual
bias which explains—at least in great part—our
complete capitulation to the Darwinian hypothesis
// 042.png
.pn +1
and accounts for the way in which we have pressed
it out of its proper sphere to furnish clues in
religion, history, and ethics—regions in which there
are factors to be considered which are not included
among the data of the doctrine of biological
evolution. Here also is the explanation of the
wide acceptance of the pragmatist philosophy.
Pragmatism is indeed the characteristic philosophy
of the machine-age; its postulate “that truth is
what works” is clearly derived from the engine-shop,
where efficiency is the only rule. Generally
it may also be said that it is this mechanistic
attention to processes which accounts for the
importance and omnicompetency ascribed to the
still juvenile science of psychology; and this is
particularly true of the application of psychology
and psychological method to the problems of
sociology.

Psychology is the fruit of the application of the
scientific method to mental processes; its subject
matter consists of the observable phenomena of
mind. Its application to sociology has produced
an almost exclusive concentration on social
functions; and while this has important uses, it
does not furnish us with the clue we need to our
sociological tasks. Mental functions, whether of
the individual or of society, cannot be treated
in the same way as chemical reactions. Chemical
reactions are predetermined and invariable; human
functions are dirigible. Those functions which
ultimately govern and sustain human activity and
// 043.png
.pn +1
determine human character are directed to more
or less sharply recognised and chosen ends. It is
indeed true that many of the processes which
are concerned in the movement of life are, as Mr.
Cooley has pointed out, unconscious and seemingly
impersonal, such as those which account for the
growth of tradition and the variations of language.
Nevertheless, as Mr. Cooley himself very excellently
shows in his illustration of the growth of a
book in its author’s mind, even these unconscious
and involuntary processes fall into line with a
definitely fixed purpose of the mind.[#] The
problem of sound social integration is not merely an
affair of processes operating properly. For human
powers may function, at least for a time, in a normal
way even while they are being directed to mischievous
and perverse ends. Modern Germany
supplies an instance of unexampled attention to
social processes; but it is not open to question
that all this has been directed to a perverse and
immoral end, and has (as the event has shown)
culminated in catastrophe and confusion. Just
so a man’s intellect may operate brilliantly; yet
the man himself may be a thief. Psychology may
claim that its business is a disinterested study of
processes; and the claim is justly made. But
the same claim cannot be made for sociology.
The sociologist may indeed claim that he too is a
scientist; and that his science like every other
is empirical and not teleological. But the two
// 044.png
.pn +1
claims are not parallel. Psychology deals with an
<i>opus operatum</i>, the actual concrete mind as it is;
whereas the assumption which underlies all
sociology is that it is handling an <i>opus operandum</i>,
a work still to be done, the production of a living
and wholesome society. The teleological interest
is necessarily supreme. This does not mean that
sociology has not its empirical aspects; of course,
it has; and these aspects are all important for
the construction of a sound sociology. But we
shall produce a mere torso of sociology if we suppose
we can ignore the problem of ends. The relation
of psychology to sociology is of much the same
character as its relation to education or the relation
of physiology to public health.

.pm fn-start // A
Charles Horton Cooley, <i>Social Process</i>, p. 16.
.pm fn-end

It is probable, moreover, that the obscuration
of this question of ends has been helped by the
modern acceptance of the doctrine of progress.
This in its turn appears to be mainly due to the
application of the principle of evolution to human
affairs. We have supposed that because living
nature shows a process of development, the life
of man is also necessarily governed by a law of
predestined progress, from worse to better, from
the simple to the more complex. The result of
this evolutionary view of human affairs has been
to make the study of ends appear impertinent.
The ends are already determined; why then
trouble ourselves about them? It is true that we
do not know whither this <i>vis a tergo</i> is propelling
us; the only thing we can do, therefore, is to study
// 045.png
.pn +1
the processes by which it works as we see them in
operation in men’s minds, whether the single or
the mass mind. We shall observe them, duly
record them, and contemplate them in a spirit of
detachment, without concerning ourselves overmuch
with their destination. But it is now too
late in the day to suppose that this attitude can be
seriously maintained. The area of the margin of
human freedom may be a subject of controversy;
but it is impossible to take seriously the kind of
determinism which denies the possibility of
directing human action to deliberately chosen ends.
The actual range of our control over our actions
may be limited; but within those limits it is very
real. And in any case it does not require to be
very much to make the evolution hypothesis of
very doubtful validity as an interpretation of the
whole life of man.[#]

.pm fn-start // A
For a concise statement of the philosophical argument
against a doctrine of progress based upon biological evolution,
see Bertrand Russell, <i>Mysticism and Logic</i>, pp. 105, 106.
.pm fn-end

Sociology must concern itself with ends; and
it must do so at its own beginnings. If this means
that it has to forfeit its claim to a strictly scientific
status, so be it. There is no virtue in replying
that the question of ends is an affair of speculation
and hypothesis. That is indeed true; but it
cannot be helped. We are compelled to speculate
concerning ends since there is no other way of
reaching a conception of them. And there is no
harm in speculation so long as it starts from the
// 046.png
.pn +1
soundest available premises, and its conclusions
are not hardened into dogma. Sociology will
hardly rise above an academic futility until it
abandons its obsession to rank as a pure science and
makes bold to define however tentatively the
goal toward which social processes should be
directed. Let it by all means make its surveys
and collate its statistics unremittingly; but these
things it ought to do and not to leave the other
undone.
.sp 2
.h3
II
.sp 2
Yet it becomes plain, immediately we begin to
discuss this question of ends, that if we exclude
definitely religious considerations from the argument,
we cannot indicate an end that has the
character of a real end, that is, an absolute
ultimacy. It is indeed questionable how far even
the religious postulate directly provides the conception
of an end, except to the comparatively
small company of people who are strongly mystical
by nature. The Shorter Catechism taught us
that the chief end of man was to seek God and to
glorify Him for ever, but to most of us this brings
not information but bewilderment; and Mr.
Kipling’s paradise where the painter “draws the
thing as he sees it for the God of things as they
are” is attractive but elusive. The truth appears
to be that for the multitude of religiously disposed
persons, the sense of God becomes effectual for
conduct only as it dramatises itself in the form of
// 047.png
.pn +1
a social vision or a personal relationship; and
the ascendency of Jesus in the Christian tradition
is explained by the power He has possessed of
inviting that unreserved personal loyalty through
which the sense of God assumes reality for common
men. Such a phrase as “the glory of God”
describes not our knowledge but our ignorance.
All the content which can intelligibly be given to it
is that there is an ideal end toward which we are
called to move. This, however, does not mean
that it is barren of immediate effect on conduct.
We know that throughout history it has had the
power to evoke a supreme disinterestedness in
people who have been sensitive to it. It is, of
course, akin to what Mr. Benjamin Kidd calls
“the emotion of the ideal;” and it is related
closely to the characteristic poetic anticipation and
hope expressed in such passages as Tennyson’s
in which he speaks of the “one far-off divine event
to which the whole creation moves.”

But disinterestedness and “the emotion of the
ideal,” while they are essential to any kind of
healthy social existence afford but slender foundation
for a positive social policy. No moral
attitude or emotion will carry us far except it be
evoked by an ideal which can dramatise itself in
terms of a more or less achievable undertaking.
We are therefore compelled to relinquish the
hope of a definition of absolute social ends, and
must be content with something more modest
and manageable. We may at least attempt to
// 048.png
.pn +1
indicate certain proximate social aims. Even if we
cannot hopefully describe the ultimate goal of life,
we may reasonably endeavour to answer the
question—What do we want our social organisation
to produce? Just what results are we to aim at?
That some such discussion as this is involved in
any fruitful handling of the question of social
integration is clear from the fact that the conception
of an aim is either implicit or explicit in all attempts
to formulate a social polity ever since Aristotle
defined the aim of the Republic as the promotion
of the good life. But this definition, like Mill’s
“greatest good of the greatest number” raises
further questions—What is the nature of the good?
What is the characteristic note and quality of the
good life? This indeed takes us to the very centre
of our problem; for at last the controversy
between the militarist and the pacifist, the protectionist
and the free-trader, the authoritarian
and the libertarian, springs from differing conceptions
of the good life. This is not to say that
either party has worked out a reasoned conviction
on the point. Both appear to start from certain
instinctive acceptances, determined largely by
temperamental variations,—which points to the
need of a rigorously rationalistic exploration of this
entire region. Mr. Graham Wallace speaks of
“the organisation of happiness”; but as he himself
perceives, he is speaking in paradox. It seems in
any case improbable that our social aims can be
defined in terms of an emotional state.
// 049.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.h3
III
.sp 2
A good deal of confusion has been introduced
into this subject by a tendency to regard society
itself as an end. In much modern thought upon
the matter, the individual is conceived as attaining
his own end through his due contribution to the
life of the group. The extreme development of
this view is to be found in the German doctrine
of the state, a doctrine which prevails in more or
less perfection wherever the Hegelian philosophy
has struck its roots.[#] On this view, the individual
has neither function nor end which is not to be expressed
in terms of his own personal subordination
to the state. He is a cog in the wheel, and no
more. The modern dogma of progress has reinforced
this view to some extent; as has also the
obsession of <i>size</i>, which is one of the by-products
of our extended knowledge of the physical universe
and which has had the effect of minimising the
significance of the single life. But whatever the
causes to which this view is attributable, its
influence on sociological thought is beyond
question. It has been assumed, with varying
explicitness, that the supra-personal end which
the individual is to serve is to be identified with
the social group to which he belongs. It is his
appointed purpose to minister to the happiness of
// 050.png
.pn +1
the group or to increase its efficiency as a military
or economic unit.

.pm fn-start // A
The devout Hegelian who dislikes the Prussian doctrine of
the state is nowadays at some pains to explain that Hegel’s view
of the state does not cohere quite congruously with the rest
of his philosophy.
.pm fn-end

(<i>a</i>) It may be urged against this view that the
antithesis which it implies between the individual
and the group is fallacious. For the group is
composed of individuals and it cannot have a
conscious end except in the minds of the individuals
who compose it. There is a degree of truth in
speaking of the “personality” of a group so long as
the analogy is not pressed too far. A group may
have a common thought and may unite in a
collective act; but to say that a group has a
definite “personality” of its own is to carry the
process of abstraction too far. A group attains to
consciousness only in the several minds of its
members. Moreover social ends must take shape
in individual lives. That the individual should
serve a social end is true; it is equally true that
the social aim must be achieved in the character
and experience of individuals. For if they are not
realised in persons, where shall they be realised?
If our ultimate social aims do not become effective
in the single life, they remain mere abstractions,
existing only in a speculative thought and never
reaching the point of actuality. But it serves us
as little to insist on the converse of this view and
to assert that the end of society is the individual.
The truth would rather appear to be that the
individual is to reach his own end in and through
a society which it is his first business to create.
Personal self-realisation and social integration will
// 051.png
.pn +1
proceed <i>pari passu</i>. The individual and the group
will find themselves in each other; the great soul
and the great society will arrive together. But
from the nature of the case, we must seek the clue
to the character of right social aims through a study
of personality, and of what is involved in its self-realisation.

(<i>b</i>) A further objection to this view is that it
subordinates personality to aims that are limited
and sectional. In practice it may make good
Germans, but almost certainly it cannot make good
men. While it is better for a man to serve the
narrowest social group than to serve his self-regard,
yet the exclusiveness of the social group as it is
identified with the state or the nation is hostile
to that increasing social integration which is implied
in a self-consistent sociology. The current conceptions
of the state and the nation must undergo
some revision if they are to be made congruous
with a fruitful social polity. The nation represents
a stage in the social education of the race, in that
discipline whereby the caveman grows into a
citizenship of the world; and in no sense can the
nation be ethically regarded as constituting an
adequate end for the individual, except as the nation
in its turn is consciously seeking its own end in
the service of the whole.

It is true that men have in the past generally
regarded the glory and the power of their particular
group as an end which has the right to command
their absolute devotion, and have believed that to
// 052.png
.pn +1
suffer death in such a cause is the highest conceivable
self-realisation. This does indeed represent
a much higher ethical plane than that on
which a man fights only for his own hand or the
tiny circle of his blood kindred. But the fact that
this loyalty to his group has had the power to evoke
the highest possible sacrifice, does not prove that
the glory and the power of the group provides a
full and valid end for him as a man. In his
character as German or Englishman, it may appear
to provide him with an end to which he may
properly submit himself without reserve; but it
is questionable whether he can do so without some
sacrifice of his possibilities and obligations as a
man. The propaganda of Germanism produced
very efficient and docile Germans; but the records
of the war leave us little room to doubt that the
process has had a mischievous effect upon their
manhood. From the standpoint of an expanding
society polity, education should produce individuals
who are human before they are national. There
is no system of national education which achieves
this result; but the ultimate logic of the prevailing
educational tradition as we see it in the German
conduct of the war should provoke serious misgivings
and minister to a change of heart in those
persons who direct the policies of public education.

(<i>c</i>) It is worth observing in this connection that
even in Germany the Germanic propaganda had
to trick itself out in a pseudo-universal jargon. It
had to say large-sounding things about a <i>Kultur-mission</i>
// 053.png
.pn +1
to the world in order to validate itself in
the eyes of the German people. The claim implied
in the <i>Kultur-mission</i> as it was commonly expounded
is so preposterous as to be self-refuting
to a normal mind; but this systematic diffusion of
the idea proves that man has reached a point where
the power and wealth of a particular group
is no longer able by itself to evoke an effectual
response in the individuals who compose the group.
The fact is that civilised mankind is slowly learning
to think in universal terms. Its social grasp is
already faintly embracing the whole world.

This circumstance tends to simplify the sociologist’s
task very materially. While the application
of the polity which he evolves will require to take
account of the peculiar traditions and institutions
of different groups, he will be free to work out his
polity in terms which are independent of the
present exclusive and conflicting aims of the groups
which compose the world of man. He will state
the ultimate problems of society in Germany
in the same terms as he will state those in
America; for he will necessarily be dealing
with the one factor which is common to both.
There cannot be a distinctive social science in
Germany and another in America, differing from
one another in essentials and both at the same time
being true. There will be endless variety in the
methods by which social principles are applied by
different groups; for we cannot write off the
past of a people and the institutions in which its
// 054.png
.pn +1
history is embodied. Yet there can be no true
sociology in England or in Germany unless its
postulates are equally valid in America. In other
words these postulates must be drawn from a
disinterested study of personality. They will
not concern themselves with the welfare of a
particular group, in whatever terms that welfare
may be defined. But they will be concerned with
the good of the world of groups because they are
derived from the one fact which is common to
and underlies them all, and which, despite conflicting
aims still binds human groups together in a
permanent unity, namely, personality.
.sp 2
.h3
IV
.sp 2
The aims of our social polity must, therefore,
be defined congruously with the nature of personality;
and the corresponding social processes
must validate themselves by bringing to those
whom they affect, the sense of movement towards
a real and recognisable personal good. It does
not require that all the individuals composing a
society should organise their common life with
the conscious and deliberate aim of personal self-realisation;
but it is certain that the processes
of a genuine social integration will be accompanied
by a certain growing emotional satisfaction in the
persons concerned. It is generally assumed that
this emotional satisfaction is to be described as
<i>happiness</i>; but it is probably something deeper
and more organic than the state which this word
// 055.png
.pn +1
connotes. Professor Dewey says that “to find
out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an
opportunity to do it, is the key of happiness.”[#]
This is, of course, true so far as it
goes; but it is symptomatic of the inadequate
analysis which this point generally receives.
Obviously there are possibilities of self-realisation
and personal satisfaction far beyond the attainment
which Professor Dewey indicates in this sentence.
We might, perhaps, find a better definition of
the emotional state which we should require our
process of social development to produce, in the
New Testament use of the word <i>joy</i>. There the
word is clearly associated with an emotional state
consequent upon a sense of accomplishment or
discovery. The golfer experiences it for a passing
moment after a completely successful drive from
the tee. The artist knows it more durably as he
puts the finishing touch to what he believes to be
his masterpiece. Gibbon had it (not without a
large tincture of self-admiration) on the memorable
evening on which he finished the “Decline and
Fall.” It is the condition which is described by
the word “fruition;”[#] the inward reaction evoked
// 056.png
.pn +1
by the sense of arrival, of fulfilment, and of course—derivatively—of
being surely on the way. It
comes to a man when he knows he is on the road
to personal completeness.

.pm fn-start // A
<i>Democracy and Education</i>, p. 360.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start // B
This word is so frequently mishandled that it is perhaps
necessary to point out that it does not mean <i>bearing fruit.</i> It
is derived from the Latin word <i>fruor</i>, <i>I enjoy</i>; and it describes
an inward state.

Illustrative of the New Testament use of the word <i>joy</i>, the
following passages may be cited: John ii. 30, “<i>This my joy is
made full</i>” (spoken by John Baptist on hearing that Jesus was
launched on the full tide of His ministry.) John xvi. 21,
“... when she is delivered of the child, she remembereth
no more the anguish for joy that a man is born unto the
world.” Matt. xiii. 14, “In his joy, he goeth and selleth all
that he hath” (the merchant man who has found the pearl of
great price). Luke xv. 9, “Rejoice with me, for I have found
my sheep that was lost.”
.pm fn-end

It is upon the question of what constitutes
personal completeness that we have to reach some
kind of conclusion if our sociological thinking is
to be fruitful and if we are to have the proper tests
to apply to our social programmes. Obviously
the society we want to produce is one which will
provide the conditions under which every man may
rise to the full stature of his manhood. But what
is the full-grown man? Apparently the only
person in the modern world who has possessed
a definite and vivid conception of the full-grown
man is Nietzsche. But Nietzsche’s doctrine is
ruled out by our democratic hypothesis. He has
told us that mankind falls into two broad classes
of master and slave, and though he recognises a
considerable hierarchy of social grades, he sees,
nevertheless, at the one end the ruling class, and
at the other “the class of man who thrives best
when he is looked after and closely observed,
the man who is happy to serve not because he must,
but because he is what he is, the man uncorrupted
by political and religious lies concerning liberty,
equality and fraternity, who is half conscious of the
// 057.png
.pn +1
abyss which separates him from his superiors, and
who is happiest when he is performing those acts
which are not beyond his limitations.”[#] Obviously
the only kind of society possible on the Nietzschean
terms is an armed peace between supermen and
“slave morality” for the rest. The will to power
soon or late issues in anarchy. The strength of
the position of Nietzsche lies in the theoretic
justification it provides for the native human bias
which leads to the quest of personal ascendency,
and the struggle for possession. The result of
this tendency has been the constant subordination
and exploitation of the weak by the strong, and a
ceaseless scrimmage among the strong in which the
weak are the pawns; and if this struggle has not
brought about the Nietzschean equilibrium, it
is due, presumably, to the enervating influence
of Christianity. Yet, here, in this self-regarding
bias we have the original source of all our social
chaos; but the disorder is not to be overcome by
inhibiting this impulse. It is sometimes supposed
that human nature is incurably and permanently
self-regarding and anarchic; but this is not true.
It is indeed true that human nature does take
easily to the practice of self-assertion as against
others; this is the penalty of our inheritance
from the “ape and the tiger.” But it is mere folly
to suppose that man has to carry this sorrowful
entail in perpetuity. It is fastened on him largely
by reason of the external circumstances of his life,
// 058.png
.pn +1
a vicious social heredity which has put a premium
upon power and pushfulness, and an atmosphere
of competition in which capacity and cunning win
the prize. It is, however, not impossible to
communicate to men a social vision which is able
to divert the natural energies of the human spirit
into more generous channels. This, did they
but know it, is the peculiar vocation of the preacher
and the teacher.

.pm fn-start // A
A. M. Ludovici, <i>Nietszche</i>, pp. 85f.
.pm fn-end

Mr. Bertrand Russell has recently laid just
emphasis upon the supremacy of impulse in
determining human conduct; and has pointed out
the distinction between impulses which make
for life and those which make for death. William
Blake had a somewhat similar view. What Blake
in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” calls
<i>energy</i> appears to be that vital stress which expresses
itself in our impulses, and which in the form of
“poetic” energy is the source of creative art.
In Blake’s psychology, this <i>energy</i> only works out
healthily and fruitfully when it is co-ordinated on
the one side with Reason and on the other by
Desire; and he traces our human troubles to
an undue ascendency of one or other of these two
balancing principles. When Reason prevails over
Desire, it imposes disastrous restraint upon energy;
but when the tables are turned, the ascendency
of Desire leads to the “vegetated life.” Blake’s
analysis has much to commend it; and it appears
to supply the necessary complement to Mr.
Russell’s. For our impulses, whether they make
// 059.png
.pn +1
for life or death are the same impulses—the
difference in their result springing from a difference
in their direction, and in the conditions under
which they operate.

The old psychological analysis of the mind into
will, intellect, affections, and so forth has served
its turn; and for purposes of social building we
must betake ourselves rather to an analysis
of Blake’s <i>energy</i> or Mr. Russell’s <i>impulses</i>.
M. Bergson has shown us how the “<i>elan vitale</i>” has
in the course of its onward march split up again
and again, and in so doing has set afoot new lines
of development and variation; and we have for
result the infinite wealth of plant and animal
form which fills the earth. The primitive urge
of life was seemingly a bundle of tendencies, which
were released, one at this point, and another at
that, under the stress of the circumstances encountered
on the way. In the same way the <i>energy</i>,
the vital stress of personality is an organic complex
of impulses, each of which has released and shaped
itself conformably to the conditions in which the
human spirit has found itself in the process of
growth. In this complex of impulses, it is possible
to discern three main strands:

1. <i>The Impulse of Self-preservation.</i> This has
to do with the desire and purpose to maintain life;
and its primitive form was determined by the
necessity of procuring food, clothing and shelter.
Its characteristic activity was that of discovering
and adapting the means which were available to
// 060.png
.pn +1
the end of sustaining life; and out of this grew
agriculture, weaving, housebuilding and a range
of operations which grew in number and elaboration
as the requirements of life increased. Here is
the origin of what Mr. Veblen has called <i>the
Instinct of Workmanship</i>.

2. <i>The Impulse of Reproduction.</i> This in its
elemental form expresses itself in the begetting
of children. But as man became more familiar
with the objects round about him, in the course
of handling them for the ends of self-preservation,
this impulse became associated with the instinct
of workmanship, and man began to attempt to
reproduce himself in other media than his flesh.
He came to do certain work which was not required
by the exigencies of his physical subsistence; and
this work he did—as it were—for the joy of doing
it. He attempted to express himself upon such
materials as were capable of receiving his impress;
and his delight in his handicraft became the beginning
of Art. Presently he learnt to set line and
colour and sound in combinations that pleased
him, and in which he was conscious of the joy of
fatherhood. This is <i>the Instinct of Creativeness</i>.
It is not always perceived that there is a very
profound distinction to be drawn between the
workmanlike and the creative activities. Miss
Helen Marot appears to assume (in her book
<i>The Creative Impulse in Industry</i>), that a
democratic form of co-operation, and an understanding
of industrial processes will satisfy the
// 061.png
.pn +1
creative instinct in industry. It is difficult to see
how this can happen under the conditions of
the modern large-scale machine industry. Miss
Marot rightly insists that the creative impulse is
not merely an affair of individual self-expression.
Nevertheless, it is only possible to a group when
the group is comparatively small, and every member
is in active touch with the whole process. The
instinct of workmanship is of a routine productive
character, the instinct of creativeness is original
and <i>reproductive</i>. Nothing on this earth can make
our highly specialised machine processes into
opportunities of self-expression. This, however,
does not mean that the machine industry has no
place in the future social order.

3. <i>The Impulse of Association.</i>—Man has always
lived with men; and there is perhaps nothing so
distinctive of human nature as its faculty for
association. We are so made that we only find
ourselves and each other as we live together in
societies, that we only find ourselves as we find
one another. The exchanges of love and friendship,
the riches of fellowship—these are the most
fruitful experiences of life. “We are members
of one another”; and are fulfilled in each other.
Our mutual need has released in us <i>the Instinct of
Sociability</i>.

The weakness of this kind of analysis is that
it appears to untwine threads that cannot be
untwined in practice and never are separated in
experience. Human instincts do not operate
// 062.png
.pn +1
independently; they blend into each other
continuously and inextricably in countless ways.
We have seen how the reproductive impulse fused
with the instinct of workmanship into an impulse
toward creative art. But the debt has been repaid
in the introduction of requirements of beauty into
the exercise of workmanship. In the era of
craftsmanship, the two impulses were very
intimately blended, workmanship and creativeness
going hand in hand in the erection of stately
minsters, or in the making of harness for the
squire’s horses. It is due to the development of
the machine that these two impulses have been so
widely parted in our time, to the immense injury
of both; and it is one of the tasks, perhaps the
chief of the tasks, facing us in the future to restore
them to something of their old-time intimacy.
Of this restoration, the great modern prophet is
William Morris, who saw hope neither for the
worker nor for the artist except in a closer association
of industry with beauty, and who laid the
foundation of this revived association by his own
pioneer work as a house-decorator. This does
not require, as some suppose, the scrapping of the
machine industry, even though that were possible;
it only requires that we understand the true place
of the machine industry and put it there. Similarly,
the instinct of sociability coalesced with
those of workmanship and creativeness. The
signal instance of this combination is to be found
in the spirit of the mediæval Guilds; but there
// 063.png
.pn +1
are other instances in plenty. Most of the great
human achievements in thought, religion and art,
have had a social origin, in schools of philosophers
and prophets, in groups of artists and the like, and
conversely new departures in thought, religion and
art have become the <i>foci</i> of new groups.

Of all this the moral would seem to be that we
must treat the <i>energy</i> of personality, its characteristic
outgoing, as a single undivided indivisible
stream; yet we must recognise it also as a stream
containing a certain range of ingredients. Therefore,
what we shall require of our ideal society
is that it shall generate an atmosphere and an
environment in which the constituent ingredients
of personal <i>energy</i> shall find opportunity of full,
co-ordinated and parallel development. It will
be a society in which the instinct of workmanship,
creativeness and sociability will grow side by side
and hand in hand toward “the perfect man, of the
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

Of this society then, we may say, that its marks
will be that first every man shall have the opportunity
of a secure and sufficient physical subsistence,
second, that its work will press upward to the plane
of art, and that its sociability will grow into vital
and purposeful fellowship. By these tests we
shall judge the soundness of democratic progress.

Our analysis has hitherto taken account only of
the common man without reference to natural
divergencies of genius or capacity. Professor
Geddes has lately been emphasising Comte’s
// 064.png
.pn +1
doctrine of history as an interplay of the temporal
and spiritual powers, and his classification of the
four Social types—Chiefs, People, Emotionals
and Intellectuals. Mr. Arnold Bennett found men
on the Clyde sorting themselves out into Organisers,
Workers, Energisers and Initiators, which
classification, as Professor Geddes justly points out,
corresponds closely to Comte’s. These types,
however, reduce themselves to two, namely those
chiefly animated by the impulse of action, and those
chiefly animated by the impulse of reflection. Of
course, these types shade off imperceptibly into
one another, because the impulses which give them
their peculiar colour are native to and present in
universal human nature. And while it is certain
that nature will see to it that mankind will be
delivered from the doom of a dead uniformity, it
is nevertheless necessary that we should aim at
the full development of both the active and
reflective impulses in every man. Would that
all the Lord’s people were prophets! Hitherto,
we have considered man as actuated mainly by the
impulse of action; but the release and development
of the <i>impulse of reflection</i> is essential to the
growth of society. For the experience which is
the sequel of action is condemned to sterility except
it be reflected upon. Reflection upon experience
is the appointed guide of further action. We must,
therefore, add to our tests of sound democratic
progress, a fourth, namely, that it shall be of a
kind to stimulate and encourage reflection. It
// 065.png
.pn +1
must, that is, include a method of education
whereby every man shall as far as possible become
capable of independent thought and sound judgment.

Out of all this emerges immediately one certain
conclusion. The kind of society which encourages
creative self-expression, independent judgment
and a living expanding fellowship must necessarily
be conceived and created in freedom. For to
these essential human impulses, freedom is the
very breath of life. The initial problem of
sociology is, therefore, the achievement of freedom;
upon that foundation, and that only, can it
build for eternity.
// 066.png
.pn +1

.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch03
Chapter III.|THE PECUNIARY STANDARD
.sp 1
.pm letter-start
“The deeper cause of the oppression of the factory operative
and of the terrible degradation and pauperisation of the agricultural
labourer, was not the mere fact that machines were
invented which multiplied the efficiency of labour, but the
previous monopolisation, in the period of the Renaissance and
the Reformation, and during the earlier part of the eighteenth
century, of the land and of education. The great change then
took place in the current philosophy of life, which made the
whole of the governing classes of England, with exceptions
practically negligible, accept with avidity the idea merely more
clearly formulated by political economists, that the highest duty
of man was to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market.”
.rj
<sc>Patrick Geddes.</sc>
.pm letter-end
.sp 1
.h3
I
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.67
THE saying that “man shall not live by bread
alone” has been in familiar circulation so long
and on authority so good that it is remarkable
how slightly it has affected the general conduct of
life. Bread and the things symbolised by bread
in the saying are and must remain the first care
of men, but they are first only in the sense of
being preliminary, the necessary conditions of
the main and supreme business of life. Yet
modern civilisation as a whole has shown no
manifest sign of a conception of life which requires
that the chief interest and energy of men should
be directed to ends of a higher order than that
of maintaining physical existence. This fact is
to some extent obscured from us by the elaborate
development of commercial organisation, so that
multitudes of men are engaged in enterprises and
vocations apparently so removed from the actual
// 067.png
.pn +1
business of clothing, feeding and housing other
men that they are not aware of being connected
with it at all. Yet the entire structure of
commerce rests upon the requirement that certain
primary physical needs of men must be met.
That men shall be fed, clothed, sheltered, provided
with heat and light,—here is the source of commerce.
Around these primary needs certain other demands
have gathered—for elaboration in food and
clothing, comfort in the home, and the like;
and a multitude of commercial activities of a
secondary kind have been set afoot and added to
the sufficiently complex business of providing
society with the first necessities of life. This
secondary life of commerce is mainly parasitical
and feeds upon the other, and its vitality depends
as much upon the success with which demands
are ingeniously created as upon the power to
produce the supply profitably. Added to this
vast business of production is an enormous
machinery of distribution; and in these or in
financial operations, originally derived from them
but now largely controlling them, we are all more
or less directly engaged. There are a few
professional occupations which remain outside
this classification, which (to use Carlyle’s phrase)
“are boarded and lodged on the industry” of the
community to which they belong,—the doctor,
the clergyman, the lawyer, the teacher, the actor,
the artist, the journalist; yet so strong and
imperious is the commercial tradition that the
// 068.png
.pn +1
non-productive vocations are required to justify
their existence by providing the inspiration, the
health, the recreation and the knowledge necessary
to the effectual and prosperous working of the economic
machine. Society seems (outside the “leisure
class”) feverishly engaged in keeping itself alive.

Yet if its only purpose were to keep itself alive,
it would not need to be so busy. But to the first
impulse of production and exchange has been
added another interest, that of making profit and
accumulating wealth. In the process of exchange
the opportunity was found of securing a margin
of personal advantage; and gradually this margin
of personal advantage has become the chief
incentive to commercial enterprise. It does not
belong to our purpose to trace the history of this
change; it is enough that we should observe the
fact that the profit-seeking motive has become the
real driving force of modern commerce, and that
historical circumstances, such as the introduction
of large scale processes, the world-wide ramifications
of commerce through improved facilities of travel
and transportation, the invention of the telephone
and the telegraph, the growth of trusts, combines,
and monopolies have made possible fabulous
increments and accumulations of profit.[#]

.pm fn-start // A
For an analysis of the process by which simple barter has
grown into the modern intricate system of commerce, with its
fine flower in “big finance,” see Thorstein Veblen, <i>The Instinct
of Workmanship</i>, chap. V., VI., VIII. More summarily in
Geddes and Slater, <i>Ideas at War</i>, Chap. III., IV., V. For a
useful analysis of the current commercial organisation see
Cole, <i>Self-Government in Industry</i>, pp. 178, 179.
.pm fn-end

// 069.png
.pn +1

The effect of this upon a generation habituated
to the profit-making temper has been to set up
the multi-millionaire as the type of perfection
toward which aspiring youth should be encouraged
to strive. We go into business not to feed and
clothe each other, but to make money; and since
from the nature of the case only comparatively
few of us have the capacity and the opportunity to
become commercial supermen, the rest of us remain
in business to feed and clothe ourselves, or (as
we say) to “make a living.” Commerce, which
owes its origin to social need, has almost wholly
lost the social motive. If we are not making money
ourselves, we hire ourselves out as the money-making
tools of others; and while some of us aim
at larger profits, the rest of us hope for larger
wages. The economic motive is universal, and it
expresses itself exclusively in the pecuniary
standard. “The Almighty Dollar” is more than
a gratuitous exercise in satire, it describes the spirit
of an age.

Much has been heard since the war began of the
profiteer, on both sides of the Atlantic, and on both
sides of the quarrel. But the profiteer is not a
phenomenon peculiar to war-time. Like the
poor, he is always with us; the war has but served
to reveal him more vividly in his proper character.
His peculiar crime is that he makes the extremity
of his country the opportunity of private gain. But
what he does in time of war, he does no less
sedulously in time of peace. His sin takes a
// 070.png
.pn +1
deeper dye in war-time because the national need
is greater, and his opportunity is much enlarged.
Yet the story of how “big business” has endeavoured,
and has largely succeeded in the endeavour
to control the legislative machinery of the nations
in its own interests in normal times, is a very
deplorable and shameful chapter in modern
history. It is, of course, no new thing that legislatures
should show themselves tender to economic
interests; there is even yet no legislature in the
world which is not more careful of the rights of
property than of the welfare of men—except,
perhaps, in Russia. By a curious paradox, those
who most jealously guarded the sanctities of
property, were once the implacable critics of
commercial enterprise, but that phase has passed
away. Landed aristocracies, no less than bourgeois
manufacturers, have been so seduced by the lure
of large and swift gain that the old line of demarcation
has disappeared; and the doctrine of
property rights has been invoked to secure the
sanctity of the capitalist system of industry. The
“governing classes” in Europe and America, who
to-day are the economically powerful, have become
an unholy alliance which exploits the state in the
interests of trade. It is not the English brewers
and publicans only who say, “our trade, our
politics,” though these particular people may be
the only ones who have the effrontery to say so in
public. It is always the profiteer’s cry; and whenever
in the past a piece of social legislation has been
// 071.png
.pn +1
introduced in England, he raises the scare cry
that “capital will leave the country,” which simply
means that he esteems his profits more highly than
he does his country. He is the author of the
inspiring doctrine that “trade follows the flag”;
which prostitutes national idealism to the sordid
business of profiteering; and so deeply has this
poison entered into our life that Christian missions
to the non-Christian world are frequently commended
on the ground that they do pioneering work
for the trader.

All this is, of course, trite and commonplace;
and ever since the early part of the nineteenth
century there has been a continuous and increasing
note of protest against the modern commercial
doctrine of competitive profit-making. It must,
however, be admitted that the protest has not
gained much headway against the evil; on the
contrary the evil has, during this same period,
grown by leaps and bounds, so that the earlier
twentieth century witnessed its supreme achievements.
Mr. John D. Rockefeller is the tragical
culmination of the process in our generation; and
there is no reason to suppose that he is the last, or
greatest figure of the line of Crœsus. Nor will
the subordination of life to the business of
pecuniary gain be effectually stayed until we
seriously take in hand the profiteering ideology
which governs all our thought and conduct. The
main ingredient in the social heredity of this
generation is the profit-making impulse; that is
// 072.png
.pn +1
the atmosphere which it has breathed and which
constitutes its habitual universe of discourse. Art
and religion alike have been infected with the
spirit; the current repute of an artist is fixed by
the prices which his pictures command; and the
prosperity of a Christian congregation is judged
by its statistical returns. It is required of education
that it shall minister primarily to commercial
efficiency; and the outcry against the study of
the classics, and the demand for a more exclusively
scientific and technical education reflect the
essentially commercial orientation of our educational
outlook. It is, perhaps, the most deplorable
aspect of this latter tendency that it so often
becomes vocal in persons whose academic training
should have provided them with a more discriminating
view of life. Even in the universities,
which should be the impregnable citadels of
spiritual idealism, there is an inclination to
capitulate to the monstrous and deadly doctrine
that the end of national life is commercial
supremacy.

Commerce originated in social need and should
be a social service; nor indeed has its perversion
to profit-making prevented it from rendering
substantial services to society. Apart from its
provision of the necessities of life, many of its
inventions have added much to the wealth of life
independently of their immediate purposes. The
unique facilities for travel which we moderns
enjoy owe their origins in the first instance to
// 073.png
.pn +1
the demand for better commercial transport.
Stephenson’s first locomotive was intended to
haul coal trucks. The increasing socialisation
of life in our time owes much to the economic
motive that has popularised the telegraph and the
telephone; and the supreme achievement of Mr.
Henry Ford is not a miracle of standardised production,
but the contribution which his car has
made to the socialisation of the farmer’s life. Our
knowledge of the earth’s surface and its peoples,
and through this, one of the foundations of the
coming internationalism, we owe greatly to the
enterprise of the trader. For a hundred great
services beyond its ministry to the elementary
human needs of food and clothing, we are debtors
to commerce and to those merchant venturers in
many ages who laid its broad modern foundations.
Yet just because we acknowledge a manifest debt
even to profiteering commercial enterprise, it is
the more necessary that we should assail its modern
ascendency over life, and its own perversion to
individual aims, and point out the havoc which its
more modern developments have wrought. It
would be foolish and undiscriminating to say that
it is the sole source of our social confusion, but it
is simple truth to say that it has become its chief
direct occasion; and the result is to be traced to
the circumstances which have changed commerce
from its essential function as a great social service
to a scramble for private gain. The restoration
of commerce to its own proper place and office is
// 074.png
.pn +1
bound up with a recovery of a true view of life
as a whole, with a new understanding of those
things other and greater than bread by which it is
ordained that men shall live.
.sp 2
.h3
II
.sp 2
The paramountcy of the economic motive is no
modern phenomenon, and it would be a mistake to
identify it exclusively with the modern commercial
civilisation. Its modern beginnings are no doubt
to be found in the appearance of the small merchant
class in the era of craftsmanship; and the difference
between him and the merchant prince of the
twentieth century is mainly a difference of scale—this
difference being chiefly due to the high mobility
of property when it assumes the form of money,
and the increased facilities for mobilising it through
the development of the credit system and the
improvement in the means of communication.
The fundamental impulses and instincts which
determine the social order are broadly identical
throughout history. That is why Marx’ economic
interpretation of history is probably the most
luminous and fruitful clue to the course of human
affairs that historical study has yet yielded to us.
We are not justified in assuming (as some have
done) that it is the only valid clue; still less are
those disciples of Marx justified who have developed
his theory of historical interpretation into the
metaphysical dogma of economic determinism.
That economic factors have controlled the general
// 075.png
.pn +1
drift of human affairs in the past does not necessarily
mean that they are predestined to do so in
perpetuity.

Yet even those who most vehemently denounce
the existing profit-making organisation of society
are still obsessed by the notion that social transformation
is chiefly an affair of economic revolution.
Their thought appears to run wholly within
the economic circle. It is in some respects
the strangest paradox of modern times that the
Russian people with their long and unique tradition
of spirituality should have been so completely
captured (to all appearance) by the doctrinaire
materialism of the Marxian school and have
accepted the view that the Kingdom of Heaven
comes by a proletarian capture of economic power.
The circumstance is, of course, capable of explanation,
for in Russia, as elsewhere, political power
has gone with economic power; and the Russian
revolutionary knew what the Frenchman of 1789
did not know, namely, that no political revolution
could be complete or permanent which was not
an economic revolution at the same time. That,
therefore, the Russian revolution should have been
primarily economic is not strange—since Marx had
lived and written in the interval between 1789 and
1917; but it remains a somewhat singular fact
that the spiritual idealism of Feodor Dostoievsky
and Lyof Tolstoi have been so little manifest
during these last surprising months. This preoccupation
with economic change is characteristic
// 076.png
.pn +1
of the attitude of those everywhere who are
most urgent in their endeavour after social
transformation. The advocates of the National
Guild Movement are never weary of reiterating
that political power belongs to those who
wield economic power, and of urging that the
workers should make themselves masters of the
economic resources of society as the necessary
preliminary of laying hold of the political power.[#]
This may be a sound counsel of immediate
strategy; but it is full of disaster if it is treated
as a permanent principle of social practice. For
it leaves us still within the vicious circle where the
purely economic interests are paramount. Whensoever
we consent to the statement that the one
thing needful to society is a more equitable
distribution of the wealth which its industry
produces, we are still within the same hopeless
universe of discourse. A more equitable distribution
of wealth is needed; so much is obvious.
But having secured it, what then? Will the
City of God then come down from heaven? Or
are we content with the hope of a redeemed
society which goes no farther than a vision of a
community of healthy and contented animals?
It is certain that, so long as our thought of social
regeneration moves chiefly within the existing
framework of wealth production and wealth
// 077.png
.pn +1
distribution, our effort will create a range of new
social problems of an acute and probably less
soluble kind. That we should labour to humanise
and to socialise the existing commercial and
industrial organisation goes without saying; but
there is no certainty that after we have done so,
the same economic pre-occupation will not still
fill our minds. It is not enough to work for
change that only transfers the power to produce
and to enjoy wealth from the hands of a small
minority to those of the great majority. That is
indeed only change, and not necessarily progress.
There will be fewer people with more butter on
their bread than they need; and fewer people with
less than they need; and that will be something
gained. But it does not necessarily follow that we
will not still be chiefly concerned about bread
and butter, and whatever elaborations upon that
simple theme that our enlarged resources may
tempt us to seek.

.pm fn-start // A
This is not to be taken as meaning that the National Guild
Movement is destitute of a spiritual outlook. On the contrary,
see, for instance, the last chapter of S. G. Hobson’s <i>Guild
Principles in War and Peace</i>.
.pm fn-end

This is not in any sense an argument for spending
less energy upon the urgent task of accomplishing
the radical economic changes which social well-being
plainly requires; it is rather a renewed
plea that we should ask ourselves whether we are
moving conformably with a vision of man and life
as a whole. Whether we rank as reformists or
revolutionists we should endeavour to see the evils
we hate and the manner and matter of the remedy
in the light of a philosophy of comprehensive and
coherent human good. The scheme of social
// 078.png
.pn +1
insurance established in Great Britain before the
war was a response to a definite social need; but
it is now no longer open to question, that both
in respect of its content, and the method of its
institution, its promoters failed to appreciate the
precise nature and conditions of the need; and
the final solution of the problem which evoked
the measure has been confused and retarded.
And generally, so long as we think exclusively of
social advance in economic terms, out of relation to
their context in life, we are subordinating the greater
thing to the lesser, and are in continual danger of
postponing the greater thing into an impossible
future. We become and remain virtual opportunists
(even though we call ourselves revolutionaries!),
only moving spasmodically and incoherently
within the very circle of institutions and
tendencies which have wrought our present
confusion, until we have gained that social perspective
in which the economic requirements of
life take their proper place.

Properly understood, this place is a relatively
humble one. In our analysis of personality in
the previous chapter, four major instincts were
defined. The first, the instinct of self-preservation
has to do with the maintenance of physical life;
the second, the third and the fourth, as they appear
in their full development, are mainly concerned
with the spiritual expression of life. The first is
the necessary basis of the other three—the foundation,
as it were, upon which they build; but
// 079.png
.pn +1
the real significance and joy of life are associated
predominantly with the impulses of creativeness,
sociability, and reflection. Now, the economic
business of life has to do almost exclusively with
the instinct of self-preservation; its function ends
with the provision of the conditions and materials
of a wholesome physical existence. Yet to-day, the
economic interests absorb virtually the whole of
life; the ultimate interests of life—that range of
things which we may broadly call <i>spiritual</i>, if they
are not subordinated to and absorbed in the
economic motive, are consigned to the odds and
ends of time which we are able to spare from the
sovereign business of making a fortune or making
a living. The distinctive human interests of
religion, thought, art, and recreation are no more
than occasional alternatives which enable us to
some extent to repair the wear and tear of the
ceaseless economic drive. The real revolution
we need is the general conviction that to put it
roughly—as the kitchen is to the home, so the
economic interest is to the rest of life. The
kitchen is indispensable to the home; and there
are exceptional persons to whom it is the most
important part of the home. Yet it is no more
than a strictly subordinate part of the home.
When we have finished with the business of
procuring and eating bread, then the real business
of life begins. It is indeed necessary that the
kitchen should be in tune with home, and that the
work of producing and distributing the primary
// 080.png
.pn +1
necessities of life should be organised so as to
be consistent with the spiritual realisation of life.
We can, of course, no longer admit a dualism of
material and spiritual; for the spiritual may and
must infuse the material and subordinate it to its
own ends. To-day the material has made the
spiritual ancillary to itself; and the soul is
the drudge of the body. The radical problem of
the future is how to reverse this position and to
enthrone the spiritual.

What the spiritual realisation of life implies we
can no more than dimly guess. We may speak of
love and art; but the potentialities of social and
creative achievement in human nature have yet
to be explored. A material civilisation has largely
kept mankind in a state of arrested development
on every side save that which has to do with the
conditions of its physical life. Psychology is
busily, though not yet very successfully, explaining
that hidden world of life which lies beyond the
frontiers of consciousness; there are (and this is
virtually all we can say) vast possibilities and powers
latent within us of which we have only occasional
and indistinct intimations. We have tested the
power and the range of those endowments of which
we are already aware; and the triumphs of art
and science show how nobly and richly our nature
is equipped. Nevertheless, all that art and
science have yet accomplished are but the promise
of that glory that is still to be. But the full release
of all our powers—known and unknown—is
// 081.png
.pn +1
contingent upon a social setting more richly
human, that is to say, more spiritual in temper,
and outlook, than mankind has hitherto known.
This social setting will come when we make up our
minds to break the tyranny of the economic motive
and to deliver life from the infamous despotism
of things. No man knows to what heights of
creative achievement and personal self-realisation
we may not attain when once the economic
preoccupation which swallows our best energies
is dissipated, and we are free to become all that
we have it in us to be, when powers of fellowship
and creation now inert and unknown are awakened
in us, and we press on to those peaks of attainment
of which prophets have spoken and which angels
have desired to see.
.sp 2
.h3
III
.sp 2
The task before us, therefore, is the deliverance
of life from the ascendency of the economic
motive; and at bottom this means the redemption
of commerce from the obsession of profit-making.
In other words, commerce must be conceived and
conducted as a social service. It is true that in the
early days of modern commercialism, the principle
of competition was regarded as the heaven-sent
panacea for human ills. Men became dithyrambic
about <i>laissez-faire</i>, and though they perforce
admitted that the growth of the commercial
system had caused certain glaring evils, yet they
maintained that these were no more than the
// 082.png
.pn +1
inevitable accidents of a process of readjustment.
Let the system only work out its inherent logic to
the end, and there will be a golden age for everybody.
The system has had a fair trial; and so far
from achieving the results confidently predicted by
its advocates, it has failed hopelessly to provide
even a tolerably secure and sufficient subsistence
for the great mass of men. It is indeed difficult
to see how it could be otherwise or how those who
uphold it could have expected a different result.
There is no doubt that the system has stimulated
the production of wealth; and this its protagonists
accurately foresaw; but they apparently
supposed that the distribution of wealth would look
after itself. It had indeed done so, in a fashion
which has deprived the mass of toilers of that
security of physical subsistence which is a necessary
condition of liberty and of the liberation of the
spiritual impulses. So far from adequately fulfilling
the elementary services of providing men
with a steady and reasonable supply of the
necessities of life, it has made life itself insecure
and precarious.

How this situation has come about may be
stated summarily in a few words: (<i>a</i>) The pursuit
of profit tends to lower the cost of production,
while it raises the price of the product. Chief
among the costs of production is the payment of
labour,—that is to say, wages. The result of this
tendency is to depress the income of the worker
and at the same time to raise his expenditure
// 083.png
.pn +1
and since there is no limit fixed at either end the
standard of life is in constant danger of being
lowered beneath the point of reasonable subsistence.
It often happens that wages show an
increase over given periods of time; but it is an
increase of money-wages and not of real wages;
since the period of wage-increase is generally
also a period of a disproportionate increase in the
price of commodities. Some check has been
placed upon the decrease of wages by Trade Union
action; but this is offset by the partial elimination
of competition in the markets through the growth
of Trusts and Combines, and the consequent
upward tendency of prices.

(<i>b</i>) This insecurity is accentuated by the fact
that the maintenance of profits frequently require
a check upon productivity in order to tighten the
market by reducing the supply of commodities.
It is estimated that in America this interference
with production has kept productivity down anywhere
between twenty-five and fifty per cent.
below its possible maximum. This obstruction
is effected by such devices as the diminution of
working hours, dismissal of workmen, and periodic
stoppages of work.

(<i>c</i>) A further element of insecurity is to be found
in the circumstance that labour is itself treated
as a commodity, subject to market fluctuations, its
price governed by the relation of supply to demand,
like any other commodity. In order to prevent
an undue rise in the price of labour, the industrial
// 084.png
.pn +1
system has evolved a <i>reserve of labour</i>, commonly
called unemployment. In normal times, there is
in every trade a chronic margin—varying in
amount—of unemployed men; and no man knows
when his turn may come to fall into the reserve.
It naturally happens that the less efficient man
goes first—the man least equipped to face the
demoralising effects of unemployment. The
result is that he degenerates into an unemployable
and swells the volume of the human driftwood of
our social order.

(<i>d</i>) Insecurity arises also from the unquestioned
and unchallenged authority of the owners or
representatives of the invested capital, against
whose verdicts there is no appeal. The worker is
at the absolute mercy of the master or the foreman;
and he can usually find work only at the sacrifice
of his freedom. Should he display any signs
of restiveness and be dismissed, the growth of
Trusts and Employers’ Associations has made
it possible to deny him employment within the
area over which such bodies exercise control.

This takes no account of the dehumanising and
despiritualising effects of the machine industry
under the conditions of the profit system. That
is an aggravation of the situation which must
be considered in another connection. Here we are
concerned to note the failure of commerce under
a profit system to provide the conditions of
security of life for the mass of men. And not the
least disastrous consequence of this failure is the
// 085.png
.pn +1
deep social schism it has engendered. It has
created the criminal antithesis of great wealth
and great poverty in great cities, and the virtually
open warfare between capital and labour. The
investor and the employer are bent on larger
dividends upon the outlay of capital; the worker
is seeking a larger return upon his outlay of
labour. In the struggle the worker is at a disadvantage.
For while capital and labour, the
producers, are fighting, the casualties of the
struggle are chiefly among the consumers. But the
consumers are mostly composed of the labourer
and the tenement-dweller, that is to say, the
working-class itself. So that the worker in the
struggle is divided against himself. If he is
successful in his struggle for higher wages, the
advantage is lost through the increased price of
commodities; for the employer pays the higher
wages out of higher prices. In the issue, the
worker is caught in the vicious circle of a
continuous struggle against himself, which to
dependence and insecurity adds an unending
confusion.

No question is here raised as to the legitimacy
of profit; we are concerned only to point out the
consequences of a system which permits an
unlimited expansion of profits; and it should be
clear that the redemption of commerce and its
restoration to the status of the social service it
should be, are to be wrought first by imposing a
limit upon profit-making.
// 086.png
.pn +1

This requires two measures:

First, the production and distribution of the
necessities of life should be definitely placed outside
the sphere of competition. The British
Labour Party in its memorandum on reconstruction,
proposes that the coal-supply shall be
so organised that the ordinary householder shall
be able to have his coal delivered at his door, at a
uniform price all over the country and all through
the year—just as he buys postage stamps. But
the principle should be extended to all the essential
commodities. Flour, milk, coal, meat, wool,
cotton and their immediate derivatives should
be withdrawn from the circle of competitive
commerce, and be no more subject to the fluctuations
of a market manipulated in the interest of
profit-making than the water-supply is. There
is no reason why the supply of these primary
articles should not be so regulated as to bear a
reasonably constant proportion to the demand.
For those who argue that this would dislocate
the customary economic processes, a two-fold
answer may be returned. First, that the customary
economic processes deserve to be dislocated; and
second, that the only possible justification of the
customary economic processes is derived from an
economic theory which is no longer relevant to
the facts of life. In point of actual fact, the
standardisation of prices has become in recent
years increasingly common—the elimination of
competition by the formation of trusts and combines
// 087.png
.pn +1
has had the result of fixing prices with a considerable
rigidity; and during the war, it has been done
on a very large scale. In neither case is it suggested
by any one that it has had a deleterious effect upon
commerce. In this proposal for the standardisation
of prices, there is nothing new; it is simply
a revival of the mediæval custom of the <i>justum
pretium</i>—according to which buyers and sellers
and market authorities together determined a price
for each commodity which should be equally fair
to the producer and the consumer; and a return
to this practice—with such modifications as modern
conditions require—is opposed only by those who
still hold to the curious illusion that Adam Smith
spoke the last word upon this subject.[#]

.pm fn-start // A
Revelations of after-war profiteering in Great Britain and
America are creating a definite demand for standardisation of
prices. And if we are to have Wages Boards, why not Prices
Boards?
.pm fn-end

Second: A limit should be placed upon profits,
dividends, incomes and fortunes. This may be
done by taxation, inheritance duties and other devices
already familiar to the managers of public finance.
We should agree to make it cease to be worth anyone’s
while to exploit the public, by fixing rigid
bounds to the accumulation of private wealth; and
this we may do with a good conscience. For all
wealth is socially produced; and the society which
produces it has the first claim upon it. This is a
position which can be challenged only by those who
still hold that the possession of property confers
upon its possessors a “divine right” to take the
// 088.png
.pn +1
lion’s share of the wealth produced by the industry
of the whole community.

It will be maintained that measures of this kind
will take away the incentive to industry and commercial
progress. But it may be pointed out in
reply that the economic end of British life so far
from being disastrously undermined by wholesale
interference with economic laws during the
war, seems to have been in a rather healthier
condition than it had ever known previously.
Profits were limited; prices were standardised;
the old competitive basis was largely suspended.
Virtually all those incentives of self-regard and gain
which we have been told were essential to economic
development were put out of business. Yet
production reached an unprecedented point, both
in quality and in amount. Another incentive was
indeed operative; but this incentive was not of the
personal kind. The peril of the nation in the
great hazard of war evoked a social solidarity
which proved a more powerful incentive to
industry than the self-regarding instincts ever
provided. This is our sufficient answer to those
who still hold to the cynical superstition that the
only motives on which we can rely in dealing with
human nature are those of selfishness. What is
needed to stimulate effort and devotion is the
sense of direct participation in a great social task;
and there is no reason to suppose that the systematic
education of a couple of generations may not make
this same social idealism the normal driving force
// 089.png
.pn +1
of national effort. It is no doubt true that, as
things are, only such a challenge to patriotic feeling
as war brings, could achieve such a result; but it is
our business to discover the stimuli which will make
this same intensity of devotion a permanent fact.

But, it may be said, the economic conditions of
wartime are abnormal, and economic “laws”
must be disregarded in the stress of national
crisis. This is, of course, partly true and partly
untrue. So far as production is concerned, the
only change that war requires is greater speed and
greater volume; the difference is one of degree
and not at all of kind. It is only in the region of
finance that war-time conditions work havoc
with economic “laws”; and the experience of
war-time has taught us the useful lesson that these
“laws” have no permanent character. They are
on the contrary contingent and derivative affairs,
being no more than general statements concerning
economic tendencies which are set afoot
and sustained by the ways in which men habitually
act. If men could be induced to act differently,
then we should require to formulate a new set
of “laws.” The greatest revelation of the war in
many respects is the tremendous achievement of
industrial production in Great Britain under the
influence of a social emotion, and without any of
the common incentives of personal advantage. It
may be conceded that this social emotion was to
some extent stimulated by a group antagonism,
but in the main it was the love of and the desire to
// 090.png
.pn +1
preserve—in spite of its faults—that particular
social synthesis described as British that lay behind
this great performance. And once more let it
be repeated that the peril of war is not the only
organ of social vision.

It is not pretended that commerce will be
redeemed automatically by placing a limitation
upon the profit-motive; but without such a limitation,
it cannot be redeemed at all. It must enter
into our scheme to provide means of kindling the
social vision which will transform commerce into
a social service; and this implies certain changes
of temper and method in the system of education.
There is no reason why we should not come to
regard the business of feeding and clothing the
people as much a department of the public service
as that of educating or that of providing them with
water or the time of day, or of transmitting their
correspondence; and there is no reason for supposing
that a right education will not provide in time
as effectual a spur to patriotism as the peril of war.
.sp 2
.h3
IV
.sp 2
It is, however, not enough to standardise the
cost of living and to impose a limit upon profits;
for we have still no adequate guarantee against
a lowering of the standard of life. It does not
necessarily follow that the surplus profits will go
to the raising of wages, or that standardised prices
will make for a sufficient living. It is necessary
to define a minimum standard of life. The demand
// 091.png
.pn +1
for a minimum wage is a beginning in this direction,
but under the profit system, the minimum wage
defined as a money-wage is something of a snare.
For so long as prices tend to fly upward, no
minimum wage can effectually prevent a depression
of the standard of life. It is only as we succeed
in fixing a minimum “real wage” which takes
account of the cost of living that we approach a
satisfactory estimate. But, again, under the present
system—the relation of supply to demand in the
labour market will render even a minimum “real
wage” exceedingly precarious.

The only satisfactory solution of this difficulty
is to dissolve the connection between work and
wages. The assumption that men will not work
unless they must is not true; but it is the truth
that while men are compelled to work by the
coercion of fear—whether of hunger or of punishment—they
will not do the most or the best work
of which they are capable. That workmen nowadays
are apt to do as little as they can for as much
as they can get is not to be disputed; and organised
labour combines with its demand for larger wages
another demand for fewer working hours, and
under certain conditions imposes restrictions on
output. But this is simply the answer in kind
which labour returns to capital. It is the vicious
sequel of a vicious system. Capital buys in the
cheapest and sells in the dearest market; and
labour having been brought up in the same school
does the same thing. If capital tries to extort as
// 092.png
.pn +1
much as it can out of labour, it is not to be wondered
at that labour should take a hand in the game.

We have to recognise that the best workmanship
requires two conditions; first—that the worker
shall have a direct interest in the thing he produces,
second, that he shall enjoy the freedom which comes
from a sense of guaranteed security. To the
former we shall have to return at a later stage in the
argument. Concerning the latter, we have seen
how the present system exposes the worker to a
grave and vexatious insecurity. It is stupid to
suppose that men will habitually put their best
into their work under such conditions as these.
The whole system is intrinsically demoralising to all
whom it touches. It is demoralising to the
employer because he comes to regard the worker
as a mere “hand,” a tool; and that is a frame of
mind which saps his own manhood. It is demoralising
to the worker because it treats his physical
energy as a thing to be bought and sold at a price,
the highest price he can extort; and since a man’s
labour is actually inseparable from his person, it
reduces him to a condition of servility, which,
within a certain limit, is as real as that of a chattel
slave. He has neither independence nor security.
Over against this state of things, we must affirm
that a man’s subsistence shall be guaranteed to
him as a customary practice, in good weather and
in bad, in sickness and in health, in work or
unemployment. The British Labour Party’s
proposal of a national minimum standard of life
// 093.png
.pn +1
universally enforced is certainly one of the cornerstones
of a wholesome social order. The cynic
will probably say that this will be the paradise of
the slacker; and no doubt there would be some
persons base enough to evade their share of
productive labour. But we can count upon the
public opinion of a society in which freedom has
created a new sense of social obligation and a new
quality of fellowship, to make a slacker’s life not
worth living. It may very fairly be doubted whether
at the worst the slacker who remained incorrigible
would constitute so great a tragedy—either in
number or in kind—or constitute so clear evidence
of the bankruptcy of a system as do the innumerable
and increasing derelicts of the present
industrial order.

These three measures, the standardisation of the
cost of living, the limitation of profits, the institution
of a minimum standard of life are necessary
to the redemption of commerce. For to redeem
commerce, we must in the first instance, take away
from it the power and the opportunity of exploiting
life for the ends of private gain. But this process
secures another result. It ensures for the mass
of the people a reasonable security and sufficiency
of physical subsistence, so that the pre-occupation
with self-preservation need no longer arrest their
spiritual development. We establish the foundations
of freedom—freedom from fear, from
anxiety, from the autocracy of the employer or
his agent—and confer upon the ordinary man a
// 094.png
.pn +1
new status, in which we may with good hope
expect to find him susceptible to a social vision
powerful to evoke his devotion and to bring his
will into captivity to its obedience. Commerce
and industry will then no longer be a vast scramble
of competition and exploitation, but a generous
social co-operation.
// 095.png
.pn +1

.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch04
Chapter IV.|THE REDEMPTION OF WORK.
.sp 1
.pm letter-start
“And the men of labour spent their strength in daily struggling
for breath to maintain the vital strength they laboured with. So
living in a daily circulation of sorrow, living but to work, and
working but to live, as if daily bread were the only end of a
wearisome life, and a wearisome life the only occasion of daily
bread.”—<sc>Daniel Defoe.</sc>
.pm letter-end

.pm letter-start
“And perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men understood
that the beauty of holiness must be in labour as well as in rest.
Nay! more, if it may be, in labour; in our strength rather than
in our weakness; and in the choice of what we shall work for
through the six days and may know to be good at their evening
time, than in the choice of what we pray for on the seventh, of
reward and repose. With the multitude that keep holiday we
may perhaps sometimes vainly have gone up to the House of
the Lord and vainly there have asked for what we fancied would
be mercy; but for the few who labour as their Lord would have
them, the mercy needs no seeking, and their wide home no
hallowing. Surely goodness and mercy shall <i>follow</i> them all
the days of their life, and they shall dwell in the House of the
Lord for ever.”—<sc>John Ruskin.</sc>
.pm letter-end
.dc 0.3 0.67
THE clue to the approaching change in the
social order is to be found in the mind of
organised labour. What organised labour is
resolved to achieve, that it will achieve soon or
late. Hitherto we have been concerned in these
pages with an enquiry, more or less speculative,
into the conditions and measures required for a
wholesome social evolution. How far does the
present tendency of organised labour correspond
with the general lines of progress which our enquiry
has so far constrained us to define? It will not
be necessary, in order to answer this question, to
survey the whole field of labour policy. For our
// 096.png
.pn +1
present purpose we may neglect on the one hand
the conservative element in the labour movement,
and the extreme revolutionary element on the other.
This does not imply a judgment on either; it
simply means that we shall reach a safer judgment
upon the direction in which labour is minded to go
by considering the central mass of the movement;
and of this central mass it may be affirmed with
some assurance that its best mind has received
a more coherent and detailed interpretation in
Great Britain than elsewhere. We shall, therefore,
consider the general tendency of the progressive
elements in the British Labour Movement. It
will not be necessary to raise the question of ways
and means at this point. It is a question upon
which strong views are held on both sides—whether
labour is to attain its goal by political or
industrial action, by gradual approach or by some
catastrophic method such as the general strike.
But the question of method does not arise at this
point; our present object is to examine so far as
we may the goal which organised labour is
pursuing.
.sp 2
.h3
I
.sp 2
The Trade Union movement originated in the
necessity to provide some remedy for “the
helplessness in which since the industrial revolution,
the individual workman stood in relation
to the capitalist employer and still more in relation
to the joint-stock company and the national
combine or trust.” In this initial stage it was
// 097.png
.pn +1
governed by what Mr. Sidney Webb has called the
“Doctrine of Vested Interests,” and it was chiefly
concerned with securing those concessions and
safe-guards which constitute the “Trade Union
Conditions” to the suspension of which British
Labour consented for the period of the war. These
conditions affected the rate of wages, the length of
working day, overtime, night work, Sunday duty,
mealtimes, holidays, and included a countless
multitude of details affecting processes, machines,
the employment of boys and girls, the limitation
of output, and other related subjects—the whole
being an inconceivably intricate patchwork of
concessions and advantages gained as the result
of innumerable local skirmishes and negotiations.
The policy at this stage may be properly described
as one of “nibbling” at the enemies’ lines, of
raiding his trenches as opportunity offered or need
required; and it is a commonplace what large and
substantial advantages these operations have
yielded to the workers as a whole, whether unionists
or not. But it was not possible that these piece-meal
tactics should continue to be the chief
weapon of a growing, highly organised movement
which was gaining a kind of self-consciousness
and a common mind; and gradually out of the
experience of the Unions grew the “Doctrine of
the Common Rule.” The main emphasis has now
shifted from the local and sectional problem to that
of establishing and maintaining a Standard Rate
of Wages and a normal Working Day. This change
// 098.png
.pn +1
is naturally marked by the appearance of a large
scale strategy in place of the local and occasional
tactics of the earlier stage; and the earlier type
of labour leader is rapidly disappearing in favour
of persons who are able to bring some gifts of
statesmanship to the problems of labour. This is
not to say that the earlier doctrine has been
abandoned; rather it has been supplemented and
overshadowed by the new orientation.

But a situation has recently arisen which will
probably bring about the permanent and general
supremacy of the Common Rule doctrine. The
urgencies of war-production made it desirable
and necessary that the achievements of the earlier
unionism should be suspended; and all the
intricate machinery of safeguards and restrictions
was willingly laid on one side for the period of the
war. But it is now evident that even with the best
will in the world, this restoration, as it was originally
guaranteed, has become impracticable. Events
in industry have moved so rapidly that it is impossible
to retrace our steps to the <i>ante-bellum</i> period
and to pick up the lines of life where we dropped
them in 1914. At first sight it would appear that
this result proved that the whole achievement of
the earlier union activity had been of a peculiarly
fragile and slender kind. Yet, despite this
circumstance, the British Trade Unions have
grown considerably during the war, this growth
being doubtless due to the increasing sense that
only a strong corporate movement of the workers
// 099.png
.pn +1
will be able to establish for them the necessary
conditions of a secure and independent life, and in
particular such improvements in their position, in
respect of wages and other matters, as they have
been able to gain during the war. It now seems
likely that the outcome of the situation created by
the impossibility of restoring the <i>status quo ante</i>,
and the increase of Trade Union strength, will
be the general acceptance of the Doctrine of the
Common Rule and a programme based upon it;
and the demand for the Restoration of Trade Union
Conditions may take the form of a demand for
certain general standards of life and labour.
Already, it is fairly evident that the least that labour
will demand will be what Mr. Sidney Webb
calls “the New Industrial Charter” in which
there are five articles: (i.) the prevention of
unemployment; (ii.) the maintenance of standard
rates of wages; (iii.) a “constitution” for factory
and industry, <i>i.e.</i> the introduction of a measure of
democratic control over the conditions of work;
(iv.) no limitation of output; (v.) freedom for
every worker.[#] The “charter” as it stands,
represents a minimum demand; it certainly does
not run to revolutionary excess and contemplates
no organic change in the existing framework of the
industrial order. With its probable economic
// 100.png
.pn +1
effects we are not now concerned, but it is important
to notice the emphasis which it lays upon the
standing of the worker. The charter aims to give
him security against unemployment, a share in the
control of the conditions under which he works,
and freedom from the autocratic dictation of
employer or foreman, and from the coercion of
necessity. Even this moderate measure would
undoubtedly bring a great accession of independence
to the ordinary worker. Further, this charter
applies to all workers, not to unionists alone; for
once the Standard Rate and the Normal Day
are conceded, the old invidious necessity of
making war upon non-unionists disappears; and
with it, to the great good of all concerned, the
demoralising custom of imposing restrictions upon
output.

.pm fn-start // A
The whole position is discussed in its relation both to the
employer and to the worker in Mr. Webb’s brochure: <i>The
Restoration of Trade Union Conditions</i>. Since these passages
were written, the increased demands here foreshadowed have
been definitely made.
.pm fn-end
.sp 2
.h3
II
.sp 2
This “charter” will not be granted without a
struggle. The greed and <i>amour propre</i> of some
employers, and the stupidity of others, will interpose
great obstacles to its institution. The great
growing strength of organised labour, however,
guarantees a comparatively early capitulation of
the intransigent employers.[#] But it would be
a mistake to suppose that this is all that is implied
// 101.png
.pn +1
in the present temper of labour. A good deal of
what labour is looking to has not yet reached the
stage of articulation, but it is impossible to misapprehend
the general direction in which it is
moving. The socialist propaganda, even if it has
not always been as prolific of conversions as its
promoters desired, has been a singularly potent
instrument of education, and if the workers as a
whole have not accepted the conclusions of the
socialist, it is most certain that they have been
profoundly moved by his premises. Probably
more than any other influence it has stimulated
the spirit of revolt against a permanent division
of society by a line of economic privilege; and it
has encouraged a very real insurgency against the
idea, so comforting to the fortunate classes, that it
is the duty of all persons to be content in that
station of life into which Providence has been
pleased to call them. While the rich believed
that their duty to their less fortunate neighbours
was an affair of charity, the Socialist had taught the
poor to cry for justice. The chief achievement of
the Socialist movement up to this time lies less
in the acceptance of its doctrines than in the new
sense of <i>right</i> which it has succeeded in awakening,
even in many to whom the very term socialism
still represents a dangerous and forbidding spectre.
And it is this sense of <i>right</i>, the refusal to accept
as permanent and just a state of exploitation, with
the demand for economic freedom and independence,
which is working as an irresistible leaven in
// 102.png
.pn +1
the mind of the worker-mass of our time; often
indeed, inarticulately enough, but in the minds of
the better educated and most thoughtful workers,
beginning to express itself in specific requirements
which far outstrip Mr. Sidney Webb’s conservative
interpretation of the present need.

.pm fn-start // A
Since these paragraphs were written, a National Industrial
Conference convened by the British Government, and composed
of equal numbers of employers’ and workers’ representatives, has
reported unanimously in favour of a universal minimum wage and
a universal maximum week.
.pm fn-end

The Socialism popularly advocated during the
last half-century, is, however, not likely to capture
the working-class of to-day. The movement for
the nationalisation of the means of production and
distribution—especially of the primary necessities
of life—has indeed gained strength during the war;
and the public ownership doctrine of orthodox
socialism is in no danger of being discarded, though
it may be modified in the extent of its application.
But the orthodox socialist plan of vesting economic
and industrial control in the state will not survive
the war. The modern doctrine of the state reached
its apogee during the war; it is already in process
of rapid discredit. This is chiefly due to the
revelation of the logic of state-absolutism, which
the German performance in the war has yielded;
and we are likely to witness a strong reaction from
the doctrine of the sovereign omni-competent
state in the coming generation. Moreover, in
England the working of the Munitions Act has
proved that the state may be as harsh and troublesome
an employer as a private individual or a
corporation; and the workers are not minded to
emancipate themselves from the plutocracy to
hand themselves over to a bureaucracy.
// 103.png
.pn +1

But how is public ownership to be made practicable
without slate control? The experiences
of war-time have revealed a possible solution
of the difficulty. The Garton Foundation and
the Whitley Committee, the former a private, the
latter a parliamentary body, and neither committed
to “labour” views, have been led by the study
of industrial conditions in war-time to advocate
introduction of democratic control into industry,
and experiments in democratic control which have
been made, have plainly demonstrated its practicability
and its economic value. In the woollen
trades that centre upon Bradford, in Yorkshire,
various troubles interfered with the output of
cloth. Early in 1916 the War Office requisitioned
the output of the factories for the production of
khaki, blankets, and other war-material; and a
little later the Government purchased all the
available wool on the market. The distribution
of this wool to the factories was left by the Army
Contracts Department to a Board of Control which
it established for the whole industry. “The
allocation,” says a recent account of the matter,
“is carried out by means of a series of rationing
committees. There are district rationing committees
of spinners, of manufacturers, and a joint
rationing committee on which the Trade Unions
are represented. These committees ascertain all
the facts about an individual firm’s consumption
of wool, and the kind and quality of machinery
that has been used. From these data the rations
// 104.png
.pn +1
are arranged for the several mills of the district,
while the Government committee settles the rations
for the several districts. It is an extraordinarily
interesting example of an industry regulating its
life on a principle of equity instead of leaving the
fortune of different mills and the fortunes of
thousands of workmen’s homes to the blind
scramble of the market.” It is of interest further
to observe concerning this experiment that when
the Government requisitioned the mills, it established
a method of payment which eliminated
profit-making, and the spinner and the manufacturer
became virtually government servants.
This is worth remembering when it is urged that
the incentive of profit is essential to industrial
development, especially in view of the conspicuous
success of the experiment. More to our immediate
point, however, is that this is a definite experiment
in democratic control, for the organisation in which
the ultimate control of the woollen industry was
vested is composed of thirty-three members, eleven
each being appointed by the Government, the
Employers’ Associations, and by the Trade Unions.

The experiment in the woollen trades goes
farther than the measure of democratic control
suggested by Mr. Sidney Webb in his charter.
For he contemplates no more than a democratic
control of the actual conditions of work, while the
control of raw material is vested in the Board of
Control of the woollen industries. Mr. Webb’s
suggestion is for “workshop committees or shop
// 105.png
.pn +1
stewards” in every establishment having more than
twenty operators, to whom the employer should
be required to communicate at least one week
prior to their adoption any proposed new rules,
and also any proposed changes in wage-rates, piece-work
prices, allowances, deductions, hours of
labour, meal-times, methods of working and
conditions affecting the comfort of the workshop.[#]
Mr. Webb himself would probably like a good deal
more than this; but in his brochure, he frankly
writes as one who believes that “the most hopeful
evolution of society ... lies always in making
the best rather than the worst out of what we find
at the moment to hand.” But in point of fact, very
considerable extensions of the principle are already
being canvassed; and it is unlikely that organised
labour will be long content with the timid bid
for a share of industrial control which Mr. Webb’s
proposal represents. It is symptomatic of the
present tendency that in the Building Trades a
movement initiated by Mr. Malcolm Sparkes, a
London Master Builder, looking toward the formation
of an Industrial Parliament for the building
trades, has already been the subject of serious
discussion both by the employers’ associations,
and the trade unions concerned. Mr. Sparkes
suggests that the Parliament should be composed
of twenty members appointed by the National
Association Building Trades Council, and twenty
appointed by the Federation of Building Trades
// 106.png
.pn +1
Employers, and that it should meet regularly
for constructive, and not at all for arbitral or
conciliatory purposes. To this parliament would
be remitted such matters as the regularisation of
wages, unemployment, technical training and
apprenticeship, publicity, and the investigation of
possible lines of trade improvement. But
obviously such a parliament as Mr. Sparkes
suggests could have vitality and authority only
as it stood at the top of a hierarchy of analogous
bodies all the way up, through provincial and district
councils, from the committee of the single shop.

.pm fn-start // A
<i>The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions, p. 95.</i>
.pm fn-end

The principle of democratic control in industry
has come to stay; together with the doctrine of
public ownership it will probably fix the accepted
social policy of progressive labour. Already,
indeed, this combination is to be found in the
British Labour Party’s memorandum on “Labour
and the Social Order.” The Party “demands the
progressive elimination from the control of industry
of the private capitalist, individual or joint-stock.”
It stands “unhesitatingly for the national
ownership and administration of the Railways and
Canals, and their union, along with Harbours and
Roads, and the Posts and Telegraphs ... in
a united national service of Communication and
Transport, to be worked, unhampered by
capitalist, private and purely local interests, <i>and
with a steadily increasing participation of the
organised workers in the management, both central
and local</i>, exclusively for the common good.”
// 107.png
.pn +1
And again, the Party “demands the immediate
nationalisation of mines, the extraction of coal and
iron being worked as a public service, <i>with a
steadily increasing participation in the management,
both central and local, of the various grades of
persons employed</i>.” It is no exaggeration to say
that the principle of democratic control in industry,
especially under the conditions within which the
British Labour Party contemplates it, carries with
it an entire change in the status of the worker. For
when we remember that with democratic control
in industry, the British Labour Party demands a
universal application of the policy “of the National
Minimum, affording complete security against
destitution, in sickness and in health, in good times
and bad alike, to every member of the community
of whatever age or sex,” it is evident that we have
the two requirements of that necessary revolution
in the worker’s standing which is the corner-stone
of a worthy social order. The worker is no longer
dependent, a pawn in the game of production, an
employed wage-earner, a “hand;” he has become
a partner, possessing both the freedom and the
responsibility of partnership. And it is no less
evident that a great stride has been taken in the
direction of separating work from the means of
subsistence and abolishing “wagery.”
.sp 2
.h3
III
.sp 2
There can be little doubt that the principle of
public ownership with democratic control has
// 108.png
.pn +1
received a great impulse from the able advocacy
of what has come to be known as Guild-Socialism.
The work <i>guild</i> in this connection is something
more than a reminiscence of the mediæval institution;
the present movement has quite definite
affinities with its historical precursor, notably in the
principle of combining all the members of a craft
in co-operation. But the “national” guild goes
beyond its forbear in two respects—in the fact of
being national where the older institution was
local, and in the account it necessarily takes of
the more complex and specialised character of
modern industry. “A national guild,” says Mr.
S. G. Hobson, “is a combination of all the labour
of every kind, administrative, executive, productive,
in any particular industry. It includes those who
work with their brains and those who contribute
labour power. Administration, skilled and unskilled
labour—every one who can work—are all
entitled to membership.” This body of people
will lease from the community the right and the
means to carry on the industry with which it is
concerned, always providing that it shall be under
conditions which safeguard the interests of all the
people in respect of the products of the industry.

In the eyes of the guildsman, the “original sin”
of the existing industrial system is production for
profit. In his <i>Guild Principles in Peace and
War</i>, Mr. S. G. Hobson puts side by side (<i>inter
alia</i>) the following figures, (the particular year to
which they belong is not given):
// 109.png
.pn +1

.ta l:25 r:15 r:15
                         |Iron and Steel |  Railway
                         |  Industries.  |  Construction.
Net output               |   £30,948,100 |   £17,103,100
Persons employed         |       262,225 |       241,520
Net output per person    |          £118 |           £71
Average wage per person  |           £67 |           £67
.ta-

Here are revealed two facts of great interest. The
first is that in railway construction, which is chiefly
for <i>need and use</i>, the disparity between the average
output and the average wage per person is only
four pounds, whereas the iron and steel industries,
where production is for profit, the disparity is as
high as fifty-one pounds. Railway construction
represents output in locomotives, rolling-stock and
so forth which the railway companies make for
their own use; whereas the products of the iron
and steel industries are destined for the market.
Where product is for profit, the excess of average
output over the average wage is more than twelve
times as great as where the production is for use.
This is connected with the fact that the iron and
steel industries are chiefly concerned with the
provision of dividends, whereas in railway construction
there is no such <i>direct</i> necessity.

The second fact of importance is that in both
cases the average wage is the same. This is the
result of two circumstances—first, the commodity-theory
of labour, according to which labour-power
is regarded as a measurable marketable affair,
subject to the law of supply and demand and
separate from the personality of the worker; and
second, that reserve of labour commonly called
unemployment, the existence of which tends to
// 110.png
.pn +1
moderate the fluctuations of the labour market.
It is in the interests of capital that there should be
a permanent margin of unemployment in order that
the price of labour should not become excessive
at any time by reason of its scarcity.

In the past, the maintenance of the unemployed
was, so far as their own members were affected,
assumed altogether by the Trade Unions; but by
the provisions of the National Insurance Act this
has partly been laid upon the employer and upon
the community as a whole. But, says the
guildsman, since the existence of a reserve of
labour seems under present conditions inseparable
from the conduct of the industry; and since
further, it is impossible to secure that under no
conditions there will not be some margin of unemployment,
the charge for the maintenance of the
reserve of labour should be made to fall on the
industry itself. This, however, immediately
destroys the commodity-theory of labour. Under
such an arrangement, the worker will be regarded
not as a potential vendor of so much labour-power,
subject to the law of supply and demand, and
liable to lose his subsistence and that of his family
by the chances of the market, but as a regular
member of a society which provides a financial
reserve for the purpose of maintaining him when
he falls into the labour reserve. So once more, we
see the status of the worker transformed. He
ceases to be a “hand,” and becomes a partner.

The “national guild” is really no more than the
// 111.png
.pn +1
systematic development of this idea of partnership;
and because it insists that this partnership shall be
real and not fictitious, it rejects all schemes of
democratic control in industry which (like the
Garton Foundation and the Whitley schemes)
still retain the commodity-theory of labour, and
all schemes of profit-sharing which is the voluntary
bounty of the employer. The guildsman holds
that the worker has a direct interest in the thing
produced apart from his hire, and that his contribution
in the way of labour entitles him to a
partnership in the industry as real as that of his
employer, and much more real than that of the
investor who does no more than rake in his
dividends. To this principle of partnership, there
is, of course, no logical end but the elimination of
the private employer, whether an individual or a
company, and the combination of the administrative,
executive and productive labour in a given
industry in some such way as is contemplated in
the “national guild.”

Under these conditions, production for profit
will be subordinated increasingly to production for
need and use. Industry will be organised no
longer in the interests of capital, but in those of
the community; and the profits that may accrue
will go to the community. The conduct of the
industry will be vested in a hierarchy of representative
bodies which will consist of persons chosen
to act on behalf of the various departments of
production and administration; and these bodies
// 112.png
.pn +1
will range all the way up from the small shop
council to the national council. The guildsmen
extend their vision further to a combination of
national councils, which will become the economic
parliament of the nation, empowered to handle its
commercial and industrial affairs and leaving the
legislature to occupy itself with those aspects of
public life such as education, health, art, local
government and so forth which are now so grievously
neglected and subordinated to the exigencies
of the commercial life of the nation.[#]

.pm fn-start // A
The proposed National Industrial Council recommended by
the recent National Industrial Conference is plainly an instalment
of the National Guild Council.
.pm fn-end

That roughly is the guild theory. Its great
advantage is that while it eliminates competitive
profit-making, it also avoids through its emphasis
upon democratic control, the danger of excessive
centralisation and bureaucratic control inherent
in state socialism. On the other hand it does not
fall into the syndicalist error of antagonism to
the state. It is not without interest to point out
here (in anticipation of later discussion) that the
national guild reflects on the economic side the
current tendency in political philosophy towards
a doctrine of the state which regards it as multi-cellular
in nature, and would make it federalistic
in practice, in contrast with the emphasis of the
last generation upon its unitary and absolutist
character. It would appear that sovereignty is
destined to be distributed among a series of
democratic functional controls.
// 113.png
.pn +1

The pressure of events has already validated
many of the contentions of the guildsman. We
have seen how in the case of the woollen industries
the Government has initiated the practice of
treating employers as its own paid servants, has
recognised the principle of democratic control,
has assumed the purchase and control of raw
materials, and has superseded production for
profit by production for use; we have here all
the essentials of a national guild save one; and
that one thing needful is the short step from
government control to public ownership. Naturally
the end of the war will bring some reaction
from the position thus achieved; yet it is impossible
not to believe that the need to increase the aggregate
normal productivity of the nation, imposed by the
financial burdens of the war, will ultimately
compel a further development of these wartime
tendencies. Certainly we have in the British
Labour Party some guarantee that this movement
will continue. Its memorandum on reconstruction
virtually presupposes where it does not explicitly
affirm the underlying principles of the guild-movement.
“Standing as it does for the
Democratic Control of Industry, the Labour
Party would think twice before it sanctioned any
abandonment of the present profitable centralisation
of purchase of raw materials; of the present
carefully organised ‘rationing,’ by joint committees
of the trades concerned, of the several
establishments with the materials they require;
// 114.png
.pn +1
of the present elaborate system of ‘costing’ and
public audit of manufacturers’ accounts, so as
to stop the waste heretofore caused by the mechanical
inefficiency of the more backward firms, of the
present salutary publicity of manufacturing
processes and expenses thus ensured; and on the
information thus obtained (in order never again
to revert to the old-time profiteering) of the
present rigid fixing, for standardised products,
of maximum prices at the factory, at the warehouse
of the wholesale trader, and in the retail
shop.”
.sp 2
.h3
IV
.sp 2
“The question,” the Memorandum continues,
“of the retail prices of household commodities is
emphatically the most practical of all political issues
to the woman elector. The male politicians have
too long neglected the grievances of the small
household, which is the prey of every profiteering
combination.” And this brings us to the answer
to our question how far the present orientation of
labour satisfies the conditions we have laid down
as necessary to worthy social progress. The rigid
fixing of the retail prices of household commodities,—the
primary necessities of life—plainly substitutes
the principle of production for need and use for
that of production for profit; and while this of
itself does not eliminate the profiteer altogether,
it tends so to limit the area of exploitation as to
bring the small household, which is after all the
// 115.png
.pn +1
unit of society, within reasonable distance of a
healthy security of material circumstance. Moreover,
the principle of the National Minimum
virtually dissolves the connection between work
and the means of subsistence, so that the worker
gains security of maintenance and a large accession
of freedom and independence. Still further, the
principle of democratic control brings to every
worker complete immunity from exploitation by
those upon whom an antecedent economic
advantage has conferred power and enables him
to graduate to the dignity and responsibility of
partnership.

But what then? Having achieved this new
status, it is certain that he will not be satisfied. For
the thing that is stirring in the mind and heart of
organised labour to-day is something much deeper
than a desire for a more satisfactory physical life
or for economic independence. Labour is indeed
unable to make articulate more than the margin of
the new desire of which it is aware; but the
phenomenon which we have called “labour unrest”
properly understood, is the result of a craving,
imperious and not to be denied, for a larger life.
Of this larger life the worker instinctively feels that
economic security and independence are the
indispensable pre-requisites. According to the
measure of his intelligence and insight, he is aiming
for these things. That is the inwardness of the
present stirrings of organised labour. The worker
knows that while he is compelled to hire himself out
// 116.png
.pn +1
at a price in order to provide himself and his
children with bread, under conditions which make
a sufficiency of bread permanently uncertain, and
which virtually deny him the opportunity of
being anything more—from his first working day
to his last—than the tool of interests from which
he is powerless to detach himself, he can never
become the man he might be or experience the
joy of life which his intuitions declare to be his
rightful inheritance. The greater part of life, and
especially of the worker’s life, is an unredeemed and
unexplored tract; and the possibilities hidden in
those regions beyond, eye hath not seen neither
hath ear heard. But dimly and indistinctly the
worker has caught glimpses of this promised land
and he has set his face that way. But he has
justly perceived that between him and the promised
land lies the “great divide” of economic disinheritance
with all that it entails of insecurity and
bondage. To-day he has come so far as to be
in the very act of crossing this divide. That he
does not discern clearly what manner of life awaits
him in his promised land is no wonder; for none
of us know, since as yet none of us have tasted save
only in brief and transitory moments the rare
quality of the fellowship and the creative urge
which belong to the life of spiritual freedom. The
British Labour Party speaks of “the promotion of
music, literature, fine art, which have been under
capitalism so grossly neglected, and upon which,
so the Labour Party holds, any real development
// 117.png
.pn +1
of civilisation fundamentally depends.” This is
a hint of the “milk and honey” of the promised
land, and it is only in hints we can speak until
we have entered upon our inheritance of spiritual
life, and have begun to explore its untold riches.
But the road into that land is the road of economic
freedom and independence; and that is the road
which organised labour is making to-day. It
has discovered that “society, like the individual,
does not live by bread alone,—does not exist only
for perpetual wealth production.” If it makes
bread and produces wealth, it is only that men may
live, and living may together strive to achieve the
glorious liberty of the sons of God.

It is a fair conjecture concerning the results of
this general movement, that it will ultimately
assign to the economic interests of life their own
proper secondary place. With the gradual disappearance
of private profit and wages will pass
the present ascendancy of the economic motive over
the whole of life. It is significant of the intrinsic
impulse of this movement that the promoters of
the national guild movement should contemplate
the separation of the conduct and control of the
commercial and industrial elements of national
life from the business of the national legislature, so
that that body may attend to things other and
greater than bread. This does not mean that the
economic aspects of life will lose their proper
importance; it simply means that they will be
deprived of their present paramountcy; and how
// 118.png
.pn +1
much that means for the right kind of social
progress, for the development of a completely
human order of life, it is impossible to do more
than fancy. But it will be a great day when men
awaken to the fact that the centre of gravity of life
is not in the body but in the mind.
.sp 2
.h3
V
.sp 2
To have transformed the status of the worker is,
however, only a part of the problem of work. An
industrial democracy may conceivably be no better
than a glorified capitalist, a national profit-making
concern. But this keeps us still within the vicious
circle of economic domination, with the dangers of
degeneration greatly increased. For in place of
individuals exploiting individuals, we should have
nations endeavouring to exploit nations—with
two certain consequences, war and a reaction to
competitive individualism; and our last state
would be worse than the first. Our complete
emancipation from the economic motive requires
not only a new status for the worker but <i>a new
doctrine of work</i>. Industry must no more be
conceived as a means of <i>national</i> wealth than of
individual wealth.

The true doctrine of work is present in germ in
the British Labour Party’s formula of “workers
whether by hand or by brain.” The inclusion in
one category of the industrial and professional
classes should exert a very profound influence upon
the popular attitude to manual labour. Much of
// 119.png
.pn +1
the traditional habit of looking upon manual labour
as being intrinsically inferior to brain work is due
to a stupid lack of discrimination. For skilled
labour often requires as nice a co-ordination of mind
and hand, and as sensitive a nervous organisation
as the most recondite surgery. The competent
engineer is in no sense the mental inferior of the
accountant; probably the engineer has on the
whole the more highly organised mind; yet the
engineer is popularly assigned to a relatively
lower social rating. The conventional social
divisions of those who work are entirely absurd and
seem chiefly to depend upon the clothes one
wears. That toil is regarded as inferior which
cannot be performed without soiling clothes of a
more or less ceremonial cut.

But when once it is realised that the work of
the physician or the clergyman is different only in
kind and not in social worth from the work of the
machinist or the farm-labourer, we shall have a
more reasonable basis for classification; and
though it is true that the minister (being no more
immune from the pressure of social atmosphere
than other men) has not been unmindful of his
stipend or the doctor of his fee, yet both callings
have preserved enough of the ideal of disinterested
social service to pass on something of the same
impulse into occupations which the common mind
regards solely as means of livelihood. This indeed,
must be the first element in our doctrine of work.
It must be regarded primarily as a social service.
// 120.png
.pn +1
John Ruskin long ago tried to teach us that in every
nation there were four great intellectual professions:
the soldier’s, to defend it; the pastor’s, to teach it;
the lawyer’s, to establish justice in it; and the
merchant’s, to provide for it; and it was, he added,
the duty of each of these on due occasion to die
for it. What was novel in Ruskin’s doctrine was
that there was a due occasion on which a merchant
should die for his country. But why should we
stop at the merchant? There is no reason why
this principle should not be extended to every
kind of labour essential to the life of the nation. At
least there should be nothing inconceivable in
the idea that every member of the community
should develop the same degree and quality of
social devotion. And (let it be repeated once more)
the industrial records of this time of war do make
this expectation into something more than a
chimæra. The splendid social devotion which the
emergency of war has discovered and released
should and could be made a permanent asset.
It is entirely a question of the right kind of
education.

If the impending revolution in the worker’s
status brings with it (as it should) a sense of genuine
partnership, its natural sequel should be a growing
consciousness of participation in a great social task.
Every man would come to look upon his job as an
integral and indispensable part of the common
service. This would add a new interest and worth
even to the purely mechanical tasks which the
// 121.png
.pn +1
growth of large-scale production has so greatly
multiplied. It would be no more than a partial
solution of the entire problem involved in routine
mechanical toil; but it would go a great way
towards mitigating its inevitable dreariness, and it
would certainly bring with it a quality of personal
satisfaction in work which working for a living
at a job in which one’s sole interest is one’s hire
cannot possibly afford.
.sp 2
.h3
VI
.sp 2
Yet neither the habit of regarding work as
participation in a social task nor the element of
comradeship which we may reasonably expect
to grow out of such a way of conceiving work,
nor yet the amelioration of the purely external
conditions of modern industrial production, can
possibly be accepted as furnishing a final solution
of the problem of work. It is probable that
under existing conditions, some such changes as
these are all we can hope for over large areas of
industrial life; perhaps, indeed, without a general
recognition of the real social significance of large
scale production, the best we can ever do will consist
of further modification of industrial conditions
along these lines. Yet all this does virtually
nothing to make work a means of worthy self-expression.

The high degree of specialisation which has
followed the introduction and improvement of
industrial machinery, confines large multitudes of
// 122.png
.pn +1
people to occupations which consist of repeating
the same small routine operation all day and every
day; and the mentally benumbing and demoralising
consequences of this type of work is one of
the commonplaces of social observation. Not
the least of the social services of Trade Unionism
is that it has furnished to men occupied in purely
mechanical work an interest which has helped to
keep their minds alive. It is rarely recognised how
inevitably certain of our graver social evils are
connected with the devitalising influences of
modern industrial conditions. Undoubtedly one
of the most powerful causes of the deadly grip
of the drink traffic upon society is the opportunity
it provides of reaction from the depressing and
deadening round of the shop. The saloon strikes
a kind of psychological balance with the factory.
The well-meaning persons who suppose that open
spaces, museums, art galleries, and the like will
furnish effectual off-sets to the public house,
overlook the fact that the peculiar depression to
which the factory worker is subjected demands
a relief more vivid and more violent than these
more refined avenues of diversion offer. Temperance
reformers have greatly neglected this aspect
of their problem; and prohibition without any
accompanying provision for the healthy equilibration
of human energies is likely to have consequences
that may astonish and perhaps confound
its advocates.

But the remedy for this and the other penalties
// 123.png
.pn +1
which society has to pay for its industrial system
is not to be found in the abandonment of large-scale
processes and reversion to an earlier fashion
of production. Machinery certainly supplanted
a more human, kindlier way of life; and not even
the extensive factory legislation which has tempered
the worst excesses of the new way, has compensated
for the passing of the amenities of the older system.
We have, however, to count upon the permanence
and the still further extension of large-scale
processes. Obviously it is not intrinsically an
evil thing, potentially it is an asset of incalculable
value to society. Even its monotonies have their
uses; for a certain amount of routine work is good
for every man. It is only evil when it is excessive.
The disadvantages which belong to large-scale
production are on the whole incidental, and owe
their origin chiefly to <i>laissez faire</i> and the economic
motive. Once this vicious connection is dissolved
and production for need and use becomes the
general rule, the very proficiency of our large-scale
processes will liberate a great volume of
human energy for the pursuit of the spiritual ends
of life.

For the elimination of the profit-interest, and
the regulation of production on the basis of calculated
demand, will at once lead to a very considerable
diminution in the number of working
hours. It is questionable whether, with industrial
processes properly organised, it would be necessary
for any man to spend more than four hours a day
// 124.png
.pn +1
in the actual production of necessities. This
refers, of course, to the strictly mechanical departments
of production. In agriculture, which
depends upon seasons and weather conditions, it
is obvious that a standardised day is impracticable.
Moreover, agriculture is an avocation which has
its own peculiar compensations. It is carried on
in the open-air and has elements of variety and
change to which the industrial worker is a stranger.
Yet, even in agriculture the great extension of
mechanical and labour-saving instruments should
go far to mitigate the acknowledged disadvantages
of the life. The evils attaching to the work of the
farmer and his labourer are, however, largely
extrinsic. It is the dullness and monotony of his
spare hours that weigh most heavily upon him.[#]
With the industrial, it is different. He does not
lack opportunity of social life in so much as he
lives normally in large populous centres; but the
atonic condition to which he is reduced by the
circumstances of his work, renders him incapable
of creating and enjoying the best kind of fellowship.
He is either too weary for any kind of
fellowship and sits at home reading the newspaper,
and then to bed; or he turns in his need of
compensating excitement to the questionable
atmosphere of the public-house. A small minority
// 125.png
.pn +1
of tougher mental and nervous fibre will cultivate
an allotment or seek diversion in books or sport;
but the majority have neither inclination nor energy
for any active pursuits. The remedy for this
trouble lies in the drastic shortening of the working
day for all men who are engaged in the mechanical
process of production. With the increasing application
of science to industry, under conditions of
production for use, it is impossible to say how
short the necessary working day may become. And
if it became the rule, as it probably should, that
no member of society should be exempt from
a share in the work of maintaining its natural life
and so take his part in mechanical production, there
is no reason why the indispensable mechanical
toil expected of the individual should not be reduced
to a very low point indeed.

.pm fn-start // A
The present wholly inadequate remuneration of the
agricultural labourer does not come under discussion here, as
the argument assumes that the principle of the national minimum
is accepted. This assumption is the more reasonable in view
of the fact that in England a minimum wage for agricultural
labourers has been fixed and is to operate for five years.
.pm fn-end

If in addition men are trained from childhood
to take the view that this toil is a necessary social
task, and therefore, intrinsically noble and honourable,
the whole atmosphere in which it is discharged
would be organically changed. To-day, the
prevailing note of speed and competition reduces
the place and sense of comradeship to very narrow
limits. The general attitude of antagonism
between capital and labour infects the air, and not
only makes co-operation between the administrative
and productive functions impossible, but introduces
a subtle poison of disintegration into the
mutual relations of the operatives. The only
comradeship which appears to exist is that which
// 126.png
.pn +1
is created by the need under present conditions
of safeguarding class interests. When men of all
classes have been brought up to regard a certain
amount of mechanical toil as an honourable
obligation to the society to which they belong,
they will naturally accept their share in the common
task and bring themselves to it in a spirit of comradeship.
.sp 2
.h3
VII
.sp 2
But it is useless to suppose that we have done all
that is needed when we have thus relieved the
irksomeness of the day’s work. Indeed, we have
(if we leave it at that) only created a great peril—the
peril of deterioration which always attends
unused or ill-used leisure. “Satan finds some
mischief still for idle hands to do;” and the
antidote to idleness lies in providing things to do
that unoccupied hands will turn to do with
readiness. Yet it were fatal to regard this as a
problem of utilising spare time. We have indeed
a greater and worthier task on hand; and the
drastic shortening of the statutory working day
provides us with our opportunity.

Genuine social progress and content is, as we
have seen, to be achieved only under conditions
where men have the opportunity, and are trained
in the exercise of the instinct of creativeness. For
the great majority of men, the means of this self-expression
must be found in some sort of manual
// 127.png
.pn +1
activity. It must take the form of work. Perhaps
the solution lies in the principle of “one man, two
trades”; of which one shall be some part of the
mechanical toil involved in social upkeep, and the
other a craft in which a man may exercise and express
something of his own independent mind. Possibly
we may distinguish the two types of occupation
as utility-trades and vocations, the one necessary
quality of the latter being that men should be able
to put their whole souls into their tasks; and in
so far as these tasks are of a direct productive kind,
since they are not tasks of mere utility, they may
fitly be tasks of beauty as well. We require
something of the nature of a revival of the older
type of craftsmanship in which the æsthetic
faculties found room for expression; and in the
matter of clothing and house-furniture and decoration
there is ample room for the development of a
revived craftsmanship where use will go hand in
hand with beauty. It should plainly be an
organic part of educational policy to provide for
the early laying of the foundations of original and
creative craftsmanship. In any wise system of
education, the period of adolescence should be
marked by a very definite differentiation of
vocational training (without neglecting the other
elements of a generous education). Aptitudes
should be watched for; and the growth of the
youth should be stimulated along the lines of his
natural inclinations. Especially should any signs
of independent and original creative power be
// 128.png
.pn +1
encouraged. Change of this sort can, of course
be brought about only gradually; but it should
be faced seriously if society is ever to be emancipated
from its baleful subjection to the economic
motive.

That we find it difficult to believe that any
change along these lines is possible is due chiefly
to a lack of acquaintance with any other conditions
than those which exist to-day. But William Morris
and John Ruskin found no difficulty in believing
that men would work “for the joy of the working,”
provided that they had work to do which had in it
the elements of joy. It was so that they worked
themselves; and the substance of their teaching
was a plea that work should be made once more a
delight by being raised to the plane of art—that
is to say, that it might become the avenue of
independent creative self-expression. It would
doubtless take several generations before this
doctrine could be established as a habit of mind and
society organised conformably to it, but it is no
cheap speculation which foresees, arising out of a
progressive liberation and discipline of the creative
instincts of a community, a new birth of art. The
creative urge would, like the sun, shoot out coronas
of flaming achievement; art itself might climb to a
plane it has never hitherto known and break out in
directions which we in our present state of spiritual
purblindness cannot anticipate. At least, it is something
to be remembered that those days in England
in which industry was alive with a fine craftsmanship
// 129.png
.pn +1
and a generous comradeship, were also the days
which produced the finest monuments of English art.
.sp 2
.h3
VIII
.sp 2
The organisation of society upon lines of this
kind would be a protracted and difficult task; and
here one is concerned more with the definition of
a tendency rather than the precise measures
necessary to make it effective. Obviously there
must be large exceptions to any rule of life in any
vital and developing social order. But the
reduction of mechanical toil to the lowest practicable
point, and a generous development of the
idea and practice of the vocational life seem to be
essential. And the general principle which we
desire for mechanical tasks of production should
be applied in other regions, as for instance in the
distributive trades and in those occupations which
are concerned with the disposal of waste. The
increasing emphasis on hygiene has led to the
multiplication of a number of “waste-occupations,”
the street-cleaner, the drain-man, the garbage-man
and so forth. Within this region we have every
right to expect so large an extension of scientific
and mechanical methods of dealing with the waste
products of life as to make some at least of these
occupations wholly superfluous. This type of
occupation has meantime, the very undesirable
and injurious effect of relegating those who are
// 130.png
.pn +1
engaged in it to a condition of much social inferiority;
and this is the more unjust, insomuch as the
health of the community depends so greatly upon its
being faithfully performed. It was a happy
inspiration to clothe the New York street-cleaners
in white; and it should have a sacramental
suggestion for their fellow citizens. For we are
familiar with a word which describes a multitude
“arrayed in white garments.” The innovation
established a point of contact between urban
cleanliness and holiness; and it is within this
cycle of social judgment that the waste occupations
should be placed. We should then take more
kindly to the only equitable solution of the problem
presented by this class of work, namely that it
should be shared out and that all the members of
the community should be liable to be called out in
companies, as they are now for jury service, to do
their part of this indispensable work. This brings
the waste occupations into the same category
as the productive trades; in point of fact, it is there
they really belong. There can be no intrinsic
difference of worth between the work of providing
for the needs of society and the work of disposing
of its waste. For without either of these, society
cannot live.

The only class for which there should be no
room in a healthy social order is the social parasite.
It is to this class that the “idle rich” belong, the
people who neither toil nor spin yet fare sumptuously
every day at the expense of the labour of
// 131.png
.pn +1
others. To this class also belongs the large
“flunkey” class—butlers, footmen, door-openers,
and other uniformed persons who are arrayed in
fine apparel doing little things for us that we ought
to do for ourselves. It is just neither to these
persons nor to society that they should be allowed
to continue in careers of such complete uselessness.
So far as Europe is concerned this class has
already largely disappeared, for the Army or
industry has swallowed it up; and it is not likely
ever to re-emerge on the pre-war scale. We
must add also to this parasitic class those who are
engaged in luxury trades—with the <i>caveat</i> that
it is exceedingly difficult to draw a strict frontier
line between necessity and luxury on the one hand,
and on the other, between luxury and the thing
that may minister to the legitimate comfort, the
health, the beauty and the general enrichment of
life. But there are some things so palpably on
the wrong side of the line that there should be no
difficulty in identifying them. It is a subject
worth some reflection here that the war is teaching
us to do without many things which we had come
to regard as necessities. It is a sad commentary
upon the civilisation we had produced, that it
left us with a hunger which we endeavoured to
appease by an elaboration of the fringes of life.
We had gradually accumulated a range of comforts
and conveniences, and not a few superfluities,
which had come to be regarded as indispensable.
But the war has taught us how few things are after
// 132.png
.pn +1
all needful. We have all the materials of joyful
life when we have food to eat, a home to live in,
freedom and congenial work, comradeship and
love. And unless these become more and more
the sure possession of all, our social progress is no
more than a laborious sham.
// 133.png
.pn +1

.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch05
Chapter V.|THE ACHIEVEMENT OF FREEDOM.
.sp 1
.pm letter-start
“When we say that one animal is higher than another, we
mean that it is more able to control its own destiny. Progress
is just this: Increase in Freedom.”—<sc>Stewart McDowall.</sc>
.pm letter-end

.pm letter-start
“Ne vous laissez pas tromper par de vaines paroles. Plusieurs
chercheront a vous persuader que vous êtes vraiment libres,
parce qu’ils auront écrit sur une feuille de papier le mot de
liberté et l’auront affiché à tous les carrefours.

La liberté n’est pas un placard qu’on lit au coin de la rue.
Elle est une puissance vivante qu’on sent en soi et autour de soi,
le génie protecteur du foyer domestique, la garantie des droits
sociaux, et le premier de ces droits.
.tb
La liberté luira sur vous quand, a force de courage et de
persévérance, vous vous serez affranchis de toutes ces servitudes.”
.rj
<sc>Lamennais.</sc>
.pm letter-end
.sp 1
.h3
I
.sp 2
.dc 0.2 0.67
POLITICAL and religious freedom cannot
be complete without the winning of
economic freedom. That economic dependence
cuts the nerve of all freedom needs no proof; the
history of landownership is full of instances—even
in recent times—of the coercion of dependants
in matters of opinion and religious observance.
So long as one man’s subsistence depends upon
the will of another, it is foolish to suppose that he
can in any real sense be free; and it is to be
counted for righteousness to the Trade Unions
that by binding the workers together, they have
been able to resist encroachments on the part of
the vested interests upon liberty of thought and
conscience. Nevertheless, while the present
acceptances of the industrial order prevail, the
// 134.png
.pn +1
worker still lacks that liberty of the person without
which the liberty of the mind, the crown and
safeguard of all liberty, can never be more than
partial. It is true that the serf was tied to the
land in a way in which the modern worker is not
tied to his job. Yet the difference is more apparent
than real; for the worker has obtained this freedom
at the cost of that security of subsistence which the
serf did undoubtedly to some extent enjoy. The
worker may also choose his master as the serf could
not; but it is nevertheless the choice of <i>a master</i>, a
man who dictates the terms and conditions of
employment, except in so far as the principle of
collective bargaining has succeeded in entering in
and modifying the magisterial power of the
employer. Freedom of thought and conscience
is a vain thing except a man be able to translate
thought into act and to obey the injunctions of
his conscience; and so long as a system, industrial
or other, imposes restrictions upon a man’s control
of his own person, he does not possess that mobility
with which his own personal growth and his
ultimate social efficiency are organically bound up.
To complete our heritage of freedom, it is essential
that the worker should receive a guarantee of
economic security. His mind and his conscience
mud be delivered from the fear of starvation; for
to-day it is only at the risk of exposing himself
and his children to hunger that he is able to assert
his liberty within the industrial region.[#]

.pm fn-start // A
Upon the broader effects of the economic factor of property
rights upon liberty, see pp. 246f.
.pm fn-end

// 135.png
.pn +1

It is further to be noted that industrial conditions
circumscribe the mind in another more subtle
and probably more dangerous way; for a man may
assert—and indeed men have often done so—his
liberty of thought, and so save his mind even at
the risk of starvation. The evolution of the
machine industry has been in a direction which
continually decreases the activity of the mind.
It requires no more than habituation to a routine
process which makes no demand for initiative
and independent judgment on the part of the
worker. This is apt to lead to a mental inertia
which accords well with that bondage of the person
which the wage system entails; and this is
no doubt the reason (at least in great part) of the
general apathy of large masses of the workers in
the past to progressive industrial movements. And
so long as there is ample and easy opportunity for
those parts of the physical and nervous organism
which have laid inert through the working day to
strike a balance of expenditure with the rest—in
the drinking-shop or elsewhere—there seems to
be no reason why a large proportion of the workers
should not sink into a permanent helot class. We
are apt to forget that the progressive elements of
the labour movement have not hitherto constituted
or represented by a great deal the total mass of the
working population; and there has been a real
menace to the growth of liberty involved in the
possibility that the apathetic elements of the
working class might be hardened into a virtual
// 136.png
.pn +1
serfdom. For the presence in any society of a
permanently unprivileged and disabled element
which is condemned in perpetuity to do its menial
work is the undoing not only of liberty, but at
last of the society itself.

The problem of liberty resolves itself therefore
into that of the liberty of the mind. The coming
achievement of economic independence is due
largely to the circumstance that the Trade Unions
have afforded a sanctuary for intellectual freedom
against the danger of encroachment upon it by
the system of private capital and the conditions
of the machine industry.[#] It must, however, be
remembered that the freedom of the mind is
dependent on factors other than external; and
chiefly upon the capacity to use mind in coherent
and purposeful ways. A mind capable of such
use will not long remain bound. This aspect of
// 137.png
.pn +1
the problem belongs properly to the sphere of
education; and it is in that setting only that it
can be profitably handled. At this point our
concern is with the external conditions of mental
freedom.

.pm fn-start // A
It is worth noticing that on the other hand, the growth of the
machine industry has itself indirectly co-operated in this process.
“It follows as a consequence of the large and increasing requirements
enforced by the machine technology that the period of
preliminary training is necessarily longer, and the schooling
demanded for general preparation grows unremittingly more
exacting. So that, apart from all question of humanitarian
sentiment or of popular fitness for democratic citizenship,
it has become a matter of economic expediency, simply as a
proposition in technological efficiency at large, to enforce the
exemption of children from industrial employment until a later
date and to extend their effective school age appreciably beyond
what would once have been sufficient to meet all the commonplace
requirements of skilled workmanship.” (Thorstein
Veblen, <i>The Instinct of Workmanship</i>, p. 309.) This
educational process has had consequences beyond those immediately
sought. The quickening and enlargement of mind which
have followed even the very inadequate education hitherto
provided in the common schools, have made a very considerable
contribution to the movement for economic emancipation.
.pm fn-end
.sp 2
.h3
II
.sp 2
Lord Acton’s definition of liberty, already
quoted, as “the assurance that every man shall be
protected in doing what he believes to be his duty
against the influence of authority, custom and
opinion,” suggests that the test of the quality and
measure of liberty in a particular community, lies
in its attitude to and its treatment of dissent—or
to put it in another way, its treatment of minorities.
And it is plainly true that the freedom of the mind
is a pure fiction except it be freedom to dissent
from the common acceptances of the community.
Speaking generally, the common tendency is
toward the suppression of dissent especially if it
be of a radical type, in all kinds of communities,
democratic or otherwise. In some cases, the
suppression is dictated by the obvious requirements
of an authoritarian polity, in which case
it is systematic and deliberate; but this is on the
whole less dangerous than the informal and unorganised
suppression or opposition which springs
out of the mental inertia of the multitude, the
lethargy which is bred of hatred of change, and
especially out of the prejudice which is easily
and successfully generated in the minds of the
// 138.png
.pn +1
ignorant by those whose interests would be
imperilled by change. It is only by a recognition
of the social significance and value of dissent, and
the important part it has played in historical
progress, that we are likely to reach a proper
understanding of the true democratic attitude to it.
In the history of religion, it is plain that dissent
has almost always proved to be the organ of advance,
and if not of advance, at least of a saner balance
of religious faith and practice; and it may be said
with not a little assurance that whether in church
or state, the dissent that has gained a reasonable
following has been evoked by the need of vindicating
some natural right or emphasising some
truth or fact of experience which was neglected or
obscured in the traditional syntheses. It may still
further be stated, that whereas dissent has been
denounced by its contemporaries as disruptive and
hostile to social solidarity, it has in point of fact
been the product of a larger social vision than that
current in the existing conventions. Dissent has
usually been created by the desire to broaden the
basis of human fellowship.

This will be seen by an appeal to the mental
outlook of the dissenter. Of course every
dissenting movement has been hampered and
prejudiced, and its ideals muddied by the adhesion
to it of temperamental rebels, and the type of
crank which gathers around any standard of revolt,
just as the opposition to dissent has been degraded
by its readiness to accept the help of “lewd fellows
// 139.png
.pn +1
of the baser sort.” But when one penetrates to
the core of the movement in the mind of its chief
exponents we find ourselves in a peculiarly pure
and stimulating air. The great historical rebels
have almost invariably been actuated by a social
passion.

Some day perhaps a competent student may give
us a work upon the psychology of the rebel. That
there is something typical about the mentality of
the great rebels may be gathered even from a
cursory reading of a few obvious biographies.
There is usually an abnormal mental sensitiveness
combined with great physical restlessness, a keen
craving for comradeship, combined with
fondness for solitude and lonely meditation,
a vivid perception of present evils together
with a passion for a future which should
restore some ancient simplicity, a tendency—once
the first step in revolt has been taken,—to
broaden the rebellious front to include other issues,
a frequent admixture of integrity of character
with a certain irregularity of conduct. Yet this
is only the psychological basis; and the real
<i>differentia</i> of the true rebel lies in the character
of the occasion which crystallises his mental make-up
into a definite course of action.

Disraeli used to speak of the “two nations”
which inhabited England. These were the
privileged people and the disinherited. But that
is a phenomenon peculiar neither to England nor
to the modern world. It is the great permanent
// 140.png
.pn +1
line which divides the human race from top to
bottom into two classes. We belong either to
the exploiting race or the exploited, are either
top dogs or under-dogs. The Greek cities with
all their emphasis upon freedom yet thought of it
as the prerogative of the few. “There were
vague beginnings of a new ideal in Athens, but
even in Athens personal liberty such as is now
connected with the word ‘democracy’ was
confined to a very small percentage of the
population.”[#] The remainder were women and
slaves upon whose subordination the entire social
order rested. The line of division has not always
been political or economic. In our own time the
acute sense of disinheritance has been the main-spring
of the feminist movement. In religion
especially the cleavage has been conspicuous.
The Reformation controversy about the layman’s
rights to receive the chalice in the Sacrament
was at bottom a repudiation of the tradition of a
privileged caste; and every considerable reformation
of religion has involved a challenge to
priestcraft on the part of a disinherited laity.

.pm fn-start // A
G. D. Burns, <i>Greek Ideals</i>, p. 76.
.pm fn-end

It is the clear perception of this circumstance—the
subordination of that mass
which we commonly designate “the people,”
the appeal of a disinherited class, of “the army
of workers,” as Lord Morley said, “who make
the most painful sacrifices for the continuous
nutrition of the social organisation,” which
// 141.png
.pn +1
constitutes the decisive factor in shaping the rebel’s
mind and course of life. It sometimes happens
that a combination of circumstances throws the
need of the disinherited into sharp relief, and the
ensuing ferment creates the leader <i>ad hoc</i>, as it
were. The disintegration of the old feudal bonds
in England liberated the social discontent which
roused John Ball and made him the inspirer of
the Peasants’ Revolt. Dr. Lindsay in his <i>History
of the Reformation</i> tells us of the existence of
an active and wide-spread evangelical piety in
Germany long before the Reformation, and it was the
sharp contrast between the spiritual hunger
of the people and the barren externality
and corruption of mediæval ecclesiasticism,
at last brought to a head by Tetzel’s peddling of
indulgences, that precipitated Luther’s crisis and
with it the Reformation. The crisis in the early
development of Kansas undoubtedly marked a
stage in John Brown’s development. But whether
we may be able or not to trace decisive occasions
of this kind in the life of the rebel, the common
mark of the rebel mind is a passion for the common
people. It has been said of Rousseau that “it
was because he had seen the wrongs of the poor
not from without but from within, not as a pitying
spectator but as one of their own company, that
he by and by brought such fire to the attack of
the old order and changed the blank practice of
the older philosophers into a deadly affair of ball
and shell.” Similarly Professor Dowden says
// 142.png
.pn +1
of Shelley that “it was the sufferings of the
industrious poor that especially claimed his
sympathy; and he thought of publishing for
them a series of popular songs which should inspire
them with heart and hope.”[#] Tolstoi, according
to Romain Rolland, had for the labouring people
a “strange affection, absolutely genuine,” which
his repeated disillusionments were powerless to
shake. Sometimes, as in the case of Glendower,
Mazzini and “nationalist” rebels generally, it is not
the case of a disinherited class but of an oppressed
nation which shapes the rebel’s course. The great
rebel in every case is made by the lure of the
disinherited.

.pm fn-start // A
Dowden, <i>Life of Shelley</i>, p. 437. The “Songs and
Poems for the Men of England,” were published in 1819, after
Shelley’s death.
.pm fn-end

But it is not only compassion for the disinherited
which moves the rebel, but a profound faith in their
power to work out their own salvation. The appeal
to the people has been of the essence of rebel
policy. The Peasants’ Revolt in England was
stimulated by John Ball’s doggerel verse, which
was specially intended to stir discontent. “Wyclif,”
says John Richard Green, “appealed, and the
appeal is memorable as the first of such a kind in
our history, to England at large. With an amazing
industry, he issued tract after tract in the tongue of
the people itself.” He wrote “in the rough, clear
homely English” of the ploughman and trader of
his day. The Tractarians of a later date were only
imitating their great Oxford precursor when they
// 143.png
.pn +1
went distributing their tracts from door to door.
But Wyclif did not confine his popular appeal to
tracts. His order of “poor preachers,” “whose
coarse sermons and long russet dress moved the
laughter of the clergy, formed a priceless organisation
for the diffusion of their master’s teaching.”
John Brown addressed his propaganda at an early
stage to the negro; and it is hardly doubtful that
his hopes chiefly centred at last upon a general
rising of negroes in support of his campaign. Long
before, John Hus had carried his appeal to the
Bohemian people, as Arnauld of Port Royal,
convicted of Jansenism at the Sorbonne, designed
to place his case before the French. Pascal’s
Provincial Letters were deliberately composed as
an appeal from the ecclesiastics to the public. The
great emphasis upon public preaching during the
Reformation was derived from this same faith
in the efficacy of popular appeal. It is sufficiently
well known to need no further remark than the
reminder that in this way the rebel has made
important contributions to the literary as well as
the social and religious history of his people.

The paradox of the rebel, then, is this, that while
he has been assailed as a subverter of social order,
his own driving force has been a social sense
quicker and broader than that of his orthodox
contemporaries. He attacked the existing social
organisation only to break down walls that hindered
fellowship. He heard the call of the disinherited
and it became in his heart a call to lead them into
// 144.png
.pn +1
that heritage of opportunity of which they were
cheated by the cupidity and cunning of the great.
He assailed the Bastilles of constituted authority,
and battered hoary institutions that people might—at
this point or that—come into their own. He
sought to fling out wide the frontiers of privilege
that the poor and the outcast might come into a
world of larger life.

Mr. Wells has recently told us that “from the
first dawn of the human story” man has been
“pursuing the boundary of his possible community.”
But the prime agent of this pursuit
has been the dissenter. Dissent has proved itself
to be the growing point of society. Yet the
dissenter has been stoned and hanged by his
contemporaries. Must it ever be so? Is there no
conceivable social order in which it shall be
unnecessary to treat the moral pioneer as a
criminal? As yet we have not achieved it. Our
limit hitherto has been a kind of toleration rather
grudgingly accorded so long as the dissenter does
not disturb us over much. But no society will
ever be truly free until it has reached the point not
only of frank toleration but of the serious encouragement
of dissenting opinion. For dissent is after
all only a manifestation of the “<i>elan vitale</i>” of a
living society; and it should be greeted with a
cheer. A society incapable of dissent or of tolerating
it has entered upon its last phase.
// 145.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.h3
III
.sp 2
The problem of dissent, however, goes deeper
than the realm of opinion. Dissenting opinion
would not trouble Israel so long as it remained pure
opinion. The difficulty begins when opinion is
translated into action. William James said that
a belief always discharges itself in an act; and this
supplies us with a convenient working distinction
between a belief and an opinion. But this brings
us into a region where other forces begin to
operate, and particularly that inner constraint to
act in obedience to one’s belief which we call
conscience. From the days when Plato spoke of
his [Greek: daimôn] to ours, the dissenter has always claimed
that he acted because he “could do no other.” He
submitted to what he believed to be the instance
of a moral order from which he could not appeal.
His contemporaries either derided his conscience
or charged him with hypocrisy; but it is worth
some consideration that the contemporary judgment
was reversed in almost every case.

It is essential that we should attempt to work
out the problem of the relation of conscience to
the achievement of liberty in view of the
extreme danger which lurks in the recent contemptuous
criticism of the conscientious objector.
“The duty of obeying conscience at all hazards”
(to quote Newman), is valid only so long as we
agree with Newman that conscience is “the
aboriginal vicar of Christ,” that is to say, that it
// 146.png
.pn +1
is the inner embodiment of an irrevocable and
infrangible moral order. This does not, of course,
imply that every “conscientious objector”
interprets the moral order rightly, but simply that
it is, as and in so far as he sees it, the moral order
for him. His judgment may be fallacious; but
what is in question is not so much the soundness
of his judgment as the sincerity of his conviction;
and we are rather apt to forget that moral sincerity
is a greater asset to society than a logical correctitude.
It is difficult to see how any one who takes
a “religious” view of the world can escape this
conviction. Even Lord Morley, who speaks of
“the higher expediencies” where a religious
believer might speak of an ultimate moral order,
reaches the judgment that this is a region in which
no man ought to compromise. It is on this
account singular that the most drastic criticism of
the conscientious objector, both in England and
America, has come from ministers of religion; and
it is more singular still that this severity of criticism
should have chiefly come from ministers of the
non-authoritarian churches which were born out
of the struggle for the rights of conscience.

When Gladstone challenged English Catholics
to say how they would act in the event of a collision
between the commands of the Queen and the
Pope, the greatest of modern English Catholics
took up the gage and gave answer. “It is my
<i>rule</i>,” said Newman, “both to obey the one and
to obey the other; but that there is no rule in this
// 147.png
.pn +1
world without exceptions; and that if either the
Pope or the Queen demanded of me an ‘Absolute
Obedience,’ he or she would be transgressing the
laws of human nature and human society. I give
an absolute obedience to neither. Further, if ever
this double allegiance pulled me in contrary ways
which in this age of the world I think it never will,
then I should decide according to the particular
case, which is beyond all rule and must be decided
on its own merits. I should look to see what
theologians could do for me, what the Bishops
and Clergy around me, what my confessor, what
my friends whom I revered, and if, after all, I
could not take their view of the matter, then I
must rule myself by my own judgment and my
own conscience.”[#] He then goes on to insist upon
“the duty of obeying our conscience at all hazards”
and supports his view by an appeal to weighty
Roman authorities. “Certainly,” he concluded,
“if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner
toasts (which indeed does not seem quite the
thing) I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please—still
to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”[#]

.pm fn-start // A
<i>Letter to the Duke of Norfolk</i>, p. 69. (New York,
1875.)
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start // B
<i>Letter to the Duke of Norfolk</i>, p. 86. For a luminous
discussion of this episode see H. J. Laski, <i>Studies in the
Problems of Sovereignty</i>, pp. 121f.
.pm fn-end

Forty years before this English controversy, a
great French Catholic found himself in this
dilemma. No man had more consistently maintained
the duty of submission to the Pope than
// 148.png
.pn +1
Lamennais. His hard fight for religious liberty
in France was precisely for the right of the Catholic
to render the Pope a full and undivided allegiance
in all matters relating to the content and practice
of faith. But a time came when the Pope came
to exact from Lamennais a submission he was
unable to make. As he would not allow the state
to have jurisdiction in the spiritual sphere, so he
denied to the Pope jurisdiction in the civil. The
Pope would not consent to this modification of his
claim to authority and demanded of Lamennais
an unqualified submission. Whereupon Lamennais
replied, “Most Holy Father, a word from your
Holiness is always enough for me, not only to
obey it in all that religion ordains but to comply
with it in all that conscience allows.”[#] “Outside
the Church,” he wrote to the Countess de Senfft,
“in the strictly temporal order, and more particularly
in that which touches the affairs of my
country, I do not recognise any authority which
has the right to impose an opinion upon me or to
dictate my conduct. I say it emphatically, in that
sphere which is not that of the spiritual power, I
will never renounce my independence as a man;
nor will I, for thought or action, ever take counsel
but of my conscience and my reason.”[#] In this
course, Lamennais followed the judgment of
Cardinal Jacobatus, in what Newman calls his
“authoritative work upon councils.” “If it were
// 149.png
.pn +1
doubtful whether a precept (of the Pope) be a
sin or not, we must determine thus: that if he
to whom the precept is addressed has a conscientious
sense that it is a sin and injustice; first,
it is his duty to put off that sense; but if he cannot
nor conform himself to the judgment of the Pope,
in that case it is his duty to follow his own private
conscience, and patiently to bear it if the Pope
punishes him.”[#]

.pm fn-start // A
Boutard, <i>Lamennais, sa via et ses doctrines II.</i>, p. 382.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start // B
<i>Ibid</i>, II., p. 370.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start // A
Quoted in Newman, <i>Letter to the Duke of Norfolk</i>,
p. 85. Nevertheless, when Lamennais followed the instances
of his conscience, Pope Gregory XVI. in the Bull <i>Mirari vos</i> took
occasion to describe “liberty of conscience” as “cette maxime
absurde et erronée,” “cette pernicieuse erreur,” “cette liberté
funeste.”
.pm fn-end

At first sight there appears to be no real analogy
between the case of the conscientious objector to
war, as we have recently known him, and that
propounded by Newman. Newman postulates a
conflict of loyalties to two societies whose requirements
are at a given point antagonistic, before
invoking the arbitrament of conscience. The
conscientious objector is conceived as setting his
own private judgment against the will of the only
society to which he owes allegiance. That is,
at least, how it looks on the surface. But in point
of fact, the conscientious objector as a rule bases
his action on the ground of loyalty to a certain view
of human relationships, that is to say, to a social
ideal; and in the case of a man like Stephen
Hobhouse whose social idealism has been validated
by a unique realism of self-renunciation and
sacrifice, it would be idle to deny that the conflict
// 150.png
.pn +1
of loyalties was very concrete and authentic. The
Socialist conscientious objector who sees in the
International, if not the city of God, at least its
threshold, and who does not conceive himself
absolved from his loyalty to it even though the
German socialists betrayed it, is moved by no
personal eccentricity, but by a real social emotion.
A sympathetic study of the conscientious objector
brings him according to his measure into the same
category as the historical leaders of dissenting
movements. The decisive moral surrenders
which quicken and ennoble life are acts of obedience
to a social vision; and the only really moral
attitude to men who make these surrenders, however
variously they may make them, is that of the
dedication of a recent volume—“To all who are
fighting for conscience’ sake, whether in the
trenches or in prison.”[#] It is well for the community
that it should have those within it who
are ready to endure obloquy and imprisonment
rather than be guilty of what is to them a moral
apostasy.

.pm fn-start // A
Dr. Orchard’s fine <i>The Outlook for Religion</i>.
.pm fn-end

The conscientious objector—whatever the subject
matter of his dissent—has always been an
exasperating figure to his orthodox contemporaries.
This is, of course, largely due to the inertia and
the dislike of dissent which settle upon middle-aged
communities; but at the present time it is
probable that the impatience with the conscientious
objector springs from other and more
// 151.png
.pn +1
respectable sources. Yet by a curious paradox the
two principal sources are logically antithetical.

The first is the circumstance that the mental
habit of this generation has been profoundly
affected by the supremacy of the machine. Its
characteristic intellectual achievement is the
pragmatist philosophy; and as much in religion
and sociology as in the physical sciences its main
pre-occupation is with processes. It requires
efficiency for immediate concrete objects rather
more than faithfulness to what seems to be remote
and imponderable abstractions. Conscientious
objection is irritating because it is so palpably
futile, and indeed so vexatiously obstructive of
the business in hand. Not only does it not <i>work</i>,
it actually hinders the work in which the multitude
is engaged. It puts the machine out of gear; in a
supreme emergency when all hands should be at
the pumps, the conscientious objector puts us to
the trouble of putting him in irons. That is
obviously—and naturally—how the case looks.
The gulf between the conscientious objector and
common opinion is made by a difference of emphasis
upon principle and process. The conscientious
objector—being perhaps a sort of reversion to a
less sophisticated age—puts the process to the
test of principle and finds them incompatible.
Common opinion, in the exercise of a presumably
more realistic judgment says, “This is the only
process available; let us make the best use of it we
can, and take the risk of coming to terms with
// 152.png
.pn +1
principles afterwards, if that be necessary.” The
one hitches his wagon to a star; the other hitches
it to anything that is going his way. Upon the
merits of this kind of controversy, contemporary
judgments are notoriously unsafe; unfortunately,
none of us will be living at the time when it will
be possible to say with assurance who was in this
case the true realist after all. Meantime, the
conscientious objector, however despised, may help
us to a healthier balance between ultimate principle
and immediate process than any of us have had
this many a day.

But along with the mechanistic habit of thought,
there is a survival of the Hegelian idealism which
has been chiefly responsible for the modern
apothesis of the national state. It is not the
Prussian only who has affirmed the sovereignty
and omnicompetency of the state and its right
to undivided obedience; but being more mechanically
and remorselessly logical than his neighbours,
he has carried the doctrine to a more definite
point. But it seems to be generally assumed in
all popular political thinking that our loyalty to the
state should be not only first but absolute over all
the other loyalties of life. In our day this view
has received, particularly in democratic communities,
a subtle and plausible reinforcement from
the growing emphasis upon the fact of social
solidarity with its implication that the consensus
of the community fixes the norm of conduct. A
man’s conscience should reflect the collective
// 153.png
.pn +1
conscience of the society. Moreover, the egalitarian
populates of republican democracy are
construed to require a uniformity of conduct no
less complete than that demanded by the political
theory of autocracy; and the unpardonable sin
is to break the ranks. “The true democratic
principle,” says Lord Acton, “that every man’s
free will shall be as unfettered as possible, is taken
to mean that the free will of the collective people
shall be fettered in nothing.”[#] Democracy which
has sloughed the archaism of aristocracy has yet
to outgrow the Austinian doctrine of sovereignty
if it is not to be in danger of ceasing to be the
sanctuary and becoming the grave of liberty, and
with liberty of much else beside. When it no
longer tolerates the nonconformist and the moral
pioneer, “its doom is writ;” for once more let
it be repeated that historically dissent of this type
has always proved to be the growing point of
society.

.pm fn-start // A
Lord Acton, <i>The History of Liberty</i>.
.pm fn-end

This is not a plea for the conscientious objector
but for democracy. Newman said that if the Pope
spoke against conscience, “he would commit a
suicidal act. He would be cutting the ground
from under his feet.” The authority of the Pope
is not shaken because he concedes to conscience
the liberty of dissent; rather it is confirmed.
Even more so do the stability and growth of
democracy depend upon its recognition of the
inviolability of the individual conscience; for
// 154.png
.pn +1
democracy cannot live except its roots be deep
struck in the moral nature of man. The ultimate
battleground of democracy is in men’s hearts; and
its appeal must at last ever be to men’s consciences.
But the appeal to conscience has no meaning unless
conscience be free; and when democracy constrains
men’s consciences it is writing off its own
spiritual charter. Even in time of war it is safer
for democracy to let a hundred shirkers go scot-free
rather than run the risk of penalising an
honest conscience. For by its affirmation of the
sovereignty of conscience it reinforces the consciences
of all its members and wins the deeper
loyalty of those who are constrained to dissent
from its policy on particular issues.
.sp 2
.h3
IV
.sp 2
The growth of the democratic ideal is bound up
with the acceptance of the freedom of the mind
in all its consequences—even at the risk of some
disorder; and the difficulty which political
democracy is apt even in normal times to find in
conforming to this view is due to the fact that it
has not yet perceived the logic of its own first
principles. This in its turn is at least to some
extent to be accounted for by the survival in
democracies of mediæval conceptions of authority.
We do not need to take into account those doctrines
of authority which are begotten of the divine right
of kings and are now clearly at their last gasp.
The divine right of kings is, however, assumed
// 155.png
.pn +1
to have fallen upon democratic governments; and
though they may not exercise authority for the
same ends as an autocrat of the old style, yet they
conceive of it as operating in the same way.
Theoretically, authority in democracies is exercised
in the interests of social justice; but we still
suppose that the discipline of social justice must
be imposed upon men from without.

Apparently the assumption underlying the
authoritarian position is that human nature is
incurably anarchic, that it is its instinctive tendency
to be wayward and disruptive, and that there is no
remedy for this state of things except that of
putting it in a cage, of surrounding it with a fine
mesh of arrests, checks and restraints. This view
may owe something of its modern strength to the
theological doctrine of the total depravity of human
nature—a dogma no longer held by sane people.
We know that if we do hold a doctrine of original
sin it must be held together with the no less true
doctrine of original goodness. But the authoritarian
is theologically orthodox; man to him is a
born rebel, a natural anarchist; he holds that he
is organically antisocial; and there is therefore
nothing to do with him but to treat him like a
wild animal and put him behind bars. It is of
course possible to subdue anarchy in this way,
and to produce some kind of order—for a time.
But it should be observed that what happens is
that liberty is not so much disciplined as denied;
and as it appears to be the inherent, and incurable
// 156.png
.pn +1
tendency of authority to feed upon itself and to
grow fat, the natural consequence is the progressive
destruction of liberty. The historical
reaction from the excess of authority is a violent
revulsion to wild and bloody anarchy; and over
against authority, the only hope of liberty is to
divide and to keep it divided.

As a matter of fact in democratic communities,
there is a curious discrepancy between theory
and practice; and—somewhat unusually—our
practice is better than our theory. The mediæval
doctrine of authority still haunts our political and
social thinking; but there are few people in a
democratic community who behave themselves
only when and because there is a policeman about.
The whole structure of law (of which the policeman
is the symbol) rests upon the proposition that it is
possible to define and to enforce those moral
obligations which are essential to the cohesion and
the order of the community, those things which
members of a society must do or abstain from
doing if the society is to hold together at all.
Law does not do more than state the lowest common
terms of social duty. It does not cover “the
whole duty of man.” The maximum of legal
obligation is the minimum of moral obligation.
That is why the law does not touch ordinary
folk—except, of course, in formal adjustments of
affairs of business or property. In the region of
personal conduct, law is for decent folk in normal
times a pure irrelevancy. We not only keep the
// 157.png
.pn +1
law but we to some degree transcend it, and we do
so without thinking about it. The policeman has
no terrors for us because we do not approach his
frontiers; and he has terrors only for the wilful
social misfit whose native anarchy is still untamed.
Law, that is, imposes the discipline of social
justice only upon the exceptional case, the individual
who is contemptuous or negligent of his
social duty. Upon the great majority of people
it is imposed from within—sometimes indeed by the
fear of public opinion, but chiefly by a more or
less effective social sense. We are free from the
law not because we take care not to break it, but
because a higher principle has lifted us outside
and beyond its bounds. Our righteousness truly
exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and the
Pharisees, that is, of the legal mind; and that is
because a higher principle of righteousness is at
work within us. This higher principle of righteousness
is of course no other than our own independent
and energised sense of social obligation. The
degree to which it is effectual may and does vary
in different persons; but it is not to be questioned
that democracy exists because of the increasing
efficiency of the inward sense of social obligation
in its members. Its further development is
contingent upon the measure in which this inner
constraint supersedes coercive machinery as the
organ of social justice.

It is, of course, better for men to live under law
than in anarchy. What we have to understand
// 158.png
.pn +1
concerning law and its machinery is that it is a
stage in the evolution of social order and in our
education into true freedom. At the same time
it must not be forgotten that the law itself may
become a real hindrance to this process. Just
because law is a <i>definition</i> of obligation, it tends to
be regarded as fixing the outmost limits of social
duty; and whatsoever we do beyond these limits
ranks as work of supererogation. That is bad
enough; but worse may happen. One may
suppose that outside these limits, any kind of
conduct is admissible; and law, despite its
intention, may therefore arrest the growth of the
social sense. The social sense, that is, is expected
to operate up to frontier line defined by the law;
beyond that point, it is not called upon to act. We
require to introduce into men’s minds a different
conception of law from that popularly current.
It is the office of the law to make itself superfluous;
and its administration requires not a superstitious
veneration of its majesty or a pedantic respect for
its letter, but humanity and common sense. The
law is overmuch conceived as our gaoler; properly
understood, it is, as St. Paul said of the Mosaic
Law, our “schoolmaster.” But so long as we
talk about “vindicating” the law more than
reclaiming the offender—as the legal mind is apt
to do—so long will men tend to regard the law not
as a stepping-stone to higher things, but as an
irksome restraint; and while we indulge in tall
talk about the majesty of the law, we make law-abidingness
// 159.png
.pn +1
“the law and the prophets,” and
jeopardise our chance of effecting that increasing
enfranchisement of the social sense in which alone
is the hope of the democratic ideal.

The further development of the democratic
principle and the achievement of a genuine freedom
would appear to be contingent upon the growth of
the interior discipline of social justice with a
consequent diminution in the influence of exterior
legal sanctions. If society is to be regarded as
in any sense truly organic, and if consequently
its vitality is to be measured by its capacity for
variation, it is plain that it must be released from
the tendency to uniformity which is entailed in a
“reign of law.” Augustine’s definition of liberty
is pertinent here—Love God and do as you please,
and translated out of the idiom of religion into that
of sociology (which is like unto it) the rule runs:
Love your neighbour and do as you please.
Authoritarianism makes inevitably for regimentation;
and while it may in this way repress the
waywardness of individualism, it does so at the
expense of that precious thing, individuality.
The task of democracy is that of destroying individualism
and of cultivating individuality. Liberty
is the condition in which a man may be true
to himself through everything, and may live out
the logic of his own distinctive spiritual endowments.
But because personality is essentially
social, a man cannot be true to himself until he
is in a true sense delivered from himself. An
// 160.png
.pn +1
effectual social discipline is a necessary condition
of a real liberty. It is not a check upon liberty
but its indispensable concomitant. Without it,
liberty overshoots its bolt and destroys itself.

But this relation is a mutual one. Not only
does a social conscience safeguard and discipline
liberty; but its own mating with liberty works for
its liberation. We have seen how the influence of
legalistic preconceptions tends to arrest the growth
of the social conscience; how the school of law may
become the prison of legalism. The social conscience
is something more than a moral critic or
invigilator; it has the quality of a creative energy;
and once it is “free from the law,” it is for ever
trying to outdo itself. It is indeed only an
adventurous social conscience of this kind that will
avail to overcome those distinctions of class which
constitute the immemorial and multiform schism
of our race. We have to work not only for the
socialisation of liberty but also for the liberation
of our social instincts; and this is to be done by
an equal mating of liberty and the social conscience.
This is, in the main, the office of the teacher and
the preacher, but meantime a great deal is to be
done by a systematic effort to multiply and develop
those social contacts which already exist either
actually or potentially.

The final reason for this mating is not merely to
make room for dissent in the community. That,
indeed, is only an incidental thing which serves
to test the quality and extent of the community’s
// 161.png
.pn +1
freedom. Freedom is necessary because it
is the only condition under which creative self-expression
becomes really possible. The human
spirit must have independence and initiative if it
is to be its whole self. It was not made for
regimentation; it was made for a distinctive life
of its own. But its very constitution tells us that
if it is to attain to a fruitful freedom, it must
achieve something besides freedom. The motto
of a democracy resolute to live out the full implicates
of its first principles must not be freedom
alone, but <i>freedom and fellowship</i>.
// 162.png
.pn +1

.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch06
Chapter VI.|THE PRACTICE OF FELLOWSHIP.
.sp 1
.pm letter-start
“We are members one of another.”—<sc>St. Paul.</sc>
.pm letter-end

.pm letter-start
“Forsooth, brothers, fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship
is hell; fellowship is life and lack of fellowship is death;
and the deeds that ye do on earth, it is for fellowship’s sake that
ye do them; and the life that is in it, that shall live on and on
for ever, and each one of you part of it, while many a man’s life
upon the earth from the earth shall wane.

“Therefore I bid you not to dwell in hell but in heaven; or
while ye must, upon earth, which is part of heaven, and forsooth
no foul part.”—<sc>William Morris</sc>, <i>The Dream of John Ball</i>.”
.pm letter-end

.pm letter-start
“Sans d’égalité donc, point d’unité; sans liberté point
d’égalité; mais point de liberté non plus sans des devoirs mutuels
volontairement accomplis, c’est-a-dire accomplis par la volonté
se portant d’elle-même et sans contrainte a tout ce qui produit
l’union entre les êtres égaux; autrement chacun n’aurait
d’autre règle que son intérêt, sa passion. Et du conflit de tant
de passions, de tant d’intérêts opposés naîtraient aussitôt, avec
la guerre, la servitude et la tyrannie. Or, l’obéissance libre au
devoir est une obéissance d’amour; liberté lorsque l’amour
s’affaiblit, la liberté décline en même proportion. A la place
de l’union volontaire et morale, dont il est le principle, la force,
loi des brutes, opére une union purement matérielle.”—<sc>Lamennais</sc>,
<i>Affaires de Rome</i>.
.pm letter-end
.dc 0.2 0.67
IT is usually assumed that the distinctively
social end of life begins “after business hours.”
There is, we say, “no room for sentiment in
business,”—which is part of the intolerable price
we pay for our subjection to the economic motive.
In business the presumption is that we are all
competitors; when business is over we are
prepared to be friends. The formality and the
insincerity of much social intercourse in our time—not
to speak of its utter fruitlessness for any healthy
// 163.png
.pn +1
human good—has its origins largely in the banishment
of fellowship from the “business end” of
life. This is not to say that there is not a great
deal of wholesome human intercourse in modern
life or that there are not genuine friendships
between business competitors and between
principals and subordinates in industry; but it is
generally true that we conceive of commerce and
industry as admitting of no extensive exercise
of the humanities; and for this habit of mind we
are punished by a deep impoverishment of life.

There is a sense in which the struggle for liberty
may be regarded as being essentially a struggle to
broaden the basis of human fellowship; and it is
undoubtedly true that forms of privilege are the
most prolific causes of social schism. No community
possesses the conditions of real fellowship
while it is (as modern communities are) divided into
topdogs and underdogs, whether the topdogs be
aristocrats or plutocrats, and the underdogs be
serfs or wage-slaves. For the poison of privilege
is apt to permeate the whole body; and an
exploited class may itself be composed of exploiters.
In our day the quest and the possession of pecuniary
advantage has so grievously muddied the springs
of fellowship that we live in a chronic temper of
mutual suspicion and distrust. We do not
constitute living societies; we are but collections
of individuals who live together because we must,
and come no nearer to each other than is necessary
for the indispensable common operations of life.
// 164.png
.pn +1
Lord Morley has pointed out that the business of
the Irish Land League lay as much in adjusting
feuds among its own members as in carrying on
their common feud against the landlords. Within
small circles there is, of course, much genuine
friendly exchange and co-operation; there are
holiday occasions when good temper and good
fellowship rule; but for the rest, we chiefly live
under jungle law.

It is essential to the creation of a living society
that we should recognise that the principle of
fellowship is a condition of the highest fruitfulness
of human effort in every part of life. But fellowship
in this connection means something more than
the casual and superficial <i>camaraderie</i> of one’s
leisure hours. It must be translated into concrete
policies and into organised and sustained co-operation.
In this sense its application to industry
is one of the first conditions of its restoration in
other regions and in other senses. Indeed, it may
be regarded as the natural complement of that
change in the worker’s status which we have seen
to be impending. Free men will flow into fellowship
as the cistern to the river; and the “democratic
control” of industry is the name we give to
the practice of fellowship in industry which is the
clear sequel to the doctrine of partnership.

Mr. Sidney Webb, as we have seen, advocates
the grant of a “constitution” to industry; but
this proposal suffers from the inherent defect of
the well-meaning experiments in co-partnership
// 165.png
.pn +1
and profit-sharing of which there have been not
a few in recent years. This defect is that all alike
preserve the line of privilege. The benefits are
granted as concessions from above; and generally
as incentives to greater assiduity. There can be
no objection to the granting of concessions from
above so long as those who are above come down
and stand on the same footing as those below.
But so long as a vestige of the old differentiation of
superior and inferior, of master and servant
remains, not all the nominal co-partnership and
profit-sharing in the world can satisfy the conditions
of real partnership. While for instance the
administrative and executive branches of an
industry remain out of the sphere of co-partnership,
the partnership is a polite fiction; and it is only
by the passing of all the departments of an industry,
administrative as well as operative, into the control
of all who carry them on, that democratic conditions
can be established. The theory of partnership
implies an actual interest in and an actual
control over all the divisions of an industry;
and, while this does not imply that direction and
leadership and the powers of discipline will not
still be vested in individuals, these individuals
will owe their position not to any antecedent
privilege but to the will and consent of the workers
as a whole.

On the surface there seems to be a danger lest
such an arrangement may lead to an exclusive
and particular fellowship within separate industries
// 166.png
.pn +1
and therefore may militate against the larger
fellowship of the community, a fellowship, that
is, of producers against consumers. But it is not
contemplated that the control of the workers—whether
operative or administrative—shall be
absolute over their industry. That will in turn
be subject to the will of the commonwealth as a
whole—this superior authority being made
effective by such devices as the control of raw
material. This particular danger may, however,
be very easily exaggerated. After all, every
producer is a consumer; and the co-operative
societies have shown that it is possible to create
a very fruitful fellowship of consumer and producer.
Moreover, this is a danger which we
imagine largely because we argue from existing
conditions. It will be greatly diminished as the
economic motive ceases to exercise its withering
influence upon men.

But it stands to reason that men will do better
and more faithful work under conditions which
give them a direct interest in and control over their
work. Both the quantity and quality of work
suffer to-day because nothing is left to the worker’s
sense of honour and responsibility. It is only
a more or less irksome necessity to which the
worker goes apathetically and from which he turns
with relief. But convert it into a social task in
which fellowship may be actually realised in a
genuine participation in control, where management
is an affair of common counsel and not of
// 167.png
.pn +1
autocratic fiats, where the ideal of public service
has superseded the purpose of private gain, and
you set free potentialities both of quality and
quantity of workmanship of which under the
present demoralising conditions it is not possible
to form a conception.

Clearly the reality of fellowship in industry must
be validated by making every position of greater
responsibility open to every worker; and appointment
to such positions should be by choice of the
workers. That the workers may be trusted to
make good appointments is demonstrated by the
sagacity which has generally been manifested in
the selection of their Union leaders; and this
is a far more certain guarantee of effective management
than the present system which often assigns
incompetent men to important positions on grounds
of kinship or “influence.” It further goes without
saying that a genuine partnership implies the right
of withdrawal. A man must be free to choose his
work and the place where he works. Freedom is
of the very essence of fellowship. Anything of
the nature of coercion or conscription would be
deadly to the spirit which it is desired to create.
.sp 2
.h3
II
.sp 2
Naturally a living society will require a living
fellowship in the ordering of its public affairs; and
it is true that the arrest and corruption of democracy—wheresoever
those ills have befallen it—are due
more to the ignorance and the indifference of the
// 168.png
.pn +1
mass of the people in respect of their common
affairs than to any other single cause. This is ever
the opportunity of the demagogue and the spoilsman.
Where there is no vision, said the ancient
scribe, the people perish; but the people perish
no less certainly where there is no common thought.
The mental indolence and inertia of the public
and the incompetency of public criticism is the
danger of the statesman, and the very life of the
carpet-bagging politician. The extent of this
ignorance and apathy—beyond the narrow limits
where our pockets are concerned—is appalling.
Especially in regard to the external relationships
of their respective states, the common people have
lived in the past in great darkness, and as the war
has shown, in the shadow of death. If the masses
of the European peoples had been in 1914, as
well-informed concerning their neighbours as
they are to-day (and this does not say very much),
the war might well have never happened; and it
is well that we should remember that the democratic
control of foreign policy, of which we justly hope
much, will prove a vain thing without systematic
education of the people in the matters which are
gathered up in the expression “foreign policy.”

And, indeed, the main root of indifference is
ignorance; for we are vitally interested in nothing
of which we do not know something. It is to
education that we must look for our main remedy.
Some gleams of light have indeed already begun to
pierce our darkness. We have commenced to
// 169.png
.pn +1
educate school children in the rudiments of civic
obligation; and there is no reason why history and
geography should not be taught, not as at present
to stimulate national pride or commercial efficiency,
but to generate a sympathetic and comprehensive
outlook upon human relationships. To this subject
we shall need to turn in more detail presently;
here all we need is to premise that the stimulation
and mobilisation of common thought requires an
education which shall equip the citizen with a
system of knowledge and ideas which will enable
him to respond to the challenge of the problems
of common life and approach them with intelligence
and sympathy. No one who is familiar
with the proceedings of parliaments and congresses
will require proof of the existence of this need.

But this is no more than a beginning. To
education must be added the opportunity of free
and unfettered discussion. Every manner of
embargo or restraint on thought must be removed.
When a Cambridge don once said that morning
chapel should be compulsory on the ground that
if there were no compulsory religion there would
be no religion at all, Thirlwall, afterwards Bishop
of St. David’s, replied that the distinction was too
subtle for his apprehension. No less does restraint
upon thought lead to the destruction of thought.
Yet thought, just because it is free, requires some
method of test and correction; and this is supplied
by discussion. In this region especially is fellowship
the necessary co-efficient of freedom. At
// 170.png
.pn +1
present the comparative paucity of opportunities
of systematic discussion, outside small circles and
coteries, has led to that lack of mental independence
to which the modern press owes its ordinate power.
The pathetic, not to say tragic, readiness of the
multitude to follow any demagogue in the press
who shouts loudly enough is a manifest sign of
dangerous mental incompetency. The Northcliffes
and the Hearsts owe their influence to the
incapacity of the multitude to think for itself; and
no multitude will ever be able to think which does
not acquire the habit of thinking together.

It is impossible to estimate the value of the New
England Town Meeting as an organ of discipline
in common thought; and some such focus of
public discussion there should be in every community.
Nowadays the community elects a board
or a council and relegates the function of discussion
to this body, and so far as its local affairs are
concerned goes to sleep until the next election,
except perhaps for a small minority chiefly
composed of hostile critics. This elected body
rarely reaches a plane of initiative and leadership
in thought even within the narrow province
committed to its care. Its discussions chiefly
gather around minor points of administration;
rarely do they reveal any degree of constructive
originality. Yet the public spirit which is the
life of a community needs continual stimulus;
and this stimulus is dependent on discussion. It
is a frequent, almost a constant complaint against
// 171.png
.pn +1
municipal bodies that they are composed of persons
who have axes of their own to grind, or who, though
they are not personally corrupt, are promoting the
advantage of particular interests. There is no
way out of this difficulty save by the creation of
community centres for regular and free public
discussion. Those who are charged with the
conduct of public affairs—whether local or national—should
be open to continuous and reasoned
popular criticism for which an election allows no
opportunity.

The rapid extension of the public Forum in
America takes to some extent the place once filled
by the Town Meeting; but its outlook is too general
and its constitution too casual to enable it to
discharge the functions of the latter. Yet it has
a very important office to fill; and in many respects
it is the most promising object in the outlook for
democracy in America. As yet it is too dependent
upon the platform; and questions do not form an
adequate alternative to reasoned discussion.
These are, however, defects which will be remedied
as the movement develops. It is not at all
improbable that the churches may find a way of
recovering their social usefulness by the promotion
of the Forum method. Dr. Kirsopp Lake
has a theory that just as the sacramental stage of
religion has passed, so now the “sermon” stage
is passing, and we are entering upon the “discussion”
stage. It may be so. Certainly no
human concern so stands in need of vigorous and
// 172.png
.pn +1
radical discussion as does religion; and now that
it becomes increasingly evident that the day is
wholly gone when religion could be cultivated as
an isolated interest unrelated to the secular concerns
of life, it will be of untold advantage to the church
and to society, in the interests of truth and right
thinking, that the free discussion of religion and
public affairs in the closest possible relation to one
another should be seriously fostered. Neither
religion nor any view of the world which does not
touch life at every point is likely to survive in an
age which is slowly learning the unity of all life.
In modern England, the Trade Union branches
have in many cases proved to be educational centres
of the utmost value; but even more than the Trade
Unions has the Socialist propaganda, with its
challenge to discussion, proved a fruitful organ
of common thought on public affairs.

When we pass from the plane of local to that of
national interests we find a state of things which
provokes wonder that any shred of democracy has
survived it. The system of political parties has
its roots in human nature; and we are never
likely to outlive it. The quip that we are all born
either little Liberals or little Conservatives has
beneath it the fact of a profound and perhaps
permanent difference of temperament. There are
those—and probably will always be—who take
less kindly to change than others; and in this
difference there will always be ample room and
occasion for discussion and criticism. It is also
// 173.png
.pn +1
well to remember that the conflict of sincerely held
opinion is one of the most fruitful forms of co-operation
in the search for truth. But there are
few existing lines of party division which reflect
a genuine cleavage of conviction. The present
opposition of Republican and Democrat in America
seems to have only a distant connection with that
profound division of opinion in which the opposition
first originated. In Great Britain, Liberal
and Conservative have stood ideally for the two
necessary principles of freedom and order, progress
and stability; but the party conflict has raged
chiefly in recent times around the question of
power. It has been a duel of the “ins” and
“outs.” There are, of course, Liberals like Lord
Morley, and Conservatives like Lord Hugh Cecil,
whose political attachments rest upon deep and
reasoned conviction; but reasoned conviction is not
the main subject of interest in the Whips’ offices.
The final judgment upon the nature of the party
struggle is to be sought in the practical business of
electioneering. Direct corruption is on the whole
rare in democratic countries; but the organisation
of the party vote—whether in England or America—is
a wholly scandalous and deplorable business.
The practice of canvassing for votes, attended
frequently with intimidation and generally with a
good deal of insincere cajoling, the easily made
and easily forgotten electioneering promises, the
frantic shepherding of sluggish voters to the polling
booth,—these things show how little substance of
// 174.png
.pn +1
conviction and thought there is in the modern
political game. Canvassing is sometimes defended
as a method of political education; occasionally
in competent hands it no doubt is so; but anyone
who is acquainted with electioneering methods
knows that the education is merely incidental to
securing the promise of a vote. Canvassing would
conceivably serve a useful purpose if the attempt
to extract the promise of a vote were declared to be
in fact what it is in spirit—a violation of the Ballot
Act. It is questionable, however, how long the
practice of canvassing would survive this curtailment.
And in addition to this, all inducements
to drag unwilling and indifferent citizens to the
poll should be made illegal. Democracy is not
necessarily government by the mob. It is rather
government by the intelligent and the interested;
and the remedy for popular apathy here, as elsewhere,
is proper education.

The two-party system of Great Britain, and in the
United States, may in time be replaced by the group
system as it prevails on the continent of Europe.[#]
The group system is subject to the evils and the
disadvantages attending the two-party system; but
it has the distinct advantage of making possible
a larger range and variety of criticism. Nevertheless,
whether under the two-party or group
conditions, it is doubtful whether the present
territorial arrangement of representation can ever
// 175.png
.pn +1
secure a truly democratic government. The
territorial arrangement is derived from a period
which long antedates the railroad; and improved
means of communication have created national
groups with specialised but ultra-local interests,
and for the purposes of democratic government the
Labour Union (for instance) is as important a unit
as the county. It is absurd that the only way in
which the specific interests of organised labour
can be represented in the House of Commons is
by putting Labour candidates in competition with
Liberals and Conservatives in mixed constituencies.
Some alleviation of this anomaly may be found in
the plan of proportional representation; but this
does not fully provide for the necessity of securing
direct and adequate representation of functional
and cultural associations in the councils of the
nation. It is an anachronism that to-day the mind
of the nation should be gathered solely on a geographical
basis, when the actual living mind of
the nation increasingly resides in the various
groups into which men form themselves on the
basis of interests that are no longer determined
by local considerations. The representation
of non-territorial constituencies in the councils
of the nation raises the question of the nature of
the state which must be considered separately.

.pm fn-start // A
The results of the last General Election in England seem
to bear out this anticipation.
.pm fn-end

Freedom and fulness of discussion is the very
breath of life to popular institutions, and wheresoever
any problem or range of problems is withdrawn
from public discussion, there is a virtual
// 176.png
.pn +1
denial of the democratic principle. When, for
instance, and in particular, foreign policy is conducted
behind closed doors, a control over the
destinies of the people is vested in individuals or
in a class of individuals which is as real and as
monstrous as that of an autocrat; and democracy
is denied in its most sensitive and critical part. It
is true that the practice of secret diplomacy has
survived because nations have been too little
concerned about their external affairs; and no
plausible arguments about “delicate situations”
and the like could resist for a moment the insistence
of an intelligent democracy upon the management
of its own affairs. If democracy is to survive at all,
it must make up its mind speedily that the principle
of its inner life shall not be denied in its outer. But
if democracy is to have a mind at all, it must learn to
use the mind it has; and the chief stimulus to this
end would be the multiplication of centres of
discussion. This would be materially helped if
government departments were required to produce
not only ponderous blue-books which only
bewilder the common man, and official documents
intelligible only to the expert, but popular accounts,
published regularly, of their proceedings. The
press should be used far more extensively for this
purpose; and even the children of the public
schools should be provided with appropriate
graded summaries of the acts of the national
government. Then on the basis of this material
for discussion, the social debating society, the
// 177.png
.pn +1
reading circle, the Forum and all such groups
would become the living and increasing springs
of democracy.

In speaking of education we are far too apt to
confine the word to the education of children;
but what may be done in the education of adults
and at the same time in the stimulation of fellowship
in thought, is well shown by the achievement of
the Workers’ Educational Association in England.
The education of the working class is an idea which
dates back to the social and political ferment of the
early nineteenth century—the earliest expression
being the Mechanics’ Institute movement. This
was followed by the Working Men’s College
movement under Frederick Denison Maurice and
his friends. Then came the educational experiments,
first of the Rochdale Pioneers in 1840, and
then of the Co-operative Societies, out of which
grew ultimately the University Extension movement.
The existing Worker’s Educational
Association originated in an alliance of the educational
activities of the Co-operative, Trade
Union and University Extension movements.
It was based upon “the vital principle that there
could be no complete education of working people
unless it was a result of the combination of
working men and women and scholars, respectively
experts in demand and supply.” It is certain—and
the war has provided many instances of it—that
this alliance of worker and scholar has done much
to break down the partition wall of class prejudice;
// 178.png
.pn +1
and the “tutorial class” has in particular been a
very fruitful agent of fellowship and education.
“The days of the W.E.A.” (as it is called) says
Mr. Alfred Mansbridge, its devoted and able
secretary, “have been few so far; but it has already
demonstrated the soundness of its theories—to
take one instance alone—by the development of
the University Tutorial Class movement which
conforms in method to that of Plato so far as
question and answer developed in discussion are
concerned. In England alone over eight thousand
men and women have passed through these courses
which are organised in connection with every
University and University College. If it were not
for the clear demonstration of experience, it would
seem fatuous to expect that men and women who
have undergone no educational training other
than that provided in the few years of attendance
at the elementary school would be willing to attend
classes for three years, and in some cases for as
many as seven or eight years. It must be remembered
that the discipline of the class though self-imposed
is severe. No absence is allowed for
other than unavoidable causes. Moreover, their
purpose is the acquisition of knowledge as assisting
the fulfilment of an educational ideal which is
conceived not in the interests of the individual
but in the interests of citizenship. The level of
intellectual achievement testified to by many
eminent educationists is such as to warrant the
Board of Education in making a regulation to
// 179.png
.pn +1
the effect that ‘the instruction must aim at reaching
within the limits of the subject covered, the
standard of University work in honours.’”[#] While
the emphasis in this account is laid chiefly upon
the educational aspects of the movement those who
are acquainted with its working lay much stress
upon the part which the practice and realisation
of fellowship play in it.[#] The sense of common
quest is at once a source and a result of the movement:
and it is not open to any question that the
W.E.A. is one of the most powerful organs of the
new democracy now existing. Alongside the
W.E.A. in Great Britain is also the Adult School
movement, which chiefly under the auspices of
the Society of Friends is doing much similar,
though not so severe work. It gathers together
every Sunday morning in all parts of the country
thousands of working men and women in its
many hundred schools to study not only “the
principles of the life and teaching of Jesus, but the
manifold and perplexing problems of national
and international life.” In such fruitful activities
as these will the mind and the temper of the coming
// 180.png
.pn +1
democracy be created. These men and women
are learning the practice of freedom and fellowship
in thought, which is the fundamental democratic
method.

.pm fn-start // A
<i>Contemporary Review</i>, June, 1918.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start // B
An interesting sign of where the members of the W.E.A.
themselves feel the essence of the movement to lie is seen in the
inscription on a memorial cross erected in the Parish Church of
Lambeth, London, in memory of three tutors of the W.E.A.:
.in +4
.nf l
“In memory of
 Philip Anthony Brown, 1886-1915.
 Alfred Edward Bland, 1881-1916.
 Arthur Charleswood Turner, 1881-1918.
.nf-
.in -4
Tutors of the Workers’ Educational Association. They
lived for Fellowship in England and died for it in France.”
.rj
<i>The Challenge</i>, July 19th, 1918.
.pm fn-end
.sp 2
.h3
III
.sp 2
Now that we have come to acknowledge not only
that Jack’s vote is as good as his master’s, but
that Jill’s vote is as good as Jack’s, we have laid the
train of a further change in the relations of men and
women. For just as surely as the worker has
discovered that political equality does not of
necessity remove economic disability, and is now
beginning to demand economic emancipation, so
also women will pass on from the acquisition of
political equality to a demand for economic
equality. Indeed, the demand is already being
made. The war has served to reveal the arbitrary
and illusory character of the assumptions which
closed certain occupations to women. We know
that the number of occupations for which women
are temperamentally or physically unfitted is
comparatively small. There are obvious reasons
for believing that some few trades will remain
permanently undesirable for women; but the
immediate fact that confronts us is that the
traditional line of demarcation has been swept
away under the stress of war needs; and that we
shall have to work out in the school of experience
a new classification of occupations more consonant
with the new facts.
// 181.png
.pn +1

Some years ago there was much discussion in
England concerning a high legal decision that a
woman was not a “person” within the meaning of
a certain Act of Parliament. This was symptomatic
of a general survival of the view which
assigned women to a slightly sub-human class;
and the vitality of this view is still more considerable
than many hopeful minds are willing to think.
Yet it is only when we have educated ourselves into
the conception of woman which attributes to her
a distinct personality of her own, with an end in
and for herself, and with all the rights and privileges,
the freedom and the independence appertaining
to it, that we shall approach the problem of the
relations of men and women from a genuinely
democratic standpoint. Woman is commonly
regarded as having a function rather than an individual
end. It is her part to preserve the race.
Her peculiar vocation is child-bearing. It cannot,
however, be affirmed with too much emphasis that
the perpetuation of the race is no more the task of
woman than of man. The heavier end of the
physical burden of race-preservation certainly
falls upon the woman; but this fact does not
indicate that this is the purpose for which she
exists. Her traditional assignment to this role, and
the consequent limitation of her circle of experience
and interest, the virtual incarceration of the great
majority of women to the “home,” and the denial
to them of any real participation in the larger
concerns of the common life, must cease if social
// 182.png
.pn +1
existence is to achieve the balance necessary to
stable and healthy progress.

The preservation of the race can be left to look
after itself. Race-suicide only becomes a peril
when the relations of men and women become
perverted and unnatural as they commonly do in
our present social order. When at one end of
society, the bringing up of families entails an
economic burden too heavy to be borne, and at
the other, the hedonism which accompanies
excessive wealth tends to a sensuality which refuses
to accept the natural risks and to pay the natural
price of the sex-relation, a poisonous arrest is
unavoidably laid upon the normal operation of the
sex-instincts. The most easily perverted endowment
of human nature is sex, and it cannot retain
a balanced and healthy functioning under disordered
conditions of life. The incessant discussion
of marriage and divorce misses the point
largely because it ignores the background of the
problem. While we regard the physical distinction
of sex as the primary fact to be considered in
relation to woman, and still cling to the obsession
so dear to bourgeois respectability that her business
is motherhood and “her place is the home,” so
long, that is, as we regard her life and its purpose
as dependent upon man, so long will judgment
be deflected from its true pole at its very source.
Wholesome and free men and women will continue
to fall in love with one another and will want to
have children of each other, where to-day because
// 183.png
.pn +1
their relations are unwholesome and unequal,
they tend only to seek possession of one another,
without any disposition (not to speak of eagerness)
to welcome the fruit of their union; and too often
with the deliberate intention of preventing the
fruitage. For the disorder which leads to this
confusion of the sex-relation, the first remedy is
to establish the independence of the woman.

The problem of marriage will remain acute—and,
indeed, ultimately insoluble—until the contracting
parties enter it upon the basis of an equal
partnership. The conception of marriage as a
“career” for women has done much to destroy
the only conditions under which marriage can
ever be successful. The freedom and spontaneity
of the relation between men and women is made
impossible by those calculations of position and
wealth which the career theory of marriage requires.
While it is nominally the case that no woman is
compelled to marry, it is actually the fact that
many women—in the <i>bourgeois</i> classes, most
women—are so brought up that marriage becomes
their only escape from indigence. The fact of
woman’s independence should be made concrete
and real by requiring that every woman shall be
self-supporting, that is to say, that she shall share
in the necessary industrial processes of the community
or do some work of acknowledged social
worth. Naturally the latter category includes the
bearing and upbringing of children; for than this
there is no work more fundamental or of greater
// 184.png
.pn +1
social worth. This requires the economic
independence of the mother; and since the social
reconstruction postulated in these pages, involves
in some form or other the establishment of an
universal minimum standard, the mother will not
only be economically independent but will also
be released from the harassing task of bringing
up a growing family upon a stationary income.

It will be argued against such proposals as these
that they endanger the sanctity of the family. But
this criticism possesses neither grace nor force
in a generation which has permitted industrial
conditions to prevail which have virtually destroyed
the home-life of the working-classes. The only
assumption on which it is safe to proceed in dealing
with this question is that anything entitled to be
called a “home life” is quite exceptional among
large masses of the population. Both the physical
setting of the home—the house—and the economic
condition of its members rob the home of that
quality of sanctuary and base which is of the essence
of a genuine <i>home</i>. Our problem is to recreate the
home, the setting of that social group of man,
woman and child, which we call the family, and
which is the natural nucleus of the commonwealth,
and the moral gymnasium where the young should
best learn the arts of fellowship. The housing
question has its own importance in the problem;
but of infinitely more importance to the recovery
of home life is the establishment of the economic
independence of the woman. So long as custom
// 185.png
.pn +1
and necessity place her in a position of dependence
on the man, so long will she be denied the freedom
which is essential to perfect comradeship. Her
present status denies the equality which is necessary
to fellowship; and much of the unhappiness of
modern marriage is due to the intelligible chafing
of women against the conditions which dependence
and inferiority of status impose upon her. That
many married people succeed in overcoming this
initial handicap is true; but that is due to certain
qualities in themselves and does not in the least alter
the fact that where marital relations go awry the
evil is largely in the conditions which govern
those relations in our present social order.

The relaxing of marriage ties is no remedy; it
is only a relief to persons of incompatible tempers.
Both the advocates and the opponents of greater
facilities for divorce seem to argue their case out
of all relation to the existing social environment of
marriage. The evils for which a remedy is sought
in easier divorce are not to be found in the nature
of the marriage relation but in the conventional
and legal status of women.[#] While the social and
economic sources of the trouble are left untouched,
no amount of Catholic emphasis upon the sacramental
character of marriage is going to stay the
demand for the greater dissolubility of a tie which
// 186.png
.pn +1
existing conditions do much to make difficult and
frequently intolerable. Even under the best
conditions, the mutual adjustments of the man and
woman in married life are not easy; but when one
party enters the relation in a position of more or
less explicitly acknowledged dependence and
inferiority, there are seeds of ineradicable trouble.

.pm fn-start // A
This does not imply that the present writer does not recognise
the need of some extension of the grounds of divorce in Great
Britain. It simply means that he thinks that the problem
cannot be rightly approached until the economic independence
of women has been established.
.pm fn-end

It is not for a moment argued that the establishment
of the economic independence of woman is
a cure for all the ills that afflict the family. But this
is fundamental; and we shall simply be beating
the air so long as we do not accept this principle.
For it is the only method which holds a promise
of restoring the life of the home. At the same
time, it is no less necessary that the woman being
by reason of her motherhood economically independent
should not be regarded as the economic
handmaid of the state. If the endowment of
motherhood is only a provision for increasing the
economic and military human material of the
community, then we are better without it. For
the poison which vitiates our life will return to it
at its most delicate and sensitive point. To regard
the marriage relation simply as the means of supplying
a constant stream of military and economic
units for the state is to deny the spiritual nature
of man at its very source, and to reimpose on
ourselves the deadly incubus of materialism. This
is the danger which the Eugenics movement
threatens us with. To introduce the principle of
selective breeding into human relations may result
// 187.png
.pn +1
in a community of persons, healthy, vigorous and
efficient for economic and military purposes; but
we are learning how little physical heredity has to
do with the ultimate purpose of life. In so far as
Eugenics will lead to greater precautions against
the propagation of diseased and mentally and
physically degenerate persons, and quickens a
greater vigilance and a more insistent demand for
sound minds and sound bodies in those about to
give themselves in marriage, it brings a necessary
and valuable reinforcement to the influences that
make for human welfare. But when it goes
beyond this point, it becomes a danger to the
spiritual conception of life and society. What we
must insist upon is that marriage shall be a partnership,
deliberately entered into by two equal
persons, economically independent of each other,
attracted to each other by that physical and temperamental
affinity which we call love; and that we
shall import into the relationship no extraneous
notions of state-service or of race-preservation
which may interfere with the freedom and spontaneity
of the relation thus established. The bearing
of children may be a service to the nation; but no
child is well-born who is not born simply of the
joyful mutual selfgiving of man and woman.

Yet it may be held that the partnership is an
affair so momentous that none should be permitted
to enter it so precipitately as the marriage laws
of the United States allow. Some degree of
deliberation should be insisted upon before legal
// 188.png
.pn +1
recognition of the union is granted. The demand
for greater facilities for divorce is probably not
unconnected with the extreme facility with which
persons can enter upon the marriage relationship.

But the establishment of right relations between
the sexes must begin before the period when
men and women have reached the condition of
personal independence. It should be plain that
the sense of sex-difference which emerges in
adolescence should not be allowed to develop in
the unregulated and capricious manner in which
our false modesty compels it to develop to-day.
The processes of initiation into the mysteries of
sex should begin sufficiently early to avert so far
as possible the danger of its being discoloured and
perverted by the undue obtrusion of its sense-accompaniments.
There is no real reason why the
frank comradeship of boys and girls should not
be maintained through adolescence into youth,
but the criminal negligence which we have shown
concerning the means by which sex-knowledge is
communicated to growing children has succeeded
in creating a gulf between men and women which
persists more or less permanently and constitutes
the most obstinate difficulty in the way of perfect
freedom of fellowship between men and women.
It is no exaggeration to say that the attitude of most
men to women is poisoned—perhaps beyond perfect
recovery at any time—by the conditions under
which as boys they received their first intimations
of the nature of the sex-relation. A good deal has
// 189.png
.pn +1
already been done to pave the way of change in
this matter; and an increasing number of parents
are assuming the responsibility of communicating
this knowledge to their children. But there is
still unfortunately a great mass of unhealthy
prudery to be overcome before rational dealing with
this problem becomes anything like universal.

The problem of the fellowship of men and
women, however, extends beyond the institution of
marriage. Now that the enfranchisement of
women is opening up the question of their availability
and qualification for national legislatures, we
are confronted with a very large possibility of
change in the tone and temper of government.
Much nonsense is talked about the psychological
differences between men and women; and of
this nonsense, the emptiest is that which assumes
that women are dominated by sentiment and
emotion, while men are guided by reason. An
unprejudiced observer, watching deliberative
gatherings of men over any space of time would
certainly arrive at the conclusion that the occasions
on which they acted upon purely rational grounds
were rare and exceptional; and it has been the
experience of the present writer that in deliberative
groups of men and women the women are on the
whole more likely to display a dispassionate rationality
in arriving at their judgments than the men.
It is a region in which broad generalisations are
bound to be unsound; and the progress of the higher
education of women is undoubtedly obliterating
// 190.png
.pn +1
any patent difference of mental operation between
men and women. At the same time, there are
certain differences which are embedded in the
physical structure of sex and which may be
therefore permanent; but so far from disqualifying
women from a share in government, those
very differences entitle them to it. Quite apart
from the fact that the problems of food and
clothing in their incidence on the home are of
peculiar importance to women, and that the
woman’s point of view should always be represented
in discussion of the large-scale problems of production
and distribution, the mind of woman
brings a check and balance to the operations of
the male mind which they very acutely need.
There can, for instance, be no question that the
male mind tends to an inordinate faith in force
and coercive processes; and while it would hardly
be correct to say that the female mind possesses
an antithetic bias of a reasoned kind, it does
normally display a certain hesitancy to apply the
closure of compulsion which the too ready <i>real-politik</i>
of a purely male assembly is prone to adopt
when it sets out to translate its emotions into
enactments. The truth of the matter, in fine, is
this—that because humanity is bi-sexual, its
affairs cannot be reasonably and fruitfully determined
save through the common counsels of men
and women. We have already made a beginning
in the admission of women to the councils of the
community. A woman has sat in the Congress of
// 191.png
.pn +1
the United States; women have long been at home
in British municipal bodies, and their right to
a place in Parliament has been acknowledged. It
is only a matter of time when the logic of the
enfranchisement of women will reach its inevitable
conclusion in their admission to all public deliberative
bodies on equal terms with men. They have
a contribution to bring to the corporate direction of
affairs without which the nations can no longer do;
and the fact that as a class they may take some
time to become habituated to the mechanics of
legislation is an argument for hastening their
complete admission to it.

There were those who in the “militant” stage
of the “Votes for Women” campaign foretold
that the economic class-war would presently be
superseded or complicated by a sex-war; and
some women there were whose utterances undoubtedly
pointed in that direction. For the time,
however, this danger has dropped over the horizon.
The war has evoked a community of suffering in
which men and women alike have shared too
deeply, and in which their mutual need has been
too overwhelming to make the notion of a sex-war
even thinkable to-day. But we should be rejoicing
prematurely if we supposed that all possible
sources of sex-antagonism have disappeared. The
political enfranchisement of women certainly
removes one source; but the new industrial
complications caused by the entry of women
into occupations which have hitherto been a male
// 192.png
.pn +1
monopoly, and in which their employment has been
fully justified by the character of their workmanship
may, when the transition to peaceful life
is being made, breed grievances and troubles in
which the line of cleavage will be determined
by the sex-factor. But if we assume the establishment
of the “national minimum,” applicable
to men and women alike, and therefore securing
the economic independence of women, we shall
have robbed this prospective danger of much
of its substance. For the rest, there seems to
be no reason why women should not be freely
permitted to engage in occupations for which
they are competent, on equal terms with men;
and the comradeship of men and women in the
control and the operation of industrial processes
would do much to fix the now dominant sex-interest
in its proper place in life. The primacy
of the sex-interest in determining the relations of
men and women works definitely toward the
retention of women in a subordinate, parasitic and
exploited position, and while this lasts, we shall
still have with us the seeds of sex-antagonism. All
this does not overlook the fact that there are kinds
of work for which women are physically unsuited,
and that there are times in the life of the married
woman when she should be exempted from all
manual work save of the lightest sort. But these
problems are in essence present even in the working
conditions of men. All men are not suited for
all classes of work; and there are few men whose
// 193.png
.pn +1
work is not occasionally interrupted by sickness.
What is needed in the case of women is simply a
further application of those principles of selection
and accommodation which already operate in every
industry. Unless some such position as this is
frankly accepted, we may be presently confronted
with a new militancy and a new sabotage at the
hands of women who have tasted the experience
of economic independence and are unwilling to
surrender it to a convention of inequality which
they claim their own war-time performance has
permanently discredited.
.sp 2
.h3
IV
.sp 2
Difficult as the realisation of a perfect fellowship
between men and women may be, it presents a
problem comparatively easy of solution by the
side of that entailed in the division of a community
by a colour-line. In itself the colour-line is not
insuperable; its difficulty lies in its symbolical
character as representing a difference and an inferiority
of tradition and history. The chief difficulty
in the United States arises out of the memory of the
former slavery of the negro population; and the
consequent persistence of a prejudice against
according equal treatment to a class regarded as,
if not sub-human, at least permanently inferior in
capacity. It is useless to press the assumption
that a necessary physical aversion must always
separate the white from the black, in the face of the
existence of a vast number of palpably cross-bred
// 194.png
.pn +1
persons in the community. This does not,
of course, mean that mixed marriages should be
encouraged or regarded as normal. The problems
raised by miscegenation are much too difficult
to permit us to remove the colour-line by the off-hand
method of race-fusion. The fusion of two
races separated from one another not only by the
memory of two centuries of slavery but by unnumbered
centuries of widely different culture,
would probably create more problems than it
solved. The colour-line would be superseded by a
multiplicity of shade-lines; and confusion would
be worse confounded. It is probable that the
level of the more advanced race would be depressed
more than that of the more backward race would be
raised. Houston Chamberlain is probably right
(in spite of his capacity for being so frequently and
so colossally wrong) in holding that the finest racial
types are produced by the fusion of two peoples not
too widely separated in physical and historical
character, followed by close inbreeding. The gulf
between black and white in America and South
Africa is far too deep, as yet at least, to make the
removal of the colour-line by fusion a subject of
hopeful discussion.

But equally the solution is not to be found in
segregation—certainly so far as these two countries
are concerned. The admixture of the black and
the white elements in the population has gone much
too far to make segregation a practical proposition.
It would, moreover, have the distinct disadvantage
// 195.png
.pn +1
of stereotyping two different types of cultural
development within the same commonwealth and
of consequently endangering its unity by setting
up the possibility of rivalry and antagonism. In
any two-race community the ideal must be to
secure so far as may be possible a substantial
identity of outlook and culture; and this is to be
done not by segregation, but by contact.

But it is just this “contact” that is denied to
the negro race both in America and South Africa.
The races are really segregated as effectually as
though they lived in separate reservations; they
live in quite different cultural “climates.” The
negro though no longer a chattel-slave yet constitutes
a servile class; the duties assigned to him in
the community are essentially of a menial kind.
It is characteristic of his position in America that
the higher ranks of military command are closed
to him; and while a woman has made her way to
Congress, there is as yet no negro congressman;
the idea is still barely thinkable. Yet no community
has thrived permanently which permitted
a helot class to exist within itself; and the position
of the negro—now that education is quickening
his mind to the sense of class-disinheritance and
race-consciousness—may become a grave menace
to the inner harmony of the Republic.

The logic of Lincoln’s proclamation has yet to
be worked out in the minds of white Americans.
To abolish slavery is not indeed to make a black
man white; nor does it at once equip him for the
// 196.png
.pn +1
responsibilities of freedom. But it does confer
citizenship upon him; and the gift of citizenship
should be validated by two things; first, by a
frank and generous recognition of equality of
standing, and second, by a thorough-going policy
of education. Perhaps the former was more than
could be justly expected. Just as the slave was
ill-equipped for freedom, so the white man could
hardly rise at once to the plane of regarding the
negro as his free and equal brother. But it is a
fair criticism of the public treatment of the negro
that he has not been supplied with the opportunity
of rising to his white brother’s plane of culture.
There have been voluntary philanthropic efforts
in this direction, but this work should not have
been left to the precarious chances of charity. Just
because negro emancipation was a public act, the
full cultural education of the negro was a public
responsibility.

By reason of this failure on the part of the white
man, the negro has not advanced to such a point
as two generations of liberty would seemingly
entitle us to expert. He has inevitably retained
much of the mentality and many of the habits of
his servitude; and these are effectual bars to that
type of social contact which the negro’s growth
requires. That there is no inherent impossibility
in educating the negro up to the average plane of
the Anglo-Saxon has been proved in a multitude of
instances; and people who are devoid of race-prejudice
find no difficulty in establishing frank
// 197.png
.pn +1
and fruitful fellowship with educated coloured
persons.

America and Great Britain in her dominions
and dependencies have to face the logic of their
democratic ideals by a sustained resolution to
provide the opportunity to their coloured fellow-citizens
to reach their own plane of culture. As
things are they deny their democratic professions
by permitting their race prejudices to consign
their coloured fellow-citizens to a condition of
permanent social inferiority. If they wish to be
democratic in fact and not merely in name, they
will need to be true to the implications of their
democracy through everything, even through the
physical repugnances which the personal habits
of backward races are apt to evoke. The colour
problem was created for this generation by its
forbears—by those who sold and owned slaves and
those who established colonies in distant countries.
But though the problem is not of our making, we
cannot absolve ourselves from the moral responsibility
which it lays upon us; and it is only by
means of an inveterate good-will that we shall
discharge this responsibility. Such a good-will
must rest upon the truth—however unpalatable
to our prejudices it may be—that the black man
whether in New York or in Cape Town is equally
with ourselves endowed with the human <i>differentia</i>
of personality, and that he is morally entitled to
all the rights of life and light and liberty that we
claim for personality. With this truth must be
// 198.png
.pn +1
accepted the task imposed upon us by our superior
advantages (which like our responsibilities we owe
to our fathers), to raise the more backward races
with whom we live to a plane on which there can
be free and enriching fellowship between them and
ourselves. We cannot hopefully go on to make
the world safe for a principle of common life which
our present habits show that we do not believe in
at home.
.sp 2
.h3
V
.sp 2
However complete and well-organised the provision
may be against destitution in any society, it
can never prevent the distress which ensues upon
the accidents of life, sickness and sorrow, loneliness
and old age—these we shall not wholly escape even
in our earthly paradise. We may indeed lessen the
occasions of sickness and of premature death by a
wiser and more scientific ordering of the physical
setting of life and of personal habit; but no
ingenuity or skill can overcome the inevitable
brokenness of life in a world of time. But this
very circumstance provides fellowship with the
opportunity to do its most perfect work.

And real fellowship will be possible for the
simple reason that “charity” will be superfluous.
In modern life, the material destitution of large
numbers of people has necessitated the organisation
of relief on a large scale, both public and private;
and while the charitable impulse is intrinsically
admirable, the conditions under which it has come
// 199.png
.pn +1
to be exercised have in effect widened the gulf
between the rich and the poor. On the one
hand the rich have contracted the habit of condescending
patronage; and the poor have fallen
into a habit of cunning obsequiousness. In self-defence
the rich have built up a machinery of
investigation and distribution which has had three
disastrous results: <i>first</i>, it has set up the
monstrous and unfair test of deservingness,—“the
deserving poor” is a phrase in which the well-to-do
have forever crystallised their pharisaism;
<i>second</i>, it has set a premium upon the petty tactics
of evasion and deceit among the poor, and upon
a corresponding cunning and astuteness in those
entrusted with the business of investigation; and
<i>third</i>, it has eliminated from charity the one element
which could make it tolerable and preserve the
grace which should properly go with it—namely,
friendly contact. For the most part, the relief of
destitution through charitable organisations, has—because
it eliminates the direct personal touch
between need and supply—produced and aggravated
a deep and deplorable social schism.

Nor is the case any better with the public organisation
of poor relief. The English poor-law has
been so completely discredited and is so near
dissolution that it is hardly necessary to discuss
it here. It is more impersonal in its operations
than a charity organisation society; but its most
evil consequence is that it has so worked as to
attach a stigma to honest poverty—for the person
// 200.png
.pn +1
who has received poor-relief is denied the rights of
citizenship. Old age has fortunately been provided
for in Great Britain in the only worthy way, by a
grant of state-pensions, though the actual amount
of the pension is pitifully inadequate. Yet the
fact of the provision indicates a distinct advance in
the sense of public justice. But we shall not make
much more progress until we realise that the pauper
like the plutocrat is a social product; and that
such destitution as prevails to-day is due less to
personal perversity than to a vicious social order.
No one is so foolishly hopeful as to suppose that
even the most radical social change will eliminate
the prodigal and the spendthrift and the sensualist.
Nevertheless, it is no longer open to question that a
revolution in economic conditions would do much
to remove the auxiliary causes of pauperising
excess.

But the chief evil which attends our method of
dealing with poverty is that it has tended to
perpetuate a pauper class. Whether in the relief
work of religious and charitable societies, or in the
administration of public relief, we have been
chiefly governed by the fact of an immediate need.
We have lived in the fond hope that if the present
corner could be turned, something might transpire
to save the recipient of relief from another crisis;
and not even the obvious fact that the crisis is
chronic in the case of multitudes has shaken us out
of our preoccupation with symptoms into an investigation
of causes. In one of the supplementary
// 201.png
.pn +1
reports of the British Poor-Law Commission,
it was stated that the investigation of the
cases of applicants to whom “out-door” relief
was denied (the alternative being to go into
the “house”), showed that only in one instance
where such persons had been helped by religious
organisations was there any attempt to place the
person concerned on an independent economic
footing. This is symptomatic of the ineptitude
of our common thought about the poor. We
appear to accept the fact of their dependence as
chronic and incurable; and by the process of
“doles” we aggravate this dependence and turn it
into what we suppose it to be.

This same ineptitude has pursued society in its
dealings with another class—the criminal. Criminologists
do not nowadays assume the existence
of a natural criminal class; but our way of treating
criminals has created such a class. Both for the
pauper and the criminal we require a new diagnosis.
Instead of treating the pauper as an incurable
social parasite we should regard him as a personal
inefficient; and rather than put a premium upon
his inefficiency by a continual gratuitous relief
of his necessities, we should impose some discipline
which may lead to personal efficiency and an ordered
habit of life. As for the criminal, he is a social
inefficient; and his treatment should include some
provision for his training in the sense and arts of
social responsibility. It is a practical recognition
of this need that constitutes the contribution which
// 202.png
.pn +1
men like Messrs. Thomas Mott Osborne and
Homer Lane are making to the solution of a difficult
problem. That some plan of temporary segregation
is necessary in the treatment of the inefficient—whether
personal or social—is not open to
question; but the poorhouse and the prison, as
we know them, only aggravate the evil which they
are intended to cure.

Our increasing attention to the problem of the
social misfit at an earlier stage—through the new
study and treatment of mentally deficient children—will
considerably reduce the proportions both
of pauperism and crime. We are a long way
from Samuel Butler’s vision of the time when the
liar will be sent to hospital and the sick person to
jail; nevertheless, the point of Butler’s <i>extravaganza</i>
is becoming recognised in the double fact
that a good deal of disease is due to preventable
causes, the disregard of which is already treated
as a legal offence; and that much of the delinquency
that prevails originates in pathological
conditions rather than in moral depravity.
Especially are we on hopeful lines when we take
the mentally deficient child and regard him as
the subject of medical rather than of legal treatment.
And we shall go yet farther when we
realise that though we cannot and dare not eliminate
the factor of personal responsibility, yet our
social misfits are the products of our social disorder,
and it is seen that while justice requires that a man
shall pay the penalty of his sins, yet the same
// 203.png
.pn +1
justice requires that the society which produced the
sinner shall feel a corporate responsibility for his
restoration. And restoration is indeed the very
centre of our problem in dealing with the social
misfit. For our task with the pauper and the
criminal is that of making each capable of entering
freely and vitally into the fellowship of free men.

Yet when we have dealt with the social misfit
there will remain, life being what it is, a number
of people in every community for whom the burden
of life has proved too heavy or whose lives are
clouded by sickness or loneliness or death. “The
poor,” said Jesus, “ye have always with you.” He
did not mean that we need always have physically
destitute people with us; He knew better, as we
know better. But the smoking flax and the bruised
reed we shall ever have with us; and no society can
afford to despise a ministry of comfort. Indeed,
fellowship will lack its native grace if it fails to
produce an unfailing stream of sympathy and
consolation to the distressed. Here will be the
test of the vitality of our fellowship. For our
ideal of fellowship may become hardened in
organisation; and personal spontaneity may be
lost in a routine habit of life. And to whatever
else we may be able to give an organised and
official form, it is at least sure that when the ministry
of comfort and help loses the touch of personal
directness and spontaneity, it is from henceforth
a dead and useless thing.
// 204.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.h3
VII
.sp 2
Up to this point we have considered the more
general problems of fellowship in the community as
a whole; we have still to consider some of the
questions raised by the more particular associations
which form themselves within the community, and
in which by far the largest measure of the community’s
vitality resides. F. W. Maitland, in an
interesting passage, reviews the endless variety of
social forms in which men group themselves
together. He speaks of “churches, and even the
mediæval church, one and catholic, religious
houses and mendicant orders, nonconforming
bodies, a presbyterian system, universities, old
and new, the village community, which Germanists
have revealed to us, the manor in its growth and
decay, the township, the New England town, the
counties and hundreds, the chartered boroughs,
the guild in all its manifold varieties, the Inns of
Court, the merchant adventurers, the militant
“companies” of English <i>condottieri</i> who, returning
home, help to make the word “company” popular
among us: the trading companies, the companies
that became colonies, the companies that make
war, the friendly societies, the Trade Unions, the
clubs, the group that meets at Lloyd’s Coffee
House, the group that becomes the Stock Exchange,
and so on even to the one man company, the
Standard Oil Trust, and the South Australian
statutes for communistic villages.” The prevailing
political philosophy of our time has stated its
// 205.png
.pn +1
problem almost wholly in terms of an abstract
state over against an abstract individual; and one
of the most heartening signs of the invasion of
political thought and practice by a more healthy
humanism is the growing recognition of these
many-coloured nucleations of life. There are
important and difficult questions bearing upon their
political and legal status, but these are only to be
answered by a frank acknowledgment that
groupings of this kind come into being because
they meet a real need and answer to certain facts
of life and human nature. No political philosophy
is likely to stand the racket of historical experience
which does not stand upon the assumption that
these associations have a real and inherent right
to form themselves, to exist, to thrive and to
multiply; for it is in groups that are voluntarily
formed around a living interest that the most
significant and important part of our life is lived.
To the more direct political implications of this
type of association we shall turn at a later point;
here we are concerned only to emphasise the need
and the right of such bodies to live, and their
importance for the preservation of the balance of
life, and therefore, of stable social progress. Their
real importance may be seen from the circumstance
that the struggle for religious liberty in England,
which has historically been the spring of civil and
political liberty, was a struggle not for the liberty
of the individual but of the small voluntarily
associated group.
// 206.png
.pn +1

These voluntarily associated groups will form
themselves around any interest of sufficient
importance; and, as we have seen, they are of the
most various character and raise the most various
questions concerning their relation to the commonwealth.[#]
This is a subject still in the earlier stages
of exploration and likely to be of increasing importance
for our political and social philosophies,
especially as it comes to be recognised that for the
most part the groups which are here spoken of
represent interests and needs more vital to human
nature than the accidental aggregations represented
by political states. It may, moreover, be
held that the multiplication of such groups within
the commonwealth, insomuch as they bear upon
real interests of life, is much to be encouraged;
and the commonwealth which knows what is good
for its people will impose no restrictions upon their
power and readiness to form themselves into
combinations of this kind. And indeed, however
absolute the authority of the state, it cannot
prevent the formation of voluntary associations.
If it be not permitted to form these associations
openly, they will be formed secretly; and the
secret society is the undoing of commonwealths.

.pm fn-start // A
The commonest and the oldest type of freely associated
group within the commonwealth is of course the Church, and
on this point the reader may be referred to the present writer’s
book <i>The Church in the Commonwealth</i>.
.pm fn-end

As a matter of fact, the state has always been
apprehensive and suspicious of combinations of
any kind within its own bounds and has endeavoured
// 207.png
.pn +1
either to repress them or to establish the principle
that they exist only on sufferance. But no attempts
at repression when they are directed at associations
that represent real human concerns have been
permanently successful. The repeal in 1824 of
the British Acts against combination, intended
chiefly to frustrate industrial unions, whether of
employers or of workers, is typical of the fate of
such legislation. These Acts went against the
actual facts of the human situation and naturally
proved disastrous. It is in this region of industrial
combinations that we have the best modern
illustration of the spontaneity and inevitability of
voluntary human association. In the Guild period
it was broadly true that Capital and Labour being
in the same hands had interests which were
identical; but when power-driven machinery
separated Capital from Labour and lodged them
in different hands, and as the rift widened through
the operation of <i>laissez-faire</i>, and the interests
of Capital and Labour became antagonistic, it was
natural that the capitalists and the workers should
severally combine in defence of their interests.
The state prayed a plague on both their houses
at that time, being equally afraid of both; later,
the state became more complaisant to the powerful
owning classes; and looked askance only at the
workers’ unions—an attitude which led to a very
material strengthening of the latter. This schism
of Capital and Labour dominates the present social
situation, and it is at this time, even more than the
// 208.png
.pn +1
state, the gravest hindrance to the natural activities
of social energy. Its disintegrating and antisocial
effect is plain far outside the region where the
immediate issue lies, and it is questionable whether
an organic social life is possible until the antagonism
is overcome. Something has been done to
mitigate the worst asperities of this unsatisfactory
position by welfare work, copartnership, profit-sharing;
and still more will be done by the
introduction of measures of joint control of the
conditions of industry. But the fact still remains
that this antithesis and separation of capital and
labour is artificial and unnatural, as it is also
essentially undemocratic. For power goes with
ownership under the conditions imposed by the
current doctrine of property; and concessions
and benefits which are granted as from the voluntary
bounty of the employer (however worldly wise they
actually are in their intention) involve an assumption
of patronage which the present temper of
the workers makes entirely unreal and obsolete.
The danger of social disruption lies in this quarter;
and so long as the present tension remains, it tends
to retard the free and varied expressions of fellowship
in which a living society should abound.
Society divided into two camps, with interests radically
divergent, is condemned to a state of tension
which is hostile to the free ferment of association
natural to men; and this despite all well-meaning
efforts to reconcile the conflicting interests
by compromises which leave the framework
// 209.png
.pn +1
of the schism untouched. So that we have
come to this—that it is not only the traditional
attitude of the state which is hostile to the free
efflorescence of social groups but the actual
condition of society under the present industrial
system. A state of war, even of suppressed war,
makes for a forced fellowship of partisans, and not
for the free fellowship of partners. It is in the
interests of the genuine socialisation of life that it
is demanded that this social schism of capital and
labour should be overcome; and there is but
one way of overcoming it, namely the logical
democratic way of putting the capital and the
power it wields in the hands of those who labour.
Towards this goal the first step has been taken in
the movement toward democratic control in
industry; and from this it is inevitable that the
worker should proceed to demand control not only
of production, but, as Mr. Cole says, also of the
product, its sale and exchange; and, finally of
investments. The free variegated expression and
embodiment of the natural society-forming
instincts of mankind are not possible in a
community where one class is in a position
to impose its will upon another. A state
of conflict tends inevitably to a kind of flattening
regimentation within the conflicting bodies; and
regimentation whether deliberate or unconscious
is an obstruction to the free flow of life. There
is all the difference in the world between an
organised society and a society that is essentially
// 210.png
.pn +1
organic. An organised society makes for uniformity;
an organic society will express itself in an
endless number and variety of social forms.

If the state only knew it, its security lies in the
encouragement of voluntary associations of all
types; and even if it finds it difficult to rise to the
plane of encouragement, it should at least achieve
an attitude of toleration. For it is the only safeguard
against the inevitable conflict of loyalties
which is bound to arise when the state attempts
to legislate for individuals in matters which touch
the question of moral obligation. Indeed, during
the war, we have seen the state in a somewhat
lame and half-hearted way endeavouring to escape
some of the consequences of its own legislation
by having recourse to a recognition of the small
group. It was bound by the sheer nature of the
falls to acknowledge the existence of conscientious
objection to war; and it proposed to acknowledge
the genuineness of an individual conscientious
objection to war if the person in question was a
member of a religious society, the doctrines of
which contained a testimony against war. It was
assumed that if a man belonged to the Society of
Friends, it constituted respectable evidence that
his objection to participation in war was sincere.
In this particular case, the test proved hopelessly
inadequate; but it does at least indicate the condition
under which the unity of the state can best
be preserved. It is plainly impossible for the
state to avoid conflict with the individual conscience
// 211.png
.pn +1
so long as it lacks the means of determining whether
a conscientious scruple is merely a personal idiosyncrasy
or arises from a reasoned and socially
authenticated view of life. By recognising the
right of the members of a small group which has
demonstrated its social worth to live their life out
in their own way, it saves itself from a dangerous
conflict with the individual conscience; while, on
the other hand, as the individual conscience is
safe-guarded from an anarchic eccentricity by the
discipline of a freely chosen social environment,
the state has the assurance that it is dealing with a
genuine manifestation of moral life which must at
all costs be respected. The small voluntary
associated group is the saving middle term between
the state and the individual. It is not likely, of
course, that it will prove efficacious without
exception in solving the problems involved in the
relations of the individual and the state; but it
would do much to mitigate the dangerous possibilities
of the present practice.[#]

.pm fn-start // A
This chapter pretends to do no more than discuss at large
those questions of fellowship which directly abut upon the public
affairs of democracies. The promotion of fellowship in general
opens up a large range of subjects which would not fall easily
within the scope of this book.

No discussion of the practice of fellowship can, for instance,
be complete which does not take account of the actual and
potential social ministry of play and recreation. But this matter
involves questions with which the present writer is without competency
to deal. It would require an extended treatment of the social
reactions of sport, amateur and professional, the revival of
folk-dancing and the maypole, the multiplication of play-centres
for children and of open spaces; of the drama and the public
provision of music—and of other matters. The subject is
large and important enough for systematic discussion in a separate
volume by someone capable of handling it.
.pm fn-end

// 212.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch07
Chapter VII.|THE ORGANISATION OF GOVERNMENT.
.sp 1
.pm letter-start
“The people of England were then, as they are now, called
upon to make Government strong. They thought it a great deal
better to make it wise and honest.”—<sc>Burke.</sc>
.pm letter-end

.pm letter-start
“We may need and we may be moving towards a new conception
of the state, and more especially a new conception of
sovereignty.... We may have to regard every state, not only
the federal state proper, but also the state which professes to
be unitary, as in its nature federal. We may have to recognise
that sovereignty is not single and indivisible, but multiple and
multicellular.”—<sc>Ernest Barker.</sc>
.pm letter-end

.pm letter-start
“We find the true man only through group organisation.
The potentialities of the individual remain potentialities until
they are released by group life. Man discovers his true nature,
gains his true freedom only through the group. Group organisation
must be the new method of politics, because the modes
by which the individual can be brought forth and made effective
are the modes of practical politics.”—<sc>Mary P. Follett.</sc>
.pm letter-end
.dc 0.3 0.67
THE war has given the <i>coup de grace</i> to the
Sovereign State. It was on its last legs before
the war. It is certain that Mr. Combes’
affirmation of state absolutism during the debates
on the disestablishment of the Catholic Church in
France, was the last serious stand of this doctrine
in democratic communities. In England the
doctrine was never securely rooted; certainly it has
not gained an unquestioned ascendency over
political thought for any considerable period of
time; and the exploit of Austinian legalism which
(in the Scottish Churches’ case) denied to a church
the right to govern itself had virtually to be annulled
by a special Act of Parliament. During the war
the claim of the State upon the individual has
naturally attained a point which in normal times
// 213.png
.pn +1
would have been unthinkable; but this was
confessedly the result of an emergency and not a
rule for ordinary conditions of life. The
German performance during the war has revealed
the logic of state-absolutism in far too vivid a
fashion for any of the somewhat turgid exaltation
of the state by academic people in the days previous
to the war to survive on any terms. To rebut the
doctrine of state-absolutism at this time would be
merely to flog a dead horse.

But long before the war the absolutist theory
was being undermined. In the region of law and
political theory the criticism of F. W. Maitland,
Nevill Figgis, Duguit, and others had raised a
very definite challenge to the doctrine of state-omnicompetency.
But of much greater influence
in the actual business of modifying the current
conception of the state was the growing tendency
to form independent foci of authority within the
commonwealth. One obvious case of the kind
is the institution of the Bank Clearing House which
represents the last stage in the process by which
the business of exchange has passed from the state
into the hands of an independent body which
exercises in its own sphere an authority which is
hardly to be resisted; and the present movement
for the amalgamation of large banking concerns
makes it not impossible that should the banking
interest come into collision with the State, there
would be a very exciting tug-of-war. The medical
profession took up an attitude of organised
// 214.png
.pn +1
opposition to the State in the matter of the British
Health Insurance Act; and other professional
associations are to-day so highly organised that
in the event of a collision with the State, it is at
least doubtful how the issue would be decided.
In the case of the Taff Vale decision which rendered
a Trade Union liable to prosecution for illegal
action by its members, so threatening a protest
ensued that the legal decision had virtually to be
reversed by special legislation; and the growing
solidarity of organised labour again creates a
problem of state authority which is not easily
soluble, and which (it is not inconceivable) may
at last have to be solved by a trial of strength.[#] It
is no longer possible to assume that the philosophy
of government can be stated in terms of the state
and the individual; it will have to take increasing
account of the relation of the state to the powerful
voluntary organisations of citizens within the
state—organisations which, because they are
voluntary, may exercise a more powerful influence
upon their members than the state can possibly
do. On the economic side this tendency toward
the breaking up and the distribution of centralised
authority among functional and professional
groups, takes the form of Guild Socialism; and,
while Syndicalism has not yet succeeded in gaining
a wide footing in Europe, its challenge to the state
has added a good deal to the minimising influences
// 215.png
.pn +1
already afoot. It is worth while observing that
these independent organisations are already so
powerful that the British Government found it
advisable to administer its National Insurance
Act through Labour Unions and Friendly
Societies.

.pm fn-start // A
Since these words were written, they have received very
clear confirmation in the recent activities of the “Triple
Alliance.”
.pm fn-end

But it is not the growth of powerful organisations
<i>within</i> the Commonwealth alone that is making
for the disintegration of state-sovereignty. We
are living in a period when great international
bodies are coming into being, and while most of
these are at present of a cultural and professional
type, it is evident that one at least is of a character
which involves a very profound challenge to the
sovereignty of the national state. The Socialist
International has not been destroyed by the war;
it has only been interrupted; and if the signs are
not wholly misleading, we may look for a steady
and wide extension of the international proletarian
movement. In 1914 it proved too immature to
resist the pressure of nationalism, but it is likely
that in the future it will increasingly arm itself
against a like collapse. As yet it is only in the
case of the Socialist International that there is a
direct challenge to the national state; but it
would require considerable hardihood to deny the
possibility that other international professional
and functional associations may find themselves at
variance with the constituted authorities of national
states. For instance, the problem of hygiene
is becoming more and more an international
// 216.png
.pn +1
affair; and it is no unthinkable thing that
a medical international may find itself at odds
with the state authorities just as the British
Medical Association found itself in conflict with
its own national Government. One has only to
add in this connection that the project of a League
of Nations will require an abdication of the claim
to absolute sovereignty on the part of the states
constituting it.[#]

.pm fn-start // A
This cession of sovereignty may be hidden by a formal
<i>camouflage</i>; but there can be no real League of Nations without it.
.pm fn-end

So that both from within and without, the march
of events is disintegrating the dogma of state-sovereignty.
The traditional political acceptances
are rapidly becoming obsolete. In the main
this would appear to be due to the new situation
created by the swift development of the means of
communication during the last century. The
territorial factor in the delimitation of states and
in their own internal economy, has ceased to have
the importance it possessed in days when distance
set sharp limits to the intercourse of men. Those
days are now past; and national frontiers and
county boundaries are being gradually effaced by
steam, and the sea has been bridged by the electric
current and the aeroplane.
.sp 2
.h3
II
.sp 2
The problem created in this way is not in its
essence a new one. Since the dissolution of the
Holy Roman Empire, the conflict between the
// 217.png
.pn +1
national state and the church—whether conceived
as an independent association within the commonwealth
or as an international society—has provided
some of the most significant passages of political
history. The struggle for religious freedom in
England (which in the event proved the spring
of other liberties) was essentially a struggle to
secure the right of voluntary religious associations
to determine their own religious life and practices;
and while the legal decision in the Scottish
Churches’ case was a revival of the Austinian
doctrine of state-sovereignty, and an assertion on
the part of the state of its own right to sit in
judgment upon the religious proceedings of a
church, the ensuing situation proved so impossible
(as has already been pointed out) that the legal
decision had to be annulled by a special piece of
legislation. Since that decision most of the “free”
churches in England have taken steps to safeguard
themselves against similar intrusions on the
part of the state. In the present situation, however,
such security cannot be absolute since the
state still has something to say to the legal instruments
under which the churches hold their
temporalities. But the entire episode shows how
clear is the British sense that the omnicompetency
of the state does not extend into the sphere of
religious life and practice; and the “Life and
Liberty” movement in the Established Church of
England is an indication that the control of the state
even over a state church is not beyond challenge.
// 218.png
.pn +1

The success with which the independent
religious association has established its right to
live in the face of the state is probably due to the
circumstance that the region in which it claimed
freedom was strictly defined; and it may be argued
that the state has been on the whole more successful
in resisting the claims of the church as an international
society because those claims were allowed
to enter regions in which the church’s competency
could be reasonably denied. The case of Lamennais’
illustrates the point. Lamennais began life
as a fervent monarchist and Catholic. He held
strongly to the doctrine of the “two societies,”
the temporal and the spiritual of which the King
and the Pope respectively were the heads.[#]
These two societies were distinct and within their
own sphere, independent of each other. But
when the monarchy encroached upon the freedom
of the spiritual society, Lamennais broke with it,
and when later the papacy insisted upon a withdrawal
of his opinion that it had no rights outside
the spiritual sphere, he broke with the papacy also.
He acknowledged the existence of a borderland
in which the interests of both were commingled—“that
undiscovered country,” as Lord Acton has
put it, “where church and state are parted”;
// 219.png
.pn +1
but the broad configurations of the frontier were
plain enough. For the most part the relations of
church and state as institutional authorities have
consisted of assaults and intrigues and forays in
this “no man’s land”; and it has not been
historically to the advantage of either. And the
whole history of this conflict in France and out of
it points to the moral that without some clear
definition of function, the relation of the state to
other associations within and without itself must
be one of continual conflict—that is to say, of
course, so long as the state and the other associations
speak in terms of right and authority.
Granted a measure of good-will, the task of
delimiting frontiers should not be insuperable;
but if a church or a labour union insists on its
rights while the state insists upon its authority,
the natural result will be confusion.

.pm fn-start // A
“Toute déclaration qui supposerait de ma part, même
implicitement, l’abandon de la doctrine traditionelle de deux
societés distinctes, independante chacune dans son ordre,
serait non pas un acte de vertu, mais un acte coupable. La
conscience ne le permet pas—.” This was Lamennais’ reply to
a papal demand for retractation in 1833. See Boutard, <i>Lamennais</i>
II., 387.
.pm fn-end

.sp 2
.h3
III
.sp 2
At the same time that these independent
nucleations of authority are increasingly afoot
within the body politic, we observe in recent times
a seemingly opposite tendency to impute competency
to the state in regions where hitherto its
writ was not supposed to run. To a purist
political philosophy, the function of the state
is broadly twofold—the preservation of domestic
order and the safeguarding of national interests
with reference to other nations. But it has latterly
more and more stretched out its tabernacle to
// 220.png
.pn +1
cover other matters; even going so far as to
assume that a positive and comprehensive culture
of national life came legitimately within its domain.
That this should be so in a dynastic state like the
German is easily understood; for the security and
pretensions of the dynasty are dependent upon an
intense development of human and material
resources for military defence and offence. But
even where such particularist designs have not been
so obtrusively present, the state has tended more
and more to absorb into itself the control and
organisation of national life in all its important
phases. It has, for instance, taken upon its
shoulders almost the entire burden of public
education; it has conspicuously concentrated
its thought and wisdom upon measures designed
to increase the material prosperity of the nation—though
in point of fact this has worked out chiefly
as the prosperity of a few favourably situated
persons. The care of the destitute, old age
pensions, health and unemployment insurance have
been included within its competency; and its
apparently insatiable absorbent proclivity is
drawing into its capacious hands the control and
operation of the means of communication, the
postal service, the railways, telegraph and telephones.
Plainly this extension of its office has
been accompanied by a large and indefinite
increment of authority.

For this movement, two circumstances appear
to be accountable. Of these the first is the growth
// 221.png
.pn +1
of an ill-defined and only partially understood
sense of collective responsibility for the well-being
of the social whole. Old Age Pensions, for
instance, appear to constitute the proper alternative
to the precarious charity or the degrading
“poor relief” to which a less self-respecting
social past committed the industrial veteran.
The means of communication similarly appear
to a reasonably educated community to be a
public service rather than a gold-mine for private
individuals or concerns. The second circumstance
is the prestige which accrued to the state
from the reaction of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries from the bankrupt
individualism of the preceding generations. In
their recoil from the anarchy of <i>laissez faire</i> and
industrial competition men sought sanctuary in
the state; and in the event the state gained a
repute for competency which led to a facile transference
to it of all those interests that appear to
bear materially upon the life of the community as
a whole. But without prejudice to the question of
public ownership, it may be observed that while
the impulse which led to this regard for the state
was natural and admirable, it had the effect of
concentrating in the state a volume of power which
was entirely ominous to the liberties of the individual.
Indeed, it may be said without much
hesitation that the logic of state-absolutism was
revealed by the Germans only in time to save their
neighbours from the like tragedy of incontinent
// 222.png
.pn +1
subjection to the state. And the sense of personal
responsibility was in danger of atrophy under the
pleasing and soporific influence of the popular
idea that the state was a sort of fairy god-mother
who could be trusted to step in and make good
individual derelictions and delinquencies—which
frame of mind accorded well with the related drift
towards unquestioning submission to the state.
.sp 2
.h3
IV
.sp 2
In democratic communities the sovereignty of
the state is a residuum left over from the period of
dynastic government; and though the divine right
of kings is obsolete, we have not yet out-grown the
derivative dogma of the divine right of governments.
There still gathers around the state an odour of
sanctity; and in minds that have a turn for
abstraction it is apt to take shape as a sacrosanct
objective reality. But soon or late the democratic
peoples will have to look upon the state with a
cold and business-like realism if they are to be
delivered from the dangers that lurk in all quasi-religious
and sentimental abasement to conventional
idols. It is just this vague political devoutness
that makes it easy for the common people to be
stampeded into invidious commercial and military
enterprises by statesmen schooled in a tradition
either frankly dynastic or still deriving its main
presuppositions from the dynastic period. There
is no security for democracy except in a persistent
posture of criticism towards its institutions; and
// 223.png
.pn +1
there is no immediate hope of a sane restoration
of our somewhat shattered fortunes except as we
strip the halo away from the state and discuss it
dispassionately in terms of its functions.

Its police responsibilities remain with it as a
matter of course, so long as human nature needs
policing; and it must provisionally remain the
organ of the community in its intercourse across
its frontiers. With this latter we are not for the
moment concerned; what falls to be considered
is the problem of the state’s function in respect of,
first, the present tendency to form extraneous and
independent (and on occasion conceivably hostile
and intractable) centres of authority, and second,
the recent process of investing the state with a
sort of proprietorship and pastorate at large.
Summarily it may be said that the office of the state
in respect of these two developments is that it
should be on the one hand the clearing house of
the increasing functional and professional associations
among which its ancient sovereignty is
being distributed, and on the other, the trustee
of the public in the matter of producing and
distributing the goods that are essential to life.
The state of the case and the course of events
indicate a doctrine of public ownership with
democratic functional control, with the necessary
machinery for the due co-ordination of the centres
of control.

It seems a fairly safe risk to say that the movement
toward the public ownership of a certain
// 224.png
.pn +1
range of utilities will suffer no abatement with the
passing of time. That the means of communication
should be public property should be as
axiomatic as that a man’s nervous system should
belong to himself; and no serious question can be
raised as to the certainty of ultimate common
proprietorship in this region. With respect to
the means of production the case is less clear;
but it is a fair assumption, that if a reasonable
security of the maintenance of life and health is
to be achieved, there must be an increasing public
ownership of the sources of raw material and of
the means of production so far as the essential
commodities are concerned. That there is a
range of industrial production beyond this limit
which is quite legitimate but which is nevertheless
not a matter of universal concern is obvious; and
it seems very questionable whether it is the business
of the state to do more than to secure that the
conditions under which these industries are
conducted are of a piece with those obtaining in
the primary industries. Objects of differential
and selective interest do not appear to enter into
the province of the state; it has to do only with
those for which the demand is universal because
they correspond to a general need. It is a question
(as has been previously suggested) whether in
this region of production it should not be the
general rule that every member of the community
should share; in which case there would be ample
time and occasion for the production of the
// 225.png
.pn +1
secondary and more selective goods for life. There
is nothing in this argument which should be
construed into a suggestion that the things called
in this connection secondary are unimportant. On
the contrary they are very important; and with
the cultural development of society their importance
is likely to grow. The production of
books and objects of æsthetic interest is likely to be
stimulated very materially by any advance in the
right sort of education. But (with the exception
of a very narrow margin) these are probably things
which are not suitably and fruitfully produced
except as they are free from central regulation.

Within the limits so indicated, therefore, the
trend of affairs is rightly in the direction of public
ownership—in which case we shall require an
organ in which this ownership shall be vested.
For this purpose the state is already to hand, and
is indeed, already assuming the office. Its first
domestic office will consequently be that of a
public trustee. But this raises the question
whether the trustee is to be manager as well.

It is of course plain that the trust would be a pure
fiction if some measure of control in the disposition
of the property were not implied in it. Certainly
the last word in such matters should belong to
the state. This, however, appears to bring us
back to that very doctrine of sovereignty from
which, on our premises, it is our business to
escape; and, indeed, if we have no different sort
of state organisation in mind from that now
// 226.png
.pn +1
current we should be starting out on a new cycle
of authoritarianism, were we to vest in the state so
much authority. But already the specifications
of a new type of state-structure are being indicated
by the course of events.
.sp 2
.h3
V
.sp 2
It is of some significance at this point to observe
that of the functional associations within the
commonwealth to which reference has been made,
the most powerful are those which are concerned
with the production of the primary commodities,
and the means of their distribution. This is no
doubt chiefly due to the fact that these associations
represent the most numerous sections of the community.
Coal miners, engineers, transport
workers, clothing makers—it is among these classes
that the movement toward combination has been
most effectual. One notable exception—namely,
agricultural workers—is to be observed here, the
significance of which exception will come up for
discussion presently. It does not, however, affect
the general run of the present argument. The
constitution and activity of the labour unions are
sufficiently well known to require no exposition
here—the main point to be emphasised being that
here within the commonwealth are large, growing
and powerful groups formed around a particular
interest; and that this interest is deemed to be
vital is evident from the steady growth of the
// 227.png
.pn +1
groups. But we may further infer that the existence
of these groups is due chiefly to the fact that
the particular interest which concerns them
was not effectually regarded in the councils of the
commonwealth at large. The interests of the
workers were presumably neglected to such a
degree that the class concerned deemed it necessary
to organise itself in order to safeguard and to
enforce these interests. Indeed on the workers’
showing the case was even worse. They argued
that not only were their peculiar interests neglected
by the existing powers, but that these powers were
weighted in favour of those against whom more
specifically the worker had to defend his interests.
The formation and growth of the Non-partisan
League in America is a recent instance of a class
nucleation under the pressure of circumstances
largely parallel to those here outlined.

The interests here discussed are of an economic
kind, but they are vital and essential. It is to be
observed, however, that these particular associations
are not confined either to the worker or to
interests purely economic. Reference has already
been made to the Bank Clearing House. This is
an instance of the formation of a powerful group
to promote the common interests of its members,
though in this case its formation was less due to
the neglect of those interests by the state than to the
fact that the interests concerned have become so
extensive in range and so complex in character
that the state was palpably incompetent to handle
// 228.png
.pn +1
them profitably. In certain cases where the state
has assumed liabilities of this kind (as in railway
control) experience has not in the long run endorsed
the competency of the state for the job. That,
however, is less to the point than that we should
observe the tendency to form voluntary associations
for the protection and promotion of presumably
necessary interests, and in some cases assuming (as
in the case of the Bank Clearing House) a kind of
police authority within its own field. Besides these
economic and financial associations, there are
also large and powerful professional associations
which exist likewise to promote certain special
interests. The British Medical Association affords
an instance of such association; and here again
we have an association which in the exercise of its
office also assumes a function of discipline. Just
as the Bank Clearing House can put a recalcitrant
bank out of business, so the British Medical
Association can “unfrock” a doctor who has
offended against the professional code. It is true
that the excommunicated culprit may in either case
appeal to the civil courts for redress; but the
rarity of such appeals shows how nearly complete
is the authority exercised by these professional
associations within their own province. With
certain modifications the same general rule obtains
in Teachers’ Unions, the Bar, the Co-operative
Societies, Churches and other voluntary associations
of persons, that gather around the nucleus of a
special interest. The case is not so plain in regard
// 229.png
.pn +1
to societies of a specially cultural character which
do not so directly abut upon the general conduct
of life, though the place of the Universities,
Academies of Art, Author’s Associations and the
like, in the total scheme of social life, makes it
impossible to exclude them from consideration
in any discussion which looks to the integration of
all the legitimate interests of life in an organic
full-growing social whole.

Such integration must, from the nature of the
case, be a long and tedious process; and the
difficulties involved in its extension to such distant
and shadowy regions as Art and Authorship may
be left for solution until they become more
imminent. It is in any case doubtful whether the
interests involved in these and similar cases are
such as would be served by any formal connection
with the machinery of government, except as
regards certain narrow legal points (<i>e.g.</i> copyright).
This is also true of the Churches whose sole point
of contact with the State is in the matter of their
temporalities. Fortunately for the moment the
task need not take account of these remoter
complexities; and it will be a matter for legitimate
argument how far associations of a cultural kind
are to enter into the organisation of government,
when those associations which are already abutting
on the province of the state and shearing it of some
of its powers have been successfully co-ordinated
in a scheme of political management.
// 230.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.h3
VI
.sp 2
At this point it is important to bear in mind two
things. First of all, the real interests which go to
make up the sum of our life are precisely those
which lead us to form ourselves into associations
independent of the state. Indeed, the particular
interest which binds a given individual to the state
is generally fortuitous in its origin and largely
imaginary in character. A man chances to be born
into a certain geographical area, and in the great
majority of cases that circumstance fixes his state
affiliation for his entire life. An emigrant may
transfer his affiliation to another state; but his case
is exceptional. Moreover, the nature of the
interests which bind him to the state is of a
dubiously sentimental and imaginary order. This
is not the place to discuss the significance of
that temper of attachment to a particular political
unity which is called patriotism; but it would
appear to have comparatively little to do with any
essential purpose of life. This must not be taken
to mean that patriotism is to be decried as an evil or
a futile thing. On the contrary, in so far as it
represents a feeling of loyalty to a social group,
it is admirable and of great value. Its value is,
however, compromised by the invidious and
divisive colour which it habitually appears to wear;
and its historical uses—which chiefly consist in
its exploitation by astute statesmen—constitute a
// 231.png
.pn +1
record which is hardly flattering to human intelligence.
In the main it plays comparatively little
part in the sum total of the ordinary man’s life;
and indeed it is hardly ever heard of in normal
times until it is played up by politicians who want
a national backing for a selfish enterprise at the
expense of some other community. Its chief
significance seems to be that it provides a reserve
of sentimental devotion which may be drawn upon
without limit in the cause of national prestige or
national defence. Outside war-time, the state
appears to touch the ordinary man’s life directly
only when it requires him to pay the expenses of its
upkeep or when he provokes the attention of the
police. But on the other hand, when a man joins
a Trade Union or a religious society it is because the
new association bears some sort of vital and immediate
relation to his life. The most authentic
interests of life are those which move men to join
together voluntarily for their defence and promotion;
and for the purpose of social development,
the associations that grow in this fashion are at
least of no less importance to the common run of
men than the state. It is no longer tolerable,
therefore, that in the general management of the
affairs of a community these associations should
be virtually ignored in deference to a doctrine
which presupposes that the state and the individual
are the sole terms of political theory and practice,
and that such associations exist within the commonwealth
only on sufferance of the state.
// 232.png
.pn +1

Second, it has some bearing upon our present
argument that these associations may conceivably
come at any time into conflict with the interests of
the social whole. A trade union may, for instance,
make claims which are incongruous with the well-being
of the general public; churches have been
known to claim advantages which are inconsistent
with the freedom and welfare of other religious
societies. With the multiplication of societies
within the commonwealth, and especially in view
of the prospective great increase of strength in the
case of trade unions, it is entirely essential that
such bodies should be required directly to participate
in the responsibility of promoting the general
social good. They should—in their character of
associations charging themselves with certain
vital though particular interests—be introduced
into the official management of public affairs. So
long as they live more or less isolated and unco-ordinated
lives they remain in danger of becoming
antisocial in effect; and the only remedy is to
provide for them a clearing-house in the conduct
of which they are directly implicated; and once
more, the state is already to hand and its machinery
should be so ordered as to enable it to discharge
this office.

Theoretically our movement is away from the
“amoeba” conception of the national state, which
regards it as an independent unicellular affair
with the central state organisation as its nucleus,
to a conception of it as multicellular, and finding
// 233.png
.pn +1
a practical unity in the contribution of all its cells
to the activity of a common brain. This may be
bad biology but that is no argument against its
political soundness.

A difficult question arises when we come to
consider what associations are entitled to this
treatment; and it is plain that no association
which cannot prove a genuine social worth has a
claim for recognition. Some associations are
powerful enough to claim and to receive recognition
without formal scrutiny of their credentials;
but their power is itself a presumptive proof that
they correspond to a real social need; and in the
early stages of state-reconstruction, it will be
naturally such associations as can validate their
claims by the volume of authority with which they
make them that will enter into the arrangement.
For the rest, we shall have to take the risk of being
able to cross the bridges when we come to them.
.sp 2
.h3
VII
.sp 2
Discontent with the existing method of assembling
the machinery of government has been
growing rapidly in recent years. The progress of
the proportional representation movement is the
measure of this discontent; and it is difficult to
conceive any valid objection to the scheme on the
part of those who desire to give to the personnel
of the governing body a more genuinely representative
character than it possesses at present. At
the same time, the transferable vote does not and
// 234.png
.pn +1
from the nature of the case cannot secure a completely
representative government—at any rate
while we continue to elect parliamentary representatives
on a territorial basis.

We shall no doubt continue to elect representatives
on a territorial basis, for it would appear
to be the only effectual method of representing
the chief interests which all individuals in the
commonwealth have in common, namely their
interests as consumers (or enjoyers). But the
territorial unit is more or less arbitrary in definition,
and it does not coincide with the other interests that
make up the business of life. And these other
interests have assumed a commanding importance
in the conduct of the business of life in recent
times. Reference was made in a previous paragraph
to the fact that the one great industry which
was not adequately organised was agriculture.
The reason for this circumstance is to be found in
the greater difficulty which the farmers and the
farm workers have had in getting together. The
other great industries are located in urban areas
where facilities of communication and meeting are
comparatively easy. The result of facilitating
communication among the farmers is already
evident. The Non-partisan League was brought
to birth by the Ford car and the rural telephone.
It is true that the farm-workers still lack the
opportunity of easy assembly; but what has
happened in the case of the farmers has the peculiar
interest of being a graphic and simple object lesson
// 235.png
.pn +1
in the processes which have transformed modern
life. Our present political methods and acceptances
date back to the period before the railroad;
and not only in politics, but in ethics and religion,
we have yet to take on the task of revising our
traditional concepts in the light of the vast transformation
wrought by the swift advance in methods
of communication. The main result is that there
are very few men who do not belong to professional
and trade organisations which stretch out beyond
their county boundaries, and there is a growing
number to whom these ultra-territorial associations
are more vital and significant than the local
association of citizens in which the accident of
their habitat places them. The new fact for the
problem of government consists in the actual
existence and multiplication of these professional
and vocational constituencies; and it is evident
that that representative government is unworthy
the name which does not represent these large
embodiments of living opinion and interest.

If for the moment then, we consider the economic
aspects of the life of the community alone, it is
evident that two main sources of representation
have to be provided for—the consumer and the
producer; and every man should have a vote in
each capacity. The defect of the Soviet organisation
in Russia is that, as it is at present constituted,
it appears to provide the consumer with no direct
representation. The Russian Soviet is a council
of workers. But it is evident that the provision
// 236.png
.pn +1
supply, carriage and distribution of commodities
to a village is the concern of the whole village
independently of the share which the villagers
may have in the actual production of these commodities.
So that the consumer <i>qua</i> consumer
must be represented. The physician and the
teacher[#] may not be producers in a strict and
direct sense; but they are directly interested in
the problem of consumption and are interested in it
in the same way as the village blacksmith and the
shoemaker. Moreover, there are problems of
sanitation and road-keeping in which they are all
also equally concerned. The village and the city
ward are therefore proper units of representation.
But they still remain only one type of unit. The
agricultural labourers who live in the village may
be members of a labour union which charges itself
with the oversight of the conditions of the agricultural
labourer’s work. The physician will
also be a member of an association which is concerned
with the special interests of his profession.
Here then we have another type of unit. For our
present purpose we are concerned with these units
only as they are industrial and productive.

.pm fn-start // A
Of course there may be physicians’ and teachers’ soviets;
but they will operate provincially rather than parochially, while
the village soviet would appear usually to consist of peasants.
.pm fn-end

In Russia the problem of representing these
“professional” or “industrial” constituencies
has been solved with greater ease than is likely to
be the case elsewhere. In many cases the owners
of industrial plants have been expropriated and a
// 237.png
.pn +1
“shop-council” is in control. This shop-council
sees to it that none but members of the labour
union concerned are employed in the shop; it is
free to hire what expert help it requires to carry on
production; and in general it rules the roost.
But it is an elected body, and it forms the cell-unit
out of which, through a hierarchy of local and
provincial bodies, the All-Russian Congress of
Soviets is at last constituted. Naturally this
scheme is not yet in universal operation. Some
employers are still tolerated to remain in possession,
and a single rule has not yet been established in
the tenure of land. But that is the general principle;
and while it must necessarily admit in
practice of all sorts of exceptions, there is no clear
reason why it should not become effective throughout
Russia.

But this simplicity is not likely to obtain elsewhere.
The forcible immediate expropriation of
the employer is not a probable contingency in
England or America so far as one may judge from
present signs. But this need constitute no
insuperable obstacle to the institution of shop-councils
such as for instance have been set up in
the woollen trades at Bradford. And just as in this
instance, the shop-council would be generally
the unit out of which an ascending scale of superior
bodies would be formed, reaching at last to what
the Russians call the “supreme council of public
economy.” The outline of such an organisation is
to be found already in Mr. Malcolm Sparkes’
// 238.png
.pn +1
scheme (referred to in another chapter) of a
“national industrial parliament”; and all that
need be added to the plan is that this industrial
parliament should be recognised as the actual
legislative body within its own sphere, subject to
the review and veto of a final body which would
be charged with the oversight of all the interests
of the commonwealth.[#]

.pm fn-start // A
This “National Industrial Parliament” has come very near
taking practical form in the proposal of the recent National Industrial
Conference for a “National Industrial Council” in England.
.pm fn-end

Still confining ourselves to the economic
interests, we should find it necessary to secure
that the labour unions shall find effective
representation in the legislative organisation; and
so long as private ownership of industrial plant is
permitted, the same thing is true of employers’
associations as well. But it is plain that while
industry is subject to this antagonism of interests
within itself, it is not likely to minister to the public
interest as effectually as we have a right to require
of it. Ultimately we shall be compelled to establish
the doctrine that industrial production is a community-interest
and to institute the principle of
national Guilds as the ground plan of industrial
organisation. Some approach to this plan has been
made during the war in the interests of increased
productivity; and the situation consequent upon
the war in the belligerent countries is likely to
aggravate rather than abate the acuteness of the
problem of productivity. On this account it would
be a grave misfortune if industry were permitted
// 239.png
.pn +1
to relapse into its pre-war inefficiency. Thorstein
Veblen, in a shrewd analysis of the working of the
capitalistic system in America, estimates that it
“lowers the actual output of the country’s industry
by something near fifty per cent. of its ordinary
capacity when fully employed.” “But” he adds,
“it is at the same time plain enough that this, in
the larger sense, untoward discrepancy between
productive capacity and current productive output
can readily be corrected, in some appreciable degree
at least, by any sufficient authority that shall
undertake to control the country’s industrial
forces without regard to pecuniary profit and loss.
Any authority competent to take over the control
and regulate the conduct of the community’s
industry with a view to maximum output as counted
by weight and tale, rather than by net aggregate
price income over price cost can readily effect an
appreciable increase in the effectual productive
capacity.... The several belligerent nations
of Europe are showing that it can be done, and they
are also showing that they are all aware, and have
always been aware, that the conduct of industry
on business principles is incompetent to bring the
largest practical output of goods and service;
incompetent to such a degree indeed as not to be
tolerable in a season of desperate need when the
nation requires the full use of its productive
forces, equipment and man power, regardless of the
pecuniary claims of individuals.”[#] The course of
// 240.png
.pn +1
events seem to point to the institution of the
“sufficient authority” which Professor Veblen
indicates. It is clear that this authority must be
of a character to ignore the exigencies of the
profit-system, and to operate with an eye single to
the welfare of the community; in which case, soon
or late, there must be eliminated from it those who
would desire to turn it to a personal or sectional
advantage. Or at least their possible advantage
from industry shall be so rigorously abridged as
to make it cease to be worth their while to rig the
business in such a way as to retard or otherwise
to interfere with output. But, inasmuch as this
rigging has been done in the past chiefly at the
expense of the workers, they in their turn armed
themselves for defence, by joining into unions.
With the elimination of the private profit motive
from industry, the character of the trade union as
a fighting body would largely if not wholly lapse;
and the need for its direct representation in
industrial control would cease to be urgent or even
important. Especially would this be true when
a minimum standard of life had been fixed and
universally applied. The union would merge into
the guild which would include not the operatives
alone but the entire effective personnel of the
industry. Out of these guilds, themselves
functioning through a hierarchy of bodies from
the single shop upward, would be formed the
national industrial parliament which would be
the effectual economic authority of the community.

.pm fn-start // A
Thorstein Veblen. <i>The Nature of Peace</i>, pp. 173, 174.
.pm fn-end

// 241.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.h3
VIII
.sp 2
That this in its turn should be subject to a still
higher court goes without saying. For in this
capacity our industrial parliament represents the
community only as producing. The general
interests of the common man who has to eat,
drink, clothe himself, find a roof over his head,
marry, bring up children, are not subordinate to
his interest as a producer; nor are they covered
by a parliament which supervises the productive
interests alone.[#] The standard of life must be fixed
by the common will of the community; and it will
be the business of the industrial parliament to see
that the volume, quality and conditions of production
shall correspond to this standard; and
somewhere there must be a body which also sees
to it that the industrial parliament is discharging
its task efficiently. It must even be in a position
to veto the acts of the industrial parliament should
that course become necessary; and this position
could be secured by vesting the purchase and
control of raw material in the hands of this superior
body. At the same time it is evident that there
are functions which this superior body is not
efficient to discharge simply on the ground of its
being representative of the general consumer.
The problems of education and public health, for
instance, are highly specialised affairs which a
purely representative assembly on the traditional
// 242.png
.pn +1
lines has proved itself incompetent to handle—and
it is notorious how both education and national
hygiene have had their development governed and
deflected from its proper course by the too great
ascendency of trade and business interests in the
legislature. Just as the industrial affairs of the
community are committed to the charge of those
who are directly engaged in them, so the education
of the country should be in the hands of a self-governing
body of teachers, and the public health
to a self-governing medical association—in both
cases the personnel being regarded as members
of a public service serving under standardised
conditions, and their representative and executive
body being like the guild parliament answerable
to the supreme national assembly.

.pm fn-start // A
It has been suggested that associations of <i>Consumers</i>, e.g.
the Co-operative Societies, should be represented in the National
Industrial Parliament.
.pm fn-end

It would be palpably beyond the province of
this writing to do more than thus roughly indicate
the general direction in which the organisation of
government should and is likely to go; and there
are conspicuous questions—such as national
finance and the administration of law—which
would enter deeply into a detailed discussion but
have here to be passed by with no more than this
cursory mention. It is now desired only to
emphasise the fact that the actual conditions of
modern life have made the existing legislative
machinery obsolete, and that moreover they point
to the nature of the changes which are required to
make the machinery to fit the facts of the case.
Summarily, therefore, it may be said that there are
// 243.png
.pn +1
two types of social unit which must be recognised,
the one being of the geographical, the other of
the vocational order. Somewhere these two
sources of representation must meet in a supreme
common assembly; and the picture which passes
through the mind—say in England—is of a joint
house of county and municipal representatives
chosen by way of ward and village and district
councils, and of representatives of accredited
national industrial and professional associations.
Yet, insomuch as this process of delegation would
make the sense of connection between the individual
citizen and the supreme assembly somewhat weak
and faint, it would appear to be necessary to
provide for some measure of direct popular representation
in the assembly. So that we should have
a house drawing its personnel from three sources—from
the people directly, and by delegation from
the two types of social constituency, local and
functional. In this body would be vested the
supreme and final control of national affairs; and
to this body the Guild-parliament and other
departmental bodies would render account of their
stewardship. It is only in some such way as this
that remedy is to be found for a state of things, in
which, apart from paid experts in administrative
departments, the vital interests of industry,
education and national health are committed to
a body to which the chances of a general election
may return not one single person competent to
speak to these matters at first hand.
// 244.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.h3
IX
.sp 2
It is not necessary to extend this discussion into
further detail since we are concerned only to
indicate a direction rather than to describe a
finished product. It may, moreover, be justly
questioned whether the business of government
can range to any fruitful purpose beyond the
common economic, hygienic and educational
concerns of the community, and such derivative
and concomitant operations as they require for
their effectual conduct. In any case it would
appear that the remaining interests of life abut on
the legitimate province of government only at
minor and somewhat special points. These particular
interests are for the most part of the “spiritual”
order—religious and cultural; and from the nature
of the case it were best to leave them to go their
own way in peace so long as they may not equitably
be charged with encroaching upon the general
welfare. Such matters as the property of a
religious society or an author’s copyright represent
the kind of point at which the spiritual interests
come into some sort of relation with the state;
and these are essentially matters in the state-regulation
of which the chief care should be to
avoid anything that may interfere with independence
and freedom of thought.

For when all is said and done, it is in this particular
region that we must look for the actual and
// 245.png
.pn +1
characteristic fruits of a democratic order. The
real wealth of a community consists in the capacity
it possesses and acquires for activity of a creative
kind; its true riches are “the riches of the mind.”
And in a sense we may say that the business of
government is to set the house-keeping machinery
moving so smoothly and efficiently that there will
be real wayleave for the spiritual business of life.
Just as the best physical condition of a man is that
in which he is least aware of his body, so the best
government is that which makes the governed
least conscious of its operation. Here as elsewhere,
<i>magna ars celare artem</i>. But is there any guarantee
that such a state-organisation as is here pleaded
for will be any more friendly to freedom of thought
than the existing type? So far as the traditional
state is concerned, it regards freedom of thought
largely as a concession which is not quite congruous
with the postulates upon which it habitually acts.
Freedom of thought has been wrested from the
state by main force; and then only with the
understood proviso that the state is empowered
on due occasion to withdraw the concession. The
habit of free thought has however become so ingrained
in the idea of democratic progress that there
is now only one due occasion on which the state can
interfere with it with any prospect of success—that
is, in the event of war. Still from the standpoint
of the state, freedom of thought is a regrettable,
though, as things are, unavoidable defect in its machinery.
It interferes sadly with the uniformitarian
// 246.png
.pn +1
programme of the typical governmental mind.
But this grudging toleration of freedom of thought
is an inheritance from the dynastic period when it
was necessary to have a population easily mobilisable
for whatever adventure the dynast might plan,
or whatever necessity of defence might be laid on
him. The dynastic tradition required a regimentated
people; and we have outgrown the dynastic
tradition without discarding all its characteristic
modes of working. This is in part to be accounted
for by the fact that the continued existence of
dynastic pretensions and the consequent danger
of dynastic adventures of a predatory kind has
necessitated the survival of dynastic ideas and
practices as a measure of insurance even in communities
that have discarded the dynastic principle.
There will be no secure freedom of thought
anywhere so long as the world contains any
powerful survival of the dynastic tradition.

Latterly the dynastic tradition has (for patent
reasons) been the enemy; but it is not unlikely
that the downfall of the dynastic tradition may do
no more than clear the decks for another more
recent predatory institution, not less ominous for
human well-being, which may secure the reversion
of all the stock-in-trade and goodwill of its
predecessor in the matter of national prestige
and honour and the like. This is that commercial
imperialism which has already insinuated itself
into the folds of whatever mantle the dynastic
tradition is still able to wear—so much so that it is
// 247.png
.pn +1
popularly believed to be impossible to define the
frontier at which dynastic pretensions end and
commercial chauvinism begins. In any case
it is sure that as the dynastic institution falls into
desuetude, this commercial imperialism will make
a strenuous effort to step into its shoes and arm
itself with its weapons. There may be some
difference between the person who seeks to gobble
up the face of the earth and his brother who seeks
to gobble up the markets of the earth. But for
practical purposes they belong to the same class
and will use the same methods. The nations will
be persuaded to maintain sufficient military
establishments to protect national capital when it
is sent upon profitable adventures beyond the
frontier; and the prospect of national prosperity
and jealousy for national prestige will be worked
for all that they are worth in support of these
projects. With the net result that the attention
of the state will be chiefly directed in the future
as in the past to the furtherance of particularist
national interests, and the consequent need of
centralised power in the state for the easy regimentation
of the people in case of emergency will
remain as a permanent arrest on democratic
development. And all this is the more tragic in
that the “national” interests alleged to be engaged
are in point of fact the interests only of the capitalist
class. The rest of the nation stands to gain nothing
material from these operations.

This latter danger can, however, be dealt with by
// 248.png
.pn +1
the simple expedient of declaring that the capital
goes out of the country at its own risk. It is,
anyhow, preposterous to assume that capital
has any inherent right to seek national protection
when it travels abroad on private ventures of its
own. That should be as clear as daylight; and
its recognition would remove one of the main
sources of international trouble. But it would also
release the community from a good deal of the
present wasteful and distracting preoccupation with
the business incidental to the chances of international
trouble, and leave it free to concern
itself with the more vital matters of its inner life.
And most of all, with the passing of the dynastic
danger, this refusal to under-write the risks of
profit-seeking capitalistic adventures abroad would
remove the chief reason for that residual embargo
on utter freedom of thought which must exist in
a community which has to be held in readiness for
swift regimentation. Men will never be wholly
free until the possibility of war has disappeared
from the earth.

With the diminution of the chances of international
friction, the urgency of domestic uniformity
will in great part disappear; and democratic
life may be counted upon to express itself in a free
and unlimited variation of thought and interest.
At the same time it is obvious that the present
doctrine of property-rights within the community
entails a serious limitation upon the freedom of the
mind. Notice has already been taken of the effect
// 249.png
.pn +1
of the property-privilege as it operates in the hands
of the capitalist employer upon the freedom of the
worker; but the hindrance to freedom ranges far
beyond this region. In domestic legislation, the
rights of property have virtually been “the law and
the prophets”; and modern states have shown
themselves more jealous for the defence of vested
interests than the culture of the national life. It
may be indeed that they have not perceived that
these two things were different, not to say opposed.
But how far these vested interests enter into the
counsels of the state is evident from the fact that
it has tended to treat any doctrine which assails
them as criminal; and crimes against property
are almost invariably treated with greater severity
than crimes against the person. While these class
rights are still recognised as entitled to the corporate
protection of the community, there will be a region
within which freedom of thought will be still
frowned upon and so far as may be denied. The
sun is too high in the heavens to permit of persecution
save in sporadic cases; and it would seem
that this is the last ditch in which privilege is still
entrenched in its retreat before the advance of
freedom. <i>Lese-majesté</i> has ceased to be a
dangerous crime; the heretic in religion enjoys
his heresies unmolested; and the accident of noble
birth has ceased to confer a privilege. The
“divine rights” of property will presently go the
way of the divine right of kings; and then
democracy will have all its enemies under its feet,
// 250.png
.pn +1
unless there may be lurking beyond the frontier
some unforeseen and unforeseeable enemy. Yet
this enemy too the spirit of democracy may be
trusted to subdue.

Entire freedom of thought is contingent upon the
ultimate disappearance of all forms of special and
exclusive privilege, whether it appertains to
monarchy, aristocracy or property; and freedom
of thought is still tolerated grudgingly because
government is contaminated by a survival of habits
of thought derived from the doctrine of special
inherent and sacred rights. The type of government
pleaded for in these pages is one which
assumes that no special interest shall have precedence
over the good of the social whole, and which
requires that every separate interest shall be
subordinated to and co-ordinated into a general
scheme of social welfare. The rights of property
will be subject to such curtailment as the common
good requires. And since therefore the main
causes of existing limitations on freedom of thought
will have disappeared, there seems to be no reason
why this type of government should at any time
take it upon itself to repress or to control thought.
To this statement one exception may require to be
made parenthetically, namely, that the continuance
of sources of international trouble that may
eventuate in war will probably necessitate occasional
interference with freedom of thought and action.
This matter we shall consider in more detail
presently. Meantime, it is not rash to believe
// 251.png
.pn +1
that in a state of the type here indicated, there will
not only be any disposition to set bounds upon
independent thought but a definite tendency to
encourage it. It may conceivably come to conceive
of national “prestige” in terms of perfect and
untrammelled intellectual freedom.

Three conditions seem to be necessary to such
an end. The first has to do with national education
the aim of which should be to make every individual
capable of thinking for himself and imparting to
him a social vision which will discipline and fructify
his thought. To this matter also we shall need to
return at a later point.

The second condition is the provision of
opportunities of free public discussion. To this
subject some reference has already been made;
and nothing more extended need now be added,
save only, perhaps, the thought that the encouragement
of free public discussion is the proper safeguard
against the vagaries and dangers of a
suppressed and inarticulate dissent. Let the
new thing be brought into the Agora as it was in old
Athens; and the daylight will declare whether
it be gold or stubble.

The third condition is the full and unconditional
recognition of the right of association,—the
only proviso being that no association shall have
private or occult or undeclared purposes. A
strong tendency to the formation of social groups
of various kinds, political, cultural, religious,
recreational, should be hailed as a sign of life in
// 252.png
.pn +1
the community. And even if the association be
formed for the promulgation of the view of a
dissenting minority, it should be as frankly
encouraged as any other. For no view ever gains
a considerable following which does not embody
some fact or truth of experience which is necessary
to the wholeness of life.
// 253.png
.pn +1

.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch08
Chapter VIII.|A DEMOCRATIC WORLD.[#]
.sp 1
.pm letter-start
“We believe in association—which is but the reduction to
action of our faith in one sole God, and one sole law, and one
sole aim—as the only means we possess of realising the truth;
as the method of progress; the path leading towards perfection.
The highest possible degree of human progress will correspond
to the discovery and application of the vastest formula of
association.

We believe, therefore, in the Holy Alliance of the Peoples
as the vastest formula of association possible in our epoch;—in
the <i>liberty</i> and <i>equality</i> of the peoples without which no true
association can exist; in <i>nationality</i>, which is the <i>conscience</i> of
the peoples, and which, by assigning to them their part in the
work of association, their function in humanity, constitutes
their mission upon earth, that is to say, their <i>individuality</i>,
without which neither liberty nor equality is possible; in the
sacred <i>Fatherland</i>, cradle of nationality, altar and worship of
the individuals of which each people is composed.
.tb
And, as we believe in humanity as the sole interpreter of
the law of God, so do we believe in the people of every state as
the sole master, sole sovereign, and sole interpreter of the law
of humanity, which governs every national mission. We believe
in the people, one and indivisible, recognising neither castes nor
privileges, neither <i>proletariat</i> nor <i>aristocracy</i>, whether landed
or financial; but simply an aggregate of faculties and forces
consecrated to the well-being of all, to the administration of the
common substance and possession, the terrestrial globe.”—
.rj
Mazzini.
.pm letter-end

.pm fn-start // A
This chapter was written some time before the League of
Nations plan adopted at the Peace Conference was issued. It is,
in spite of a few points which might require modification,
allowed to stand as it was written, since the general course
of the argument still appears to be sound, especially as it raises
points in relation to which the official scheme will most certainly
require great changes.
.pm fn-end
// 254.png
.pn +1

.pm verse-start
“Come, read the meaning of the deep!
   The use of winds and waters learn!
 ’Tis not to make the mother weep
   For sons that never will return.

 ’Tis not to make the nations show
   Contempt for all whom seas divide;
 ’Tis not to pamper war and woe
   Nor feed traditionary pride;
.pm verse-end
.tb
.pm verse-start
 It is to knit with loving life
   The interests of land to land,
 To join in far-seen fellowship
   The tropic and the polar strand.
.pm verse-end
.tb
.pm verse-start
 And more, for Knowledge crowns the gain
   Of intercourse with other souls,
 And wisdom travels not in vain
   The plunging spaces of the poles.

 O may our voice have power to say
   How soon the wrecking discords cease,
 When every wandering wave is gay
   With golden argosies of peace.”
.pm verse-end
.rj
—<sc>George Meredith.</sc>
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.67
DEMOCRACY can only thrive in a democratic
setting; and while any powerful
remnants of the dynastic tradition survive in
the world, it is unlikely that democracy will be able
to reach the full term of its own development. For
the dynastic tradition is from the nature of the
case of an incurably predatory character; and
democracy will be arrested in its self-realisation
by so much of the dynastic habit of thought and
way of life as it may be necessary to retain in order
to gain immunity from attack. It has been one
of the commonplaces of the Great War that the
democratic countries have been compelled to
// 255.png
.pn +1
defend themselves against Prussianism by adopting
the familiar Prussian methods of repression and
regimentation. And what the war has actually
provoked is always potentially present. So long as
there are dynastic nations with highly centralised
and omnicompetent authority and consequently
in a more or less advanced state of preparation
for military enterprise, it is not to be expected that
their democratic neighbours will leave themselves
at their mercy; and the common democratic
rights of freedom—whether of the person or of
thought—have to be so far permanently subject
to curtailment and even entire suspension in the
event of war. It is easy to say that once the danger
is past, the former liberties will be automatically
restored; but it does not so work out in actual
fact. For authority is ever loth to relinquish any
advantage it has gained; and there are always
parties in every community who either on selfish
or academic grounds are favourable to the curtailment
of democratic rights. The restoration of
these rights has commonly to be effected against
the opposition of parties interested in their curtailment.
It is a matter of common knowledge that
powerful interests are already at work, for
instance, to secure that the hard-won privileges
of the Trade Unions shall not be restored to them;
and we may expect to find very considerable and
dangerous opposition to the re-establishment of
those civil liberties which were suspended “for
the duration of the war.” It is not likely, however,
// 256.png
.pn +1
that this opposition can be long maintained. But
it is certain that it will be some time after the close
of the war before the domestic liberties of the
democratic countries will be restored to the point
which they had reached at the beginning of the
war; and by so much democratic advance will have
been retarded.
.sp 2
.h3
I
.sp 2
So that the development of the democratic
principle requires the cessation of war and of
preparedness for war. And this to begin with
requires the disappearance of the dynastic
tradition. But will the disappearance of the
dynastic tradition necessarily carry with it the
abolition of that preoccupation with national
“prestige” and the like out of which it has always
drawn its strength? The dynasty may vanish;
but nationalism may remain; and the catchwords
of national prestige and national honour may
conceivably become a menace to peace and therefore
to freedom as real as the dynastic tradition.

And at the present time there is, as has been
previously shown, a very real possibility that the
disappearance of the dynastic tradition may leave
the door open to another type of predatory
nationalism no less injurious to the cause of
democracy. This is that “commercial imperialism”
to which reference has already been
made. The impression has been deeply made
// 257.png
.pn +1
upon this generation that the accumulation of
wealth constitutes the primary business of the
community. It should aim to become the richest,
wealthiest nation. It is not generally perceived
that the distribution of this wealth is of a character
which robs it of any right to be regarded as a
“national” interest. It is the interest only of
a comparatively small class within the nation.
Yet so sedulously has this illusion of national
prosperity been cultivated, and so feeble is the
faculty of discrimination in the multitude, that it
will yet be possible for commercial adventurers to
invoke and receive national endorsement of their
projects even to the extent of a guarantee of military
support in case of need. The surplus capital
of a nation will seek avenues of activity beyond its
frontiers and it will move heaven and earth to
secure that the nation shall be committed to the
business of protecting it when it goes abroad. And
it will do this by fostering the illusion that in some
mysterious way its profitable foreign excursions
bring prosperity to the home community. A
moment’s reflection should be sufficient to show
that operations of this kind will bring to no nation
any compensation that is even remotely commensurate
with the cost of guaranteeing them.

Nor is it for their foreign adventures alone that
these particular interests will work up national
pride and prejudice. They look upon the home
market with the same avid eye as the foreign;
and it is an affair of common knowledge that they
// 258.png
.pn +1
have not hesitated to inflame national feeling in
order to secure invidious protective tariffs against
other nations. “Keep out the foreigner” is
always an effective battlecry; it bears a certain
immediate and obvious plausibility to the untutored
and uncritical mind. The argument for free
trade labours under the disadvantage of not
possessing this kind of effective simplicity. Except
in cases where free trade has been tried and is
supported by experience, the argument for it has
to lean upon postulates which are not so easily
demonstrable to the crowd and which do not lend
themselves to glib catchwords such as the protectionists
delight in. It is easy for instance,
to show that the prosperity of a particular industry
depends upon its security against a foreign competition
which apparently starts with the superior
advantage of cheap labour; and a case may be
fairly made for the protection of a young and
struggling industry from unequal competition.
The protectionist, however, extends his argument
to cover all industry; his concern is not for the
growth of a struggling industry but for a monopoly
of the home markets—what time he is also actively
invading foreign markets. The free trader has in
reply to show that a protective tariff is a stranglehold
upon all industry. Because, for instance,
it renders the capitalist producer immune from
foreign competition, it reduces the necessity on his
part to improve methods of production; and in so
much as his care is for his profits rather than the
// 259.png
.pn +1
real development of industry for the good of the
social whole, he will tend to remain content with
obsolete and antiquated methods of production so
long as improvement is not essential to the maintenance
of profits. Moreover, it works in the
direction of compelling the industries of the nation
to utilise the raw materials available within its
own borders even though these be inferior in
quality to those obtainable elsewhere, with the
result that the national industries are seriously
handicapped in competition in foreign markets,
even in some cases in the home markets. The
problem of clothing oneself in the United States
of America is a sufficient illustration of the fantastic
illusion that a protective tariff makes for the common
good. The tariff on woollen goods may be
useful to the owners of the woollen industries in
America; but the advantage is gained at the
expense of the whole people, including the very
operatives in woollen mills.

This is, however, not the place to state the whole
case as between protection and free trade. Chiefly
it is to our point here to emphasise the fact that
the advocates of a protective tariff belong mainly
to the capitalist class; and that they will plead
for a protective tariff on the ground of national
prosperity, and that national pride and prejudice
will be invoked in support of the argument. They
will be careful to abstain from calling undue
attention to the point that a protective tariff will
discriminate in favour of the classes that are
// 260.png
.pn +1
already sufficiently prosperous, and their popular
argument will have much to say about the high
wages of the worker. “Make the foreigner
pay” was the battlecry of the Chamberlainite
fiscal reformer in England; and what the foreigner
pays we all enjoy together. It sounds fair enough;
until it is seen that by no chance whatsoever does
the foreigner pay anything. He may lose something
in the diminution of his trade; but he pays
nothing. The payment is made by the domestic
consumer in the higher prices which immediately
prevail in respect of “protected” commodities;
and this higher price brings an advantage to whom?
To the worker? Not at all, if the capitalist can
help it. Will the worker get higher wages?
Only if he is strong enough to demand it. The
empty hypocrisy of this talk about national
prosperity should be evident from the fact that
the very people who are interested in high prices
are those who are equally interested in lowering
wages. The increase of the wage rate during the
war has not automatically or proportionately
followed the rise in prices; it has always to be
wrested by main force from those whose interest
lies in keeping prices high and wages low. Under
a protectionist régime, wages are rarely high
enough to compensate for the higher cost of living,
and the more dependent a country is upon importation
from abroad, the truer is this statement. It
is only in countries like the United States of
America where the natural resources are large and
// 261.png
.pn +1
more or less easily available that protection can
effect any substantial appearance of social prosperity,
and even in these cases it is scarcely
doubtful that the general prosperity would be
greatly increased by the removal of a protective
tariff. The dividends upon invested capital would
no doubt be lower; but the general level of
material well-being would be appreciably raised.

Democracy must make up its mind upon this
point. It must turn a cold and critical eye upon
all plausible talk about national prosperity and ask
whether this prosperity is in fact the thing it
professes to be. National wealth is so inequitably
distributed that the production of wealth as a
national concern is a polity <i>pour rire</i>. Protection
and commercial imperialism are devices which
work in the interests of the already prosperous
classes, a very small minority of the community.
This is not to say that there are not advocates of
protective tariffs who sincerely believe all they say
so fluently about “national” prosperity; of these
good people it is not the disinterestedness that is
to be called into question but the intelligence.
But it as sure as anything can very well be that if
a statutory limit were set upon profits, incomes
and fortunes, we should hear very little about
protective tariffs and the need of protecting
commercial interests “<i>in partibus infidelibus</i>.”
To say that this would immediately crush the
incentive to the commercial and industrial enterprise
of the nation would be an unworthy reflection
// 262.png
.pn +1
upon the patriotism of those who are at present
directing the enterprise. In any case the point
which is coming up for the decision of democratic
communities is whether they are going to identify
themselves with, and commit themselves to, the
support of enterprises which primarily serve the
interests of a class already well enough provided for
and which can bring no advantage to the people
at large commensurate with the risk involved in
endorsing them. With the crumbling of the
dynastic tradition, the one substantial cause still
outstanding of international misunderstanding is
commercial rivalry; but this commercial rivalry
is in no sense a rivalry between peoples; it is
purely a rivalry between the capitalist interests in
the different countries. Are the democracies still
prepared to suffer arrest of their own development
by retaining a sort of potential war-footing in the
interests of what are after all mainly class-adventures?[#]

.pm fn-start // A
The proposal to establish an <i>International Labour Standard</i>
will, of course, do something to rob the protectionist argument of
the force it borrows from playing up the “dumping” of
goods produced by underpaid foreign labour.
.pm fn-end

But it may be urged that even in the event of
the elimination of this type of commercial rivalry,
the national feeling would still remain—intrinsically
and without the adventitious aid of dynastic
or commercial interests—a permanent ground of
separation and possible dissension between peoples,
even democratic peoples. We are told that there
is such a thing as national “honour” which is a
// 263.png
.pn +1
sacred trust and which the nation must be prepared
to defend against all comers. It may be seriously
questioned whether this conception of national
“honour” is not an archaism which has lapped
over from the age when men still talked of gambling
debts as “debts of honour” and gentlemen
adjusted their differences by means of “affairs of
honour.” It should be evident that no nation has
any kind of honour which is subject to real offence
save at its own hands, or which can be forfeited
save by its own act; and a nation in anything like
a mature stage of ethical development should
be (in a memorable phrase) “too proud to fight”
merely because its <i>amour propre</i> had been pricked
by some ill-behaved urchin among the nations.
No self-respecting citizen resorts to fisticuffs in
order to avenge an insult; and the more self-respecting
he is the more effectual is the interior
constraint which forbids him to act in that way.
And it is equally inconceivable that a self-respecting
nation should think it worth while to assert itself
in a retaliatory way against what after all can amount
to no more than rudeness or impertinence. It is
true that there is a good deal of residual superstition
in this particular region which is apt to magnify
out of all proportion the significance of such
improprieties as disrespect to the flag; but a little
good humoured realism is all the antidote that
is required. Such things as these have no real
meaning except where symbolic and formal
punctilio still takes precedence over the actualities
// 264.png
.pn +1
of life. For the rest, the only possible sources of
offence to national honour lies in the region where
national honour travels abroad in the persons of
official and unofficial individuals of that nation.
But at this time of day, it is inconceivable that any
issues should arise in this region which are not
capable of easy and friendly adjustment. In
point of fact, that is what usually happens.
Apologies are made; a formula is adopted; and
the affair blows over. It will occur to the cynical
that in recent times the point of honour has been
chiefly insisted upon on such occasions as the
pursuit seemed likely to eventuate in some
material advantage; in any case the point of
honour survives only as an affair of statesmen and
diplomats and provokes no more than a languid
interest in the remainder of the nation, which
has more pressing concerns on hand. National
“honour” seems on the whole to be but a frill
left over from the day in which the divine right of
kings was still a live dogma.

In the fact of nationality itself there is nothing
which necessarily tends to a breach of the peace.
We know that it represents no fact of organic
inheritance which is bound to perpetuate divisions
of an unfriendly or unneighbourly kind between
peoples. There is no modern “nation” which can
claim homogeneity of racial origin, of language,
of religion. It describes a political unity within
which a people by the simple process of living
together has developed and is continuing to develop
// 265.png
.pn +1
a particular way of life and quality of culture. The
peculiar colour of national life is due of course
to some extent to its geographical location, to the
circumstances of its history, and to its natural
resources, but national unity is achieved in the
evolution of a common tradition and a common
culture. Nor is it possible to fix any real bounds
to the growth of a nation. It is a historical
commonplace how the small primitive groupings
of man have steadily grown in extent until we have
reached the stage of vast aggregations of polyglot
peoples comprehended under a single national
name—like the British Empire and the United
States. The “nation” possesses no fixity, and
national feeling undergoes continual change and
modification as the result of changing circumstances.
There are many like the present writer
whose early schooling left them with the impression
that there was a necessary and permanent antagonism
of interest between the British and French;
but since then the Entente Cordiale and other
momentous happenings have completely banished
that hoary tradition from the British mind. It is,
moreover, not open to question that the increase
and improvement of means of communication have
done much to dispel the ignorance from which
national prejudice and international suspicion
drew their strength. The biological judgment
upon nationality is pertinent to this point: “All
the most important agencies producing the divergent
modification of the nations are human
// 266.png
.pn +1
products and can be altered.”[#] These agencies
are presumably the factors which constitute what
Mr. Benjamin Kidd called social heredity; and
he has shown with great force how possible it is
to “impose the elements of a new social heredity”
on a whole people and to change its character
accordingly.[#] The sum of the matter is that
nationality is a fluid and changing entity; and its
intrinsic nature and its history appear to point to
the conclusion that it is a necessary stage in the
evolution of human society, by which the caveman
is to become at last a citizen of the world. There
is nothing to justify the expectation that present
national characters and national frontiers will
remain as permanent factors in the life of the
world.

.pm fn-start // A
Chalmers Mitchell, <i>Evolution and the War</i>, p. 90.
.pm fn-end

.pm fn-start // B
Benjamin Kidd, <i>The Science of Power</i>, p. 305.
.pm fn-end


This does not mean that the world will not
continue to be organised on the basis of nationality;
it means only that the present national divisions
are not permanent. The law of natural variation
will operate in producing diversity in the complexion
and culture of communities; and the race
will contain to the end an infinite variety of social
types. Indeed as the dynastic imperial tradition
decays, the tendency to induce uniformity among
the peoples brought under a common rule will
disappear; and the free play of variation will
probably be more evident in the future than it has
been, at least in the near past. The emphasis upon
// 267.png
.pn +1
the rights of small nations and the disruption of
Russia and of the Dual Monarchy into their constituent
nations both alike indicate that we shall
have a considerable accentuation of distinctive
national types in the years ahead of us. But this is
not in any sense a matter for misgiving; for the
larger the variety of typical national cultures, the
more varied and rich will the life of the race
become. As Lord Bryce said in the early days of
the war, the world was already too uniform and was
becoming more uniform every day; and a reaction
from uniformity is a sign of renewed life.

At the same time it must not be forgotten that
without some balancing principle there are dangers
inherent in nationality. It has been justly
observed that nationality is an admirable thing
when it is being struggled for, but that once achieved
it is apt to become a peril. The passion for
nationality may overshoot its mark. National
self-consciousness may breed national self-conceit;
and out of this temper especially under
the conditions of modern commerce may grow the
spirit of aggression. It is useless to hide this fact
from ourselves; the recent history of Italy gives
ample demonstration of it. The Italy of Garibaldi
was hardly recognisable in the Italy of the Tripoli
adventure. It is therefore necessary that the
nations that have come to new birth in the world-travail
of these last five years, should be preserved
from the danger of becoming aggressive at the
expense of their neighbours, and in this necessity
// 268.png
.pn +1
is contained in little the entire problem of international
integration which is likely to occupy the
minds of statesmen and political thinkers in the
coming century. At the same time the ultimate
security of the peace which is necessary to the
progress of the democratic principle must lie not
in external safeguards and checks but in the
increasing democratisation of national life. The
elimination of those residual predatory interests
which still dog the steps of democracy and are
still able to pervert it to their own ends may be
helped by the creation of international machinery
which will limit the area of their opportunities;
but it depends most of all upon the progressive
disappearance of class and sectional privileges
within the nations. For privilege is always
predatory; and so long as there still remain
privileged classes within the nations no international
machinery of adjustment and restraint
can do more than preserve a highly precarious
equilibrium between conflicting interests.
.sp 2
.h3
III
.sp 2
Upon this whole subject there is little to be said
which is not already perfectly clear to those who
have given it any serious thought. Two courses
are open, and only two, to modern democracies.
They may choose to retain the traditional dogmas
of national sovereignty and “honour,” and the
current acceptances of the business system, or
// 269.png
.pn +1
they may resolve upon a break with the past. The
consequences of the first choice are perfectly
evident from the state into which the world has
been brought by its operation in the near past.
It implies the retention of a privileged class with
interests to be defended at home and abroad; it
will work out in competitive commerce and as a
natural corollary in competitive armaments. And
competitive armaments soon or late mean war.
It has already been pointed out how the doctrine
of military “preparedness” must inevitably
retard and arrest the realisation of democratic
liberty within the nation, but it must farther be
recognised that any general retention of military
establishments, under the conditions of modern
industry, must eventuate in the total destruction
of democracy and civilisation. The other choice
means a deliberate and progressive attempt to
organise the intercourse of nations upon a basis
of reciprocity and co-operation. Even though
the consequences of such an attempt may be at
present uncertain and problematical, it may at
least be asserted that they cannot be worse than
those which have so tragically ensued from the
former tradition.

Indeed, we have already come to a state of the
world in which the former tradition has long
ceased to correspond to actuality. So long as the
means of communication remained elementary
and slow, it was possible for nations to live more
or less independent lives and it was in their interest
// 270.png
.pn +1
to become self-sufficing and self-contained. They
were sufficiently far from one another to meet only
in the event of border brawls or of predatory
excursions on a large scale on the part of a strong
neighbour against a weaker. But with the modern
development of the means of communication a
policy of isolation has become utterly impossible.
The world has become a neighbourhood; and
national interests are inextricably intertwined.
When President Wilson said in 1916 that the
European War was the last great war out of participation
in which it would be possible for the
United States to remain, he was speaking with
this particular circumstance in mind; and
not even his foresight was sufficient at that time
to see that the day of isolation was already over.
In six months, the United States was engulfed in
the bloody maelstrom. The policy of national
isolation is obsolete; and the persons who advocate
military preparedness and protective tariffs are
“back numbers.” These atavistic policies are
no longer possible except at the cost of the incalculable
impoverishment of the nation which adopts
them. The nation that shuts others out also
shuts itself in and will slowly perish from an
inbreeding mind and an ingrowing energy. For
the barrier against mutual confidence and goodwill
which is military preparedness, and the barrier
against reciprocal trade, which is a protective
tariff, hinder much more than the exchanges of
friendship and trade. They hinder that exchange
// 271.png
.pn +1
of spiritual, intellectual and cultural goods which
are on any radical analysis more essential to a
people’s growth and wealth than its trade.

Even as things are, those barriers are not
sufficient to prevent a certain mutuality in trade and
in culture. Neither the German tariff could keep
Sheffield steel out of Germany, nor does the United
States tariff keep Bradford cloth out of America,
and in the region of intellectual and cultural
interests the commerce has attained in recent
times a considerable briskness. But in the present
state of the world, why should a nation still cling
to the illusion that it is a source of strength
to be self-contained? It is simply silly to continue
to live on homemade goods and homemade ideas
when one’s neighbours are ready to supply those
which they are in a position to produce better than
ourselves, and to supply them freely on a basis
of fair exchange; and it is no compensation for
the consumption of second-rate goods that it
helps to increase the bank balance of a few of one’s
countrymen, especially when these few countrymen
who are thus profited can out of their profits
procure the superior foreign article which they put
out of the reach of the rest.

The organisation of the world upon a basis of
international reciprocity becomes a necessity by
reason of the proximity into which modern means
of communication have thrown the peoples.
The process is indeed already afoot and in spite
of hindrances will inevitably grow in power and
// 272.png
.pn +1
range; and we are only anticipating events when
we set out to organise the nations on a foundation
of mutuality. The process is, however, not
without its difficulties; and the conditions which
are necessary in order to create a league of nations
bound together by a principle of reciprocity may be
passed in brief review.
.sp 2
.h3
IV
.sp 2
First of all it is necessary that the last vestige
of imperial dominion should disappear. A nation
which is held unwillingly within a particular
political unity should be emancipated and be set up
in independence. Real reciprocity is only possible
on a foundation of common freedom, and it is a
pre-requisite of any scheme of world federation
that any so-called “subject” nation which puts
in a claim to independence should have its claim
conceded at sight. The whole conception of
reciprocity is denied when a nation is dragged into
the scheme at the tail of another. At the same
time it should be made clear that an independence
thus recognised does not carry with it the prerogative
of a sovereignty of the traditional kind.
Independence is to mean autonomy in domestic
affairs but not independent action in external
affairs. Reciprocity implies joint action in matters
of international interest; and in so much as the
working of a reciprocal scheme implies the power
of authoritative action by some superior joint
// 273.png
.pn +1
council, it is clear that there must be a cession of
such portion of national sovereignty as is implied
in the joint transaction of international affairs.
Nor is this to be a rule merely for the lesser or the
newly emancipated nations. Clearly it must be
a rule for all nations great or small which enter
into the arrangement. It is supposed that the
nations will be found unready to make this
surrender; in which case it is in no need of
demonstration that a League of Nations is impossible
save only for the purely negative business of
adjusting difficulties and settling disputes. That
indeed were a great gain, even though from the
nature of the case it would in all probability be
only temporary. Nations still boasting sovereignty
would soon or late be tempted to take matters into
their own hands in the event of adjustments and
settlements which proved unsatisfactory. But in
point of fact there is no difficulty at all about this
cession of sovereignty except in the minds of
incurable jingoes or legal doctrinaires. The thing
has been done and is in practice on a large scale
already. That vast unity called the United
States of America became and remains possible
only because independent states have voluntarily
ceded certain elements of their sovereignty to a
federal authority; and there is no objection other
than that of chauvinistic prejudice or of academic
theory which could effectually prevent the creation
of a United States of Europe on the same basis and a
greatly extended United States of America as well.
// 274.png
.pn +1

But it requires to be emphasised at this point
that we need less a league of nations than a league
of peoples; and if it be alleged that this is a
distinction which implies no real difference, the
answer must be made that the difference is indeed
deep and vital. Sir Rabindranath Tagore has
lately criticised the idea of the nation on the ground
that it is the organisation of a people in the interests
of its material welfare and power;[#] and insomuch
as the nation finds its focus in the sovereign state,
its effect is separative and divisive. A league of
nations in the Western World would tend to be
a league of states, of governments; and the
psychological inheritance of such a league would
tend to an undue preoccupation with schemes
and policies rather than the broader matters of
human intercourse. It is inconceivable that a
league of nations will be able to divest itself
from the characteristic stock-in-trade of the
specialist in “foreign affairs,” since it would
naturally be engineered by statesmen schooled in
the traditional order. No league has any chance
of permanence which does not break wholly with
the current conventions of international business;
and the only hope of such a break lies in the direct
selection by the people of the various countries of
their own representatives on the council of the
league. The league must be democratically
controlled; and that with as much direct democratic
power as such expedients as proportional
// 275.png
.pn +1
representation and recall can secure. The foreign
offices of Europe are so incurably steeped in an evil
tradition that the less they have to do with any
future league the better. The secrecy, the
intrigue, the diplomatic <i>finesse</i> in which they have
been expert are incongruous with the democratic
principle; and it is necessary in the interest of
international understanding that they should be put
out of commission with all decent haste. The kind
of domestic organisation for foreign business
which a league of nations requires differs <i>toto
coelo</i> from the existing institution; and it will have
to be built from the bottom up.

.pm fn-start // A
See <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>, March, 1917, p. 291.
.pm fn-end

A league of peoples requires plain dealing in the
open; but there is nothing gained even then if
there be no public apprehension of the nature of
the business in hand. Hitherto, the common man
has displayed but a flickering interest in the external
affairs of his country; and this vast and important
region has been left the monopoly of a comparatively
small coterie of people who have made
the shunning of publicity a fine art. This circumstance
is bound up with the fact that speaking
generally these persons have consistently belonged
to the prosperous classes; and the conventions
of the diplomatic tradition have made it a preserve
of people possessing considerable independent
incomes. It is needless to observe how inevitably
the whole service must be vitiated by this anti-democratic
discrimination. The established
system is secured by employing in it only those
// 276.png
.pn +1
whose upbringing and education have instilled into
them the spirit of class superiority and ascendency.
The Foreign Offices of Europe have from the
nature of the case been the breeding ground of
jingoism and chauvinism. The principle of
democratic control in foreign affairs, both by the
public discussion of international business and by
the thorough democratisation of Foreign Offices
is a <i>sine qua non</i> not alone of democracy at home
but of any such league of peoples as may be
established.

It follows as a corollary that there should be a
systematic education of the people in foreign
affairs. Popular ignorance would nullify any
advantage which accrued from the democratisation
of the control and the conduct of international
business. For the control and conduct would
under such conditions pass back into the hands of
specialists and experts and interested parties. This
popular education does not fail to be considered
in detail at this point. But it may be questioned
whether it can be effectively sustained unless in
some form or another foreign relations can be made
a permanent issue of domestic politics. Perhaps
we may come to the point of instituting the popular
election of the persons in whom the responsibility
of foreign business shall be vested. At the present
time it is only rarely, and then but in a subordinate
way, that questions of foreign policy enter into the
issues of an election; and until some means is
devised of educating the public mind in the
// 277.png
.pn +1
subject-matter of foreign relations, this condition
will continue.
.sp 2
.h3
V
.sp 2
It is, however, likely that the force of circumstances
may expedite this process of education.
The articles of the coming peace are guaranteed to
contain a provision for general disarmament;
and so far as Europe is concerned, this will be a
work of necessity and not of supererogation.
Professor Delbrück, for instance, has come to
acknowledge that the “derided notions” of
disarmament, hitherto “entertained only by
persons of no account,” are likely to be raised to
“the position of the ruling principle of our
time.”[#] His conversion is due to the fact that
the war will leave the belligerents of Europe in a
financial position which will not only make the
increase of armaments impossible, but will
require the very drastic reduction of their military
establishments. The only danger to the process
of disarmament lies in the circumstance that two
of the belligerent powers, the United States and
Japan, have been so little crippled by the war that
they are in a position and may get into the mood
to maintain large armaments. It is useless to
obscure from ourselves the further circumstance
that these two powers that are in a position to
afford large military establishments look upon one
// 278.png
.pn +1
another with a considerable measure of suspicion
despite their recent association upon the same side
in the war, and the formal professions of mutual
good-will that have latterly been made. It must
be borne in mind that Japan is still mainly dynastic
in government and consequently imperialistic in
spirit, that its economic development seems to
require an expansion of marketing opportunities,
and that its over-population will stimulate emigration.
In these matters there is plenty of
inflammable stuff; and we should be guilty of not
facing the facts of the case, did we not perceive
that by reason of the attraction which Western
America has for the Japanese emigrant, and of the
peculiar interest which America has taken in the
welfare of China, situations of very great peril
may arise between Japan and the United States.
It is upon such a state of the case that the argument
for universal military service in America will be
based; and indeed must be based; as it is
inconceivable that any American in his senses
should apprehend any danger from the other side
of the Atlantic. The certain democratisation of
Europe and the virtual certainty of the impossibility
on financial grounds of any considerable war-like
enterprise on the part of the European nations make
the contingency of a Transatlantic war unthinkable
at the present time, or indeed at any future
time. This, of course, pre-supposes that the
causes of friction likely to arise from the national
underwriting of private foreign investments will
// 279.png
.pn +1
be removed by a common understanding that
the private ventures of capital abroad are made
at its own risk.

.pm fn-start // A
<i>Prüssische Jahrbucher</i> (November, 1917).
.pm fn-end

The possible strain of the situation between the
United States and Japan is, however, already
alleviated to some extent by the prospect of a
democratic movement in the latter country.
Japan can in any case hardly expect to keep its
institutions intact if it enters into reciprocal
relations with democratic communities. Now, for
the first time, a commoner is premier of Japan;
and the widespread social discontent is likely
to stimulate the tendency to popularise the
machinery of government. It is probably too
much to expect in the present state of Japanese
education, that the veneration in which the
dynasty is held will speedily disappear. Yet after
the swift and dramatic disappearance of “divine
rights” in Germany, it is not wise to assume that
historical processes of this type are necessarily
slow.

Apart, however, from the possible causes of
friction between the United States and Japan, there
seems to be little insuperable difficulty in reaching
an international understanding concerning disarmament.[#]
Upon such an understanding, the whole
future of the projected League of Nations hangs.
The League will be no more than an empty shell
if the constituent nations still continue to go about
// 280.png
.pn +1
with loaded fire-arms. Yet even if the League
itself were not to come into existence immediately
the economic necessity of disarmament would of
itself suffice to change international relationships
very profoundly. Reduction in armaments will
involve a revolution in foreign policy. For the
two things go together. A particular kind of
foreign policy requires a corresponding scale
of armaments; and the state of a nation’s armaments
very materially affects the objects and the
tone of its foreign policy. In a word the reduction
of armaments would compel the nations in some
sort to moralise their mutual relations. The old
basis of ambition-<i>cum</i>-fear backed by force will
have to be displaced by a practice of plain dealing
and mutual understanding. Since the nations
cannot afford to fight one another for some time
to come, there is nothing for it but that they learn
to behave themselves properly toward each other.
After a while it is permissible to hope that they
would not want to fight each other.

.pm fn-start // A
This statement does not seem quite so true now as
when it was written, in view of the provisions of the Peace
Treaty.
.pm fn-end

.sp 2
.h3
VI
.sp 2
But if disarmament is likely to compel a new
type of international dealing, it is plain that there
must be some kind of international clearing house.
We have gone past the stage at which one nation
can transact a bargain with another which will not
affect the interests of a third party. The shrinkage
of the world has thrown the nations too closely
// 281.png
.pn +1
together for any of them to suppose that they can
determine their policies in isolation and carry
them through piece-meal with this one and that,
without reference to the rest. Preferential trade
agreements, for instance, are not merely an affair
of the contrasting parties; they affect all the
nations. And it is impossible any longer—in the
absence of <i>force majeure</i>—to establish relations of
that kind without the consent of the rest of the
world. The case for an international clearing
house is indeed at this time of day irresistible.

Moreover, the immediate stress of the food-situation
throughout the world is certain to require
some such organ for the co-ordination and the
distribution of the available food-supply. It seems
likely that the supply of food for the world will be
for some years inadequate to the need without
careful distribution; and it will require the most
careful organisation and rationing of what food
there is if the people of some parts of the world
are to escape very great and protracted hardship.
For this, a clearing house is necessary. Fortunately
we have the foundations of this organisation
already laid—on the one hand in the machinery of
international distribution created by Mr. Hoover,
and on the other in Mr. David Lubin’s far-seeing
institution of an international bureau for the survey
of the world’s grain resources. From a central
organisation of this kind the world will need to
receive its food for some time to come.

Nor is the problem of food the only urgent
// 282.png
.pn +1
matter of this kind. There will be presently a
very great demand for the raw material of industrial
production. In the past, raw material has been
provided by means of private ventures of all kinds
on a competitive basis. Any reversion to such a
chaotic and uncoordinated method of providing
raw material would be attended by consequences
of a most disastrous kind. There would be no
guarantee of equitable distribution among the
nations; with the result that those unfavourably
placed in the matter of capital or credit, would be
put in a position of permanent and increasing
economic dependence and disability. If the nations
now released from ancient tyrannies are to be set
upon their feet, it is plain that they must receive
supplies of raw material as nearly adequate for their
need as possible. Otherwise we may create a
number of pauper nations. In addition to this
fact, there is also the danger that the private
exploitation of the sources of raw material would
tend to the subjugation of backward peoples
whose lands chanced to be rich in such material.
It is an old and a shameful story how the need of
civilisation for raw material has led to the laceration
and impoverishment of the native population of
(say) Africa; and it is necessary that the conscience
of the world should refuse to tolerate the system
of concessions and the like which made this
criminality possible. On both grounds—the need
of industrial production among the civilised people,
and the rights of the undeveloped peoples—a
// 283.png
.pn +1
system of the joint international quest and distribution
of raw material is requisite.

This international rationing of raw material may
seem a drastic and impracticable proposal; but any
consideration of its alternatives must drive us to
the conclusion that we cannot escape some experiment
however inadequate in this direction. In the
present state of the world, the balance is so overwhelmingly
in favour of the strong nations that
any perpetuation of the private and competitive
quest of raw materials will simply lead to a struggle
of great commercial imperialisms in which the
victims will be the weak nations. Just as the
unprivileged classes within the nation have been
the victims of the great industrial powers, the weaker
nations which start with a handicap in the struggle
will be disabled in perpetuity and will be squeezed
between their stronger neighbours. It is difficult
to see that the economic dependence and subjection
of one nation to another differs appreciably
in its consequences to the people at large from that
political dependence and subjection to destroy
which the European war was undertaken and
fought at so terrific a cost.
.sp 2
.h3
VII
.sp 2
The necessity and the logic of the case leads us
therefore, to expect the creation of an international
organisation which shall have certain positive
functions in addition to the negative task of
// 284.png
.pn +1
mitigating the causes of international friction and
the adjustment of differences. The hope of the permanence
of the League lies in its positive activities
rather than in its purely negative offices. Moreover,
the just rationing of food and raw material
would of itself so considerably diminish the possibility
of international misunderstanding, that we
may look to the extension of the positive and integrative
functions of the League while the need of
purely mediatorial activity would naturally decrease.
Nor have we exhausted the matters in which the
need of the nations requires action and organisation
of a constructive and positive kind. At the
present time it is plain that some of the peoples
newly liberated are not in a position to conduct
their affairs without outside assistance. Palestine,
Syria, and Mesopotamia, for instance, must be
guided and protected for some time to come; and
while the peoples of these countries might choose
to be placed under the wing of one or other of the
existing “great” powers, it is not open to argument
that such a connection should be under an
arrangement which secured the accountability of
the protecting power to an international body. If
Great Britain becomes foster-mother to Palestine,
or France to Syria, the agreement should be so
formulated that this relationship is always subject
to revision at the hands of the League of Peoples.
The case with the native populations in the former
German colonies is still more clear. Africa, in
especial, has suffered unspeakable things from the
// 285.png
.pn +1
imperialistic rivalries of the European nations;
and its whole future development is bound up
with a guarantee that its territory and its peoples
shall be immune from invasion and exploitation
at the hands of nations with selfish purposes. This
again points to the institution of a system of international
tutelage and supervision. It goes without
saying, of course, that any such international action
should consist not only of protection and tutelage,
but of education into self-government. The
question as to the mode in which this international
supervision should be exercised is secondary.
The proposal that it should be made effective by
means of international commissions is met with the
objection that international commissions have
proved to be a failure in practice. In some cases
this is doubtless true; but it is not the whole truth.
The Danube Commission and the Postal Union
furnish examples of successful management by
international commission. But there is no need
to mix up the question of international supervision
with the method of rendering it effective.
There appears to be no inconsistency in maintaining
that the method of international commission would
be most fruitful in some instances, while the method
of devolving the work upon a single nation suitably
placed for doing it would be more advantageous
in other cases. In those instances, where a
weak or backward people is capable of appreciating
the alternatives, there is no reason why the choice
should not be left to the people themselves.
// 286.png
.pn +1

One of the further consequences of the contraction
of the world is that health has become an
international question. The days when a plague
could be confined to a city are over.[#] The recent
spread of the so-called “Spanish” influenza is an
instance which proves how indissolubly bound
together the world has come to be. And the system
of national quarantines has to be superseded by an
international organ for the localisation and the
extirpation of diseases which like the bubonic
and the pneumonic plagues are capable of easy
and destructive diffusion; and for the removal of
those conditions of filth and insanitation in any part
of the world to which these scourges owe their
origin. It is likely, moreover, that the great
increase in pulmonary and venereal diseases as
by-products of the war require international
handling if their worst consequences are to be
averted.

.pm fn-start // A
If, indeed, there ever were any such days. In 1665, the
Great Plague was brought from London to Eyam, a little
Derbyshire town, in a parcel of cloth consigned to the local
tailor!
.pm fn-end

It will also belong to the proposed international
body to oversee and improve the facilities for
travel and transport. Obviously this is largely a
question of keeping the seas an open highway for
traffic. The phrase “the freedom of the seas”
has a special connotation in current discussions
which is apt to obscure the real point at issue. The
claim made by the German Government for the
establishment of the “freedom of the seas” seemed
// 287.png
.pn +1
and was intended to imply that British naval
supremacy had constituted a hindrance to sea-borne
trade in normal times. No one with any historical
knowledge would be able to consent to that judgment.
British naval supremacy has been in no
sense a limitation upon the “freedom of the seas”
in times of peace. The seas have always been free
in modern times; and so far from its having been
restricted by British naval supremacy, a good case
may be made out for the contrary view. The
safety of the high seas is possibly more connected
with the efficiency of the British navy than a superficial
judgment might allow. The freedom of
the seas only comes in question in war time; and
if we are minded to eliminate war from the world
the whole problem loses its relevancy anyhow,
except in so far that some measure of police
surveillance may continue to be necessary. In the
meantime it should be remembered that the insular
position of Great Britain has created the necessity
in past times for a strong navy in order to secure
the freedom of the seas for its own commerce;
but it is not to be maintained for a moment that it
has in recent times used its supremacy to limit the
freedom of other commerce. Even if the policing
of the high seas should be placed by the international
authority in the hands of Great Britain, its
past record shows that it may be trusted; and in any
case its own interest in the free and unimpeded
passage of commerce upon the seas is a guarantee
that it would discharge its office effectually.
// 288.png
.pn +1

Still, it is probably not desirable that the control
of the seas should be devolved upon a single power.
The universal interests of the nations in the franchise
of the ocean highways make it necessary that
their protection be an international obligation.
This part of the problem should, however, present
no insuperable difficulty. In practice the high
seas are to all intents and purposes already
neutralised. Our difficulties arise when we come
to the question of narrow inter-ocean waterways.
The most conspicuous, though perhaps not the
most important, case of this type, is the water
connecting the Black and the Ægean Seas; and
the obvious solution lies in the permanent neutralisation
of the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmora and
the Dardanelles. There is no difficulty involved
in the institution of an international commission
to carry this project into effect. This particular
outlet affects so many nations that it is intolerable
that it should remain the particular property of a
single nation; and the only possible alternative
is this of neutralisation under international commission.
The straits of Gibraltar present a
different though a no more difficult problem. With
the development of modern ordnance, the military
and political importance of the Rock of Gibraltar
has virtually disappeared; and its value is chiefly
that of a naval base and coaling station. It is
difficult to see what purpose under modern conditions
the retention of a kind of British sovereignty
in the Straits serves. In the days when the route
// 289.png
.pn +1
to India had to be protected, it was of course
another story; and there is really no reason why
the Straits of Gibraltar—as well as all other narrow
waterways—should not be neutralised in perpetuity
under international guarantee. The
experience of the present war in the matter of
submarine attacks on merchant ships in the
Mediterranean showed how ineffectual any
guardianship of the Straits is likely to be in the
future; and the same thing is true of all waterways
which are not sufficiently narrow to be
swiftly barred against entrance by submarine craft.

The most thorny part of this problem lies in
the question of the two great inter-ocean canals,
Suez and Panama. These two passages are now
held by single powers though they are governed
in such a way as to give virtual equality of use to
the seacraft of all nations. Apart from the
profits which accrue to the possessing nations from
the charges upon traffic, it is difficult to see what
advantage the arrangement possesses. It is in the
interest of the possessing nations to encourage the
general use of the canals, so much so, indeed, that
it has been found expedient by the United States
to renounce the idea of preferential treatment
to its own shipping in the Panama Canal.
Probably not much would be immediately gained
by the neutralisation of these canals, though
it is likely that the pressure of circumstances may
lead to such an event at a later time. Nevertheless,
any international authority would find it
// 290.png
.pn +1
necessary to secure that craft of all nations should
have free and equal access to the canals at all
times.

But the facilitation of international traffic is not
an affair of the water only. It is no less essential
that the great trunk railroads should be effectually
co-ordinated. The British project of an “all-red
route” round the world is an instance of the kind
of co-ordination that is required. The Interstate
Railroad Commission of the United States supplies
the idea at another angle. The convenient international
transport of persons and commodities,
the regulation of time-schedules, of fares and
freights, is surely part of the subject matter of a
League of Nations. It has long been seen that
the roads of a nation are its arteries and veins;
and the provision of cheap and easy transit for
persons and things may well become one of the
most potent factors in the cohesive energy of a
League of Nations.

Enough has already been said upon the conditions
of international trade which are requisite to the
project of a League of Peoples. Invidious protective
tariffs, “favoured nation” clauses, preferential
arrangements of any kind must work
injuriously to the process of integration. That
these devices are also injurious to the nations which
utilise them is of less moment to us at this point
than their effect in creating rivalry and antagonism.
To secure a genuine and universal reciprocity in
trade should be one of the aims of the league, as it
// 291.png
.pn +1
will also be one of the primary conditions of its
consolidation and growth.
.sp 2
.h3
VIII
.sp 2
But may not this concentration of authority in
the hands of an international body create a kind
of super-state? In any case this danger is very
remote at the present time; but it is no less necessary
that at its inception conditions should be
agreed upon which will safeguard it from such a
tendency. This might be done in one of two
ways. It might, for instance, be ordained that the
machinery of the League should not be unitary,
but that the commissions requisite for various
purposes should be independently appointed by
the contracting nations and derive their mandate
directly from them; and in the event of overlapping,
the commissions concerned might adjust
the matter by joint session. The other alternative
is that there should be a supreme international
authority, but that it should be subject to a
“Barrier Act.”[#] This would provide that the
power and the enactments of the authority should
// 292.png
.pn +1
be perpetually subject to the revision of the contracting
parties; and it would be impossible
for the international body to take any material
step outside the limits of its mandate and consequently
to extend its sphere of authority without
the general consent of the nations concerned.
Perhaps both these conditions are necessary—the
direct appointment of commissions and the
Barrier Act; and in any case a general agreement
should be reached beforehand as to the limits and
nature of the functions to be vested in the international
body. It is plain, of course, that in any
event the League must stand upon consent. It
will be a voluntary association of free peoples; and
its maintenance will depend upon the impossibility
of its ever accruing any authority sufficient to
prevent the withdrawal of any nation which might
be so minded. It is questionable whether once the
League had come into operation, any nation could
afford to withdraw; but no power should be
veiled in it to coerce a nation to remain in the
League against its will. The basis of free and
voluntary association is the only guarantee of
genuine and fruitful solidarity.

.pm fn-start // A
The Barrier Act was a Presbyterian device against hasty
innovation. “Every proposal which contemplates a material
change in the constitution of the Church or in its laws respecting
doctrine, discipline, government, or worship, after being considered
and accepted by the Synod, must be sent down to
Presbyteries for their approval or disapproval, before it can
become the law of the Church.” (The Book of Order of the
Presbyterian Church of England, p. 50.) Just so, the Federal
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative
to prohibition had to be referred to the several states for endorsement
before final ratification.
.pm fn-end

This, however, raises the question of whether
the League should be armed with powers to enforce
its decisions. That it should be endowed with a
definite judicial authority goes without saying;
but is it to be supported by a police organisation?
In the present state of opinion it appears likely
that some kind of international police force will be
// 293.png
.pn +1
attached to the League; but there are some reasons
for doubting whether such a provision is necessary
or likely to be useful. In this connection the
interesting point has been raised that the Constitution
of the United States established a court to
adjudicate upon disputes between the States, with
no provision of force to compel a State to accept
the Court’s decision, but depending upon public
opinion alone to validate the judgment. Had
there been any attempt on the part of those who
framed the Constitution to invest the federal
authority with power to coerce a recalcitrant state,
it is likely that the Union would never have come
into existence; but the Union was founded
and survived despite the absence of coercive
sanctions, and the venture of faith has been vindicated
by the growth and unity of the American
people.[#] There is a real danger lest the institution
of a police force at the disposal of the League might
prove a disruptive factor; and the question should
be carefully canvassed before a decision is reached.
In any case it is safe to say that it should be the
business of the League to work towards the
ultimate elimination of coercive sanctions.

.pm fn-start // A
Technically, in the Civil War, force was used to prevent the
secession of the South; but what the North really fought for
was the abolition of slavery.
.pm fn-end

But meantime is there any method by which the
League could effectually deal with recalcitrant
nations other than direct physical compulsion?
A good deal has been said about the use of
// 294.png
.pn +1
economic boycott; but it requires some casuistry
to distinguish successfully between military coercion
and economic boycott. Certainly in intention
both devices come within the same category,
and in result they may work out in curiously
identical fashion. Constraint by starvation bears
in effect a strong family resemblance to constraint
by destructive <i>force majeure</i>. At the same time
it is evident that a nation which chooses to put
itself “in <i>contumaciam</i>” must in some way or
another pay the penalty of its offence. The Bank
Clearing House deals with an offending and
impenitent member by the simple process of
exclusion. In the League of Nations, a nation in
the same position should be dealt with in the
same fashion; it should understand that its
persistency in the offending attitude carries with
it exclusion from the comity of nations. It should,
that is, be compelled to accept the responsibility
of imposing the punishment upon itself. It has
put itself outside the pale; and no injustice is
involved in accepting its deed at its obvious face
value and letting it remain where it has chosen
to place itself until such time as it elects to think
better of its action. It is doubtful whether any
constituent nation would think it worth while to
indulge in a contumacy which automatically led
to excommunication.

It would take us too far afield from our purpose
to discuss the details of the organisation required
by a League of Nations. Questions of constitution
// 295.png
.pn +1
and representation, the problems involved in the
adhesion to the League of vast composite aggregates
like the British Empire, and of the place of some
of the minute independent states that still remain
in the world,—these and many more matters
will have to be faced in the institution of
the League. Here, however, it has been our
business merely to point out that some such
device as a League of Peoples is entirely
necessary to the further development of the
democratic principle, and to pass in brief review
certain of the conditions which the League must
satisfy, and certain of the functions it must assume,
if it is to be consistent with and helpful to the realisation
of the ideal of democracy. A League to enforce
peace may be no more than the Holy Alliance
<i>redivivus</i>, an unholy alliance in defence of the
<i>status quo</i>.[#] What is needed is a League to guarantee
freedom and to promote fellowship, and given such
a League peace will largely look after itself. It is
not sufficiently recognised that to make peace an
object in itself is to condemn the world to virtual
stagnation. The only peace, like the only happiness
which is permanent, is that which is a bye-product.
Permanent peace will come from a
voluntary association of peoples co-operating on a
basis of reciprocity; and such a consummation is
not so far off as it would at fist sight appear. The
// 296.png
.pn +1
reciprocity which has been established between
the Allied peoples in the war will have to be continued
long after the war. Their needs are so
vast that they will only escape death and want by
close co-operation. Moreover, the agreement of
the Allies reported in the press as these pages are
written to send food to their late enemies, is an
asset of the utmost importance to the creation of
the League. And once the League is properly
afoot, we may live in the hope of the day which
William Blake foretold:

.pm verse-start
“In my exchanges, every land shall walk,
   And mine in every land;
 Mutual shall build Jerusalem,
   Both heart in heart, and hand in hand.”
.pm verse-end

.pm fn-start // A
It is hardly possible to resist the remark at this point that
the League as fashioned in Paris bears a strong family
likeness to the Holy Alliance, and so far behaves uncommonly
like it,—<i>e.g.</i>, towards Russia and Hungary.
.pm fn-end

// 297.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
.pb
.sp 4
.h2 id=ch09
Chapter IX.|EDUCATION INTO DEMOCRACY.
.sp 1
.pm letter-start
“Education teaches in what social welfare consists. It is of
first importance to you that your sons should be taught what
are the ruling principles and beliefs which guide the lives of their
fellowmen in their own times and in their own country; what
the moral, social and political programme of their nation is;
what the spirit of the legislation by which their deeds will have
to be judged; what degree of progress Humanity has already
attained and that which it has yet to attain. And it is important
to you that they should feel themselves from their earliest years,
united in the spirit of equality and of love for a common aim,
with the millions of brothers that God has given them.”—<sc>Mazzini.</sc>
.pm letter-end
.sp 1
.h3
I
.sp 2
.dc 0.3 0.67
“IT was,” says Mr. Benjamin Kidd, “with a well-founded
instinct that William II. of Germany,
on his accession turned to the elementary school
teachers of his country when he aimed to impose
the elements of a new social heredity on the whole
German people.” It is impossible at this time
of day not to go far in agreement with Mr. Kidd
when he tells us that it is not so much what is
born in a man as what he is born into that shapes
his life. The most powerful formative influence
in the shaping of character and outlook is “social
heredity,” “imposed on the young at an early age
and under conditions of emotion.”[#] This judgment
is no longer a matter of speculation. Dr.
Stanley Hall’s work upon the phenomena of adolescence
has made it clear that the plastic and
absorbent stuff of youth will inevitably take its
abiding shape and colour from the cultural setting
in which it finds itself. The advocates of sectarian
// 298.png
.pn +1
education in the famous English controversy
about the Balfour Acts were, from their own
point of view, speaking within the universe of the
soundest possible psychology when they insisted
that in religious education “atmosphere” was
paramount. It was a piece of very astute observation
on the part of the ancient Jews that led to
the practice of bringing their twelve-year-old boys
to Jerusalem for the Passover ceremonies. All the
early training was crystallised into a definite
direction of life by the induction of the youth at his
most sensitive moment into the highly charged
emotional atmosphere of the Holy City at the great
festival of national remembrance and hope. He
went there a boy; he returned home a Jew.

.pm fn-start // A
Benjamin Kidd, <i>The Science of Power</i>, p. 305.
.pm fn-end

Again and again in the course of this examination
of the conditions of democratic evolution, we have
had reason to look to education for a solution of
many fundamental matters. It is indeed no longer
possible to overlook the absolute primacy of the
school in any progressive democratic polity; and
if the foundations of the coming democratic
commonwealth are to be well and truly laid, they
must be laid around about the child. Our present
purpose does not require that we should consider
the actual machinery of the education proper to
democratic development—that is a matter for the
educator. Our business here and now is to consider
the broad general characters of such an
education.

It is a commonplace that needs no labouring
// 299.png
.pn +1
that modern education suffers many things from
the “dead hand.” The tradition of the “grammar
school” which aimed at opening the field of
knowledge by a training in letters is still with us,
despite the fact that we have become familiarised
in recent years with a rounder and fuller conception
of education. We have been told again
and again that the business of education is to
produce good citizens, to promote the growth of
moral character, and so forth; and slowly this
emphasis has made some headway in the minds
of educational officials. But the whole implication
of this conception of education is far from being
realised, even by those who are actively engaged
in the work of education. A disproportionate pre-occupation
with “letters” and knowledge still
remains to betray our bondage to traditional ideas;
and this in spite of the fact that popular education
has in recent years received a very definite
orientation through the demand for industrial
efficiency. But as yet there has not been—save in the
region of what is called “technical education”—any
serious and sustained effort to co-ordinate the whole
subject matter of education to this particular end.
“Technical” education appears in the scheme
not as an integral or organic part of the process
as a whole, but as a somewhat arbitrary and
unrelated annex to the last stage of the process.

To this demand that education should minister
to industrial efficiency we shall have reason to
return presently. Here we are concerned only
// 300.png
.pn +1
with the fact that though this demand has been
fairly general and insistent, it has not succeeded in
shaking the hold of tradition upon the method of
the educational process. Popular education still
consists in the main of variations upon and
extensions of the three R’s; and though the experts
have discussed widely and in detail the ways and
means of directing the educational processes to
given ends, the solutions have not yet arrived in
any very substantial way in the schools.

Roughly, our popular education is still governed
by the idea of equipping the young person with such
a quantum of knowledge as he may be supposed
to require in order to make a living and gain some
sort of settled place in life. It has become more
and more possible in recent times for boys and
girls who show unusual aptitudes to proceed to
the higher branches of learning; but in the main
our thought of popular education has been coloured
by a pernicious doctrine of “minimums.” We
have asked how little education can be given
consistently with the need of the individual and the
society in which he lives; and the opposition
which meets any endeavour to raise the
“school leaving age” proves quite conclusively
that we have not generally advanced beyond the
stage of regarding that education as best which is
soonest done with. For this the economic
strain of life is partly accountable; it is desirable
that the boys and girls should be wage-earning as
speedily as possible; but even more responsible
// 301.png
.pn +1
for this state of things is a general ignorance concerning
the meaning and purpose of education.
Indeed, few of those who are now parents have
reason to recall with any profound interest or
gratitude the days when they were receiving an
alleged education. Something in the nature of a
systematic campaign of education in the interests
of education would seem to be necessary if the
popular indifference is to be removed to any good
purpose.

It has indeed to be remembered that popular
education is still in its infancy; and the prejudice
it has to overcome is the result of the inevitable
failures of its experimental stages. When it is
recalled that elementary education in England
was until 1870 in the hands of voluntary agencies,
and that only since that date has education become
universally accessible, it is perhaps remarkable
that education should have made as much headway
as it has made; and much of our criticism of
current educational methods tends to overlook
what is under the circumstances the real magnitude
of the achievement in education. At the same
time it is plain that our educational methods are
in need of much sustained radical criticism if our
purposes in education are to be saved from mis-carriage.
.sp 2
.h3
II
.sp 2
But most of all do we require to clear our minds
concerning the goal we are seeking through
// 302.png
.pn +1
education. It is true, as Professor Dewey has
pointed out, that it is not possible to define an end
for education; for in a profound sense, education
has no end. A true education will be that which
fits an individual to go on learning to the end of his
life. The aim of education is more education.
At the same time this education will not be for
its own sake, or for the learning it helps the
scholar to acquire. Here again Dr. Dewey helps
us by reminding us that one aim of education is
social efficiency. Plainly and beyond peradventure
no education will serve a democracy which does
not produce socially efficient persons.

But this word <i>efficiency</i> has become discredited
by its recent use. We have heard something of
efficiency engineers who have tried to reduce
human faculty into mathematical formulæ for the
purpose of speeding up and suitably supplementing
the mechanical processes of industry. It amounts
to no more than a systematic endeavour to fit the
human agent to the machine so as to get more out
of the machine. The result for the life of the
human agent as a whole is hardly taken into account.
And even if this myth of efficiency engineering
has met the fate it deserved, its very appearance
and name are symptomatic of the general direction
of popular thought upon the main business of a
community. Nor is this confined to the classes
that are interested in getting the utmost out of
the worker, or to the unreflecting public. The
British National Union of Teachers at its Annual
// 303.png
.pn +1
Conference in 1916 declared that “this great war,
with its terrible wastage of human life and material
has brought into bold relief the economic potentialities
of the child. As never before, the nation
now realises that efficient men and women are the
best permanent capital the state possesses.”[#]
So that the business of education is to develop the
economic potentialities of the child in order to
provide capital for the state. It does not appear
that the child has any rights in the matter at all.
He is to be trained in order to become “the best
permanent capital” of the state. It is to be
hoped that two more years of war have brought
a more fruitful vision to the National Union of
Teachers.

.pm fn-start // A
Quoted in the <i>Public</i> (N.Y.), July 6th, 1918.
.pm fn-end

Yet the word <i>efficiency</i> is worth keeping, for it
embodies the true conception of educational aim
so long as it is rightly interpreted; and industrial
efficiency must be allowed to enter into our interpretation
of it. Industrial efficiency gains its
preponderant emphasis in recent discussion
because we are still in the toils of the disastrous
illusion that the national ideal is national wealth.
We think of the nation’s well-being in terms of
its financial prosperity; and naturally we tend to
subordinate all our social processes to this end.
But the result of this tendency will be to create not a
society, but a wealth-producing machine; and those
human possibilities in which the final wealth
of life lies, will have to fight a doubtful battle
// 304.png
.pn +1
for their very existence, and at best can gain no
more than a precarious foothold in the interstices
of the money-making organisation.

From this bias education must be delivered—at
whatever cost; and a doctrine of social efficiency
enunciated which will be comprehensive enough
to satisfy the requirements of the single mind and
the social whole at the same time. In point of fact,
these requirements are virtually identical, for that
which makes a full man makes also for a full
fellowship. The individual is to find himself
in precisely those things which enable him to
contribute his due to society. We need, therefore,
to enquire somewhat broadly into the nature of
the things in which the individual shall render
his due to the commonality. We shall then be in
a position to state in general terms what we should
look to the educational process to provide.

Professor Dewey has laid down in this connection
a principle of the utmost importance. He affirms
that “we may produce in schools a projection in
type of the society we should like to realise.”[#] If
we are to train the young for social life, the proper
method is to surround them in childhood, so far
as that may be, with the conditions of the ideal
social life toward which we look. The school
should be the <i>societas perfecta</i> in miniature.
This naturally requires a very considerable
departure in <i>tone</i> from the conditions which still
prevail. The pontifical and authoritarian tradition
// 305.png
.pn +1
of the mediæval school is still with us; and an
attention is devoted to problems of discipline and
order which is disproportionate to the real business
of preparing for life in a democratic commonwealth,
and is to a great extent from an angle and
in a spirit alien to the purpose in hand. A considerable
breach in this system has already been
made by the new emphasis upon the value of
self-determination in education from the earliest
stages; but the relaxation of the traditional
canons of discipline does not carry us far enough.
Self-determination must be recognised not only
as an individual right but as a group responsibility;
and the practice of popular self-government should
begin in the schools. It is symptomatic of the
present tendency among educators of a liberal
and radical type that in the prospectus of a school
soon to be established, it is laid down that the
internal government “shall be increasingly democratic,
scholars and teachers sharing both legislation
and administration,” and that the external government
shall be vested in a council, representing
the trustees, the faculty and the scholars. This is a
sane and fruitful method of initiating boys and
girls into the larger responsibilities of social life.
Already the plan has been adopted in some existing
schools with a considerable measure of success;
and if the school is to be the organ of a genuine
training in social efficiency, we need a wide
extension of this method.

.pm fn-start // A
<i>Democracy and Education</i>, p. 370.
.pm fn-end

But beyond this discipline in self-government,
// 306.png
.pn +1
the school has to undertake the fitting of the child
for other kinds of social contribution.

(<i>a</i>) He must be trained to contribute his share
to the supply of the physical needs of the community.
Obviously, in a school, the direct and
complete application of this principle is impossible.
It is laid down in the prospectus before referred to
that “all must share, teacher and scholar alike,
in the labour that lies at the basis of human life
and unites all men through their common need”;
and it is ordained that “the kitchen, the crafts-room
and the garden shall rank equally with the
classroom.” It is proposed to give the scholars
“direct experience of agricultural processes and
the preparation of the main articles of food,
spinning, weaving, dyeing, sewing, carpentry,
building, pottery, printing and any other crafts
directly contributing to the life of the community.”
Naturally, no child is required to become expert
in all these occupations; but his training in them
will presently serve to reveal his special aptitudes
and to determine his own personal choice.

It is not contemplated in this particular experiment
that machinery will be introduced to any
considerable extent; and while it is stated that
machinery will not be excluded, it is obvious that
it is regarded with some dubiety, if not hostility.
But it is necessary to accept the position that the
machine industry is here with us and is here to
stay; and a proper perception of its true function
will save us from assuming a fallacious attitude in
// 307.png
.pn +1
regard to it. While the incentive to the development
and improvement of large scale mechanical
processes has been the pursuit of profit, the real
office of these processes is to diminish the purely
mechanical and menial operations which are
necessary to life, and consequently to release a
larger volume of human energy for tasks of a more
independent and creative nature. There are
certain necessities of life concerning which our
requirements are that they should be good in
quality and abundant in quantity—and as no
question but of utility arises in relation to them,
they may be assigned to the large-scale machine
industry. This, however, does not in the least
absolve us from including in our school curriculum
a provision for the habituation of children
to mechanical processes of this kind. But
because these processes are necessarily monotonous
and irksome, every effort should be
made to introduce into them what elements of
interest may be attached to them; and to reduce
to the lowest possible point the current tendency
to make the worker a mere accessory of the
machine.

Miss Helen Marot has recently described
proposals for an educational experiment which aims
at the association of discipline in industrial production
with the educational process. This
particular experiment takes the form of producing
wooden toys; and while, as Miss Marot sees, the
production of toys has anyhow an intrinsic interest,
// 308.png
.pn +1
the details which are given show how radically the
atmosphere of the machine industry might be
changed by giving it a place in the school curriculum.
Miss Marot’s assumption that the machine
industry can be so transformed by democratic
control as to satisfy the creative instinct has
already been adversely criticised in these pages;
but the present discussion is not affected by
criticism of that particular point. What it is to our
purpose to observe is that mechanical processes
may be relieved of some of their present irksomeness
by supplying them with their appropriate
background. First of all, it is necessary that the
worker should be acquainted with the whole
process of manufacture in order that he may
participate in his own special task with a measure
of intelligent interest; and this will involve a
degree of familiarity with the technical problems
of management, with accounting and costing, with
the internal conditions of the industry and the
plant, and with the larger economics of the enterprise.
But in addition to all this more immediate
business of habituation to routine, provision is
made for the development of artistic judgment
and execution and for the acquisition of knowledge
relating to the craft itself—consisting in this case
of “authentic accounts and inspirational stories
of industrial life, especially of the lumber, wood-working
and the toy industry.”

Obviously not all trades command the interest
which can be created around toy-making. In the
// 309.png
.pn +1
manufacture of articles of utility which are produced
by processes of a highly standardised kind, it
would be less easy to introduce elements of
romance and sentiment. Still much can and should
be done in every trade; and admission to any
particular trade should be preceded by some
discipline of this kind. If ever industry is organised
on the basis of national Guilds, surely one
function of the Guilds will be to establish national
trade schools in which a generous training of this
kind can be given and which shall be closely
co-ordinated to the entire scheme of public
education.
.sp 2
.h3
III
.sp 2
But it cannot be too frequently emphasised that
we are not to accept the present subordination of
social life to the exigencies of the machine industry.
That the machine industry is here to stay need not
be argued; and we may dismiss as impracticable
the suggestion of a return to the handicraft system.
The machine industry must be retained for the
production of utilities where no question of beauty
or ornament arises; and it should be so ordered
as to reduce the purely mechanical operations
entailed in the manufacture of the staple commodities
to a minimum. Consequently care should
always be had to prevent an exaggerated emphasis
upon the place of the machine industry in education.
It is not to be pretended that mechanical
// 310.png
.pn +1
processes can ever in themselves minister substantially
to the joy of life. The best that can be
said is that their present disadvantages can be
materially reduced; but not even the sense of
partnership and democratic control, the shortening
of hours and the addition of intellectual interest,
taken all together, can turn factory life into “a
thing of beauty and a joy for ever.”

Some emphasis has already been laid upon the
difference between productive and creative
activity. Creation is not merely production, but
reproduction, that is to say, the activity in which
we express <i>ourselves</i> for the joy of the thing itself.
The present writer was brought up in a slate-quarrying
town in North Wales. The workers
spent their time in mining and dressing roofing-slates—an
industry which involves no special
skill save only in the department of slate-splitting.
This is handwork and no satisfactory mechanical
substitute for it has yet been contrived; and there
is much emulation among the workers in this
process. Apart from this there is nothing note-worthy
about the industry except the very considerable
extent of partnership which prevails
(or used to prevail) in the work itself and of
fellowship in the dressing shops. But after the
day’s work was done there was a somewhat
remarkable activity of another kind. Sometimes a
worker would take a piece of raw slate home with
him and spend his spare time in turning it into
candlesticks or some other article by means of a
// 311.png
.pn +1
lathe or by direct manual work. The result from
an artistic standpoint was doubtless very crude;
but it was interesting and instructive to observe the
almost instinctive way in which men, released from
necessary toil, turned to the production of things of
beauty. This free self-expression took other forms
in other men. Welsh quarrymen have always
been well-known for their literary tastes; and the
town contained a considerable number of quite
capable writers of both prose and verse in the Welsh
language. Others there were—and these were a
large number—whose dispositions were musical;
and since the purchase of musical instruments was
as a rule beyond these men’s pockets, they devoted
themselves to vocal music. The congregational
singing in the churches was famous throughout
the country; and while there were many individual
vocalists and composers of considerable merit, the
development of choral singing reached an extremely
high point. It was an intensely religious community
and was full of religious activities of many
kinds. It was perfectly plain that the real business
and joy of life lay not in the production of roofing-slates
but in the exercises of creative self-expression
to which the men appeared to turn
naturally and instinctively when the business
of making a livelihood was over.

This is a parable for the educator. While the
business of producing the necessities of life should
be so conceived and ordered as to make participation
in it as much a pleasure as a duty, it is not to
// 312.png
.pn +1
be gainsaid that the joy and the ultimate wealth
of life lies in the free and self-directed activity of
self-expression whether by the individual himself
or in some free concert with his neighbours.
Education for life will necessarily take account of
this circumstance—not only because it provides
a means of personal satisfaction but also because
it might, and properly developed would, become
the chief and the most characteristic contribution
of the individual to the life and growth of the community.
The school must therefore provide
opportunity of independent personal self-expression—in
every manner of medium—in order
that the peculiar creative aptitude of each child
may be discovered and encouraged. Whether
it be wood-carving or verse-writing, pattern-designing
or violin-playing, any education that
pretends to fit a child for a vital social service must
make room for it.

It is in this region that we are to look for the
differentiation of future social function according
to particular aptitudes. To-day, education
reproduces the traditional social schism between
the privileged and the disinherited classes. On
the one hand, we have schools and universities
which aim to provide a culture appropriate to those
who have to assume the business of leadership and
government in the community; on the other we
have a popular education which appears in the
main to aim at providing a docile mass amenable
to leadership and government. There is virtually
// 313.png
.pn +1
no attempt to sift out of the mass those who have
aptitudes for special social tasks or genius for any
form of artistic production. Its methods—mitigated
only by the vagaries of the personal
equation—are calculated to turn out human
products having the uniformity of a sheet of postage
stamps. This method can have no result but that
of producing and perpetuating a general spiritual
poverty. In a democratic community it should
be intolerable that schools for children should
exist other than the common school. The common
school being what it is, it is not surprising that
there should be a demand for schools that give a
better chance to the human material of boys and
girls. This, however, tends to stereotype a class-distinction;
and for that reason to limit the field
in which the talent for public leadership and
artistic and political genius might be discovered.
In the common school there should be provision
and encouragement for the exercise of free and
original self-expression in every possible way so
that each child may be enabled to discover its
own peculiar vocation in the commonwealth.
Not every child will reveal a faculty for creative
self-expression of a high order; but every child
should have the chance of doing so. And it is the
only safe assumption on which to proceed that every
child has in it the latent capacity for making a
unique and original personal contribution to the
total life and wealth and beauty of the community.
The common school should become the mine out
// 314.png
.pn +1
of which we dig the raw material of our poets,
whether minor or major, our singers, our sculptors,
our fabricators of beautiful garments, our painters
of pictures, our orators, our thinkers and our house-decorators;
and there is an untold wealth of this
raw material which is lost to society all the time
under the conditions of our present preoccupation
with the making of money. It would be stupid
to suppose that every child can become a great
artist; but some kind of artist in some kind of
medium every child should have the opportunity
of becoming, on the assumption that here—in
this region of creative self-expression—lies the
richest contribution he can make to the common
life.
.sp 2
.h3
IV
.sp 2
But the democratic principle further requires
the intelligent co-operation of persons in the
conduct of affairs; and it is the part of the common
school to furnish the necessary equipment of this
partnership. In this equipment there are two
main elements. The first is the provision of
adequate capital of information for the stimulation
and direction of thought; the second is the
encouragement of independent and original
thought.

There is a certain body of knowledge which it is
essential that the child should have if he is to think
rightly and to order his conduct accordingly.
// 315.png
.pn +1
This body of knowledge may be roughly described
as knowledge of the world in which we live; and
its two chief parts have reference to the world as it
now is, and to the story of how it came to be what
it is. The former involves observation and
interpretation of the actual conditions of the life
in which the child lives; and the process should
begin where the child stands. In the modern
teaching of geography, the beginning is made in
school-yard or the precinct and from this
centre it broadens out to cover one’s city, one’s
county, one’s state or province, one’s country, until
at last it embraces the round earth. This is as it
should be. In the past the teaching of geography
has been a mere imparting of a mass of facts, which
have seemed to possess no direct relation to life;
by making the child’s own location a focus round
about which the available and necessary knowledge
of the world can be gathered in a more or less
coherent fashion, the relation of facts, which in
themselves might seem remote and irrelevant to
the business of life, becomes more evident, and the
entire study gains a new vitality. This discussion
is now trenching dangerously upon the province of
educational theory; but it is needful to emphasise
how indispensable it is that knowledge should not
be, as it has so often been, allowed to appear
unconnected with the actual business of living in
this world. Even yet one may hear children
asking in a bewildered way—“What on earth is
the use of my learning the height of Popocatapetl?”
// 316.png
.pn +1
Or “what good is it to know the length of the
Yang-Tse-Kiang?” Information of this kind
has no doubt a certain fascination for some types
of mind; but it may be left for those minds to seek
it out for themselves. The business of the school
is to make possible the acquisition of the knowledge
which bears upon the contribution which the
pupil is expected to make to the community.
This is not to say that there is not knowledge
which is desirable for its own sake, or that the love
of knowledge should not be encouraged for what
it brings. Moreover, soon or late all knowledge
will possess a social value. But the knowledge
which is most valuable is that which the individual
acquires for himself; and the responsibility of
the school in this matter is to release and quicken
the capacity for independent and continuous
acquisition of knowledge. But this <i>desideratum</i>
is not in the least compromised or neglected by
ordering the acquisition of knowledge in the first
instance with reference to the actual business of
social life.

It is the business of the educator to determine
what the subject-matter of the curriculum must
be in order to give the pupil adequate knowledge
of the world in which he has to live; it is our
business here simply to stress the point that this
knowledge shall be of a relevant and vital kind.
It should have to do not only with the physical
features of the world, but with social and political
institutions and the like; and indeed throughout
// 317.png
.pn +1
it should have more to say about the ways than
about the places in which people live. But chiefly
this aspect of the educational process should aim
to equip the pupil with the necessary knowledge
to enable him to acquire more knowledge through
his own direct experience of the world.

But this knowledge of the world as it is would
be hopelessly inadequate were it not connected
with some knowledge of how the world came to be
what it is. Here again the subject-matter must
be defined by the experience of the educator.
The business of this writing is to emphasise the
requirement that this knowledge of the past shall
be ordered conformably to the ultimate social
fruitfulness of the pupil. In his boyhood the
present writer was required to study geology—at
first sight a somewhat irrelevant subject for a lad
in his early teens. But he happened to live in a
district where slate-quarrying was the only
industry; and when he learnt that his bread and
butter came from the “Llandeilo Beds”; and
that these same “beds” occupied a specific place
in a more or less orderly process of world-making,
the study of geology assumed a new interest. But
its most important action was the awakening of a
dim sense of being an “heir of all the ages.” This
feeling received a very powerful reinforcement
from another side. The writer well remembers
his first reading of the story of the Pilgrim Fathers.
Hitherto history had seemed to consist mainly of
the puerile and discreditable exploits of a succession
// 318.png
.pn +1
of royal persons of whom none were better than
they should be; and he had wondered what on earth
all this had to do with a boy living among the Welsh
mountains in the nineteenth century. But the
Pilgrims Fathers were different; here at last was
something that seemed to have a meaning, and it
is easy to see what that meaning would be to a lad
whose upbringing had been in a Strong Nonconformist
tradition. It took long years to fill with a
connected content the interval between the sailing
of the <i>Mayflower</i> and the campaign for the disestablishment
of the Anglican Church in Wales;
but from henceforth the lad knew that he stood in
the succession of a tradition that had made a
difference to the world and that he owed a very
great deal to it.

The story of how we have come by our inheritance
of freedom, of the age-long upward struggle
of mankind, this above all should furnish the
inspiration and the guidance for our service of the
present. For this reason, emphasis should be laid
upon the history of peoples rather than of states,
upon the movement of social life rather than upon
historical biography. It seems hardly credible
but it is strictly true that the present writer left
school without ever having heard of the Craft
Guilds of the Middle ages; or of the great tradition
of ecclesiastical architecture which enters so
organically into the story of social development in
England. He had heard in a somewhat casual
manner of Wat Tyler and John Ball, and of other
// 319.png
.pn +1
incidents which disturbed the normal flow of
royal intrigue and adventure; but of the story
of the common people he knew virtually nothing
at all. Yet after all that is the history that chiefly
matters; and much has yet to be done to give
it its proper place in the school curriculum.

Whatever the subject-matter, its arrangement
and presentation should be so ordered as to inspire
and enable the child to make a willing and worthy
contribution to the life of his community. But the
social emphasis in education, if it is to be true to
itself and indeed to the general history of mankind,
must define society in wider terms than that of
the immediate community. Mr. Wells has told
us that mankind has been forever “pursuing the
frontiers of its possible community.” Whether
by revolution within the commonwealth, by
imperial expansion or by fusion with other commonwealths,
there has been an abiding impulse—erratic
and often perverse in its operations—to
broaden the basis of human fellowship. And
in the present position of the world, there is nothing
so urgent as to quicken a social sympathy wide
enough to embrace the world. It is peculiarly the
function of geography and history to serve this
purpose. Geography should assume that frontiers
are the lines at which peoples meet rather than
part; and history should lay stress upon the forces
that have made for human unity rather than for
national power. If the writer may be permitted
to indulge in a last personal reminiscence, the
// 320.png
.pn +1
tendency in the teaching of history in the past
may be illustrated by the fact that the outstanding
impression left upon him by the school history
was that the French were the hereditary enemies
of the British; and it is something to the point
to observe that the text books of American history
have in the past failed to lay proper emphasis upon
the circumstance that during the Revolutionary
War the best mind of England was on the side of
the colonists. The gratuitous and unhistorical
prejudice which the traditional attitude in school
history has bred is not a little accountable for the
divisive tempers that have led to wars. To-day
the shrinkage of the world has made this attitude
more than ever disastrous; and in view of our
hope of a League of Nations it is essential that
geography and history in particular should be
treated as the opportunity for a general expansion
of social sympathy.
.sp 2
.h3
V
.sp 2
It is hardly necessary to point out that the
conception of history which is pleaded for here
includes the history of thought, of art, and of
religion; and that so far as is possible, this history
should be learnt by direct recourse to its sources
in the classic literature and art of the past. But
generous and comprehensive as the provision for
acquiring knowledge should be, the educational
process has not finished its business until it has
// 321.png
.pn +1
habituated the youth to the task of using this
knowledge as the basis and material of independent
thought. Democracy faces no greater danger than
the inability of the people to exercise a critical
judgment upon the voices that clamour for their
suffrages; and the experiences of war-time have
shown that freedom is not inconsistent with a very
dangerous unreflective docility on the part of the
public. This danger is the greater when the
staple of a people’s reading is the daily press, which
envelops men in the tumult and the clangour of
passing events without providing them with the
longer perspective necessary to a valid judgment.
The power of the demagogue and the tyranny of
the press are to be mitigated only by an educational
process which does two things—first of all, provides
a background of general knowledge and interest,
and second, turns out individuals able and
accustomed to think for themselves. And just
because the life of democracy requires free discussion,
the school curriculum should contain
stated provision for the discussion of current
matters, which would turn out to be a powerful
stimulant of independent thought, especially in
its critical aspects. The more constructive and
sustained elements in independent thought may
be encouraged by a careful development of the
time-honoured method of the essay. But whatever
the precise methods may be, the aim must be the
systematic encouragement of the habit of independent
thought; and in this connection, with
// 322.png
.pn +1
proper safeguards against putting a premium on
“cussedness,” it is important that dissenting and
minority opinions, which whether right or wrong
contain some guarantee of independence, should
be welcomed and valued as the promise of ultimate
social usefulness.
.sp 2
.h3
VI
.sp 2
Important as the materials and methods of
education are, we cannot afford to forget that
there are two other elements of our problem,
closely related to one another, which are in the end
of greater importance. The first of these is the
teacher. It is not a gratuitous slander upon the
general body of teachers to say that the whole
method of recruiting teachers and the conditions
of the teaching profession tend to degrade teaching
into a trade. A great deal needs to be done to
exalt the teacher’s office in the public mind; and
the teaching profession should be so honoured as
to give it the first call upon the human material in
the community. As things are, it is far too much
regarded as a means of livelihood, comparatively
easily qualified for, and tolerably well remunerated;
and the training required for admission into
the profession is quite inadequate. If only
teaching were rightly esteemed and its practitioners
held in such honour as even judges, who do a
much inferior work, are held, it would be possible
to exercise a far more careful selection of persons
// 323.png
.pn +1
suited by their temperamental and moral characters
for the work. For we have to look for something
infinitely greater than the successful communication
of knowledge, or the training of mental
faculties. Robert Owen followed an essentially
sound instinct when, having established a school
for infants in New Lanark he put at the head of
it a man who could neither read or write, but who
was familiar with birds and flowers and had “a
way with him.” Robert Louis Stevenson, writing
of Wordsworth, says, “I do not know that you
learn a lesson. You need not agree with any of
his beliefs; and yet a spell is cast. Such are the
best teachers. A dogma learned is only a new
error, the old one was perhaps as good. But a
spirit communicated is a perpetual possession.
These best teachers climb beyond teaching to the
plane of art; it is themselves and what is best in
themselves that they communicate.” It was said
during the education controversy in England that
some teachers taught more religion in an hour’s
arithmetic lesson than others did in a year of
“religious instruction,” and the saying is true.
It is the spirit communicated that makes the
difference between a real and a spurious education.

Especially is this the case when we consider the
business of education from the point of view of
social efficiency. For the prerequisite of social
efficiency is social vision, social passion; and this
is supremely a matter of contagion. For this
reason, the true type of teacher will be devoid of
// 324.png
.pn +1
the pontifical, <i>ex-cathedra</i> temper and will rather
seek out a relation of comradeship with his pupils.
The form of a democratic education will be
essentially co-operative; and its spirit will be that
of fellowship. This brings us to the second
outstanding point of our discussion, namely,
the question of “atmosphere.” Upon this subject
there is little more to be said than what is contained
in Professor Dewey’s dictum that the school should
so far as possible be a miniature of the society we
desire to create. The creation of “atmosphere”
is of course specifically the task of the faculty;
and the eagerness and the enthusiasm of their
participation in the more informal amenities of
school life is an important factor in the process.
But most of all is a genuine social passion in
themselves the surest guarantee that they will help
in the making of socially creative and effective
persons.

Much is being said at the present time concerning
the introduction of military training into
schools. It is worth notice in passing that
Mr. Fisher, the British Minister of Education,
recently informed a deputation of miners that the
government had canvassed the question and had
decided that the innovation had neither educational
nor military value and would not be adopted.
It is no doubt true that military training would have
a beneficial effect upon the physique of the boys;
but, quite apart from its dubious value for education
and any subsequent purpose, it must be observed
// 325.png
.pn +1
that the genius of the military business is intrinsically
hostile to the development of the democratic
ideals. For the military organisation is a regimentation
of men for power; it entails the
mechanisation of the human material and imposes
a discipline of uniformity upon those who are
subject to it. Democratic education has to do
with life, and its genius moves in the direction
of the largest possible spontaneity and variation
in the individuals with whom it has to do. Moreover,
military discipline introduces the authoritarian
temper into the atmosphere; and this
is a temper altogether at variance with the spirit of
frank comradeship in which a democratic education
should be pursued. What advantages may accrue
to the future in the shape of improved physical
health and strength in the community is more than
counter-balanced by the injection of an undemocratic
virus into the minds of those who are called
to sustain the democracy of the future.

Nor is it impossible to compensate ourselves for
the loss of physical training consequent upon the
rejection of military training. For there are other
ways of providing for physical efficiency; and
those other ways are more consistent with the aim
of a democratic education. In the sports field,
for instance, you have at once an instrument of
physical training as well as a definite education
in a team work, which does not depend upon
uniform and synchronous movements commanded
from without, but upon the intelligence and
// 326.png
.pn +1
dexterity of the players themselves. Moreover,
the sports field affords an illustration of the proper
use of the competitive spirit. The military
discipline has its eye upon potential enemies to
be destroyed; the sports discipline has its eye
upon rival teams of friends and thus always a
cheer for the beaten team in the end. It has been
observed that the difference in temper between the
behaviour of the German and the English soldier
was to be traced to the fact that the football field
had played a large part in the training of the latter;
and it is not unlikely that even the superior military
efficiency of the English soldier in the latter stages of
the war has to be attributed to the same circumstance.
In any case, sportsmanship is nearer akin
to the spirit of democracy than the military
discipline.

A plea has been made for military training on
the ground that the rhythm of its movements
has a certain psychological value. That the place
of rhythm in education has been neglected is
indeed true; and there is little doubt that a more
sustained attention to it would add much to physical
grace and the joy and beauty of life. The question,
however, remains whether the military rhythm
which rests upon a principle of regularity is likely
to have the psychological effects proper to such
education as these pages contemplate. The rhythm
of the folk-dance like the rhythm of the ballad is
a far more accurate version of the rhythm which is
natural to men and women; and the rhythm of
// 327.png
.pn +1
Walt Whitman, which is of the same order, reflects
the genuine rhythm of democracy. The Eurhythmics
of Dalcroze, because they encourage a
spontaneous self-expression through the free
rhythmical movement of the body promise more
for the future grace and beauty of democratic
life than a military discipline can from its very
nature do.
.sp 2
.h3
VII
.sp 2
The sum of the matter then is this, that the test
of a true democratic education lies in the quality
and power of the social vision it evokes in the
growing child, in the measure of power and
capacity it gives to the child to share in the realisation
of the vision, and in this sharing to give to
the child the inspiring and joyous promise of
personal self-fulfilment. Here we have tried only
to sketch in very rough and fragmentary outline
what would appear to be the temper and the general
configuration of such an educational process;
and much has been omitted which naturally belongs
to a full discussion of the subject. Of the place of
dramatic and symbolic activities in education,
generous notice should be taken in any extended
treatment, for it is obvious, first of all that the
dramatic and the symbolic make a peculiar appeal
to the child, and second, that the social enthusiasm
which it is our desire to quicken can be quickened
more effectively in no other way. There is one
// 328.png
.pn +1
point, however, upon which it might serve an
immediate purpose to dwell. The graduation
ceremony in an American school provides a fitting
close to a school career; it rounds it off with
dignity and solemnity. But something more than
this should be done—whether on leaving school or
college or trade school—in order to impress upon
the individual that he is passing into another
world demanding other and more responsible
service. Some solemn ceremonial of initiation
into the rights and responsibilities of citizenship,
accompanied by every circumstance of gravity and
reverence, should furnish the fitting close to the
period of training. At present we slip out into
the business of life in a ragged insignificant way.
Our entry upon responsible citizenship should be
signalised by a great public observance which
should serve the purpose not only of launching
the youth upon his course in life, but also of
reminding the rest of the community of its vows
and its obligations to the common life.[#]

.pm fn-start // A
This discussion closes without any attempt to deal with
the problem of education beyond the school age. The office of
the University in democratic development is obviously large and
important; but here again the writer confesses his inability
to handle the subject adequately with any degree of confidence.
Valuable suggestions concerning the social ministry of the
University may be found in <i>The Coming Polity</i>, by Patrick
Geddes and Victor Branford, especially in the chapter on “The
University Militant.”
.pm fn-end
.sp 4
.hr 20%
.nf c
<xs>HEADLEY BROS., ASHFORD, KENT & 18 DEVONSHIRE ST., E.C.2.</xs>
.nf-


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.it Transcriber’s Notes:
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.it Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
.it Typographical errors were silently corrected.
.it Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a\
predominant form was found in this book.
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.it Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
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