XXVIIFROM NEIGHBORHOOD TO NATION: THE UNIFYING STATE
HOW can the will of the people be the sovereign power of the state? There must be two changes in our state: first, the state must be the actual integration of living, local groups, thereby finding ways of dealing directly with its individual members. Secondly, other groups than neighborhood groups must be represented in the state: the ever-increasing multiple group life of to-day must be recognized and given a responsible place in politics.[90]
First, every neighborhood must be organized; the neighborhood groups must then be integrated, through larger intermediary groups, into a true state. Neither our cities nor our states can ever be properly administered until representatives from neighborhood groups meet to discuss and thereby to correlate the needs of all parts of the city, of all parts of the state. Social workers and medical experts have a conference on tuberculosis, social workers and educational experts have a conference on industrial education. We must now develop the methods by which the citizens also are represented at these conferences. We must go beyond this (for certain organizations, as the National Settlement Conference at least, do already have neighborhood representation), and develop the methods by which regular meetings of representatives from neighborhood organizations meet to discuss all city and state problems.Further still, we must give official recognition to such gatherings, we must make them a regular part of government. The neighborhood must be actually, not theoretically, an integral part of city, of state, of nation.
When Massachusetts is thus organized, the neighborhood groups and intermediary, or district, groups should send representatives to city council and state legislature. The Senate might be composed of experts—experts in education, in housing, in sanitation etc.[91]The neighborhood and district centres would receive reports from their representatives to city council and state legislature and take measures on these reports. They should also be required to send regular reports up to their representative bodies. We should have a definitely organized and strongly articulated network of personal interest and representative reporting. Then the state legislature must devise ways of dealing not only with the district group but with the neighborhood groups through the district group, and thus with every individual in the commonwealth. The nation too must have a real connection with every little neighborhood centre through state and district bodies.[92]
America at war has found a way of getting word from Washington to the smallest local units. The Council of National Defense has a “Section of Coöperation with States.†This is connected with a State Council ofDefense in every state. In most cases the State Council is connected with County Councils, and these often with councils in cities and towns. Beyond this the Council of National Defense has recently (February, 1918) recommended the extension of county organization by the creation of Community Councils in every school district. Its official statement opens with this sentence: “The first nine months of the war have shown the vital importance of developing an official nation-wide organization reaching into the smallest communities to mobilize and make available the efforts of the whole people for the prosecution of the war.†And it goes on to say that the government must have such close contact with small units that personal relation with all the citizens is possible.
President Wilson in endorsing this step, said, “[This is an] advance of vital significance. It will, I believe, result when thoroughly carried out in welding the nation together as no nation of great size has ever been welded before.... It is only by extending your organization to small communities that every citizen of the state can be reached.â€
Thus when the government found that it must provide means to its hands for keeping constantly in touch with the whole membership of the nation, it planned to do this by the encouragement and fostering of neighborhood organization. The nation is now seeking the individual through neighborhood groups. It is using the School Centres (it recommends the schoolhouse as the best centre for community organization) for the teaching of Food and Fuel Conservation, for Liberty Loan and Red Cross work, for recruiting for the army, for enlisting workers for war industries, for teaching the necessity and methods of increasing the food supply, for plans to relieve transportation by coöperative shipmentsand deliveries, for patriotic education etc.[93]This “patriotic education†has an interesting side. In a country which is even nominally a democracy you cannot win a war without explaining your aims and your policy and carrying your people with you step by step. If beyond this the country wishes to be really a democracy, the neighborhood groups must have a share in forming the aims and the policy.
Of course one would always prefer this to be a movement from below up rather than from above down, but it is not impossible for the two movements to go on at the same time, as they are in fact doing now with the rapid development of spontaneous local organization. There were Community Councils in existence in fact if not in name before the recommendation of the Council of National Defense.[94]
Through these non-partisan councils not only national policy can be explained and spread throughout the country, but also what one locality thinks out that is good can be reported to Washington and thus handed on to other sections of the country. It is a plan for sending the news backwards and forwards from individual to nation, from nation to individual, and it is also a plan for correlating the problems of the local community with the problems of the nation and of coöperating nations.
But why should we be more efficiently organized for war than for peace? Is our proverbial carelessness to be pricked into effectiveness only by emergency calls? Is the only motive you can offer us for efficiency—towin? Or, if that is an instinctive desire, can we not change the goal and be as eager to win other things as war?
I speak of the new state as resting upon integrated neighborhood groups.[95]While the changes necessary to bring this about would have to be planned and authorized by constitutional conventions, its psychological basis would be: (1) the fact that we are ready for membership in a larger group only by experience first in the smaller group, and (2) the natural tendency for a real group to seek other groups. Let us look at this second point.
We have seen the process of the single group evolving. But contemporaneously a thousand other unities are a-making. Every group once become conscious of itself instinctively seeks other groups with which to unite to form a larger whole. Alone it cannot be effective. As individual progress depends upon the degree of interpenetration, so group progress depends upon the interpenetration of group and group. For convenience I speak of each group as a whole, but from a philosophical point of view there is no whole, only an infinite striving for wholeness, only theprincipleof wholeness forever leading us on.
This is the social law: the law which connects neighborhood with neighborhood. The reason we want neighborhood organization is not to keep people within their neighborhoods but to get them out. The movement for neighborhood organization is a deliberate effort to get people to identify themselves actually, not sentimentally, with a larger and larger collective unit than the neighborhood. We may be able through our neighborhoodgroup to learn the social process, to learn to evolve the social will, but the question before us is whether we have enough political genius to apply this method to city organization, national organization, and international organization. City must join with city, state with state, actually, not through party. Finally nation must join with nation.
The recommendation of the Council of National Defense which has been mentioned above would repay careful reading for the indications which one finds in it of the double purpose of neighborhood organization. It is definitely stated that the importance of the Community Council is in: (1) initiating work to meet its own war needs; and (2) in making all its local resources available for the nation. And again it is stated that: (1) in a democracy local emergencies can best be met by local action; and (2) that each local district should feel the duty of bearing its full share of the national burden.
Thus our national government clearly sees and specifically states that neighborhood organization is both for the neighborhood and for the nation: that it looks in, it looks out. Thus that which we are coming to understand as the true social process receives practical recognition in government policy.
I have said that neighborhood must join with neighborhood to form the state. This joining of neighborhood and neighborhood can be done neither directly nor imaginatively. It cannot be done directly: representation is necessary not only because the numbers would be too great for all neighborhoods to meet together, but because even if it were physically possible we should have created a crowd not a society. Theoretically when you have large numbers you get a big, composite consciousness made up of infinite kinds of fitting together of infinite kinds of individuals, but practically this variedand multiplied fitting together is not possible beyond a certain number. There must be representatives from the smallest units to the larger and larger, up to the federal state.
Secondly, neighborhoods cannot join with neighborhoods through the imagination alone. Various people have asserted that now we have large cities and solidarity cannot come by actual acquaintance, it must be got by appropriate appeals to the imagination, by having, for instance, courses of lectures to tell one part of a city about another part. But this alone will never be successful. Real solidarity will never be accomplished except by beginning somewhere the joining of one small group with another. We are told too that the uneducated man cannot think beyond his particular section of the universe. We can teach him to think beyond his particular section of the universe by actually making him participate in other sections through connecting his section with others. We are capable of being faithful to large groups as well as small, to complex groups as well as simple, to our city, to our nation, but this can be effected only by a certain process, and that process, while it may begin by a stimulation of the imagination, must, if it is going to bring forth results in real life, be a matter of actual experience. Only by actual union, not by appeals to the imagination, can the various and varied neighborhood groups be made the constituents of a sound, normal, unpartisan city life. Then being a member of a neighborhood group will mean at the same time being a member and a responsible member of the state.
I have spoken of the psychological tendency for group to seek group. Moreover, it is not possible to isolate yourself in your local group because few local needs can be met without joining with other localities, which havethese same needs, in order to secure city or state action. We cannot get municipal regulation for the dance-hall in our neighborhood without joining with other neighborhoods which want the same thing and securing municipal regulation for all city dance-halls. If we want better housing laws, grants for industrial education, we join with other groups who want these things and become the state. And even if some need seems purely local, the method of satisfying it ought not to be for the South End to pull as hard as it can for a new ward building, say, while the North End is also pulling as hard as it can for a new ward building, and the winner of such tug-of-war to get the appropriation. If the South End wants a new ward building it should understand how much money is available for ward buildings, and if only enough for one this year, consider where it is most needed. Probably, whatever the evidence, it will be decided that it is most needed in the South End, but a step will be taken towards a different kind of decision in the future.
And we join not only to secure city and state but also federal action. If we want a river or harbor appropriation, we go to Congress. And if such demands are supplied at present on the log-rolling basis, we can only hope that this will not always be so. When group organization has vitalized our whole political life, there may then be some chance that log-rolling will be repudiated.
And we do not stop even at Washington. Immigration is a national and international problem, but the immigrant may live next door to you, and thus the immigration question becomes one of nearest concern. This intricate interweaving of our life allows no man to live to himself or to his neighborhood.
Then when neighborhood joins with neighborhood all the lessons learned in the simple group must be practisedin the complex one. As the group lesson includes not only my responsibilitytomy group but my responsibilityformy group, so I learn not only my duty to my neighborhood but that I am responsible for my neighborhood. Also it is seen that as the individuals of a group are interdependent, so the various groups are interdependent, and the problem is to understand just in what way they are interdependent and how they can be adjusted to one another. The process of the joining of several groups into a larger whole is exactly the same as the joining of individuals to form a group—a reciprocal interaction and correlation.
The usual notion is that our neighborhood association is to evolve an idea, a plan, and then when we go to represent it at a meeting of neighborhood associations from different parts of the city that we are to try to push through the plan of action decided on by our own local group. If we do not do this, we are not supposed to be loyal. But we are certainly to do nothing of the kind. We are to try to evolve the collective idea which shall represent the new group, that is, the various neighborhood associations all acting together. We are told that we must not sacrifice the interests of the particular group we represent. No, but also we must not try to make its interests prevail against those of others. Its real interests are the interests of the whole.
And then when we have learned to be truly citizens of Boston, we must discover how Boston and other cities, how cities and the rural communities can join. And so on and so on. At last the “real†state appears. We are pragmatists because we do not want to unite with the state imaginatively, we want to be the state; we want to actualize and feel our way every moment, let every group open the way for a larger group, let every circumference become the centre of a new circumference.My neighborhood group opens the path to the State.
But neighborhoods coöperating actively with the city government is not to-day a dream. Marcus M. Marks, President of the Borough of Manhattan, New York City, in 1914 divided Manhattan into sixteen neighborhoods, and appointed for each a neighborhood commission composed of business men, professional men, mechanics, clerks etc.—a thoroughly representative body chosen irrespective of party lines. Mr. Marks’ avowed object was to obtain a knowledge of the needs of his constituents, to form connecting links between neighborhoods and the city government. And these bodies need not exist dormant until their advice is asked. Sections 1 and 2 of the Rules and Regulations read:
“1. The Commissions shall recommend, or suggest, to the Borough President, for his consideration and advice, matters which, in their opinion will be of benefit to their districts and to the City.
“2. The Commissions shall receive from the Borough President suggestions or recommendations for their consideration as to matters affecting their districts, and report back their conclusions with respect thereto.â€
Moreover, beyond the recommendations of the Commission, the coöperation of the whole neighborhood is sought. “Whenever the commissions are in doubt as to the policy they desire to advocate and wish to further sound the sentiment of their localities, meetings similar to town-meetings are held, usually in the local schoolhouse.†The “neighborhoods†of Manhattan have coöperated with the city government in such matters as bus franchise, markets, location of tracks, floating baths, pavement construction, sewerage etc. One ofthe results of this plan, Mr. Marks tells us, is that many types of improvement which were formerly opposed, such as sewerage construction by the owners of abutting property, now receive the support of the citizens because there is opportunity for them to understand fully the needs of the situation and even to employ their own expert if they wish.
The chairmen of the twelve Neighborhood Commissions form a body called the Manhattan Commission. This meets to confer with the President on matters affecting the interests of the entire borough.[96]
This plan, while not yet ideal, particularly in so far as the commissions are appointed from above, is most interesting to all those who are looking towards neighborhood organization as the basis of the new state.
To summarize: neighborhood groups join with other neighborhood groups to form the city—then only shall we understand what it is to be the city; neighborhood groups join with other neighborhood groups to form the state—then only shall weunderstand what it is to be the state. We do not begin with a unified state which delegates authority; we begin with the neighborhood group and create the state ourselves. Thus is the state built up through the intimate intertwining of all.
But this is not a crude and external federalism. We have not transferred the unit of democracy from the individual to the group. It is the individual man who must feel himself the unit of city government, of state government: he has not delegated his responsibility tohis neighborhood group; he has direct relation with larger wholes. I have no medieval idea of mediate articulation, of individuals forming groups and groups forming the nation. Mechanical federalism we have long outgrown. The members of the nation are to be individuals, not groups. The movement for neighborhood organization is from one point of view a movement to give the individual political effectiveness—it is an individualistic not a collectivistic movement, paradoxical as this may seem to superficial thinking. But, as the whole structure of government must rest on the individual, it must have its roots within that place where you can get nearest to him, and where his latent powers can best be freed and actualized—his local group.
What are we ultimately seeking through neighborhood organization? To find the individual. But let no one think that the movement for neighborhood organization is a new movement. Our neighborhood organization, we are often told, had its origin in the New England town-meeting. Yes, and far beyond that in the early institutions of our English ancestors. That our national life must be grounded in the daily, intimate life of all men is the teaching of the whole long stream of English history.
We have seen that the increasing activity of the state, its social policies and social legislation, demands the activity of every man. We have seen in considering direct government that the activity of every man is not enough if we mean merely his activity at the polling booths. With the inclusion of all men and women (practically accomplished) in the suffrage, with the rapidly increasing acceptance of direct government, theextensivework of the democratic impulse has ended. Now theintensivework of democracy must begin. The great historic task of the Anglo-Saxon people has been to find wise and reasoned forms for the expression of individualresponsibility, has been so to bulwark the rights of the individual as to provide at the same time for the unity and stability of the state. They have done this externally by making the machinery of representative government. We want to-day to do it spiritually, to direct the spiritual currents in their flow and interflow so that we have not only the external interpenetration—choosing representatives etc.—but the deeper interpenetration which shows the minds and needs and wants of all men.
We can satisfy our wants only by a genuine union and communion of all, only in the friendly outpouring of heart to heart. We have come to the time when we see that the machinery of government can be useful to us only so far as it is a living thing: the souls of men are the stones of Heaven, the life of every man must contribute fundamentally to the growth of the state. So the world spirit seeks freedom and finds it in a more and more perfect union of true individuals.The relation of neighbors one to another must be integrated into the substance of the state.Politics must take democracy from its external expression of representation to the expression of that inner meaning hidden in the intermingling of all men. This is our part to-day—thus shall we take our place in the great task of our race. Our political life began in the small group, but it has taken us long to evolve our relation to a national life, and meanwhile much of the significance and richness of the local life has been lost. Back now to the local unit we must go with all that we have accumulated, to find in and through that our complete realization. Back we must go to this small primary unit if we would understand the meaning of democracy, if we would get the fruits of democracy. As Voltaire said, “The spirit of France is the candle of Europe,†so must the spirit of the neighborhood be the candle of the nation.
THE OCCUPATIONAL GROUP
ALL that I have written has been based on the assumption of the unifying state. Moreover I have spoken of neighborhood organization as if it were possible to take it for granted that the neighborhood group is to be the basis of the new state. The truth of both these assumptions is denied by some of our most able thinkers.
The unified state is now discredited in many quarters. Syndicalists, guild socialists, some of the Liberals in England, some of the advocates of occupational representation in America, and a growing school of writers who might be called political pluralists are throwing the burden of much proof upon the state, and are proposing group organization as the next step in political method. To some the idea of the state is abhorrent. One writer says, “The last hundred years marked in all countries the beginning of the dissolution of the State and of the resurrection of corporate life [trade unions etc.].... In the face of this growth of syndicalism in every direction, ... it is no longer venturesome to assert that the State is dead.â€
Others like to keep the word “state†but differ much as to the position it is to occupy in the new order: to some it seems to be merely a kind of mucilage to keep the various groups together; with others the state is to hold the ring while different groups fight out their differences. Still other thinkers, while seeing the open doorto scepticism in regard to the state, are nevertheless not ready to pass through, but, preserving the instinct and the reverence for the unity of the state, propose as the most immediate object of our study how the unity can be brought about, what is to be the true and perfect bond of union between the multiple groups of our modern life. All these thinkers, differing widely as they do, yet may be roughly classed together as the upholders of a multiple group organization as the basis for a new state.
This movement is partly a reaction against an atomistic sovereignty, the so-called theory of “subjective†rights, a “senseless†geographical representation, a much berated parliamentary system, and partly the wish to give industrial workers a larger share in the control of industry and in government.
The opposition to “numerical representation†has been growing for some time. We were told thirty years ago by Le Prins that vocational representation is “the way out of the domination of the majority,†that the vocational group is the “natural†group “spontaneously generated in the womb of a nation.†Twenty-five years ago Benoist said that the state must recognize private associations: universities, chambers of commerce, professional associations, societies of agriculture, syndicates of workmen—“en un mot tout ce qui a corps et vie dans la nation.†If the state is to correspond to reality, it must recognize, Benoist insisted, all this group life, all these interests, within it. Moreover, he urged, with our present pulverized suffrage, with sovereignty divided among millions, we are in a state of anarchy; only group representation will save us from “la force stupide de nombre.†M. Léon Duguit has given us a so-called “objective†theory of law which means for many people a new conception of the state.
Many say that it is absurd for representation to be based on the mere chance of residence as is the case when the geographical district is the unit. The territorial principle is going, we are told, and that of similar occupational interests will take its place. Again some people are suggesting that both principles should be recognized in our government: that one house in Parliament represent geographical areas, the other occupations.[97]No one has yet, however, made any proposal of this kind definite enough to serve as a basis of discussion.
Syndicalism demands the abolition of the “state†while—through its organization of the syndicate of workers, the union of syndicates of the same town or region and the federation of these unions—it erects a system of its own controlled entirely by the workers. Syndicalism has gained many adherents lately because of the present reaction against socialism. People do not want the Servile State and, therefore, many think they do not want any state.
In England a new school is arising which is equally opposed to syndicalism and to the bureaucracy of state socialism. Or rather it takes half of each. Guild socialism believes in state ownership of the means of production, but that the control of each industry or “guildâ€â€”appointment of officers, hours and conditions of work etc.—should be vested in the membership of the industry. The syndicalists throw over the state entirely, the guild socialists believe in the “co-management†of the state. There are to be two sets of machinery side by side but quite distinct: that based on the occupational group will be concerned with economic considerations, the other with “political†considerations, the first culminatingin a national Guild Congress, and the second in the State.[98]
“Guild Socialism,†edited by A. R. Orage, gives in some detail this systematic plan already familiar to readers of theNew Age. A later book of the same school “Authority, Liberty and Function,†by Ramiro de Maeztu, concerns itself less with detail and more with the philosophical basis of the new order. The value of this book consists in its emphasis on the functional principle.[99]
Mr. Ernest Barker of Oxford, although he formulates no definite system, is a political pluralist.
John Neville Figgis makes an important contribution to pluralism,[100]and although he has a case to plead for the church, he is equally emphatic that all the local groups which really make our life should be fostered and given an increased authority.
In America vocational representation has many distinguished advocates, among them Professor Felix Adler and Professor H. A. Overstreet. Mr. Herbert Croly, who has given profound thought to the trend of democracy, advocates giving increased power and legal recognition to the powerful groups growing up within the state.Mr. Harold Laski is a pronounced political pluralist, especially in his emphasis on the advantage of multiple, varied and freely developing groups for the enrichment and enhancement of our whole life. Mr. Laski’s book, “Studies in the Problem of Sovereignty,†is one of the most thought-stimulating bits of modern political writing: it does away with the fetich of the abstract state—it is above all an attempt to look at things as they are rather than as we imagine them to be; it shows that states are not supreme by striking examples of organizations within the state claiming and winning the right to refuse obedience to the state; it sees the strength and the variety of our group life to-day as a significant fact for political method; it is a recognition, to an extent, of the group principle—it sees that sovereignty is not in people as a mass; it pleads for a revivification of local life, and finally it shows us, implicitly, not only that we need to-day a new state, but that the new state must be a great moral force.[101]
Perhaps the most interesting contribution of the pluralists is their clear showing that “a single unitary state with a single sovereignty†is not true to the facts of life to-day. Mr. Barker says, “Every state is something of a federal society and contains different national groups, different churches, different economic organizations, each exercising its measure of control over its members.†The following instances are cited to show the present tendency of different groups to claim autonomy:
1. Religious groups are claiming rights as groups. Many churchmen would like to establish the autonomy of the church. It is impossible to have undenominationalinstruction in the schools of England because of the claims of the church.
2. There is a political movement towards the recognition of national groups. The state in England is passing Home Rule Acts and Welsh Disestablishment Acts to meet the claims of national groups. “All Europe is convulsed with a struggle of which one object is a regrouping of men in ways which will fulfil national ideals.â€
3. “The Trade-Unions claim to be free groups.†“Trade-unions have recovered from Parliament more than they have lost in the courts.â€
Let us consider the arguments of the pluralist school, as they form the most interesting, the most suggestive and the most important theory of politics now before us. It seems to me that there are four weaknesses in the pluralist school[102]which must be corrected before we can take from them the torch to light us on our political way: (1) some of the pluralists ostensibly found their books on pragmatic philosophy and yet in their inability to reconcile the distributive and collective they do not accept the latest teachings of pragmatism, for pragmatism does not end with a distributive pluralism, (2) the movement is in part a reaction to a misunderstood Hegelianism,(3) many of the pluralists are professed followers of medieval doctrine, (4) their thinking is not based on a scientific study of the group, which weakens the force of their theories of “objective†rights and sovereignty, much as these latter are an advance on our old theories of “subjective†rights and a sovereignty based on an atomistic conception of society.
First, the underlying problem of pluralism and pragmatism is, as James proclaims, the relation of “collective†and “distributive.†The problem of to-day, we all agree, is the discovery of the kind of federalism which will make the parts live fully in the whole, the whole live fully in the parts. But this is the central problem of philosophy which has stirred the ages. The heart of James’ difficulty was just this: how can many consciousnesses be at the same time one consciousness? How can the same identical fact experience itself so diversely? How can you be the absolute and the individual? It is the old, old struggle which has enmeshed so many, which some of our philosophers have transcended by the deeper intuitions, sure that life is a continuous flow and not spasmodic appearance, disappearance and reappearance. James struggled long with this problem, but the outcome was sure. His spirit could not be bound by intellectualistic logic, the logic of identity. He was finally forced to adopt a higher form of rationality. He gave up conceptualistic logic “fairly, squarely and irrevocably,†and knew by deepest inner testimony that “states of consciousness can separate and combine themselves freely and keep their own identity unchanged while forming parts of simultaneous fields of experience of wider scope.†James always saw the strung-along universe, but he also saw the unifying principle which is working towards its goal. “That secret,†he tells us, “of a continuous life which the universe knows by heartand acts on every instant cannot be a contradiction incarnate.... Our intelligence must keep on speaking terms with the universe.â€
When James found that the “all-form†and the “each-forms†are not incompatible, he found the secret of federalism. It is our task to work out in practical politics this speculative truth which the great philosophers have presented to us. The words absolute and individual veil it to us, but substitute state and individual and the problem comes down to the plane of our actual working everyday life. It may be interesting to read philosophy, but the thrilling thing for every man of us to do is to make it come true. We may be heartened by our sojourns on Sinai, but no man may live his life in the clouds. And what does pragmatism mean if not just this? We can only, as James told us again and again, understand the collective and distributive by living. Life is the true revealer: I can never understand the whole by reason, only when the heart-beat of the whole throbs through me as the pulse of my own being.
If we in our neighborhood group live James’ philosophy of the compounding of consciousness, if we obey the true doctrine, that each individual is not only himself but the state—for the fulness of life overflows—then will the perfect form of federalism appear and express itself, for then we have the spirit of federalism creating its own form. Political philosophers talk of the state, but there is no state until we make it. It is pure theory. We, every man and woman to-day, must create his small group first, and then, through its compounding with other groups, it ascends from stage to stage until the federal state appears. Thus do we understand by actual living how collective experiences can claim identity with their constituent parts, how “your experience and minecan be members of a world-experience.†In our neighborhood groups we claim identity with the whole collective will, at that point we are the collective will.
Unless multiple sovereignty can mean ascending rather than parallel groups it will leave out the deepest truth which philosophy has brought us. But surely the political pluralists who are open admirers of James will refuse with him to stay enmeshed in sterile intellectualism, in the narrow and emasculated logic of identity. Confessedly disciples of James, will they not carry their discipleship a step further? Have they not with James a wish for a world that does not fall into “discontinuous pieces,†for “a higher denomination than that distributed, strung-along and flowing sort of reality which we finite beings [now] swim in� Their groups must be the state each at its separate point. When they see this truth clearly, then the leadership to which their insight entitles them will be theirs.
I have said that the political pluralists are fighting a misunderstood Hegelianism. Do they adopt the crudely popular conception of the Hegelian state as something “above and beyond†men, as a separate entity virtually independent of men? Such a conception is fundamentally wrong and wholly against the spirit of Hegel. As James found collective experience not independent of distributive experience, as he reconciled the two through the “compounding of consciousness,†so Hegel’s related parts received their meaning only in the conception of total relativity. The soul of Hegelianism is total relativity, but this is the essence of the compounding of consciousness. As for James the related parts and their relations appear simultaneously and with equal reality, so in Hegel’s total relativity: the members of the state in their right relation to one another appear in all the different degrees of reality together as one whole totalrelativity—never sundered, never warring against the true Self, the Whole.
But there is the real Hegel and the Hegel who misapplied his own doctrine, who preached the absolutism of a Prussian State. Green and Bosanquet in measure more or less full taught the true Hegelian doctrine. But for a number of years the false leadings of Hegel have been uppermost in people’s minds, and there has been a reaction to their teaching due to the panic we all feel at the mere thought of an absolute monarch and an irresponsible state. The present behavior of Prussia of course tends to increase the panic, and the fashion of jeering at Hegel and his “misguided†followers is wide-spread. But while many English writers are raging against Hegelianism, at the same time the English are pouring out in unstinted measure themselves and their substance to establish on earth Hegel’s absolute in the actual form of an International League!
The political pluralists whom we are now considering, believing that a collective and distributive sovereignty cannot exist together, throw overboard collective sovereignty. When they accept the compounding of consciousness taught by their own master, James, then they will see that true Hegelianism finds its actualized form in federalism.
Perhaps they would be able to do this sooner if they could rid themselves of the Middle Ages! Many of the political pluralists deliberately announce that they are accepting medieval doctrine.
In the Middle Ages the group was the political unit. The medieval man was always the member of a group—of the guild in the town, of the manor in the country. But this was followed by the theory of the individual not as a member of a group but as a member of a nation, and we have always considered this on the whole anadvance step. When, therefore, the separate groups are again proposed as the political units, we are going back to a political theory which we have long outgrown and which obviously cramps the individual. It is true that the individual as the basis of government has remained an empty theory. The man with political power has been the rich and strong man. There has been little chance for the individual as an individual to become a force in the state. In reaction against such selfish autocracy people propose a return to the Middle Ages. This is not the solution. Now is the critical moment. If we imitate the Middle Ages and adopt political pluralism we lose our chance to invent our own forms for our larger ideas.
Again, balancing groups were loosely held together by what has been called a federal bond. Therefore we are to look to the medieval empire for inspiration in forming the modern state. But the union of church and guild, boroughs and shires of the Middle Ages seems to me neither to bear much resemblance to a modern federal state nor to approach the ideal federal state. And if we learn anything from medieval decentralization—guild and church and commune—it is that political and economic power cannot be separated.
Much as we owe the Middle Ages, have we not progressed since then? Are our insights, our ideals, our purposes at all the same? Medieval theory, it is true, had the conception of the living group, and this had a large influence on legal theory.[103]Also medieval theory struggled from first to last to reconcile its notion of individual freedom,[104]the patent fact of manifold groups,and the growing notion of a sovereign state. Our problem it is true is the same to-day, but the Middle Ages hold more warnings than lessons for us. While there was much that was good about the medieval guilds, we certainly do not want to go back to all the weaknesses of medieval cities: the jealousies of the guilds, their selfishness, the unsatisfactory compromises between them, the impossibility of sufficient agreement either to maintain internal order or to pursue successful outside relations.
The Middle Ages had not worked out any form by which the parts could be related to the whole without the result either of despotism of the more powerful parts or anarchy of all the parts. Moreover, in the Middle Ages it was true on the whole that your relation to your class separated you from other classes: you could not belong to many groups at once. Status was the basis of the Middle Ages. This is exactly the tendency we must avoid in any plan for the direct representation of industrial workers in the state.
Is our modern life entirely barren of ideas with which to meet its own problems? Must twentieth century thought with all the richness which our intricately complex life has woven into it try to force itself into the embryonic moulds of the Middle Ages?
The most serious error, however, of the political pluralists is one we are all making: we have not begun a scientific study of group psychology. No one yet knows enough of the laws of associated life to have the proper foundations for political thinking. The pluralists apotheosize the group but do not study the group. They talk of sovereignty without seeking the source of sovereignty.
In the next three chapters I shall consider what the recent recognition of the group, meagre as it is at present,teaches us in regard to pluralism. Pluralism is the dominant thought to-day in philosophy, in politics, in economics, in jurisprudence, in sociology, in many schemes of social reorganization proposed by social workers, therefore we must consider it carefully—what it holds for us, what it must guard against.
XXIXPOLITICAL PLURALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY
WHAT does group psychology teach us, as far as we at present understand it, in regard to sovereignty? How does the group get its power? By each one giving up his sovereignty? Never. By some one from outside presenting it with authority? No, although that is the basis of much of our older legal theory. Real authority inheres in a genuine whole. The individual is sovereign over himself as far as he unifies the heterogeneous elements of his nature. Two people are sovereign over themselves as far as they are capable of creating one out of two. A group is sovereign over itself as far as it is capable of creating one out of several or many. A state is sovereign only as it has the power of creating one in which all are. Sovereignty is the power engendered by a complete interdependence becoming conscious of itself. Sovereignty is the imperative of a true collective will. It is not something academic, it is produced by actual living with others—we learn it only through group life. By the subtle process of interpenetration a collective sovereignty is evolved from a distributed sovereignty. Just so can and must, by the law of their being, groups unite to form larger groups, these larger groups to form a world-group.
I have said that many of the pluralists are opposed to the monistic state because they do not see that a collective and distributive sovereignty can exist together. They talk of the Many and the One without analyzing the process by which the Many and the One are creatingeach other. We now see that the problem of the compounding of consciousness, of the One and the Many, need not be left either to an intellectualistic or to an intuitive metaphysics. It is to be solved through a laboratory study of group psychology. When we have that, we shall not have to argue any more about the One and the Many: we shall actually see the Many and the One emerging at the same time; we can then work out the laws of the relation of the One (the state) to the Many (the individual), and of the Many (the individual) to the One (the state), not as a metaphysical question but on a scientific basis. And the process of the Many becoming One is the process by which sovereignty is created. Our conceptions of sovereignty can no longer rest on mere abstractions, theory, speculative thought. How absurdly inadequate such processes are to explain the living, interweaving web of humanity. The question of sovereignty concerns the organization of men (which obviously must be fitted to their nature), hence it finds its answer through the psychological analysis of man.
The seeking of the organs of society which are the immediate source of legal sanctions, the seeking of the ultimate source of political control—these are the quests of jurists and political philosophers. To their search must be added a study of the process by which a genuine sovereignty is created. The political pluralists are reacting against the sovereignty which our legal theory postulates, for they see that there is no such thing actually, but if sovereignty is at present a legal fiction, the matter need not rest there—we must seek to find how a genuine social and political control can be produced. The understanding of self-government, of democracy, is bound up with the conception of sovereignty as a psychological process.
The idea of sovereignty held by guild socialists[105]is based largely on the so-called “objective†theory ofle droitexpounded by M. Léon Duguit of Bordeaux. This theory is accepted as the “juridical basis†of a new state, what some call the functionarist state.[106]Man, Duguit tells us, has no rights as man, but only as a member of the social order. His rights are based on the fact of social interdependence—on his relations and consequent obligations. In fact he has no rights, but duties and powers. All power and all obligation is found in “social solidarity,†in a constantly evolving social solidarity.[107]
The elaboration of this theory is Duguit’s large contribution to political thought. Hisdroitis a dynamic law—it can never be captured and fixed. The essential weakness of his doctrine is that he denies the possibility of a collective will, which means that he ignores the psychology of the social process. He and his followers reject the notion of a collective will as “concept de l’espritdénué de toute réalité positive.†If this is their idea of a collective will, they are right to reject it. I ask for its acceptance only so far as it can be proved to have positive reality. There is only one way in the world by which you can ever know whether there is a collective will, and that is by actually trying to make one; you need not discuss a collective will as a theory. If experiment proves to us that we cannot have a collective will, we must accept the verdict. Duguit thinks that when we talk of the sovereignty of the people we mean an abstract sovereignty; the new psychology means by the sovereignty of the people that which they actually create. It is true that we have none at present. Duguit is perfectly right in opposing the old theory of the “sovereign state.â€
But Duguit says that if there were a collective will there is no reason why it should impose itself on the individual wills. “L’affirmation que la collectivité a le pouvoir légitime de commander force qu’elle est la collectivité, est une affirmation d’ordre métaphysiqueoú religieux....†This in itself shows a misunderstanding of the evolution of a collective will. This school does not seem to understand that every one must contribute to the collective will; ideally it would have no power unless this happened, actually we can only be constantly approaching this ideal.[108]Duguit makes a thing-in-itself ofla volonté nationale—it is a most insidious fallacy which we all fall into again and again. But we can never accept that kind of a collective will. We believe in a collective will only so far as it isreallyforming from out our actual daily life of intermingling men and women. There isnothing “metaphysical†or “religious†about this. Duguit says metaphysics “doit rester étranger à toute jurisprudence....†We agree to that and insist that jurisprudence must be founded on social psychology.
Five people produce a collective idea, a collective will. That will becomes at once an imperative upon those five people. It is not an imperative upon any one else. On the other hand no one else can make imperatives for those five people. It has been generated by the social process which is a self-sufficing, all-inclusive process. The same process which creates the collective will creates at the same time the imperative of the collective will. It is absolutely impossible to give self-government: no one has the right to give it; no one has the power to give it. Group Aallowsgroup B to govern itself? This is an empty permission unless B haslearned howto govern itself. Self-government must always be grown. Sovereignty is always a psychological process.
Many of Duguit’s errors come from a misconception of the social process. Violently opposed to a collective will, he sees in the individual thought and will the only genuine “chose en soi†(it is interesting to notice thatla chose en soifinds a place in the thought of many pluralists). Not admitting the process of “community†he asserts thatla règle de droitis anterior and superior to the state; he does not see the true relation ofle droittol’état, that they evolve together, that the same process which createsle droitcreatesl’état.[109]The will of the people, he insists, can not createle droit. Here he does not see the unity of the social process. He separates will and purpose and the activity of the reciprocal interchange instead of seeing them as one. Certainly the will of the people does not createle droit, but the social process in its entire unity does. “Positive law mustconstantly followle droit objectif.†Of course. “Le droit objectifis constantly evolving.†Certainly. But how evolving? Here is where we disagree. The social process createsle droit objectif, and will is an essential part of the social process. Purpose is an essential part of the social process. Separate the parts of the social process and you have a different idea of jurisprudence, of democracy, of political institutions. Aim is all-important for Duguit. The rule ofle droitis the rule of conscious ends: only the aim gives a will its worth; if the aim is juridical (conformed tola règle de droit), then the will is juridical. Thus Duguit’s pragmatism is one which has not yet rid itself of absolute standards. It might be urged that it has, because he finds his absolute standards in “social solidarity.†But any one who believes that the individual will is achose en soi, and who separates the elements of the social process, does not wholly admit the self-sufficing character of that process.
The modern tendency in many quarters, however, in regard to conceptions of social practice, is to substitute ends for will.[110]This is a perfectly comprehensible reaction, but future jurisprudence must certainly unite these two ideas. Professor Jethro Brown says, “The justification for governmental action is found not in consent but in the purpose it serves.†Not in that alone.De Maeztu says, “The profound secret of associations is not that men have need of one another, but that they need the same thing.†These two ideas can merge. Professor Brown makes the common good the basis of the new doctrine of natural right.[111]But we must all remember, what I do not doubt this writer does remember, that purpose can never be achose en soi, and that, of the utmost importance, the “new natural law†can be brought into manifestation only by certain modes of association.
It is true, as Duguit says, that the state has the “right†to will because of the thing willed, that it has no “subjective†right to will, that its justification is in its purpose. (This is of course the truth in regard to all our “rightsâ€; they are justified only by the use we make of them.) And yet there is a truth in the old idea of the “right†of a collectivity to will. These two ideas must be synthesized. Theyaresynthesized by the new psychology which sees the purpose forming the will at the same time as the will forms the purpose, which finds no separation anywhere in the social process. We can never think of purpose as something in front which leads us on, as the carrot the donkey. Purpose is never in front of us, it appears at every moment with the appearance of will. Thus the new school of jurisprudence founded on social psychology cannot be a teleological school alone, but must be founded on all the elements which constitute the social process. Ideals do not operate in a vacuum. This theorists seem sometimes to forget, but those of us who have had tragic experience of this truth are likely to give more emphasis to the interaction of purpose, will and activity, past and present activity. The recognition thatle droitis the product of a group process swallows up the question as to whether it is “objectiveâ€or “subjectiveâ€; it is neither, it is both; we look at the matter quite differently.[112]
To sum up this point. We must all, I think, agree with the “objective†conception of law in its essence, but not in its dividing the social process, a true unity, into separate parts. Rights arise from relation, and purpose is bound up in the relation. The relation of men to one another and to the object sought are part of the same process. Duguit has rendered us invaluable service in his insistence thatle droitmust be based on “la vie actuelle,†but he does not take the one step further and see thatle droitis born within thegroup, that there is an essential law of the group as different from other modes of association, and that this has many implications.
Thedroitevolved by a group is thedroitof that group. Thedroitevolved by a state-group (we agree that there is no state-group yet, the state is evolving, thedroitis evolving, there is only an approximate state, an approximately genuinedroit) is thedroitof the state. The contribution of the new psychology is thatle droitcomes from relation and is always in relation. The warning of the new psychology to the advocates of vocational representation is that thedroit(either as law or right)[113]evolved by men of one occupation only will represent too little intermingling to express the “community†truth. We don’t want doctors’ ethics and lawyers’ ethics, and so on through thevarious groups. That is just the troubleat present. Employers and employees meet in conference. Watch those conferences. The difference of interest is not always the whole difficulty; there is also the difference of standard. Capitalist ethics and workman ethics are often opposed. We must acceptle droitas a social product, as a group product, but we must have groups which will unify interests and standards. Law and politics can be founded on nothing but vital modes of association.
Mr. Roscoe Pound’s exposition of modern law is just here a great help to political theory. The essential, the vital part of his teaching, is, not his theory of law based on interests, not his emphasis upon relation, but his bringing together of these two ideas. This takes us out of the vague, nebulous region of much of the older legal and political theory, and shows us the actual method of living our daily lives. All that he says of relation implies that we must seek and bring into use those modes of association which will reveal true interests, actual interests, yet not particularist interests but the interests discovered through group relations—employer and employed, master and servant, landlord and tenant, etc. But, and this is of great importance, these groups must be made into genuine groups. If law is to be a group-product, we must see that our groups are real groups, we must find the true principle of association. For this we need, as I must continually repeat, the study of group psychology. “Life,†“man,†“society,†are coming to have little meaning for us: it is your life and my life with which we are concerned, not “man†but the men we see around us, not “society†but the many societies in which we pass our lives. “Social†values? We want individual values, but individual values discovered through group relations.
To sum up this point: (1) law should be a group-product,(2) we should therefore have genuine groups, (3) political method must be such that the “law†of the group can become embodied in our legislation.
M. Duguit’s disregarding of the laws of that intermingling which is the basis of hisdroit objectifleads to a partial understanding only of the vote. Voting is for him still in a way a particularist matter. To be sure he calls it a function and that marks a certain advance. Moreover he wishes us to consider the vote an “objective†power, an “objective†duty, not a “subjective†right. This is an alluring theory in a pragmatic age. And if you see it leading to syndicalism which you have already accepted beforehand, it is all the more alluring! But to call the vote a function is only half the story; as long as it is a particularist vote, it does not help us much to have it rest on function, or rather, it goes just half the way. It must rest on the intermingling of all my functions, it must rest on the intermingling of all my functions with all the functions of all the others; it must rest indeed on social solidarity, but a social solidarity in which every man interpenetrating with every other is thereby approaching a whole of which he is the whole at one point.
Duguit, full of Rousseau, does not think it possible to have a collective sovereignty without every one having an equal share of this collective sovereignty, and he most strenuously opposesle suffrage universel égalitaire. Butle suffrage universel égalitairestaring all the obviousinequalities of man in the face, Rousseau’s divided sovereignty based on an indivisible sovereignty—all these things no longer trouble you when you see the vote as the expression at one point of some approximate whole produced by the intermingling of men.
True sovereignty and true functionalism are not opposed; the vote resting on “subjective†right andthe vote resting on “objective†power are not opposed, but the particularist vote and the genuinely individual vote are opposed. Any doctrine which contains a trace of particularism in any form cannot gain our allegiance.
Again Duguit’s ignoring of the psychology of the social process leads him to the separation of governors and governed. This separation is for him the essential fact of the state. Sovereignty is with those individuals who can impose their will upon others. He says no one can give orders to himself, but as a matter of fact no one can really give orders to any one but himself.[114]Here Duguit confuses present facts and future possibilities. Let usbethe state, let us be sovereign—over ourselves. As the problem in the life of each one of us is to find the way to unify the warring elements within us—as only thus do we gain sovereignty over ourselves—so the problem is the same for the state. Duguit is right in saying that the German theory of auto-limitation is unnecessary, but not in the reasons he gives for it. A psychic entity is subordinate to thedroitwhich itself evolves not by auto-limitation, but by the essential and intrinsic law of the group.
But Duguit has done us large service not only in his doctrine of a law, a right, born of our actual life, of our always evolving life, but also in his insistence on the individual which makes him one of the builders of the new individualism.[115]We see in the gradual transformation of the idea of natural law which took place amongthe French jurists of the end of the nineteenth century, the struggle of the old particularism with the feelings-out for the true individualism. That the French have been slow to give up individual rights, that many of them have not given them up for any collective theory, but, feeling the truth underneath the old doctrine, have sought (and found) a different interpretation, a different basis and a different use, has helped us all immeasurably.
Group psychology shows us the process of man creating social power, evolving his own “rights.†We now see that man’s only rights are group-rights. These are based on his activity in the group—you can call it function if you like, only unless you are careful that tends to become mechanical, and it tends to an organic functionalism in which lurk many dangers. But the main point for us to grasp is that we can never understand rights by an abstract discussion of “subjectiveâ€vs.“objectiveâ€â€”only by the closest study of the process by which these rights are evolved. The true basis of rights is neither a “mystical†idea of related personalities, nor is it to be found entirely in the relation of the associated to the object sought; a truly modern conception of law synthesizes these two ideas. “Function,†de Maeztu tells us “[is] a quality independent of the wills of men.†This is a meaningless sentence to the new psychology. At present the exposition of the “objective†theory of law is largely a polemic against the “subjective.†When we understand more of group psychology, and it can be put forth in a positive manner, it will win many more adherents.
Then as soon as the psychological foundation of law is clearly seen, the sovereignty of the state in its old meaning will be neither acclaimed nor denied. An understandingof the group process teaches us the true nature of sovereignty. We can agree with the pluralist school that the present state has no “right†to sovereignty;[116]we can go further and say that the state will never be more than ideally sovereign, further still and say that the whole idea of sovereignty must be recast and take a different place in political science. And yet, with the meaning given to it by present psychology, it is perhaps the most vital thought of the new politics. The sovereign is not the crowd, it is not millions of unrelated atoms, but men joining to form a real whole. The atomistic idea of sovereignty is dead, we all agree, but we may learn to define sovereignty differently.
Curiously enough, some of the pluralists are acknowledged followers of Gierke and Maitland, and base much of their doctrine on the “real personality†of the group. But the group can create its own personality only by the “compounding of consciousness,†by every member being at one and the same time an individual and the “real personality.†If it is possible for the members of a group to evolve a unified consciousness, a common idea, a collective will, for the many to become really one, not in a mystical sense but as an actual fact, for the group to have a real not a fictional personality, this process can be carried on through group and group, our task, an infinite one, to evolve a state with a real personality. The imagination of the born pluralist stops with the group.[117]
But even in regard to the group the pluralists seemsometimes to fall into contradictions. Sovereignty, we are often told, must be decentralized and divided among the local units. But according to their own theory by whom is the sovereignty to be divided? The fact is that the local units mustgrowsovereignty, that we want to revivify local life not for the purpose of breaking up sovereignty, but for the purpose of creating a real sovereignty.
The pluralists always tell us that the unified state proceeds from the One to the Many; that is why they discard the unified state. This is not true of the unifyingstate which I am trying to indicate. They think that the only alternative to pluralism is where you begin with the whole. That is, it is true, the classic monism, but we know now that authority is to proceed from the Many to the One, from the smallest neighborhood group up to the city, the state, the nation. This is the process of life, always a unifying through the interpenetration of the Many—Oneness an infinite goal.
This is expressed more accurately by saying, as I have elsewhere, that the One and the Many are constantly creating each other. The pluralists object to the One that comes before the Many. They are right, but we need not therefore give up oneness. When we say that there is the One which comesfromthe Many, this does not mean that the One isabovethe Many. The deepest truth of life is that the interrelating by which both are at the same time a-making is constant. This must be clearly understood in the building of the new state.
The essential error in the theory of distributed sovereignty is that each group has an isolated sovereignty. The truth is that each should represent the whole united sovereignty at one point as each individual is his wholegroup at one point. An understanding of this fact seems to me absolutely necessary to further development of political theory.[118]This does not mean that the state must come first, that the group gets its power from the state. This the pluralists rightfully resent. The power within the group is its own genetically and wholly. But the same force which forms a group may form a group of groups.
But the conclusion drawn by some pluralists from the theory of “real personality†is that the state is superfluous because a corporate personality has the right to assert autonomy over itself. They thus acknowledge that pluralism means for them group and group and group side by side. But here they are surely wrong. They ignore the implications of the psychological fact that power developed within the group does not cease with the formation of the group. That very same force which has bound the individuals together in the group (and which the theory of “real personality†recognizes) goes on working, you cannot stop it; it is the fundamental force of life, of all nature, of all humanity, the universal law of being—the out-reaching for the purpose of further unifying. If this force goes on working after the group is formed, what becomes of it? It must reach out to embrace other groups in order to repeat exactly the same process.
When you stop your automobile without stopping your engine, the power which runs your car goes on working exactly the same, but is completely lost. It only makes a noise. Do we want this to happen to our groups? Are they to end only in disagreeable noises? In order that the group-force shall not be lost, we must provide means for it to go on working effectively afterit is no longer needed within the group, so to speak. We must provide ways for it to go out to meet the life force of other groups, the new power thus generated again and endlessly to seek new forms of unification. No “whole†can imprison us infinite beings. The centre of to-day is the circumference of to-morrow.