THE NEW STATE
THE NEW STATE
GROUP ORGANIZATION THE SOLUTION
OF POPULAR GOVERNMENT
BY
M. P. FOLLETT
AUTHOR OF
"THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES"
WITH INTRODUCTION BY
LORD HALDANE
FIFTH IMPRESSION
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.G.4
TORONTO, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS
1926
3zo
O
COPYRIGHT, 1918
BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1920
BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
First Edition, December, 1918
New Impression, January, 1920
Third Impression, with Introduction by Viscount Haldane, September, 1920
Fourth Impression, August, 1923
Fifth Impression, March, 1926
MADE IN THE UNITED STATES ,
INTRODUCTION
BY
VISCOUNT HALDANE
I HAVE ventured to ask the authoress of what Professor
Bosanquet has recently called "the most sane and brilUant
of recent works on political theory," to let me write a féw
pages introductory to the next issue of her book. My
reason has been, not the thought of being able to improve on
anything that she has said* in it, but the desire to help to make
the book known in my own country by pointing out its bearing
on our own political problems. For to me the book is one of
real importance. It is the exposition of a principle which is
not stated for the first time, but which, in the form and
connection in which she states it, seems to place many diifi-
cultieis in a new light, and to lay to rest controversies, some at
least of which have arisen out of misinterpretation of what is
fundamental. Vagueness about first principles is at once the
source of confusion in conception and of waste of valuable
energy. Now Miss FoUett's book sets itself firmly to avoid
this vagueness.
"The New State" has a double purpose. It seeks to estab¬
lish a point of view from which self-production and variation
in the forms of the State may be rendered intelligible, and
it endeavours to show the lines^ on which these forms may be
adapted in the solution of practical questions' The relations
of Labour to Capital are becoming progressively difficult as
the labouring classes are advancing in education and ability
for searching reflection. The questions which are every day
arising cannot be wholly separated from their theoretical
basis. This basis is being discussed everywhere, sometimes
crudely, but more and more with insight and knowledge.
The authoress has therefore undertaken to examine and re¬
state it, and she does so with a learning and grasp wliich it
V
vi INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE
would be difficult to surpass. There are few fields of research
which she has not explored.
About the theory that underlies the book I propose to write
very briefly, its importance notwithstanding. For what is
most to the point to-day is that, as illustrated in their appli¬
cation to politics, a set of practicable ideas, in vital respects
not only fresh but full of promise, are set forth for consideration.
I will therefore refer to Miss FoUett's philosophical views
only in so far as is necessary to make my interpretation of the
practical side of the book intelligible. The great point in
her theory is that the controversy between Monism and Plural¬
ism arises out of views that are too contracted on both sides.
Monism is often thought to suggest that the state is a self-
subsisting entity into which all sovereign power is reaUy gath¬
ered up and is exercised outside the central government only
by permission or delegation. Such a conception the pluralists
naturally find to be too narrow to contain the facts. They
pronounce it to be not only ethically objectionable, but incap¬
able of explaining our actual experience of legislation and
administration alffie. Hobbes' "Leviathan" and the German
notion of the state they put on the same level. The most
acute among the critics of the monistic state are careful not
to fall into the journalistic habit of representing the late Ger¬
man Government as the outcome of idealist metaphysics.
They know too much not to be aware that the great theorists
of a hundred years ago in Germany did not wish for anything
of the kind. It was not Hegelianism, as Miss Follett and tlie
best-informed thinkers have come to understand it, but the
violent reaction against idealism which set in throughout
Germany soon after Hegel's death, that gave rise to the domi¬
nance of militarism.
Hegel does not appear to have been a particularly pleasatit
person in controversy. He indulged at times in diatribes
against his opponents, and he has paid the usual penalty of
being miscalled and misrepresented. But had he lived in
Boston in 1920, instead of in Germany a century earlier, he
would probably, as far as I can judge from his writings, ha^ e
said something not very different from what Miss Follett says.
INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE vü
His concern was to explain the existing state of things in his
own country and in Great Britain, the constitution of which
was for him a subject of keen interest. For Hegel, as for others,
it was only after the day's work had been done that philosophy
could come on the scene to survey it. The American Constitu¬
tion would for him have been an actual fact, embodying what
he pronounced, in his Philosophy of Right, to be "freedom of
individual thought, the principle of the modern world that all
essential aspects of the spiritual whole should attain to their
rights by self-development." "From this standpoint," he says,
"one can hardly raise the idle question as to which form is the
better, monarchy or democracy." We venture to reply simply
that the forms of all constitutions of the state are one-sided,
if they are not abie to contain the principle of free individual¬
ity, and do not know how to correspond to completed reason.
He denounces "the confusion of the force of right with the right
of force." It was he who said of Napoleon that he had brought
"the highest genius to victory, only to show how httle victory
could achieve." He was a conservative, but in the first place
he was a thinker. He knew that the forms of government
might display infinite variety, according to the moods of those
who were behind them. And therefore, when he had been
carrying the proof sheets of a book to the printers in Jena,
and had been passed by Napoleon who was entering the town
at the head of his troops, he made the dry observation in a
letter, that he had met the World Spirit and that it was on
horseback.
I have referred to Hegel's teaching only because Miss Follett
refers to it in much the same sense. His task was simply to
take the facts as he found them and to discover what was
their meaning. As the result he held that human institutions
belonged to the region, not of inert externality, but of mind
and purpose, and were, therefore, dynamic and self-developing.
Miss Follett's principle is not different. She would fain avoid
the approach to metaphysical discussion. Like Mr. Bosanquet
she finds in the obvious facts of social experience the ground
on which she seeks to build up her structure. ' The cardinal
doctrine of her book is that the state is what its members make
viii INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE
it to be. Sovereignty is a relative notion. Hie individual is
sovereign over himself in so far as he can develop, control and
unify his manifold nature. The group is sovereign in so far
as its members in unity direct themselves in the expression of
the common purposes they are evolving. A state is sovereign
only in so far as it does the same thing, and it gives rise to the
power of a great group unified by common ends. It is the
expression of elements of identity in purpose. We are not
isolated atoms. We live and we think only in communion
with others of our kind, and it is so that we evolve the collec¬
tive will which, in its fullest and most imperative form, gives
rise as its outcome to sovereignty. This will is not a mere
aggregate of isolated wills. It evolves itself only through liv¬
ing with others in group life, out of actual identity of ideas
and purposes amid their differences. The form of the state
and the meaning of the resulting sovereignty may vary, follo^v-
ing general opinion at different periods and under different
conditions, and so may the mode of expressing the imperative.
But all ultimately comes back to the will of the people of the
state. It was this will, as he interpreted it, that Cromwtdl
expressed when he beheaded Charles the First. It was this
will that was embodied when the British people first succeeded
in laying down definite constitutional limitations on the power
of their kings. It was this will that Lincoln proved to ha^/^e
expressed when he placed beyond doubt the unity of the nation
as a nation in the American Civil War.
It is not true that each group within the state has an iso¬
lated sovereignty. Each group may control itself, but ordy
within the limits of its existence and influence as a group.
It is Uke the individual, with a general will which is distinc¬
tive, but a will the purposes of which fall within the larger
purposes of the state group. Wills are not atomic. They may
and do act under the guidance of various ends, some of which
are less individual than others. The general will so evolved
is no entity separate from these individual wills. It is their
common expression. But it may, as in war time, present these
individual wills as unified at a tremendous level. Reality does
not always exist at the same level, and human purposes may
INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE ix
embody reality at varying degrees. The will is no static thing
but is a form of the dynamic activity characteristic of mind.
At some of these degrees each may stand for the whole, and
when this is so the private mind coincides with the group
mind. Thus there is no isolated sovereignty, nor does the
unified state begin from any pre-existing unity in its control of
its groups. ,It may be evolved only gradually, or it may be
that on occasions the individual wills effect their unification
per saltum. History contains examples of both methods.
There are many forms in which sovereignty is given shape,
just' as there are many forms of the state. In Great Britain
the instrument of the unified state is, in principle at all events,
Parliament. In America it is the Federal and State Govern¬
ments and their Executives, with that Supreme Court, the
delegation to which of some degree of sovereign power under
the original Constitution the genius of John Marshall brought
to clear light when he rendered judgment in Marbury v, Madi¬
son. Such a judgment as his would not have been rendered
in England. But then the written constitution of the United
States is an instrument differing radically from that of Great
Britain. There sovereign power is differently distributed.
Yet in both countries the ultima ratio is the collective will of
the people.
Sovereignty is thus a fact with many forms, and not an
abstract or uniform principle. It is a consequence of the
existence of the state rallier than the state itself. Whoever
can gain the approval of the people gets this power. Sover¬
eignty in the subordinate group is not different in nature
from state sovereignty, but it is only relative sover¬
eignty, and it is subordinate to that of a larger entirety. As
I have said, the individual man is no static or isolated atom.
Relations to his fellow men are of the essence of his life, and
they are ever in active process of development. He is always
to some extent engaged in developing these relations. And
so it is with the subordinate groups. They are always seeking
to bring themselves into relation with each other, it may be
in a trade-union congress or it may be in a different kind of
assoiciation for the promotion of some common cause. All
X INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE
these groups may be of great value. Ideally all are essential,
for the functions which mankind has to fulfil are not activities
in isolation from each other. It would be to the good if the
teacher could always have the practical training of a parent.
Man must identify himself, so far as he can, with the experi¬
ence of humanity generally. But we are finite and must limit
our purposes if we would accomplish anything actual. What
pluralism really has to impress is that a rich experience can¬
not be adequately gained excepting through many actual
relations in group life. What it is apt to overlook is that none
of these group relationships is more than a stage towards a
more complete whole within which they all take their places,
and that consequently, even as a citizen, man has to identify
himself with group life in many forms before he has fully de¬
veloped his humanity. In some of such groups I may be an
employer; in others an employee. I may be a workman and
also a shareholder; a clerk, and the representative of my
fellow citizens on a local authority; a lawyer and a fellow of
a college or a professor. I may thus not only get education in
opposing points of view, but I may contribute to apparently
opposing points of view. Only apparently opposing, however,
because there is a larger outlook which is open to me, frcsm
which they fall into their places. It is through this larger
outlook that what is called a true general will develops itself.
Individuals and groups stand in no antithesis. ^ The group
will is just the individual will at a different level of purpose.
The sovereign state itself is nothing apart from the citizens
who compose it, and whose assent to its objects and its organi¬
sation it embodies. The hesitation in accepting this view has
arisen from the idea that individual human beings exist only
as segregated atoms, with purposes which are entities apart
and merely resembling each other. But our experience tells
us that such is not the true character of mind, and the state,
like the subordinate group, is the embodiment of mind. We
cannot obtain our full stature or even be what we are apart
from active relationships, to our parents, or to our churches,
or to our social and political surroundings. When I pay my
rates and taxes I accept this as a fact. No one group crni
INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE xi
completely enfold me, and that is because of the multiplicity
of my nature. Nor can any number of groups exhaust the
capacity of the modern citizen. Group organisation is a
method or instrument in politics, but the ultimate unit is
always the individual, because his activities and range are
more extensive than those of any group organised only for special
purposes and in this sense subordinate to his full life by reason
of the limitation of its purposes. Beyond the ends by which
the group is thus confined lie the wide purposes of the nation
state. This state is no Absolute. For it too may participate
in movements which go beyond itself, and concern no one
people but mankind generally. That is the principle of a
League of Nations or a Concert of Powers, or whatever else
the form of union may be. But here too there is no contra¬
diction between the will of the member and that of the com¬
munity. The will of the latter is just that of the former at a
higher level or degree and in a different aspect, a result depend¬
ing not on mechanical addition, but on identity in modes of
thought and the action which embodies it. These are not
separable. Majority rule must if it is to be of value, possess
an intellectual foundation of a character different from what
is merely mechanical addition.
It is our habit of assuming that we are dealing with aggre¬
gates of mechanical and exclusive things, standing in no higher
relationship than that of causes and effects external to one
another, that has caused confusion. The tendency to assume
that the category appropriate to things or substances is
sufficient for the representation of all phases of our experience
of the actual, has been responsible for the genesis of this habit.
Miss Follett's task has been to bring unconscious assump¬
tions of this kind to light and to scrutiny, and this she has
sought to do simply by testing them against the facts of life
and their background.
For her the true state does not demand a merely submissive
allegiance, for it is the outcome of a spontaneous and instinc¬
tive process of unifying manifold interests. Nor need it in
its activities supersede those of subordinate groups, such as
trade unions, whose functions are different from its own, while
xii INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE
Ihey can yet be fitted into their places in a larger entirety.
Every legitimate interest can not only be recognised but can
be regarded with satisfaction. If I am discontented with the
policy of the state I can seek to change it. For I am a mem¬
ber of the whole with a title to an integral function and voice
in it. No abstract principle can be laid down for the solution
of situations in which dissatisfaction arises. For the facts
are usually highly individual. And the state is no static unit.
For it is not an arbitrary creation; 'Tt is a process; a continual
self-modification to express its different stages of growth in
which each and all must be so flexible that continual change
of form is twin-fellow of continual growth.'' The stability of
the state depends on continuity of broad national purpose,
and, consistently with that continuity and the stability re¬
sulting from it, there is room for infinite modification in internal
institutions. The state is made, not by external acts, but by
the continuous thought and action of the people who five its
life. In this sense it is never perfect for it is a process that
remains always unbroken in creative activity.
The practical lesson of all this may be expressed in Miss
Follett's own words: — "Neighbourhood education and neigh¬
bourhood organisation is then the pressing problem of 1918.
All those who are looking towards a real democracy, not the
pretence of one which we have now, feel that the most immi¬
nent of our needs is the awakening and invigorating, the edu¬
cating and organising of the local unit. All those who in the
humblest way, in settlement or community centre, are work¬
ing for this, are working at the greatest political problem of
the twentieth century." Knowledge is from this point of view
indeed power, and here is a method for systematically acquir¬
ing and imparting the knowledge requisite for political fife.
She concludes a chapter on this subject in fervent words : —
"This is the way we must understand an individual allegiance.
I live for ever the individual life. As an individual I am the
undivided one, as the group-I, I am again the undivided one,
as the state-I, I am the undivided one — I am always and for
ever the undivided one, mounting from height to height, al¬
ways mounting, always the whole of me mounting."
INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE xiu
*'The great lesson of the group process/' says Miss FoIIett
towards the end of the book, ''is that particularism, however
magnified, is no longer possible. There is no magic by which
selfishness becomes patriotism the moment we can invoke the
nation. The change must be this: as we now see that a nation
cannot be healthy and virile if it is merely protecting the
rights of its members, so we must see that we can have no
sound condition of world affairs merely by the protection of
each individual nation — that is the old theory of individual
rights. Each nation must play its part in some larger whole.
Nations have fought for national rights." "What raises this
war to a plane never reached by any war before is that the
Allies are not fighting for national rights. As long as history
is read the contribution of America to the Great War will be
told as America's taking her stand squarely and responsibly
on the position that national particularism was in 1917 dead."
If I read aright the record of the constitutional issues which
are to-day being discussed throughout the United States, this
remains profoundly true. That a great nation should examine
these questions critically and in detail seems to me as natural
as it is necessary, and in no sense to be in conflict with the full
recognition of the principle that her people have definitely
taken their stand on what goes beyond national particularism.
It is by the fullest and freest discussion and debate, and by
this means alone, that a true national purpose can be evolved
and brought to clarity and full fruition.
I now pass to the second object with which "The New State"
is written. It is to show how, the state being non-mechanical
and capable of self-development, its self-development can be
best accomplished. The answer of the authoress is that the
question is ultimately one of education in the largest sense.
She does not deal with education as a general subject. She
confines herself to the capacity which the individual, with the
ability for a larger life as a citizen in the state about which she
writes, can make that life actual. How is democracy to be
improved? How are we to reach something with a deeper
significance than a majority obtained in the ballot boxes by
mere mechanical and narrow party organisation? To this her
xiv INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE
answer is that no government will be really successful or endure
which does not rest on the individual on his better side, and
that this better side is to be reached neither by sending more
people to the poll nor by sending them there more frequently.
For to do so is to effect no real deliverance from particularism,
nor is genuine union to be got by simply collecting a crowd.
It is only by a sufficiency of intelligent discussion and by the
evolution of common purpose in diverse forms of group life
that the capacity of the individual citizen can be called forth.
That individual is always potentially more than he knows
himself to be. He is no passive element in an assemblage. He
can create, and this he does best when joining with others to
form a real whole of opinion and action, a living group, in
which he can develop his personality. The first need of de¬
mocracy is therefore training for citizenship, which must be
trained for as we train to develop other capacities.
It appears that in the United States a beginning has been
made in the organisation of the group training which is thus
requisite. As there are many relations in which men stand to
each other, so training in more than one form of association is
necessary. In a particular town there may be a group, with a
character resembling the Whitley Council in Great Britain,
in which employers and workmen voluntarily meet and discuss
the conditions of industrial life. Injustice and imagined in¬
justice are equally found in the majority of cases to have re¬
sulted from want of knowledge and not from evil purpose.
A common general opinion is developed which tends to settle
such disputes as remain, and capital and labour may thus
come to understand and interpret aright each other's claims.
The sense of a set of common functions in industry can so grow.
Next door to the industrial group and in the same town
there may be a health group. As I write I have before me
the papers relating to an organisation of this kind in Cincinnati.
We are familiar with something of the same sort in my own
country. Our health committees are organised for the same
end, and they are partially recognised by the State and by
the Local Authorities, and receive some assistance. But the
movement is still in its infancy, and it has not so far been prac-
INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE xv
ticable to put it adequately on a democratic basis, instead of
trusting to the energies of individuals to run it.
In Cincinnati, where the name used for the group is ''social
unit," this is defined as being "a group of people living in
the same neighbourhood, and organised to give and receive
community service," The plan of work goes on to state that
"the same principle of group organisation will be applied to
the social work, the nursing, the statistical work, etc., as well
as to the gradual building up of an advisory council composed
of men and women from other occupational groups in the
community. For example, in social work, formulation of
plans and directions of policies will rest in city committees of
social experts, elected by their fellow-members and united
through their heads in a social council, of which the Superin¬
tendent of Public Welfare will be a member. . . In summary
the unit plan aims at three things: to organise the people of
a limited district democratically, so that they can get a clear
idea of what their common needs are, and what they think
ought to be done about them; to organise democratically the
speciahsts of the neighbourhood and of the city so that the
highest skill and experience can be applied to meeting the
needs disclosed, and to bind the people and the technically
skilled groups together in such a way that the people can tell the
specialists what they want done, and the speciahsts can point
out how to do it, submitting plans, programmes, and policies
to the people for their approval. To put it another way, the
plan is an attempt to bring efficiency to democracy."
This is an illustration of the principle set forth in "The New
State" for the building up of an enlightened general opinion,
a principle which is meant, however, to hav^e a far wider apph-
cation than it has as yet obtained in Cincinnati and the other
cities which have partially applied it. In particular the prin¬
ciple is capable of application to the relations between Labour
and Capital. The British Whitley Council plan is capable of
great extension. So soon as employers learn that their work¬
men are now insisting on having a voice as to the conditions
under which they work, and that this does not mean interfer¬
ence with expert direction of higher policy, progress of this
xvi INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDÂNE
kind may become rapid. Such progress has already begun to
show itself, both in the United States and in Great Britain.
There is indeed a broad pohtical and economic question raised.
There is a growing sense that those who do constructive work,
whether as hand workers or as brain workers, should no longer
be wholly under the domination of those whose sole aim is
to make money. The true purpose of industry is being felt
by an increasing number to be the provision, not so much of
mere dividends, as of service from which the community as
a whole may derive benefit. The function of capital is becom¬
ing recognised to be that of a means rather than that of an
end; to assist and to develop the labour of human beings,
rather than to use human beings to serve it. Economic activity
should always be carried on consistently with the greatest social
purposes, and its rewards should be, as far as possible, re¬
wards for real service rendered whether by hand or by brain.
It is this conception of the duty and station of the members
of the state that is becoming more and more prominent in both
the New World and the Old. It is the outcome of increasing
reflective power in the working classes, and its neglect in the
past has been the most fertile of the sources of industrial unrest.
Mere profit-sharing does not suffice to-day. The desire is
for the status of free men, co-operating in the discharge of a
general obligation. An individual is not the less free because
he must work hard. But his freedom in his toil consists in this,
that he knows why he toils and that he does so as a member of
his community. If he has the sense that he does what he
does as what he owes to himself, and not merely to another
who can compel him, the best kind of man wiU not only work
hard but he will work willingly. He does not even ask that he
should have the same share as others more fortunate in this
respect. What he wishes to feel is that he is a free citizen and
respected as such. Poor and rich are alike in this quality, more
than those who come in contact with only one or the other are
apt to suppose. The gloom which bases itself on the supposed
absence of justice is carried too far. Those who talk so forget
that it is not by bread alone that man wishes to live. Whether
the duties which are allocated are those of the physical toiler
INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HÂLDANE xvii
or of the brain worker, the best of all look for their reward in
a sense gained which is of a spiritual character. There is a
fine passage in the second series of Mr. Bosanquet's Gilford
Lectures,^ which points to the deeper-lying principle on which
this conclusion rests. ''If we are arranging any system or
enterprise of a really intimate character for persons closely
united in mind and thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of
the whole — persons not at arm's length to one another — all
the presumptions of individualistic justice at once fall to the
ground. We do not give the 'best' man the most comfort,
the easiest task, or even, so far as the conduct of the enter¬
prise is concerned, the highest reward. We give him the
greatest responsibility, the severest toil and hazard, the most
continuous and exacting toil and self-sacrifice. It is true and
inevitable, for the reasons we have pointed out as affecting all
finite life, that in a certain way and degree honour and ma¬
terial reward do follow on merit in this world. They follow,
we may say, mostly wrong; but the world, in its rough work¬
ing, by its own rough and ready standards, thinks it necessary
to attempt to appraise the finite individual unit; this is, in
fact, the individualistic justice, which, when we find it shat¬
tered and despised by the Universe, calls out ihe pessimisni
we are discussing. But the more intimate and spiritual is the
enterprise, the more does the true honour and reward restrict
itself to what lives —
* In those pure eyes
And perfect witness of all-judging Love.'
Under an order of things that has now passed away it was
easier to find room for freedom in this attitude than it is in
our time. Production on an enormous scale, the use of ma¬
chinery at every turn, and the magnitude of output, have all
tended to separate capital from labour, and to create rival
organisations with uniform and monotonous work for the
individual worker, especially in the case of labour. We have
moved away from the state of things in which the workman
began and carried to its completion the production of each
^ The Value and Destiny of the Individual, p. 153.
xviii INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE
particular article. It was inevitable that it should be so.
But with the change his pride of paternity is gone. His piece
of work is no longer his own, in idea and execution, as it was
in the old days. It is more diflicult for him to feel that his
activity is directed to an end complete in itself, in which quality
can count. His service is to-day much more directed to an
end that does not appeal to him, contributing merely one
particle to a huge aggregate in which its character, and his
own intellect, is lost out of sight. We have consequently a
far more difficult problem to deal with when we endeavour
to make his sense of self-respect keep pace with his growing
enlightenment on the question of what his hfe ought to be.
Change of a considerable kind in the general organisation
which prevails to-day appears to be slowly becoming unavoid¬
able, if industrial and social unrest is not to increase with
that increasing spread of knowledge which is inevitable and
is already in progress and which all right-minded people must
welcome. Democracy will doubtless solve this problem for
itself, the only way in which it can be really solved, and the
practical question is whether this is to be done by sudden
and violent effort, such as is being called for by the impatient,
or by methods that are progressive and gradual in their un-
hasting yet unresting gentleness, yet not on that account the
less efficient. If the latter alternative is to become the order
of the day there is something else required than simple organi¬
sation of the democracy. This further requisite is indicated,
if not dwelt on in detail, in Miss FoUett's book. I am not sure
that in what I am going to refer to we are not, on this side of
the Atlantic, at least as far on in our commencement of the
solution of the further problem as are the people of the United
States. But it is evident that both peoples are becoming con¬
scious of a new social question, if slowly, yet profoundly.
What I refer to is the necessity of education in a larger
meaning of the word. Education is looked on popularly as a
dull topic. So it is in some of its aspects, but only if the sense
of the word is unduly confined. The name does not signify
merely what we are familiar with in the training of youth.
That is a most important national concern, but it does not
INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE xix
occupy all the ground. Its purpose is, by instruction given
to those who have not yet developed full freedom or full per¬
sonality, to inculcate what is required for such development.
Consequently the position of the teacher has to be one of
authority. What he lays down must in the main be accepted
as the truth. It, therefore, implies a standard in the main
external to the mind which is confronted with it. It is assumed
that a defined result, rather than the method of attaining it,
or the spirit of the search after it, is what matters.
Now in the case of the University student of the higher
type this is different. He comes with a good deal of knowl¬
edge, normally gained in the secondary school, and with con¬
siderable experience of fife. He is already to a considerable
extent an educated adult. What he comes for is to receive a
new inspiration. His professor does not stand over him in a
relationship of external authority. Student and teacher are
comrades on a journey of discovery on which both recognise
that there is no finality, and that what signifies is not a body
of rigid and complete truth, for there is none such, but the
search after truth, and the expansion and freedom of spirit
which such search gives. The relationship at this later stage,
where the education is that of the adult, is a fresh one, and it
presupposes a considerable amount of mental and spiritual
experience as already possessed by the student. But such
teaching has a creative effect. It brings to birth in the best
student a new discovery of how much he can become that
he is not yet. He has a nascent sense of a freedom that he did
not before possess, and his outlook on life becomes enlarged
in a new fashion. The best in literature, in science, in philoso¬
phy, in art, in public life, and in religion, is now fully opened
to him, and he can commune with the great souls that have
expressed themselves throughout history as though they were
his living teachers. The importance of his new gift is one
that is difficult to exaggerate. * He is an individual who takes
his place in the whole that society constitutes with enlarged
relations and capacities for good.'
The problem which is occupying some of us in Great Britain
is how to extend the range of such training, and the enlarge-
XX INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE
ment of the spirit which follows on it, to the working classes.
We now think that this has been demonstrated to be possible.
If it is possible, then there lies in front a new avenue towards
a state of society in which unrest will be, not abolished, but
converted into a discontent of a new order, the discontent of
the individual with limitations for which he himself, and not
circumstances, will have the responsibility. For the really
educated man works himseK out of adverse conditions. He
and his educated neighbours combine in a rational fashion
to re-fashion general opinion and the conditions which are
there just because general opinion has let them be there.
Let us therefore give to the working classes as freely as can
be of the water of this priceless fountain. They are just hke
the rest of society, and are inspired by the same ideals. The
point is how to malie the highest ideals prominent and to
develop these among them. For it is the most spiritual that
is the most real and most compelling, with them as with us.
I have seen a good deal of the Labour movement over here.
I have intimate and valued friends among its leaders. I have
addressed a good many Labour meetings. And this has struck
me. Those who assemble in them think just as the rest of us
do. They feel keenly when they are excluded from what is
best, but their desire is to live along with us the lives of good
citizens if we will only let them. Good citizens they cannot
fully become while we deny them the higher blessings of citizen¬
ship. It is this denial that gives rise to violent language. The
agitations for nationalisation, for better housing, for higher
wages, for shorter hours of work, are just the expressions of
the real demand which if larger is gentler. If we can give them
the full education they desire, then a larger and more en¬
lightened society at a more uniform level will put these things
right; Service to others will be more evenly rewarded, and the
conditions of life will gradually become more nearly equal¬
ised. There will be in any case reasonable hope for the
attainment of such a result. The methods to-day prescribed
for attaining the ends which Labour sets before itself will
gradually be superseded, as the ends to which they have been
directed become attained. Capital will no longer dominate.
INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE xxi
It will still be there but as progressively being endowed with
a new function in the interests of society, and its owners will
be rewarded, not merely for the accident of possession, but
on the basis of what they do for those in conjunction with
whom they work. The great organiser may continue to be
paid a great wage, for his service may be as irreplaceable as
it is priceless. But when it is so it will be in accordance with
general assent to its being so. Individual talent must com¬
mand individual reward. Even Bolshevist Russia appears
to have now discovered this. Probably nine industries out
of ten will be found to be so dependent on this talent as to be
incapable of anything like nationalisation, notwithstanding the
fact that there are conditions which must be observed in the
general interest. Yet there may remain other industries which
can be and ought to be national, just as navies and postal
services are. They may require a new and very high class of
state servants to be trained for their management for the
public, men whose position must be made to correspond with
the sense of duty to the state required of them. But there
should be available in the provision of such service a new and
as yet untapped reservoir of democratic talent to draw on,
which so far has not yet been Constructed.
I am impressed, so far as my observation has gone, with
the moderation of the working classes when they are taken
into counsel and trusted, even when they are suffering under
hardships which they hold to be preventable. The loud and
discordant voices, whether expressed at meetings or in print,
turn out to represent those of a minority. The majority desire
far-reaching reform, but they would rather have it quietly,
and so avoid the risk of confusion and consequent failure. The
way to meet them seems to be to act on the principle on which
the Reform Bill was conceded over here in 1832, and in which
the demands of the Chartists were gradually met a little later
on. This principle was that of the Whigs, a body of men who
were very shrewd, even where they do not seem to us to have
been very intelligent according to the standards of our time.
It was bv their resolute refusal to bolt and bar doors that the
application of the battering ram was avoided. They were
xxü INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE
always ready to discuss things on the assumption that the
political truth to which they had been accustomed could never
have been more than relative truth. Nothing stands still in
political thought, any more than in thought of other kinds.
But I have not referred to these things in order to speculate
on the future of poUtical institutions. About these there will
be many varieties of opinion and much divergence of method.
What I am insisting on is the principle of relativity in pohtical
thought, and that its co-ordinates of reference are ever vary¬
ing. It is with the hope of getting a larger outlook, the result
of a more intelligent public opinion, that I am suggesting here
the advisability of a great and systematic stimulation of the
Bclf-education of the adult working-class population, and I
will, before concluding, draw attention very briefly to
how we are attempting in my own country to initiate
this stimulation.^
The adult son or daughter of the well-to-do citizen can
only be adequately educated further in a university atmos¬
phere, and so also the working people can only receive ade¬
quately the stimulus of education of the same kind through
the personality of a first-rate university teacher. Personality
counts for much in this connection. 'The universities must
therefore be primarily entrusted with this new mission. They
must be encouraged to train teachers of a quality as high as
that of their best tutors for their internal purposes, who will
devote themselves to this new and extra-mural work. For the
class of teacher of this kind a profession is thus opened as
real as that of the clergymen whom the old universities over
here used to train in such large numbers. It is an attractive
mission. The tutor may go for three or four years' work among
the new class of students, and ought then to return within the
walls of his university for study and research, so that he may
^ For fuller information on this subject see "University Tutorial
Classes; a Study in the Development of Higher Education among Work¬
ing Men and Women" by Albert Mansbridge (1913), and The Report
to the Government of the Master of Balliol's Committee on Adult Edu¬
cation in 1919 (Cmd. 321), as well as, from the point of view of Labour,
"The Education of the Citizen," by Arthur Greenwood.
INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE xxiii
return to his work refreshed. The cost to the state is small,
and already some provision has been made here for a new com¬
munal service which promises to have a most valuable future.
Oxford has been particularly active in the movement.
In his book on "Nationality and Government'' Mr. A. E.
Zimmern, after defining education as, not simply experience,
but experience interpreted, goes on, in the chapter on Educa¬
tion, social and national, to say this: "Few parts of Industrial
England can appear more depressing at first sight to the casual
visitor than the string of overlapping villages now comprised
in the new County Borough of Stoke-on-Trent and known as
the Five Towns. Smoke and slag-heaps have done their
best to mar the appearance of a once beautiful countryside;
nor have the towns themselves yet been able to do much to
remedy the confusion and ugliness inseparable from nineteenth-
century industriahsm.
"Yet, a few weeks ago, addressing an audience of miners
in a village schoolroom on one of the ridges overlooking this
vale of smoke, a distinguished student of Sixteenth Century
England spoke of what he termed the revival of humanism in
the England of to-day. 'Early in the sixteenth century,' he
said, 'a great educational movement arose in Europe and
penetrated to England. Men felt that new worlds were open¬
ing up before their eyes, that there were great kingdoms of
the mind to be overrun and possessed. In those days there
was a great Dutch scholar named Erasmus. He came to
England to meet his fellow scholars. He went to the seats of
knowledge, to Oxford and to Cambridge, where the new learn¬
ing was at home. If Erasmus were to come to England on such
a mission to-day, do you know,' he asked the miners, 'where
he would be directed to come? He would be taken to the Potteries,'
The miners looked surprised. Some of them had been in the
pit all day; others were going down on the night shift; but
that so much importance should be attached to their natural
human desire to meet at regular. intervals for an evening's
tussle at economics seemed strange to them. Their tutor,
for whom the regular five miles' missionary journey up the
hill at the end of his own day's work was more of a strain than
xxiv INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE
he let them know, was, however, glad to feel that his work
linked him with the great scholars of the past. "
This kind of extra-mural university teaching is to-day
being given by most of our universities and in different parts
of the country. There is no restriction on the number or char¬
acter of the subjects. What is offered consists not in disjointed
lectures but in systematic courses, on which is built the en¬
couragement of investigation by the students themselves, dis¬
tributed into groups for the purpose. Philosophy, Economics,
History, Literature, Art, Music, Science, all have their places,
and care is taken to avoid prejudice on the part of the men due
to the exclusion of particular standpoints. Discussion is
therefore trusted for bringing out the relative merits of doc¬
trines. Each class, consisting of about twenty-five, lasts for
about two hours, the first of which is occupied with exposition,
and the second with the discussions to which the workmen
attach much importance.
What I have sketched represents the best form of what is
actually taking place. The system has been organised in a
fair number of places by the various universities. But it is
still in its infancy, and some of us will not be satisfied until
it has spread all over our country, while at least maintaining
its level and quality. It is for the state to give it recognition
as of an importance as great as that of the education of the
youth of the nation. For an educated democracy would gradu¬
ally become a democracy inspired as the people of to-day are
not yet inspired. Its capacity for the estimation of values
would be heightened, and so would be its power of judging
about the means to its fends. It is fuller knowledge alone
that can be trusted to make a people conscious of the immensi¬
ties of the difficulties of self-government,
"And apprise it if pursuing
Or the right way or the wrong way
To its triumph or undoing."
It is also such knowledge alone that can render it fully
aware of "the little done; the undone vast," and awaken in it
that "divine discontent" which the spectacle of unrealised
standards around must awaken before a remedy is practicable.
INTRODUCTION BY VISCOUNT HALDANE xxv
A great educational change of this kind, if made throughout
a country, ought to tend to change the temper, not merely of
the working classes, but of the whole community, and to
change it for the better. It is from ignorance that the bulk
of injustice springs, and knowledge treats injustice gently
because it has latent in it a spiritual power of getting rid of it.
Such knowledge cannot but double the efficacy of Miss
FoUett's principle of group organisation. Indeed it is hardly
separable from it, and she herself treats the matter as itself
faUing within the domain of national education.
It is to the self-organisation of the citizens of the state in
groups formed for the several purposes of social life that some
of us are coming to look more and more in the interests of
democracy in the future. The individual citizens dare not,
if the organisation is to be a reality, allow their intellectual
and spiritual education to stand stiU after any period of fife.
The striving for the larger outlook resulting from fuUer knowl¬
edge, if it is encouraged in childhood, must not be allowed to
cease before the end of Hfe. As Goethe makes Faust in his
last days declare,
only gains and keeps his life and freedom
Who daily strives to conquer them anew."
In reform there is finality no more than there is in truth in
general, of which reform is only an example. It is in the qual¬
ity reached in the striving itself, and not in a result, apparently
but not really to be attained once for all, that we may profit¬
ably seek to satisfy our desire for the sense of something ac¬
complished.
If I have interpreted her book aright this appears to me to
be an inference to be drawn from Miss FoUett's results. But
whether or not she would accept my inference in this very
general form, I am persuaded that the principles relative to
the future of the state, set by her before the public in the
scientific and systematic fashion which is characteristic of
her volume, ought to infiuence opinion deeply, not only in
her country but in my own.
Haldane
London, April, 1920
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction 3
Part I
THE GROUP PRINCIPLE
I. The Group and the New Psychology ... 19
II. The Group Process: the Collective Idea . 24
III. The Group Process: the Collective Idea
(continued) 33
IV. The Group Process: the Collective
Feeling 44
V. The Group Process: the Collective Will 48
VI. The Unity of the Social Process 50
VII. The Individual 60
VIII. Who is the Free Man.^^ 69
IX. The New Individualism 73
X. Society 75
XI. The Self-and-Others Illusion 79
XII. The Crowd Fallacy 85
XIII. The Secret of Progress 93
XIV. The Group Principle at Work 105
XV. From Contract to Community 122
Part II
THE TRADITIONAL DEMOCRACY
XV1. Deäiocracy not " Liberty " and " Equality " :
Our Political Dualism 137
xxvii
xxviii
CONTENTS
XVII. Democracy not the Majority: Our Politi¬
cal Fallacy 142
XVIIL Democracy not the Crowd: Our Popular
Delusion 148
XIX. The True Democracy 156
XX. The Growth of Democracy in America . . 162
XXI. After Direct Government — What? . . . 174
Part III
GROUP ORGANIZATION DEMOCRACY'S
METHOD
1. THE NEIGHBORHOOD GROUP
XXII. Neighborhood Needs the Basis of Politics 189
XXIII. An Integrated Neighborhood 204
XXIV. Neighborhood Organization vs. Party
Organization: The Will of the People . . 216
XXV. Neighborhood Organization vs. Party
Organization: Leaders or Bosses? .... 227
XXVI. Neighborhood Organization vs. Party
Organization: A Responsible Neighborhood 232
XXVII. From Neighborhood to Nation: the Unify¬
ing State 245
2. THE OCCUPATIONAL GROUP
XXVIII. Political Pluralism 258
XXIX. Political Pluralism and Sovereignty . . 271
XXX. Political Pluralism and Functionalism:
The Service State vs. The ^'Sovereign State^^ 288
XXXI. Political Pluralism and the True Federal
State . 296
XXXII. Political Pluralism (concluded) 311
XXXIIL Increasing Recognition of the Occupa¬
tional Group 320
CONTENTS
X3dx
Part IV
THE DUAL ASPECT OF THE GROUP:
a union of individuals, an individual in a
larger union
XXXIV. The Moral State and Creative Citizen¬
ship 333
XXXV. The World State 344
Appendix
The Training for the New Democracy 363
THE NEW STATE
THE NEW STATE
INTRODUCTION
UR political life is stagnating, capital and labor
are virtually at war, the nations of Europe
are at one another's throats — because we have
not yet learned how to live together. The twentieth
centiu*y must find a new principle of eissociation. Crowd
philosophy, crowd government, crowd patriotism must go.
The herd is no longer sufficient to enfold us.
Group organization is to be the new method in politics,
the basis of our future industrial system, the foundation
of international order. Group orgemization will create
the new world we are now blindly feeling after, for crea¬
tive force comes from the group, creative power is evolved
through the activity of the group life.
We talk about the evils of democracy. We have not
yet tried democracy. Party or "interests" govern us
with some fiction of the "consent of the governed"
which we say means democracy. We have not even a
conception of what democracy means. That concep¬
tion is yet to be forged out of the crude ore of life.
We talk about the tragedy of individualism. The
individual we do not yet know, for we have no methods
to release the powers of the individual. Our particu¬
larism — our laissez-faire, our every-man-for-his-own-
interests — has little to do with true individualisin, that
is, with the individual as consciously responsible for the
life from which he draws his breath and to which he
contributes his all.
3
4
INTRODUCTION
Politics do not need to be "purified." This thought
is leading us astray. Politics must he vitalized hy a
new method. "Representative government," party or¬
ganization, majority rule, with all their excrescences,
are dead-wood. In their stead must appear the organi¬
zation of non-partisan groups for the begetting, the
bringing into being, of common ideas, a common pur¬
pose and a collective will.
Government hy the people must he more than the
phrase. We are told — The people should do this, the
people should do that, the people must he given control
of foreign policy, etc. etc. But all this is wholly useless
imless we provide the procedure within which the people
can do this or that. What does the "sovereign will" of
the people amount to unless it has some way of operat¬
ing? Or have we any "sovereign will?" There is little
yet that is practical in "practical politics."
But method must not connote mechemics to any mind.
Many of us are more interested in the mechanism of life
than in anything else. We keep on putting pennies in
the slot from sheer delight in seeing something come out
at the other end. All this must cheinge. Machines,
forms, images, moulds — all must he broken up and the
way prepared for our plastic life to find plastic expres¬
sion. The principle of democracy may he the underly¬
ing unity of men, the method of democracy must he that
which allows the quickest response of our daily fife to
the common faith of men.
Are we capable of a new method? Can the inventive
faculty of the American people he extended from me¬
chanical things to political organization? There is no
use denying that we are at a crisis in our history. Whether
that crisis is to abound in acute moments which will
largely wreck us, or wjiether we are going to he ■*rVISe
enough to make the necessary political and soo', ad-
INTRODUCTION
5
justments — that is the crucial question which faces
America to-day.
Representative government has failed. It has failed
because it was not a method hy which men could govern
themselves. Direct government is now heing proposed.
But direct government wiU never succeed if (1) it is
operated from within the party organization as at pres¬
ent, or (2) if it consists merely in counting aU the votes
in all the baUot-hoxes. Bedlot-box democracy is what
this hook is written to oppose.
No government wiU be successful, no government wül
endure, which does not rest on the individual, and no
government has yet foimd the individued. Up to the
present moment we have never seen the individual.
Yet the search for him has been the whole long striv¬
ing of our Anglo-Saxon history. We sought him through
the method of representation and failed to find him.
We sought to reach him by extending the suffrage to
every man and then to every woman and yet he eludes
us. Direct government now seeks the individual; hut
as we have not found him by sending more men to the
hedlot-box, so we shall not find him hy sending men
more often to the bedlot-hox. Are our constitutional
conventions to sit and .congratulate themselves on their
progressive ideas while they are condemning us to a
new form of om old particularism P The baUot-hoxI
How completely that has failed men, how completely
it will fail women. Direct government as at present
generedly understood is a mere phantom of democracy.
Democracy is not a sum in addition. Democracy is not
brute numbers; it is a genuine imion of true individuals.
The question before the American people to-day is —
How is that genuine union to he attained, how is the
true individual to he discovered The party has always
ignored him; it wants merely a crowd, a preponderance
6
INTRODUCTION
of votes. The early reform associations had the same
aim. Both wanted voters not men. It makes little
difference whether we follow the boss or follow the good
government associations, this is edi herd life — "follow¬
ing the lead" — democracy means a wholly different
kind of existence. To follow means to murder the indi¬
vidual, means to kill the only force in the world which
c£m make the Perfect Society — democracy depends upon
the creative power of every man.
We find the true man only through group organiza¬
tion. The potentialities of the individual remtdn poten¬
tialities until they are released by group life. Man
discovers his true natme, gains his true freedom only
through the group. Group orgEuiization 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.
But who is the individual we have been seeking, who
is the individual we are to find within the group? Cer¬
tainly not the particularist individual. Every man to
count as one? That was once our slogan. Now we
have relegated it to a mechanical age. To-day we see
that every man must count for infinitely more than one
because he is not part of a whole, a cog in a machine, not
even an organ in an organism, but from one point of view
the whole itself. A man said to me the other day, " That
is not democracy, that is mysticism." But why mysti¬
cism? It is our daily life as lived from hour to hour.
We join with one group of men at work, with another
at play, another in our civic committee, another in our
art club. Man's life is one of manifold relatings. His
vote at the poUs must express not his particularist self,
but the whole complex of his related life, must express
as much of the whole as these multiple relations have
brought into existence for him, through him. I find
INTRODUCTION
7
my expression of the whole-idea, the whole-will, through
my group life. The group must always dictate the
modes of activity for the individual. We must put
clearly before us the true individual with his infinite
relations, expressing his infinite relations, as the centre
of politics, as the meaning of democracy. The first pur¬
pose of genuine politics is to make the vote of every man
express the All at his special coign of outlook. In every
man is the potentiality of such expression. To call it
forth is the aim of all training, the end sought by all
modes of real living.
Thus group organization releases us from the domina¬
tion of mere numbers. Thus democracy transcends
time and space, it can never be understood except as a
spiritual force. Majority rule rests on numbers; de¬
mocracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that
society is neither a collection of units nor an organism
but a network of human relations. Democracy is not
worked put at the polling-booths; it is the bringing
forth of a genuine collective wül, one to which every
single being must contribute the whole of his complex
life, as one which every single being must express the
whole of at one point. Thus the essence of democracy
is creating. The technique of democracy is group or¬
ganization. Many men despise politics because they see
that politics manipulate, but make nothing. If politics
are to he the highest activity of man, as they should be,
they must he clearly understood as creative.
What is there inherent in the group which gives it
creative power? The activity which produces the true
individual is at the same time interweaving him and
others into a real whole. A genuine whole has creative
force. Does this seem "mystical?" The power of our
corporations depends upon this capability of men to
interknit themselves into such genuine relations that
8
INTRODUCTION
a new personality is thereby evolved. This is the "real
personality" of modem legal theory. Are our company
directors and corporation lawyers usually mystics?
The seeing of self as, with all other selves, creating,
demands a new attitude and a new activity in man.
The fallacy of self-and-others fades away and there
is only self-in-and-through-others, only others so firmly
rooted in the self and so fruitfully growing there that
sundering is impossible. We must now enter upon modes
of living commensurate with this thought.
What American politics need to-day is positive prin¬
ciples. We do not want to "regulate" our trusts, to
"restrain" our bosses. The measure of our progress is
never what we give up, but what we add. It may be
necessary to prime the garden, but we do not make a
pile of the dead branches and take our guests to see
them as evidence of the flourishing state of the garden.
The group organization movement means the sub¬
stitution of intention for accident, of organized purpose
for scattered desire. It rests on the solid assumption
that this is a man-made not a machine-made world, that
men and women are capable of constmcting their own
life, and that not upon socialism or any rule or any
order or any pleui or any utopia can we rest our hearts,
but only on the force of a united and creative citizenship.
We are asking for group organization in order to leap
at once from the region of theory, of which Americans
are so fond, to a practical scheme of living. We hear a
good deal of academic talk eübout "the functioning of
the social mind"; what does it aU amount to? We
have no social mind yet, so we have no functioning of
the social mind. We want the directive force of con¬
sciously integrated thought and will. All our ideas of
conscious self-determination lead us to a new method:
it is not merely that we must be allowed to govern our-
INTRODUCTION
9
selves, we must leam how to govern ourselves; it is not
only that we must he given "free speech," we must
leam a speech that is free; we are not given rights, we
create rights; it is not only that we must invent ma¬
chinery to get a social wiU expressed, we must invent
machinery that wiU get a social wiU created.
Pohtics have one task only — to create. To create ?
But what are politics to create? The state? The state
is now discredited in many quarters. The extremists
cry, "The state is dead, Down with the state." And it
is by no means the extremists alone who are saying that
our present state has played us false and that therefore
we are justified in abolishing it. An increasing number
of men are thinking what one writer has put into words,
" We have passed from the regime of the state to that of
the groups." We must see if it is necessary to abolish
the state in order to get the advantage of the group.
Meuiy trickles have gone to feed the stream of reaction
against the state: (I) em economic and industrial prog¬
ress which dememds politiced recognition, which de¬
mands that leibor have a sheu-e in political power, (2) the
trend of philosophic thought towards plmalism and the
whole anti-intellectualistic tendency, (3) a progressive
legal theory of the "real personeJity" of groups, (4) a
growing emtagonism to the state because it is supposed
to embody the crowd mind: our electorate is seen as a
crowd hypnotized by the party leaders, big words,
vague ideas and loose generalizations, (5) our fife of
rapidly increasing intercourse has made us see our volun¬
tary associations as real and intimate, the state as some¬
thing remote and foreign to us, and (6) the increasing
alignment before the war of interests across state lines.
Every one of these reasons has force. Almost any
one of these reasons is sufficient to tmn political theory
into new chemnels, seeking new cmrents of poUtical life.
10
INTRODUCTION
Yet if our present state is tiiken from us and we are left
with our multiple group life, we are at once confronted
with many questions. Shall the new state be based
on occupational groups or neighborhood groups P Shall
they form a unifying or a plural state Shall the group
or the individuad be the basis of pohtics? The pluralist
gives us the group as the unit of politics, but most of
the group theories of politics are as entirely particularistic
as the old "individuadistic" theories; our paulicularism
is merely tramsferred from the individuad to the group.
Pluralism is the most vital trend in political thought
to-day, but there au*e mamy dangers lurking in pluralism
as at present understood. The pluradists apotheosize
the group; the average Americam, on the other hand, is
aifraid of the group because he thinks of it chiefly in the
form of corporation and trust. Both make the same
mistake: both isolate the group. The group in relation
must be the object of our study if that study is to be
fruitful for politics. The pluradists have pointed out
diversity but no pluralist has yet answered satisfac¬
torily the question to which we must find am answer —
What is to be done with this diversity.'*
Some of the pluralista tend to lose the individual in
the group; others, to abandon the state for the group.
But the individuad, the group, the state — they are adi
there to be reckoned with — we cannot ignore or mini¬
mize any one. The relation of individual to group,
of group to group, of individual and group to state —
the part that labor is to have in the new state — these
au"e the questions to the consideration of which this book
is directed.
This book maikes no attempt, however, to construct
the new state, only to offer certain suggestions. But
before the details of a new order are even hinted at, we
must look fau" enough within for our practicad sugges-
INTRODUCTION
11
f
tions to have value. In Part I we shall try to find the
fundamental principles which must underlie the new
state; in Part II we shall see how far they are expressed
in present political forms; in Part III we shall consider
how they can be expressed. When they are fully ex¬
pressed, then we shall have the true Federal State, then
we shall see appearing the World State.
To sum up this Introduction: The immediate prob¬
lem of political science is to discover the method of self-
government. Industrial democracy, the self-government
of smaller nations, the "sovereignty" of an International
League, our own politiccd power, — how are these to
be attained.'^ Not by being "granted" or "conferred."
Genuine control, power, authority are always a growth.
Self-government is a psychological process. It is with
that psychological process that this book is largely
concerned. To free the way for that process is the task
of practical politics.
New surges of life are poimding at circumference and
centre; we must open the way for their entrance and
onflow. To-day the individual is submerged, smothered,
choked by the crowd fallacy, the herd theory. Free him
from these, release his energies, and he with all other
Freemen will work out quick, flexible, constantly chang¬
ing forms which shall respond sensitively to every need.
Under our present system, social and economic chemges
necessary because of changing social euid economic con¬
ditions cannot be brought about. The first reform
needed in our political practice is to find some method
by which the government shall continuously represent
the people. No state can endure unless the political
bond is being forever forged anew. The organization of
men in small local groups gives opportimity for this
continuous political activity which ceaselessly creates
the state. Our government forms cannot be fossils from
12
INTRODUCTION
a dead age, but must be sensitive, mobile channels for
the quick and quickening soul of the individual to flow
to those larger confluences which finally bring forth the
state. Thus every man is the state at every moment,
whether in daily toil or social intercourse, and thus the
state itself, leading a myriad-membered life, is express¬
ing itself as truly in its humblest citizen as in its supreme
assembly.
The principle of modem politics, the principle of crea¬
tive citizenship, must predominantly smd preëminently
body itself and be acknowledged by every human being.
Then will "practical politics" be for the first time
practical.
A few words of explanation seem necessary. I have
no bibliography simply because any list of references
which I could give would necessarily be a partied one
since much of this book has come by wireless. Besides
all that is being written definitely of a new state, the air
to-day is full of the tentative, the partial, the fragmentary
thought, the isolated flash of insight from some genius,
all of which is being turned to the solution of those prob¬
lems which, from our waking to our sleeping, face us
with their urgent demand. I am here trying to show
the need of a wide and systematic study of these problems,
not pretending to be able to solve them. Much inter¬
weaving of thought will be necessary before the form of
the new state appears to us.
Moreover, I have not traced the strands of thought
which have led us to our present ideas. That does not
mean that I do not recognize the slow building up of
these ideas or aU our indebtedness to the thinkers of
the past. I speak of principles as "new" which we all
know were familiar to Aristotle or Kant and are new
to-day only in their application.
INTRODUCTION
13
The word new is so much used in the present day
— New Freedom, New Democracy, New Society etc.
— that it is perhaps well for us to remind om-selves what
we mean by this word. We are using the word new partly
in reaction to the selfishness of the nineteenth century,
in reaction to a world which has culminated in this
war, but more especially in the sense of the Kve, the
real, in contrast to the inert, the dead. It is not a time
distinction — the "new" (the vital) claims fellowship
with edl that is "new" (vital) in the past. When we
speak of the "New" Freedom we mean all the reality
and truth which have accumulated in all the concep¬
tions of freedom up to the present moment. The " New "
Society is the "Perféct Society." The "New" Life
is the Vita Nuova, "when spring came to the heart of
Italy."
It is I hope unnecessary to explain that in my frequent
use of the term "the new psychology," I am not referring
to any definitely formulated body of thought; there
are no writers who are expoxmding the new psychology
as such. By the "new psychology" I mean something
now in the making : I mean partly that group psychol¬
ogy which is receiving more attention and gaining more
influence every day, and partly I mean simply that feel¬
ing out for a new conception of modes of association
which we see in law, economics, ethics, politics, and
indeed in every department of thought. It is a short
way of saying that we are now looking at things not as
entities but in relation. When our modern jurists
speak of the growing emphasis upon relation rather
than upon contract — they are speaking of the "new
psychology."
There is, however, another and very important aspect
of contemporary psychology closely connected with
this one of relation. We are to-day seeking to under-
14
INTRODUCTION
stand the sources of human motives/ and then to free
their channels so that these elemental springs of human
activity (the fimdamental instincts of man) shaU not
be dammed but flow forth in normal fashion, for normal
man is constructive. A few years ago, for instance, we
were satisfied merely to condemn sabotage and re¬
pudiation of law; now we are trying to discover the
cause of this deviation from the normal in order to see
if it can be removed. This necessity for the under¬
standing of the natme and vital needs of men has not
yet reached full self-consciousness, but appears in diverse
forms: as the investigation of the I. W. W., as a study
of "Human Nature in Politics," an examination of "The
Great Society," as child-study, as Y. M. C. A. efforts
to nourish all sides of men at the front, etc. etc. To-day
the new psychology speaks in many voices. Soon we
may hope for some unified formulation of all this varied
and scattered utterance. Soon we may hope also that
the connection will be made between this aspect of con¬
temporary psychology and the group psychology upon
which this book is mainly founded.^
I wish to add my reason for giving quotations from
many writers whose names I have not cited. This
has been chiefly because often the sentence or phrase
quoted taken away from all context does not give a fair
idea of the writer's complete thought, and I have used
it not in an attempt to refute these writers, but merely
as illustrating certain tendencies to which we are all
more or less subject at present. Many of the writers
with whom I have disagreed in some particular have
been in the main my teachers and guides.
A certain amount of repetition has seemed necessary
in order, to look at the same idea from a number of angles
and to make different applications of the same principle.
^ See WilKam McDougall, Social Psychology.
INTRODUCTION
15
From a few friends I have received much help. My
thanks are especially due to my teacher and counsellor
of many years, Miss Anna Boynton Thompson, who
went over the first copy of the manuscript with me and
gave to it the most careful consideration and criticism,
offering constantly invaluable suggestion and advice;
to her unflagging and most generous help the final form
owes more than I can quite express. The inception of
the book is due to my friends and feUow-workers, Mrs.
Louis Brandeis, Mrs. Richard Cabot and Mr. Arthur
Woodworth, as also much of its thought to the stimulus
of "group" discussion with them. Mrs. Charles W.
Mixter, Professor Albert BushneU Hart, Professor H. A.
Overstreet, Professor W. Ernest Hocking and Mr. Roscoe
Pound have read the manuscript in full or in part and
have given me many valuable suggestions. I owe to
my friend. Miss Isohel L. Briggs, daily help, advice and
encomagement in the development of the book, and the
revision of manuscript and proofs.
21 have also taken it for granted that the new psychology " would be
generally understood to include some of the interpretations of the results
of recent biological research given by behaviorists and Freudian
psychologists.
Part I
THE GROUP PRINCIPLE
I
THE GROUP AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
POLITICS must have a technique hased on an
imderstanding of the laws of association, that
is, hased on a new and progressive social psy¬
chology. Politics alone should not escape all the modern
tendency of scientific method, of analysis, of efi&ciency
engineering. The study of democracy has been based
largely on the study of institutions; it should be based
on the study of how men behave together. We have to
deal, not with institutions, or any mechanical thing, or
with abstract ideas, or "man," or anything but just
men, ordinary men. The importance of the new psy¬
chology is that it acknowledges man as the centre and
shaper of his imiverse. In his nature all institutions are
latent and perforce must he adapted to this nature.
Man not things must be the starting point of the future.
But man in association, for no man lives to himself.
And we must understand further that the laws of asso¬
ciation are the laws of the group. We have long been
trying to understand the relation of the individual to
society; we are only just beginning to see that there
is no "individual," that there is no "society." It is
not strange, therefore, that our efforts have gone sistray,
that our thinking yields smaU returns for politics. The
old psychology was based on the isolated individual as
the unit, on the assumption that a man thinks, feels and
judges independently. Now that we know that there
is no such thing as a. separate ego, that individuals are
created by reciprocal interplay, our whole study of
psychology is being transformed.
19
20
THE NEW STATE
Likewise there is no "society" thought of vaguely as
the mass of people we see aroimd us. I eun always in
relation not to "society" but to some concrete group.
When do we ever as a matter of fact think of "society" P
Are we not always thinking of our psul. in our board of
directors or college faculty, in the dinner party last
night,^ in our football team, our club, our political party,
our trade-union, oxur church? Practically "society" is
for every one of us a number of groups. The recogni¬
tion of this constitutes a new step in sociology analogous
to the contribution William James made in regard to
the individual. James brought to popular recognition
the truth that since man is a complex of experiences
there are many selves in each one. So society as a com¬
plex of groups includes many social minds. The craving
we have for union is satisfled by group life, groups and
groups, groups ever widening, ever unifying, but always
groups. We sometimes say that man is spiritually de¬
pendent upon society; what we are referring to is his
psychic relation to his groups. The vital relation of the
individual to the world is through his groups; they are
the potent factors in shaping our bves.
Hence social psychology cannot be the application
of the old individual psychology to a number of people.
A few years ago I.went to a lecture on "Social Psy-
cology," as the subject weis Eumounced. Not a word
WEIS said except on the nervous systems and other aspects
of individual psychology, but at the last moment the
lecturer told us that had there been time he would have
applied what he had SEiid to socied conditions! It re¬
minded me of our old acquaintance Silas Wegg who,
when he wemted to know something about Chinese meta¬
physics, first looked up China in the encyclopedia smd
^ Probably by no means a group, but tending in some instances in that
direction, as in the discussion or conference dinners now so conunon.
THE GROUP AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 21
then metaphysics and put them together. The new
psychology must take people with their inheritance,
their "tendencies," their environment, and then focus
its attention on their interrelatings. The most careful
laboratory work must be done to discover the conditions
which make these interrelatings possible, which make
these interrelatings fruitful.
Some writers make "socially minded" tendencies on
the part of individuals the subject of social psychology,
but such tendencies belong still to the field of individual
psychology. A social action is not an individual initia¬
tive with social apphcation.' Neither is social psychology
the determination of how far social factors determine
the individual consciousness. Social psychology must
concern itself primarily with the interaction of minds.
Early psychology was based on the study of the indi¬
vidual; early sociology was based on the study of society.
But there is no such thing as the "individual," there is
no such thing as "society"; there is only the group emd
the group-unit — the social individual. Social psy¬
chology must begin with an intensive study of the group,
of the selective processes which go on within it, the
differentiated reactions, the hkenesses and unhkenesses,
and the spiritual energy which unites them.
The acceptance and the living of the new psychology
will do away with all the progeny of particularistic psy¬
chology: consent of the governed, majority rule, external
leadership, industrial weu-s, national wars etc. From
the analysis of the group must come an understanding of
collective thought and collective feeling, of the common
will and concerted activity, of the true nature of free-
^ The old definition of the word social has been a tremendous drag
on politics. Social policies are not policies for the good of the people but
policies created by the people, etc. etc. We read in the work of a conti¬
nental sociologist, "When a social will is bom in the brain of a man," but
a social will never is bom in the brain of a man.
22
THE NEW STATE
dorn, the illusion of self-and-olhers, the essential unity
of men, the real meaning of patriotism, and the whole
secret of progress and of life as a genuine interpénétra¬
tion which produces true community.
All thinking men are demanding a new state. The
question is — What form shall that state take No one
of us will be able to give an answer until we have studied
men in association and have discovered the laws of
association. This has not been done yet, but already
we can see that a political science which is not based on
a knowledge of the laws of association gained by a study
of the group will soon seem the crudest kind of quackery.
Syndicalism, in reaction to the so-called "metaphysical"
foundation of pohtics, is based on "objective rights," on
function, on its conception of modes of association which
shall emphasize the object of the associated and not the
relation of the associated to one another. The new psy¬
chology goes a step further and sees these as one, but
how can any of these things be discussed abstractly
Must we not first study men in association.® Young
men in the hum of actual life, practical politicians, the
members of constitutional conventions, labor leaders —
all these must base their work on the principles of group
psychology.
The fundamental reason for the study of group psy¬
chology is that no one can give us democracy, we must
learn democracy. To be a democrat is not to decide on
a certain form of hiunan association, it is to leam how
to live with other men. The whole labor movement is
being kept back by people not knowing how to five to¬
gether much more than by any deliberate refusal to
■grant justice. The trouble with syndicalism is that its
success depends on group action and we know almost
nothing of the laws of the group.
I have used group in this book with the meaning of ,
THE GROUP AND THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY 23
men associating under the law of interpénétration as
opposed to the law of the crowd—suggestion and imi¬
tation. This may be considered an arbitrary definition,
but of course I do not care about the names, I only want
to emphasize the fa.ct that men meet under two different
sets of laws. Social psychology may include both group*
psychology and crowd psychology, but of these two
group psychology is much the more important. For a
good many years now we have been dominated by the
crowd school, by the school which taught that people
met together are governed by suggestion and imitation,
and less notice has been taken of all the interplay which
is the real social process that we have in a group but not
in a crowd. How men behave in crowds, and the rela¬
tion of the crowd conception of pohtics to democracy,
will be considered in later chapters. While I recognize
that men are more often at present under the laws of
the crowd than of the group, I believe that progress
depends on the group, and, therefore, that the group
should be the basis of a progressive social psychology.
The group process contains the secret of collective hfe,
it is the key to democracy, it is the master lesson for
every individual to learn, it is our chief hope for the
pohtical, the social, the international Ufe of the future.^
^ This is essentially the process by which sovereignty is created. There¬
fore chapters II-VI on The Group Process are the basis of the conception
of sovereignty given in Part III and of the relation of that conception
to the politics of reconstruction.
II
THE GROUP PROCESS: THE COLLECTIVE IDEA
Let us begin at once to consider the group process.
Perhaps the most familiar example of the evolving
^ of a group idea is a committee meeting. The
object of a committee meeting is first of all to create
a common idea. I do not go to a committee meeting
merely to give my own ideas. If that were aU, I might
write my fellow-members a letter. But neither do I go
to leam other people's ideas. If that were all, I might
ask each to write me a letter. I go to a committee
meeting in order that all together we may create a
group idea, an idea which wiU be better than any one
of our ideas alone, moreover which wiU be better than
aU of our ideas added together. For this group idea
wiU not be produced by any process of addition, but
by the interpénétration of us aU. This subtle psychic
process by which the resulting idea shapes itself is the
process we want to study.
Let us imagine that you, I, A, B and C are in con¬
ference. Now what from our observation of groups will
take place P WiU you say something, and then I add a
little something, and then A, and B, and C, until we
have together built up, brick-wise, an idea, constructed
some plan of action ? Never. A has one idea, B another,
C's idea is something different from either, and so on,
but we cannot add all these ideas to find the group idea.
They wiU not add any more than apples and chairs wiU
add. But we gradue^y find that our problem can be
24
THE COLLECTIVE IDEA
25
solved, not indeed by mechEuiical aggregation, but by
the subtle process of the intermingling of all the dif¬
ferent ideas of the group. A says something. There¬
upon a thought arises in B's mind. Is it B's idea or
A.'s? Neither. It is a minghng of the two. We find
that A's idea, after having been presented to B and re¬
turned to A, has become shghtly, or largely, different
from what it was originally. In hke manner it is affected
by C and so on. But in the same way B's idea heis been
affected by sdl the others, and not only does A's idea feel
the modifying influence of each of the others, but A's
ideas are Etffected by B's relation to all the others, and
A's plus B's are affected by all the others individually
and collectively, and so on and on imtil the common
idea springs into being.
We find in the end that it is not a question of my
idea being supplemented by yours, but that there has
been evolved a composite idea. But by the time we have
reached this point we have become tremendously civil¬
ized people, for we have learned one of the most impor¬
tant lessons of life: we have learned to do that most
wonderful thing, to say "I" representing a whole instead
of "I" representing one of our sepeirate selves. The
course of action decided upon is what we all together
want, and I see that it is better than what I had wanted
alone. It is what I now want. We have all experienced
this at committee meetings or conferences.
We see therefore that we cannot view the content
of the collective mind as a hohday procession, one part
after another passing before our mental eyes; every part
is bound up with every other part, every tendency is
conditioned by every other tendency. It is hke a game
of tennis. A serves the ball to B. B returns the serve
but his play is influenced as largely by the way the ball
heis been served to hhn as it is by his own method of
26
THE NEW STATE
return. A senos the ball hack to B, hut his return is
made up of his own play plus the way in which the
ball has been played to him by B plus his own original
serve. Thus in the end does action and reaction become
inextricably bound up together.
I have described briefly the group process. Let us
consider what is required of the individual in order that
the group idea shall he produced. First and foremost
each is to do his part. But just here we have to get rid
of some rather antiquated notions. The individual is
not to facihtate agreement by courteously (!) waiving
his own point of view. That is just a way of shirking.
Nor may I say, "Others are able to plan this better than
I." Such an attitude is the result either of leiziness or
of a misconception. There are probably many present
at the conference who could make wiser plans than I
alone, but that is not the point, we have come together
each to give something. I must not subordinate myself,
I must aflirm myseK and give my full positive value to
that meeting.
And as the psychic coherence of the group can be
obtained only by the full contribution of every member,,
so we see that a readiness to compromise must be no
part of the individual's attitude. Just so far as people
think that the basis of working together is compromise
or concession, just so far they do not understand the
first principles of working together. Such people think
that when they have reached an appreciation of the
necessity of compromise they have reached a high plane
of social development; they conceive themselves as
nobly willing to sacrifice part of their desire, part of
their idea, part of their will, in order to secure the un¬
doubted benefit of concerted action. But compromise
is still on the same plane as fighting. War will continue
— between capiteJ emd.labor, between nation and na-
THE COLLECTIVE IDEA 27
tion —until we relinquish the ideas of compromise arid
concession.^
But at the same time that we offer fully what we have
to give, we must be eager for what all others have to
give. If I ought not to go to my group feeling that I
must give up nay own ideas in order to accept the opinions
of others, neither ought I to go to force my ideas
upon others. The "harmony" that comes from the
domination of one man is not the kind we want. At a
board of directors' meeting once Mr. E. H. Haniman
said, "Gentlemen, we must have cooperation. I insist
upon it." They "cooperated" and all his motions were
put through. At the end of the meeting some one asked
Mr. Harriman to define cooperation. "Oh, that's sim¬
ple," he said, "do as I say and do it damned quick."
There are many people who conscientiously go to their
group thinking it their duty to impose their ideas upon
others, but the time is coming soon when we are going
to see that we have no more right to get om* own way
by persuading people than by bullying or bribing them.
To take om fuU share in the synthesis is all that is
legitimate.^
Thus the majority idea is not the group idea. Sup¬
pose I belong to a committee composed of five: of
A, B, C, D and myself. According to the old theory of
my duties as a committee member I might say, "A
^ This is the heart of the latest ethical teaching based on the most
progressive psychology: between two apparently conflicting courses of
action, a and 6, a is not to be followed and h suppressed, nor h followed
and a suppressed, nor must a compromise between the two be sought,
but the process must always be one of integration. Our progress is meas¬
ured by our ability to proceed from integration to integration.
2 This statement may be misunderstood unless there is borne in mind
at the same time: (1) the necessity for the keenest individual thinking
as the basis of group thinking, and (2) that every man should maintain
his point of view until it has found its place in the group thought, that is,
until he has been neither overruled nor absorbed but integrated.
28
THE NEW SlAíi:
agrees with me, if I can get B to agree with me that
will make a majority and I can carry my point." That
is, we five can then present this idea to the world as our
group idea. But this is not a group idea, although it
may be the best substitute we can get for the moment.
To a genuine group idea every man must contribute
what is in him to contribute. Thus even the passing
of a unanimous vote by a group of five does not prove
the existence of a group idea if two or three (or even one)
out of indifférence or laziness or prejudice, or shut-upness,
or a misconception of their function, have not added
their individual thought to the creation of the group
thought. No member of a group which is to create can
be passive. All must be active and constructively active.
It is not, however, to be constructively active merely
to add a share: it must be a share which is related to and
bound up with every other share. And it must be given
in such a way that it fits in with what others are giving.
Some one said to me the other day, "Don't you think
Mr. X talks better than anyone else in Boston.^" Well
the fact is that Mr. X talks so well that I can never talk
with him. Everything he says has such a ring of final¬
ity, is such a rounding up of the whole question, that it
leaves nothing more to be said on the subject. This is
particularly the kind of thing to be avoided in a com¬
mittee meeting or conference.
There are many people, moreover, who want to score,
to be brilliant, rather than to find agreement. Others
come prepared with what they are going to say and
either this has often been said long before they get a
chance to speak, or, in any case, it allows no give-and-
take, so they contribute nothing; when we really leam
the process our ideas wfil be struck out by the interplay.
To compare notes on what we have thought separately
is not to think together.
THE COLLECTIVE IDEA 29
I asked a man once to join a committee I was organiz¬
ing and he replied that he would he very glad to come
and give his advice. I didn't wemt him — and didn't
have him. I asked another man and he said he would
like very much to come and leam hut that he couldn't
contribute anything. I didn't have him either — I
hadn't a school. Probably the last man thought he
wa? being modest and, therefore, estimable. But what
I wanted was to get a group of people who would de¬
liberately work out a thing together. I should have
liked very much to have the man who felt that he had
advice to give if he had had also what we are now learn¬
ing to call the social attitude; that is, that bf a man
willing to take his place in the group, no less and no
more. This definition of social attitude is very différ¬
ent from om old one — the willingness to give; my
friend who wanted to come and give advice had that,
but that is a crude position compared with the one we
are now advocating.
It is clear then that we do not go to our group —
trade-union, city council, college faculty — to be passive
and leeurn, and we do not go to push through something
we have already decided we want. Each must discover
and contribute that which distinguishes him from others,
his difference. The only use for my difference is to join
it with other differences. The imifying of opposites is
the eternal process.* We must have an imagination
which will leap from the particular to the universal.
Our joy, our satisfaction, must always be in the more
inclusive aspect of our problem.
We can test our group in this way: do we come
together to register the results of individual thought,
^ We must not of course confuse the type of unifying spoken of here
(an integration), which is a psychological process, with the "reconcilia¬
tion of opposites," which is a logical process.
30
THE NEW STATE
to compare the results of individual thought in order to
make selections therefrom, or do we come together to
create a common idea? Whenever we have a reed group
something new is actuedly created. We can now see
therefore that the object of group life is not to find the
best individual thought, but the collective thought. A
committee meeting isn't like a prize show edmed at
calling out the best each can possibly produce and then
the prize (the vote) awarded to the best of all these
individual opinions. The object of a conference is not
to get at a lot of different ideas, as is often thought, hut
just the opposite — to get at one idea. There is noth¬
ing rigid or fixed about thoughts, they are entirely plas¬
tic, and ready to yield themselves completely to their
master — the group spirit.^
I have given some of the conditions necessary for
collective thinking. In every governing board — city
councils, hospited and hbreu-y trustees, the boards of
colleges and churches, in business and industry, in di¬
rectors' meetings — no device should be neglected which
wiU help to produce joint rather than individual think¬
ing. But no one has yet given us a scientific analysis of
the conditions necessary or how to fulfil them. We
do not yet know, for instance, the best number to bring
out the group idea, the number, that is, which wül bring
out as many differences as possible and yet form a whole
or group. We cannot guess at it but only get it through
scientific experiments. Much laboratory work has to*
be done. The numbers on Boards of ' Education, on
Governors' Commissions, should be determined by psy¬
chological as well as by political reasons.
Again it is said that private sessions are undemocratic.
1 I am sometimes told that mine is a counsel of perfection only to
be realized in the millenium, but we cannot take even the first step until
we have chosen our path.
THE COLLECTIVE IDEA 31
If they contribute to true collective thinking (instead of
efforts to dazzle the gallery), then, in so far, they are
democratic, for there is nothing in the world so demo¬
cratic as the production of a genuine group will.
Mr. Gladstone must have appreciated the necessity
of meddng conditions favorable to joint thinking, for I
have been told that at important meetings of the Cabi¬
net he planned beforehand where each member should
sit.
The members of a group are reciprocally conditioning
forces none of which acts as it would act if any one
member were different or absent. You can often see
this in a board of directors: if one director leaves the
room, every man becomes slightly different.
When the conditions for collective thinking are more
or less fulfilled, then the expansion of life will begin.
Through my group I leam the secret of wholeness.^ The
inspiration of the group is proportionate to the degree
in which we do actually identify omselves with the
whole and think that we are doing this, not Mr. A and
Mr. B and I, but we, the united we, the singular not the
plural pronoun we. (We shall have to write a new
grammar to meet the needs of the times, as non-Eucli¬
dean geometries are now being published.) Then we
shall no longer have a feeling of individual triumph, but
feel only elation that the group has accomplished some¬
thing. Much of the evü of our political and social life
comes from the fact that we crave personal recognition
and personal satisfaction; as soon as our greatest satis¬
faction is group satisfaction, many of our present prob¬
lems win disappear. When one thinks of one's self as
part of a group, it means keener moral perceptions,
^ The break in the English Cabinet in 1915, which led to the coalition
Cabinet, came when both Kitchener and Churchill tried to substitute
individual for group action.
32
THE NEW STATE
greater strength of -will, more enthusiasm and zest in
life. We shall enjoy living the social life when we imder-
stand it; the things which we do and achieve together
will give us much greater happiness than the things we
do and achieve by ourselves. It has been asked what,
in peace, is going to take the place of those songs men
sing as they march to battle which at the same time
thrill and unite them. The songs which the hearts of
men will sing as they go forward in life with one desire
— the song of the common will, the socieJ will of man.
Men descend to meet? This is not my experience.
The' laissez-aller which people allow themselves when
alone disappears when they meet. Then they pull them¬
selves together and give one another of their best. We
see this again and again. Sometimes the ideal of the
group stands quite visibly before us as one which none
of us is quite living up to by himseK. We feel it there,
an impalpable, substantial thing in our midst. It raises
us to the n**" power of action, it fires our minds and glows
in our heEurts and fulfils emd actuates itself no less, but
rather on this very accoimt, because it has been gener¬
ated only by our being together.
III
THE GROUP PROCESS: THE COLLECTIVE IDEA
(continued)
WHAT then is the essence of the group process
by which eire evolved the collective thought
and the collective wiU? It is an acting iind
reacting, a single and identical process which brings out
differences and integrates them into a unity. The com¬
plex reciprocal action, the intricate interweavings of the
members of the group, is the social process.
We see now that the process of the many becoming
one is not a metaphysical or mystical idea ; psychological
analysis shows us how we can at the same moment he
the self and the other, it shows how we can be forever
apart and forever united. It is by the group process
that the transfiguration of the external into the spiri¬
tual takes place, that is, that what seems a series he-
comes a whole. The essence of society is diiference,
related difference. "Give me your difference" is the
cry of society to-day to every man.'
But the older sociology made the social mind the con¬
sciousness of likeness. This hkeness was accounted for
by two theories chiefly: the imitation theory and the
Uke-response-to-like-stimuli theory. It is necessary to
consider these briefly, for they have been gnawing at
the roots of all our pohtical life.
To say that the social process is that merely of the
spread of similarities is to ignore the real nature of the
collective thought, the collective will. Individual ideas
* Free speech is not an "individual" right; society needs every man's
difference.
33
34
THE NEW STATE
do not become social ideas when communicated. The
difference between them is one of kind. A collective
thought is one evolved by a collective process. The essen¬
tial feature of a common thought is not that it is held
in common hut that it has been produced in common.
Likewise if every member of a group has the same
thought, that is not a group idea: when all respond
simultaneously to the same stimulus, it cannot he as¬
sumed that this is in obedience to a collective will,
When all the men in a street run round the corner to
see a procession, it is not because they.,are moved by a
collective thought.
Imitation indeed has a place in the collective hfe, it
is one of the various means of coadaptation between
men, but it is only a part and a part which has been
fatally overemphasized.^ It is one of the fruits of par¬
ticularism. "Iruitation" has been made the bridge to
span the gap between the individued and society, but
we see now that there is no gap, therefore no bridge is
necessary.
The core of the social process is not likeness, but the
harmonizing of difference through interpénétration.^
But to be more accurate, similarity and' difference can
not be opposed in this external way — they have a vital
connection. Similarities and differences make up the
differentiated reactions of the group; that is what con-
1 It has been overemphasized in two ways: first, many of the writers
on imitation ignore the fact that the other law of association, that of
interpenetrating, is also in operation in our social life, as well as the fact
that it has always been the fundamental law of existence; se(X)ndly, they
speak as if it were necessary for human beings to be under the law of
imitation, not that it is merely a stage in our development.
2 This is the alpha and omega of philosophical teaching: Heraclitus
said, "Nature desires eagerly opposites and out of them [it completes
its harmony, not out of similars." And James, twenty-four hundred
years later, has given his testimony that the process of life is to
* * compenétrate. * *
THE COLLECTIVE IDEA 35
stitutes their importance, not their hkeness or unlike-
riess as such. I react to a stimulus: that reaction may
represent a likeness or an unhkeness. Society is the
xmity of these differentiated reactions. In other words
the process is not that merely of accepting or rejecting,
it is bound up in the interknitting. In that continuous
coordinating which constitutes the social process both
similarity and difference have a place. Unity is brought
about by the reciprocal adaptings of the reactions of
individuals, and this reciprocal adapting is based on
both agreement and difference.
To push OOT analysis a httle further, we must distin¬
guish between the given similarity and the achieved
similarity. The common at any moment is always the
given: it has come from heredity, biological influences,
suggestion and imitation, and the previous workings of
the law of interpénétration. All the accumulated effect
of these is seen in om habits of thinking, our modes of
living. But we cannot rest in the common. The surge
of hfe sweeps through the given similarity, the common
ground, and breeiks it up into a thousand differences.
This tumultuous, irresistible flow of life is our existence:
the unity, the common, is but for an instant, it flows on
to new differings which adjust themselves anew in fuller,
more varied, richer synthesis. The momènt when simi¬
larity achieves itself as a composite of working, seething
forces, it throws out its myriad new differings. The tor¬
rent flows into a pool, works, ferments, and then rushes
forth until aU is again gathered into the new pool of its
own unifying.
This is the process of evolution. Social progress is to
be sure coadapting, but coadapting means always that
the fresh unity becomes the pole of a fresh difference
leading to again new unities which lead to broader and
broader fields of activity.
36
THE NEW STATE
Thus no one of comse undertakes tö deny the obvious
fact that in order to have a society a certain amount of
similarity must exist. In one sense society rests on like¬
ness: the Mkeness between men is deeper than their
difference. We could not have an enemy unless there
was much in common between us. With my friend all
the aims that we share imite us. In a given society the
members have the same interests, the same ends, in
the main, and seek a common fulfihnent. Differences
are always grounded in an underlying similarity. But
all this kind of "similarity" isn't worth mentioning be¬
cause we have it. The very fact that it is common to us
aU condemns it from the point of view of progress. Prog¬
ress does not depend upon the similarity which we find
but upon the similarity which we achieve.
This view of the social process gives us individual
responsibihty as to the central fact of life because it de¬
mands that we grow our own_ Kke-mindedness. To-day
we me basing all our hopes not on the given likeness
but the created unity. To rest in the given Hkeness
would be to annihilate social progress. The organiza¬
tion of industry and the settlement of international
relations must come under the domination of this law.
The Allies are fighting to-day with one hnpulse, one
desire, one aim, hut at the peace table memy differences
wiU arise between them. The progress of the whole
world at that moment wiU depend upon the "similar¬
ity" we can create. This "similarity" will consist of aU
we now hold in common and also, of the utmost import¬
ance for the continuance of civilization, upoij our ability
to unify our differences. If we go to that peace table with
the idea that the new world is to be based on that com¬
munity of interest and aim which now emimates us, the
disillusion will be great, the result an overwhelming failure.
Let us henceforth, therefore, use the word unifying
THE COLLECTIVE IDEA 37
instead of similarity to represent the basis of associa¬
tion. And let us clearly understand that unifying is a
process involving the continuous activity of every man.
To await "variation-giving" individuals would be to
make hfe a mere chance. We cannot wait for new ideas
to appear among us, we must ourselves produce them.
This makes possible the endless creation of new social
values. The old hke-minded theory is too fortuitous,
too passive and too negative to attract us; creating is
the divine adventure.
Let us imagine a group of people whom we know. If
we find the hfe of that group consisting chiefly of imita¬
tion, we see that it involves no activity of the real self
but crushes and smothers it. Imitation condemns the
human race. Even if up to the present moment imita¬
tion has been a large factor in man's development, from
this moment on such a smothering of aU the forces of
hfe must cease.
If we have, however, among this group "like-re¬
sponse," that is if there spring up like thoughts and
feehngs, we find a more dignified and worthy hfe —
fellowship claims us with all its joys and its enlarge¬
ment of our single self. But there is no progress here.
We give ourselves up to the passive enjoyment of that
already existing. We have fqund our kindred and it
comforts us. How much greater enhancement comes
from that life foreshadowed by the new psychology
where each one is to go forth from his group a richer
being because each one has taken and put into its right
membership ah the vital differences of all the others.
The hke-mindedness which is now to be demanded of us
is the like-mindedness which is brought about by the
enlargement of each by the inflowing of every other one.
Then I go forth a new creature. But to what do I go
forth."* Always to a new group, a new "society." There
38
THE NEW STATE
is no end to this process. A new being springs forth
from every fresh contact. My nature opens and opens
to thousands of new influences. I feel countless new
births. Such is the glory of our common every-day hfe.
Imitation is for the shirkers, hke-mindedness for the
comfort lovers, unifying for the creators.
The lesson of the new psychology is then: Never
settle down within the theory you have chosen, the
cause you have embraced; know that another theory,
another cause exists, and seek that. The enhancement
of hfe is not for the comfort-lover. As soon as you
succeed — real success means something arising to over¬
throw yom security.
In all the discussion of "similarity" too much im¬
portance has been put upon analogies from the animal
world.^ We are told, for instance, and important con¬
clusions are drawn in regard to human society, that the
gregarious instinct of any animal receives satisfaction
only through the presence of animals similar to itself,
and that the closer the similarity the greater the satis¬
faction. True certainly for animals, but it is this fact
which keeps them mere animals. As far as the irrational
elements of hfe give way to the rational, interpénétra¬
tion becomes the law of association. Man's biological
inheritance is not his only hfe. And the progress of man
means that this inheritance shall occupy a less and less
important place relatively.
It has been necessary to consider the similarity theory,
I have said, because it has eaten its way into all our
thought.^ Many people to-day seem to think that prog-
^ Also the group-units of early societies are studied to the exclusion
of group-units within modern complex society.
2 Even some of our most advanced thinking, which repudiates the
like-minded theory and takes pains to prove that imitation is not an
instinct, nevertheless falls into some of the errors implicit in i-he imita¬
tion theory.
THE COLLECTIVE IDEA 39
ress depends upon a number of people aU speaking
loudly together. The other day a woman said to me
that she didn't like the Survey because it has on one page
a letter from a conservative New York hanker and on
another some radical proposed for the reconstruction of
society; she said she preferred a paper which took one
idea emd hammered away on that. This is poor psy¬
chology. It is the same reasoning which makes people
think that certain kindred souls should come together,
and then by a certain intensified thinking and living
together some noble product will emerge for the benefit
of the world. Such association is based on a wrong
principle. However various the reasons given for the
non-success of such experiments as Brook Farm, certain
religious associations, and certain artistic and literary
groups who have tried to five together, the truth is
that most of them have died simply of non-nutrition.
The bond created had not within it the variety which
the human soul needs for its nourishment.
Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain
unity only through variety. Differences must be inte¬
grated, not annihilated, nor absorbed.^ Anarchy means
unorgemized, unrelated difference; coordinated, mfified
difference belongs to om- ideal of a perfect social order.
We don't want to avoid our adversary but to "agree with
him quickly"; we must, however, learn the technique
of agreeing. As long as we think of difference as that
' When we come in Part III to consider the group process in relation
to eertain political methods now being proposed, we shall find that part
of the present disagreement of opinion is verbal. I therefore give here a
list of words which can be used to describe the genuine social process and
a list, which gives exactly the wrong idea of it. Good words: integrate,
interpenetrate, interpermeate, compenétrate, compound, harmonize, cor¬
relate, coordinate, interweave, reciprocally relate or adapt or adjust, etc.
Bad words: fuse, melt, amalgamate, assimilate, weld, dissolve, absorb,
reconcile (if used in Hegelian sense), etc.
40
THE NEW STATE
which divides us, we shall dislike it; when we think of it
as that which unites us, we shall cherish it. Instead of
shutting out what is different, we should welcome it
because it is different and through its difference wiU
make a richer content of life. The ignoring of differences
is the most fatal mistake in politics or industry or inter¬
national life: every difference that is swept up into a
bigger conception feeds emd enriches society; every
difference which is ignored feeds on society and even¬
tually corrupts it.
Heterogeneity, not homogeneity, I repeat, makes
unity. Indeed as we go from groups of the lower types
to groups of the higher types, we go from those with
many resemblemces to those with more and more strik¬
ing differences. The higher the degree of social organi¬
zation the more it is based on a very wide diversity
among its members. The people who think that Lon¬
don is the most civilized spot in the world give as evi¬
dence that it is the only city in which you can eat a
bun on a street comer without being noticed. In London,
in other words, difference is expected of us. In Boston
you caimot eat a bun on the street comer, at least not
without impleasant consequences.
Give your difference, welcome my difference, unify all
difference in the larger whole — such is the law of growth.
The unifying of difference is the eternal process of life
— the creative synthesis, the highest act of creation,
the at-onement. The implications of this conception
when we come to define democracy are profound.
And throughout our participation in the group proc¬
ess we must be ever on our guard that we do not con¬
fuse differences and antagonisms, that diversity does
not arouse hostility. Suppose a friend says something
with which I do not agree. It may be that instantly
I feel antagonistic, feel as if we were on opposite
rHF; COLLECTIVE IDEA 41
sides, gpr' my emotions are at once tinged with some
of the enmity which being on opposite sides usually
brings. Our relations become slightly streiined, we
change the subject as soon as possible, etc. But suppose
we were reeJly civilized beings, then we should think:
"How interesting this is, this idea has evidently a larger
content than I realized; if my friend and I can unify
this material, we shEdl separate with a larger idea than
either of us had before." If my friend and I are always
trying to find the things upon which we agree, what is
the use of our meeting.^ Because the consciousness of
agreement makes us happy It is a shallow happiness,
only felt by people too superficial or too shut-up or too
vain to feel that richer joy which comes from having
taken part in an act of creation — created a new thought
by the uniting of différences. A friendship based on
likenesses and agreements alone is a superficial matter
enough. The deep and lasting friendship is one capable
of recognizing and dealing with all the fundamental dif¬
ferences that must exist between any two individuals,
one capable therefore of such an enrichment of our
personalities that together we shall mount to new heights
of maderstanding and endeavor. Some one ought to
write an essay on the dangers to the soul of congeniality.
Pleasant little glows of feeling can never be fanned into
the fire which becomes the driving force of progress.
In trying to explain the social process I may have
seemed to over emphasize difference as difference. Dif¬
ference as difference is non-existent. There is only
difference which carries within itself the power of miify-
ing. It is this latent power which we must forever and
ever call forth. Difference in itself is not a vital force,
but what accompanies it is — the unifying spirit.
Throughout my description of the group process I
have taken committee-meetings, conferences etc. for
42
THE NEW STAT1\
iUustralion, but really the object of every ass-^ciating
with others, of every conversation with friends, in feet,
should he to try to bring out a bigger thought than any
one alone could contribute. How different oiu- dinner
parties would he if we could do this. And I mean with¬
out too labored an effort, hut merely by recognizing
certain elementary rules of the game. Creation is always
possible when people meet; this is the wonderful interest
of life. But it depends upon us so to manage our meet¬
ings that there shall he some result, not just a frittering
away of energy, imguided because not understood. All
our private life is to he puhhc life. This does not mean
that we cannot sit with a friend by our fireside; it does
mean that, private and gay as that hour may he, at
the same time that very intimacy and lightness must in
its way he serving the common cause, not in any fanciful
sense, hut because there is always the consciousness of
my most private concerns as tributary to the larger life
of men. But words are misleading: I do not mean that
we are always to he thinking about it — it must he
such an abiding sense that we never think of it.
Thus the new psychology teaches us that the core of
the group process is creating. The essentied value of
the new psychology is that it carries enfolded within
it the obligation upon every man to live the New Life.
In no other system of thought has the Conunand been
so clear, so insistent, so compelling. Every individual
is necessary to the whole. On the other hand, every
member participates in that power of a whole which
is so much greater than the addition of its separate
forces. The increased strength which comes to me when
I work with others is not a numerical thing, is not he-
cause I feel that ten of us have ten times the strength
of one. It is because aU together we have struck out a
new power in the universe. Ten of us may have ten,
THE COLLECTIVE IDEA 43
or a hundred, or a thousand times the strength of one
— or rather you cannot measure it mathematically at
all.
The law of the group is not arbitrary hut intrinsic.
Nothing is more practical for our daily hves than an
understanding of this. The group-spirit is the pillar of
cloud by day and of fire by night — it is our infallible
guide — it is the Spirit of democracy. It has all our
love and aU our devotion, but this comes only when we
have to some extent identified ourselves with It, or
rather perhaps indentified It with all our common,
every-day lives. We can never dominate another or
be dominated by another; the group-spirit is always our
master.
IV
THE GROUP PROCESS: THE COLLECTIVE FEELING
The unification of thought, however, is only a
part of the social process. We must consider,
besides, the unification of feeling, affection,
emotion, desire, aspiration — all that we are. The re¬
lation of the feehngs to the development of the group
has yet to be sufficiently studied. The analysis of the
group process is beginning to show us the origin and
nature of the true sympathy. The group process is a
rational process. We can no longer therefore think
of sympathy as "contagion of feehng" based on man's
"inherited gregarious instinct." But equally sympathy
cannot belong to the next stage in our development —
the particularistic. Particularistic psychology, which
gave us ego and alter, gave us sympathy going across
from one isolated being to another. Now we begin with
the group. We see in the self-unifying of the group
process, and all the myriad unfoldings involved, the
central and aU-germinating activity of fife. The group
creates. In the group, we have seen, is formed the col¬
lective idea, "similarity" is there achieved, sympathy too
is born within the group — it springs forever from
interrelation. The emotions I feel Avhen apart belong
to the phantom ego; only from the group comes the
genuine feeling with — the true sympathy, the vital
sympathy, the just and balanced sympathy.
From this new understanding of sympathy as essen¬
tially involved in the group process, as part of the gen¬
erating activity of the group, we learn two lessons: that
sympathy cannot antedate the group process, and that
it must not be confused with altruism. It had been
44
THE COLLECTIVE FEELENG 45
thought until recently by many writers that sympathy
came, before the social process. Evidences were col¬
lected among animals of the "desire to help" other
members of the same species, and the conclusion drawn
that sympathy exists and that the result is "mutual
aid." But sympathy cannot antedate the activity. We
do not however now say that there is an "instinct" to
help and then that sympathy is the result of the helping ;
the feehng and the activity iwe involved one in the other.
It is asked, Was Bentham right in making the desire
for individual happiness the driving force of society, or
was Comte right in saying that love for our fellow crea¬
tines is as "natural" a feeling as self-interest.^ Many
such questions, which have long perplexed us, wiU he
answered by a progressive social psychology. The rea¬
son we have found it difficult to answer such questions is
because we have thought of egoistic or altruistic feelings
as preëxisting; we have studied action to see what pre¬
cedent characteristics it indicated. But when we begin
to see that men possess no characteristics apant from
the unifying process, then it is the process we shall study.
Secondly, we, can no longer confuse sympathy and
altruism. Sympathy, born of our union, rises above
both egoism and altruism. We see now that a classifica¬
tion of ego feelings and alter feelings is not enough, that
there are always whole feefings to be accounted for, that
true sympathy is sense of community, consciousness of
oneness. I am touched by a story of want and suffering,
I send a check, denying myself what I have eagerly
desired in order to do so, — is that sympathy .i^ It is
the old particularistic sympathy, hut it is not the sym¬
pathy which is a group product, .which has come from
the actual intermingling of myself with those who are
in want and suffering. It may he that I do more harm
than good with my check because I do not really know
46
THE NEW STATE
what the situation demands. The sympathy which
springs up within the group is a productive sympathy.
But, objects a friend, if I meet a tramp who has been
drinking whiskey, I can feel only pity for him, I can have
no sense of oneness. Yes, the tramp and I are bound
together by a thousand invisible bonds. He is a part of
that society for which I am responsible. I have not been
doing my entire duty ; because of that a society has been
built up which makes it possible for that tramp to exist
and for whiskey drinking to be his chief pleasure.
A good illustration of both the errors mentioned —
making sympathy antedate the group process and the
confusion of sympathy and altruism — we see frequently
in the discussion of cooperation in the business world.
The question often asked, "Does modem cooperation
depend upon self-interest or upon sympathy?" is en¬
tirely misleading as regards the real natme of sympathy.
Suppose she manufacturers meet to discuss some form
of union. There was a time when we should have been
told that if each man were guided entirely by what would
benefit his own plant, tmsting the other five to be equally
interested each in his own, thereby the interest of all
would be evolved. Then there came a time when many
thinkers denied this and said, "Cooperation cannot
exist without some feeling of altruism; every one of
those manufacturers must go to the meeting with the
feeling that the interests of the other five should be con¬
sidered as well cis his own; he must be guided as much
by sympathy as by self-interest." But our new psy¬
chology teaches us that what these men need most is
not altruistic feelings, but a consciousness of themselves
as a new unit and a realization of the needs of that unit.
The process of forming this new imit generates such
realization which is sympathy. This true sympathy,
therefore, is not a vague sentiment they bring with
THE COLLECTIVE FEELING 47
them; it springs from their meeting to be in its turn a
vital factor in their meeting. The needs of that new unit
may be so different from that of any one of the manu¬
facturers alone that altruistic feelings might be wasted!
The new ethics wiU never preach alter feelings but whole
feelings. Sympathy is a whole feeling; it is a recogni¬
tion of oneness. Perhaps the new psychology has no
more interesting task thiui to define for us that true
sympathy which is now being bom in a society which
is shedding its particularistic garments and clothing
itself in the mantle of wholeness.
To sum up: sympathy is not pity, it is not benevo¬
lence, it is one of the goals of the futme, it cannot be
actualized imtil we can think and feel together. At
present we confuse it with altruism and aU the particu-
larist progeny, but sympathy is always a group product;
benevolence, philanthropy, tenderness, fervor, ardor,
pity, may be possible to me alone, but sympathy is not
possible alone. The particulairist stage has been neces¬
sary to our development, but we stand now on the thresh¬
old of another age: we see there humanity consciously
generating its own activity, its own purpose and aU that
it needs for the accomplishment of that purpose. We
must now fit ourselves to cross that threshold. Oiu faces
have turned to a new world; to train our footsteps to
follow the way is now our task.
This means that we must live the group life. This is
the solution of our problems, national and internatioucd.
Employers and employed cannot be exhorted to feel sym¬
pathy one for the other ; trúe sympathy wiU come only by
creating a conununity or group of employers and em¬
ployed. Through the group you find the details, the filling-
out of Kant's universal law. Kant's categorical imperative
is general, is empty ; it is only a blank check. But through
the life of the group we leam the content of universal law.
V
THE GROUP PROCESS: THE COLLECTIVE WILL
From the group process arise social understand¬
ing and true sympathy. At the same moment
appears the social will which is the creative
will. Many writers are laying stress on the possibilities
of the collective will; what I wish to emphasize is the
necessity of creating the collective will. Many people
talk as if the collective wül were lying round loose to be
caught up whenever We hke, hut the fact is we must go
to oiH group and see that it is brought into existence.
Moreover, we go to our group to learn the process.
We sometimes heeir the advantages of collective plan¬
ning spoken of as if an act of Congress or Parliament
could substitute collective for individual planning ! But
it is only by doing the deed that we shall learn this doc¬
trine. We learn how to create the common will in our
groups, and we learn here not only the process but its
value. When I can see that agreement with my neighbor
for larger ends than either of us is pursuing alone is of
the same essence as capital and labor learning to think
together, as Germany and the Alhes evolving a common
will, then I am ready to become a part of the world
process. To leam how to evolve the social wiU day by
day with my neighbors and fellow-workers is what the
world is demanding of me to-day. This is gettmg into
the inner workshop of democracy.
Until we leeu-n this lesson war cannot stop, no con¬
structive work can be done. The very essence and sub¬
stance of democracy is the creating of the collective will.
Without this activity the forms of democracy are use-
48
THE COLLECTIVE WILL 49
less, and the aims of democracy are always unfulfilled.
Without this activity both political and industrial de¬
mocracy must be a chaotic, stagnating, self-stultifying
assemblage. Many of the solutions offered to-day for
our social problems are vitiated by their mechanical
natme, by assuming that if society were given a new
form, the socialistic for instance, what we desire would
follow. But this assumption is not true. The deeper
truth, perhaps the deepest, is that the will to will the
common will is the core, the germinating centre of that
large, still larger, ever larger life which we are coming
to caU the true democracy.
VI
THE UNITY OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS
WE have seen that the common idea and the
common will are bom together in the social
process. One does not lead to the other,
each is involved in the other. But the collective
thought and the collective wiU are not yet complete,
they are hardly an embryo. They carry indeed within
themselves their own momentum, but they complete
themselves only through activity in the world of affedrs,
of work, of government. This conception does away
with the whole discussion, into which much ardor has
gone, of the priority of thought or action in the social
life. There is no order. The union of thought and will
and activity by which the clearer will is generated, the
social process, is a perfect unity.
We see this in our daily life where we do not finish our
thought, constmct our will, and then begin our actualiz¬
ing. Not only the actualizing goes on at the same time,
but its reactions help us to shape our thought, to ener¬
gize our will. We have to digest our social experience,
but we have to have social experience before we cem di¬
gest it. We must leam and build and learn again through
the building, or we must build and learn and build again
through the learning.
We sit around the council table not blank pages but
made up of all our past experiences. Then we evolve a
so-cedled common will, then we take it into the concrete
world to see if it will work. In so far as it does work, it
proves itself; in so far as it does not, it generates the
necessary idea to make it "common." Then again we
50
THE UNITY OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 51
test and so on and so on. In our work always new and
necessary modifications arise which again in actualizing
themselves, again modify themselves. This is the process
of the generation of the common will. First it appears
as an ideal, secondly it works itself out in the material
sphere of life, thereby generating itself in a new form
and so on forever and ever. All is a-making. This is
the process of creating the absolute or Good Wül. To
elevate Genered Welfare into our divinity makes a golden
calf of it, erects it as something external to ourselves
with an eibsolute nature of its own, whereas it is the ever
new adjusting of ever new relatings to one another. The
common wiU never finds perfection but is always seek¬
ing it. Progress is an infinite advance towards the in¬
finitely receding goal of infinite perfection.
How important this principle is wUl appear later when
we apply these ideas to politics. Democratic ideals will
never advance unless we are given the opportunity of
constantly embodying them in action, which action will
react on our ideals. Thought and wiU go out into the
concrete world in order to generate their own complete
form. This gives us both the principle and the method
of democracy. A democratic community, is one in which
the common wül is being gradually created by the civic
activity of its citizens. The test of democracy is the ful¬
ness with which this is being done. The practical thought
for our political life is that the collective wiU exists only
through its self-actualizing and self-creating in new and
larger and more perfectly adjusted forms.
Thus the unity of the social process becomes clear to
us. We now gain a conception of "right," of purpose, of
loyalty to that purpose, not as particularistic ideas but
as arising within the process.
52
THE NEW STATE
BIGHT
We are evolving now a system of ethics which has
three conceptions in regard to right, conscience and duty
which are different from much of our former ethical
teaching: (1) we do not follow right, we create right,
(2) there is no private conscience, (3) my duty is never
to "others" but to the whole.
First, we do not foUow right merely, we create right.
It is often thought vaguely that our ideals are all there,
shining and splendid, and we have only to apply them.
But the truth is that we have to create our ideals. No
ideal is worth while which does not grow from our actual
life. Some people seem to keep their ideals aU carefully
packed away from dust and air, but arranged alphabeti¬
cally so that they can get at them quickly in need. But
we can never take out a past ideal for a present need.
The ideal which is to be used for our hfe must come out
from that very life itself. The only way our past ideals
can help us is in moulding the life which produces the
present ideal; we have no further use for them. But we
do not discard them: we have built them into the pres¬
ent— we have used them up as the cocoon is used up
in meiking the silk. It has been sometimes taught that
given the same situation, the individual must repeat
the same behavior. But the situation is never the same,
the individual is never the same ; such a conception has
nothing to do with hfe. We cannot do our duty in the
old sense, that is of following a crystedhzed ideal, be¬
cause our duty is new at every moment.
Moreover, the knowledge of what is due the whole is
revealed within the life of the whole. This is above
everything else what a progressive ethics ipust teach —
not faithfulness to duty merely, but faithfulness to the
hfe which evolves duty. Indeed "foUowing our duty"
THE UNITY OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 53
often means mental and moral atrophy. Man cannot
live by tabus; that means stagnation. But as one tabu
after another is disappearing, the call is upon us deliber¬
ately to build our own moral bfe. Our ethical sense
will surely starve on predigested food. It is we by our
acts who progressively construct the moral universe; to
follow some preconceived body of law — that is not for
responsible moral beings. In so far as we obey old
standards without interpenetrating them with the ac¬
tual world, we are abdicating our creative power.
Further, the group in its distributive aspect is bring¬
ing such new elements into the here and now that life
is wholly changed, and the ethical commands therein
involved are different, and therefore the task of the
group is to discover the new formulation which these
new elements demand. The moral law thus gathers to
itself all the richness of science, of art, of aU the fulness
of our daily hving.
The group consciousness of right thus developed be¬
comes our daily impèrative. No mandate from without
has power over us. There sire many forms of the fallacy
that the governing and the governed can be two differ¬
ent bodies, and this one of conforming to standards
which we have not created must be recognized as such
before we can have any sound foundation for society.
When the ought is not a mandate from without, it is no
longer a prohibition but a self-expression. As the social
consciousness develops, ought wül be swallowed up in
wiU. We are some time truly to see our bfe eis positive,
not negative, as made up of continuous willing, not of
restraints and prohibition. Morahty is not the refrain¬
ing from doing certain things — it is a constructive
force.
So in the education of our young people it is not enough
to teach them their "duty," somehow there must be
54
THE NEW STATE
created for them to live in a world of high purpose to
which their own psychic energies wiU instinctively re¬
spond. The craving for self-expression, self-reahzation,
must see quite naturally for its field of operation the
community. This is the secret of education: when the
waters of our life are part of the sea of human endeavor,
duty wiU be a difficult word for our young people to
understand; it is a glorious consciousness we want, not
a painstaking conscience. It is ourselves soeiked with
the highest, not a Puritanical straining to fulfil an external
obligation, which wiU redeem the world.
Education therefore is not chiefly to teach children
a mass of things which have been true up to the present
moment; moreover it is not to teach them to learn about
fife as fast as it is made, not even to interpret fife, but
above and beyond everything, to create fife for them¬
selves. Hence education should be largely the training
in making choices. The aim of all proper training is not
rigid adherence to a crystedfized right (since in ethics,
economics or politics there is no crystallized right), bul;
the power to make a new choice at every moment. And
the greatest lesson of ciU is to know that every mo¬
ment is new. "Man fives in the dawn forever. Life is
beginning and nothing else but beginning. It begins
ever-lastingly."
We must breed through the group process the kind
of man who is not fossilized by habit, but whose eye is
intent on the present situation, the present moment,
present values, and can decide on the forms lyhich wiU
best express them in the actual world.
To smn up this point: morality is never static; it
advsmces as fife advances. You cannot hang your ideals
up on pegs and take down no. 2 for certain emergencies
and no. 4 for others. The true test of our morality is
not the rigidity with which we adhere to standard, but
THE UNITY OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 55
the loyalty we show to the life which constructs standards.
The test of our morality is whether we are hving not to
follow but to create ideeils, whether we are pouring om-
life into our visions only to receive it back with its
miraculous enhancement for new uses.
Secondly, I have said that the conception of right as a
group product, as coming from the ceaseless interplay of
men, shows us that there is no such thing as em individual
conscience in the sense in which the term is often used.
As we are to obey no ideals dictated by others or the
past, it is equally important that we obey no ideal set
up by our unrelated self. To obey the moral law is to
obey the social ideal. The social ideal is born, grows
and shapes itself through the associated hfe. The in¬
dividual cannot alone decide what is right or wrong.
We can have no true moral judgment except as we live
our life with others. It is sedd, "Every man is subject
only to his own conscience." But what is my conscience
Has it not been produced by my time, my country, my
associates .5 To make a conscience by myself would be
as difißcult as to try to make a language by myself.^
It is sometimes said, on the other hand, "The indi¬
vidual must yield his right to judge for himself; let the
majority judge." But the individual is not for a moment
to yield his right to judge for himself; he can judge
better for himseK if he joins with others in evolving a
synthesized judgment. Our individual conscience is not
absorbed into a national conscience; our individual con¬
science must be incorporated in a national conscience as
1 This does not, however, put us with those biologists who make con¬
science a "gregarious instinct" and — would seem to be willing to keep
it there. This is the insidious herd fallacy which crops up constantly in
every kind of place. We may to-day partake largely of the nature of
the herd, our conscience may be to some extent a herd conscience, but
such is not the end of man for it is not the true nature of man — man
does not find his expression in the herd.
56
THE NEW STATE
one of its constituent members.^ Those of us who are
not wholly in sympathy with the conscientious objec¬
tors do not think that they should yield to the majority.
When we say that their point of view is too particularis¬
tic, we do not mean that they should give up the dictates
of their own conscience to a collective conscience. But
we mean that they should ask themselves whether their
conscience is a freak, a purely personal, conscience, or a
properly evolved conscience. That is, have they tried,
not to saturate themselves with our collective ideals, but
to take their part in evolving collective standards by
freely giving and taking. Have they hved the life which
makes possible the fullest interplay of their own ideas
with EiU the forces of their time.i^ Before they range
themselves against society they must ask themselves if
they have taken the opportunities offered them to help
form the ideas which they are opposing. I do not say
that there is no social value in heresy, I only ask the
conscientious objectors to ask themselves whether they
are claiming the "individual rights" we have long
outgrown.
What we want is a related conscience, a conscience
that is intimately related to the consciences of other
men and to all the spiritual environment of om- time, to
aU the progressive forces of our age. The particularistic
tendency has had its day in law, in pohtics, in inter¬
national relations and as a guiding tendency in our daily
hves.
We have seen that a clearer conception to-day of the
unity of the social process shows us: first, that we are not
merely to follow but to create " right," secondly, that there
is no private conscience, and third, that my duty is never
to "others" but to the whole. We no longer make a dis-
1 To a misunderstanding of this point are due some of the fallacies
of the political pluralists (see ch. XXXII).
THE UNITY OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 57
tinctíon between selfishness and altruismd An act done
for our own benefit may be social and one done for
another may not be. Some twenty or thirty years ago
our "individual" system of ethics began to be widely
condemned and we have been hearing a great deal of
"social" ethics. But this so-called "social" ethics has
meant only my duty to "others." There is now emerg¬
ing an idea of ethics entirely different from the altruis¬
tic school, hased not on the duty of isolated beings to
one another, but on integrated individuals acting as a
whole, evolving whole-ideas, working for whole-ideals.
The new consciousness is of a whole.
PURPOSE
As right appears with that interrelating, germinat¬
ing activity which we call the social process, so purpose
also is generated by the same process. The goal of evo¬
lution most obviously must evolve itself. How self-con¬
tradictory is the idea that evolution is the world-process
and yet that some other power has made the goal for
it to reach. The truth is that the same process which
creates all else creates the very purpose. That pmpose
is mvolved m the process, not prior to process, has far
wider reaching consequences than can be taken up here.
The whole philosophy of cause and effect must be re¬
written. If the infinite task is the evolution of the whole,
if our finite tasks are wholes of varying degrees of scope
and perfection, the notion of causality must have an
entirely different place in our system of thought.
The question is often asked, "What is the proposed
unity of European nations after the war to be fori^"
This question implies that the alUance will be a mere
method of accomphshing certain purposes, whereas it
^ See p. 45.
58
THE NEW STATE
is the union which is the important thing. With the
union the purpose comes into being, and with its every
step forward, the purpose changes. No one would say
that the aims of the Allies to-day are the same as in
1914, or even as in April, 1917. As the aUÍEmce develops,
the purpose steadily shapes itself.
Every teleologiced view wiU be given up when we see
that pmpose is not "preëxistent," but involved in the
unifying act which is the life process. It is man's part
to create purpose and to actuahze it. From the point
of view of man we are just in the dawn of self-conscious¬
ness, and his purpose is dimly revealing itself to him.
The life-force weUs up in us for expression — to direct
it is the privilege of self-consciousness. ^
LOYALTY
As this true purpose evolves itself, loyalty springs
into being. Loyalty is awakened through and by the
very process which creates the group. The same process
which organizes the group energizes it. We cannot
"wiU" to be loyal. Our task is not to "find" causes
to awaken our loyalty, but to live our life fully and
loyalty issues. A cause has no part in us or we in it if
we have fortuitously to "find" it.
^ This view of purpose is not necessarily antagonistic to the "interest"
school of sociology, but we may perhaps look forward to a new and deeper
analysis of self-interest. And the view here put forwaird is not incom¬
patible with the "objective" theory of association (see ch. XXlX) nor
\yith the teleological school of jurisprudence (see ch. XV), it merely
emphasizes another point of view — a point of view which tends to
synthesize the " subjective" and " objective " theories of law. But those
jurists who say that a group is governed by its purpose and leave the
matter there are making a thing-in-itself of the purpose; we are gov¬
erned by the purpose, yes, but we are all the time evolving the purpose.
Modern jurists wish a dynamic theory of law — only such a concep¬
tion of purpose as is revealed by group psychology will give value to a
teleological school of jurisprudence.
THE UNITY OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 59
Thus we see that we do not love the Beloved Com¬
munity because it is lovable — the same process which
makes it lovable produces our love for it. Moreover
it is not enough to love the Beloved Community, we
must find out how to create it. It is not there for us to
accept or reject — it exists only through us. Loyalty
to a collective will which we have not created and of
which we Etre, therefore, not an integral part, is slavery.
We belong to om community just in so far as we are
helping to make that community; then loyalty follows,
then love follows. Loyalty means the consciousness of
oneness, the full reahzation that we succeed or ftdl,
five or die, are saved or damned together. The only
imity or community is one we have made of ourselves,
by ourselves, for ourselves.^
Thus the social process is one aU-inclusive, Self-suffic¬
ing process. The vital impidse which is produced by
aU the reciprocally interacting influences of the group
is also itself the generating and the vivifying power.
Social unity is not a sterile conception but an active
force. It is a double process — the activity which goes
to make the unity and the activity which flows from
the unity. There is no better example of centripetal
and centrifugal force. All the forces which are stored
up in the unity flow forth eternally in activity. We
create the common will and feel the spiritual energy
which flows into us from the purpose we have made, for
the purpose which we seek.
^ In a relation even of two I am not faithful to the other person but
to my conception of the relation in the whole. Loyalty is always to the
group idea not to the group-personnel. This must change our idea of
patriotism.
VII
THE INDIVIDUAL
AS the collective idea and the collective, will,
right and purpose, are bom within the aU-
suificing social process, so here too the indi¬
vidual finds the wellspring of his life. The visible form
in which this interplay of relations appears is society
and the individual. A man is a point in the social proc¬
ess rather than a unit in that process, a point where
forming forces meet straightway to disentangle them¬
selves and stream forth again. In the language of the
day man is at the same time a social factor and a social
product.
People often talk of the socicd mind as if it were an
abstract conception, as if only the individual were real,
concrete. The two are equally real. Or rather the only
reahty is the relating of one to the other which creates
both. Our sundering is as artificial and late an act as
the sundering of consciousness into subject and object.
The only reahty is the interpenetrating of the two into
experience. Late inteUectuahsm abstracts for practical
purposes the ego from the world, the individual from
society.
But there is no way of separating individuals, they
coalesce and coalesce, they are "confluent," to use the
expression of James, who tells us that the chasm between
men is an individuahstic fiction, that we are surrounded
by fringes, that these overlap and that by means of these
I join with others. It is as in Norway when the colors of
the sunset and the dawn are minghng, when to-day and
to-morrow are at the point of breaking, or of uniting,
60
THE INDIVIDUAL
61
and one does not know to wMch one belongs, to the
yesterday which is fading or the coming hoirr — perhaps
this is something like the relation of one to emother: to
the onlookers from another planet our colors might seem
to mingle.
The truth about the individual and society has been
already implied, but it may be justifiable to develop the
idea further because of the paramoimt importance for
edl our future development of a clear tmderstanding of
the individual. Our nineteenth-centm-y legal theory
(individual rights, contract, "a man can do what he
likes with his own," etc.) was based on the conception
of the separate individual.^ We can have no sound
legal doctrine, and hence no social or political progress,
until the fallacy of this idea is fully recognized. The
new state must rest on a true conception of the indi¬
vidual. Let us ask ourselves therefore for a further
definition of mdividuality than that edready implied.
The individual is the unification of a multiplied variety
of reactions. But the individual does not react to society.
The interplay constitutes both society on the one hand
and individuality on the other: mdividuality and society
are evolving together from this constant and complex
action and reaction. Or, more accurately, the relation
of the individual to society is not action and reaction,
but infinite interactions by which both individual and
society are forever a-making: we cannot say if we would
be exact that the individual acts upon and is acted upon,
because that way of expressing it implies that he is a
definite, given, finished entity, and would keep him
apart merely as an agent of the acting and being acted
on. We caimot put the individual on one side and
society on the other, we must understand the complete
interrelation of the two. Each has no value, no exist-
1 See oh. XV, " From Contract to Community."
62
THE NEW STATE
ence without the other. The individual is created by
the social process and is daily nourished by that process.
There is no such thing as a self-made man. What we
think we possess as individuals is what is stored up
from society, is the subsoil of socicd life. We soak up
and soak up and soiik up our environment all the time.
Of what then does the individuaUty of a man consist
Of his relation to the whole, not (1) of his apartness nor
(2) of his difference alone.
Of course the mistake which is often made in thinking
of the individual is that of confusing the physical with
the real individual. The physical individual is seen to
be apart and therefore apartness is assumed of the
psychic or real individual. We think of Edward Fitz¬
gerald as a recluse, that he got his development by being
alone, that he was leu-gely outside the influences of so¬
ciety. But imagine Fitzgerald's hfe with his books. It
undoubtedly did not suit his nature to mix freely with
other people in bodily presence, but what a constant
and vivid hving with others his hfe reaUy was. How
closely he was in vital contact with the thoughts of men.
We must bear in mind that the social spirit itself may
impose apartness on a man; the method of uniting with
others is not always that of visible, tangible groups.
The pioneer spirit is the creative spirit even if it seems
to take men apart to fulfil its dictates. On the other
hand the sohtary man is not necessarily the man who
hves alone; he may be one who fives constantly with
others in all the complexity of modern city fife, but who
is so shut-up or so set upon his own ideas that he makes
no real union with others.
Individuality is the capacity for xmion. The measure
of individuality is the depth and breadth of true relation.
I am an individual not as far as I am apart from, but as
far as I am a part of other men. Evil is non-relation.
THE INDIVIDUAL
63
The source of our Strength is the central supply. You
may as well break a branch off the tree and expect it to
live. Non-relation is death.
I have said that individuahty consists neither of the
separateness of one man from the other, nor of the dif¬
ferences of one man from the other. The second state¬
ment is challenged more often than the first. This comes
from some confusion of ideas. My individuality is dif¬
ference springing into view as relating itself with other
differences. The act of relating is the creating act. It
is vicious intellectualism to say, "Before you relate you
must have things to relate, therefore the differences are
more elemental: there are (1) differences which (2) unite,
therefore uniting is secondary." The only fact, the only
truth, is the creative activity which appears as the great
complex we call hmnanity. The activity of creating is
all. It is only by being this activity that we grasp it.
To view it from the outside, to dissect it into its different
elements, to lay these elements on the dissecting table
as so many different individuals, is to kill the life and
feed the femcy with dead images, empty, sterile concepts.
But let us set about relating ourselves to oirr community
in fruitful fashion, and we shall see that our individuahty
is bodying itself forth in stronger and stronger fashion,
our difference shaping itself in exact conformity with
the need of the work we do.
For we must remember when we say that the essence
of individuality is the relating of self to other difference,
that difference is not somethihg static, something given,
that it also is involved in the world of becoming.
This is what experience teaches me — that society needs
my difference, not as an absolute, but just so much dif¬
ference as wiU relate me. Differences develop within
the social process and are united through the social
process. Difference which is not capable of relation is
64
THE NEW STATE
eccentricity. Eccentricity, caprice, put me outside,
bring anarchy; true spontaneity, originality, belong not
to chaos but to system. But spontaneity must be coordi¬
nated; irrelevancy produces nothing, is insanity. It is
not my uniqueness which meikes me of value to the
whole but my power of relating. The nut and the screw
form a perfect combination not because they are dif¬
ferent, but because they exactly fit into each other and
together can perform a fimction which neither could
perform edone, or which neither could perform half of
alone or any part of alone. It is not that the significance
of the nut and screw is increased by their coming to¬
gether, they have no significance at aU unless they do
come together. The fact that they have to be different
to enter into any fruitful relation with each other is a
matter of derivative importance — derived from the
work they do.
Another illustration is that of the specialist. It is not
a knowledge of his specialty which makes an expert of
service to society, but his insight into the relation of Iiis
specialty to the whole. Thus it implies not less but more
relation, because the entire value of that specialization
is that it is part of something. Instead of isolating him
and giving him a narrower fife, it gives him at once a
broader fife because it binds him more irrevocably to
the whole. But the whole works both ways : the special¬
ist not only contributes to the whole, but aU his relations
to the whole are embodied in his own particular work.
Thus difference is only a part of the fife process. To
exaggerate this part led to the excessive and arrogant in¬
dividualism of the nineteenth century. It behooves us
children of the twentieth century to search diligently
after the law of unity that we may effectively marshal
and range imder its dominating sway all the varying
diversities of fife.
THE INDIVIDUAL
65
Our deûnition of individuality must now be "finding
my place in the whole": "my place" gives you the indi¬
vidual, "the whole" gives you society, but by connect¬
ing them, by saying "my place in the whole," we get a
fruitful synthesis. I have tried hard to get away from
any mechaniceJ system and yet it is difficult to find words
which do not seem to bind. I am now afraid of this
expression — my place in the whole. It has a rigid, un¬
yielding sound, as if I were a cog in a machine. But my
place is not a definite portion of space and time. The
people who believe in their "place" in this sense can
always photograph their "places." But my place is a
matter of infinite relation, and of infinitely changing
relation, so that it can never be captmed. It is neither
the anetfchy of peirticularism nor the rigidity of the
German machine. To know my place is not to know my
niche, not to know whether I am cog no. 3 or cog no. 4;
it is to be ahve at every instant at every finger tip to
every contact and to be conscious of those contacts.
We see now that the individual both seeks the whole
and is the whole.
First, the iudividual, biology teUs us, is never com¬
plete, completeness spells death; social psychology is
beginning to show us that man advances towards com¬
pleteness not by further aggregations to himself, but
by further and further relatings of self to other men. We
are always reaching forth for imion; most, perhaps aU,
om desires have this motive. The spirit craves totality,
this is the motor of social progress; the process of getting
it is not by adding more cmd more to ourselves, but by
offering more and more of omselves. Not appropriation
but contribution is the law of growth. What our special
contribution is, it is for us to discover. More and more
to release the potentialities of the individual means the
more and more progressive organization of society if at
66
THE NEW STATE
the same time we are leaniing how to coordinate all the
variations. The individual in wishing for more whole¬
ness does not ask for a chaotic mass, but for the orderly
wholeness which we call unity. The test of our vitality
is our power of synthesis, of life synthesis.
But although we say that the individual is never com¬
plete, it is also true that the individual is a being who,
because his function is relating and his relatings are
infinite, is in himself the whole of society. It is not that
the whole is divided up into pieces; the individual is
the whole at one point. This is the incarnation: it
is the whole flowing into me, transfusing, suffusing me.
The fulness, bigness of my fife is not measmed by the
amount I do, nor the number of people I meet, but how
far the whole is expressed through me. This is the rea¬
son why unifying gives me a sense of life and more xmify-
ing gives me a sense of more life — there is more of the
whole and of me. My worth to society is not how valu¬
able a part I am. I am not unique in the world because
I am different from any one else, but because I am a
whole seen from a special point of view.^
That the relation of each to the whole is dynamic and
not static is perhaps the most profound truth which
recent years have brought us.^ We now see that when
I give my share I give always far more than my share,
such are the infinite complexities, the fulness and fruit-
fulness of the interrelatings. I contribute to society
my mite, and then society contains not just that much
more nourishment, but as much more as the loaves smd
^ This is the principle of the vote in a democracy (see ch. XXI). This
must not, however, be confused with the old Hegelianism (see ch. XXIX
on "Sovereignty").
2, In art this is what impressionism has meant. In the era before im¬
pressionism art was in a static phase, that is, artists were working at
ßxed relations. The "balance" of modern artists does not suggest fixed¬
ness, but relation subject directly to the laws of the whole.
THE INDIVIDUAL
67
fishes which fed the multitude outnumbered the original
seven and two. My contribution meets some particular
need not because it can be measmed off against that
need, but because my contribution by means of all the
cross cmrents of life always has so much more than
itself to offer. When I withhold my contribution, there¬
fore, I am withholding far more than my personal share.
When I fail some one or some cause, I have not failed
just that person, just that cause, but the whole world is
thereby crippled. This thought gives an added solem¬
nity to the sense of personal responsibility.
To sum up: individuality is a matter primarily neither
of apartness nor of difference, but of each finding his own
activity in the whole. In the many times a day that we
thinh of ourselves it is not one time in a thousand that
we think of our eccentricities, we are thinking indirectly
of those quahties which join us to others: we think of
the work we are doing with others and what is expected
of us, the people we are going to play with when work is
over and the part we are going to take in that play, the
committee-meeting we are going to attend and what we
are going to do there. Every distinct act of the ego is
an affirmation of that amount of separateness which
makes for perfect union. Every affirmation of the ego
establishes my relation with all the rest of the universe.
It is one and the same act which estabhshes my indi-
viduafity and gives me my place in society. Thus an
individual is one who is being created by society, whose
daily breath is drawn from society, whose fife is spent
for society. When we recognize society as self-imfold-
ing, self-unifying activity, we shall hold ourselves open
to its influence, letting the Light stream into us, not
from an outside source, but from the whole of which we
are a living peat. It is eternally due us that that whole
should feed and nourish and sustain us at every moment.
68
THE NEW STATE
but it cannot do this imless at every moment we are
creating it. This perfect interplay is Life. To speak
of the "limitations of the individual" is blasphemy and
suicide. The spirit of the whole is incarnate in every
part. "For I am persuaded that neither death, nor hfe,
nor angels, nor principahties, nor powers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor
any other creature, shall be able to separate" — the
individual from society.
VIII
WHO IS THE FREE MAN P
The idea of liberty long current was that the
solitary man was the free man, that the
man outside society possessed freedom but
that in society he had to sacrifice as much of his
hberty as interfered with the fiherty of others. Rous¬
seau's effort was to find a form of society in which all
should be as free as "before." According to some of our
contemporary thinkers liberty is what belongs to the
individutd or variation-giving-one. But this tells only
half the tale, i'reedom is the harmonious, unimpeded
working of the law of one's own nature. The true nature
of every man is found only in the whole. A man is ideally
free only so far as he is interpermeated by every other
human being; he gains his freedom through a perfect
and complete relationship because thereby he achieves
his whole nature.
Hence free-will is not caprice or whim or a partial wish
or a momentary desire. On the contrary freedom means
exactly the liberation from the tyranny of such particu-
larist impulses. When the whole-will has supreme
dominion in the heart of man, then there is freedom. The
mandate of om real Self is om liberty. The essence of
freedom is not irrelevant spontaneity but the fuhiess^
of relation. We do not curtail our hberty by joining
with others; we find it and increase all our capacity for
fife through the interweaving of wiUings. It is only in
a complex state of society that any large degree of free¬
dom is possible, because nothing else can supply the
many opportunities necessary to work out freedom. The
69
70
THE NEW STATE
social process is a completely Self-sufBcing process.
Free-wül is one of its implications. I am free for two
reasons: (1) I am not dominated by the whole because
I am the whole; (2) I am not dominated by "others"
because we have the genuine social process only when I
do not control others or they me, but all intermingle to
produce the collective thought and the collective will. I
am free when I am functioning here in time emd space
as the creative wiU.
There is no extra-Will: that is the vital lesson for us
to learn. There is no Will except as we act. Let us be
the Will. Thereby do we become the Free-Will.
Perhaps the most superficial of aU views is that free¬
will consists in choice when an alternative is presented.
But freedom by our definition is obedience to the law of
one's nature. My nature is of the whole: I am free,
therefore, only when I choose that term in the alterna¬
tive which the whole commands. I am not free when
I am making choices, I am not free when my acts are
not "determined," for in a sense they always are deter¬
mined (freedom and determinism have not this kind of
opposition). I am free when I am creating. I am de¬
termined through my wiü, not in spite of it.
Freedom then is the identifying of the individual wiU
with the whole wiU—the supreme activity of fife. Free the
spirit of man and then we can trust the spirit of man, and
is not the very essence of this freeing of the spirit of man
the process of taking him from the self-I to the group-I
That we are free only through the social order, only as
fast as we identify ourselves with the whole, implies
practically that to gain our freedom we must take part
in all the fife around us: join groups, enter into many
social relations, and begin to win freedom for ourselves.
When we are the group in feeling, thought and will, we
are free: it does what it wishes through us — that is our
WHO IS THE FREE MAN?
71
liberty. In a democracy the training of every child from
the cradle — in nursery, school, at play — must be a
training in group consciousness.
Then we shaU have the spontaneous activity of free¬
dom. Let us not be martyrs. Let us not give up bread
and cocd that the ends of the Great War may be won,
with the feehng of a restricted life, but with the feehng
that we have gained thereby a fuller Kfe. Let us joyously
do the work of the world because we are the world. Such
is the élan de vie, the joy of high activity, which leaps
forward with force, in freedom.
We have to begin to-day to live the hfe which will
give us our freedom. Savants and plain men have af¬
firmed the freedom of the will, but at the same time
most of us, even while loudly claiming our freedom,
have felt boimd. While determinism has many theoreti¬
cal adherents, it has many more practical ones; we have
considered ourselves bound in thousands of ways — by
tradition, by religion, by natured law, by inertia and
ignorance, etc., etc. We have said God is free but man
is not free. That we are not free has been the most
deadening fallacy to which man has ever submitted.
No outside power indeed can make ns free. No docu¬
ment of our forefathers can "declare" us "independent."
No one can ever give us freedom, but we can win it for
ourselves.
It is often thought that when some restraint is taken
away from us we are freer than before, but this is child¬
ish. Some women-suffragists talk of women as "en¬
slaved" and advocate their emancipation by the method
of giving them the vote. But the vote will not make
women free. Freedom is always a thing to be attained.
And we must remember too that freedom is not a static
condition. As it is not something possessed "originally,"
and as it is not something which can be given to us, so
72
THE NEW STATE
also it is not something won once for all. It is in our
power to win our freedom, but it must be won anew at
every moment, HteraUy every moment. People think of
themselves as not free because they think of themselves
as obeying some external law, but the truth is we are
the law-makers. My freedom is my share in creating,
my part in the creative responsibility. The heart of our
freedom is the impelling power of the will of the whole.
Who then are free.»* Those who win their freedom
through fellowship.
IX
THE NEW INDIVIDUALISM
The new freedom is to be founded on the new
individualism. Many people in their zeal
for a "sociahzed" hfe are denouncing "in-
dividueJism." But individuahsm is the latest social
movement. We must guard against the danger of think¬
ing that the individual is less important because the
collective aspect of life has aroused our ardor and won
our devotion. Collectivism is no short cut to do away
with the necessity of individual achievement; it means
the greatest burden possible on every man. The develop¬
ment of a truly social hfe takes place at the same time
that the freedom and power emd efficiency of its mem¬
bers develop. The individual on the other hand can
never make his individuahty effective until he is given
collective scope for his activity. We sometimes hear
it said that the strong man does not hke combination,
but in fact the stronger the man the more he sees coopera¬
tion with others as the fitting field for his strength.
But we must learn the method of a real cooperation.
We cannot have any genuine collectivism until we have
learned how to evolve the collective thought and the
collective will. This can be done only by every one
taking part. The fact that the state owns the means of
production may be a good or a poor measure, but it is
not necessarily collectivism or a true socialism. The
wish for soeiaHsm is a longing for the ideal state, but it
is embraced often by impatient people who want to take
a short cut to the ideal state. That state must be grown
— its branches will widen as its roots spread. The
73
74
THE NEW STATE
socialization of property must not precede the social¬
ization of the will. If it does, then the only difference
between socialism and our present order will be sub¬
stituting one machine for another. We see more and
more collectivism coming: so far as it keeps pace with
the socialization of the will, it is good; so far as it does
not, it is purely mechanical. Some people's idea of
socialism is inventing a machine to grind out your duties
for you. But every man must do his work for himself.
Not socialization of property, but socialization of the
wiU is the true sociahsm.
The main aim in the reconstruction of society must
be to get all that every mem has to give, to bring the
submerged millions into hght and activity. Those of us
who are basing all our faith on the constructive vision
of a collective society are giving the fullest value to the
individual that has ever been given, are preaching indi¬
vidual value as the basis of democracy, individual affirma¬
tion as its process, and individual responsibility as its
motor force. True individualism has been the one thing
lacking either in motive or actuality in a so-called indi¬
vidualistic age, but then it has not been an individualistic
but a particularistic age. True individualism is this
moment piercing through the soil of our new understand¬
ing of the collective life.
X
SOCIETY
WE have seen that the interpenetrating of
psychic forces creates at the same time
individuals and society, that, therefore, the
individual is not a unit but a centre of forces (both
centripetal and centrifugal), emd consequently society
is not a collection of units but a complex of radiating and
converging, crossing and recrossing energies. In other
words we are learning to think of society as a psychic
process.
This conception must replace the old and wholly
erroneous idea of society as a collection of units, and the
later and only less misleading theory of society as an
organism.
The old individuahsm with all the political fallacies
it produced — social contract of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, majority rule of the nmeteenth,
etc. — was based on the idea of developed individuals
first existing and then coming together to form society.
But the basis of society is not numbers: it is psychic
power.
The organic theory of society has so much to recom¬
mend it to superficial thinking that we must examine
it carefully to find its fatal defects. But let us first
recognize its merits.
Most obviously, an organic whole has a spatial and
temporal individuality of its own, and it is composed of
parts eaeh with its individuafity yet which could not
^ I speak of it as later because the biological analogy was different
from the organism of medisBval doctrine.
75
76
THE NEW STATE
exist apart from the whole. An organism means unity,
each one his own place, every one dependent upon every
one else.
Next, this unity, this interrelating of parts, is the
essential characteristic. It is always in imstable equi¬
librium, always shifting, varying, and thereby changing
the individual at every moment. But it is always pro¬
duced and maintained by the individual himself. No
external force brings it forth. The central life, the total
Ufe, of this self-developing, self-perpetuating being ii
involved in the process. Hence biologists do not expect
to understand the body by a study of the separate cells
as isolated units: it is the organic connection which
unites the separate processes which they recognize as
the fundamental fact.
This interrelating holds good of society when we view
it externally. Society too can be understood only by
the study of its flux of relations, of aU the intricate rec¬
iprocities which go to make the unifying. Reciproced
ordering — subordinatmg, superordinating, coordinat¬
ing— pmposeful self-unifyings, best describe the social
process. Led by James, who heis shown us the individual
as a self-unifying centre, we now find the same kind of
activity going on in society, in the social mind. And
this interrelating, this unity as unity, is what gives to
kociety its authority and power.
Thus the term organism is valuable as a metaphor,
but it has not strict psychological accuracy.
There is this world-wide difference between the self-
interrelatings of society and of the bodily organism: the
social bond is a psychic relation and we cannot express
it in biological terms or in any terms of physical force.
If we could, if "functional combination" could mean à
psychological relation as well as a physiological, then
the terms "functional" and "organic" might be ac-
SOCIETY
77
cepted. But they denote a different luiiverse from that
of thought. For psychical seff-unitings knit infinitely
more closely and in a wholly different way. They are
freed from the limitations of time and space. Minds
can blend, yet in the blending preserve each its own
identity. They transfuse one another while being each
its own essential and imique self.
It follows that while the cell of the organism has only
one function, the individual may have manifold and
multiform functions; he enters with one function into
a certain group of people this morning and with another
function into another group this afternoon, because his
free soul can freely knit itself with a new group at any
moment.^
This self-detaching, self-attaching freedom of the indi¬
vidual saves us from the danger to democracy which
lurks in the organic theory. No man is forced to serve
as the running foot or the lifting hand. Each at any
moment can place himself where his nature calls. Cer¬
tain continental sociologists me whoUy imjustified in
building their hierarchy where one man or group of men
is the sensorium, others the hewers and carriers, etc. It
is exactly this despotic and hopeless system of caste from
which the true democracy frees man. He follows the
call of his spirit and relates himself where he belongs
to-day, and through this relating gains the increment of
power which knits him anew where he now belongs and
so continually as the wind of spirit blows.
Moreover in society every individual may be a com¬
plete expression of the whole in a way impossible for
the parts of a physical organism.® When each part is
itself potentially the whole, when the whole can live
completely in every member, then we have a true society,
1 See ch. XXX, "Political Pluralism and Functionalism."
2 See p. 66.
78
THE NEW STATE
and we must view it as a rushiug of life — onrusli, out-
rush, inrush — as a mobile, elastic, mcalculahle. Protean
energy seeking fitting form for itself. This ideal society
is the divine goal towards which life is an infinite prog¬
ress. Such conception of society must be" visibly before
us to the exclusion of all other theories when we ask
ourselves later what the vote means in the true democ¬
racy.^
^ See eh. XXI. I have been told that the distinction between the
organic and the psychic theory of society is merely academic. But no
one should frame amendments on the initiative and referenduni without
this distinction; no one without it can judge wisely the various schemes
now being proposed for occupational representation — something every
one of us wiU have soon to do.
XI
THE SBLF-AND-OTHERS ILLUSION
IT is now evident that self and others are merely
different points of view of one and the same experi¬
ence, two aspects of one thought. Neither of these
partial aspects can hold us, we seek always that which
includes self emd others. To recognize the community
principle in everything we do should be our aim, never
to work with individuals as individuals. If I go to have
a talk with a mother about her daughter, I cannot ap¬
peal to the mother, the daughter, or my own wishes,
only to that higher creation which we three make when
we come together. In that way only wiU spiritual power
be generated. Every decision of the future is to be based
not on my needs or yours, nor on a compromise between
them or an addition of them, but on the recognition of
the community between us. The community may be
my household and I, my employees and I, but it is only
the dictate of the whole which can be binding on the
whole. This principle we cem take as a searchlight to
turn on aU our life.
It is the lack of understanding of this principle which
works much havoc among us. When we watch men in
the lobbies at Washington working for their state and
their town as against the interests of the United States,
do we sometimes think, "These men have learnt loyalty
and service to a small unit, but not yet to a large one.^"
If this thought does come to us, we are probably doing
those men more than justice. The man who tries to
get something in the River and Harbor appropriation for
his town, whether or not it needs it as much as other
79
80
THE NEW STATE
places, is pretty sure back in his own town to be working
not for that but for his own pocket. It is not because
America is too big for him to think of, that he might
perhaps think of Ohio or Mülfield, it is just because he
cannot think of Ohio or MiMeld. There he thinks of
how this or the other local development, rise in land
values etc., is going to benefit himself; when he is in
Washington he thinks of what is going to benefit Mill-
field. But the man who works hardest and most truly
for MiUfield and Ohio wiU probably when he comes to
Washington work most truly for the interests, not of
MiUfield and Ohio, but of the United States, because he
has learned the first lesson of fife — to think in wholes.
The expressions social and socially-minded, which
should refer to a consciousness of the whole, are often
confused with altruism. We read of "the socialized
character of modem industry." There is a good deal of
altruism in modem industry, but little that is socieJized
yet. The men who provide rest rooms, baths, lectures,
and recreation facilities for their employees, do not
by so doing prove themselves to be socially-minded;
they are altruistically-minded, and this is involved in
the old individualism.^ Moreover, in our attempts at
social legislation we have been appealing chiefly to the
altruism of people: women and children ought not to
be overworked, it is cruel not to have machinery safe¬
guarded, etc. But om* growing sense of unity is fast
bringing us to a realization that aU these things are for
the good of ourselves too, for the entire community. And
the war is rapidly opening our eyes to this human solidar¬
ity: we now see health, for instance, as a national asset.
AU of us are being slowly, very slowly, purged of our
1 It must be remembered, however, that these welfare arrangements
are often accompanied by truly social motives, and experiments looking
towards a more democratic organization of industries.
THE SELF-AND-OTHERS ILLUSION 81
particularistic desires. The egotistic satisfaction of
giving things away is going to be replaced by the joy
of owrdng things together. As our hves become more
and more intricately interwoven, more and more I come
to suffer not merely when I am undergoing personal
suffering, more and more I come to desire not only when
I am feehng personal desires. This used to be considered
a fantastic idea not to be grasped by the plain man, but
every day the plain man is coming more and more to
feel this, every day the "claims" of others are becom¬
ing My desires. "Justice" is being replaced by under¬
standing. There are many people to-day who feel as
keenly the fact of child labor as if these children were
their own. I vote for prohibition, even although it does
not in the least touch me, because it does touch very
closely the Me of which I am now coming into realization.
The identification of seW and others we see in the fact
that we cannot keep ourselves "good" in an evil world
any more than we can keep ourselves well in a world of
disease. The method of moral hygiene as of physiced
hygiene is social cooperation. We do not walk into --the
Kingdom of Heaven one by one.
The exposition of the self-and-others fallacy has trans¬
formed the idea of self-interest. Our interests are inex¬
tricably interwoven. The question is not what is best
for me or for you, but for all of us. My interests are not
less important to the world than yours; your interests
are not less important to the world than mine. If the
"altruistic" man is not a humbug, that is, if he really
thinks his affairs of less importance to the world than
those of others, then there is certainly something the
matter with his life. He must reuse his fife to a pomt
where it is of as much value to the world as any one's else.
The self-and-others fallacy has led directly to a con¬
ception which has wrought much harm among us, namely.
82
THE NEW STATE
the identification of "others" with "society" which leads
the self outside society and brings us to one of the most
harmful of dualisms. The reason we are slow to under¬
stand the matter of the subordination of the individual
to society is because we usually think of it as meaning
the subordination of the individual to "others," whereas
it does not at all, it means the subordination of the indi¬
vidual to the whole of which he himself is a part. Such
subordination is an act of assertion; it is fraught with
active power and force; it affirms and accomplishes.
We are often told to "surrender our individuality." To
claim our individuality is the one essential claim we
have on the universe.
We give up self when we eu-e^too sluggish for the heroic
life. For our self is after all the greatest bother we ever
know, and the idea of giving it up is a comfortable thought
for sluggish people, a narcotic for the difficulties of life.
But it is a cowardly way out. The strong attitude is
to face that torment, our self, to take it with all its
implications, all its obligations, aU its responsibilities,
and be ourselves to the fullest degree possible.
I do not mean to imply, however, that unselfishness
has become obsolete. With our new socied ideal there
is going to be a far greater demand on our capacity for
sacrifice than ever before, but self-sacrifice now means
for us self-fulfihnent. We have now a vision of society
where service is indeed our daily portion, but our con¬
ception of service has entirely changed. The other day
it was stated that the old idea of democracy was a society
in which every man had the right to pursue his own
ends, while the new idea was based on the assiunption
that every man should serve his fellow-men. But I do
not believe that man should "serve his feUow-men";
if we started on that task what awful prigs we should
become. Moreover, as we see that the only efficient
THE SELF-AND-OTHERS ILLUSION 83
people are the servers, much of the connotation of hu¬
mility has gone out of the word service ! Moreover, if
service is such a very desirable thing, then every one
must have an equal opportunity for service.
We have had a wrong idea of individualism which
has made those who had more strength, education, time,
money, power, feel that they must do for those who
had less. In the individuahsm we see coming, all our
efforts will be bent to making it possible for every mem
to depend upon himself instead of depending upon
others. So noblesse oblige is really egoistic. It is what
I owe to myself to do to others. Noblesse oblige has had
a splendid use in the world, but it is somewhat worn
out now simply because we are rapidly getting away
from the selfish point of view. I don't do things now
because my position or my standing or my rehgion or
my anything else demands it, nor because others need
it, but because it is a whole-imperative, that is, a social
imperative. We cannot transcend self by means of
others, but only through the synthesis of self and others.
Wholeness is an irresistible force compelling every mem¬
ber. The consciousness of this is the wellspring of our
power.
An English miter says that we get leadership from
the fact that men are capable of being moved to such
service by the feefing of altruism; he attributes public
spirit to love, pity, compassion and sensitiveness to
suffering. This is no doubt largely true at the present
moment, hut public spirit will sometime mean, as it
does to-day in many instances, the recognition that it
is not merely that my city, my nation needs me, hut
that I need it as the larger sphere of a larger self-expression.
I remember some years ago a Boston girl just entering
social work, fresh from college, with all the ardor and
enthusiasm of youth and having been taught the ideals
84
THE NEW STATE
of service to others. She was talking to me about her
future and said that she was sorry family circumstances
obhged her to work in Boston instead of New York,
there was so much more to reform in New York! She
seemed reaUy afraid that justice and morahty had
reached such a point with us that she might not be
afforded sufficient scope for her zeal. It was amusing,
but think of the irony of it: that girl had been taught
such a view of hfe that her happiness, her outlet, her
self-expression, depended actually on there being plenty
of misery and wretchedness for her to change; there
would be no scope for her in a hcœmonious, well-ordered
world.
The self-and-others theory of society is then wrong.
We have seen that the Perfect Society is the complete
interrelating of an infinite number of selves knowing
themselves as one Self. We see that we are dependent
on the whole, while seeing that we are one with it in
creating it. We are separate that we may belong, that
we may greatly produce. Om separateness, our indi¬
vidual initiative, are the very factors which accompfish
our true xmity with men. We shall see in the chapter on
" Political Pluralism" that " irreducible pluralism " and the
self-unifymg principle are not contradictory.
XII
THE CROWD FALLACY
Many people are ready to accept the truth
that association is the law of hfe. But in
consequence of an acceptance of this theory
with only a partial imderstanding of it, many people
to-day are advocating the hfe of the crowd. The words
society, crowd, and group are often used interchangeably
for a number of people together. One writer says, "The
real things are breathed forth from multitudes . . . the
re;al forces of to-day are group forces." Or we read of
"the gregarious or group hfe," or "man is social because
he is suggestible," or, "man is social because he hkes to
be with a crowd." But we do not find group forces in
multitudes: the crowtl and the group represent entirely
different modes of association. Crowd action is the
outcome of agreement based on concurrence of emotion
rather than of thought, or if on the latter, then on a
concurrence produced by becoming aware of similarities,
not by a slow and gradual creating of unity. It is a
crowd emotion if we aU shout "God save the King." Sug-
gestibihty, feehng, impulse — this is usually the order
in the crowd mind.
I know a httle boy of five who came home from school
one day and said with much impressiveness, "Do you
know whose birthday it is to-morrow?" "No," said his
mother, "whose?" "Ab'm Lincoln's," was the reply.
"Who is he?" said the mother. With a grave face and
an awed voice the child rephed, "He freed the slates!"
and then added, "I don't know whether they were the
big kind like mine or the little kind like Nancy's." But
85
86
THE NEW STATE
his emotion was apparently as great, his sentiment as
sincere, as if he had understood what Lincoln had done
for his country. This is a good example of crowd sug¬
gestion because thought was in this case inhibited by
contagious emotion.
Suggestion is the law of the crowd, interpénétration of
the group. When we study a crowd we see how quickly
B takes A's ideas and also C and D and E; when we
study a group we see that the ideas of A often arouse in
B exactly opposite ones. Moreover, the crowd often
deadens thought because it wants immediate action,
which means an unthinking imanimity not a genuine
collective thought.^ The group on the other hand stimu¬
lates thought. There are no "differences" in the crowd
mind. Each person is swept away and does not stop to
find out his own difference. In crowds we have unison,
in groups harmony. We want the single voice but not
the single note; that is the secret of the group. The
enthusiasm and unanimity of a mass-meeting may warm
an inexperienced heart, but the experienced know that
this unanimity is largely superficial and is based on the
spread of similar ideas, not the unifying of differences.
A crowd does not distinguish between fervor and wisdom;
a group usually does. We do not try to be eloquent
when we appear before a board or a commission; we try
merely to be convincing. Before a group it is self-control,
restraint, discipline which we need, we don't "let our¬
selves go"; before a crowd I am sorry to say we usually
do. Many of us nowadays resent being used as part of
a crowd; the moment we hear eloquence we are on
^ A good example of the crowd fallacy is the syndicalist theory that
the vote should be taken in a meeting of strikers not by ballot but by
acclamation or show of hands. The idea is that in an open meeting en¬
thusiasm passes from one to another and that, therefore, you can thus
get the collective wiU which you could not get by every man voting one
by one.
THE CROWD FALLACY 87
the defensive. The essential evil of crowds is that they
do not allow choice, and choice is necessary for progress.
A crowd is an undifferentiated mass; a group is an articu¬
lated whole.
It is often difficult to determine whether a number of
people met together are a crowd or a group (that is, a
true society), yet it is a distinction necessary for us to
make if we would understand their action. It is not in
the least a question of numbers: it is obvious that ac¬
cording to our present definition a group is not a small
number of people and a crowd a large number. If some¬
one cries " Fire," and you and I run to the window, then
you euid I are a crowd. The difference between a group
and a crowd is not one of degree but of kind. I have
seen it stated in a sociological treatise that im any de¬
liberative assembly there is a tendency for the wisest
thought to prevail. This assumes tha't "any delibera¬
tive assembly" is more fike a group tban a crowd — a
very pleasant thing to assume!
Some writers seem to think that the difference be¬
tween a crowd and a not-crowd is the differ'ence between
organized and unorganized, and the example is given of
laborers unorganized as a crowd and of a trade-union
as a not-crowd. Hut a trade-union can be and often is
a crowd.
We have distinguished between the crowd emd the
group; it is also necessary to distinguish between the
crowd and the mob. Often the crowd or mass is con¬
fused with the mob. The examples given of the mass
or crowd mind are usually a lynching-party, the panic-
stricken audience in a theatre fire, the mobs of the French
Revolution. But all these are very different from a mass
of people merely acting under the same suggestion, so dif¬
ferent that we need different names for them. We might
for the moment call one a crowd and the other a mob.
88
THE NEW STATE
An unfortunate stigma has often attached itself to
the crowd mind because of this tendency to think of the
crowd mind as always exhibiting itself in inferior ways.
Mass enthusiasm, it is true, may lead to riots, but also it
may lead to heroic deeds. People talk much of the
panic of a crowd, but every soldier knows that men
are brave, too, in a mass. Students have often studied
what they called the mass mind when it was under the
stress of great nervous strain and at a high pitch of excite¬
ment, and then have said the mass acts thus and so. It
has been thought legitimate to draw conclusions con¬
cerning the nature of the mass mind from an hysterical
mob. It has been assumed that a crowd was necessarily,
as a crowd, in a condition of hysteria. It has often been
taken for granted that a crowd is a pathological con¬
dition. And color has been given to this theory by the
fact that we owe much of our knowledge of the laws of
suggestion to pathologists.
But the laws of the mass can be studied in ordinary
collections of people who are not abnormally excited,
who are not subjects for pathologists. The laws of the
mass as of the mob are, it is true, the laws of suggestion
and imitation, but the mob is such an extreme case of
the mass that it is necessary to make some distinction
between them. Emotion in the crowd as in the mob is
intensified by the consciousness that others are sharing
it, but the mob is this crowd emotion carried to an ex¬
treme. As normal suggestibility is the law of the mass,
so abnormal suggestibility is the law of the mob. In
abnormal suggestibility the controlling act of the wiU
is absent, but in normal suggestibility you have the
wiU in control and using its power of choice over the
material offered by suggestion. Moreover, it must be
remembered that emotional distiubance is not eilways
the cause of the condition of suggestibility : the wiU may
THE CROWD FALLACY 89
lose its ascendancy from other causes than excitement;
suggestibihty often comes from exhaustion or habit.
The fact is we know little of this subject. Billy Sun¬
day and the Salvation Army, political bosses and labor
agitators, know how to handle crowds, but the rest of us
can deal with individuals better than with the mass;
we have taken courses in first-aid to the injured, but we
have not yet learned what to do in a street riot or a finan¬
cial panic.
Besides the group and the crowd and the mob, there
is also the herd. The satisfaction of the gregarious in¬
stinct must not be confused with the emotion of the
crowd or the true sense of oneness in the group. Some
writers draw analogies from the relation of the individual
to the herd to apply to the relation of man to society;
such analogies lead to false patriotism and wars. 'The
example of the wild ox temporarily separated from his
herd and rushing back to the "comfort of its fellowship"
has adorned many a different tale. The "comfort" of
feefing ourselves in the herd has been given as the
counterpart of spiritual communion, but are we seeking
the "comfort" of fellowship or the creative agonies of
fellowship The latter we find not in herd life, but in
group life.
Then besides the group, the crowd, the mob, the herd
there are numbers as mere numbers. When we are a lot
of people with different purposes we are simply wearied,
not stimulated. At a bazaar, for instance, far from
feeling satisfaction in yom fellow-creatures, you often
loathe them. Here you are not swayed by one emotion,
as in a crowd, nor unified by some iutermingling of
thought as in a group.
It must be understood that I do not wish to make any
arbitrary dictum in regard to distinctions between the
crowd and the herd, the crowd and mere numbers, etc.
90
THE NEW STATE
I merely wish to point out that the subject has not yet
received sufficient study. What is it we feel at the mid¬
night mass of the Madeleine.»* It is not merely the one
thought which animates all; it is largely the great mass
of people who are feeling the one thought. But many
considerations and unanswered questions leap to our
mind just here. All this is an interesting field for the
further study and close analysis of psychologists.
We must not, however, think from these distinctions
that man as member of a group and man as member of
a crowd, as one of a herd or of a mob or of a mere assem-
«
blage, is subject to entirely different laws which never
mingle; there are all the various shadings and minglings
of these which we see in such varied associations as busi¬
ness corporation, family, committee, pofitical meeting,
trade-union etc. Our herd traditions show in our group
life; there is something of the crowd in all groups and
there is something of the group in many crowds, as in a
legislative assembly. Only further study will teach us
to distinguish how much herd instinct and how much
group conviction contribute to our ideas and feefings
at any one time and what the tendencies are when these
clash. Only further study will show us how to secure
the advantages of the crowd without suffering from its
disadvantages. We have all felt that there was much
that was valuable in that emotional thriU which brings
us into a vaster reahn although not a coordinated reahn;
we have all rejoiced in the quickened heart-beat, the
sense of brotherhood, the love of hmnanity, the renewed
courage which have sometimes come to us when we were
with many people. Perhaps the ideal group will com¬
bine the advantages of the mass and the group proper:
will give us collective thought, the creative will and at
the same time the inspiration for renewed effort and sus¬
tained self-discipline.
THE CROWD FALLACY 91
Cro\.d association has, however, received more study
than group association because as a matter of fact there
is at present so much more of the former than of the
latter. But we need not only a psychology which looks
at us as we are, but a psychology which points the way
to that which we may become. What our advanced
thinkers are now doing is to evolve this new psychology.
Conscious evolution means giving less and less place to
herd instinct and more to the group imperative. We are
emerging from our gregarious condition and are now to
enter on the rational way of living by scEuming oin rela¬
tions to one another, instead of bluntly feeling them,
and so adjusting them that unimpeded progress on this
higher plane is secured.
And now that association is increasing so rapidly on
every hand, it is necessary that we see to it that this
shall be group association, not crowd association. In the
business world our large enterprises are governed by
boards, not by one man: one group (corporation) deals
with another group (corporation). Hospitals, libraries,
colleges, are governed by boards, trustees, faculties. We
have committees of arbitration, boards of partial man¬
agement (labor agreements) composed of representatives
of employers and employed. Many forms of coopera¬
tion eure being tried: some one must analyze the psy¬
chological process of the generation of cooperative
activity. All this means a study of group psychology.
In the political world there is a growing tendency to
put the administrative part of government more and
more into the hands of commissions. Moreover, we
have not legislatures swayed by oratory and other forms
of mass suggestion, but committee government. Of
course legislative committees do not try to get the group
idea, they are largely controlled by partisan and financial
interests, but at any rate they are not governed wholly
92
THE NEW STATE
by suggestion. In the philanthropic world we no longer
deal with individuals: we form a committee or associa¬
tion to deal with individuals or with groups of indi¬
viduals. The number of associations of every kind for
every purpose increases daily. Hence we must study
the group.
XIII
THE SECRET OF PROGRESS
I HAVE said that the essence of the social process
is the creating of ever new values through the inter¬
play of all the forces of life. But I have also tried
to show that these forces must be organized; from con¬
fusion nothing is horn. The spiritual order grows up
within us as fast as we make new correlations. Chaos,
disorder, destruction, come everywhere from refusing the
syntheses of life.
The task of coadaptation is unending, whether it
means getting on with a difficult member of my family,
playmg the game at school or college, doing my part
in my business, my city, or whether it means Germany
and the Allies living together on the same plemet.
Nietzsche thought that the man who showed the most
force was the most virtuous. Now we say that all this
brute energy is merely the given, that the hfe-process is
the unifying of the given — he who shows the imifying
power in greatest degree is the superman. Progress is
not determined then by economic conditions, by physical
conditions nor by biological factors solely, but more
especially by our capacity for genuine cooperation.
This idea of progress clear-cuts, some long-established
notions. We see now the truth and the fallacy in the
assertions (1) that social evolution depends upon indi¬
vidual progress with imitation by the crowd, (2) that
evolution means struggle and the sinvival of the fittest.
For some years the generally accepted theory of the
social process was that the individual invents, society
spreads. We have already examined one half of this
93
94
THE NEW STATE
theoiy; let us look at the other half — the idea that
the individual originates.
If a man comes forward with an idea, what do we
mean by saying that he is more "original" than his
fellows So far as the quahty of originality can be de¬
scribed, do we not mean that his capacity for saturation
is greater, his connection with the psychic reservoir
more direct, so that some group finds in him its most
complete interpreter Or even if it is quite evident that
in a particular instance a particular individuad has not
derived his idea from the group of which he is at the
moment a member, but has brought it to the group,
none of us believes that that idea arose spontaneously
in his mind independent of all previous association.
This individual has belonged to many other groups,
has discussed with many men, or even if he has fived
his life apart he has read newspapers and magazines,
books and letters, and has mingled his ideas with those
he has found there. Thus the "individual" idea he
brings to a group is not ready an "individual" idea; it
is the result of the process of interpénétration, but by
bringing it to a new group and soaking it in that the
interpénétration becomes more complex. The group idea
he takes away is now his individual idea so far as any
new group is concerned, and in fact it becomes an active
agent in his progress and the progress of society only by
meeting a new group. Our fife is more and more stag¬
nant in proportion as we refuse the group fife.
According to the old theory, the individual proposes,
society accepts or rejects; the individual is forever walk¬
ing up to society to be embraced or rejected — it sounds
like some game but is hardly fife.
There is an interesting theory current which is the
direct outcome of the fallacy that the individual origi¬
nates and society imitates, namely, the great man theory.
THE SECRET OF PROGRESS 95
While it seems absurd in this age to he comhating the
idea of special creation, yet it is something very like
this that one comes up against sometimes in the dis¬
cussion of this theory. The question is often asked,
"Does the great man produce his environment or is he
the product of his environment .•* " Although for my pur¬
pose I may seem to emphasize the other side of things,
not for a moment do I wish to belittle the inestimable
value of genius. Rut the fact of course is that great men
make their environment and are made by their environ¬
ment. There wells up in the individual a fountain of
power, hut this fountain has risen imderground and is
richly fed by all the streams of the conunon life.^
1 have spoken of fallacies in the individual invention
theory and in the struggle theory. But I am using the
word struggle as synonymous with strife, opposition, war;
eifort, striving, the ceaseless labor of adjustment will
always be ours, hut these two ideas represent opposite
poles of existence. In the true theory of evolution strug-'
gle has indeed always been adaptation. For many years
the "strongest" man has been to science the being with
the greatest number of points of union, the "fittest" has
been the one with the greatest power of cooperation.
Darwin we all know believed that the cause of the ad¬
vance of civilization was in the social habits of man.
Our latest biologists teU us that "mutual aid" has from
the first been a strong factor in evolution, that the ani¬
mal species in which the practice of "mutual aid"^ has
attained the greatest development are invariably the
^ It is unfortunate to be obliged to treat tbis important point with such
brevity.
2 The expressions "mutual aid" and "animal cooperation" have, how¬
ever, a slightly misleading connotation; mutual adaptation, coordinated
activities, come nearer the truth. It is confusing to take the words and
phi'ases we use of men in the conscious stage and transfer them to the
world of animals in the unconscious stage.
96
THE NEW STATE
most numerotis and the most prosperous. We no longer
think of the animal world as necessarily a world of strife ;
in many of its forms we find not strife but coordinated
activities.
But to too many people struggle suggests conquest
and domination; it imphes necessarily victors and van¬
quished. Some sociologists call the dissimilar elements
of a group the struggle elements, and the similar ele¬
ments the imifymg elements. But this is a false distinc¬
tion which wiU, as long as persisted in, continue the war
between classes and between nations. The test of our
progress is neither our likenesses nor our unlikenesses,
but what we are goiug to do with our unlikenesses.
Shall I fight whatever is different from me or find the
higher synthesis.»^ The progress of society is measured
by its power to unite into a living, generating whole
its self-yielding differences.
Moreover, we think now of the survival of groups
rather than of individuals. For the survival of the group
the stronger members must not crush the weaker but
cherish them, because the spiritual and social strength
which will come from the latter comse makes a stronger
group them the mere brute strength of a number of
"strong" individuals. That is, the strength of the group
does not depend on the greatest number of strong men,
but on the strength of the bond between them, that is,
on the amount of solidarity, on the best organization.
But it might be said, "You still evidently beheve in
struggle, only you make the group instead of the indi¬
vidual the unit." No, the progress of man must con¬
sist in extending the group, in belonging to many groups,
in the relation of these groups. If we accept life as end¬
less battle, then we shedl always have the strong over¬
coming the weak, either strong individuals conquering
the weak, or a strong group a weak group, or a strong
THE SECRET OF PROGRESS 97
nation a weak nation. Rut synthesis is the principle of
Ufe, the method of social progress. Men have developed
not through struggle but through leeuning how to Uve
together.
Lately the struggle theory has been transferred from
the physical to the inteUectued world. Many writers
who see society as a continuous conflict think its highest
form is discussion. One of these says, "Not for a mo¬
ment would I deny that fighting is better carried on by
the pen than by the sword, but some sort of fighting
will be necessary to the end of the world." No, as long
as we think of discussion as a struggle, as an opportu¬
nity for "argument," there will be all the usual evil
consequences of the struggle theory. But all this is super¬
ficial. If struggle is unavailing, it is imavailing aU along
the fine. It is not intellectual struggle that marks the
fine of progress, but any signs of finding another method
than struggle. Two neighbors quarrelling in words are
httle more developed than two men fighting a duel. We
must learn to think of discussion not as a struggle but
as experiment in cooperation. We must learn coopera¬
tive thinking, intellectual team-work. There is a secret
here which is going to revolutionize the world.
Perhaps the most profound reason against struggle is
that it always erects a thing-in-itself. If I "fight" Mr.
X, that means that I think of Mr. X as incapable of
change — that either he or I must prevail, must con¬
quer. When I realize fully that there are no things-
in-themselves, struggle simply fades away; then I know
that Mr. X and I are two flowing streams of activity
which must meet for larger ends than either could pursue
alone.
Is Germany the leist stronghold of the old theory of
evolution, is she the last being in a modern world to
assert herself as a thing-in-itself i* President Wilson's
98
THE NEW STATE
contribution to this war is that he refuses to look upon
Germany as a thing-in-itself.
The idea of adaptation to environment has been so
closely connected with the "struggle for existence" theory
that some people do not seem to realize that in giving up
the latter, the former still has force, although with a
somewhat different connotation. We now feel not only
that adaptation to environment is compatible with co¬
operation, hut that cooperation is the basis of adapta¬
tion to environment. But our true environment is
psychic, and as science teaches adaptation to the physi¬
cal, so group psychology will teach the secret of mem¬
bership in the psychic environment, will teach the branch
to know its vine, where its own inner sources of hfe are
revealed to it. Then we shall imderstand that environ¬
ment is not a hard and rigid something external to us,
always working upon us, whose influence we cannot
escape. Not only have self and environment acted and
reacted upon each other, hut the action and reaction
go on every moment; both self and environment are
always in the making. The individual who has been
affected by his environment acts on an environment
which has been affected by individuals. We shall need
an understanding of this for all our constructive work:
it is not that formative influences work on a dead mass of
inertia, hut formative influences work on an environment
which has already responded to initiatives, emd these
iaitiatives have been affected by the responses. We
cannot he practical pohticians without fully understand¬
ing this.
Progress then must he through the group process.
Progress implies respect for the creative process not the
created thing; the created thing is forever and forever
being left behind us. The greatest blow to a hide-bound
conservatism would be the understanding that hfe is
THE SECRET OF PROGRESS 99
creative at every moment. What the hard-shelled con-
servátive always forgets is that what he really admires
in the past is those very moments when men have strongly
and rudely broken with tradition, burst bonds, and
created something. True conservatism and true pro-
gressivism are not two opposites: conservatives dislike
"change," yet they as well as progressives want to grow;
progressives dislike to "stand pat," yet they as well as
conservatives want to preserve what is good in the pres¬
ent. But conservatives often make the mistake of think¬
ing they can go on living on their spiritual capital;
progressives are often too prone not to fund their capi¬
tal at all.
What we must get away from is "the hell of rigid
things." There is a living hfe of the people. And it
must flow directly through our goverrunent and our in¬
stitutions, expressing itself anew at every moment. We
are not fossils petrified in our social strata. We are alive.
This is the first lesson for us to learn. That very word
means change and change, growth and growth. To live
gloriously is to change undauntedly — our ideals must
evolve from day to day, emd it is upon those who can
fearlessly embrace the doctrine of "becoming" that the
life of the future waits. All is growing; we must recog¬
nize this and free the way for the growth. We must
unclose our spiritual sources, we must allow no mech¬
anism to come between our spiritual sources and our
hfe. The élan vital must have free play.
Democracy must he conceived as a process, not a goal.
We do not want rigid institutions, however good. We
need no "body of truth" of any kind, but the will to wül,
which means the power to make our own government, our
own institutions, our own expanding truth. We progress,
not from one insiiiuiion to another, but from a lesser to a
greater will to will.
100
THE NEW STATE
We know now that there cire no immutable goals.—
there is only a way, a process, by which we shall, like
gods, create our own ends at any moment — crystallize
just enough to be of use emd then flow on again. The
flow of hfe and we the flow: this is the truth. Life is
not a matter of desirable objects here and there; the
stream flows on and he who waits with his object is left
with a corpse. Man is equal to hfe at every moment,
but he must hve for life and not for the things life has
produced.
Yet while it is true that hfe can never be formahzed
or formulated, that hfe is movement, change, onward-
ness, this does not mean that we must give up the
abiding. The unchangeable and the unchanging are
both included in the idea of growth.'^ Stabihty is neither
rigidity nor sterflity: it is the perpetual power of bring¬
ing forth.
Writers are always fixing dates for the dividing hne
between the ancient and the modern world, or between
the mediaeval and the modern world. Soon the begin¬
ning of modem times, of modem thought, wiU, I beheve,
be dated at the moment when men began to look at a
plastic world, at a hfe constantly changing, at institu¬
tions as only temporary crystalhzations of hfe forces, of
right as evolving, of men as becoming.
The real work of every mam is then to build. The chal¬
lenge is upon us. This is the task to which all vahant
souls must set themselves. We are to rise from one
mastery, to emother. We eae to be no longer satisfied
with the pace of a merely fortuitous progress. We must
know now that we are coworkers with every process
of creation, that our function is as important as the
power which keeps the stars in their orbits. We are
^ It is because of this profound truth that wç must always respect
conservatism.
THE SECRET OF PROGRESS 101
creators here and now. We are not in the anteroom
of our real hfe. This is real hfe.
We caimot, however, mould om lives each by himself;
but within every individual is the power of joining him¬
self fundamentally and vitally to other hves, and out of
this vital union comes the creative power. Revelation,
if we want it to he continuous, must be through the com-
mimity bond. No individual can change the disorder
and iniquity of this world. No chaotic mass of men and
women can do it. Conscious group creation is to he the
social and poHtical force of the future. Our aim must
be to live consciously in more and more group relations
and to make each group a means of creating. It is the
group which will teach us that we are not puppets of
fate.
Then will men and women spend their time in trivial
or evü ways when they discover that they can make a
world to their Kking ? We are sometimes told that yoimg
men and women working all day under the present very
trying industrial conditions live in our great cities a
round of gaiety at night. Go and look at them. It is
a depressing sight. A tragedy is a tragedy and has its
own nobility, but this farce of a city population enjoy¬
ing itself at night is a pitiful spectacle. Go to clubs, go
to dances, go to theatres or moving-pictxues, and the
mass of our young people look indifferent and more or
less bored — they have not found the joy of hfe. Play,
as useless idhng, does not give us joy. Work, as drudg¬
ery, does not give us joy. Only creating gives us joy.
When we see that we are absolute masters of our hfe,
that in every operation, however humble, we are work¬
ing out the fundamental laws of being, then we shah
walk to oiu daily work as the soldiers march to the
Marseillaise.
We know what happened on that lonely island in a
102
THE NEW STATE
distant sea when the young Prince came to the people
of the Kingdom of Cards, who had always lived by Rules,
and taught them to hve by their Ichcha, their will.
Images became men and women, rules gave place to
wüls, the caste of the Court cards was lost, a mechanism
changed into hfe. The inhabitants of the Kingdom of
Cards, who had never thought, who had never made a
decision, learned the royal power of choosing for them¬
selves. Regulations were abandoned, and the startling
discovery was made that they could walk in any direction
they chose. This is what we need to learn — that we can
walk in any direction we choose. We are not a pack of
cards to be put here and there, to go always in rows,
to totter and faU when we are not propped up. We
must obey our Ichcha.
Already the change has begun. I have said that we
are beginning to recognize this power — there are many
indications that we are beginning to hve this power.
We are no longer willing to leave human affairs to
"natural" control: we do not want war because it is
"natmal" to fight; we do not want a haphazard popu¬
lation at the dictates of "nature." We no longer be¬
lieve that sickness and poverty are sent by God; people,
are being taught that they need not be sick, that it is
largely in their own hands, their own collective hands
(social hygiene etc.). Modem charity is not aimed at
relieving individual poverty, but at freeing the individual
from the particular enslavement which has produced his
poverty, in freeing society from the causes which pro¬
duce poverty at all.^
Our once-honored bhnd forces are more and more
losing their mastery over us. We are at this moment,
however, in a difficult transition period. We are "freer"
1 The claim of the individual to a larger share in government and to
a share in the control of industry will be taken up in later chapters.
THE SECRET OF PROGRESS 103
than ever before; the trouble is we do not know what to
do with this freedom. It is easy to hve the moral, the
"social," life when it consists in following a path care¬
fully marked out for us, but the task given us to-day is
to revalue all the world values, to steer straight on and
on into the unknown — a gallemt forth-faring indeed.
But conscious evolution, the endless process of a perfect-
coordinating, demands vital people. War is the easy
way: we take to war because we have not enough vi-
tahty for the far more difficult job of agreeing. So also
that kind of rehgion which consists of contemplation
of other-worldhness is the easy way, and we take to that
when we have not enough vitality dehberately to direct
our hfe and construct om world. It takes more spiritual
energy to express the group spirit than the particularist
spirit. This is its glory as well as its difficulty. We
have to he higher order of beings to do it — we become
higher order of beings by doing it. And so the progress
goes on forever: it means hfe forever in the making, and
the creative responsibihty of every man.
Conscious evolution is the key to that larger view of
democracy which we are embracing to-day. The key.^
Every mem sharing in the creative process is democracy;
this is our pohtics and our rehgion. People are always
inquirmg into their relatidn to God. God is the moving
force of the world, the ever-continuing creating where
men are the co-creators. "Chaque homme fait dieu, un
peu, avec sa vie," as one of the most illumined of the
younger French poets says.^ Man and God are corre¬
lates of that mighty movement which is Humanity self-
creating. God is the perpetual Call to our self-fuffilhng.
We, by sharing in the life-process which binds all to-
^ "Ce que Nait" is the title of a volume of poems by Arcos, and that
which is being born through all the activity of our common life is God.
It is of the "naissance" and "croissance" of God that Arcos loves to sing.
104
THE NEW STATE
gether in an active, working unity are all the time shar¬
ing in the making of the Universe. This thought calls
forth everything heroic that is in us; every power of
which we are capable must be gathered to this glorious
destiny. This is the True Democracy.^
^ I have said that we gain creative power through the group. Those
who feel enthralled by material conditions, and to whom it seems an
irony to be told that they are "creators," wiU demand something more
specific. Concrete methods of group organization are given in Part III,
XIV
THE GROUP PRINCIPLE AT WORK
OUR rate of progress, then, and the degree in
which we actualize the perfect democracy,
depend upon our understanding that man
has the power of creating, and that he gets this power
through his capacity to join with others to form a real
whole, a living group. Let us see, therefore, what signs
are visible to-day of the group principle at work. •
First, our whole idea of education is rapidly changing.
The chief aim of education now is to fit the child into
the life of the community; we do not think of his "indi¬
vidual" development except as contributing to that.
Or it would be nearer the truth to say that we recognize
that his individual development is essentially just that.
The method of accomplishing this is chiefly through
(1) the introduction of group class-room work in the
place of individual recitations, (2) the addition of voca¬
tional subjects to the curriculum and the establishment
of vocational schools, and (3) the organizing of vocational
guidance departments and placement bureaus in con¬
nection with the pubUc schools.
In many of the IcU-ge cities of the United States the
pubhc schools have a vocational guidance department,
and it is not considered that the schools have done their
duty by the child until they have helped him to choose
his life occupation, have trained him in some degree for
it, and have actually found him a job, that is, fitted him
into the community. It is becoming gradually accepted
that this is a function of the state, and several of our
105
106
THE NEW STATE
states are considering the appropriation of funds for the
carrying on of such departments.'
The further idea of education as a continuous process,
that it stops neither at 14 nor 21 nor 60, that a man
should be related to his community not only through
services rendered and benefits received but by a steady
process of preparation for his social emd civic life, will
be discussed later,^
The chief object of medical social service is to put
people into harmonious and fruitful relation, not only
because iUness has temporarily withdrawn certain people
from the community, but because it is often some lack
of adaptation which has caused the illness.
Our different immigration theories show clearly the
growth of the community idea. First came the idea of
amalgamation: our primary duty to all people coming
to America was to assimilate them as quickly and as
thoroughly as possible. Then people reacted against
the melting-pot theory and said, "No, we want all the
Italians have to offer, all the Syrians can give us; the
richness of these different civilizations must not be en¬
gulfed in ours." So separate colonies were advocated,
sepetrate organizations were encouraged. Many articles
were written and speeches made to spread this thought.
But now a third idea is emerging — the community idea.
We do not want Swedes and Poles to be lost in an undif¬
ferentiated whole, but equally we do not want aU the
evils of the separatist method; we are trying to get an
articulated whole. We want all these different peoples
to be part of a true community — giving all they have
to give and receiving equally. Only by a mutual permea¬
tion of ideals shall we enrich their lives and they ours.
^ It is interesting to notice that Miss Lathrop*s whole conception of
the Children's Bureau is that it is to fit children into the life of the com¬
munity. ^ See Appendix.
Í HE GROUP PRINCIPLE AT WORK 107
Again our present treatment of crime shows the com¬
munity principle in two ways: (1) the idea of com-
mimity responsibility for crime is spreading rapidly;
(2) we €ne fast outgrowing the idea of punishing crimi¬
nals merely, our object is to fit them into society.
First, the growing idea of community responsibility
for crime. We read in an account of the new penology
that "Crime in the last analysis is not to be overcome
after arrest but before," that crime will be abolished by
a change of environment and that "environment is trans¬
formed by child labor laws and the protection of chil¬
dren, by housing laws and improved sanitation, by the
prevention of tuberculosis and other diseases, by health-
giving recreational facilities, by security of employment,
by insurance against the fatalities of industry emd the
financial burdens of death and disease, by suitable voca¬
tional training, by all that adds to the content of human
Ufe and gives us higher and keener motives to self-con¬
trol, strenuous exertion and thrift." We of course do
not exonerate the individual from responsibility, but
it must be shared by the whole society in which he
fives.
Secondly, the old idea of justice was punishment, a
relic of personal revenge; this punishment took the form
of confinement, of keeping the man outside society. The
new idea is exactly the opposite: it is to join him to
society by finding out just what part he is best fitted to
play in society and training him for it. A former Com¬
missioner of Corrections in New York told me that a
number of people, including several judges, were look¬
ing forward to the time very soon being ripe for making
the "punishment" of a crime the doing some piece of
social service in order to fit the criminal into the social
order. One man who had shown in his crime marked
organizing ability had been sent to oversee the reclaim-
108
THE NEW STATE
ing of some large tracts of abandoned farm land, and
this had worked so well that a number of judges wished
to try similar experiments.
Thus criminals are coming to he shown that their
crime has not been against individuals hut against so¬
ciety, that it has divorced them from their community
and that the object of their imprisonment is that they
may learn how to unite themselves to their community.
The colony system means that they must learn to hve
in a community by hvmg in a community. This is the
object of Mr. Wilham George's "Social Sanitarium,"
where the men are to hve in a graded series of farm
villages, govern themselves, support themselves and also
their famihes as far as possible, and pass from "village"
to "village" on their way towards the society from which
their crime has separated them.
This same principle, to make the hfe while imder
pimishment a preparation for conamunity hfe, rmderlay
the work of Mr. Osborne at Sing Sing. Through his
Mutual Welfeae League he tried to develop a feehng of
responsibihty to the commxmity, a feehng first of ah
that there was a community within the prison. All the
men knew gang loyalty; it was Mr. Osborne's aim to
build upon this. He thought they could not feel responsi¬
bihty to a conummity outside when they left unless they
learnt community consciousness inside. He did not pro¬
vide recreation for them solely for the sake of recreation;
he did not aUow them self-government because of any
abstract idea of the justice of self-government; he tried
to bring the men of Sing Sing to a reahzation of a com-
mimity, to a sense of responsibihty to a community.
The two men who escaped from Sing Sing in 1916 and
volimtarily returned had learned this lesson.^
1 The new farm industrial system which is to replace Sing Sing is
founded largely on the community idea.
THE GROUP PRINCIPLE AT WORK 109
Roth these principles — community responsibility for
crime and the necessity of fitting the offender into the
community fife — underlie the work of the juvenile court.
The probation officer's duty is not exhausted by knitting
the child agrnn into worthy relations; he must try to see
that community fife shall touch children on all sides in
a helpful not a harmful way.
A futme task for the juvenile court is to organize
groups hack of the child as part of the system of proba¬
tion. All oxn experience is showing us the value of using
the group incentive. The approval or blame of our
fellow-men is an urgent factor in our fives; a man can
stand any sort of condemnation better than that of his
club. It was the idea of community punishment which
was such an interesting peu't of the "Little Common¬
wealth" which Mr. Homer Lane established near De¬
troit for boys emd girls on probation. If a boy did not
work he was not punished for it, he did not eveii go
without food, but the whole commonwealth had to
pay for it out of their earnings. The whole moral
pressure of the community was thus brought to bear
upon that boy to do his share of the work — an in¬
centive which Mr. Lane found more powerful than emy
punishment.
A colonel of the American army says that fewer offenses
are committed in our army than in the Continental
armies, not because human nature is different in America
but because our methods of army discipline are different :
the custom in our army is to punish a company for the
offense of an individual; the company, therefore, looks
after its own members.
The procedure of our courts also shows signs of change
in the direction of the recognition of the group principle.
Until recently we have had in om* courts two lawyers,
each upholding his side : this means a real struggle, there
110
THE NEW STATE
is no effort at unifying, one or the other must win; the
judge is a sort of umpire. But the Reconciliation Court
of Cleveland (and some other western cities) marks a
long step in advance. This does away with lawyers
each arguing one side; the judge deals directly with
the disputants, trying to make them see that a harmoniz¬
ing of their differences is possible. In our municipal
courts, to be sure, the principal fimction of the judge has
long been not to punish but to take those measures which
will place the individual again in his group, but this
apphes only to criminal cases, whereas the Reconciha-
tion Court of Cleveland, following the practice of the
conciliation courts of certain continental countries,^ deals
with civil cases. The part of the judge in our juvenile
courts is too well known to need mention.
In a jury I suppose we have always had an example
of the group idea in practical hfe. Here there is no
question of counting up similar ideas — there must be
one idea and the effort is to seek that.
In om legislatures and legislative committees we get
little integrated thought because of their party organiza¬
tion; even among members of the seune party on a com¬
mittee there are many causes at work to prevent the
genuine interplay we should have. The governors' com¬
missions, on the other hand, hear both sides, call in
many experts and try to arrive at some composite
judgment.
Nowhere has our social atomism been more apparent
than in our lack of city-planning: (1) we have had many
beautiful single buildings, but no plan for the whole
city; (2) and more important, we could not get any
general plan for our cities accepted because the individual
^ France, Norway, Switzerland. In Norway it is said that more
than three-quarters of the cases which come before the conciliation courts
are settled without law suits.
THE GROUP PRINCIPLE AT WORK 111
property owner (this was called individualism!) must
be protected against the community. City-planning
includes not only plans for a beautiful city but for all
its daily needs — streets, traffic regulations, bousing,
schools, industry, transportation, recreational facibties;
we cannot secure these things while property owners
are being protected in their "rights." The angry pro¬
test which goes up from real estate owners when it is
proposed to regulate the height of buildings we have
hecu-d in all our cities. The struggle for enough light and
air in tenements has been fought step by step. The
"right" claimed was the right of every man to do what
he hked with his own property. Now we are beginning
to recognize the error of this, emd to see that it is not a
state of individuahsm but of anarchy that our new build¬
ing laws are trying to do away with. No real estate
owner is to be allowed to do that with his own property
which will not fit into a general plan for the beauty and
efficiency of the city. The key-note of the new city-
planning is adaptation, adaptation of means to end and
of part to part. This does not stifle individual initiative,
but directs it.
And the interesting point for us here is that the real
estate men themselves are now beginning to see that
particularistic builcing has actually hurt real estate
interests. The "Report of the Advisory Council of the
Real Estate Interests of New York City" admits that
"fight, air and access, the chief factors in fixing rentable
values, had been impaired by high buildings and by the
proximity of inappropriate or nuisance buildings and
uses." It is impossible to talk ten minutes with real
estate men to-day without noticing how entirely changed
their attitude has been in the last ten or twenty years.
Moralists used to tell us that the only path of progress
was to make people willing to give up their own interests
112
THE NEW STATE
for the sake of others. But this is not what our real
estate men are doing. They are coming to see that their
interests are in the long run coincident with the interests
of aU the other members of the city.
The growing recognition of the group principle in the
business world is particularly interesting to us. The
present development of business methods shows us that
the old argument about cooperation and competition is
not fruitful. Cooperation and competition are being
taken up into a larger synthesis. We are just entering
on an era of collective living. "Cut-throat" competi¬
tion is beginning to go out of fashion. What the world
needs to-day is a cooperative mind. The business world
is never again to be directed by individual intelligences,
but by intelligences interacting and ceaselessly influenc¬
ing one another. Every mental act of the big business
man is entirely different from the mental acts of the
man of the last century managing his own competitive
business. There is of course competition between our
large firms, but the cooperation between them is com¬
ing to occupy a larger and larger place relatively. We
see this in the arrangement between most of our large
printers in Boston not to outbid one another, in those
trades which join to establish apprentice schools, in the
cooperative credit system, wo^'ked out so carefully in
some of the western cities as almost to eliminate bad
debts, in the regular conferences between the business
managers of the large department stores, in our new
Employment Managers' associations in Boston and else¬
where, in the whole spirit of our progressive Chambers
of Commerce. When our large stores "compete" to
give the highest class goods and best quality service,
and meet in conference to make this "competition"
effective, then competition itself becomes a kind of
cooperation! There are now between thirty and forty
THE GROUP PRINCIPLE AT WORK 113
associations in this comitry organized on the open-price
plan. The Leather Belting Exchange, Ein excellent
example of "cooperative competition," was organized
in 1915. Some of its avowed objects Eire: stEmdEirdiza-
tion of grades of leather, promotion of use of leather
belting by scientific investigation of its possible uses,
uniform contract system, uniform system of cost ac¬
counting, daily charts of sales, monthly statistical re¬
ports, collection Emd distribution of infonnation relative
to cost of raw material Emd to methods and cost of mEmu-
facturing and distribution.^ How vastly different a
spirit from that which used to animate the business
world!
Modern business, therefore, needs above all men who
cEm unite, not merely men who can unite without fric¬
tion, but who can turn their union to account. The
successful business man of to-day is the man of trained
cooperative intelhgence. The world as well as the psy¬
chologist places a higher value on the man who CEm take
part in collective thinking and concerted action, and has
higher positions to offer him in the business Emd pohtical
field. The secretEury of a Commission investigates a
subject, is clever in masteriug details, in drawing con¬
clusions Emd in presenting them, perhaps far cleverer in
these respects than any member of the Commission.
But the chairman of the Commission must have another
and higher power — the power of uniting these conclu¬
sions with the conclusions of others, the power of using
this material to evolve with others plans for action.
This means a more developed individual and brings a
higher price in the open market.
Another illustration of the group principle in the busi¬
ness world is that a corporation is obliged by law to
act in joint meeting, that is, it cannot get the vote of
"Experiences in Cooperative Competition," by W. V. Spaulding.
114
THE NEW STATE
its members by letter and then act according to the
majority.
But more important than any of the illustrations yet
given is the application of the group principle to the
relations of capital and labor. People are at last begin¬
ning to see that industrial organization must be based
on the community idea. If we do not want to be domi¬
nated by the special interests of the capital-power, it is
equally evident that we do not want to be dominated
by the special interests of the labor-power. The interests
of capital and labor must be imited.^
Even collective bargaining is only a milestone on the
way to the full apphcation of the group principle. It
recognizes the union, it recognizes that some adjustment
between the interests of capital and labor is possible, but
it is stiU "bargaining," still an adjustment between two
warring bodies, it still rests on the two pillars of conces¬
sion and compromise. We see now the false psychology
imderlying compromise and concession. Their practical
futility has long been evident: whenever any difference
is "settled" by concession, that difference pops up again
in some other form. Nothing will ever truly settle dif¬
ferences but synthesis. No wonder the syndicahsts label
the "compromises" made between "antagonistic in¬
terests" as insincere. In a way all compromise is insin¬
cere, and real harmony can be obtained only by an
integration of "antagonistic" interests which can take
place only when we imderstand the method. The error
of the syndicalists is in thinking that compromise is
the only method; their fundamental error is in thinking
that different interests are necessarily " emtagonistic "
interests.
Compromise is accepted not only as inevitable emd
^ The great value of Robert Valentine's work consisted in his recog¬
nition of this fact.
THE GROUP PRINCIPLE AT WORK 115
as entirely proper, but as the most significant fact of
human association, by those economists who belong to
that school of "group sociologists" which sees present
society as made up of weirring groups, ideal society as
made up of groups in equilibrium. Not only, I believe, is
conflict and compromise not the true social process, but
also it is not, even at present, the most significemt, al¬
though usually the largest, part of the social process.
The integrating of ideas which comes partly from direct
interpénétration, and partly from that indirect inter-
penetration which is the consequence of the overlapping
membership of groups, I see going on very largely in
the groups to which I belong, and is surely an interest¬
ing sign-post to future methods of association.
The weakness of Arbitration and Concifiation Boeuds,
with their "impartial" member, is that they tend to mere
compromise even when they are not openly negotia¬
tions between two warring parties.^ It is probable from
what we see on all sides that the more " coneessions "
we make, the less "peace" we shall get. Compulsory
Arbitration in New Zealand has not succeeded as well
as was hoped just because it has not found the com¬
munity between capital emd Iribor.
The latest development of collective beirgaining, the
Trade Agreement,^ with more or less permanent boards
of representatives from employers and workers, brings
us nearer true eommunity than we have yet found in
industrieJ relations. The history of these Agreements
in England and America is fruitful study. One of the
best known in Ameriea is Mr. Justice Rrandeis' protocol
^ I am speaking in general. It is true that the history of cases settled
by arbitration reveals many in which the "umpire" has insisted that
negotiations continue until the real coincident interest of both sides
should be discovered.
2 It has long been known in England and America but recently it
has been spreading rapidly.
116
THE NEW STATE
scheme in 1910 for the garment industries of New York,
which provided for an industrial comt composed of em¬
ployers and employed to which all disagreements should
be brought, and for six years this prevented strikes in
the needle trades of New Yorkd
One of the most interesting of the Trade Agreements
to be found in the Bulletins of the National Labor De¬
partment, smd one which can be studied over a long term
of years, is that between the Stove Founders' National
Defence Association (employers) and the Iron Moulders'
Union of North America. It is not only that the per¬
manent orgem of "conference" (employers and em¬
ployees represented) has brought peace to the stove
industry after forty years of disastrous strikes emd lock¬
outs, but that question after question has been decided
not by the side which the market rendered strongest
at the moment seizing its advantage, but by a real
harmonizing of interest. A good illustration is the
treatment of the question of who should pay for
the bad castings: that was not decided at once as a
matter of superior strength or of compromise, but
after many months a basis of mutual advemtage was
found.
For some years Trade Agreements have been coming
to include more and more points; not wages and hours
alone, but many questions of shop management, dis¬
cipline etc. are now included. Moreover it has been
seen over and over again that the knowledge gained
through joint conference is the knowledge needed for
joint control: the workmen ought to know the cost of
production and of transportation, the relative value of
different processes of production, the state of the market,
the conditions governing the production and marketing
of the competing product etc. ; the employer must know
^ Recently abandoned.
THE GROUP PRINCIPLE AT WORK 117
the real conditions of labor and the laborer's point of
view.
The fundamental weeikness of collective bargaining
is that while it provides machinery for adjustment of
grievances, while it looks forward to all the conceivable
emergencies which may arise to cause disagreement be¬
tween labor and capital, and seeks methods to meet
these, it does not give labor a direct share in industrial
control. In the collective bargain wages and the condi¬
tions of employment are usually determined by the rela¬
tive bargaining strength of the workers and employers
of the industrial group. Not bargaining in any form,
not negotiation, is the key to industrial peace and pros¬
perity; the collective contract must in time go the way
of the individual contract. Commimity is the key-word
for aU relations of the new state. Labor unions have
long been seeking their "rights," have looked on the
differences between capital and labor as a fight, and
have sought an advantageous position from which to
carry on the fight: this attitude has influenced their
whole internal organization. They quite as much as
capital must recognize that this attitude must be given
up. If we want harmony between labor and capital, we
must make labor and capital into one group: we must
have an integration of interests and motives, of stand¬
ards and ideals of justice.
It is a mistake to think that social progress is to depend
upon anything happening to the working people: some
say that they are to be given more material goods and
all will be well; some think they are to be given more
"education" and the world will be saved. It is equally
a mistake to think that what we need is the conver¬
sion to "unselfishness" of the capitalist class. Those
who advocate profit-sharing are not helping us. The
quarrel between capital and labor can never be settled
118
THE NEW STATE
on material grounds. The crux of that qusurel is not
profits and wages — it is the joint control of industry.
There has heen an increasing tendency of recent years
for employers to take their employees into their councils.
This ranges from mere "advisory" boards, which are
consulted chiefly concerning grievances, through the
joint committees for safety, health, standardization,
wages etc., to real share in the memagement.^ But even
in the lowest form of this new kind of cooperation we
may notice two points: the advisory boards are usually
representative bodies elected by the employees, and they
are consulted as a whole, not individually. The flaw in
these advisory boards is not so much, as is often thought,
because the memagement still keeps all the power in its
own hands, as that the company officials do not sit with
these boards in joint consultation. There is, however,
much variety of method. In some shops advisory com¬
mittees meet with the company officials. Some com¬
panies put many more important questions concerning
conditions of employment before these bodies them other
companies would think practical. A few employers have
even given up the right to discharge — dismissal must
be decided by feUow-employees.
Usually the management keeps the final power in its
own hands. This is not so, however, in the case of Wm.
Filene Son's Co., Boston, which has gone fmther than
any other plant m co-management. Here the employees
have the right by a two-thirds vote to change, initiate,
or amend any rule that affects the discipline or work¬
ing conditions of the employees of the store, and such
vote becomes at once operative even against the veto of
^ The three firms which have carried co-management furthest are
the Printz-Biederman Co. of Cleveland, the Wm. Filene's Sons Co. of
Boston and the U. S. Cartridge Co. of Lowell. See Report of Committee
on Vocational Guidance, Fourth Annual Convention of National Asso¬
ciation of Corporation Schools, by Henry C. MetcaK.
THE GROUP PRINCIPLE AT WORK 119
the management. Further, out of eleven members of
the board of directors, four are representatives of the
employees.^
The great advantage of company officiais and workers
acting together on hoards or committee^ (workshop
committees, discipline boards, advisory councils, boeu-ds
of directors, etc.) is the same as that of the regular joint
conferences of the Trade Agreement: employers and
employed can thus leam to function together and pre¬
pare the way for joint control. Workshop committees
should be encouraged, not so much because they remove
grievances etc., as because in the joint workshop com¬
mittee, managers and workers are learning to act to¬
gether. Industrial democracy is a process, a growth.
The joint control of industry may be estabhshed by
some fiat, but it wiU not be the genuine thing until the
process of joint control is learned. To be sure, the
workshop committees which are independent of the man¬
agement are often considered the best for the workers
because they can thus keep themselves free to maintain
emd fight for their own particular interests, but this is
exactly, I think, what should be avoided.
The labor question is — Is the war between capital and
labor to he terminated by fight and conquest or by
learning how to function together.»^ I face fully the fact
that many supporters of labor beheve in what they caU
the "frank" recognition that the interests of capital
and labor are "antagonistic." I believe that the end
of the wars of nations and of the war between labor and
capital will come in exactly the same way: by making
^ We have a number of minor instances of the recognition of the group
principle in industry. An interesting example is the shop piece-work in
the Cadbury works, where the wages are calculated on the output of a
whole work-room, and thus every one in the room has to suffer for the
laziness of one. (See "Experiments in Industrial Organization," by
Edward Cadbury.)
120
THE NEW STATE
the nations into one group, by making capital and labor
into one group. Then we shall learn to distmguish be¬
tween true and apparent interests, or rather, between
long-run and immediate interests; then we shall give
up the notion of "antagonisms," which belong to a static
world, and see only difference — that is, that which is
capable of integration. This is not an ideahstic treat¬
ment of the labor problem. Increase of wages and re¬
duction in cost of production were once considered an
irreconciliable emtagonism — now their concurrence is
a matter of common experience. If the hope of that
concurrence had been abandoned as visionary or ideal¬
istic, we should be sadly off to-day. Many people are
now making a distinction, however, between production
and distribution in this respect: in the former the in¬
terests of capital and labor are the same, it is said, but
not in the latter. When that reorganization of the
business world, which it is no longer Utopian to think
of, is further actuahzed, then in distribution too we shall
be able to see the coincident interests of labor emd capital.
As the most hopeful sign in the present treatment of
industrial questions is the recognition that man with his
fundamental instincts and needs is the very centre and
heart of the labor problem, so the most hopeful sign that
we shall fuUy utihze the constructive powers which will
be released by this psychological approach to industriad
problems, is the gradually increasing share of the workman
in the actual control of industry.
The recognition of community rather than of indi¬
viduals or class, the very marked getting away from the
attitude of pitting labor interests agadnst the interests
of capital, is the most striking thing from our point of
view about the famous report formulated by a sub-com¬
mittee of the British Labor Party in the autumn of
1917. In every one of the fom "Pillars" of the new
THE GROUP PRINCIPLE AT WORK 121
social order this stands out as the most dominant fea¬
ture. In explaining the first, The Universal Enforce¬
ment of the National Minimum, it is exphcitly stated
that this is not to protect individuals or a class, but to
"safeguard" the "conummity" against the "insidious
degradation of the standard of life." The second. The
Democratic Control of Industry, proposes nationed owner¬
ship and administration of the railways, canals and
mines and "other main industries ... as opportunity
offers," with "a steadily increasing participation of the
orgemized workers in the management," the extension
of municipal enterprise to housing and town planning,
public hbraries, music and recreation, and the fixing of
prices. This "Pilleu," too, we are told, is not a class
measure, hut is "to safeguard the interests of the com¬
munity as a whole."
Under the heading, "Revolution in National Finance,"
the third "PiUar," it is again definitely stated and more¬
over convincingly shown that this is not "in the interests
of wage-earners alone." Under "The Surplus Wealth
for the Common Good," the fourth "PiUar," it is stated
that the surplus wealth shall be used for what "the
community day by day needs for the perpetual improve¬
ment .and increase of its various enterprises," "for scien¬
tific investigation and original research in every branch of
knowledge," and for "the promotion of music, hterattire
and fine arts." "It is in the proposal for this appropria¬
tion of every surplus for the common good — in the vision
of its resolute use for the building up of the community
as a whole . . . that the Labor Party . . . most distinc¬
tively marks itself off from the older pohtical parties." ^
^ I have not spoken of the cooperative buying and selling movement
because by the name alone it is obvious how well it illustrates my point,
and also because it is so well known to every one.
Another evidence of the spreading of the community idea is the wide ac¬
ceptance of the right of the community to value created by the community.
XV
FROM CONTRACT TO COMMUNITY
But perhaps nowhere in our national hfe is the
growing recognition of the group or community
principle so fundamental for us as in our modern
theory of law. Mr. Roscoe Pound has opened a new
future for America by his exposition of modern law, an
exposition which penetrates and illumines every depeurt-
ment of om* thought. Let us speak briefly of this modem
theory of law. It is: (1) that law is the outcome of our
community life, (2) that it must serve, not individuals,
but the community.
Mr. Pound, in a series of articles on "The Scope and
Purpose of Sociological Jurisprudence" in the Harvard
Law Review (1910-1912), points out that it was an epoch-
making moment when attention began to be turned
from the nature of law to its purpose. The old concep¬
tion of law was that "new situations are to be met ed-
ways by deductions from old principles." The new
school (headed by Jhering) heheve that "law is a product
of conscious and increasingly determinate human will."
"Legal doctrines and legal interests do not work them¬
selves out blindly, but have been fashioned by hmnan
wants to meet human needs." Refore Jhering the theory
of law had been individuahstic ; Jhering's is a social
theory of law. "The eighteenth century conceived of
law as something which the individual invoked against
society; . . . Jhering taught that it was something
created by society through which the individual found
a means of securing his interests, so far as society recog¬
nized them." And Jhering called his a jurisprudence of
122
FROM CONTRACT TO COMMUNITY 123
realities ; he wanted legal precepts worked out and tested
by results. For instEuice, if a rule of conunercial law were
in question, the search should be for the ride which best
accords with and gives effect to sound business practice.'
So, Mr. Pound tells us, the idea of justice as the maxi¬
mum of individual self-assertion, which began to appear
at the end of the sixteenth century and reached its high¬
est development in the nineteenth century, began to
give way towards the end of the nineteenth century to
the new idea of the end of law. Modern jurists have
come to consider the working of law more than its ab¬
stract content; they lay stress upon the social purposes
which law subserves rather them upon sanction.^
Mr. Pound then shows us that Gierke's theory of asso¬
ciation "became as strong an attack upon the individu¬
alistic jurisprudence of the nineteenth century upon one
side as Jhering's theory of interests was upon another."
The "real personality" of the group is plainly expounded
by Gierke, that it is not a legal fiction, that is that the
law does not create it but merely recognizes that which
already exists, that this "real person" is more than an
aggregation of individuals, that there is a group will
which is something real apart from the wills of the asso¬
ciated individuals.
Thus Germern jurists recognize the principle of "com¬
munity." The theory of Vereinbarung, as expounded
by Jellinek,® is also a recognition of the fact that one will
cem be formed from several. The present tendency to
work out the law of association through the study of
the group is marked and significant.
^ Col. Law Rev. 8, 610.
^ Pound, Outlines of Lectures on Jurisprudence, p. 20. The influence
of sociology on law has here been very marked. For further discussion
of a teleological jurisprudence, see ch. XXIX.
3 Duguit, L'Etat, Le Droit Objectif et La Loi Positive, 398^09, from
Jellinek, System der subjektiren öffenthchen Rechte, 193.
124
THE NEW STATE
The chief consequence of this growing tendency in
modern juristic thinking is seen in the change in atti¬
tude towards contract. The fundamental question of
relation, of association, is — Can you make one idea
grow where two grew before? This is the law of fruitful
increase. The gradual progress away from contract in
legal theory is just the gradual recognition of this prin¬
ciple. You can have a contractual relation between two
wills or you can have those two wills uniting to form
one wül. Contract never creates one will. It is the
latter process which is shown in the development of
corporation law.' The laws regulating partnership are
based on contractual relations between the individual
members. The laws regulating corporations are based
on the theory that a corporation is something quite dif¬
ferent from the individuals who constitute it or the sum
of those individuals, that a new entity has been created.
I am writing at this moment (February, 1918) in a room
with the thermometer at 42, but the law would not
uphold me in going and getting my share, as a stock
holder, of the coal now in the New York, New Haven
and Hartford sheds! But to many the personality of
the corporation is a fiction: they do not consider the
corporation a self-created entity but a state-created
entity. To others, following Gierke, the corporation is
merely a s\&Xe-recognized entity, it has the inherent
power to create itself. The increasing acceptemce of
this latter theory has made it possible to hold fiable
groups which have not been legally incorporated but
which exercise powers analogous to those of corpora¬
tions. This has been the principle of some of the English
decisions making trade-unions responsible, as notably in
the Taff-Vale case.
^ The whole legal history of associations and the development of
association law throws much light on the growth of the community idea.
FROM CONTRACT TO COMMUNITY 125
The paradox of contract is that while it seems to be
based on relation, it is in reahty based on the individuad.
Contract is a particularist conception. Mr. Pound
speaks of the significance of the "parallel movement
away from hberty of contract and yet at the same time
towards the full recognition of association." It is the
legal theory of association based on our growing under¬
standing of group psychology which will finally banish
contract. When Duguit, the eminent French jurist,
tells us that contract is diminishing, it is because he sees
a time when all juridical manifestations will come from
unilateral acts.^ We see contract diminishing because
we beheve in a different mode of association: as fast as
association becomes a "community" relation, as fast as
individuals are recognized as community-units, just so
fast does contract fade away. JeUinek points out that
legal theory is coming to recognize that violation of com¬
munity is quite different from the violation of contract.
From status to contract we do not now consider the
history of hberty but of particularism — the develop¬
ment of law through giving a larger emd leager share to
the particular will. The present progress of law is from
contract to community. Om- particidaristic law is giving
way to a legal theory based on a sound theory of interre¬
lationship. Our common law has considered men as
separate individuals, not as members of one another.
These separate individuals were to be "free" to fight out
their differences as best they could, it being overlooked
that freedom for one might not mean freedom for the
other, as in the case of employer and employed. "Indi¬
vidual rights" in practice usually involve some difference
^ Also, I recognize, because his " droit objectif " based on social solidar¬
ity tends to sweep away contract. It is interesting to notice that con¬
tract is being attacked from more than one point of view. The bearing
of all this on politics will be seen later, especially in ch. XXIX,
" Political Pluralism and Sovereignty."
126
THE NEW STATE
of opimon as to who is the individual ! Mr. OIney said
of the Adair case: "It is archaic, it is a long step into the
past, to conceive of and deal with the relations between
the employer in such industries and the employee as if
the parties were individuals." ^
The principles of individual rights and contract which
have long dominated our courts ^ are giving way now
to sounder doctrine. The old idea was that a man could
do what he hked with his own; this is not the modern
notion of law. We find a judge recently saying: "The
entire scheme of prohibition as embodied in the Con¬
stitution and laws of Kansas might faü, if the right of
each citizen to manufacture intoxicating fiquors for his
own use or as a beverage were recognized. Such a right
does not inhere in citizenship." ® Our future law is to
serve neither classes nor individuals, but the community.
The lawyer is to bring his accumulation of knowledge
not to his cfients merely, but to enrich and interpret and
adjust our whole social life.
We have many signs to-day of the growing recognition
of community as the basis of law. The following are
taken from an article by Mr. Poimd:^
The increasing tendency of law to impose limitations
on the use of property, limitations designed to prevent
the anti-social use of property. This has already been
noticed in our new building laws.
The hmitations now imposed on freedom of contract.
This is shown in the statutes regulating the hours and
1 Quoted by Roscoe Pound in Col. Law Rev. 8, 616.
2 Statutes limiting the hours of labor were held unconstitutional,
railway corporations were held not to be required to furnish discharged
employees with a cause for dismissal, etc.
2 Harlan, J., in Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U. S. 623. Taken from Roscoe
Pound, Liberty of Contract, Yale Law Journal, 18, 468.
^ The End of Law as Developed in Legal Rules and Doctrines,
Law Rev. 27, 195-234.
FROM CONTRACT TO COMMUNITY 127
conditions of labor, in the law of insurance,^ in the judi¬
cial decisions which have estabhshed that the duties of
pubhc service corporations are not contractual, flowiug
from agreement, but quasi-contractual, flowing from the
caUing in which the public servant is engaged.
Limitations on the part of creditor or injured party to
exact satisfaction. This is illustrated by the homestead
exemptions which prevail in many states, and such
exemptions as tools to artisans, hbraries to professional
men, and animals and implements to farmers.
Imposition of habflity without fault, as illustrated in
workmen's compensation and employers' habihty.^
Water rights eae now interpreted with limitations on
the owners. The idea is becoming accepted that run¬
ning water is an asset of society which is not capable of
private appropriation or ownership except under regula¬
tions that protect the general interest. This tendency
is changing the whole water law of the western states.
Insistence on interest of society m dependent mem¬
bers of household. With respect to children it is not
the individual interest of the parents, but the interest of
society which is regarded.
Thus modem law is being based more and more upon
a recognition of the coimnunity principle.
When we sometimes hear a lawyer talk of such
measures as old age pensions as a matter of " social ex¬
pediency," we know that he has not yet caught the com-
^ "Statutes . . . have taken many features of the subject out of the
domain of agreement and the tendency of judicial decision has been in
effect to attach rights and liabilities to the relation of insurer and insured
and thus to remove insurance from the category of contract."
2 The old idea of "contributory negligence" is seen in the following
decision: "We must remember that the injury complained of is due to
the negligence of a fellow workman, for which the master is responsible
neither in law nor morals." Durkin v. Coal Co. 171, Pa. St. 193, 205.
Quoted by Roscoe Pound in Yale Law Journal, 18, 467.
128
THE NEW STATE
munity idea in law. Modem law considers individuals
not as isolated beings, but in their relation to the Ufe
of the whole ooirununity. Thus in shortening the hours
of work the courts can no longer say this is an "unwar¬
rantable interference" with individual hherty; they have
to consider the health of the individual in its relation to
his family and his work, also the use he wiU make of his
leisure, the need he has for time to perform his duties
as citizen, etc. etc. Mr. Pound points out with great
clearness that relation is taking the place of contract in
modem law. Workmen's compensation arises from the
theory of reciprocal rights and duties and liabilities
which flow from a relation. This he tells us was the
common law conception until deflected by contract;
now we are going hack to it and we do not ask the
strict terms of the contract, hut what the relation
demands.
Perhaps social psychology can give two warnings to
this new tendency of law. First this relation must not
he a personal relation. I have spoken severed times of
our modern legal system as based on relation, hut this
must not he confused with the relation of the Middle
Ages. Then the fundamental truth of relation, that life
is a web of relationships, was felt intuitively, hut it weis
worked out on its personal side. The feudal age hved in
the idea of relation, hut the heart of the feudal system
was personal service. It was hke loyalty to the party
chief: right or wrong, the veissal followed his lord to the
battlefield and died with him there. Because it was
worked out on its personal side it had many imperfec¬
tions, and the inevitable reaction swung far away. Now
the pendulum is returning to relation as the truth of life,
hut it is to he impersonal. Employers and employed
must study the ideal relation and try to actualize that.
We seek adways the law of true community.
FROM CONTRACT TO COMMUNITY 129
Secondly, the relation itself must always be in rela¬
tion. Rut these warnings are not necessary for our pro¬
gressive judges. It is interesting to read the decisions
of om common-law judges with this in view: to see how
often the search is for the law of the actual conditions
and what obhgations those actual conditions create, not
for a personal relation with some abstract conception of
a static relation. It is of a relation in relation that judges
must, and often to-day do, consider: not landlord and
tenant as landlord and tenant, not master and servant
as master and servant, but of that relation in relation
to other relations, or, we might say, to society. This
growing conception of a dynamic relation in itself means
a new theory of law.^
Thus our law to-day is giviug up its deductions from
juristic conceptions, from the "body of rules" upon
which trial procedure has so largely rested, and is be¬
ginning to study the condition given with the aim of
reaching the law of that condition. Mr. Poimd says dis¬
tinctly that law is to be no longer based on first prin¬
ciples, but on "the conditions it is to govern." And we
are told that "Mr. Justice Hohnes has been unswerving
in his resistance to any doctrineiire interpretation," that
his decisions follow the actual conditions of fife even
often against his own bias of thought.^ The great value
of Mr. Justice Brandeis' brief in the Oregon case con¬
cerning the constitutionahty of hmiting the hours of
women in industry, was his insistence upon social facts.
And Mr. Felix Frankfurter made an address before the
1 This is the "new natural law" of which Mr. Pound speaks as "the
revival of the idealist interpretation which is the enduring possession of
philosophical jurisprudence." Formerly, we are told, "equity imposed
moral limitations. The law to-day is beginning to impose social limita¬
tions." Harv. Law Rev. 27, 227.
2 "The Constitutional Opinions of Justice Holmes," by Felix Frank¬
furter, Harv. Law Rev. 29, 683-702.
130
THE NEW STATE
American Bar Association in August, 1915, the burden
of which was that "law must foUow life." His plea
for a "creative" system of law in the place of the
crystallized system of the past which we are trying
with hopeless failure to apply to present conditions
points the way with force and convincingness to a
New Society based on the evolving not the static prin¬
ciple of life.
As our theory of the state no longer includes the idea
of contractual obligation, we begin to see the interde¬
pendence of state and law, that neither is prior to the
other. The same process which evolves the state evolves
the law. Law flows from our life, therefore it cannot be
above it. The source of the binding power of law is not
in the consent of the community, but in the fact that it
has been produced by the community. This gives us a
new conception of law. Some writers talk of social jus¬
tice as if a definite idea of it existed, emd that all we
have to do to regenerate society is to direct our efforts
towards the realization of this ideal. But the ideal of
social justice is itself a collective and a progressive de¬
velopment, that is, it is produced through our associated
fife and it is produced anew from day to day. We do
not want a "perfect" law to regulate the hours of women
in industry; we want that kind of life which will msike
us, all of us, grow the best ideas about the hours of
women in industry, about women in industry, about
women, about industry.
We cannot assume that we possess a body of achieved
ideas stamped in some mysterious way with the authority
of reason and justice, but even were it true, the reason
and justice of the past must give way to the ¡reason and
justice of the present. You cannot bottle up wisdom —
it won't keep — but through om associated life it may
be distilled afresh at every instant. We are coming now
FROM CONTRACT TO COMMUNITY 131
to see indeed that law is a social imperative in the strict
psychological sense, that is, that it gets its authority
through the power of group hfe. Wimdt says. The de¬
velopment of law is a process of the psychology of peoples,
therefore law will forever be a process of becoming^
Our obedience to law then must not be obedience to past
law, but obedience to that law which we with all the
experience of the past at our command, with all the
vision of the future which the past has taught us, with
aU the intelligence which vivid Kving in the present has
developed in us, are able to make for our generation, for
our country, for the world. We are told that one of the
most salient points in modern juristic thinking is its
faith in the efficacy of effort, its belief that law has been
and may be made consciously.
When we look upon law as a thing we think of it as a
finished thing; the moment we look upon it as a process
we think of it always in evolution. Our law must take
account of our social and economic conditions, and it
must do it again to-morrow and again day after to¬
morrow. We do not want a new legal system with every
sunrise, but we do want a method by which our law
shall be capable of assimilating from day to day what
it needs to act upon that hfe from which it has drawn
its existence and to which it must minister. The vital
fluid of the commimity, its fife's blood, must pass so
continuously from the common will to the law and from
the law to the common will that a perfect circulation
wfil be established. We do not "discover" legal prin¬
ciples which it then behooves us to burn candles before
forever, but legal principles are the outcome of our daily
fife. Our law therefore ceumot be based on "fixed" prin¬
ciples; our law must be intrinsic in the social process.
There has been a distinction made between legal prin-
^ Quoted by Roscoe Pound in Harv. Law Rev. 25, 505.
132
THE NEW STATE
ciples and the application of these principles: legal prin¬
ciples partook of the nature of the absolute, and to our
high-priests, the lawyers, fell the privilege of applying
them. But this is an artificial distinction. If our meth¬
ods could be such that the energy of lawyers, which now
often goes in making the concrete instance and the legal
principle in some way (by fiction, or twisting, or "inter¬
preting") fit each other, could help evolve day by day
a crescent law which is the outcome of our fife as it is to
be apphed to our life, an enormous amount of energy
would be saved for the development of our American
peoplq. It is static law and our reverence for legal
abstractions which has produced "privilege." It is dy¬
namic law, as much as anything else, which will bring us
the new social order.
To sum up: Law should not be a "body" of knowl¬
edge; it should be revitalized anew at every moment.
Onr judges cannot administer law by knowing law
alone. They have to be so closely in touch with a hving,
growing society, so at one with the conceptions that are
being evolved by that society that their interpretations
will be the method by which our so-called "body of law"
shall indeed be alive and grow in correspondence with
the growth of society. This is what gives to our Ameri¬
can supreme courts their large powers, and makes us
choose for judges not only men who understand law
and who can be trusted for accmate interpretation, but
men who have a large comprehension of our country's
needs, wide conceptions of social justice, and who have
creative minds — who can make legal interpretation con¬
tribute to the structure of our government.^ The modern
^ It has been proposed that we should have trained business men on
the benches of our supreme courts as well as lawyers. I should think it
would be better for our lawyers to be so conversant with social facts that
this need not be necessary.
FROM CONTRACT TO COMMUNITY 133
lawyer must see, amidst all the complexity of the twen¬
tieth-century world, where we are tending, what om true
purpose is, and the part law can take in making mani¬
fest that purpose. The modern lawyer must create a
new system of service. A hving law we demand to-day
— this is always the law of the given condition, never
a "rule."
Part II
THE TRADITIONAL DEMOCRACY
XVI
DEMOCRACY NOT "LIBERTY" AND " EQUALITY": OUR
POLITICAL DUALISM
The purpose of this book is to indicate certain
changes which must be made in om politiced
methods in order that the group principle,
the most fruitful principle of association we have- yet
found, shall have free play in our political hfe. In
Part III we shaU devote ourselves specifically to that pur¬
pose. Here let us examine some of our past notions of
democracy and then trace the growth of true democracy
in America.
Democracy has meant to many "natural" rights,
"fiberty" and "equality." The acceptance of the group
principle defines for us in truer fashion those watchwords
of the past. If my true self is the group-self, then my
only rights are those which membership in a group
gives me. The old idea of natural rights postulated the
particuleu-ist individual; we know now that no such
person exists. The group and the individual come into
existence simultaneously: with this group-man appear
group-rights. Thus mem cem have no rights apart from
society or independent of society or against society.
Particularist rights are ruled out as everything particu-
leu-ist is ruled out. When we accept fuUy the principle
of rights involved in the group theory of association, it
wfil chemge the decisions of our courts, our state consti¬
tutions, and all the concrete machinery of government.
The truth of the whole matter is that our only concern
with "rights" is not to protect them but to create them.
Our efforts are to be bent not upon guarding the rights
137
138
THE NEW STATE
which Heaven has showered upon us, but in creating all
the rights we shall ever have.^
As an imderstanding of the group process abolishes
"individual rights," so it gives us a true definition of
liberty. We have seen that the free man is he who actu¬
alizes the will of the whole. I have no liberty except as
an essential member of a group. The particularist idea
of liberty was either negative, depending on the removed
of barriers, .or it was quantitative, something which I
had left over after the state had restrained me in every
way it thought necessary. But fiberty is not measured
by the munber of restraints we do not have, but by the
number of spontaneous activities we do have. Law and
liberty are not hke the two halves of this page, mutually
exclusive — one is involved in the other. One does not
decrease as the other increases. Liberty and law go
hand in hand and increase together in the larger synthe¬
sis of fife we are here trying to make.
We see that to obey the group which we have helped
to make and of which we are an integral part is to be
free because we are then obeying ourself. Ideally the
state is such a group, actually it is not, but it depends
upon us to make it more and more so. The state must
be no external authority which restrains and regulates
me, but it must be myself acting as the state in every
smallest detail of fife. Expression, not restreunt, is always
the motive of the ideal state.
There has been long a kind of balance theory preva¬
lent: everything that seems to have to do with the one
is put on one side, everything that has to do with the
many, on the other, and one side is called individuality
and freedom, and the other, society, constraint, au¬
thority. Then the balancing begins: how much shall
1 See ch. XXIX for the theory of "objective rights" now held by many
as the basis of the new state.
OUR POLITICAL DUALISM 139
we give up on one side and how much on the other to
keep the beautiful equilibrium of our daily life? How
artificial such balancing sovmds! We are beginning to
know now that our freedom depends not on the weakness
but on the strength of om government, our govermnent
being the expression of a imited people. We are freer
imder om present sanitary laws them without them; we
eire freer under compulsory education than without it.
A highly organized state does not mean restriction of
the individual but his greater hberty. The individued
is restricted in em unorgemized state. A greater degree
of socieJ organization means a more complex, a richer,
broader life, means more opportimity for individual
effort and individual choice emd individual initiative.
The test of our hberty is not the number of limitations
put upon the powers of the state. The state is not an
extra-wül. If we are the state we welcome Our liberty.
But liberty on the popular tongue has always been
coupled with equahty, and this expression too needs
revaluation. The group process shows us that we are
equal from two points of view: first, I am equal to
every one else as one of the necessary members of the
group; secondly, each of these essential parts is the tap
from an infinite supply — in every man fives an infinite
possibility. But we must remember that there are no
mechanical, no quemtitative equalities. Democracy in
fact insists on what me usually thought of as inequali¬
ties. Of comse I am not "as good as you" — it would
be a pretty poor world if I were, that is if you were no
better than I am. Democracy without humility is in¬
conceivable. The hope of democracy is in its inequali¬
ties. The only real equality I can ever have is to fill my
place in the whole at the same time that every other
man is filling his place in the whole.
Much of our present class hatred comes from a dis-
140
THE NEW STATE
torted view of equality. This doctrine means to many
that I have as much "right" to things as any one else,
and therefore if I see any one having more things than
I have, it is proper to feel resentment against that per¬
son or class. Much legislation, therefore, is directed to
lopping off here and there. But such legislation is a
negative and therefore non-constructive interpretation
of equahty. The trouble with much of our reform is
that it is based on the very errors which have brought
about the evils it is fighting. The trade-unionists say
that the courts give special privileges to employers and
that they do not have equal rights. But this is just the
complaint of the employers: that the unionists are doing
them out of their time-honored equal rights.^
Our distorted ideas of rights and liberty and equality
have been mixed up with our false conception of the
state, with the monstrous fallacy of man vs. the state.
But as we now see that the individual and society are
different aspects of the same process, so we see that the
citizen and the state are one, that their interests are
identical, that their aims are identical, that they are
absolutely boimd up together. Our old political dualism
is now disappearing. The state does not exist for the
individual or the individual for the state: we do not
exalt the state and subordinate the individual or, on the
other hand, apotheosize the individual and give him
the state as his "servant." The state is not the servant of
the people. The state must he the people before it can
reach a high degree of effective accomplishment. The
state is one of the collective aspects of the individual;
1 This is a hoary quarrel. From the beginning of our government it
was seen that the equal rights doctrine was a sword which could cut
both ways. Both Federalists and Republicans believed in equal rights:
the Federalists, therefore, wanted to protect individuals with a strong
government; the Republicans wanted a weak government so that indi¬
viduals could be let alone in the exercise of their equal rights.
OUR POLITICAL DUALISM 141
the individual is from one point of view the distributive
aspect of the state. The non-existence of self-sufficiug
individuals gives us the whole of our new theory of
democracy. Those who govern and those who are gov¬
erned are merely two aspects of the common wiU. When
we have a state truly representative of our collective
citizenship, then the fear of the state will disappear be¬
cause the antithesis between the individual and the state
wiU have disappeared.
To sum up: our present idea of the state is that it is
not something outside ourselves, that it must flow out
from ourselves and control our social hfe. But it must
"control" our life by expressing it. The state is always
the great Yes, not the great No. Liberty and restraint
are not opposed, because ideally the expression of the
social will in restraint is our freedom. The state has a
higher fimction than either restraining individuals or
protecting individuals. It is to have a great forward
policy which shaU foUow the collective will of the people,
a collective will which embodied through our state, in
our Hfe, shall be the basis of a progress yet undreamed
of. When we can give up the notion of individual rights,
we shall have taken the longest step forward in our
poHtical development. When we can give up the idea
of national rights — but it is too soon to talk of that yet.
XVII
DEÜfflOCRACY NOT THE MAJORITY: OUR POLITICAL FALLACY
IF many people have defined democracy as liberty
and equal rights, others have defined it as "the
ascendancy of numbers," as "majority rule." Both
these definitions are particularistic. Democracy means
the wiU of the whole, but the will of the whole is not
necessarily represented by the majority, ñor by a two-
thirds or three-quarters vote, nor even by a unanimous
vote; majority rule is democratic when it is approaching
not a unanimous but an integrated will. We have seen
that the adding of similarities does not produce the
social consciousness; in the same way the adding of
similar votes does not give us the pohtical wiU. We
have seen that society is not an aggregation of units, of
men considered one by one; therefore we understand
that the will of the state is not discovered by counting.^
This means a new conception of pofitics: it means that
the organization of men in small, local groups must be
the next form which democracy takes. Here the need
and will of every man and woman cem appear and mingle
with the needs emd wills of all to produce an all-will.
Thus wiU be abolished the reign of numbers.
A crude view of democracy says that when the work¬
ing-people realize their power they can have what they
want, since, their numbers being so great, they can out¬
vote other classes. But the reason the working-people
have not already learned something so very obvious is
^ This view of democracy was well satirized by some one, I think Lord
Morley, who said, "I do not care who does the voting as long as I do the
counting."
142
OUR POLITICAL FALLACY 143
because it is not true — we are nevér to be ruled by numbers
alone.
Moreover, a fatal defect in majority rule is that by
its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must
inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too
big to hemdle itself; it organizes itself into committees
— Committee of Fifty, Fifteen, Three — which in their
turn resolve themselves into a committee of one, and
behold — the full-fledged era of bosses is at hand, with
the "consent of the governed" simply because the gov¬
erned are physically helpless to govern themselves.
Many men want majority rule so that they can be this
committee of one; some of our most worthy citizens are
incipient Greek tyrants longing to give us of their hest
— tyranny.
Many working-men are clamoring for majority rule
in industry, yet we know how often in their own organi¬
zations the rule of the many becomes the rule of the few.
If "industrial democracy" is to mean majority rule, let
us be warned by our experience of it in pohtics — it
will rend whoever dalhes with it.
Yet it wiU be objected, "But what other means under
the sun is there of finding the common will except by
counting votes We see aheady here and there signs
of a new method. In many committees, boards and
commissions we see now a reluctance to take action
imtü all agree; there is a feeling that somehow, if we
keep at it long enough, we can unify our ideas and our
wiUs, and there is edso a feeling that such unification of
wiU heis value, that our work will be vastly more eifec-
tive in consequence. How different from our old methods
when we were bent merely upon getting enough on our
side to carry the meeting with us. Some one has said,
"We count heads to save breaking them." We are
beginning to see now that majority rule is only a clumsy
144
THE NEW STATE
makeshift until we sheJl devise ways of getting at the
genuine collective thought. We have to assinne that we
have this while we try to approximate it. We are not
to circumvent the majority, but to aim steadily at get¬
ting the majority will neeirer and nearer to a true collec¬
tive will.
This may sound absurdly unhke the world as mainly
constituted. Is this the way diplomats meet.!^ Is this
the way competing industrial interests adjust their dif¬
ferences.'^ Not yet, but it must be. And what wül help
us more than anything else is just to get rid of the idea
that we ever meet to get votes. The corruption in city
councils, state legislatures. Congress, is largely the out¬
come of the idea that the getting of votes is the object
of our meeting. The present barter in votes would not
take place if the unimportance of votes was once clearly
seen.
Even now so far as a majority has power it is not by
the brute force of numbers; it is because there has been
a certain amount of unifying; it has real power directly
in proportion to the amount of unifying. The composi¬
tion of a pohtical majority depends at present partly on
inheritance and environment (which includes sentiment
and prejudice), partly on the mass-induced idea (the
spread of thought and feeling throughout a community
by suggestion), and partly on some degree of integration
of the different ideas and the different forces of that
particular society. Its power is in proportion to the
amount of this integration. When we use the expres¬
sion "artificial majority" we mean chiefly one which
shows little integration, and we have all seen how quickly
such majorities tend to melt away when the artificial
stimulus of especially magnetic leadership or of an es¬
pecially catchy and jingoistic idea is withdrawn. More¬
over a majority meaning a preponderance of votes can
OUR POLITICAL FALLACY 145
easily be controlled by a party or an "interest"; majori¬
ties which represent unities are not so easily managed.
Group organization is, above everything else perhaps,
to prevent the manipulation of helpless majorities.
But "helpless majority" may sound amusing to those
who are telling us of the tyranny of majorities. From
one point of view indeed majority rule tends to become
majority tyranny, so we do not want a majority in either
case, either as a tyrant or as an inert mass. But those
who talk of the tyranny of majorities are usually those
who are advocating the "rights of minorities." If it is
necessary to expose the majority fadlacy, it is equally
necessary to show that the present worship of minori¬
ties in certain quarters is also unsound. There is no
inherent virtue in a minority. If as a matter of fact we
cannot act forcefully without a certain eunount of com¬
placency, then perhaps it is a good thing for those in a
minority to flatter themselves that of twenty people
nine are more apt to be right than eleven. It may be
one of those false assumptions more useful than a true
one, and in our pragmatic age we shall not deny its
value. Still sour grapes hang sometimes just as high
and no higher than the majority, and it seems possible
to find a working assumption that will work even better
than this. In fact the assumption that the minority is
always right is just as much an error as the assumption
that the majority is always right. The right is not with
the majority or minority because of preponderance of
numbers or because of lack of preponderance of numbers.
But many people tell us seriously that this is not a
question of opinion at all, but of fact: all the great re¬
forms of the past, they say, whose victories are now our
common heritage, were inaugurated by an intelligent
and devoted few. You can indeed point to many causes
led by a faithful minority triumphing in the end over a
146
THE NEW STATE
numerical and inert majority, but this minority was
usually a majority of those who thought on the subject
at aU.
But aU talk of majority and minority is futile. It is
evident that we must not consider majority versus
minority, but only the methods by which unity is at¬
tained. Our fetich of majorities has held us back, but
most of the plans for stopping the control of majorities
look to all kinds of bolstering up of minorities. This
keeps majorities and minorities apart, whereas they
have both one and only use for us — their contribution
to the aU-will. Because such integration must always
be the ideal in a democracy, we cannot be much inter¬
ested in those methods for giving the minority more
power on election day. The integration must begin
further back in om life than this.
I know a woman of small school education, but large
native intelligence, who spends her time between her
family and the daily laundry work she does to support
that family, who, when she goes to her Mothers' Club
at the "School Centre" penetrates all the superficialities
she may find there, and makes every other woman go
home with higher standards for her home, her children
and herself. The education of children, the opportuni¬
ties of employment for girls and boys, sanitation,
housing, and all the many questions which touch one's
everyday life are considered in a homely way on those
Thursday afternoons. Sometime these women will vote
on these questions, but a true intermingfing of majority
and minority will have taken place before election day.
Moreover, while representation of the minority, as
proportional representation,^ is always an interesting
experiment, just because it is a method of representa-
1 Proportional representation is interesting to the view put forward
in this book because it is a method to bring out all the differences.
OUR POLITICAL FALLACY 147
tion and not a mode of association the party can circum¬
vent it. We are told that minority representation tried
in the lower house of the Ilhnois legislature has been
completely subverted to their own ends by the politi¬
cians. And also that in Belgimn, where proportional
representation has been introduced, this system has
become a tool in the hands of the dominant party. No
electoral or merely representative method can save us.
Representation is not the main fact of pohtical life;
the main concern of politics is modes of association.
We do not want the rule of the many or the few; we must
find that method of political procedure by which ma¬
jority and minority ideas may be so closely interwoven
that we are truly ruled by the will of the whole. We
shall have democracy only when we learn to produce
this wiU through group organization — when young men
are no longer lectured to on democracy, but when they
me made into the stuff of democracy.
XVIII
DEMOCRACY NOT THE CROWD: OUR POPULAR DELUSION
WHEN we define democracy as the ''rule of
the whole," this is usually understood as the
rule of all, and unless we fuUy understand
the meaning of ''all," we run the danger of falling a
victim to the crowd fallacy. The reaction to our long
years of particularism, of "individual rights" and "lib¬
erty," which led to special privilege and all the evils in
its train, has brought many to the worship of the crowd.
Walt Whitman sang of men "en masse." Many of our
recent essayists and poets and novehsts ideahze the
crowd. Miss Jane Harrison in her dehghtful volume,
"Alpha and Omega," says, "Human life is lived to the
full only in and through the herd." There is an interest¬
ing group of young poets in France ^ who call themselves
Unanimistes because they beheve in the union of all, that
an " Altogetherness " is the supreme fact of life. Mr.
Ernest Poole in "The Harbor" glorifies the crowd, and the
New York ''Tribune'' said of this book, "'The Harbor'
is the first really notable novel produced by the New
Democracy," thus identifying the new democracy with
the crowd. Another writer, looking at our present social
^ Arcos, Romains and Vildrac are the chief of these. Romains, who
has written "La Vie Unanime," is the most interesting for our present
purpose, for his togetherness is so plainly that of the herd:
. . . "quelle joie
De fondre dans ton corps [la ville] immense
oû l'on a chaud I"
Here is our old friend, the wild ox, in the mask of the most civilized (per-
haps) portion of our most civilized (perhaps) nation. Again
"Nous sommes indistincts: chacun de nous est mort;
Et la vie unanime est notre sépulture."
148
OUR POPULAR DELUSION 149
and political organization and finding it based largely on
class and therefore unsound, also leaps to the conclu¬
sion that our salvation rests not on this individual or
that, this class or that, this body of people or that, hut
on all together, on "this mass-life, seething, tumultuous,
without compass or guide or will or plan."
This school is doing good service in leading us from the
few or the many to thè all, in preaching that the race
contains within itself the power of its own advancement;
hut this power which the race contains within itself is
not got through its being a crowd, "without guide or
wiU or plan," hut just because it contains the potentiali¬
ties of guide, will, plan, all within itself, through its
capability of being a true society, that is, through its
capability of adopting group methods. It is in the group
that we get that complex interpénétration which means
both modification and adjustment and at the same time
cooperation and fulfilment. The group process, not the
crowd or the herd, is the social process. Out of the
intermingling, interacting activities of men and women
surge up the forces of life: powers are bom which we
had not dreamed of, ideas take shape and grow, forces
are generated which act and react on each other. This
is the dialectic of life. But this upspringing of power
from our hidden sources is not the latent power of the
mass hut of the group. It is useless to preach " together¬
ness" until we have devised ways of making our together
ness fruitful, until we have thought out the methods of a
genuine, integrated togetherness. Anything else is in¬
deed "blubbering sentimentality," as Bismarck defined
democracy.
But there are two sets of people who are victims of
the crowd fallacy: those who apotheosize the crowd and
those who denounce the crowd; both ignore the group.
The latter fear the crowd because they see in the crowd
150
THE NEW STATE
the annihilation of the individual. They are opposed
to what they call collective action because they say that
this is herd action and does not allow for individual
initiative. We are told, "Man loses his identity in a
crowd," "The crowd obhterates the individual mind."
Quite true, but these writers do not see that the crowd
is not the only form of association, that man may be¬
long to a group rather than to a crowd, and that a group
fulfils, not wipes out his individuahty. The collective
action of the group not only allows but consists of indi¬
vidual initiative, of an individual initiative that has
learned how to be part of a collective initiative.
Collective thought, moreover, is often called collec¬
tive mediocrity. But the collective thought evolved by
the group is not collective mediocrity. On the contrary
there is always a tendency for the group idea to express
the largest degree of psychic force there is in a group,
ideally it would always do so. Herein lies the difference
between the group idea and the mass idea. When we
hear it stated as a commonplace of human affairs that
combined action is less intelhgent than individual action,
we must point out that it all depends upon whether it is
a crowd combination or a group combination. The in¬
sidious error that democracy means the "average" is
at the root of much of our cm-rent thought.
The confusion of democratic rule and mass rule, the
identification of the people with the crowd, has led many
people to denounce democracy. One writer, thinking
the collective man emd the crowd man the same, con¬
demns democracy because of his condenmation of the
crowd man. Another speaks of "the crowd-mind or
the state," and therefore abandons the state. All
these writers think that the more democracy, the more
complete the control of the crowd. Our faith in de¬
mocracy means a profound belief that this need not be
OUR POPULAR DELUSION 151
true. Moreover this idea that the crowd man must
necessarily be the unit of democracy has led many to
oppose universal suffrage because they have seen it as
a particulcuist suffrage, giving equal value, they say,
to the enhghtened and the unenhghtened. True democ¬
racy frees us from such peurticularist point of view. It is
the group man, not the crowd man, who must be the unit
of democracy.
The philosophy of the all is supposed, by its advo¬
cates, to be opposed to the philosophy of the individual,
but it is interesting to notice that the crowd theory emd
the particularistic theory rest on the same fallacy, namely,
looking on individuáis one by one: the crowd doctrine
is an attempt to unite mechanically the isolated indi¬
viduals we have so ardently believed in. This is the
danger of the crowd. The crowd idea of sovereignty is
thoroughly atomistic. This is sometimes called an era
of crowds, sometimes an era of individuals: such ap¬
parent opposition of judgment need not confuse us, the
crowd spirit and the particularistic spirit are the seune;
that spirit will continue to corrupt pohtics and disrupt
society until we replace it by the group spirit.
The crowd theory, hke the particularist doctrine, has
been strengthened by the upholders of the knitation
theory of society. Many of our pohtical as well as our
sociological writers have seen life as some exceptional
individual suggesting and the crowd following without
reasoning, without effort of mind or wiU. Even Bage-
hot, who did so much to set us in the right way of think¬
ing, overemphasizes the part of imitation. What he says
of the "imitative part of our natures" is indeed true,
but by not mentioning the creative part of our natures
more exphcitly, he keeps himself in the crowd school.
It is true that at present the people are to a large
extent a mass led by those who suggest. The suggestion
152
THE NEW STATE
and imitation of sociology are the leading and following
of politics — the leadership of the boss and the following
of the mass. The successful politician is one who imder-
stands crowds and how to dominate them. He appeals
to the emotions, he rehes on repetition, he invents catch
phrases. The crowd foUows. As long as the corner¬
stone of om political philosophy is the theory that the
individued originates and society accepts, of course any
man who can get the people to "accept" will do so.
This is the fallacy at the foundation of our pohtical
structure. When we have a genuine democracy, we
shall not have the defective pohtical machinery of the
present, but some method by which people will be able
not to accept or reject but to create group or whole ideas,
to produce a genuine collective will. Because we have
invented some governmental machinery by which clever
politicians can rule with the entirely artificial "assent"
of their constituencies, does not mean that we know any¬
thing about democracy.
It is the ignoring of the group which is retarding our
political development. A recent writer on pohtical
science says that a study of the interaction between
individual and crowd is the basis of pohtics, and that
"the wiU of nations or states is the sum of individued
wills fashioned in accordance with crowd psychology."
In so far as this is true it is to be steadily opposed. Many
writers imply that we must either beheve in homoge¬
neity, similarity, uniformity (the herd, the crowd), or lose
the advantages of fellowship in order to discover and
assert oiu own particularistic ideals. But oiu edterna-
tives are not the individual and the crowd: the choice
is not between particularism with aU its separatist ten¬
dencies, and the crowd with its levelhng, its mediocrity,
its sameness, perhaps even its hysteria; there is the
neglected group. Democracy will not succeed rmtU
OUR POPULAR DELUSION 153
assemblages of people are governed consciously and de¬
liberately by group laws. We read, "No idea can con¬
quer until a crowd has inscribed it on its banner." I
should say, "No idea can ßnally conquer which has not
been created by those people who inscribe it on their
baimer." The triiunph of ideas will never come by
crowds. Union, not hypnotism, is the law of develop¬
ment. There can be no real spiritual unity in the mass
hfe, only in the group life.
Whether the people of America shall be a crowd, under
the laws of suggestion and imitation, or follow the laws
of the group, is the underlying problem of to-day.
The promise for the future is that there now is in
associations of men em increasing tendency for the laws
of the group rather than the laws of the crowd to govern.
Our most essential duty to the future is to see that that
tendency prevail. As we increase the conscious func¬
tioning of the group we sheiU inevitably have less and
less of the unconscious response, chauvinists will lose
their job, and party bosses wiU have to change their
tactics. People as a matter of fact me not as suggest¬
ible as formerly. Men me reading more widely and they
me following less blindly what they read.
This largely mcreased reading, due to reduction in
price, spread of raihoads, rmal dehvery, and lessening
hours of industry, is often spoken of as making men more
alike in their views. Tmde spoke of the "public," which
he defined as the people sitting at home reading news¬
papers, as a mental collectivity because of this supposed
tendency. Christensen confirms this when he says that
the people reading the newspapers me "a scattered
crowd." The usually accepted opinion is that the daily
press is making us more and more into crowds, but that
is not my experience. A man with his daily paper may
be obeying the group law or the crowd law as he unites
154
THE NEW STATE
his own thoughts with the thoughts of others or as he
is merely amenable to suggestion from others, and it
seems to me we see a good deal of the former process.
The newspaper brings home to us vividly what others
are feeling and thinking. It offers many suggestions;
we see less and less tendency to "swallow these whole,"
the colloquial counterpart of the technical "imitation."
These suggestions are freely criticized, readers do a
good deal of thinking and the results are fairly rationed.
The reader more and more I believe is selecting, is unify¬
ing difference. The result of all this is that men's minds
are becoming more plastic, that they are deciding less
by prejudice emd hypnotism and more by judgment. And
it must be remembered that a man is not necessarily
a more developed person because he rejects his news¬
paper's theories than if he accepts them; the developed
man is the group man and the group man neither accepts
nor rejects, but joins his own thought with that of aU he
reads to make new thought. The group man is never
sterile, he always brings forth.^
Democracy can never mean the domination of the
crowd. The helter-skelter strivings of an endless num¬
ber of social atoms can never give us a fair and ordered
world. It may be true that we have lived imder the
domination either of individuals or of crowds up to the
present time, but now is the moment when this must be
deliberately challenged. The party boss must go, the
1 Other results of the increased reading of newspapers and magazines
are that large questions are driving out trivial interests (I find this very
marked in the country), and the enormous amount of publicity now
given everything finds a channel to the public through the press. The
reports of commissions, like the Industrial Relations Commission, the
smveys, like the Pittsburgh Survey, the reports of foundations, like
the RusseU Sage, the reports of the rapidly increasing bureaus of research,
like the New York Municipal Bureau, all find their way to us through
the columns of our daily or weekly or monthly. Therefore we have more
material on which to found individual thinking.
OUR POPULAR DELUSION 155
wise men chosen by the reform associations must go,
the crowd must be abandoned. The idea of the All has
gripped us — but the idea has not been made workable,
we have yet to find the way. We have said, "The people
must rule." We now ask, "How are they to rule?" It
is the technique of democracy which we are seeking. We
shall find it in group organization.
XIX
THE TRUE DEMOCRACY
Democracy is the mle of an interacting, inter-
permeating whole. The present advocates of
democracy have, therefore, httle kinship with
those ardent writers of the past who when they said they
believed in the people were thinking of working-men
only, A man said to me once, "I am very democratic,
I thoroughly enjoy a good talk with a working-man."
What in the world has that to do with democracy.^
Democracy is faith in humanity, not faith in ''poor"
people or "ignorant" people, but faith in every hving
soul. Democracy does not enthrone the working-man,
it has nothing to do with sympathy for the " lower
classes"; the champions of democracy are not looking
down to raise any one up, they recognize that all men
must face each other squarely with the knowledge that
the give-and-take between them is to be equal.
The enthusiasts of democracy to-day are those who
have caught sight of a great spiritual unity which is
supported by the most vital trend in philosophical
thought and by the latest biologists and social psy¬
chologists. It is, above all, what we have learnt of the
psychical processes of association which makes us be¬
lieve in democracy. Democracy is every one building
the single life, not my life and others, not the individual
and the state, but my life bound up with others, the indi¬
vidual which is the state, the state which is the indi¬
vidual. "When a man's eye shall be single" — do we
quite know yet what that means Democracy is the
fullest possible acceptance of the single life.
156
THE TRUE DEMOCRACY 157
Thus democracy, although often considered a centrif¬
ugal tendency, is rather a centripetal force. Democracy
is not a spreading out: it is not the extension of the
suffrage — its merely external aspect — it is a drawing
together; it is the imperative call for the lacking parts
of self. It is the finding of the one will to which the wiU
of every single man and woman must contribute. We
want women to vote not that the suffrage may be ex¬
tended to women but that women may be included in
the suffrage: we want what they may have to add to
the whole. Democracy is an infinitely including spirit.
We have an instinct for democracy because we have an
instinct for wholeness; we get wholeness only through
reciprocal relations, through infinitely expanding recipro¬
cal relations. Democracy is reaUy neither extending nor
including merely, but creatiug wholes.
This is the primitive mge of aU life. This is the true
nature of man. Democracy must find a form of govern¬
ment that is suited to the nature of man and which will
express that nature in its manifold relations. Or rather
democracy is the self-creating process of fife appeeu-ing
as the true nature of man, and through the activity of
man projecting itself into the visible world in fitting form
so that its essential oneness wiU declare itself. Democracy
then is not £ui end, we must be weaving aU the time the
web of democracy.
The idea of democracy as representing the aU-will
gives us a new idea of aristocracy. We believe in the
few hut not as opposed to the many, only as included in
all. This makes a tremendous change in political thought.
We believe in the influence of the good and the wise, but
they must exert their influence within the social process;
it must be by action and reaction, it must be by a subtle
permeation, it must be through the sporting instinct to
take back the ball which one has thrown. The wise can
158
THE NEW STATE
never help us by standing on one side and trying to get
their wisdom across to the unwise. The imwise can
never help us (what has often been considered the most
they could do for the world) by a passive willingness for
the wise to impose their wisdom upon them. We need
the intermingling of all in the social process. We need
our imperfections as well as our perfections. So we offer
what we have — our xmwisdom, our imperfections — on
the altar of the social process, and it is only by this social
process that the wonderful transmutation can take place
which meikes of them the very stuff of which the Perfect
Society is to be made. Imperfection meets imperfec¬
tion, or imperfection meets perfection; it is the process
which purifies, not the "influence" of the perfect on the
imperfect. This is what faith in democracy means.
Moreover, there is the ignorance of the ignorant and the
ignorance of the wise; there is the wisdom of the wise
and the wisdom of the ignorant. Both kinds of igno¬
rance have to be overcome, one as much as the other;
both kinds of wisdom have to prevail, one as much as
the other.
In short, there is not a static world for the wise to
influence. This truth is the blow to the old aristocracy.
But we need the wise within this hving, moving whole,
this never-ceasing action and interaction, and this truth
is the basis of our new conception of aristocracy.
Democracy is not opposed to euistocracy — it includes
aristocracy.
As biology shows us nature evolving by the power
within itself, so social psychology shows us society evolv¬
ing by the power of its own inner forces, of all its inner
forces. There is no passive material within it to be
guided by a few. There is no dead material in a true
democracy.
When people see the confusion of our present life, its
THE TRUE DEMOCRACY 159
formlessness and planlessness, the servile following of
the crowd, the ignorance of the average man, his satis¬
faction in his ignorance, the insignificance of the col¬
lective Hfe, its blindness and its hopelessness, they say
they do not believe in democracy. But this is not democ¬
racy. The so-called evils of democracy — favoritism,
bribery, graft, bossism — are the evils of om lack of
democracy, of our party system and of the abuses which
that system has brought into our representative govern¬
ment. It is not democracy which is "on trial," as is so
often sedd, hut it is we ourselves who are on trial. We
have been constantly trying to see what democracy
meant from the point of view of institutions, we have
never yet tried to see what it meant from the point of
view of men.
If life could be made mechanical, our method would be
correct, but as mechanics is creature and hfe its super-
aboxmding creator, such method is whoUy wrong. When
people say that the cure for the evils of democracy is
more democracy, they usually mean that while we have
some "popular" institutions, we have not enough, and
that when we get enough "popular" institutions, om
inadequacies will be met. But no form is going to fulfil
our needs. This is important to remember just now,
with all the agitation for "democratic control." You
cannot estabhsh democratic control by legislation: it
is not democratic control to allow the people to assent
to or refuse a war decided on by diplomats; there is only
one way to get democratic control — by people learning
how to evolve collective ideas. The essence of democ¬
racy is not in institutions, is not even in "brotherhood";
it is in that organizing of men which makes most sure,
most perfect, the bringing forth of the common idea.
Democracy has one task only — to free the creative spirit
of man. This is done through group organization. We
160
THE NEW STATE
are sometimes told that democracy is an attitude and
must grow up in the hearts of men. But this is not
enough. Democracy is a method, a scientific technique
of evolving the wül of the people. For this reason the
study of group psychology is a necessary preliminary to
the study of democracy. Neither party bosses nor im-
scrupulous capitahsts are our imdoing, but our own lack
of knowing how to do things together.
The starthng truth that the war is bringing home to
many of us is that vmity must be something more than
a sentiment, it must be an actual system of organiza¬
tion. We are now beginning to see that if you want the
fruits of miity, you must have unity, a real unity, a
cooperative collectivism. Unity is neither a sentiment
nor an intellectual conception, it is a psychological process
produced by actual psychic interaction.
How shall we gain a practical understanding of this
essential imity of man.^ By practising it with the first
person we meet; by approaching every man with the
consciousness of the complexity of his needs, of the vast-
ness of his powers. Much is written of the power of
history and tradition in giving unity to a community
or nation. This has been overemphasized. If this were
the only way of getting unity, there would be httle hope
for the future in America, where we have to make a unity
of people with widely differing traditions, and httle hope
for the future in Europe where peace is unthinkable un¬
less the past can be forgotten and new ties made on the
basis of mutual imderstanding and mutual obhgation.
To have democracy we must five it day by day. De¬
mocracy is the actual commingling of men in order
that each shall have continuous access to the needs and
the wants of others. Democracy is not a form of govern¬
ment; the democratic soul is bom within the group and
then it develops its own forms.
THE TRUE DEMOCRACY 161
Democracy then is a great spiritual force evolving
itself from men, utilizing each, completing his incom¬
pleteness hy weaving together all in the many-membered
community life which is the true Theophany. The world
to-day is growing more spiritual, emd I say this not in
spite of the Great War, but because of all this war has
shown us of the inner forces bursting forth in fuller and
fuller expression. The Great Weir has been the Great
Call to humeuiity and humanity is answering. It is break-
iug down the ramparts to free the way for the entrance
of a larger spirit which is to fill every single being by
interflowing between them all. France, England, Amer¬
ica — how the beacon lights flash from one to the other
— the program of the Rritish Labor Party, the speeches
of our American President, the news of the indomitable
courage of France — these are flke the fires in Europe on
St. John's Eve, which flash their signals from hill-top to
hill-top. Even the school children of France and Amer¬
ica write letters to each other. American men and
women are working for the reconstruction of France as
they would work for the reconstruction of their own
homes — and all this because we are all sharing the
same hope. A new faith is in our hearts. The Great
War is the herald of another world for men. The com-
iug of democracy is the spiritual rebirth. We have
been told that our physical birth and life are not all, that
we are to be born again of water and the spirit. Not in¬
deed of water and spirit, but of blood and spirit, are the
warring children of men, a groaning, growing humanity,
coming to the Great Rebirth.
XX
THE GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
The two problems of democracy to-day are: (1)
how to make the individual poHticaUy effec¬
tive, and (2) how to give practical force to
social pohcies. Both of these mean that the individual
is at last recognized in pohtical life. The history of
democracy has been the history of the steady growth
towards individualism. The hope of democracy rests
on the individual. It is all one whether we say that
democracy is the development of the social consciousness,
or that democracy is the development of individualism;
until we have become in some degree socially conscious
we shall not realize the value of the individual. It is not
insignificant that a marked increase in the appreciation
of social values has gone hand in hand with a growing
recognition of the individual.
From the Middle Ages the appreciation of the individued
has steadily grown. The Reformation in the sixteenth
century was an individuahstic movement. The apotheo¬
sis of the individual, however, soon led us astray, involv¬
ing as it did an entirely erroneous notion of the relation
of the individual to society, and gave us the false pohtical
philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Men thought of individuals as separate and then had to in¬
vent fictions to join them, hence the social contract fiction.
The social contract theory was based on the idea of the
state as an aggregate of units; it therefore followed that
the rights of those units must be maintained. Thus indi¬
vidual rights became a kind of contractual rights. And
during the nineteenth century, fostered by Bentham's
162
GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 163
ideas of individual happiness, by the laissez-faire of the
Manchester school and the new industrial order, by Her¬
bert Spencer's interpretations of the recent additions to
biological knowledge, by MiU, etc., the doctrine of "indi¬
vidual rights" became more firmly entrenched. Govern¬
ment interference was strenuously resisted, "individual"
freedom was the goal of our desire, "individual" competi¬
tion and the survival of the fittest the accredited method
of progress. The title of Herbert Spencer's book, "The
Man versus the State," implies the whole of this false
pohtical philosophy built on an unrelated individual.
But during the latter part of the nineteenth century
there began to grow up, largely at first through the in¬
fluence of T. H. Green, influenced in his turn by Kant
and Hegel, an entirely different theory of the state.
The state was now not to be subordinate to the indi¬
vidual, but it was to be the fulfilment of the individual.
Man was to get his rights and his liberty from member¬
ship in society. Green had at once a large influence on
the pohtical thought of England and America, and gradu¬
ally, with other influences, upon practical pohtics. The
growing recognition of the right and duty of the state to
foster the fife of its members, so clearly and unequivo¬
cally expressed in the social legislation of Lloyd George,
we see as early as the Education Act of 1870, the Factory
Act of 1878 (which systematized and extended previous
Factory Acts), and the various mines and colheries acts
from 1872.
I do not mean to imply that the growing activity of the
state was due entirely or meiinly to the change of theory
in regard to the individual and the state; when the
disastrous results of laissez-faire were seen, then people
demanded state regulation of industry. Theory and prac¬
tice have acted and reacted on each other. Some one
must trace for us, step by step, the interaction of theory
164
THE NEW STATE
and practice in regard to the individual and his relation
to society, from the Middle Ages down to the present day.^
What has been the trend of our development in Amer¬
ica? Particularism was at its zenith when our govern¬
ment was founded. Our growth has been away from
particularism and towards a true individueJism.^
It is usual to say that the framers of om* constitution
were individuEihsts emd gave to our government an indi¬
vidualistic turn. We must examine this. They did safe¬
guard and protect the individual in his hfe and property,
they did make the biUs of rights an authoritative part
of our constitutions, they did make it possible for indi¬
viduals to aggrandize themselves at the expense of so¬
ciety, their ideed of justice was indeed of individual not
of social justice. And yet all this was negative. The
individual was given no large positive function. The
individual was feared and suspected. Our early con¬
stitutions showed no faith in men: the Massachusetts
constitution expressly stated that it was not a govern¬
ment of men. The law of the land was embodied in
written documents with great difficulty of amendment
just because the people were not trusted. As we look at
the crudities of the Declaration of Independence, as we
examine our aristocratic state constitutions, as we study
our restricted federal constitution, as we read the bor¬
rowed philosophy of our early statesmen, we see very
httle indication of modern democracy with its splendid
faith in man, but a tendency towards eaistocracy and a
lack of real individualism on every side.
To be sure it was at the same time true that the gov¬
ernment was given no positive power. Every one was
^ Also the development of the relation of indmdualistic theories to
the rise and decline of the doctrines regarding the national state.
2 I do not wish, however, to minimize the truly democratic nature of
our local institutions.
GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 165
thoroughly frightened of governments which were founded
on status and resulted in arbitrary authority. The ex¬
ecutive power was feared, therefore it was so equipped as
to be imequal to its task; the legislative power was
feared, so the courts were given power over the legisla-
tinges, were adlowed to declare their acts vahd or invahd;
the national government was feared, therefore Congress
was given only certain powers. Power was not granted
because no man and no institution was trusted. The will
to act could not be a motive force in 1789, because no
embodiment of the will was trusted; the framers of our
constitutions could not conceive of a kind of wiU which
could be trusted. Fear, not faith, suspicion not trust,
were the foundation of our early government. The gov¬
ernment had, therefore, no large formative function, it
did not look upon itself as a large social power. As the
individual was to be protected, the government was to
protect. All our thinking in the latter part of the eight¬
eenth century was rooted in the idea of a weak govern¬
ment; this has been thought to show our individualism.^
Rut our government as imagined by its founders did
not work. 2 Our system of checks and balances gave no
^ While it is true that there were undemocratic elements in the mental
equipment and psychological bent of our forefathers, and it is these which
I have emphasized because from them came our immediate development,
it is equally true that there were also sound democratic elements to which
we can trace our present ideas of democracy. Such tracing even in brief¬
est form there is not space for here,
2 It became at once evident that a government whose chief function
was to see that individual rights, property rights, state rights, were not
invaded, was hardly adequate to unite our colonies with all their separa¬
tist instincts, or to meet the needs of a rapidly developing continent. Our
national government at once adopted a constructive policy. Guided by
Hamilton it assumed constructive powers authority for which could be
found in the constitution only by a most liberal construction of its terms.
When Jefferson, an antinationalist, acquired Louisiana in 1803, it seemed
plain that no such restricted national government as was at first conceived
œuld possibly work.
166
THE NEW STATE
real power to any depeirtment. Above all there was no
way of fixing responsibility. A condition of chaos was
the result. Such complicated machinery was almost
unworkable; there was no way of getting anything done
imder our official system. Moreover, the individued was
not satisfied with his function of being protected, he
wanted an actual share in the government. Therefore
an extra-official system was adopted, the party organiza¬
tion. The two chief reasons for this adoption were:
(1) to give the individuad some share in government,
(2) to give the government a chance to carry out definite
policies, to provide some kind of a unifying power.
What effect has party organization had on the indi¬
vidual and on government The domination of the party
gives no real opportunity to the individual: originality
is crushed; the aim of all party organization is to turn
out a well-running voting machine. The party is not in¬
terested in men but in voters — an entirely different
matter. Party organization created artificial majorities,"
but gave to the individual httle power in or connection
with government. The basic weakness of party organi¬
zation is that the individual gets his significance only
through majorities. Any method which looks to the ful¬
filment of the individual through the domination of
majorities is necessarily not only partial but false. The
present demand that the nation shall have the full power
of the individual is the heaviest blow that party organi¬
zation has ever received.
Now consider, on the other hand, what party organiza¬
tion has done for the government. The powers of gov¬
ernment moved steadfiy to political bosses and business
corporations. Boss-rule, party domination and com¬
binations of capital filled in the gaps in the system of
government we inaugurated in the eighteenth centiuy.
The marriage of business emd politics, while it has been
GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 167
the chief factor in entrenching the party system, W6is the
outcome of that system, or rather it was the outcome of
the various imworkabihties of our official government.
The expansion of big business, with its control of poli¬
tics, evasion of law, was inevitable; we simply had no
machinery adequate to our need, namely, the develop¬
ment of a vast, imtouched continent. The urge of that
development was an overwhelming force which swept
irresistibly on, carrying everything before it, swallowing
up leged disability, creating for itself extra-legal methods.
We have now, therefore, a system of party organization
and pohtical practice which subverts all om theories.
Theoretically the people have the power, but really the
government is the primaries, the conventions, the cau¬
cuses. Officials hold from the party. Peirty pohtics
became corrupt because party government was irrespon¬
sible government. The insidious power of the machine
is due to its irresponsibility.
The evils of om big business have not come because
Americans are prone to cheat, because they want to get
the better of their fellows, because their greed is inordi¬
nate, their ambition domineering. Individuals have not
been to blame, but om whole system. It is the system
which must be changed. Om constitutions and laws
made possible the development of big business; om
comts were not "bought" by big business, but legal
decision and business practice were formed by the same
inheritance and tradition. The reforrnation of neither
will accompKsh the results we wish, but the nation-wide
acceptance, through eJl classes and aU interests, of a
different point of view.
The next step was the wave of reform that swept over
the country. The motive was excellent; the method
poor. The method was poor because the same method
was adopted which these reform movements were organ-
168
THE NEW STATE
ized to fight, one based on pure crowd philosophy. It
was a curious case of astigmatism. The trouble was
that the reformers did not see accurately what they
were fighting; they were fighting essentially the non-
recognition of the individual, but they did not see this,
so they went on basing all their own work on the
non-appreciation of men. Their essential weakness was
the weakness of the party machine—all their efforts were
turned to the voter not the man. Their triumphs
were always the triumphs of the polls. Their methods
were principally three: change in the forms of govern¬
ment (charters, etc.), the nomination of "good" men to
oflSce, and exhortation to induce "the people" to elect
them.
The idea of "good" men in office was the fetich of
many reform associations. They thought that their job
was to find three or four "good" men and then once a
year to hypnotize the electorate to "do their duty" and
put these men into office, and then all would go well if
before another year three or four more good men could
be found. What a futile and childish idea which leaves
out of account the whole body of citizenship ! It is only
through this main body of citizenship that we can have
a decent government and a sound social fife. That is,
in other words, it is only by a genuine appreciation of
the individual, of every single individual, that there
can be any reform movement with strength and construc¬
tive power. The wide-spread fallacy that good officials
make a good city is one which hes at the root of much
of our thinking and insidiously works to ruin our best
plans, oiu* most serious efforts. This extraordinary belief
in officials, this faith in the panacea of a change of char¬
ters, must go. If our present mechanical government is to
tmn into a hving, breathing, pulsing fife, it must be com¬
posed of an entire citizenship educated and responsible.
GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 169
This the reform associations now recognize, in some
cases partially, in some cases fuUy. The good govern¬
ment association of to-day has a truer idea of its func¬
tion. The campaign for the election of city officials is
used as a, means of educating the mass of citizens: be¬
sides the investigation and pubhcation of facts, there
is often a clear showing of the aims of government and
an enlightening discussion of method. Such associations
have always considered the interests of the city as a
whole; they have not appealed, Uke the party organiza¬
tions, to local sentiment.
I have spoken of the relation of the reform movement
of the last of the nineteenth century to the body of citi¬
zenship. What was its relation to government.^ The
same spirit apphed to government meant patching,
mending, restrEiining, but it did not mean constructive
work, it had not a formative effect on our institutions.
Against any institution that has to be guarded every
moment lest it do evü, there is a strong a priori argument
that it should not exist. This until recently has not been
sufficiently taken into accoimt. Now, however, in the
beginning of the twentieth century, we see many evi¬
dences that the old era of restraint is over and the con¬
structive period of reform begun. We see it, for instance,
in our Bureaus of Municipal Research; we see it in the
more progressive sections of our state constitutional
conventions. But the chief error of the nineteenth-cen¬
tury reformers was not that they were reactionary, nor
that they were timid, nor that they were insincere, nor
that they were hedgers. They were wanting in neither
sincerity nor courage. Their error was simply that they
did not appreciate the value of the individual. IndiAÙdu-
ahsm instead of being something we eae getting away
from, is something we are just catching sight of.
And if our institutions were founded on a false poHti-
170
THE NEW STATE
cal philosophy which taught "individual rights," dis¬
torted ideas of liberty and equality, and thought of man
versus the state, if our political development was influ¬
enced by a false social psychology which saw the people
as a crowd and gave them first to the party bosses and
next to the social reformers, our whole material develop¬
ment was dominated by a false economic philosophy
which saw the greatest good of aU obtained by each
foUowing his own good in his own way. This did not
mean the development pf individuals but the crushing
of individuals — of all but a few. The Manchester
school of economics, which was bound to flourish exten¬
sively under American conditions, combined with a
narrow legal point of view, which for a hundred years
interpreted our constitutions in accordance with an
antiquated philosophy and a false psychology, to make
particularism the dominemt note in American life.
The central point of our particularism was the idea of
being let alone. First, the individual was to be let alone,
the pioneer on his reclaimed land or the pioneer of indus¬
try. But when men saw that their gains would be greater
by some sort of combination, then the trusts were to be
let alone — freedom of contract was called liberty !
Our courts, completely saturated with this philosophy,
let the trusts alone. The interpretations of our comts,
our corrupt party organization, our institutions and our
social philosophy, hastened and entrenched the monopo¬
listic age. Natmal rights meant property rights. The
power of single men or single corporations at the end
of the nineteenth century marked the height of our par¬
ticularism, of our subordination of the state to single
members. They were like pâté de foie gras made by the
enlargement of the goose's liver. It is usual to disregard
the goose. The result of our false individualism has
been non-conservation of om national resources, ex-
GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 171
ploitation of labor, and political corruption. We see
the direct outcome in our slums, our unregulated indus¬
tries, our "industrial unrest," etc.
But egotism, materiedism, anarchy are not true indi¬
vidualism. To-day, however, we have memy evidences
of the steadily increasing appreciation of the individual
and a true understanding of his place in society, his rela¬
tion to the state. Chief among these are: (1) the move¬
ment towards industrial democracy, (2) the woman
movement, (3) the increase of direct government, and
(4) the introduction of social programs into party
platforms. These are parallel developments from the
same root. What we have awakened to now is the im¬
portance of every single man.
The first, the trend towcU"ds industrial democracy, will,
in its relation to the new state, be considered later. The
second, the woman movement, belongs to the past rather
them to the present. Its culmination has overrun the cen¬
tury mark and makes what is really a nineteenth-century
movement seem as if it belonged to the twentieth. It
belongs to the past because it is merely the end of the
movement for the extension of the suffrage. Our suffrage
rested originally in many states on property distinctions;
in New Hampshire there was a religious and property
quahfication, — only Protestant tax-payers could vote.
Gradually it became manhood suffrage, then the hmni-
grants were admitted, later the negroes, then Colorado
opened its suffrage to women, and now in thirteen states
women have the full suffrage. The essence of the woman
movement is not that women as women should have the
vote, but that women as individuals should have the
vote. There is a fundamental distinction here.
The third Emd fourth indications of the growth of
democracy, or the increase of individuahsm (1 speak of
these always eis synonymous) — the tendency towards
172
THE NEW STATE
more and more direct government and the introduction
of social programs into party platforms — wiU be con¬
sidered in the next chapter together with a third tendency
in American politics which is bound up with these two:
I refer to the increase of administrative responsibihty.
The theory of government based on individual rights
no longer has a place in modern pohtical theory; it no
longer guides us entirely in legislation but has yielded
largely to a truer practice; yet it still occupies a large
place in current thought, in the speeches of our practical
politicians, in our institutions of government, and in
America in our law court decisions. This being so it is
important for us to look for the reasons. First, there
are of course always many people who trail along be¬
hind. Secondly, partly through the influence of Green
and Bosanquet, the idea of contract has been slowly
fading away, and many people have been frightened at
its disappearance because Hegehanism, even in the modi¬
fied form in which it appears in Enghsh theory, seems to
enthrone the state and override the individual.^ Third,
the large influence which Tarde, Le Bon, and their fol¬
lowers have had upon us with their suggestion emd im¬
itation theories of society — theories based on a pure
particularism. The development of social and political
organization has been greatly retarded by this school
of sociology. Fourth, our economic development is still
associated in the minds of many with the theories of indi¬
vidual rights.
A more penetrating analysis of society during recent
years, however, has uncovered the true conception of in¬
dividualism hidden from the first within the "individual¬
istic" movement. All through history we see the feefing
1 These Enghsh writers to whom our debt is so large are not responsi¬
ble for this, but their misinterpreters.
GROWTH OF DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 173
out for the individual; there are all the false trails
followed and there are the real steps taken. The false
trails led to the individual rights of pohtics, the laissez-
faire of economics and our whole fedse particularism.
The real steps have culminated in our ideas of to-day.
To substitute for the fictitious democracy of equal rights
and "consent of the governed," the living democracy of
a imited, responsible people is the task of the twentieth
century. We seek now the method.
XXI
AFTER DIRECT GOVERNMENT — WHAT?
WE have outgrown our political system. We
must face this frankly. We had, first, gov¬
ernment by law,^ second, government hy
parties and big business, and all the time some sort of
fiction of the "consent of the governed" which we said
meant democracy. But we have never had government
hy the people. The third step is to he the development
of machinery by which the fimdamental ideas of the
people can be got at emd embodied; further, by which
we can grow fundamental ideas; fmther still, by which
we can prepare the soil in which fundamental ideas can
grow. Direct government will we hope lead to this step,
but it cannot alone do this. How then shall it be sup¬
plemented .i* Let us look at the movement for direct gov¬
ernment with two others closely connected with it—the
concentration of administrative responsibihty and the
mcrease of social legislation — three movements which
are making an enormous change in American pohtical Hfe.
Then let us see if we cem discover what idea it is necessary
to add to those involved in these three movements, in other
words what new principle is needed in modern pohtics.
We are at present trying to secure (1) a more efficient
government, emd (2) a real not a nominal control of gov¬
ernment by the people. The tendency to transfer power
to the AmericEm citizenship, and the tendency towards
efficient government by the employment of experts emd
^ With the executive and legislative limited in their powers, the de¬
cisions of the courts gradually came, especially as they developed con¬
structive powers, to be a body of law which guided the American people.
174
AFTER DIRECT GOVERNMENT — WHAT? 175
the concentration of administrative authority, are work¬
ing side by side in American pohtical hfe to-day. These
two tendencies are not opposed, and if the main thesis
of this book has been proved, it is understood by this
time why they are not opposed. Democracy I have said
is not antithetical to aristocracy, but includes aristocracy.
And it does not include it accidentally, as it were, but
aristocracy is a necessary part of democracy. There¬
fore administrative responsibihty and expert service are
as necessary a part of genuine democracy as popular
control is a necessary accompaniment of administrative
responsibihty. They are parallel in importance. Some
writers seem to think that because we are giving so much
power to our executives, we must safeguard our "Kberty "
by giving at the same time ultimate authority to the
people. While this is of course so in a way, I beheve a truer
way of looking at the matter is to see centrahzed responsi¬
bihty and popular control, not one dependent on the other,
but both as part of the same thing — our new democracy.
Both our city and our state governments are being
reorganized. We have long felt that city government
should be concentrated in the hands of a few experts.
The old idea that euiy honest citizen was fit for most pub-
he offices is rapidly disappearing. Over three hundred
cities have adopted the commission form of govern¬
ment, and there is a growing movement for the city-
manager plan. But at the same time we must have a
participant electorate. We can see three stages in our
thinking: (1) our early American democracy thought
that public offices could be fiUed by the average citizen;
(2) our reform associations thought that the salvation
of our cities depended on expert officials; (3) present
thinking sees the necessity of combining expert service
and an active electorate.^
^ For ways of doing this see Part III.
176
THE NEW STATE
The increasing number of states which are holding,
or are considering holding, constitutional conventions
for the reconstruction of state governments shows the
wide-spread dissatisfaction with our state machinery.
The principal object of nearly aU of these conven¬
tions is increased efiiciency through concentration of
responsibihty. In our fear of abuse of power there has
been no one to use power; we must change this if we
are to have administrative efficiency. Most of the
schemes for a reconstruction of state governments are
based on (1) concentration of executive leadership in
the hands of the governor, and (2) direct responsibihty
to the electorate. The former imphes appointment of
administrative officials by the governor, an executive
budget, and readjustment in the relation of executive
and legislative so that the governor can introduce and
defend biUs. The latter necessitates the abffity of the
electorate to criticize work done and plans proposed.
Therefore the tendency towards an effective responsi¬
bihty through the increased power of our executive
does not mean that less is required of citizens, but more.
To the initiative, referendum and recaU is to be added
the general control by the people themselves of our state
pohcies. Executive leadership may reduce the power of
legislatures, but it wiU increase the power of the elec¬
torate both directly and indirectly: indirectly by weaken¬
ing party organization, and directly by giving the people
more and more control. It has been suggested, for in¬
stance, that in any dispute between governor £uid legis¬
lature the people might be cahed on to decide, either
directly by passing on the proposed legislation itself, or
by a new election. At any rate ultimate control must
somehow be with the people. That this was not suffi¬
ciently provided for in the New York constitution sub¬
mitted to the voters of New York a few years ago weis one
AFTER DIRECT GOVERNMENT — WHAT? 177
of the reasons for its rejection. What frightened the men
of New York was undoubtedly the increased power of the
state administrative without any corresponding increase
in democratic control. To increase at the same time demo¬
cratic control and administrative responsibility, while not
an easy thing to do, is the task of our new constitutions.
p
With regard to direct government we are at present
making two mistakes: first, in thinking that we can get
any benefit from it if it is operated from within the party
organization; ^ secondly, in thinking that it is merely
to record, that it is based on coimting, on the preponder¬
ance of votes.
The question staring us in the face in American poli¬
tics to-day is — What possible good can direct govern¬
ment do us if party organization remains in control?
The movement for direct primaries, popxilar choice of
United States senators, presidential primaries, initiative
and referendum, the recall etc., wiU bear httle fruit rniless
something is done at the same time to break the power
of the party. Many people teU us that our present
party system, with its method of caucuses, conventions,
bosses etc., has failed, and they are now looking to the
direct primary as their hope, but the direct primely in
itself will not free us from the tyranny of party rule.
Look at this much-lauded direct primary and see what
it is actually giving us: the pohtical machines have
known from the beginning how to circumvent it, it often
merely increases the power of the boss, and at its best
it is accomphshing no integrating of the American people
— the real task of democracy. No development of party
machinery or reform of party machinery is going to give
us the will of the people, only a new method.
1 We used to think frequent elections democratic. Now we know that
they mean simply an increase of party influence and a decrease of official
responsibility.
178
THE NEW STATE
Moreover, merely giving more power to the people does
not automatically reduce the hold of the party; some
positive measures must be taken if direct government
is not to fail exactly as representative government has
failed. The faith in direct government as a sure panacea
is eJmost pathetic when we remember how in the past
one stronghold after another has been captured by the
party. Much has been written by advocates of direct
government to show that it wiU destroy the arbitrary
power of the party, destroy its relation to big business,
etc., but we see httle evidence of this. We aU know, and
we can see every year if we watch the history of referen¬
dum votes, that the party organization is quite able
to use "direct government" for its own ends. Direct
government worked by the machine will be subject to
much the same abuses as representative government.
And direct euid representative government cannot be
synthesized by executive leadership alone. All that
is said in favor of the former may be true, but it can
never be made operative unless we are able to find some
way of breaking the power of the machine. Direct
government can be beneficial to American politics only
if accompanied by the organization of voters in non¬
partisan groups for the production of common ideas
and a collective purpose. Of itself direct government
can never become the responsible government of a
people.
I have said that direct government wül never succeed
if operated from within the party organization, nor if
it is considered, as it usually is, merely a method by which
the people can accept or reject what is proposed to them.
Let us now look at the second point. We have seen that
party organization does not allow group methods, that
the party is a crowd: suggestion by the boss, imitation
by the mass, is the rule. But direct government also
AFTER DIRECT GOVERNMENT — WHAT? 179
may and probably wiU be crowd government if it is
merely a means of counting. As far as direct government
can be given the technique of a genuine democracy, it
is an advance step in political method, but the trouble
is that many of its supporters do not see this necessity;
they have given it their adherence because of their belief
in majority rule, in their behef that to count one and
one and one is to get at the will of the people. But for
each to count as one means crowd rule — of course the
party captures us. Yet even if it did not, we do not
want direct government if we are to fall from party domi¬
nation into the tyranny of ninnbers. That every man
was to coimt as one was the contribution of the old psy¬
chology to politics; the new psychology goes deeper and
further, — it teaches that each is to be the whole at one
point. This changes our entire conception of pohtics.
Voting at the polls is not to be the expression of one
man after another. My vote should not be my freak
will any more than it should be my adherence to party,
but my individual expression of the common wiU. The
particularist vote does not represent the individual will
because the evolution of the individued wiU is bound up
in a larger evolution. Therefore, my duty as a citizen
is not exhausted tyy what I bring to the state; my test as a
citizen is how fully the whole can be expressed in or through
me.
The vote in itself does not give us democracy — we
have yet to leam democracy's method. We still tbink
too much of the solidarity of the vote; what we need
is soKdarity of purpose, solidarity of will. To make my
vote a genuine part of the expression of the collective
wül is the first purpose of politics; it is only through
group organization that the individual learns this lesson,
that he learns to be an effective political member. People
often ask, "Why is democracy so unprogressive?" It
180
THE NEW STATE
is just because we have not democracy in this sense. As
long as the vote is that of isolated individuals, the ten¬
dency wül he for us to have an improgressive vote. This
state of things can he remedied, first, hy a different
system of education, secondly, hy giving men opportuni¬
ties to exercise that fundamental intermingling with
others which is democracy. To the consideration of
how this can he accomplished Part III is mainly directed.
But I am making no proposal for some hard and fast
method hy which every vote shall register the wül of a
definite, fixed number of men rather than of one man.
I am talking of a new method of living by which the indi¬
vidual shall leam to he part of social wholes, through
which he shall express social wholes. The individual
not the group must he the basis of organization. But
the individual is created hy many groups, his vote can¬
not express his relation to one group; it must ideally, I
have said, express the whole from his point of view,
actually it must express as much of the whole as the
variety of his group fife makes possible.^
When shall we begin to understand what the haUot-
hox means in our political hfe.i^ It creates nothing — it
merely registers what is already created. If direct gov¬
ernment is to he more than haUot-hox democracy it
must learn not to record what is on the surface, hut to dig
down underneath the surface. No "democracy" which
is based on a preponderance of votes can ever succeed.
The essence of democracy is an educated and responsible
citizenship evolving connnon ideas and willing its own
social fife. The dynamic thought is the thought which
represents the most complete synthesis. In art the in¬
fluence of a school does not depend upon the number of
its adherents, hut upon the extent to which that school
represents a synthesis of thought. This is exactly so in
^ See ch. XXX, "Political Pluralism and Functionalism."
AFTER DIRECT GOVERNMENT — WHAT? 181
politics. Direct government must create. It can do
this through group organization. We are at the cross¬
roads now: shall we give the initiative and referendum
to a crowd or to an interpenetrating group?
To smn up: the corruption of politics is due largely
to the conception of the people as a crowd. To change
this idea is, I believe, the first step in the reform of om
pohtical life. Unless this is done before we make sweep¬
ing changes in the mechanism of government, such
changes will not mean progress. If the people are a
crowd capable of nothing but imitation, what is the use
of all the direct government we are trying to bring about,
how can a "crowd" be considered capable of political
decisions? Direct government gives to every one the
right to express his opinion. The question is whether
that opinion is to be his particularist opinion or the
imitation of the crowd or the creation of the group. The
party has dominated us in the past chiefly because we
have truly believed the people to be a crowd. When we
understand the law of association as the law of psychic
interplay, then indeed shall we be on the way towards
the New Democracy.
Direct government wiU not succeed if it is operated
through the party organization; it will not succeed even
if separated from party control if it means the crowd in
another guise. To be successful direct government must
be controlled by some method not yet brought into prac¬
tical pofitics. When we have an organized electorate,
we shall begin to see the advantages of direct government.
At the beginning of this chapter three closely related
movements in American politics were mentioned. The
third must now be considered — the introduction of
social programs into party platforms.
We have had three policies in legislation: (1) the
182
THE NEW STATE
let-alone policy,^ (2) the regulation policy, and now (3) the
constructive policy is just appearing.
In order to get away from the consequences of laissez-
faire, we adopted, at the end of the nineteenth century,
an almost equally pernicious one, the regulation theory.
The error at the bottom of the "regulation" idea of
government is that people may be allowed to do as they
please (laissez-faire) imtil they have built up special
rules and privileges for themselves, and then they shall
be "regulated." The regulation theory of government
is that we are to give every opportunity for efficiency
to come to the top in order that we shall get the benefit
of that efficiency, but at the same time our governmental
machinery is to be such that efficiency is to be shorn of
its power before it can do any harm — a sort of auto¬
matic blow-off. Gauge your boiler (society) at what it
wiU stand without bursting, then when our ablest people
get to that point the blow-off will make society safe.
But the most salient thing about present American
politics is that we are giving up both our let-alone and
our regulation pohcies in favor of a constructive pohcy.
There has been a steady and comprehensible growth of
democracy from this point of view, that is, of the idea of
the function of government being not merely to protect,
to adjust, to restrain, and all the negative rest of it, but
that the function of government should be to build, to
construct the life of its people. We think now that a
constructive social policy is more democratic than the
protection of men in their individual rights and property.
In 1800 the opposite idea prevailed, and Jefferson, not
Hamilton, was considered the Democrat. We must rein¬
terpret or restate the fundamental principles of democracy.
^ Laissez-faire was popular when there were great numbers of indi¬
vidual producers. When the large-scale business system made wage-
earners of these, there was the beginning of the break-down of laissez-faire.
AFTER DIRECT GOVERNMENT — WHAT? 183
But why do we consider our present constructive social
policies more democratic ? Are they necessarily so ?
Has not paternahstic Germany constructive social poli¬
cies for her people? Social legislation in England and
America means an increase of democracy because it is
a movement which is in England and America bound
up with other democratic movements.^ In America we
see at the same time the trend towards (1) an increase
of administrative responsibihty, (2) em increase of direct
control by the people, (3) an increase of social legislation.
Not one of these is independent of the other two. They
have acted and reacted on one another. Men have not
first been given a more direct share in government and
then used their increased power to adopt social pohcies.
The two have gone on side by side. Moreover, the
adoption of socied pohcies has increased the powers of
government and, therefore, it has more and more come
to be seen that popular control of govermnent is neces¬
sary. At the same time the making of campaign issues
out of social pohcies has at once in itself made aU the
people more important in pohtics. Or it is equaUy true
to say that giving the people a closer share in govern¬
ment means that our daüy hves pass more naturally into
the eirea of pohtics. Hence we see, from whichever point
we begin, that these three movements are bound together.
Thus in America there is growing recognition of the
fact that social pohcies are not pohcies invented for the
good of the people, but pohcies created by the people.
The regulation theory was bcised on the same fedlacy as
the let-alone theory, namely, that government is some¬
thing external to the structural hfe of the people. Gov¬
ernment cannot leave us alone, it cannot regulate us,
it can only express us. The scope of pohtics should be
our whole social hfe. Our present idea of an omnipres-
1 Besides the more obvious one of "universal suffrage."
184
THE NEW STATE
ent, ever-active, sirticulate citizenship building up its own
life within the frame of politics is the most fruitful idea
of modern times.
Moreover, social legislation is an indication of the
growth of democracy, the increase of individuahsm,
because it is legislation for the individual. We have
had legislation to protect home industries, we have en¬
couraged agriculture, we have helped the railroads by
concessions and land grants, but we have not until
recently had legislation for the individual. Social legis¬
lation means legislation for the individual man: health
laws, shorter hours of work, workmen's compensation,
old age pensions, minimum wage, prevention of industrial
accidents, prohibition of child labor, etc. Over and over
again our social legislation is pointed to as a reaction
against individuahsm. On the contrary it shows an
increase of genuine individuahsm. The individual has
never been so appreciated as in the awakening social
world of to-day.
This is not a contradiction of what is said in chapter
XV, that law according to its most progressive exponents
is to serve not individuals, but the community; that
modern law thinks of men not as separate individuals,
but in their relation to one another. Modern law syn¬
thesizes the idea of individual and community through
its view of the social individued as the community-xmit.
Law used to be for the particularist individual; now it
serves the community, but the conununity-unit is the
social individual.
In our most recent books we see the expression
" the new individuahsm." The meaning of this phrase,
although never used by him, is clearly imphed in the
writings of Mr. Roscoe Pound. He says "As a social
institution the interests with which law is concerned are
social interests, but the chiefest of these social interests
AFTER DIRECT GOVERNMENT — WHAT? 185
is one in the full human life of the individual." Here is
expressed the essential meaning of the new individualism
—that it is a synthesis of individual and society. That
the social individual, the community-unit, is becoming
" the individual " for law is the most promising sign for
the future of political method. When Mr. Pound says
that the Hue between public law and private law in
jurisprudence is nothing more than a convenient mode
of expression, he shows us the old controversy in regard
to the state and the individual simply fading away.
Social legislation, direct government, concentration of
administrative responsibility, are then indications of the
growth of democracy ? Yes, but only indications. They
can mean an actual increase of democracy only if they
are accompanied by the development of those methods
which shall make every man and his daily needs the
basis and the substance of politics.
Part III
GROUP ORGANIZATION DEMOCRACY'S
METHOD
1. THE NEIGHBORHOOD GROUP
2. THE OCCUPATIONAL GROUP
THE NEIGHBORHOOD GROUP
XXII
NEIGHBORHOOD NEEDS THE BASIS OF POLITICS
POLITICS are changing in character: shall the
change be without plan or method, or is this
the guiding moment?
We are at a critical hour in our history. We have long
thought of pohtics as entirely outside our daily life
manipulated by those set apart for the purpose. The
methods by which the party platform is constructed are
not those which put into it the real issues before the
pubhc; the tendency is to put in what wiU elect candi¬
dates or to cover up the real issues by generahties. But
just so long as we separate pohtics and our daily hfe,
just so long shall we have all our present evils. Pohtics
can no longer be an extra-activity of the American
people, they must be a means of satisfying our actual
wants.
We are now beginning to recognize more and more
clearly that the work we do, the conditions of that work,
the houses in which we hve, the water we drink, the
food we eat, the opportunities for bringing up our chil¬
dren, that in fact the whole area of our daily hfe should
constitute pohtics. There is no hne where the hfe of the
home ends and the hfe of the city begins. There is no
waU between my private hfe and my pubhc hfe.'^A man
I know tells me that he "wouldn't touch pohtics with a
ten-foot pole," but how can he help touching pohtics?
He may not hke the party game, but pohtics shape the
life he leads from hour to hour. When this is once under-
189
190
THE NEW STATE
stood no question in history will seem more astonishing
than the one so often reiterated in these days, "Should
woman be given a place in pohtics?" Woman is in
pohtics; no power under the sun can put her out.
Politics then must satisfy the needs of the people.
What are the needs of the people .>> Nobody knows.
We know the supposed needs of certain classes, of cer¬
tain "interests"; these can never be woven into the
needs of the people. Further back we must go, down
into the actual life from which aU these needs spring,
down into the daily, hourly living with all its innumer¬
able cross cmrents, with all its longings and heart-burn¬
ings, with its envies and jealousies perhaps, with its
unsatisfied desires, its embryonic aspirations, and its
power, manifest or latent, for endeavor and accomplish¬
ment. The needs of the people are not now articulate:
they loom out of the darkness, vague, big, portentously
big, but dumb because of the separation of men. To
open up this hinterland of our life the cross currents now
burrowing under groimd must come to the surface and
be openly acknowledged.
We work, we spend most of our waking homs working
for some one of whose life we know nothing, who knows
nothing of us; we pay rent to a landlord whom we never
see or see only once a month, and yet our home is our
most precious possession; we have a doctor who is with
us in the crucial moments of birth and death, but whom
we ordinarily do not meet; we buy our food, our clothes,
our fuel, of automatons for the selling of food, clothes
and fuel. We know all these people in their occupational
capacity, not as men like ourselves with hearts like ours,
desires like ours, hopes like ours. And this isolation from
those who minister to our lives, to whose lives we minis¬
ter, does not bring us any nearer to our neighbors in
their isolation. For every two or three of us think our-
BASIS OF POLITICS
191
selves a little better than every other two or three, and
this becomes a dead wall of separation, of misunder¬
standing, of antagonism. How can we do away with
this artificial separation which is the dry-rot of our fife.^
First we must realize that each has something to give.
Every man comes to us with a golden gift in his heart.
Do we dare, therefore, avoid any man.*^ If I stay by
myself on my little self-made pedestal, I narrow myself
down to my own personal equation of error. If I go to
all my neighbors, my own life increases in multiple meas¬
ure. The aim of each of us should he to five in the fives
of aU. Those fringes which connect my fife with the fife
of every other hmnan being in the world are the inlets
by which the central forces flow into me. I am a worse
lawyer, a worse teacher, a worse doctor if I do not know
these wider contacts. Let us seek then those bonds
which unite us with every other fife. Then do we find
reality, only in union, never in isolation.
But it must he a significant union, never a mere com¬
ing together. How we waste immeasurable force in
much of our social fife in a mere tossing of the hall, on
the merest externality and travesty of a common fife
which we do not penetrate for the secret at its heart. The
quest of fife and the meaning of fife is reality. We may
flit on the surface as gnats in the sunlight, hut in each
of us, however overlaid, is the hunger and thirst for
realness, for substance. We must plunge down to find
oiu" treasure. The core of a worthy associated fife is the
call of reality to reality, the calling and answering and
the bringing it forth from the depths forever more and
more. To go to meet our fellows is to go out and let
the winds of Heaven blow upon us — we throw omselves
open to every breath and current which spring from
this meeting of fife's vital forces.
Some of us are looking for the remedy for our fatal
192
THE NEW STATE
isolation in a worthy and purposeful neighborhood hfe.
Our proposal is that people should organize themselves
into neighborhood groups to express their daily life, to
bring to the surface the needs, desires and aspirations of
that hfe, that these needs should become the substance
of pohtics, and that these neighborhood groups should
become the recognized pohtical unit.
Let us consider some of the advantages of the neigh¬
borhood group. First, it makes possible the association
of neighbors, which means fuller acquaintance and a
more real understanding. The task of creation from
elektrons up is putting self in relation. Is man the only
one who refuses this task ? I do not know my next-door
neighbor! One of the most unfortunate circumstances
of our large towns is that we expect concerted action
from people who are strangers to one another. So mere
acquaintance is the first essential. This will lead inevi¬
tably to friendly feefing. The story is told of some Ameri¬
can official who begged not to be introduced to a pohtical
enemy, for he said he could not hate any one with whom
he became acquainted. We certainly do feel more kindly
to the people we actually see. It is what has been called
"the pungent sense of effective reahty." Neighborhood
organization will substitute confidence for suspicion — a
great gain.
Moreover, neighborhood organization gives oppor¬
tunity for constant and regular intercourse. We are
indeed far more interested in humanity than ever before.
Look at what we are studying: social psychology, social
economics, social medicine and hygiene, social ethics
etc. But people must sociahze their Hves by practice,
not by study. Until we begin to acquire the habit of a
social life no theory of a social life will do us smy good.
It is a mistake to think that such abstractions as unity,
brotherhood etc. are as self-evident to our wills as to
BASIS OF POLITICS
193
our intellect. I learn my duty to my friends not by
reading essays on friendship, but by living my life with
my friends and learning by experience the obligations
friendship demands. Just so must I learn my relation
to society by coming into contact with a wide range of
experiences, of people, by cultivating and deepening
my sympathy and whole understanding of hfe.
When we have come together and got acquainted with
one another, then we shall have an opportunity for
learning the rules of the game — the game of associa¬
tion which is the game of Hfe. Certain organizations
have sprung up since 1914 with the avowed object of
fighting war with love. If only we knew how to love!
I am ready to say to you this minute, "I love my neigh¬
bors." But aU that I mean by it is that I have a vague
feeling of kindfiness towards them. I have no idea
how to do the actual deed. I shall offend against the
law of love within an hour. The love of our fellow-men
to be effective must be the love evolved from some actual
group relation. We talk of fellowship; we, puny separa¬
tists bristhng with a thousand unharmonized treiits, with
om assertive particularist consciousness, think that all
we have to do is to decide on fellowship as a dehghtful
idea. But fellowship will be the slowest thing on earth
to create. An eager longing for it may help, but it can
come into being as a genuine part of our Hfe only through
a deep understanding of what it really means.
Yet association is the impulse at the core of our being.
The whole social process is that of association, individual
with individual, group with group. Progress from one
point of view is a continuously widening of the area of
eissociation. Our modern civiHzation has simply over¬
laid and falsified this primary instinct of Hfe. But this
is rapidly changing. The most striking characteristic
of the present day is that people iu-e doiug more things
194
THE NEW STATE
together: they are coining together as never before in
labor organizations, in cooperative societies, in con¬
sumers' leagues, in associations of employers and em¬
ployed, in municipal movements, for national purposes,
etc. etc. We have the Men's City Club, the Women's
City Club; professional societies eure multiplying over
night. The explanation sometimes given for this present
tendency towards union is that we eu'e beginning to see
the material advantages of cooperation, but the root
of the thing is far from utihtarian advantage. Our happi¬
ness, our sense of living at aU, is directly dependent on
our joining with others. We are lost, exiled, imprisoned
until we feel the joy of union.
I beheve that the reahzation of oneness which will
come to us with a fuller sense of democracy, with a
deeper sense of our common hfe, is going to be the sub¬
stitute for what men now get in war. Some psycholo¬
gists tell us that fighting is one of the fundamental
instincts, and that if we do not have war we shall have
all the dangers of thwarted instinct. But the lure of war
is neither the instinct of hate nor the love of fighting;
it is the joining of one with another in a common pur¬
pose. "And the heart of a people beat with one desire."
Many men have gone joyfully to wsa because it gave
them fellowship. I said to some one that I thought the
reason war was still popular in spite of edl its horrors
was because of our lack of imagination, we simply could
not realize war. "No," said the man I spoke to, "I
know war, I know its horrors, and the reason that in
spite of it aU men like war is because there we are doing
something all together. That is its exhilaration and
why we can't give it up. We come home and each leads
his separate life and it seems tame and uninteresting
merely on that account, the deadly separateness of our
ordinary life."
BASIS OF POLITICS
195
When we want a substitute for war, therefore, we
need not seek for a substitute for fighting or for hating;
we must find some way of making ourselves feel at one
with some portion of our fellow-creatures. If the essen¬
tial characteristic of war is doing things together, let
us begin to do things together in peace. Yet not an arti¬
ficial doing things together, we could so easily fsdl into
that, but an entire reorganization of life so that the
doing things together shall be the natural way — the
way we shall all want to do things.
But mere association is not enough. We need more
than the "collective life," the mere "getting-together,"
so much talked of in these days; our getting together
must be made effective, must exercise our minds and
wills as well as our emotions, must serve the great ends
of a great life. Neighborhood organization gives aU an
opportunity to learn the technique of association.
A further advantage of neighborhood organization is
that as a member of a neighborhood group we get a
fuller £md more veu'ied life than as a member of any
other kind of a group we cem find, no matter how big
our city or how complex or comprehensive its interests.
This statement sounds paradoxical — it will seem to
many like saying that the smaller is greater than the
larger. Let us examine this statement therefore and see
if perhaps in this case the smaller is not greater than the
larger. Why is the neighborhood group better for us
than the selected group.»* Why are provincial people
more interesting than cosmopofitan, that is, if provincial
people have taken advantage of their opportunities.^
Because cosmopolitan people are all ahke — that has
been the aim of their existence and they have accom¬
plished it. The man who knows the "best" society of
Petrograd, Paris, London and New York, and that only,
is a narrow man because the ideals and standards of
196
THE NEW STATE
the "best" society of London, Paris and New York are
the same. He knows life across but not down — it is a
horizontal civilization instead of a vertical one, with all
the lack of depth and height of everything horizontal.
This man has always been eimong the same kind of
people, his life has not been enlarged and enriched by
the friction of ideas and ideeJs which comes from the
meeting of people of different opportunities and differ¬
ent tastes and different standards. But this is just
what we may have in a neighborhood group — different
education, different interests, different standards. Think
of the doctor, the man who runs the factory, the organist
and choir leader, the grocer, the minister, the watch¬
maker, the school-teacher, all hving within a few blocks
of one another.
On the other hand consider how different it is when
we choose the constituents of our group — then we choose
those who are the same as ourselves in some particular.
We have the authors' club, the social workers' club, the
artists' club, the actors' society, the business men's
club, the business women's club, the teachers' club etc.^
The satisfaction and contentment that comes with same¬
ness indicates a meagre personedity. I go to the medical
association to meet doctors, I go to my neighborhood
club to meet men. It is just because my next door
neighbor has never been to college that he is good for
me. The stenographer may come to see that her hfe is
reaUy richer from getting the factory girl's point of view.
In a neighborhood group you have the stimulus and
the bracing effect of many different experiences and
ideals. And in this infinite variety which touches you
on every side, you have a hfe which enriches and en-
1 This movement to form societies based on our occupations is of
course, although usually unconscious, part of the whole syndicalist move¬
ment, and as such has real advantages which will be taken up later-
BASIS OF POLITICS
197
larges and fecundates; this is the true soü of hiunan
development — just because you have here a natural
and not an artificial group, the members find all that is
necessary in order to grow into that whole which is true
community living.
Memy young men and women think as they come to
the teeming cities that there they are to find the fuller
life they have longed for, but often the larger our world
the narrower we become, for we cannot face the vague
largeness, and so we join a clique of people as nearly
like ourselves as we can find.
In so far, therefore, as neighborhoods are the result
of some selective process, they are not so good for our
purpose. The Italian colony or the Syrian colony
does not give us the best material for group organization,
neither does any occupational segregation like the stock¬
yard district of Chicago. (This is an argument against
the industrial colonies which are spreading.) In a more
or less mixed neighborhood, people of different nationali¬
ties or different classes come together easily and naturally
on the groxmd of many common interests: the school,
recreational opportunities, the placing of their children
in industry, hygiene, housing etc. Race and class prej¬
udices ene broken down by working together for inti¬
mate objects.
Whenever I speak of neighborhood organization to
my friends, those who disagree with me at once become
violent on the subject. I have never emderstood why it
inflames them more easily than other topics. They
immediately take it for granted that I am proposing to
shut them up tight in their neighborhoods and seal
them hermetically; they assume that I mean to substi¬
tute the neighborhood for every other contact. They
tell me of the pettiness of neighborhood life, and I have
to listen to stories of neighborhood iniquities ranging
198
THE NEW STATE
from small gossip to determined boycotting. Intoler¬
ance and narrowness thrive in the neighborhood group
they say; in the wider group they do not. But I am not
proposing to substitute the neighborhood group for
others, yet even so I should like to say a word for the
neighborhood.
We may like some selected group better than the
company of our neighbors, but such a group is no
"broader" necessarily, because it draws from all over
the city, than a local one. You can have narrow interests
as well as narrow spaces. Neighbors may, it is true,
discuss the comings and goings of the family down the
street, but I have heard people who are not neighbors
discuss equally trivial subjects. But supposing that
non-neighborhood groups are less petty in the sense of
less personal in their conversation, they are often also
less real, and this is an important point. If I dress in
my best clothes and go to another part of the city and
take all my best class of conversation with me, I don't
know that it does me any good if I am the same person
who in my every-day clothes goes in next door and talks
slander. What I mean is that the only place in the world
where we can change ourselves is on that level where
we are real. And what is forgotten by my friends who
think neighborhood life trivial is that (according to their
own argument) it is the same people who talk gossip
in their neighborhoods who sure impersonal and noble in
another part of the city.
Moreover, if we are happier away from our neighbor¬
hood it would be well for us to analyze the cause — there
may be a worthy reason, there may not. Is it perhaps
that one does not get as much consideration there eis
one thinks one's due.i^ Have we perhaps, led by our
vanity, been drawn to those groups where we get the
most consideration My neighbors may not think much
BASIS OF POLITICS
199
of me because I paint pictures, knowing that my back
yard is dirty, but my artist friends who like my color
do not know or care about my back yard. My neighbors
may feel no admiring awe of my scientific researches
knowing that I sun not the first in the house of a neigh¬
bor in trouble.
You may reply, "But this is not my case. I am one
of the most esteemed people in my neighborhood and
one of the lowest in the City Club, but I prefer the
latter just because of that: there is room for me to aspire
there, but where I am leading what is there for me to
grow toward, how can I expand in such an atmosphere.!*"
But I should say that this also might be a case of vanity:
possibly these people prefer the City Club because they
do not hke to think they have found their place in life
in what they consider an inferior group; it flatters them
more to think that they belong to a superior group even
if they occupy the lowest place there. But the final
word to be said is I think that this kind of seeking im¬
plies always the attitude of getting, almost as bad as the
attitude of conferring. It is extremely salutsuy to take
om place in a neighborhood group.
Then, too, that does not always do us most good which
we enjoy most, as we are not always progressing most
when thrills go up and down our spine. We may have a
selected group feeling "good," but that is not going to
make us good. That very homogeneity which we nestle
down into and in which we find all the comfort of a down
pillow, does not provide the differences in which alone
we can grow. We must know the finer enjoyment of
recognized diversity.
It must be noted, however, that while it is not pro¬
posed that the neighborhood association be substituted
for other forms of association — trade-union, church
societies, fraternal societies, local improvement leagues,
200
THE NEW STATE
cooperative societies, men's clubs, women's clubs etc. —
yet the hope is that it shall not be one more association
merely, but that it shall be the means of coordinating
and translating into community values other local groups.
The neighborhood association might become a very me¬
chanical affair if we were aU to go there every evening
and go nowhere else. It must not with its professed
attempt to give a richer life cut off the variety and spon¬
taneity we now have.
But the trouble now is that we have so much unre¬
lated variety, so much unutilized spontaneity. The
small merchant of a neighborhood meets with the other
small dealers for business purposes, he goes to church
on Sundays, he gets his social intercourse at his lodge
or club, but where and when does he consider any possi¬
ble integration of these into channels for community
life? At his political rally, to be sure, he meets his neigh¬
bors irrespective of business or church or social hnes,
but there he comes under party domination. A free,
full community life hved within the sustaining and nour¬
ishing power of the community bond, hved for com¬
munity ends, is almost unknown now. This will not
come by substituting the neighborhood group for other
groups, not even by using it as a clearing-house, but by
using it as a medium for interpretation and unofficied
integration.
There should be as much spontaneous association as
the vitahty of the neighborhood makes possible, but
other groups may perhaps find their significance and
coordination through the neighborhood association. If
a men's or women's club is of no use to the community
it should not exist; if it is of use, it must find out of what
use, how related to all other organizations, how through
and with them related to the whole community. The
lawyers' club, the teachers' club, the trade eissociation
BASIS OF POLITICS
201
or the union — these can have little influence on their
community until they discover their relation to the com¬
munity through and in one another. I have seen many
examples of this. If the neighborhood group is to be
the political unit, it must learn how to gather up into
significant community expression these more partial ex¬
pressions of individual wants.
It is sometimes said that the force of the neighborhood
bond is lessening now-a-days with the ease of communi¬
cation, but this is true only for the wealthy. The poor
cannot afford constantly to be paying the ten-cent
carfare necessary to leave and return to their homes, nor
the more well-to-do of the suburbs the twenty or twenty-
five cents it costs them to go to the city and back. The
fluctuating population of neighborhoods may be an
argument against getting all we should like out of the
neighborhood bond, but at the same time it makes it
all the more necessary that some organization should be
ready at hemd to assimilate the new-comers and give
them an opportunity of sharing in civic life as an integral,
responsible part of that life. Moreover a neighborhood
has common traditions and memories which persist and
influence even although the personnel changes.
To smn up: whether we want the exhilaration of a
fuller fife or whether we want to find the unities which
will make for peace and order, for justice and for right¬
eousness, it would be wise to turn back to the neighbor¬
hood group and there begin the ab c of a constructive
brotherhood of man. We must recognize that too much
congeniality makes for narrowness, and that the har¬
monizing, not the ignoring, of our differences leads us
to the truth. Neighborhood organization gives us the
best opportunity we have yet discovered of finding the
unity underneath all our differences, the real bond be¬
tween them — of living the consciously creative life.
202
THE NEW STATE
We can never reform American poKtics from above,
by reform associations, by charters and schemes of gov¬
ernment. Our political forms will have no vitality unless
our political life is so organized that it shall be based
primarily and fundamentally on spontaneous associa¬
tion. "Government is a social contact," was found in
the examination papers of a student in a near-by college.
He was nearer the truth than he knew. Political prog¬
ress must he by local communities. Our municipal
life will he just as strong as the strength of its parts.
We shall never know how to he one of a nation until
we are one of a neighborhood. And what better training
for world organization can each man receive than for
neighbors to live together not as detached individuals
hut as a true community, for no League of Nations will
he successful which regards France and Germany, Eng¬
land and Russia as sepmatist xmits of a world-imion.
Those who me working for particular reforms to he
accomplished immediately wiU not he interested in
neighborhood organization; only those will he interested
who t.hirik that it is far more important for us to find the
right method of attacking all our problems than to solve
any one. We who heheve in neighborhood organization
heUeve that the neighborhood group is a more significant
unit to identify ourselves with than any we have hitherto
known in cities. People have been getting together in
churches, in fraternal societies, in political parties, in
industrial and commercial associations, hut now in ad¬
dition to these partial groups communities are to get
together as commimities.
The neighborhood organization movement is not wait¬
ing for ideal institutions, or perfect men, hut is finding
whatever creative forces there are within a community
and taking these and building the future with them.
The neighborhood organization movement is a protest
BASIS OF POLITICS
203
against both utopias on the one hand and a mechani-
calized hiunanity on the other. It consists of the proc¬
ess of building always with the best we have, and its
chief problem is to discover the methods by which the
best we have can be brought to the surface. Neighbor¬
hood organization gives us a method which will revolu¬
tionize pohtics.
XXIII
AN INTEGRATED NEIGHBORHOOD
HOW can an active and fruitful neighborhood
life be brought into existence and fostered
and nm-tured ? How can we imclose the
sources within our own midst from which to draw our
inspiration? And then how can the vision which we
learn to see together be actualized ? How can neighbor¬
hoods learn to satisfy their own needs through their own
initiative? In other words how can the force generated
by our neighborhood hfe become part of our whole civic
and national life ? How can an integrated neighborhood
responsibility become a civic and national responsibihty ?
There is no such thing as a neighborhood in its true
sense, something more, that is, than the physical con¬
tiguity of people, imtil you have a neighborhood con¬
sciousness. Rows of houses, rows of streets, do not make
a neighborhood. The place bond must give way to a
consciousness of real union. This neighborhood con¬
sciousness can be evolved in five ways:
1. By regular meetings of neighbors for the considera¬
tion of neighborhood and civic problems, not merely
sporadic and occasional meetings for specific objects.
2. By a genuine discussion at these regular meetings.
3. By learning together — through lectures, classes,
clubs; by sharing one another's experience through
social intercourse; by learning forms of community art
expression; in short by leading an actual community
fife.
4. By taking more and more responsibility for the fife
of the neighborhood.
204
AN INTEGRATED NEIGHBORHOOD 205
5. By estabHsMng some regular connection between
the neighborhood and city, state and national govern¬
ments.
The most deliberate and conscious movement for
neighborhood organization is the Community Centre
movement. This is a movement to mobilize community
forces and to get these forces expressed in our social and
political hfe. Each community, it is becoming recog¬
nized, has its own desires, its own gifts, its own inherent
powers to bring to the hfe of the Whole city. But these
inner forces most be freed and utilized for pubhc ends.
The Community Centre movement is a movement to
release the potential values of neighborhood Hfe, to find
a channel for them to flow in, to help people find and
organize their own resources. It is to provide a means
for the self-reahzation of neighborhoods. In considering,
therefore, the various methods of neighborhood integra¬
tion, it must be remembered that many of these methods
are being already actuahzed in Community Centres,
School Centres, Neighborhood Associations — there are
many names for the many forms in which this vital need
is finding expression.
Schoolhouses are being opened all over the country
for neighborhood use. In the larger cities, indeed, where
school buildings have auditoriums, gymnasiums, cooking-
rooms, sewing-rooms etc., the School Centre is for many
reasons the best form of community organization. In
some cities, as in Chicago, the field-houses in the parks are
used as commimity centres, in addition to the school-
houses. In many smaller towns or villages, where field-
houses are unknown and the schoolhouses unsuitable
(although often we find valuable if not showy results
in the Httle red schoolhouse at the cross-roads or in a
Kansas cyclone cellar underneath the district school),
"community buildings" are being built. Their name is
206
THE NEW STATE
significant. They have a reading room, library, rest
room, club rooms and usually a small haill with stage for
dramatic and musical entertainments.
And beyond this conscious effort to organize neighbor¬
hoods, or rather to help neighborhoods to organize them¬
selves, much spontaneous initiative in both rural and
urban communities, springing from the daily needs of
the people, is finding neighborhood organization to be
the result of concerted effort. Mothers want to learn
more of the care of their homes, men want to discuss
local improvements, young men and women want recrea¬
tion, there is a hunger for a wider social intercourse or
for some form of community art-expression, music or
drama. Yet whichever of these motives leads us to the
schoolhouse or the community building, the result is
always the same — a closer forging of the neighborhood
bond. Whoever takes the initiative in organizing the
Community Centre — a parents' association, a men's
civic club, a mothers' club, a committee of citizens, the
city council, the board of education — the result is
always the same, a closer forging of the community bond.
The Community Centre movement has made rapid
progress in the last ten years. All over the country new
Centres are springing up constantly. That the impulse
for their organization is almost as varied as there are
different towns and cities is evidence of their real need.
I have had letters in regard to the organization of Centres
from as widely different sources as the city council of a
western city, girls teaching in rural schools, the mayor of
a small city, and young working men in a big city. In¬
deed Centres have become so much the fashion that one
man came to me and said, "We want a School Centre
in our district — will you help us to get one — what is
a School CentreP"
In the year 1915-16, 463 cities reported over 59,000
AN INTEGRATED NEIGHBORHOOD 207
occasions in public school buildings after 6 p.m. in addi¬
tion to evening school work.^
But School or Community Centres do not exist merely
for the satisfaction of neighborhood needs, for the creat¬
ing of a community bond, for the expression of that bond
in communal action, — they also give the training neces¬
sary to bring that activity to its highest fulfilment. We
all need not merely opportunities to exercise democracy,
but opportunity for a training in democracy. We are
not going to take any kind of citizen for the new state,
we intend to grow our own citizens. Through group
activities, through classes and lectures, through uni¬
versity extension, through actual practice in self govern¬
ment by the management of their own Centres €md
the varied activities therein, all, young and old, may
prepare themselves for the new citizenship of the new
democracy.^
Let us now consider the five ways given above for
producing an integrated and responsible neighborhood.
First, the regular meetings of neighbors in civic clubs.
In Boston we have, in connection with the School Cen¬
tres, the so-called "East Boston Town-Meeting," the
"Charlestown Commonwealth," etc. At such meetings
neighborhood needs can be discussed, and the men and
women of those neighborhoods, while getting to know
one another and their local conditions, can be training
themselves to function with government and as govern¬
ment. The first advantage of such meetings is their
regularity.
1 am urging regular meetings of small groups of neigh¬
bors as a new method in poUtics. Neighbors now often
^ Since April, 1917, with the rapidly extending use of the schoolhouse
as a centre for war services, these numbers have probably greatly in¬
creased.
2 See Appendix, The Training for the New Democracy.
208
THE NEW STATE
meet for one object or two or three, and then when these
are accomplished think that they need not meet again
until there is another definite end to be gained. But in
the meantime there should be the slow building up of
the neighborhood consciousness. A mass-meeting will
never do this. But this neighborhood consciousness is
far more important than to get a municipal bath-house
for a certain district. If the bath-house is considered
the chief thing, and no effort made to get the neighbor¬
hood group together again until something else, a play¬
ground for instance, is wanted, this time perhaps not
enough cohesion and concentration of purpose can be
obtained to secure the playground. The question in
neighborhood organization is — Is our object to get a
new playgroimd or to create methods by which play¬
grounds will become part of the neighborhood conscious¬
ness, methods which will above aU educate for further
concerted effort.»^ If neighborhood organization is one
among many methods of getting things, then it is not of
great vedue; if, however, it is going to bring about a dif¬
ferent mental life, if it will give us an open mind, a flexi¬
ble mind, a cooperative mind, then it is the greatest
movement of our time. For our object is not to get
certain things, or to have certain things; our object is
to evolve the kind of life, the way of thinking, within
which these specific things will naturally have place.
We shall make no real progress until we can do this.
Bernard Shaw has said of family life that it is often
cut off equally from the blessings of society and the
blessings of sohtude. We must see that our neighbor¬
hood associations are so organized that we do get the
advantages of society.
The second way of creating an integrated neighborhood
is by learning and practising a genuine discussion, that is,
a discussion which shall evolve a true collective purpose
AN INTEGRATED NEIGHBORHOOD 209
and bring the group will of the neighborhood to bear
directly on city problems. When I speak of discussion
I mean always the kind of discussion which is called out
by a genuine group. The group idea, not the crowd idea,
is to come from discussion. What is the remedy for a
"ruthless majority".'^ What is the remedy for an "ar¬
rogant minority".!* Group discussion. Group discus¬
sion will diminish suggestion as a social force and give
place to interpermeation.
When we advocate discussion as a political method, we
are not advocating the extension of a method aheady in
use. There is little discussion to-day. Talk to air om
grievances or as a steam-valve for the hot-headed, the
avowed intention sometimes in the organization of so-
called "discussion" societies, is not discussion. People
often speak of "self-expression" as if it were a letting off
of steam, as if there were something inside us that must
be let out before it explodes. But this is not the use to
which we must put the powers of self-expression; we
must release these powers not to be wasted through a
safety valve, but to be used constructively for the good
of society. To change the metaphor, we must not make
a petty effort to stem a stream which cannot and should
not be stemmed but helped to direct itself.
Do we have discussion in debating societies.!* Never.
Their influence is pernicious and they should he abohshed
in colleges, schools, settlements, Yoimg Men's Christian
Associations, or wherever found. In these societies the
men as a rule take either side of the question allotted to
them, hut even if they choose their side the process
of the debate is the same. The object is always to win,
it is never to discover the truth. This is excellent train¬
ing for om present party politics. It is wretched prep¬
aration for the kind of politics we wish to see in America,
because there is no attempt to think together. Some
210
THE NEW STATE
one to whom I said this rephed, "But each side has to
think together." Not in the least: they simply pool
their information and their arguments, they don't think
together. They don't even think; that artificial mental
process of maintaining a thesis which is not yours by
conviction is not thinking. In debating you eu-e always
trying to find the ideas and facts which will support
your side; you do not look dispassionately at all ideas
and all facts, and try to make out just where the
truth lies. You do not try to see what ideas of your
opponent wiU enrich your own point of view; you are
bound to reject without examination his views, his ideas,
almost I might say his facts. In a discussion you can
be flexible, you can try experiments, you can grow as
the group grows, but in a debate all this is impossible.
One of the great advantages of the forum movement
is that here we are beginning to have discussion.^
Let us analyze briefly the advantages of discussion.
Genuine discussion is truth-seeking. First, then, it
presses every man to think cleeu-ly and appreciatively
and discriminatingly in order to take his part worthily.
What we need above everything else is clear thinking.
This need has been covered over by the demand for
"honest" men, but hardly any one would say to-day,
"Give the management of your city over to a group of
the most honest men you can find." A group of honest
men — what a disconcerting picture the phrase calls
up! We want efficient men, thinking men, as well as
honest men. Take care of your thinking and your morals
wfll take care of themselves — is a present which would
have benefited certain reform campaigns.
The first advantage of discussion then is that it tends
to make us think and to seek accurate information in
^ That it is also in many instances leading the way to real community
organization makes it one of the most valuable movements of our time.
AN INTEGRATED NEIGHBORHOOD 211
order to be able to think and to think clearly. I belong
to a civic conference lunch club which meets once a
month to discuss civic questions. On one occasion the
program conomittee discovered a few days before the
luncheon that on the question to be considered (a cer¬
tain biU before the legislature), we were all of the same
opinion, and so the discussion did not seem Kkely to be
very hvely. But it happened that om secretary knew
some one who was on the other side, and this woman
was therefore invited to be om guest and present her
point of view to us. She accepted with pleasure as she
said she felt strongly on the matter. On the morning
of the day of our meeting, however, she telephoned that
she could not come, as she had just read the bill, think¬
ing it would be wise to do so before she publicly opposed
it, and she found she agreed with it heartily 1
Moreover, no one question can be adequately dis¬
cussed without an understanding of many more. Reme¬
dies for abuses are seldom direct because every abuse is
boimd up with our whole pohtical and economic system.
And if discussion induces thinking by the preparation
necessary, it certainly stimulates thinking by the oppo¬
sition we meet.
But the great advantage of discussion is that thereby
we overcome misunderstanding emd conquer prejudice.
An Englishman who. visited America last winter said
that he had seen in an American newspaper this advice,
"Get acquainted with your neighbor, you might hke
him," and was much struck with the difference between
the American and the English way of looking at the
matter. The Englishman, he said, does not get ac¬
quainted with his neighbor for fear he might hke him!
I sometimes feel that we refuse to get acquainted with
the arguments of our opponents for fear we might sym¬
pathize with them.
212
THE NEW STATE
Genuine discussion, however, will always and should
always bring out difference, but at the same time it teaches
us what to do with difference. The formative process
which takes place in discussion is that unceasing recipro¬
cal adjustment which brings out and gives form to truth.
The whole conception of discussion is now changing.
Discussion is to be the sharpest, most effective pohtical
tool of the future. The value of the town-meeting is not
in the fact that every one goes, but in what every one
does when he gets there. And discussion will overcome
much indifference, much complacency. We must re¬
member that most people are not for or against anything;
the first object of getting people together is to make
them respond somehow, to overcome inertia. To disa¬
gree, as well as to agree, with people brings you closer
to them. I always feel intimate with my enemies. It
is not opposition but indifference which separates men.
Another advantage of discussion in regular meetings
of neighbors is that men discuss questions there before
they come to a political issue, when there is not the heat
of the actual fight and the desire to win.
Through regular meetings then, and a genuine discus¬
sion, we help to forge the neighborhood bond. But this
is not enough. A true community life should be de¬
veloped. If the multiplicity and complexity of interrela¬
tions of interests emd wants and hopes are to be brought
to the surface to form the substance of politics, people
must come more and more to live their lives together.
We are ignorant: we should form classes and leam to¬
gether. The farmer in Virginia goes to the School Centre
to learn how to test his seed com. We need social inter¬
course: we should meet to exchange experiences and to
have a "good time" together. We need opportunity
for bringing old and young together, parents rmd children,
for boys and girls to meet in a natural, healthy way. We
AN INTEGRATED NEIGHBORHOOD 213
need true recreation, not the passive looking at the
motion pictures, not the deadening watching of other
people's acting; we weuit the real re-creation of active
participation. The leisure time of men and women is
being increased by legislation, by vocational efficiency,
by machinery, and by scientific management. One of
the most pressing needs of to-day is the constructive use
of leisure. This need cem be largely satisfied in the
Neighborhood Centre. Festivals, pageants, the cele¬
bration of holidays can all be used as recreation, as a
means of self-expression, and of building up the neighbor¬
hood bond.
Here too the family reeilizes that its life is embedded
in a larger fife, and the richer that larger fife the more
the family gains. The family learns its duty to other
families, and it finds that its external relations change
all its inner fife, as the International League wiU change
fundamentally the internal history of every nation. I
knew two sisters who were ashamed of their mother
until they could say to their friends, "Mother goes to
the lectures every Saturday night at the School Centre."
I know men and wives who never went out together
until they found an extended home in a School Centre.
I know a father, an intelligent policemem, who never
had any real friendship with his four daughters until
he planned dances for them at the School Centre so that
they should not go to the public dance-halls.
Families often need some means of coming to a common
understanding; they are not always capable by them¬
selves of making the necessary adjustment of points of
view brought from so many sources as the different
family outgoings produce. For example, food conserva¬
tion taught in various ways in the Neighborhood Centre
— by cooking classes for women, by lectures for both
men and women showing the relation of food to the
214
THE NEW STATE
whole present world problem, by having regular after¬
noons for meeting with agents from the Health Depart¬
ment, by comparison between neighbors of the results
of the new feeding — food conservation, that is, taught
as a community problem, is more effective than taught
merely to classes of mothers. For if the mother makes
dishes the father and children refuse to eat, the cooking
classes she has attended will have no community value.
To give community value to all our apparently isolated
activities is one of the primary objects of neighborhood
organization.
The Neighborhood Centre, therefore, instead of sep¬
arating famihes, as sometimes feared, is xmiting them.
To hve their life in the setting of the broader hfe is con¬
tinuously to interpret and explain one to the other. And
if we have learned that sacred as our family hfe must
always be, the significance of that sacredness is its power
of contributing to the hfe aroimd us, the hfe of om little
neighborhood, then we are ready to understand that the
nation too is real, that its tasks are mighty and that
those tasks wiU not be performed unless every one of us
can find self-expression through the nation's needs.
We have seen that the regular meeting of neighbors
gives an external integration of neighborhood hfe. We
have seen that group discussion begins to forge a real
neighborhood bond. We have seen that a sharing of our
daily hfe — its cares and burdens, its pleasures and joys,
each with ah — furthers this inner, this spiritued union
which is at last to be the core of a new pohtics. The
fourth way of developing the neighborhood bond is by
citizens taking more and more responsibihty for the hfe
of their community. This will mean a moral integration.
We are not to dig down into our hfe to find om true
needs and then demand that government satisfy those
needs — the satisfaction also must be found in that
AN INTEGRATED NEIGHBORHOOD 215
fermenting Kfe from which our demands issue. The
methods of neighborhood responsibility will be discussed
in chapter XXVL
The fifth way of developing the neighborhood group
is by estabhshing some regular connection between the
neighborhood and city, state and national governments.
Then shall we have the political iutegration of the
neighborhood. This wiU be discussed in chapter XXVII,
"From Neighborhood to Nation." Party politics are
organized, "iuterests" are organized, our citizenship is
not organized. Our neighborhood fife is starving for
lack of any real part in the state. Give us that p£U"t and
as inevitably as the wake foUows the ship will neighbor¬
hood responsibihty follow the integration of neighbor¬
hood and state.
XXIV
NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION VS. PARTY
ORGANIZATION
The Will 0/ the People
Many of us are feeling strongly at the pres¬
ent moment the importance of neighbor¬
hood life, the importance of the development
of a neighborhood consciousness, the paramoimt impor¬
tance of neighborhood organization as the most effective
means of solving our city and national problems. What
our pohtical life needs to-day is to get at the wiU of the
people and to incorporate it in om- government, to sub¬
stitute a man-governed country for a machine-governed
country. If politics are to be no longer mysterious and
remote, but the warp and woof of our lives, if they are
to be neither a game nor a business, far different methods
must be adopted from any we have hitherto known.
Where do we show political vitality at present? In
our government? In our party organization? In our
local commrmities? We can see nowhere any clear
stream of poUticcd hfe. The vitality of our community
life is frittered away or unused. The muddy stream of
party politics is choked with personal ambition, the
desire for personal gain. Neighborhood organization is,
I believe, to be the vital current of our political life.
There is a wide-spread idea that we can do away with
the evils of the party system by attacking the boss.
Many think also that all would be well if we could sep¬
arate politics and business. But feu" below the surface
are the forces which have allied business and politics;
216
THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 217
far below the surface we must go, therefore, if we would
divorce this badly mated couple.
Neighborhood organization is to accomplish many
things. The most important are: to give a knock-out
blow to party organization, to make a direct and continu¬
ous connection between om daily lives and needs and
our government, to dimmish race and class prejudices,
to create a responsible citizenship, and to train smd dis¬
cipline the new democracy ; or, to sum up all these things,
to break down party organization and to make a crea¬
tive citizenship the force of American political life.
An elfective neighborhood organization will deal the
death blow to party: (1) by substituting a real imity
for the pseudo unity of party, by creating a genuine
pubUc opinion, a true will of the people,^ (2) by evolv¬
ing genuine leaders instead of bosses, (3) by putting a
responsible government in the place of the irresponsible
party.
First, there is at present no real unity of the people.
It is clear that party organization has succeeded be¬
cause it was the only way we knew of bringing about
concerted action. This must be obtained by the manipu¬
lation of other men's minds or by the evolving of the
common mind; we must choose between the two. In
the past the moneach got his power from the fact that
he represented the unity of his people — the tribal or
national consciousness. In the so-called democracies of
England and America we have now no one man who
represents a true collective consciousness. Much of the
power of party has come, therefore, from the fact that
it gave expression to a certain kind of pseudo collective
consciousness: we found that it was impossible to get
a common will from a multitude, the only way we could
^ Public opinion in a true democracy is a potential will. Therefore
for practical purposes they are identical and I use them synonymously.
218
THE NEW STATE
get any unity was through the party. We have accepted
party dictatorship rather than anarchy. We have felt
that any discussion of party organization was largely
doctrinaire because party has given us collective action
of a kind, and what has been offered in its place was a
scattered and irresponsible, and therefore weak and inef¬
fective, particularism. No "independent" method of
voting can ever vie with the organized party machinery:
its loose unintegrated nebulosity wiü be shattered into
smithereens by the impact of the closely organized
machine.
The problem which many men have wrestled with in
their hves — whether they are to adhere to party or
to be "independent"—is futile. Personal honesty ex¬
hausts no man's duty m Hfe; an effective hfe is what is
demanded of us, and no isolated honesty gives us social
effectiveness. When we go up to the gates of another
world and say, "I have been honest, I have been pure,
I have been dihgent" — no guardiem of those Heavenly
gates will fling them open for us, but we shall be faced
with the counter thrust: "How have you used those
qualities for making blossom the earth which was your
inheritEmce We want no sterile virtues here. Have
you sold yom inheritance for the pottage of personal
purity, personal honesty, personal growth .i*"
To make our "independence" effective, to vie success¬
fully with party organization, we must organize genuine
groups and learn in those true collective action. No par¬
ticularistic theory of pohtics will ever be strong enough
to take the place of party. The pohtical consciousness
of men must be transferred from the party to the neigh¬
borhood group.
We hear discussed from time to time how far pubhc
opinion governs the world, but at present there is no
pubhc opinion. Our legislatures are supposed to enact the
THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 219
wiU of the people, our courts are supposed to declare
the wiU of the people, our executive to voice the wiU of
the people, a will surrounding men hke a nimbus appar¬
ently from their births on. But there is no will of the
people.^ We talk glibly about it but the truth is that
it is such a very modem thing that it does not yet exist.
There is, it is true, an overwhelming chaos of ideas on
all the problems which surround us. Is this pubUc
opinion.»* The urge of the crowd often gets crystallized
into a definite policy ardently advocated. Is this public
opinion.»* Certain interests find a voice; one party or
another, one group or another, expresses itself. Is this
public opinion.»* Public opinion is that conunon under¬
standing which is the driving force of a fiving whole and
shapes the fife of that whole.
We believe that the state should be the incarnation
of the common wiU, but where is the common wifii* All
the proposed new devices for getting at the will of the
people (referendum etc.) assume that we have a will to
express; but our great need at present is not to get a
chemce to express our wonderful ideas, but to get some
wonderful ideas to express. A more complete representa¬
tion is the aim of much of our political reform, but oiu*
first requirement is surely to have something to repre¬
sent. It isn't that we need one kind of government
more than another, as the image-breakers teU us, it isn't
that we need honest intentions, as the preachers tell us,
our essential and vital need is a people creating a wiU of
its own. In aU the sentimental talk of democracy the
wiU of the people is spoken of tenderly as if it were there
in all its wisdom and aU its completeness and we had
only to put it into operation.
^ Our federal system of checks and balances thwarted the will of the
people. The party system thwarted the will of the people. Our state
governments were never designed to get at the will of the people.
220
THE NEW STATE
The tragic thing about our situation in America is,
not merely that we have no pubUc opinion, but that we
think we have. If I have no money in my pocket and
know it, I can go to work and earn some; if I do not
know it I may starve. But I do not want the American
people to starve. The average American citizen says
to himself, "It doesn't matter very much what I think
because American public opinion is sound at the core."
It is our Great Illusion. There has been much apotheo¬
sizing of the so-called popular will, but not every circle
is a halo, and you can't put a wreath roimd "the popular
will" and call it democracy. The popular will to mean
democracy must be a properly evolved popular will —
the true will of the people.
Who are the people.»^ Every individual.!^ The major¬
ity? A theoretical average? A compromise group?
The reason we go astray about public opinion is because
we have not as yet a clear and adequate definition of
the "people." We are told that we must elevate the
"people." There are no "people." We have to create
a people. The people are not an imaginary average,
shorn of genius and power and leadership. You cannot
file off aU the points made by talent and efficiency, and
call the dead level that is left the people. The people
are the integration of every development, of every genius,
with everything else that our complex and interacting
life brings about. But the method of such integration
can never be through crowd association. We may come
to think that vox populi is vox Dei, but not until it is
the group voice, not until it is found by some more inti¬
mate process than listening to the shout of the crowd
or counting the votes in the ballot-box.
The error in regard to pubHc opinion can be traced to
that same sociological error which is the cause of so
many confusions in our pohtical thought: that the social
THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 221
process is the spread of similarities by suggestion and
imitation. Any opinion that is shared, simply because
it is shared, is called public opinion. But if this opinion
is shared because it has spread among large munhers by
"unconscious imitation," then it is not a genuine public
opinion; to be that, the process by which it has been
evolved must be that of intermingling and interpermeat-
ing. Public opinion has been defined as the opinions of
aU the men on the "tops of busses," or the opinion made
by " banks, stock-exchanges and all the wire-pullers of
the world," or the opinion "imposed on the public by a
succession of thinkers." All this is, no doubt, true of
much of our so-called public opinion at present, for
public opinion to-day is largely crowd opinion. But
there is less of this them formerly. And we must adopt
those modes of living by which there shall be less and
less infection of crowds and more and more an evolving
of genuine group thought. When reforms are brought
about by crowds being swept into them, they can be
undone just as easily; there is no real progress here.
Political parties and business interests will continue
to dominate us until we learn new methods of associa¬
tion. Men follow party dictates not because of any
worship of party but simply because they have not yet
any will of their own. Untü they have, they wiU be
used and manipulated and artificially stimulated by
those who can command sufficient money to engage
leaders for that piupose. Hypnosis wiU he our normal
state until we are roused to claim our own creative
power. The promise for the future is the power for
working together which lies latent in the great rank and
file of men emd women to-day, and which must be brought
clearly to their view and utilized in the right way. If
we see no fruitful future for our political life under the
present scheme of party domination, if we can see no
222
THE NEW STATE
bearable future for our industrial life under the present
class domination, then some plan must be devised for
the will of the people to control the hfe of the people.
Fighting abuses is not our role, but the full understand¬
ing that such fighting is a tilting at wind-mills. The
abuses in themselves amount to nothing. Our role is to
leave them alone and build up our own life with our power
of creative citizenship. We need to-day: (1) an active
citizenship, (2) a responsible citizenship, (3) a creative
citizenship — a citizenship building its own world, creat¬
ing its own pohtical and social structme, constructing
its own life forever.
Our faith in democracy rests ultimately on the behef
that men have this creative power. Our vital relation
to the Infinite consists in our capacity, as its generating
force, to bring forth a group idea, to create the common
life. But we have at present no machinery for a con¬
structive hfe. The organization of neighborhood groups
will give us this machinery.
Let us see how neighborhood groups can create a
united will, a genuine pubhc opinion.
First, neighborhood groups will naturally discuss their
local, intimate, personal concerns. The platitudes and
insincerities of the party meeting will give way to the
homely reahties of the neighborhood meeting. These
common interests wih become the pohticcd issues. Then,
and not thl then, poHtics, external at no point to any
vital need, will represent the life of our people. Then
when we see clearly that the affcdrs of city and state eue
our affairs, we shall no longer be apathetic or indifferent
in regard to pohtics. We edl are interested in our own
affairs. When our daily needs become the basis of
pohtics, then party will no longer be left in control be¬
cause pohtics bore us, because we feel that they have
nothing to do with us.
THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 223
Already the daily lives of people are passing into the
area of government through the increased social legisla¬
tion of all our states during the last few years. In 1912
a national party was organized with social legislation as
part of its platform. The introduction of social pro¬
grams into party platforms means that a powerful in¬
fluence is at work to change American pohtics from a
machine to a living thing. When the pohtical questions
were chiefly the tariff, the trust, the currency, closely as
these questions affected the lives of people, there was so
Httle general knowledge in regard to them that most of
us could contribute little to their solution. The social
legislation of the last few years has taken up crime,
poverty, disease, which we aU know a great deal about:
laws have been passed regarding child labor, workmen's
compensation, occupational disease, prison reform, tuber¬
culosis, mothers' pensions, the liquor question, minimum
wage, employment agencies etc.
Tiunmany is built up on the most intimate local work:
no family, no child, is unknown to its organization. And
it is founded on the long view: votes eu-e not crudely
bought — always; the boy is found a job, the father
is helped through his illness, the worn-out mother is sent
for a holiday to the coimtry. As pohtics comes to mean
state employment bureaus, sickness and accident insur¬
ance, mothers' pensions, Tammany is being shorn of
much of its power.
We are sometimes told, however, that while it is con¬
ceded that campaign issues should be made up from
our intimate, everyday needs, yet it is feared that on
each question a different spht would come, and thus
pohtics would be too confusing and could not be
"handled." Neighborhood organization is going to help
us meet this chflSculty. In non-partisan neighborhood
eissociations we shaU have different ahgnments on every
224
THE NEW STATE
question. Moreover, we shall have different alignments
on the same question in different years. Thus the rigid¬
ity of the party organization disappears. The party
meeting is to the neighborhood meeting what the victrola
is to the human voice: the partisan assembly utters
what has been impressed upon it, you hear the machine
beating its own rhythm; the neighborhood meeting will
give the fresh ever-varied voices from the hearts of men.
The party system and the genuine group system is the
difference between machine-made and man-made. And
this may be true of a good government organization as
well as of a Tammany organization — it is true wherever
the machine is put above the man. We can get no force
without freshness, and you caimot get freshness from
a machine, only from living men. Just the very thing
which costs the party money — keeping its members
together — is its condemnation. Men wiU make up their
minds on question after question in their neighborhood
groups. Then they wiU vote according to these con¬
clusions. Peurty dictation will never cease until we get
group conviction. If our political life is going to show
any greater sensitiveness to our real wants and needs
than it has shown in the past, there must be some pro¬
vision made for considering and voting on questions
irrespective of party: you cm not join a different party
every day, but you can separate pohtical issues from
partisanship and vote for the thing you want. The
reason more of our real wants have not got expressed m
our politics is just because people cannot be held together
on many issues.
Again, if neighborhood organization takes the place of
party organization each question can be decided on its own
merit: we shall not have to ask, "How will the manage¬
ment of this affect the power and prestige of our party "
Also neighborhood groups can study problems, but
THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 225
the study of problems is fatal to party organization.
The party hands out the ephemeral comings-to-the-sur-
face of what will help the party, or the particularistic
interests dominating the party. Every question brought
forward at all is brought forward as a campaign issue.
Moreover the group discovers and conserves the indi¬
vidual. A party gathering is always a crowd. And party
methods are stereotyped, conventional. Under a party
system we have no spontaneous pohtical hfe. The
party system gives no exercise to the judgment, it weakens
the will, it does away with personal responsibility. The
party, as the crowd, blots out the individual. Mass
suggestion is dominating our politics to-day. We shall
get rid of mass influence exactly as fast as we develop
the group consciousness. Men who belong to neighbor¬
hood organizations wiU not he the stuff of which parties
are made. The party has prevented us from having
genuine group opinion; or if we do by any chance get a
group opinion now, it can usually speak only in opposition
to party, it cannot get incorporated in our political life.
Every one of us will have an opportunity to learn
collective thinking in the smedl, local, neighborhood
group. No one comes to his neighborhood group pledged
beforehand to any particular way of thinking. The
object of the party system is to stifle aU difference of
opinion. Moreover, in partisan discussion you take one
of two sides; in neighborhood groups an infinitely vEU"ied
number of points of view can be brought out, and thus
the final decision will he richer from what it gains on
all sides. The neighborhood group which makes possi¬
ble different alignments on every question, allows ulti¬
mate honesty in the expression of our views. If we get
into the habit of suppressing our differences, these dif¬
ferences atrophy and we lose our sensitiveness to their
demands. And we have found that the expression and
226
THE NEW STATE
the maintenance of difference is the condition of the
full and free development of the race.
But we want not only a genuine pubhc opinion, but
a progressive pubhc opinion. We cannot imderstand
once for aU, we must be constantly understanding anew.
At the same time that we see the necessity of creating
the common will and giving voice to it, we must bear in
mind that there should be no crystaUizing process by
which any particular expression of the common wUl
should he taken as eternally right because it is the ex¬
pression of the common will. It is right for to-day but
not for to-morrow. The flaming fact is our daily hfe,
whatever it is, leaping forever and ever out of the com¬
mon wiU. Democracy is the ever-increasing volume of
power pouring through men and shaping itself as the
moment demands. Constitutional conventions are seek-
iug the machinery by which the reason and justice which
have existed among us can be utihzed in our hfe. We
must go beyond this and unseal the springs which will
reveal the forms for the wisdom and justice of their day.
This is hfe itself, the direct and aboriginal constructor.
We meet with our neighbors at our civic club not iu
order to accumulate facts, but to learn how to release
and how to control a constructive force which wiU build
daily for us the habitation of our needs. Then indeed will
om* government be no longer directed by a "body of law,"
but by the self-renewing appearing of the wiU of the people.
The chief need of society to-day is an enhghtened,
progressive and organized pubhc opinion, and the first
step towards an enhghtened and organized public opinion
is an enhghtened and organized group opinion. When
pubhc opinion becomes conscious of itself it wiU have a
justified confidence in itself. Then the "people," born
of an associated hfe, wfll truly govern. Then shaU we
at last reaUy have an America.
XXV
NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION VS. PARTY
ORGANIZATION
Leaders or Bosses?
Neighborhood organization wiU prove fatal
to party organization not only through the
creating of a genuine will of the people, but
also through the producing of real leaders to take the
place of the bosses.
American democracy has always been afraid of leader¬
ship. Om constitutions of the eighteenth century pro¬
vided no one department to lead, no one man in the-
legislature to lead. Therefore, as we must have leader¬
ship, there has been much undefined, irresponsible leader¬
ship. This has often meant corruption and abuse, bad
enough, but worse still it has meant the creation of
machinery for the perpetuation of corruption, the en¬
couragement of abuse. Under machine politics we choose
for our lèaders the men who are most popular for the
moment or who have worked out the most thorough
system of patronage, or rather of course we do not choose
at all. We have two kinds of leaders under our party
system, both the wrong kind: we have our actual leaders,
the bosses, and our official leaders who have tended to
be men who could be managed by the party. Our offi¬
cials in their campaign speeches say that they are the
"servants of the people." But we do not want "serv¬
ants" any more than we want bosses; we want genuine
leaders. Now that more and more direct power is being
given to the people it is especially necessary that we
227
228
THE NEW STATE
should not be led by machine bosses, but that we should
evolve the kind of leadership which will serve a true
democracy, which will he the expression of a true de¬
mocracy, and will guide it to democratic ends by demo¬
cratic methods.
We hope through local group organization to evolve
real leaders. There should be in a democracy some
sort of regular and ceaseless process by which ability of
all sorts should come to the top, and flexibility in our
forms so that new ability can always find its greatest
point of usefulness, and so that service which is no
longer useful can be replaced by that which is. In
neighborhood groups where we have different alignments
on different questions, there will be a tendency for those
to lead at any particular moment who eu-e most com¬
petent to lead in the peuticular matter in hemd. Thus a
mechanical leadership wiU give place to a vital leader¬
ship. Suppose the subject is sanitation. The man who
is most interested, who has the clearest view of the need
and who is its most insistent champion, wiU naturally
step forth as the leader in that. The man who knows
most about educational matters wiU lead in those, wül
he chosen eventually for the school committee or for the
educational committee of the state legislatme. Thus
the different leaders of a democracy appear. Here in
the neighborhood group leaders are bom. Democracy
is the breeding-ground of aristocracy. You have aU the
chance the world gives. In your neighborhood group
show the clearness of your mind, the strength of your
grip, your power to elicit and to guide cooperative action,
and you emerge as the leader of men.
No adequate statement can he made in regard to
leadership until it is studied in relation to group psy¬
chology. The leadership of the British Premier, of
President Wilson, will become interesting studies when
LEADERS OR BOSSES 229
we have a better understanding of this subject. Mean¬
while let us look briefly at some of the qualities of
leadership.
The leader guides the group and is at the same time
himself guided by the group, is always a part of the
group. No one can truly lead except from within. One
danger of conceiving the leader as outside is that then
what ought to be group loyalty wiU become personal
loyalty. When we have a leader within the group these
two loyedties can merge.
The leader must have the instinct to trace every evil
to its cause, but, equally Vcduable, he must be able to
see the relative value of the cause to each one of his
group — in other words, to see the total relativity of the
cause to the group. He must draw out all the varymg
needs of the neighborhood as related to the cause and
reconcile them in the remedy. A baby is ill ; is the milk
perhaps too rich for babies.!^ But probably the rest of
the neighborhood demands rich milk. ALL the neighbor¬
hood needs in regard to milk must be ehcited and recon¬
ciled in the remedy for the sick child. That is, the
remedy cannot be thinner milk, but it may be a demand
that the milkman have separate milk for babies.
In other words the leader of our neighborhood group
must interpret our experience to us, must see all the
different points of view which underhe our daily activi¬
ties and eJso their connections, must adjust the varying
and often confhcting needs, must lead the group to an
understEmding of its needs and to a unification of its
piurpose. He must give form to things vague, things
latent, to mere tendencies. He must be able to lead us
to wise decisions, not to impose his own wise decisions
upon us. We need leaders, not masters or drivers.
The power of leadership is the power of integrating.
This is the power which creates community. You cem
230
THE NEW STATE
see it when two or three strangers or casual acquaintances
are calling upon some one. With some hostesses you all
talk across at one another as entirely separate individuals,
pleasantly and friendlily, to be sure, but still across un-
bridged chasms; while other hostesses have the power
of making you aU feel for the moment related, as if you
were one little community for the time being. This is
a subtle as well as a valuable gift. It is one that leaders
of men must possess. It is thus that the collective wül
is evolved from out the chaos of varied personahty and
complex circumstance.
The skilful leader then does not rely on personal force;
he controls his group not by dominating but by express¬
ing it. He stimulates what is best in us; he unifies and
concentrates what we feel only gropingly and scatter-
ingly, but he never gets away from the current of which
we and he are both an integral part. He is a leader who
gives form to the inchoate energy in every man. The
person who influences me most is not he who does great
deeds but he who makes me feel I can do great deeds.
Many people teU me what I ought to do and just how I
ought to do it, but few have made me want to do some¬
thing. Who ever has struck fire out of me, aroused
me to action which I should not otherwise have taken,
he has been my leader. The community leader is he
who can liberate the greatest amount of energy in his
community.
Then the neighborhood leader must be a practical
politician. He must be able to interpret a neighborhood
not only to itself but to others. He must know not only
the need of every charwoman but how pohtics can
answer her call. He must know the great movements
of the present and their meaning, and he must know
how the smallest needs and the humblest powers of
his neighborhood can be fitted into the progressive
LEADERS OR BOSSES 231
movements of our time. His duty is to shape politics
continuously. As the satisfaction of one need, or the ex¬
pression of one latent power, reveals memy more, he must
be always alert and ever ready to gather up the many
threads into one strand of united endeavor. He is the
patient watcher, the active spokesman, the sincere and
ardent exponent of a community consciousness. His
guiding, embracing and dominant thought is to make
that community consciousness articulate in government.
The politician is not a group but a crowd leader. The
leader of a crowd dominates because a crowd wants to
be dominated. Politiciems do not try to convince but
to dazzle; they do not deal with facts but with formulae
and vague generalizations, with the flag and the coun¬
try. If our pohticians and our representatives are not
our most competent men, but those who have the great¬
est power of suggestion and are most adroit in using it,
the proposed here is that we shall develop methods
which will produce real leaders. We are aiming now in
the reorganization of our state constitutions at respon¬
sible official leadership instead of the irresponsible party
boss system which was necessary once because we had
to have leaders of some sort. How far this new move¬
ment shall succeed, will depend on how far it has back
of it, or can be made to have back of it, the kind of
organization which will develop group not crowd leaders.
Through neighborhood organization we hope that real
leaders instead of bosses will be evolved. Democracy
does not tend to suppress leadership as is often stated;
it is the only organization of society which will bring out
leadership. As soon as we are given opportunities for
the release of the energy there is in us, heroes and leaders
wül arise among us. These will draw their stimulus,
their passion, their Ufe from all, and then in their turn
increase in aU passion and power and creating force.
XXVI
NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION VS. PARTY ORGANIZATION
A Responsible Neighborhood
WE have said that neighborhood organization
must replace party organization by evolv¬
ing a true will of the people, by giving us
leaders instead of bosses, and by making possible a res¬
ponsible government to take the place of Our irrespon¬
sible party government. Let us now consider the last
point: the possibibty of an integrated neighborhood
responsibility.
Under our party organization the men who formulate
the party platform do not have the official responsibility
of carrying it out. Moreover at present representative
government rests on the fedlacy that when you delegate
the job you delegate the responsibility. Most of the
abuses which have crept in, business corruption and
pohtical bossism dike, are due in large measure to this
delegating of responsibihty. What we need is a kind
of government which will delegate the job but not the
responsibility. The case is somewhat hke that of the
head of a business undertEiking, who makes the men under
him responsible for their own work and still the final
responsibility rests with him. This is not divided respon¬
sibility but shared responsibility — a very different thing.
Consider what happens when I want to get a bill
through the legislature. I may feel sure that the bill is
good and also that "the people" want it, but I can work
only through party, and at the state house I have to
face all the special interests bound up with party, aU
the thousand and one "political" considerations, whether
232
A RESPONSIBLE NEIGHBORHOOD 233
I succeed or fail. But of course I recognize the humor
of this statement: I ought never to try to get a bill
through the legislatme ; special and partial groups have
to do this simply because there is at present no other
way; there must be some other way, some recognized way.
We do not want to circumvent party but to replace party.
Our reform associations, while they have fought party,
have often endeavored to substitute their own organiza¬
tion for the party organization. This has often been the
alternative offered to us — do we want good government
or poor government.»^ We have not been asked if we
would like to govern omselves. This is why Mitchell
lost last year in New York. One of the New York papers
during the campaign advised Mr. Mitchell "to get
nearer the people." But it is not for government to
"get nearer" the people; it must identify itself with
the people. It isn't enough for the "good" officials to
explain to the people what they are doing; they must
take the people into their counsels. If the Gary system
had ever been properly put up to the fathers it is doubt¬
ful if they would have voted against it. Then a good
deal of this advice in regard to city officials "explaining"
their plans in aU parts of the city leaves out of account
that the local people have a great deal to give. Some of
the most uneducated, so-called, of the fathers and mothers
might have had valuable points of view to offer in re¬
gard to the practical workings of the Gary system.
Tammany won in New York and we heard many people
say, "Well, this is your democracy, the people want bad
government, the majority of people in New York city
have voted for it." Nothing could be more superficial.
What the election in New York meant was that "the
people" are cleverer than was thought; they know that
the question should not be of "good" government or
"bad" government, but only of self-government, and the
234
THE NEW STATE
only way they have of expressing this is to vote against
a government which seems to disregard them.
To say, "We are good men, we are honest officials,
we are employing experts on education, sanitation etc,
you must trust us," will not do; some way must be de¬
vised of connecting the experts and the people — that
is the &st thing to be worked out, then some way of
taking the people into the counsels of city administra¬
tion. All of us criticize things we don't know anything
about. As soon as we see the difficidties, as soon as the
responsibility is put upon us, om whole attitude changes.
Take the popular cry "Boston positions for Boston
people." This seems a pretty good principle to super¬
ficial thinking. But when we know that we have an
appropriation of $200,000 a year for a certain depart¬
ment, and are looking for a man to administer it, when
we go into the matter and find that there are only two or
three experts for this position in the United States, and
that not one of these lives in Boston, the question takes
the concrete form, "Shall we allow $200,000 of our
money to be wasted through inept administration "
It might be said, "But city governments do have the re¬
sponsibility and yet this is just what they are all the time
doing." Certainly, because their position rests on patron¬
age, but I am proposing that the whole system be changed.
Neighborhood organization must be the method of
effective popular responsibility: first, by giving reality
to the political bond; secondly, by providing the ma¬
chinery by which a genuine control of the people can
be put into operation. At present nearly all our needs
are satisfied by external agencies, government or institu¬
tional. Health societies offer health to us, recreation
associations teach us how to play, civic art leagues give
us more beautiful smroundings, associated charities give
us poor relief. A kind lady leads my girl to the dentist,
A RESPONSIBLE NEIGHBORHOOD 235
a kind young man finds employment for my boy, a stern
officer of the city sees that my children are in their
places at school. I am constantly being acted upon, no
one is encouraging me to act. New York has one hun¬
dred municipal welfare divisions and bureaus. Thus am
I robbed of my most precious possession — my responsi-
bihties — for only the active process of participation
can shape me for the social purpose.
But aU this is to end. The community itself must grip
its own problems, must fill its needs, must make effec¬
tive its aspirations. If we want the latest scientific
knowledge in regard to food values, let us get an expert
to come to us, not wait for some society to send an
"agent" to us; if the stores near us are not selhng at
fair prices, let us make a cooperative effort to set this
right. If we want milk and baby hygiene organized, om
own local doctors should, in proper cooperation with
experts on the one hand and the mothers on the other,
organize this branch of public service. The medical
experts may be employees of the government, but if the
plan of their service be worked out by aU three — the
experts, the local doctors and the mothers — the results
will be: (1) that the needs of the neighborhood will really
be met, (2) much valuable time of the expert wiU be
saved, (3) a close follow-up will be possible, (4) the
expert can be called in whenever necessary through local
initiative, and (5) the machinery wiU be in existence by
which the study of that particular problem can be carried
on not as a special investigation but as a regular part of
neighborhood fife.
Take another example. The Placement Bureau is
also a necessary public service: it needs the work of
experts and it needs pooled information and centralized
machinery; a parent cannot find out all the jobs avail¬
able in a city for boys of 16 in order to place one boy.
236
THE NEW STATE
But as long as the secretary of the Placement Bureau
appears in the home and takes this whole burden off the
parent, and off the community he is serving, his work
will not be well done. For the boy will suffer eventually:
he cannot be cut off from his conummity without being
hurt; community incentive is the greatest one we know,
and somehow there must be worked out some community
responsibility for that boy, as weU as some responsibility
on his pmt to his conummity for standing up or feJling
down on his job. I say that the boy will eventually
suffer; his community also wiU suffer, for it also has
need of him; moreover, the community will greatly
suffer by the loss of this opportunity of connecting it,
through the parents, with the whole industrial problem
of the city. The expert service of the Placement Bureau,
whether it is administered by city or state, should al¬
ways be joined to local initiative, effort and responsibihty.
And so for every need. If we want well-managed
dances for our daughters, we, mothers and fathers, must
go and manage them. We do not exist on one side and
the government on the other. If you go to a municipal
dance-hall and see it managed by officials appointed
from City Hall, you say, "This is a government affair."
But if you go to a schoolhouse and see a dance managed
by men emd women chosen by the district, you say,
"This is a community affair, government has nothing
to do with this." These two conceptions must mingle
before we can have any worthy political life. It must
be clearly seen that we can operate as government as
weU as with government, that the citizen functions
through government and the government functions
through the citizen. It is not a municipal dance-hall
regulated by the city authorities which expresses the
right relation between civics and dancing, but dances
planned and managed by a neighborhood for itself.
A RESPONSIBLE NEIGHBORHOOD 237
It is not the civic theatre which is the last word in
the relation of the drama to the people, it is a community
organized theatre. Art and civics do not meet merely
by the state presenting art to its members; the civic
expression of art is illustrated by locally managed festi¬
vals, by community singing, a local orchestra or dramatic
club, community dancing etc. Those of us who are work¬
ing for civic art are working for this : for people to express
themselves in artistic forms and to organize themselves
for that purpose. The state must give the people every
opportunity for building up their own full, varied, health¬
ful life. It seems to be often thought that when the
state provides schools, parks, universities etc., there
you have the ideeJ state. But we must go beyond this
and find our ideal state in that which shows its mem¬
bers how to buüd up its own life in schools, parks, uni¬
versities etc.^
The question which the state must always be trying
to answer is how it can do more for its members at the
same time that it is stimulating them to do more for
themselves. No, more than this, its doing more for them
must take the form of their doing more for themselves.
Our modern problem is not, as one would think from
some of the writing on social legislation, how much the
increased activity of the state can do for the individual,
but how the increasing activity of the individual can
be state activity, how the widening of the sphere of
state activity ceui be a widening of our own activity.
The arguments for or against government action should
not take the form of how much or how fittle government
action we shall have, but entirely of how government
^ The war has shown us that our national agricultural program can
best be done on a cooperative neighborhood basis: through the establish¬
ment of community agricultural conferences, community labor, seed and
implement exchanges, community canning centres, community markets,
etc.
238
THE NEW STATE
action and self-action can coincide. Our one essential
political problem is always how to be the state, not,
putting the state on one side and the individual on the
other, to work out their respective provinces. I have
said in the chapter on "Our Political Dualism" that the
state and the individual are one, yet this is pme theory
until we make them one. But they can never be made
one through schemes of representation etc., only by the
intimate daily lives of all becoming the constituents of
the life of the state.
When a Mothers' Club in one of the Boston School
Centres found a united want — that of keeping their
children off the streets on Saturday afternoon and giv¬
ing them some wholesome amusement — and decided to
meet this want by asking the city of Boston for permis¬
sion to use the moving-picture machine of the Dorchester
High School for feiiry-story fihns, the mothers to manage
the xmdertaking, two significant facts stand out: (1) they
did not ask an outside agency to do something for them,
for the men and women of Dorchester, with all the
other men and women of Boston, are the city of Boston;
(2) they were not merely doing something for their chil¬
dren on those Saturday afternoons, they were in a sense
officials of the city of Boston working for the youth of
Boston. These two conceptions must blend: we do not
do for government, government does not do for us, we
should be constantly the hands and feet, yes emd the
head and heart of government. ^
A most successful effort at neighborhood organization
^ I do not mean to imply that I think it is easy to learn how to iden¬
tify ourselves with our city, especially for those who live in large cities.
The men of a small town know that if they have a new town-hall they
will have to pay for it. In a large city men ask for a ward building be¬
cause they will not have to pay for it, they think. It is aU this which
neighborhood organization and the integration of neighborhoods, of
which I shall speak later, must remedy.
A RESPONSIBLE NEIGHBORHOOD 239
is that of the East Harlem Community Association,
which set East Heirlem to work on its own problems;
first to investigate conditions, and then to find a way
of meeting these conditions. The most interesting point
about the whole scheme is that the work is not done
by "experts" or any one else from outside; there are no
pedd visitors, but a committee of twelve mothers — one
colored woman, two Itahan, two Jewish, two Irish, three
American, one Polish, and one German — are doing the
work weU. As a result of the activities of the East Har¬
lem Community Association there are now in a public
school building of the neighborhood organized athletic
clubs, industrial classes, orchestra, glee, dramatic and
art clubs, concerts, good moving pictures, dances, big
brother and big sister groups. Mothers' Leagues, Par¬
ents' Associations, physical examination of school chil¬
dren etc. Of course these community associations must
use expert advice and expert service. Exactly how this
relation will be most satisfactorily worked out we do not
yet clearly see.^
I give this merely as one illustration out of many
possible ones. The necessity of neighborhood organiza¬
tion as the basis of future progress is seen by many
people to-day. In New York there is a vigorous move¬
ment for "Neighborhood Associations"; there are fom
adready in active working order. If the main idea of
some of these is services rendered rather than neighbor¬
hood organization; if others see too great a separation
between needs and the satisfaction of the needs, that is,
1 The plan of Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Phillips for community organization
and for the connection with it of expert service is too comprehensive to
describe here, but based as it is on their actual experience, and planning
as it does for the training of whole neighborhoods and the arousing of
them to responsibility and action, it should be studied by every one, for
such plans are, I believe, the best signs we have that democracy is yet
possible for America.
240
THE NEW STATE
if the neighborhoods are always to ask the questions
and the experts to find the answers, still these Asso¬
ciations are an interesting and valuable part of the
neighborhood movement.^
The acute problem of municipal life is how to make
us men emd women of Boston feel that we are the city,
directly responsible for everything concerning it. Neigh¬
borhood organization, brought into existence largely by
the growing feeling of each individual that he is responsi¬
ble for the life around him, itself then increases and
focuses this sense of responsibihty. Neighborhood asso¬
ciation is vivid and intimate. Whereas the individual
seems lost in a big city, through his neighborhood he
not only becomes an integred part of the city but be¬
comes keenly conscious of his citizenship.
In a word, what we hope neighborhood organization
will do for the development of responsibility is this:
that men will learn that they are not to influence pohtics
through their local groups, they are to be politics. This
is the error of some of the reform associations: they
want to influence politics. This point of view will never
spell progress for us. When we have the organized neigh¬
borhood group, when every man sees the problems of
pohtical and social reorganization not as abstract mat¬
ters but as constituting his daily life, when men are so
educated in politics as to feel that they themselves are
politics functioning, 6md when our organization is such
that this functioning recoils on them, they wiU so shape
their conduct as to change the situation. Then when
they are conscious of themselves as masters of the situa¬
tion they wiU acknowledge their responsibihty.
We see many signs around us to-day of an increased
sense of responsibihty, of a longing for a self-expression
^ How much we are all indebted to the settlements as the pioneer
neighborhood movement I do not stop to consider here.
A RESPONSIBLE NEIGHBORHOOD 241
that is not to be an individual self-expression but com¬
munity self-expression. Take the women's clubs; in
their first stage their object was personal development;
in the second they wished to do something for their
town; in the present or third stage women are demand¬
ing through some of the more progressive clubs, through
women's municipal leagues etc., a more direct share in
commimity life. They are joining together not to bene¬
fit themselves, not to benefit others, as others, but be¬
cause all together they wish to express their coromunity
— no, they wish to be their community. They are not
satisfied with serving, but gathering up the service of
aU in a common consciousness, each feels herself the
whole £md seeks to express the whole.
But 1 do not mean that this greater realization of
community is confined to women. How often in the
past we have heard a man say complacently, "Well, 1
suppose 1 must do my duty emd go to the poUs and vote
to-morrow," or "1 must show myself at that rally to¬
night." But a nobler idea than this is now filling the
minds of many men. They go to their civic club not
because it is their duty, but because just there working
together with their fellows for the furtherance of their
common aims, they find their greatest satisfaction. In
neighborhood groups men can find that self-realization
which becomes by the most wonderful miracle life can
offer us community realization. That is, 1 can learn
through my neighborhood group that 1 am the city, 1
am the nation, and that fated transference of responsi-
bihty to an invisible and non-existent "they" can be
blotted out forever. When neighborhood organization
begins to teach that there is no "they," that it is
always we, we, we, that mothers are responsible and
fathers are responsible, emd young men are respon¬
sible, and young women are responsible, for their
242
THE NEW STATE
city and their nation, it wül begin to teach its chief
lesson.
Do I thrill with the passion of service, of joyful, volim-
tary surrender to a mighty cause as I sail for France to
serve the great ends of the Allies Social and political
organization eu'e fatally at fault if they cannot give me
the S6une elation as I go to my Neighborhood Centre
and know that there too the world has vital need of me,
there too am I not only pouring myself out in world
service, but that I am, just in so fetr, creating, actually
building, a new and fedrer world.
This is the finest word that can be said for neighbor¬
hood organization, for my finding my place through
my response to every daily need of my nearest group.
For the great word I believe on this subject is not that 1
serve my neighborhood, my city, my nation, but that
by this service I become my neighborhood, my city, my
nation. Surely at this hour in our history we cem realize
this as never before. The soul of America is being born
to-day. The war is binding together class and class, alien
and American, men and women. We rejoice that we
are ahve at this moment, but the keenness of my joy
is not because I can serve America but because I am
America. I save food in my bome not in order that my
family income can meet the strain of the higher prices,
not because I can thereby help to send more food to the
Allies, but because I, saving the food of America for the
Allies and the world, am performing America's task,
am therefore America. This is the deeper thought of
neighborhood organization: that through performing
my humblest duties I am creating the soul of this great
democracy.
Neighborhood organization must then take the place
of party organization. The neighborhood group wül
A RESPONSIBLE NEIGHBORHOOD 243
answer many of the questions we have put to a party
organization which has remained deaf to our importuni¬
ties, dumb to eJI om entreaties. We have asked for
bread and received the stone times without number.
The rigid formahty of the party means stultification,
annihilation. But group pohtics, made of the very stuff
of life, of the people of the groups, will express the inner,
intimate, ardent desires of spontemeous human beings,
and will contain within its circmnference the possihüity
of the fullest satisfaction of those desires. Group organi¬
zation gives a hving, pulsing unity made up of the minds
and hearts and seasoned judgments of vital men and
women. Such organization is capable of unbroken
growth. And when this vine of fife, which sends its roots
where every two or three are gathered together, has
rooted itself in the neighborhood, faithful care, sedulous
watching, loving ministration will appear with it, will
be the natmal way of hving. Its impalpable bonds
hold us together, and although we may differ on count¬
less questions, instead of flying asunder we work out the
form in pohtical fife which will shelter us and supply our
needs. Faithfulness to the neighborhood bond must
take the place of allegiance to party. Loyalty to a party
is loyalty to a thing — we want a hving pohtics in which
loyalty is always intrinsic. And from the strength of
this hving bond shah come the power of our united life.
Always the actor, never the spectator, is the rule of the
new democracy. Always the sharer, never the giver or
the receiver, is the order of our new hfe.
Do you think the neighborhood group too puny to
cope with this giant towering above us, drunk with the
blood of its many triumphs The young David went
out to conquer Gohath, strong in the conviction of his
power. Carmot our cause justify an equal faith?
Is our daily hfe profane and only so far as we rise out
244
THE NEW STATE
of it do we approach the sacred Hfe? Then no wonder
politics are what they have become. But this is not the
creed of men to-day: we believe in the sacredness of
all our life; we believe that Divinity is forever incarnat¬
ing in humanity, and so we beheve in Humanity and
the common daily life of all men.
XXVII
FROM NEIGHBORHOOD TO NATION: THE UNIFYING STATE
IOW can the will of the people be the sovereign
power of the state P There mnst be two
changes in our state: first, the state must he
the actual integration of living, local groups, thereby
finding ways of dealing directly with its individual mem¬
bers. Secondly, other groups than neighborhood groups
mnst be represented in the state: the ever-increasing
multiple group Hfe of to-day must he recognized and
given a responsible place in pofitics.^
First, every neighborhood mnst 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 adminis¬
tered imtil representatives from neighborhood groups
meet to discuss and thereby to correlate the needs of
aU parts of the city, of aU parts of the state. Social
workers and medical experts have a conference on tuber¬
culosis, social workers and educational experts have a
conference on industrial education. We mnst now
develop the methods by which the citizens also are repre¬
sented 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 prob-
^ This point will be taken up in ch. XXXIII.
245
246
THE NEW STATE
lems. Further still, we must give official recognition
to such gatherings, we must msike 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 neighbor¬
hood groups and intermediary, or district, groups should
send representatives to city council and state legisla¬
ture. The Senate might be composed of experts — ex¬
perts in education, in housing, in sanitation etc.^ The
neighborhood and district centres would receive reports
from their representatives to city council and state
legislature and take naeaSures 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 indi¬
vidual in the commonwealth. The nation too must have
a real connection with every httle neighborhood centre
through state and district bodies.^
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 Cooperation with
States." This is connected with a State Council of
^ Or perhaps the Senate might represent the occupational group (see
ch. XXXIII). Or perhaps the experts mentioned above might be repre¬
sentatives from occupational groups.
2 In North Carolina the recently organized State Bureau of Com¬
munity Service — made up of the administrators of the Department of
Agriculture, the Board of Health, the Normal and Industriad College
and the Farmers' Union, with the State Superintendent of Public Instruc¬
tion as its central executive — is making its immediate work the de¬
velopment of local community organization which shall be directly articu¬
lated with a unified state organization.
FROM NEIGHBORHOOD TO NATION 247
Defense 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 organiza¬
tion by the creation of Conununity Coimcils 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 conununi-
ties 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 an3 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."
Thus when the government found that it must pro¬
vide 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 neigh¬
borhood organization. The nation is now seeking the
individual through neighborhood groups. It is using
the School Centres (it recommends the schooUiouse as
the best centre for commimity organization) for the
teaching of Food and Fuel Conservation, for Liberty
Loan and Red Cross work, for recruiting for the army,
for enfisting workers for war industries, for teaching the
necessity emd methods of increasing the food supply,
for plems to relieve treuisportation by cooperative ship-
248
THE NEW STATE
ments and deliveries, for patriotic education etcd This
"patriotic education" has an interesting side. In a
country which is even nominally a democracy you can¬
not win a war without explaining your aims euid your
policy and carrying yotn people with you step by step.
If beyond this the coimtry wishes to be really a democ¬
racy, the neighborhood groups must have a sheu-e in
forming the aims and the pohcy.
Of course one would always prefer this to be a move¬
ment 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.^
Through these non-partisan councils not only national
pohcy can be explained and spread throughout the
country, but also what one locahty thinks out that is
good can be reported to Washington and thus handed
on to other sections of the coimtry. It is a plan for
sending the news backwards and forwards from indi¬
vidual 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
cooperating nations.
But why should we he more efficiently organized for
war than for peace .3 Is our proverbial carelessness to
be pricked into effectiveness only by emergency calls.»*
Is the only motive you can offer us for efficiency — to
^ The Community Coimcil, however, is not to duplicate other organi¬
zations but first to coordinate all existing agencies before planning new
activities.
2 And spontaneously many towns and villages turned to the school-
house as the natural centre of its war services.
FROM NEIGHBORHOOD TO NATION 249
win? Or, if that is an instinctive desire, can we not
change the goal and he as eager to win other things as
war?
I speak of the new state as resting upon integrated
neighborhood groups. ^ While the changes necessary to
bring this about would have to be planned and author¬
ized by constitutional conventions, its psychological
basis would be: (1) the fact that we are ready for mem¬
bership in a larger group only by experience first in the
smaller group, and (2) the natural tendency for a reed
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 inter-
penetration, so group progress depends upon the inter-
penetration of group and group. For convenience I
speak of each group as a whole, but from a philosophical
pomt of view there is no whole, only em infinite striving
for wholeness, only the principle of wholeness forever
leading us on.
This is the socied law: the law which connects neigh¬
borhood 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 defiherate effort to
get people to identify themselves actually, not senti¬
mentally, with a larger and larger collective unit than
the neighborhood. We may be able through our neigh-
^ For the moment I ignore the occupational group to be considered
later.
250
THE NEW STATE
borhood group to learn the social process, to learn to
evolve the social wiU, 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 De¬
fense 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 Commu¬
nity Council is in: (1) initiating work to meet its own war
needs; and (2) in making all its local resomces 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 specifi-
CEiUy 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 under¬
stand as the true social process receives practical recog¬
nition in government policy.
I have said that neighborhood must join with neigh¬
borhood to form the state. This joining of neighbor¬
hood and neighborhood can be done neither directly nor
imaginatively. It cannot be done directly: representa¬
tion 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 con¬
sciousness made up of infinite kinds of fitting together
of infinite kinds of individuals, but practically this varied
FROM NEIGHBORHOOD TO NATION 251
and 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 neighbor¬
hoods through the imagination alone. Various people
have asserted that now we have large cities and sofidar-
ity cannot come by actual acquaintance, it must be
got by appropriate appeals to the imagination, by hav¬
ing, 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 eae told too that the unedu¬
cated 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 sèction with others. We are capable of being fedth-
ful to large groups as weU as small, to complex groups
as weU as simple, to oiu 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, unpartisem city life. Then being a
member of a neighborhood group wiU 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 your¬
self in your local group because few local needs can be
met without joining with other localities, which have
252
THE NEW STATE
these same needs, in order to secure city or state action.
We cannot get municipal regulation for the dance-hall
in om* neighborhood without joining with other neigh¬
borhoods which want the same thing and seeming munici¬
pal 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 pmely 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 futme.
And we join not only to secure city and state but also
federal action. If we want a river or harbor appro¬
priation, we go to Congress. And if such demands are
supplied at present on the log-rolhng basis, we can only
hope that this wlU not always be so. When group organ¬
ization has vitahzed our whole pohtical hfe, there may
then be some chance that log-rolling will be repudiated.
And we do not stop even at Washington. Immigra¬
tion is a national and international problem, but the
immigrant may hve next door to you, and thus the immi¬
gration question becomes one of nearest concern. This
intricate interweaving of om hfe allows no man to hve
to himself or to his neighborhood.
Then when neighborhood joins with neighborhood all
the lessons learned in the simple group must be prac-
FROM NEIGHBORHOOD TO NATION 253
tised in the complex one. As the group lesson includes
not only my responsibihty to my group but my responsi-
bibty for my group, so I learn not only my duty to my
neighborhood but that I cun responsible for my neigh¬
borhood. Also it is seen that as the individucJs of a
group are interdependent, so the various groups are
interdependent, and the problem is to imderstand 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 SEune
as the joining of individueJs to form a group — a recip¬
rocal 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 he 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 par¬
ticular group we represent. No, hut 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 circumfer-
254
THE NEW STATE
ence. My neighborhood group opens the path to the
State.
But neighborhoods cooperating 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 constitu¬
ents, to form connecting hnks 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."
Moreover, beyond the recommendations of the Com¬
mission, the cooperation 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 simileir
to town-meetings are held, usually in the local school-
house." The "neighborhoods" of Manhattan have
cooperated with the city government in such matters
as bus franchise, markets, location of tracks, floating
baths, pavement construction, sewerage etc. One of
FROM NEIGHBORHOOD TO NATION 255
the results of this pleui, 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 be¬
cause there is opportunity for them to understand fuUy
the needs of the situation and even to employ their own
expert if they wish.
The chairmen of the twelve Neighborhood Commis¬
sions form a body called the Manhattem Commission.
This meets to confer with the President on matters affect¬
ing the interests of the entire borough.^
This plan, while not yet ideal, particularly in so feu'
as the commissions are appointed from above, is most
interesting to all those who are looking towards neigh¬
borhood 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 shedl we undersand 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 miit of city government, of state
government: he has not delegated his responsibihty to
^ I have taken this accoimt from the official report, I have been told
by New York people that these commissions have shown few signs of
life. This does not, however, seem to me to detract from the value of
the plan as a suggestion, or as indication of what is seen to be advisable
if not yet wholly practicable. The New York charter provides for Local
Improvement Boards as connecting links with the central government,
but these I am told have shown no life whatever.
256
THE NEW STATE
his neighborhood group; he has direct relation with
larger wholes. I have no medieval idea of mediate artic¬
ulation, of individuals forming groups and groups form¬
ing the nation. Mechanical federahsm we have long
outgrown. The members of the nation are to be indi¬
viduals, not groups. The movement for neighborhood
organization is from one point of view a movement to
give the individual pohtical effectiveness — it is an
individualistic not a coUectivistic movement, paradoxical
as this may seem to superficial thinking. But, as the
whole structure of government must rest on the indi¬
vidual, 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 iiltimately seeking through neighborhood
organization To find the individual. But let no one
think that the movement for neighborhood organiza¬
tion is a new movement. Our neighborhood organiza¬
tion, we are often told, had its origin in the New Eng¬
land 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 poUing
booths. With the inclusion of all men and women (prac¬
tically accomplished) in the suffrage, with the rapidly
increasing acceptance of direct government, the exten¬
sive work of the democratic impulse has ended. Now
the intensive work 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 individual
FROM NEIGHBORHOOD TO NATION 257
responsibility, has been so to bulwark the rights of the
individual as to provide at the same time for the unity
and stabihty of the state. They have done this exter¬
nally by making the machinery of representative govern¬
ment. 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 interpénétration — choosing
representatives etc. — but the deeper interpénétration
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 hving 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 neigh¬
bors 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 om race. Our pofitical fife 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 aU
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 xmderstand 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
XXVIII
POLITICAL PLURALISM
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 neigh¬
borhood 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 repre¬
sentation in America, and a growing school of writers
who might be called political pluralists eu'e throwing
the burden of much proof upon the state, and are pro¬
posing 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 aU coun¬
tries 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 direc¬
tion, ... it is no longer venturesome to assert that the
State is dead."
Others like to keep the word "state" hut 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 dif¬
ferences, StiU other thinkers, while seeing the open door
258
POLITICAL PLURALISM 259
to scepticism in regard to the state, are nevertheless
not ready to pass through, but, preserving the instinct
and the reverence for the xmity 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 rniion between the multiple groups of
our modern hfe. AH these thinkers, diifering widely as
they do, yet may be roughly classed together as the up¬
holders 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" geographiced representation, a much berated
parhamentary system, and partly the wish to give indus¬
trial 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, pro¬
fessional 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 bas given us a so-called
"objective " theory of law which means for many people
a new conception of the state.
260
THE NEW STATE
Many say that it is absurd for representation to be
based on the mere cbance 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 occu¬
pational interests will take its place. Again some people
are suggesting that both principles should be recognized
in our government: that one bouse in Parbament repre¬
sent geographical areas, the other occupations.^ No one
has yet, however, made any proposal of this kind definite
enough to serve as a basis of discussion.
Syndicafism demands the abohtion 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.
Syndicafism 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 syndicafism and to the bureaucracy of state
socialism. Or rather it takes half of each. Guild social¬
ism believes in state ownership of the means of produc¬
tion, but that the control of each industry or "guild"
— appointment of oflScers, hours and conditions of work
etc. — should be vested in the membership of the indus¬
try. 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 wiU be concerned with economic considerations,
the other with " political " considerations, the first cuhni-
^ Léon Duguit, Graham Wallis, Arthur Christensen, Norman Angelí,
etc.
POLITICAL PLURALISM 261
nating in a national Guild Congress, and the second in
the State.^
"Guild Socialism," edited by A. R. Orage, gives in
some detail this systematic plan already famiheu* to
readers of the New 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.®
Mr. Ernest Rarker of Oxford, although he formulates
no definite system, is a political pluralist.
John Neville Figgis makes an important contribution
to plurahsm,® and eJthough 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 dis¬
tinguished 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.
1 The fatal flaw of guild socialism is this separation of economics
and politics. First, the interests of citizenship and guild-membership are
not distinct; secondly, in any proper system of occupational representa¬
tion every one should be included — vocational representation should
not be trade representation; third, as long as you call the affairs of the
guilds "material," and say that the politics of the state should be purifled
of financial interests, you burn every bridge which might make a unity
of financial interests and sound state policy. Guild socialism, however,
because it is a carefully worked out plan for the control of industry by
those who take part in it, is one of the most well worth considering of
the proposals at present before us.
2 See G. D. H. Cole, " The World of Labor," for the relation of trade
unionism to guild socialism.
^ See especially "Churches in the Modem State" and "Studies in
Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius."
262
THE NEW 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 writ¬
ing: it does away with the fetich of the abstract state
— it is cihove 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
hfe, and fineJly it shows us, impHcitly, not only that we
need to-day a new state, but that the new state must
be a great moral force.^
Perhaps the most interesting contribution of the plu-
rafists is their clear showing that "a single unitary state
with a single sovereignty" is not true to the facts of
hfe 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 ten¬
dency of different groups to cleiim autonomy:
1. Rehgious groups are claiming rights as groups.
Many churchmen would hke to establish the autonomy
of the church. It is impossible to have undenomina-
^ See also Mr. Laski's articles: "The Personality of Associations,"
Harv. Law Rev. 29, 404-426, and "Early History of the Corporation
in England," Harv. Law Rev.: 30, 561-588. This is the kind of work
which is breaking the way for a new conception of politics.
POLITICAL PLURALISM 263
tional instruction in the schools of England because of
the claims of the church.
2. There is a political movement towards the recog¬
nition of national groups. The state in England is pass¬
ing Home Rule Acts and Welsh Disestahhshment Acts
to meet the claims of national groups. "All Europe is
convulsed with a struggle of which one object is a re¬
grouping of men in ways which will fulfil national ideals."
3. "The Trade-Unions claim to he free groups."
"Trade-unions have recovered from Parliament more
than they have lost in the courts."
Let us consider the arguments of the plurahst school,
as they form the most interesting, the most suggestive
and the most important theory of poHtics now before
us. It seems to me that there are four weaknesses in
the plurahst schooP which must be corrected before we
can take from them the torch to hght us on our pohtical
way: (1) some of the plurahsts ostensibly found their
books on pragmatic philosophy and yet in their inabüity
to reconcile the distributive and collective they do not
accept the latest teachings of pragmatism, for pragma¬
tism does not end with a distributive plurahsm, (2) the
movement is in part a reaction to a misunderstood Hegel-
^ It must be understood that all I say does not apply to all the plural-
ists. For the sake of brevity I consider them as a school although they
differ widely. Moreover, for convenience I am using the word pluralist
roughly and in a sense inaccurately to include all those who are advocating
a multiple group organization as the basis of a new state. Most of these
agree in making the group rather than the individual the unit of politics,
in their support of group "rights," the "consent" of the group, the "bal¬
ance" of groups, and in their belief that "rights" should be based on
function. But syndicalists and guild socialists are not strictly pluralists
since they build up a system based on the occupational group; yet the
name is not wholly inapplicable, for, since the guild socialists base their
state on balancing groups, that state cannot be called a unified state.
It is too early yet to speak of this school vdth entire accuracy, and in fact
there is no "school."
264
THE NEW STATE
ianism, (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 imderlying problem of plurahsm and prag¬
matism is, as James proclaims, the relation of "collec¬
tive" and "distributive." The problem of to-day, we
all agree, is the discovery of the kind of federahsm which
wiU make the parts five fully in the whole, the whole
live fuUy in the parts. But this is the centred problem
of philosophy which has stirred the ages. The heart of
James' difficulty was just this: how can many conscious¬
nesses be at the seune time one consciousness How cem
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 omr philosophers have transcended by the deeper
intuitions, sure that fife 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 inteUec-
tuahstic logic, the logic of identity. He was finally
forced to adopt a higher form of rationahty. He gave
up conceptuahstic logic "fairly, squarely and irrevoc¬
ably," and knew by deepest iimer 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 edways saw the strung-along uni¬
verse, but he also saw the unifying principle which is
working towards its goal. "That secret," he teUs us,
"of a continuous fife which the universe knows by heart
POLITICAL PLURALISM 265
and acts on every instant cannot be a contradiction
incarnate. . . . Our intelligence must keep on speaking
terms with the universe."
When Jcunes 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
pohtics this speculative truth which the great philoso¬
phers have presented to us. The words absolute and
individual veil it to us, hut substitute state and indi¬
vidual 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 Sinsd, but no man may hve his hfe 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 under¬
stand 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 hve James' philoso¬
phy 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 federahsm appear and express
itself, for then we have the spirit of federahsm creating
its own form. Pohtical philosophers talk of the state,
but there is no state until we make it. It is pme theory.
We, every man and woman to-day, must create his small
group first, and then, through its compoimding with
other groups, it ascends from stage to stage until the
federal state appears. Thus do we understand by actual
hving how collective experiences can claim identity with
their constituent parts, how "your experience and mine
266
THE NEW STATE
caB be members of a world-experience." In our neighbor¬
hood groups we claim identity with the whole collective
wiU, 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 politi¬
cal pluralists who are open admirers of James will refuse
with him to stay enmeshed in sterile intellectuahsm, in
the narrow and emasculated logic of identity. Con¬
fessedly disciples of James, wiU they not carry their dis-
cipleship 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 distrib¬
uted, 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 pohtical pluralists are fighting a
misunderstood Hegehanism. Do they adopt the crudely
popular conception of the Hegelian state as something
"above and beyond" men, as a separate entity virtueilly
independent of men? Such a conception is fimdamen-
tally 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 rel¬
ativity, but this is the essence of the compounding of
consciousness. As for Jeunes the related parts and their
relations appear simultaneously and with equal reedity,
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 total
POLITICAL PLURALISM 267
relativity — never sundered, never warring against the
true Self, the Whole.
But there is the real Hegel and the Hegel who mis¬
applied his own doctrine, who preached the absolutism
of a Prussian State. Green and Bosanquet in measure
more or less fuU 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 emd their
substance to establish on earth Hegel's absolute in the
actual form of an International League!
The political plurahsts whom we are now considering,
believing that a collective and distributive sovereignty
cannot exist together, throw overboard collective sover¬
eignty. When they accept the compounding of con¬
sciousness 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 £0*6
accepting medieval doctrine.
In the Middle Ages the group was the pofitical unit.
The medieved 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 an
268
THE NEW STATE
advance 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 creunps the individual. It is true
that the individual as the basis of government has re¬
mained an empty theory. The man with political power
has been the rich cuid strong meux. 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 retmn to the Middle Ages.
This is not the solution. Now is the critical moment.
If we imitate the Middle Ages and adopt political plural¬
ism 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 form¬
ing 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 politicEd
Emd economic power cannot be separated.
Much as we owe the Middle Ages, have we not pro¬
gressed since then.»^ Are our insights, our ideals, onr
pmposes at all the same!^ Medieval theory, it is true,
bad the conception of the living group, and this had a
large influence on legal theory.'^ Also medieval theory
struggled from first to last to reconcile its notion of indi¬
vidual freedom,^ the patent fact of manifold groups,
1 From this was taken, Gierke tells us, modern German "fellowship."
2 And the individual was certednly as prominent in medieval theory
as the community of individuals, a fact which the vigorous corporate life
of the Middle Ages may lead us to forget.
POLITICAL PLURALISM 269
and the growing notion of a sovereign state. Our prob¬
lem 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 ten¬
dency we must avoid in any plan for the direct repre¬
sentation 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 aU the richness which our intricately com¬
plex 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 edl making: we have not begun
a scientific study of group psychology. No one yet
knows enough of the laws of associated fife to have the
proper foundations for political thinking. The plural¬
ists 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,
270
THE NEW STATE
teaches us in regard to pluralism. Pluralism is the domi¬
nant thought to-day in philosophy, in politics, in econom¬
ics, in jurisprudence, in sociology, in memy schemes of
social reorganization proposed by social workers, there¬
fore we must consider it carefully — what it holds for
us, what it must guard against.
XXIX
POLITICAL PLURALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY
WHAT does group psychology teach us, as feir
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 him¬
self 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. Sover¬
eignty is the imperative of a true collective wiU. It is
not something academic, it is produced by actual Uving
with others — we learn it only through group fife. By
the subtle process of interpénétration a collective sover¬
eignty 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 creat-
271
272
THE NEW STATE
ing each 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 intellectuahstic 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 emd 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 Memy
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 hving, interweaving web of humanity. The ques¬
tion 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 pohtical control — these are the
quests of jurists and pohtical philosophers. To their
search must be added a study of the process by which
a genuine sovereignty is created. The pohtical plurahsts
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 pohtical control can be pro¬
duced. The understanding of self-government, of democ¬
racy, is bound up with the conception of sovereignty as a
psychological process.
PLURALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY 273
The idea of sovereignty held by guild socialists ^ is
based largely on the so-called "objective" theory of
le droit expounded by M. Léon Duguit of Rordeaux.
This theory is accepted as the "juridical basis" of a new
state, what some call the fimctionarist state.^ 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.^
The elaboration of this theory is Duguit's large con¬
tribution to pohtical thought. His droit is 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'esprit
^ See writings of Ramiro de Maeztu in New Age and his book men¬
tioned above.
2 See " Traité de Droit Constitutionnel " and " Etudes de Droit Public
I, L'État, Le Droit Objectif et La Loi Positive; II, L'État, Les Gouver¬
nants and Les Agents.
As in French droit may be either law or a right, Duguit, in order to
distinguish between these meanings, follows the German distinction of
objektives Recht and subjektives Recht, and speaks of le droit objectif and le
droit subjectif, thus meaning by le droit objectif merely law. But because
he at the same time writes of power as resting on function in contra¬
distinction to the classical theory of the abstract "rights" of man,
rights apart from law and only declared by law, political writers some¬
times speak of Duguit's " objective " theory of law, as opposed to a
" subjective " theory of law, when jurists would tell us that law is ob¬
jective, and that subjective right is always merely a right, my right.
This matter of terminology niust be made much clearer than it is at
present.
3 Although how far Duguit had in mind merely the solidarity of
French and Roman law has been questioned.
274
THE NEW STATE
dénué de toute réalité positive." If this is their idéa 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 posi¬
tive 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 wiU as a theory. If experi¬
ment 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 ab¬
stract sovereignty; clearly we ought to mean 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."
But Duguit says that if there were a collective will
there is no reason why it should impose itself on the
individual wiUs. " Uaffirmation que la collectivité a le
pouvoir légitime de commander force quelle est la collec¬
tivité, est une affirmation d'ordre métaphysique ou reli¬
gieux. ..." This in itself shows a misunderstanding of
the evolution of a collective wiU. 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.^ Duguit makes a thing-in-itself of la volonté
nationale — it is a most insidious fallacy which we aU
faU into again emd again. But we can never accept
that kind of a collective wiU. We beheve in a collective
wiU only so far as it is really forming from out our actual
daily hfe of intermingling men and women. There is
^ I have just read in a work on sociology, "Men surrender their indi¬
vidual wills to the collective will." No, the true social process is not
when they surrender but when they contribute their wills to the collective
will. See chs. II-VI, " The Group Process."
PLURALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY 275
nothing "metaphysical" or "rehgious" about this.
Duguit says metaphysics "doit rester étranger à toute
jurisprudence. ..." We agree to that and insist that
jmisprudence 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 wiU creates at
the same time the imperative of the collective wiU. 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 A allows group B to govern itself.i* This
is an empty permission unless B has learned how to gov¬
ern 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 that
la chose en soi finds a place in the thought of many plural-
ists). Not admitting the process of "community" he
asserts that la règle de droit is anterior and superior to the
state; he does not see the true relation of le droit to
l'état, that they evolve together, that the same process
which creates le droit creates l'état^ The wiU of the
people, he insists, can not create le droit. Here he does
not see the unity of the social process. He separates wiU
and purpose and the activity of the reciprocal inter¬
change instead of seeing them as one. Certainly the will
of the people does not create le droit, but the social
process in its entire unity does. "Positive law must
^ See p. 130.
276
THE NEW STATE
constantly follow fe cÍTOií o6/ecii/." Of course. "Le droit
objectif is constantly evolving." Certainly. But how
evolving ? Here is where we disagree. The social proc¬
ess creates le 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 democ¬
racy, of pohtical institutions. Aim is aU-important for
Duguit. The rule of le droit is the rule of conscious ends :
only the aim gives a will its worth; if the aim is juridical
(conformed to la 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
soUdarity." But any one who beheves that the indi¬
vidual will is a chose 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.^ This is a perfectly comprehensible reac¬
tion, but future jurisprudence must certainly unite these
two ideas. Professor Jethro Brown says, "The justi¬
fication for governmental action is found not in con¬
sent but in the pmpose it serves." Not in that alone.
^ De Maeztu tells us, "Rights do not arise from personality. This
idea is mystic and unnecessary. Rights arise primarily from the rela¬
tion of the associated with the thing which associates them. . . ."
Authority, Liberty, and Function, p. 250.
Mr. Barker substitutes purpose for personality and will as the unify¬
ing bond of associations, and says that we thus get rid of "murder in
the air" when it is a question of the "competition of ideas, not of real
collective personalities." (See "The Discredited State," in The Political
Quarterly, February, 1915.) This seems a curiously anthropomorphic,
so to speak, idea of personality for a twentieth-century writer. The
article is, however, an interesting and valuable one.
See also Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, I, 472.
PLURALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY 277
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 doctrme of natural right. ^ But we must all
remember, what I do not doubt this writer does re¬
member, that purpose can never be a chose en soi, and
that, of the utmost importance, the "new natural law"
can be brought into manifestation only by certedn 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 "sub¬
jective" right to will, that its justification is in its pur¬
pose. (This is of course the truth in regard to all our
"rights"; 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. They are synthesized by the new psy¬
chology 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
thmk 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 wiU.
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 pur¬
pose, wül and activity, past and present activity. The
recognition that le droit is the product of a group process
swallows up the question as to whether it is "objective"
^ See "Underlying Principles of Legislation."
278
THE NEW STATE
or "subjective"; it is neither, it is both; we look at the
matter quite diíFerently.^
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 sepeurate
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 insist¬
ence that le droit must be based on "la vie actuelle,but
he does not take the one step further and see that le droit
is born within the group, that there is an essential law
of the group as different from other modes of association,
and that this has many imphcations.
The droit evolved by a group is the droit of that group.
The droit evolved by a state-group (we agree that there
is no state-group yet, the state is evolving, the droit is
evolving, there is only an approximate state, an approxi¬
mately genuine droit) is the droit of the state. The
contribution of the new psychology is that le droit comes
from relation emd is always in relation. The warning of
the new psychology to the advocates of vocational repre¬
sentation is that the droit (either as law or right) ^ evolved
by men of one occupation only will represent too little
mterminghng to express the "community" truth. We
don't wemt doctors' ethics and lawyers' ethics, and so on
through the varous groups. That is just the trouble
1 The teleological school of sociology is interesting just here. While
it marked a long advance on older theories, the true place of selection
of ends is to-day more clearly seen. We were told: "Men have wants,
therefore they come together to seek means to satisfy those wants."
When do men "come together"? When were they ever separated? But
it is not necessary to push this further.
2 I have tried not to jump the track from legal right to ethical right
but occasionally one can speak of them together, if it is understood that
one is not thereby merging them.
PLURALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY 279
at present. Employers and employees meet in confer¬
ence. Watch those conferences. The difference of in¬
terest is not always the whole difficulty; there is also the
difference of standard. Capitalist ethics and workman
ethics are often opposed. We must accept le droit as a
social product, as a group product, but we must have
groups which will imify interests and standards. Law
and politics can be foimded on nothing hut vital modes
of association.
Mr. Roscoe Pound's exposition of modem law is just
here a great help to politiccd theory. The essentied, 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 pohtical 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 iuto use those modes of asso¬
ciation which wiU reveal true interests, actual interests,
yet not particulcurist interests but the interests dis¬
covered through group relations — employer and em¬
ployed, master and servant, landlord and tenant, etc.
But, and this is of great importance, these gtoups must
be made into genuine groups. If law is to be a group-
product, we must see that om- 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 hfe and my
hfe with which we are concerned, not "man" but the
men we see around us, not "society" hut the many
societies in which we pass our hves. "Social" values?
We want individual values, but mdividual values dis¬
covered through group relations.
To sum up this point: (1) law should he a group-
280
THE NEW STATE
product, (2) we should therefore have genuine groups,
(3) pohtical method must be such that the "law" of the
group can become embodied in om- legislation.
M. Duguit's disregarding of the laws of that inter¬
mingling which is the basis of his droit objectif leads to
a partial understanding only of the vote. Voting is for
him still in a way a particularist matter. To be sine he
ceJls it a function smd that marks a certain advance.
s
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 syndicahsm which you have already
accepted beforehand, it is all the more aUuring ! But to
call the vote a function is only half the story; às 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 interminghng of aU my func¬
tions, it must rest on the intermingling of aU my func¬
tions with aU the functions of all the others; it must
rest indeed on social sohdarity, but a social solidarity
in which every mem 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 opposes le suffrage universel égalitaire.
But le suffrage universel égalitaire staring all the obvious
inequahties of mem 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 functionahsm are not
opposed; the vote resting on "subjective" right and
PLURALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY 281
the vote resting on "objective" power are not op¬
posed, but the particulEirist vote and the genuinely
indi\idual vote are opposed. Any doctrine which con¬
tains 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.^
Here Duguit confuses present facts emd future possi¬
bilities. Let us be the state, let us be sovereign— over
ourselves. As the problem in the hfe 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-limita-
tion is unnecessary, but not in the reasons he gives for
it. A psychic entity is subordinate to the droit which
itself evolves not by auto-limitation, but by the essen¬
tial and intrinsic law of the group.
Rut 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 hfe, but also in his insistence on the
individual which meikes him one of the builders of the
new individualism.^ We see in the gradual transforma¬
tion of the idea of natmal law which took place among
1 The old consent theory assumes that some make the laws and others
obey them. In the true democracy we shall obey the laws we have
ourselves made. To find the methods by which we can be approaching
the true democracy is now our task; we can never rest satisfied with
"consent."
2 Although I do not agree with the form individualism takes in his
doctrine.
282
THE NEW STATE
the 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 creat¬
ing 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 hke, only xmless you are careful that tends to
become mechanical, and it tends to em organic func-
tionalism 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 " subjective " vs. "ob¬
jective"—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 personeJities, 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. "Ftmction," de Maeztu tells
us "QsH 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 wiU 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 wiU be neither acclaimed nor denied. An under-
PLURALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY 283
standing of 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;^
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 différent place in political science. And yet, with the
meaning given to it by present psychology, it is per¬
haps the most vital thought of the new politics. The
sovereign is not the crowd, it is not milhons of unrelated
atoms, but men joining to form a real whole. The ato¬
mistic idea of sovereignty is dead, we aU agree, but we
may learn to define sovereignty differently.
Curiously enough, some of the pluralists are acknowl¬
edged followers of Gierke and Maitland, and base much
of their doctrine on the "real personality" of the group.
Rut the group can create its own personality only by
the "compounding of consciousness," by every member
being at one and the same time an individuad and the
"real personality." If it is possible for the members of
a group to evolve a unified consciousness, a common
idea, a collective wiU, for the many to become really one,
not in a mystical sense but äs an actual fact, for the
group to have a real not a fictional personahty, this
process can be carried on through group and group, our
task, an infinite one, to evolve a state with a real per¬
sonahty. The imagination of the born plurahst stops
with the group.^
But even in regard to the group the plurahsts seem
^ Same of the plurahsts are concerned, I recognize, with the fact rather
than the right of sovereignty.
2 The trouble with the plurahsts is that their emphasis is not on the
fact that the group creates its own personahty, but on the fact that the
state does not create it. When they change this emphasis, their thinking
wiU be unchained, I believe, and leap ahead to the constructive work
which we eagerly await and expect from them.
284
THE NEW STATE
sometimes 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 miits must grow sovereignty, 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 pro¬
ceeds from the One to the Many; that is why they dis¬
card the unified state. This is not true of the unifying
state 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 neighbor¬
hood group up to the city, the state, the nation. This
is the process of life, always a unifying through the
interpénétration 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 comes from the Many, this
does not mean that the One is above the Many. The
deepest truth of life is that the interrelating by which
both eae 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 sover¬
eignty is that each group has an isolated sovereignty.
The truth is that each should represent the whole united
sovereignty at one point eis each individual is his whole
PLURALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY 285
group at one point. An understanding of this fact seems
to me absolutely necessary to further development of
pohtical theory.^ This does not mean that the state
must come first, that the group gets its power from the
state. This the plurahsts 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.
Rut the conclusion drawn by some pluralists from the
theory of "real personahty" is that the state is super¬
fluous because a corporate persoiïEihty has the right
to assert autonomy over itself. They thus acknowledge
that plurahsm means for them group and group and
group side by side. Rut here they are smely wrong.
They ignore the imphcations 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 funda¬
mental force of fife, of all nature, of all humanity, the
universal law of being — the out-reaching for the pur¬
pose 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 rxms 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
groupsAre 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 after
^ It is also necessary to an understanding of the new international
law- Se.e oh. XXXV, " The World State."
286
THE NEW STATE
it 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 xmification. No
"whole" can imprison us infinite beings. The centre of
to-day is the circumference of to-morrow.
Thus while the state is not necessary to grant au¬
thority, it is the natural outcome of the uniting groups.
The state must be the collective mind embodying the
moral wiU and purpose of All. From living group to
living group to the "real" state — such must be our line
of evolution.
Sovereignty, it is true, is a fact, not a theory. Who¬
ever can gain obedience has the sovereign power. But
we must go beyond this and seek those pofitical methods
by which the command shall be with those who have
evolved a genuine authority, that is, an authority evolved
by what I have called the true social process. We must
go beyond this and seek those methods by which a genuine
authority can be evolved, by which the true social process
shall be everywhere possible. To repeat: first, the true
social process must be given fuU opportunity and scope,
then it must be made the basis of pofitical method. Then
shall we see emergmg a genuine authority which we can
aU acclaim as sovereign. There is, I agree with the
plurafists, a great advantage in that authority being
multiple and varied, but a static pluralism, so to speak,
would be as bad as a static monism. The groups are
always reaching out towards unity. Our safeguard
against crystallization is that every fresh unity means
(as I have tried to show in chapter III) the throwing out
of myriad fresh differences — our safegu£ird is that the
universe knows no static xmity. Unification means
sterilization; imifying meems a perpetual generating.
We do not want the unified sovereignty of Germany; but
PLURALISM AND SOVEREIGNTY 287
when you put the individual and the group first, you get
nmîjing sovereignty^
^ No one has yet given us a satisfactory account of the history of
the notion of sovereignty: just how and in what degree it has been affected
by history, by philosophy, by jurisprudence, etc., and how all these have
interacted. We have not only to disentangle many strands to trace each
to its source, but we have, moreover, just not to disentangle them, but
to understand the constant interweaving of all. To watch the interplay
of legal theory and political philosophy from the Middle Ages down to
the present day is one of the most interesting parts of our reading, but
perhaps nowhere is it more fruitful than in the idea of sovereignty. We
see the corporation long ignored and the idea of legal partnership influ¬
encing the development of the social contract theory, which in its turn
reacted on legal theory. We find the juristic conception of group person¬
ality, clearly seen as early as Althusius (1557-1638), and revived and
expanded by Gierke, influencing the whole German school of "group
sociologists." But to-day are not many of us agreed that however inter¬
esting such historical tracing, our present notion of sovereignty must
rœt on what we learn from group psychology?
XXX
POLITICAL PLURALISM AND FUNCTIONALISM
The Service State vs. the "Sovereign State"
The idea at the bottom of occupational represen¬
tation which has won it many adherents is
that of the interdependence of function. Most
of the people who advocate vocational representation
beheve in what they call an organic democracy. This
leads them to beheve that the group not the individual
should be the unit of government: a man in an industry
is to vote not as an iudividual but as a department mem¬
ber because he is thus representing his fimction. But
man heis many functions and then there is something
left over. It is just because our place in the whole csm
never be boimded by any one function that we cannot
accept the organism of the Middle Ages, the organic
society of certain sociologists, or the "organic democ¬
racy" of the upholders of occupational representation.
Man has many functions or rather he is the interplay
of many functions. The child grows to manhood through
interpenetrating — with his family, at school, at work,
with his play group, with his art group: the carpenter
may join the Arts and Crafts to find there an actualiza¬
tion of spirit for which he is fitted, and so on and so on.
All the different sides of our nature develop by the proc¬
ess of compounding. If you shut a man up in his occu¬
pation, you refuse him the opportunity of full growth.
The task has been given to humanity to "Know thy¬
self," but man caimot know himself without knowing
the many sides of his self. His essential self is the possi-
bihty of the multiple expression of spirit.
288
PLURALISM AND FUNCTIONALISM 289
We see this principle operating every day in our own
lives: we cannot do one thing well by doing one thing
alone. The interrelations are so manifold that each of
us does far more than he wishes, not because our tendency
is a senseless ramifying, but because we cannot do om*
own job well unless we do many other things : we do not
take on the extra activities as an extension of our life,
but simply as an intensification of our fife at the point
of our particular interest. Ideally one should fulfil aU
the functions of man in order to perform one function.
No one ought to teach without being a parent! etc.
etc. Man must identify himself with hmnanity. The
great lesson which the plurahst school has to teach is
that man cannot do this imaginatively but only actually,
through his group relations. What it leaves out is that
the task is manifold and infinite because man must
identify himself with a manifold and infinite number of
groups before he has embraced humanity.
Society, however, does not consist merely of the imion
of aU these various groups. There is a more subtle proc¬
ess going on — the interlocking of groups. And in these
interlocking groups we have not only the same people
taking up different activities, but actually representing
different interests. In some groups I may be an em¬
ployer, in others an employee. I can be a workman and
a stockholder. Men have many loyalties. It is no longer
true that I belong to such a class and must always iden¬
tify myself with its interests. I may belong at the same
time to the college club and the business women's club,
to the Players' League (representing the actor's point of
view) and to the Drama Association (representing the
playgoer's point of view). I not only thus get opposite
points of view, but I myself can contribute to two oppo¬
site points of view. The importance of this has not been
fully estimated. I may have to say the collective I or
290
THE NEW STATE
we first of my basket-ball team, next of my trade-union,
then of my church club or citizens' league or neighbor¬
hood association, and the lines may cross and recross
many times. It is just these cross lines that are of inesti¬
mable value in the development of society.
Thus while two groups may he competmg, certain
members of these groups may he working together for
the satisfaction of some interest. This is recognized
by law. A mem can he a member of different corpora¬
tions. Our possihihty of association is not exhausted
by contributing to the production of one legal person,
we may help to create many different legal persons,
each with an entirely different set of fiahihties.
Then there may he some sort of relation with a
definite legal status existing between these bodies: I
as member of one corporation may have relation with
myself as member of another corporation. We see this
clearly in the case of corporations, hut it is what is tak¬
ing place everywhere, this interlocking and overlapping
of groups, and is I feel one of the neglected factors in
the argument of those who are advocating occupational
representation. What we are working for is a plastic
social organization: not only in the sense of a flexible in¬
teraction between the groups, hut in the sense of an elas¬
ticity which makes it possible for individuals to [change
constantly their relations, their groups, without destroy¬
ing social cohesion. Vocational representation would
tend to crystaUize us into definite permanent groups.
The present advocacy of organic democracy or "fimc-
tionalism" is obviously, and in many cases explicitly, a
reaction to "individualism": the functional group must
he the unit because the individual is so feared. I agree
with the denunciation of the individual if you mean the
man who seeks only his own advantage. But have we
not aheady seen that that is not the true individual?
PLURALISM AND FUNCTIONALISM 291
And do we not see now that man is a multiple being?
Life is a recognition of multitudinous multiplicity.
Politics must be shaped for that. Our task is to make
straight the paths for the coming of the Lord — the
true Individual. Man is struggling for the freedom of
his nature. What is his nature? Manifold being. You
must have as many different kinds of groups as there
are powers in man — this does away with "organic
democracy."
The state cannot be composed of groups because no
group nor any number of groups cam contain the whole
of me, and the ideal state demands the whole of me. No
one group can seize the whole of me; no one group can
seize any part of me in a mechanical way so that having
taken one-tenth there are nine-tenths left. My nature
is not divisible into so many parts as a house into so many
rooms. My group uses me and then the whole of me is
stiU left to give to the whole. This is the constamt social
process. Thus my citizenship is something bigger than
my membership in a vocational group. Vocational
representation does not deal with men — it deals with
masons and doctors. I may be a photographer but how
httle of my personahty does my photography absorb.
We are concerned with what is left over — is that going
to be lost? The whole of every man must go into his
citizenship.
Some of the guild socialists tell us, however, that a
man has as many "rights" as he has functions: a shoe¬
maker is also a father and a rate-payer. But they do
not give us any plan for the political recognition of these
various functions. How the father as father is to be
represented in the state we are not told. The state will
never get the whole of a man by his trying to divide him¬
self into parts. A man is not a father at home, a citizen
at the polls, an artisan at work, a business man in his office,
292
THE NEW STATE
a follower of Christ at church. He is at every moment a
Christian, a father, a citizen, a worker, if he is at any
time these in a true sense. We wemt the whole man in
pohtics. Clever business men are not engaging work¬
ers, they need men, our churches need men, the insistent
demand of our pohtical hfe is for men.
As ideally every fimction should include every other,
as every power of which I am capable should go into my
work, occupational representation might do for the
millennium, but it is not fitted for the limitations of man
in 1918.
I am advocating throughout the group principle, but
not the group as the political unit. We do not need to
swing forever between the individual and the group.
We must devise some method of using both at the same
time. Our present method is right so far as it is based on
individuals, but we have not yet found the true indi¬
vidual. The groups are the indispensable means for the
discovery of self by each man. The individual finds him¬
self in a group; he has no power alone or in a crowd.
One group creates me, another group creates me and so
on and on. The different groups bring into appearance
the multiple sides of me. I go to the polls to express the
multiple man which the groups have created. I am to
express the whole from my individual point of view, and
that is a midtiple point of view because of my various
groups. But my relation to the state is always as em
individual. The group is a method merely. It cannot
supplant either the individual on the one hand or the
state on the other. The miit of society is the individual
coming into being and functioning through groups of a
more and more federated natme. Thus the unit of so¬
ciety is neither the group nor the particularist-individual,
but the group-individual.
The question is put baldly to us by the advocates of
PLURALISM AND FUNCTIONALISM 293
vocational representation — "Do you want representa¬
tion of numbers or representation of interests?" They
are opposed to the former, which they call democracy,
because "democracy" means to them the "sovereignty
of the people," which means the reign of the crowd.
Democracy and functioneJism are supposed to be opposed.
An industry is to be composed not of individuals but
of departments; likewise the state is to be a union of
industries or occupations. The present state is con¬
ceived as a crowd-state.^ If the state is and must neces¬
sarily be a crowd, no wonder it is being condemned to-day
in many quarters. But I do not beheve this is the alter¬
native we are facing — the crowd-state or the group-
state. We want the representation of individuals, but
of true individuals, group-individuals.^
The best part of pluralism is that it is a protest against
the domination of numbers; the trouble is that it identi¬
fies numbers with individuals. Some plan must be de¬
vised by which we put the individual at the centre of our
pohtical system, without an atomistic sovereignty, emd
yet by which we can get the whole of the individual. I
am proposing for the moment the individual the unit,
the group the method, but this alone does not cover all
that is necessary. In the French syndicaHst organiza¬
tion every syndicate, whatever its size, is represented
by a single individual. In this way power is prevented
from faUing into the hands of a strong federation like
the miners, but of comse this often means minority rule.
In England the Trade Union Congress can be dominated
by the five large trades, a state of things which has been
much complained of there. But we must remember
^ The French syndicaKsts avowedly do not want democracy because
it "mixes the classes," because, as they say, interests and aims mingle
in one great mass in which all true significance is lost.
2 See p. 184.
294
THE NEW STATE
that while the syndicalists get rid of majority rule, that
is, that the majority of individuals no longer govern,
they merely give the rule to the majority of groups.
They have not given up the principle of majority rule,
they simply apply it differently. There is a good deal
of syndicalist thinking that is not a penetrating analy¬
sis which presents us with new principles, but a mere
taking of ideas long accepted in regard to the individual
and transferring them to the field of the group. I have
tried to show in chapter XVII, " Democracy Not the Ma¬
jority," that the pressing matter in politics is not whether
we want majority rule or not, but to decide upon those
methods of association by which we get the greatest
amount of integration. The syndicalists are right, we
do not want a crowd, but I do not think most syndica¬
lists have discovered the true use of the true group.
The task before us now is to think out the way in which
the group method can be a regular part of our political
system — its relation to the individual on the one hand
and to the state on the other. No man should have a
share in government as an isolated individual, but only
as boimd up with others: the individual must be the
unit, but an individual capable of entering into genuine
group relations and of using these for an expemding scale
of social, political and international fife.
The best part of functionalism is that it presents to
us the Service State in the place of the old Sovereign
State. This has two meanings: (1) that the state is
created by the actual services of every man, that every
man will get his place in the state through the service
rendered: (2) that the state itself is tested by the ser¬
vices it renders, both to its members and to the world-
community.^ The weakness of functionahsm, as so far
^ This is the basis of Duguit's international law—the place of a state
in an international league is to be determined directly by services rendered.
PLURALISM AND FUNCTIONALISM 295
developed, is that it has provided no method for all
the functions of man to be included in the state. The
essence of democracy is the expression of every man in
his multiple nature.
To smn up: no one group can enfold me, because of
my multiple natme. This is the blow to the theory
of occupational representation. But also no number of
groups can enfold me. This is the reason why the indi¬
vidual must always be the imit of pohtics, as group
organization must be its method. We find the individual
through the group, we use him always as the true indi¬
vidual— the undivided one — who, living Knk of liv¬
ing group, is yet never embedded in the meshes but is
forever free for every new possibihty of a forever unfold¬
ing life.
XXXI
POLITICAL PLURALISM AND THE TRUE FEDERAL STATE
IN the last two chapters I have taken up the two
fundamental laws of hfe — the law of interpénétra¬
tion and the law of multiples. (1) Sovereignty, we
have seen, is the power generated within the group —
dependent on the principle of interpénétration. (2) Man
joins many groups — in order to express his multiple
nature. These two principles give us federalism.
Let us, before considering the conception of federalism
in detail, siun up in a few sentences what has aheady been
said of these two principles. The fundamental truth of
life we have seen is self-perpetuating activity — activ¬
ity so regnant, so omnipresent, so all-embracing, that it
banishes even the conception of anything static from
the world of being. Conscious evolution means that we
must discover the essential principle of this activity and
see that it is at work in the humblest of its modes, the
smallest group or meeting of even two or three. The
new psychology has brought to political science the
recognition of interpénétration and the "compounding
of consciousness" as the very condition of all hfe. Our
pohtical methods must conform to hfe's methods. We
must understand and follow the laws of association that
the state may appear, that our own httle purposes may
be fulfilled. Little purposes.!^ Is there any great and
small? The humblest man and the price of his daily
loaf — is this a small matter — it hangs upon the whole
world situation to-day. In order that the needs of the
humblest shall be satisfied, or in order that world pur-
296
PLURALISM AND TRUE FEDERALISM 297
poses shall be fulfilled — it matters not which — this
principle of " compoimding " must be fully recognized
and embodied in our pohtical methods. It is this vital
intermingling which creates the real individual and knits
men into the myriad relations of life. We win through
life our individuality, it is not presented to us at the
beginning to be exploited as we wiU. We win a mul¬
tiple individuality through our manifold relations. In
the workings of this dual law are rooted all of social and
political progress, all the hope and the potency of hiunan
evolution.
Only the federal state can express this dual principle
of existence — the compounding and the multiple com¬
pounding. It is em incomplete understemding of this
dual law which is responsible for the misteiken interpre¬
tation of federeJism held by some of the pluredists: a
conception which includes the feJse doctrines of division
of power, the idea that the group not the individual
should be the unit of the state, the old consent of gov¬
erned theory, an almost discarded particularism (group
rights), and the worn-out balance theory.
The distributive sovereignty school assiunes that the
essential, the basic part of federalism is the division of
power between the central and separate parts: while
the parts may be considered as ceding power to the cen¬
tral state, or the central state may be considered as
granting power to the parts, yet in one form or another
federalism means a divided sovereignty. Esmein says
definitely, " V État fédéralif . . .fractionne la souveraineté.
. . . " ^ No, it should unite sovereignty. There should
be no absolute division of power or conferring of power.
The activity of whole and parts should be one.
In spite of all our American doctrines of the end of the
eighteenth century, in spite of our whole history of states-
1 Quoted by Duguit.
298
THE NEW STATE
right theory and sentiment, the division of sovereignty
is not the main fact of the United States govermnent.
From 1789 to 1861 the idea of a divided sovereignty —
that the United States was a voluntary agreement be¬
tween free, sovereign and independent states, that author¬
ity was "divided" between nation and states — dictated
the history of the United States. The war of 1861
was fought (some of the plurahsts seem not to know)
to settle this question.^ The two ideas of federalism
came to a death grapple in our Civil War and the
true doctrine trimnphed. That war decided that the
United States was not a delegated affair, that it had a
"real" existence, and that it was sovereign, yet not
sovereign over the states as an external party, for it is
composed of the states, but sovereign over itself, merely
over itself. You have not to be a mystic to understand
this but only an American. Those who see in a federal
union a mere league with rights and powers granted to
a central government, those who see in a federal rmion
a balancing of sovereign powers, do not understand
true federahsm. When we enumerate the powers of
the states as distinct from the powers of our national
government, some people regard this distinction as a
dividing line between nation and states, but the true "fed¬
eralist" is always seeing the relation of these powers to
those of the central government. There are no absolute
divisions in a true federal union.
Do we then want a central government which shall
override the parts until they become practically non-
1 It must be remembered, however, that while in the Civil War we
definitely gave up the compact theory held by us since the Mayflower
compact, yet we did not adopt the organism theory. The federal state
we have tried and are trying to work out in America is based on the prin¬
ciples of psychic unity described in chapter X. The giving up of the
"consent" theory does not bring us necessarily to the organic theory of
society.
PLURALISM AND TRUE FEDERALISM 299
existent? The moment federalism attempts to tran¬
scend the parts it has become vitiated. Our Civil War
was not, as some writers assert, the blow to states-
rights and the victory of centralization. We shall yet,
I believe, show that it was a victory for true federahsm.^
The United States is neither to ignore the states, tran¬
scend the states, nor to balance the states, it is to he the
states in their united capacity.
Of course it is true that many Americans do think of
our government as a division of powers between central
and local authority, therefore there is as a matter of
fact much balancing of interests. Rut as far as we are
doing this at Washington it is exactly what we must get
rid of. The first lesson for every member of a federal
government to learn is that the interests of the different
parts, or the interests of the whole and the interests of
the parts, are never to be pitted against each other. As
far as the United States represents an interpénétration
of thought and feehng and interest emd will, it is carrying
out the aims of federalism.
We have not indeed a true federalism in the United
States to-day; we are now learning the lesson of federal¬
ism. Some one must analyze for us the difference be¬
tween centralization and true federalism, which is neither
nationahzation, states-rights, nor balance, and then we
must work for true federalism. For the federal gov¬
ernment to attempt to do that which the states should
do, or perhaps even are doing, means loss of force, and
loss of education-by-experience for the states. On the
other hand, not to see when federal action means at
the same time local development and national strength,
means a serious retarding of our growth. It is equally
true that when the states attempt what the federal gov-
^ Duguit says that the United States confers the rights of a state on
a territory. No, it recognizes that which already exists.
300
THE NEW STATE
eminent alone should undertake, the consequence is gen-
ered muddle.
And it is by no means a question only of what the
federal govermnent should do and what it should not
do. It is a question of the way of doing. It is a ques¬
tion of guiding, where necessary, without losing local
initiative or local responsibility. It is a question of so
framing measures that true federation, not centraliza¬
tion, be obtained. Recently, even before the war, the
tendency has been towards increased federal action
and federal control, as seen, for instance, in the control
of railroad transportation, of vocational education etc.
The latter is an excellent example of the possibihty
of central action being true federal and not nationalized
action. The federal government upon apphcation from
a state grants to that state an. amount for vocational
education equal to what the state itself will appropriate.
The administration of the fund rest§, with the state.
The federal govermnent thus makes no assumptions.
It recognizes existing facts. And it does not impose
something from without. The state must xmderstand
its needs, must know how those needs can best be satis¬
fied; it must take responsibility. The experience of
one state joins with the experience of other states to form
a collective experience.
As we watch federalism being worked out in actual
practice at Washington, we see in that practice the
necessity of a distinction which has been emphasized
throughout this book as the contribution of contempo-
r£iry psychology to politics: nationafization is the Hege¬
lian reconciliation, true federalism is the integration of
present psychology. This means a genuine integration
of the interests of all the parts. If our present tendency
is towards nationalization, we must learn the diiference
between that and federalism and chemge it into the
PLURALISM AND TRUE FEDERALISM 301
latter. We need a new order of statesmen in the world
to-day — for oiu- nation, for our international league
— those who imderstand federalism.
Rut I have been talking of federahsm as the integra¬
tion of pEU'ts (the states). We should remember also,
and this is of the greatest importemce, that the United
States is not only to be the states in their united capacity,
but it is to be aU the men and women of the United
States in their united capacity. This it seems difiBcult
for many Europeans to understand; it breaks across
their traditional conception of federalism which has been
a league, a confederation of "sovereign" pE^ts, not a
true federal state. We of Massachusetts feel omselves not
first children of Massachusetts and then through Massa¬
chusetts of the United States. We belong directly to the
United States not merely through Massachusetts. True-
federalism means that the individual, not the group, is
the unit. A true federal government acts directly on
its citizens, not merely through the groups.
America has not led the world in democracy through
methods of representation, social legislation, ballot laws
or industrial organization. She has been smpassed by
other countries in all of these. She leads the world in
democracy because through federahsm she is working
out the secret of the universe actively. Multiple citizen¬
ship in its spontaneous unifying is the foundation of the
new state. Federalism and democracy go together, you
do not decide to have one or the other as your fancy
may be. We did not estabhsh federahsm in the United
States, we are growing federahsm. Cohesion imposed
upon us extemahy wül lack in significance and duration.
Federahsm must live through: (1) the reahty of the
group, (2) the expanding group, (3) the ascending group
or unifying process.
The federal state is the unifying state. The pohticeJ
302
THE NEW STATE
pluralists, following James, use the "trailing and"^
argument to prove that we can never have a unified
state, that there is always something which never gets
included. I should use it to prove that we can and must
have a unifying state, that this "and" is the very unify¬
ing principle. The "traiUng and" is the deepest truth
of psychology. It is because of this "and" that our goal
must always be the unified state — the unified state to
he attained through the federal form. Our spirit it is
true is by nature federal, but this means not infinite un-
relation hut infinite possibility of relation, not infinite
strnng-alongness but infinite seeking for the unifying
of the strnng-alongness. I forever discover undevel¬
oped powers. This is the glory of our exhaustless
nature. We are the expression of the principle of end¬
less growth, of endless appearing, and democracy must,
therefore, so shape its forms as to allow for the mani¬
festation of each new appearing. I grow possibilities;
new opportunities should always be arising to meet
these new possibilities.
Then through group and group smd ascending group
I actualize more and more. The "trailing and" is man's
task for ever and ever — to drag in more spirit, more
knowledge, more harmony. Federalism is the only
possible form for the state because it leaves room for
the new forces which are coming through these spiritual
"ands," for the myriad centres of life which must be
forever springing up, group elfter group, within a viteil
state. Our impulse is at one and the same time to de¬
velop self and to tremscend self. It is this ever tran¬
scending self which needs the federal state. The federal
^ "The word 'and' trails along after every sentence. Something
always escapes. . . . The pluralistic world is thus more like a federal
republic than like an empire or a kingdom." "A Pluralistic Universe,"
321-322.
PLURALISM AND TRUE FEDERALISM 303
state is not a unified state, I agree, but it is a unifying
state, not a " strung-along " state.
Thus it is the federal state which expresses the two
fundamental principles of life — the compounding of
consciousness and the endless appearings of new forces.
I have said that the plmalists' mistaken interpreta¬
tion of federalism includes the particularist notions of
"consent" €md "rights" and "balance," and that aU
these come from a false conception of sovereignty. What
does the new psychology teach us of "consent".!^ Power
is generated within the true group not by one or severed
assmning authority and the others "consenting," hut
solely by the process of intermingling. Only by the
seune method can the true state he grown.
If divorce is to he allowed between the state and this
group or that, what are the groimds on which it is to
he granted.^ Will incompatibility he sufiQcient.'^ Are
the manufacturing north and agricultural south of Ire¬
land incompatible.'^ Does a certain trade association
want, hke Nora, a "larger fife".'* The plurafists open
the gates to too much. They wish to throw open the
doors of the state to labor: yes, they are right, hut let
them beware what veiled shapes may shp between those
open portals. Labor must indeed be included in the
state, it is our most immediate task, but let us ponder
well the method.
The plurafists assume that the unified state must
always claim authority over "other groups."^ But as
he who expresses the unity of my group has no authority
over me but is simply the symbol and the organ of the
group, so that group which expresses the unity of all
groups — that is, the state — should have no authority
as a separate group, but only so far as it gathers up into
^ When they say that the passion for unity is the urge for a dominant
One, they think of the dominant One as outside.
304
THE NEW STATE
itself the whole meaning of these constituent groups.
Just here is the crux of the disagreement between the
upholders of the pluralistic and of the true monistic
state: the former think of the other groups as "coex¬
tensive" or "complementary" to the state — the state
is one of the groups to which we owe obedience; to the
latter they and all individuals are the constituents of the
state. ^
I have said that our progress is from Contract to
Community.^ This those pluralists cannot accept who
take the consent of the group as part of their theory of
the state. They thereby keep themselves in the con¬
tract stage of thinking, they thereby and in so far range
themselves with all particularists.®
Secondly, in the divided sovereignty theory the old
particularist doctrine of individual rights gives way
merely to a new doctrine of group rights, the "inherent
rights" of trade-unions or ecclesiastical bodies. "Nat¬
ural rights" and "social compact" went together; the
"inherent rights" of groups again tend to make the
1 One of the pluralists says, "I cannot see that . . . sovereignty is
the unique property of any one association." No, not sovereignty over
"others," but sovereignty always belongs to any genuine group; as
groups join to form another real group, the sovereignty of the more in¬
clusive group is evolved — that is the only kind of state sovereignty which
we can recognize as legitimate. (See ch. XXIX on " Political Pluralism
and Sovereignty.")
2 See ch. XV.
3 Mr. Laski is an exception to many writers on "consent." When
he speaks of consent he is referring only to the actual facts of to-day.
Denying the sovereignty postulated by the lawyers (he says you can never
find in a community any one will which is certain of obedience), he shows
that as a matter of fact the state sovereignty we have now rests on con¬
sent. I do not wish to confuse the issue between facts of the present and
hopes for the future, but I wish to make a distinction between the "sover¬
eignty" of the present and the sovereignty which I hope we can grow.
This distinction is implicit in Mr. Laski's book, but it is lacking in much
of the writing on the " consent of the governed."
PLURALISM AND TRUE FEDERALISM 305
federal bond a compact.^ The state resting on a numeri¬
cal basis, composed of an aggregate of individuals, gives
way only to a state still resting on a munerical basis
although composed now of groups instead of individuals.
As in the old days the individuals were to be "free,"
now the groups are to be "independent." These new
particularists are as zealous and as jealous for the group
as any nineteenth-century " individuahst " was for the in¬
dividual. Mr. Barker, who warns us, it is true, against
inherent rights which are not adjusted to other inherent
rights, nevertheless says, "If we are individualists now,
we are corporate individualists. Our individuals are be¬
coming groups. We no longer write Man vs. the State
but The Group vs. the State." But does Mr. Barker
really think it progress to write Group vs. the State
If the principle of individual vs. the state is wrong, what
difference does it make whether that individual is one
man or a group of men.i* In so far as these rights are based
on function, we have an advance in pohtical theory; in
so far as we can talk of group vs. the state, we are held
in the thralls of another form of social atomism. It is
the plurahsts themselves who are always saying, when
they oppose crowd-sovereignty, that atomism meems
anarchy. Agreed, but atomism in any form, of groups
as well as individuals, means anarchy, and this they do
not always seem to realize.
Mr. Barker speaks of the present tendency " to restrict
the activity of the state in order to safeguard the rights
of the groups." Many plurahsts and syndicahsts are
afraid of the state because for them the old duahsm is
^ Wherever you have the social contract theory in any form, and
assent as the foundation of power, there is no social process going on;
the state is an arbitrary creation of men. Group organization to-day
must give up any taint whatever of the social contract and rest squarely
and fully on its legitimate psychological basis.
306
THE NEW STATE
unsolvable. But as I have tried to show in the chapter
on "Our Pohtical Dualism" that the rights of the state
and the citizen are never, ideally, incompatible, so now
we should understand that our present task is to develop
those pohtical forms within which rights of group and
state can be approaching coincidence.
As long as we settle down within any one group, we
are in danger of the old particularism. Many a trade-
unionist succumbs to this danger. Love of a group will
not get us out of particularism. We can have egoism
of the group as well as egoism of the individual. Indeed
the group may have all the evils of the individual—
aggrandizement of self, exploitation of others etc. Noth¬
ing wiU get us out of particularism but the constsmt
recognition that any whole is always the element of a
larger whole. Group life has two meanings, one as im¬
portant as the other: (1) it looks in to its own integrated,
coordinated activity, (2) it sees that activity in relation
to other activities, in relation to a larger whole of which
it is a part. The group which does not look out deterio¬
rates into caste. The group which thinks only of itself
is a menace to society; the group which looks to its mani¬
fold relations is part of social progress. President Wilson
as head of a national group has just as cleeu" a duty to
other national groups as to his own coimtry.
Particularism of the individued is dead, in theory if not
in practice. Let us not now fall into the specious error
of clinging to our particularism while changing its name
from individual to group.
The outcome of group particularism is the balemce
of power theory, perhaps the most pernicious part of the
pluraUsts' doctrine. The plmaKst state is to be com¬
posed of sovereign groups. What is their life to be.î^
They are to be left alone to fight, to compete, or, word
most favored by this school, to bedance. With de Maeztu
PLURALISM AND TRUE FEDERALISM 307
the balance of power is confessedly the comer-stone of
the new state. "The dilemma which would make us
choose between the State and anarchy is false. There
is another alternative, that of plurality and the balance
of powers, not merely within the nation but in the family
of nations." ^
But whenever you have balance in your premise, you
have anarchy in yoiu conclusion.
The weakness of the reasoning involved in the balance
of power argument has been exposed in so much of the
war literature of the last three years, which has exploded
the balance of power theory between nations, that little
further criticism is needed here. Unity must be om aim
to-day. When you have not unity, you have balance
or struggle or domination — of one over others. The
nations of Europe refuse domination, aim at balance, and
war is the resxdt.
It seems curious that these two movements should be
going on side by side: that we are giving up the idea of
the balance of nations, that we are refusing to think
any longer in terms of "sovereign" nations, and yet at
the same time an increasing nmnber of men should be
advocating balancing, "sovereign" groups within nations.
The plurahsts object to unity, but unity and plurahty
are surely not mcompatible. The true monistic state is
merely the multiple state working out its own imity
from infinite diversity. But the unifying state shows
us what to do with that diversity. What advantage is
that diversity if it is to be always "competing," "fight¬
ing," " balancing P" Only in the unifying state do we
get the full advantage of diversity where it is gathered
up into significance and pointed action.
The practical outcome of the balance theory wiU be
1 This is perhaps a remnant of the nineteenth-century myth that com'^
petition is the mode of progress.
308
THE NEW STATE
first antagonistic interests, then jealous interests, then
competing interests, then dominating interests — a fatal
climax.
The trouble with the balance theory is that by the
time the representatives of the balancing groups meet,
it is too late to expect agreement. The chief objec¬
tion to plurahsm is, perhaps, that it is usually merely a
scheme of representation, that its advocates are usually
talking of the kind of roof they want before they have
laid the foundation stones. No theory of the state can
have vitality which is merely a plan of representation.
The new state must rest on a new conception of living,
on a true imderstanding of the vital modes of association.
The reason why occupational representation must bring
balance and competition is because the integrating of
differences, the essential social process, does not take
place far enough back in om life. If Parhaments are
composed of various groups or interests, the unification
of those interests has to take place in Parliament. But
then it is too late. The ideas of the different groups must
miugle earfier than Parfiament. We must go further
hack than om legislatures for the necessary unifying.
We do not want legislatures fuU of opposing interests.
The ideas of the groups become too crystallized by the
time their representatives get to the Parliament, in fact
they have often hardened into prejudices. Moreover, the
representatives could not go agednst their constituencies,
they would be pledged to specific measmes. The differ¬
ent groups woiild come together each to .try to prevail,
not to go through the only genuine democratic process,
that of trying to integrate their ideas and interests.
When the desire to prevail is once keenly upon us, we
behave very differently than when om object is the seek¬
ing of truth. Suppose I am the representative in Con¬
gress of a group or a party. A hill is under consideration.
PLURALISM AND TRUE FEDERALISM 309
I see a weakness in that biU; if I point it out some one
else may see a remedy for it and the bill may be im¬
mensely improved. Rut do I do this .3 Certainly not.
I am so afraid of the bill being lost if I show any
weakness in it that I keep this insight to myself and my
country loses just so much. I cannot bebeve that occu¬
pational representation wiU foster truth seeking or truth
speaking. It seems to me quite a case of the frying pan
into the fire. Compromise and swapping wiU be the
order in Parbaments based solely on the vocational
principle. The different interests must fight it out in
Parbament. This is fundamentaby against democracy
because it is against the psychological foundation of
democracy, the fundamental law of association. Democ¬
racy depends on the blending, not the balancing, of
interests and thoughts and wiUs. Occupationed repre¬
sentation assumes that you secure the interests of the
whole by securing the interests of every class, the old
particularist faUacy transferred to the group.
Moreover, it is often assumed that because the occu¬
pational group is composed of men of similar interests
we sbab have agreement in the occupational group; it
is taken for granted that in these economic groups the
agreement of opinion necessary for voting wib be auto¬
matic. But do poets or carpenters or photographers
think eJike on more than a very few questions.^ What
we must do is to get behind these electoral methods to
some fundamental method which shall produce agreement.
Moreover, if the Cabinet were made up of these war¬
ring elements, administration would be eilmost impossi¬
ble. Lloyd-George's Cabinet at present is hampered by
too much "difference." I have throughout, to he sure,
been advocating the compoimding of difference as the
secret of pobtics, but the compounding must begin fur¬
ther back in our life than Parbaments or Cabinets.
310
THE NEW STATE
And if you had group representation in England would
not the Ceibinet be made up of the most powerful of the
groups, and would not a feeir of defeat at any particular
time meem overtures to enough of the other groups to
make success in the Cabinet ? And would not an entirely
improper amount of power drift to the Premier under
these circumstances? Have we any leaders who would,
could any one trust himself to, guide the British Cabinet
for the best interests of Great Britain under such condi¬
tions as these?
To sum up: a true federalism cannot rest on balance
or group-rights or consent. Authority, obedience, hberty,
can never be imderstood without an understEinding of the
group process. Some of the advocates of guild socialism
oppose function to authority and hberty, but we can
have function and hberty and authority: authority of
the whole through the hberty of all by means of the
functions of each. These three are inescapably united.
A genuine group, a smaU or large group, association or
state, has the right to the obedience of its members.
No group should be sovereign over another group. The
only right the state has to authority over "other" groups
is as far as those groups are constituent parts of the
state. All groups are not constituent parts of the state
to-day, as the plurahsts cleeirly see. Possibly or proba¬
bly all groups never wiU be, but such perpetuahy self-
actuahzing unity should be the process. Groups are
sovereign over themselves, but in their relation to the
state they are interdependent groups, each recognizing
the claims of every other. Our multiple group hfe is
the fact we have to reckon with; unity is the aim of all
our seeking. And with this xmity wiU appear a sover¬
eignty spontaneously and joyfully acknowledged. In
true federalism, voided of division and balance, lies such
sovereignty.
XXXII
POLITICAL PLURALISM (CONCLUDED)
I HAVE spoken of the endeavor of the pluralist
school to look at things as they are as one of its
excellencies. But a progressive political science
must also decide what it is aimiug at. It is no logical
argument against a sovereign state to say that we
have not one at present, or that our present particular¬
istic states are not successful. Proof of actual plural
sovereignty does not constitute an argument against the
ideal of unified or rather a unifying sovereignty. The
question is do we want a unifying state.!* And if so,
how can we set about getting it .!*
The old theory of the monistic state indeed tended
to make the state absolute. The pluralists are justi¬
fied in their feeu- of a imified state when they conceive
it as a monster which has swallowed up everything
within sight. It reminds one of the nursery rhyme of
one's childhood:
Algy met a bear
The bear was bulgy
The bulge was Algy.
The pluralists say that the monistic state absorbs its
members. (This is a word used by many writers).^ But
the ideal unified state is not aU-eibsorptive; it is aU-
inclusive — a very different matter: we eu'e not, indi¬
vidual or group, to be absorbed into a whole, we are to
be constitutent members of the whole. I am speaking
throughout of the ideal unified state, which I call a uni¬
fying state.
^ See p. 39, note.
311
312
THE NEW STATE
The failure to understand a unifying state is responsi¬
ble for the dread on the one hand of a state which will
"demand" onr allegiance, and on the other of our being
left to the clash of "divided" eiUegiances. Both these
bugbears will disappear only through an understanding
of how each allegiance can minister to every other, and
also through a realization that no single group can em¬
brace my life. It is true that the state as state no more
than family or trade-union or church can "capture my
soul." But this does not mean that I must divide my
allegiance; I must find how I can by being loyal to each
be loyal to all, to the whole. I am an American with
all my heart and soul and at the same time I can work
daily for Boston and Massachusetts. I can work for
my nation through local machinery of city or neighbor¬
hood. My work at office or factory enriches my family
fife; my duty to my family is my most pressing incen¬
tive to do my best work. There is no competing here,
but an infinite munber of filaments cross and recross
and coimect all my various allegiances. We should not
be obliged to choose between our different groups. Com¬
petition is not the soul of true federalism but the inter¬
locking of all interests and all activities.
The true state must gather up every interest within
itself. It must take our many loyalties 6md find how it
can make them one. I have all these different allegiances,
I should indeed lead a divided and therefore uninter¬
esting fife if I could not imify them, Life would be "just
one damned thing after another." The true state has
my devotion because it gathers up into itself the various
sides of me, is the symbol of my multiple self, is my
multiple self brought to significance, to self-reeifization.
If you leave me with my plural selves, you leave me in
desolate places, my soul craving its meaning, its home.
The home of my soul is in the state.
POLITICAL PLURALISM (CONCLUDED) 313
But the true state does not "demand" my allegiance.
It is the spontaneously xmiting, the instmctive self-
unifying of our multiple interests. And as it does not
"demand" allegiance, so also it does not "compete"
with trade-unions etc., as the present state often does,
for my allegiance. We have been recently told that the
tendency of the state is to be intolerant .of " any compet¬
ing interest or faith or hope," but if it is, the cure is not
to make it tolerant, but to make it recognize that the
very substance of its life is all these interests emd faiths
and hopes. Every group which we join must increase
our loyedty to the state because the state must recognize
fully every legitimate interest. Our political machinery
must not be such that I get what I need by pitting the
group which most clearly embodies my need against the
state; it must be such that my loyalty to my trade-union
is truly part of my loyalty to the state.
When I find that my loyalty to my group and my
loyalty to the state conflict (if I am a Quaker and my
country is at war, or if I am a trade-unionist and the com¬
mands of nation smd trade-imion clash at the time of a
strike), I must usually, as a matter of immediate action,
decide between these loyalties. But my duty to either
group or state is not thereby exhausted: I must, if my
disapproval of war is to be neither abandoned nor re¬
main a mere particularist conviction, seek to change the
policy of my state in regard to its foreign relations; I
must, knowing that there can be no sound national fife
where trade-unions are pitted against the state, seek
to bring about those changes in our industrial emd
political organization by which the interests of my trade-
union can become a constituent part of the interests of
the state.
I feel capable of more thtm a multiple allegiance, I
feel capable of a unified allegiance. A unified allegiance
314
THE NEW STATE
the new state will claim, but that is something very dif¬
ferent from em "undivided" allegiance. It is, to use
James' phrase again, a compoxmding of allegiances.
"Multiple allegiemce" leaves us with the eibnormed idea
of competing groups. " Supplementeuy edlegiance" gives
us too fragmentary an existence. "Cooperative alle¬
giance" comes neeurer the truth. Cem we not perhaps
imagine a cooperative or unified allegiance, aU these
various and varying allegiances actually living in emd
through the other
We need not fear the state if we could understand it
as the unifying power: it is the state-principle when
two or three are gathered together, when £my differences
me harmonized. Our problem is how all the separate
community sense and community loyalty and commu¬
nity responsibihty can be gathered up into larger com¬
munity sense emd loyalty and control.
One thing more it is necessary to hem in mind in
considering the unified state, and that is that a unify¬
ing state is not a static state. We, organized as the
state, may issue certcdn commands to ourselves to-day,
but organized as a plastic state, those commands may
change to-morrow with our changing needs and chang¬
ing ideals, and they will change through our initiative.
The true state is neither an external force nor an un¬
changing force. Rooted in our most intimate daily fives,
in those bonds which are at the same time the strongest
and the most pliant, the " eibsolutism " of the true state
depends always upon our activity. The objectors to
the unified state seem to imply that it is necessmily a
ready-made state, with hard and fast articulations, ex¬
isting apart from us, imposing its commands upon us
which we must obey; but the truth is that the state
must be in perfect flux and that it is utterly dependent
upon us for its appearance. In so far as we actualize
POLITICAL PLURALISM (CONCLUDED) 315
it, it appears to us; we recognize that it is wrong, then
we see it in a higher form and actualize that. The true
state is not an arbitrary creation. It is a process: a con¬
tinual self-modification to express its different stages of
growth which each and aU must be so flexible that con¬
tinual change of form is twin-feUow of continual growth.
But the objections that can be raised against the
pluralists do not destroy the great value of their contri¬
bution to political thought.
First, they prick the bubble of the present state's
right to supremacy. They see that the state which has
been slowly forming since the Middle Ages with its pre¬
tences and unfulfilled claims has not won either our re¬
gard or respect. Why then, they ask, should we render
this state obedience ? " [The state must] prove itself by
what it achieves." With the latter we are all beginning
to agree.
Genuine power, in the sense not of power actually
possessed, but in the sense of a properly evolved power, is,
we have seen, an actual psychological process. Inval¬
uable, therefore, is the implicit warning of the pluralists
that to attain this power is an infinite task. Sover¬
eignty is always a-growing; our political forms must
keep closely in touch with the specific stage of that
growth. In rendering the state obedience, we assume
that the state has genuine power (because the con¬
sequences of an opposite assumption would be too dis¬
astrous) while we are trying to approximate it. The
great lesson of Mr. Laski's book is in its implication that
we do not have a sovereign state until we make one.
Pohtical theory will not create sovereignty, acts of Par-
ÜEnnent caimot confer sovereignty, only living the life
will turn us, subjects indeed at present, into kings of our
own destiny.
Moreover, recently some of the pluralists are beginning
316
THE NEW STATE
to use the phrase cooperative sovereignty ^ which seems
happily to be taking them away from their earlier "strung-
along" sovereignty. If they press along this path, we
shall all be eager to follow.
Secondly, they recognize the value of the group and
they see that the variety of our group Kfe to-day has a
significance which must be immediately reckoned with
in pohtical method. Moreover they repudiate the idea
that the groups are given authority by the state. An
able pohtical writer recently said, "All other societies
rest on the authority given by the state. The state
itself stands self-sufficient, self-directing. ..." It is
this school of thought which the pluralists are combat¬
ing and thereby rendering invaluable service to pohtical
theory.
Third, and directly connected with the last point, they
plead for a revivification of local hfe. It is interesting
to note that the necessity of this is recognized both by
those who think the state has failed and by tbose who
wish to increase the power of the state. To the former,
the group is to be the substitute for the repudiated state.
As for the latter, the Fabians have long felt that local
units should be vitalized and educated and interested, for
they thought that socialism would begin with the city "and
other local units. Neighborhood education and neigh¬
borhood organization is then the pressing problem of
1918. All those who are looking towards a real democ¬
racy, not the pretence of one which we have now, feel
that the most imminent of our needs is the awakening
and invigorating, the educatiug and organizing of the
local unit. All those who in the humblest way, in settle¬
ment or community centre, are working for this, are
working at the greatest pohtical problem of the twentieth
century.
^ Mr. Laski, I think.
POLITICAL PLURALISM (CONCLUDED) 317
In the fourth place the plurahsts see that the interest
of the state is not now always identical with the interests
of its parts. It is to the interest of England to win this
war, they say, but Engleuid has yet to prove that it is
also for the interest of her working people.
In the fifth place, we may hail the group school as the
beginning of the disappearance of the crowd. Many
people advocate vocational representation because they
see in it a method of getting away from our present
crowd rule, what they call numerical representation.
They see our present voters hypnotized by their leaders
and manipulated by "interests," and propose the occu¬
pational group as a substitute for the crowd. New politi¬
cal experiments must indeed be edong this fine. We
must guard only (1) that the "group" itself shall not
be a crowd, (2) that the union of groups shall not be a
numerical union.
Finally, this new school contains the prophecy of the
futme because it has with keenest insight seized upon
the problem of identity, of association, of federalism,^
as the centred problem of politics as it is the central
problem of fife. The force of the pluralist school is
that it is not academic; it is considering a question
which every thoughtful person is asking himself. We
are faced to-day with a variety of group interests, with
many objects demanding our enthusiasm and devotion;
our duty itself shines, not a single fight showing a single
path, but shedding a larger radiance on a fife which is
most gloriously not a path at aU. Shah Boston or Wash¬
ington hold me, my family, my church, my union With
the complexity of interests increasing every day on the
outside, inside with the power of the soul to ' belong"
^ It does not matter in the terms of which branch of study you express
it — philosophy, sociology, or political science — it is always the same
problem.
318
THE NEW STATE
expanding every day (the English and the French flags
stir us hardly less than the American now), with the
psychologists talking of pluralism and the pohtical sci¬
entists of multiple sovereignty, with aU this yet the soul
of man seeks unity in obedience to his essential natiue.
How is this to be obtained? Social evolution is in the
hands of those who can solve this problem.
What is the law of pohtics that corresponds in impor¬
tance to the law of gravitation in the physical world?
It is the law of interpénétration and of multiples. I am
the multiple man and the multiple man is the germ of
the imified state. If I live fully I become so enriched
by the manifold sides of Hfe that I cannot be narrowed
down to mere corporation or chinrch or trade-union or
any other special group. The miracle of spirit is that
it can give itself utterly to aU these things and yet remeiin
unimpaired, unexhausted, undivided. I am not a serial
story to be read only in the different instalments of my
different groups. We do not give a part to one group
and a part to smother, but we give our whole to each
and the whole remains for every other relation. Life
escapes its classifications and this is what some of the
writers on group organization do not seem to under¬
stand. This secret of the spirit is the power of the fed¬
eral principle. True federation multiphes each individual.
We have thought that federal government consisted of
mechanical, artificial, external forms, but really it is the
spirit which liveth and giveth life.
Let the pluralists accept this principle and they will
no longer teU us that they are torn by a divided alle¬
giance. Let them carry their pragmatism a step further
and they will see that it is only by actual living that we
can understand an undivided allegiance. James tells
us that "Reality falls in passing into conceptual analysis;
it mounts in living its own undivided life — it buds and
POLITICAL PLURALISM (CONCLUDED) 319
bourgeons, changes and creates." This is the way we
must understand an undivided allegiance. I live for¬
ever the imdivided life. As an individual I am the
undivided one, as the group-I, I eun again the imdivided
one, as the state-I, I am the undivided one — I am
always emd forever the undivided one, mounting from
height to height, always mounting, always the whole
of me mounting.
XXXIII
INCREASING RECOGNITION OF THE OCCUPATIONAL
GROUP
From the confessedly embryonic stage of think¬
ing in which the movement for group organiza¬
tion still is, two principal questions have emerged:
(1) shall the groups form a pluralistic or a unifying state,
(2) shall the economic group be the sole basis of repre¬
sentation? The first question I have tried to answer,
the second offers greater difficulties with omr present
amount of experience. Men often discuss the occupa¬
tional vs. the neighborhood group on the pivotal ques¬
tion— which of these is nearest a man? Benoist's plea
for the occupational group was that politics must repre¬
sent la vie. But, agreed as to that, we stiU question
whether the occupational group is the most complete
embodiment of la vie.
It is not, however, necessary to balance the advan¬
tages of neighborhood and occupational group, for I am
not -proposing that the neighborhood group take the
place of the occupational. We may perhaps come to
wish for an integration of neighborhood and industrial
groups — and other groups too as their importance and
usefulness demand — as their "objective" value appears.
In our neighborhood group we shall find that we can
correct many partial points of view which we get from
our more specialized groups. A director of a corporation
will be more valuable to his state and even to his cor¬
poration if he is at the same time the member of a neigh¬
borhood group. It may be that we shall work out some
320
THE OCCUPATIONAL GROUP 321
machinery by which the neighborhood group can include
the occupational group. AJI our functions must be
expressed, but somewhere must come that coordination
which win give them their real effectiveness. We sire
not yet ready to say what the machinery will be, only
to recognize some of the principles which should guide
us in constructing that machinery. The power of an
individual is his power to hve a vital group life. The
more your society is diversified in group hfe, the higher
the stage of civihzation. Perhaps the destiny of the
neighborhood group is to interpret and correlate, to
give full significsince and vsJue to, all the spontsineous
association which our increasingly fuller and more varied
hfe is constantly creating. It may be that the neighbor¬
hood group is not so much to include the others as to
make each see its relation through every other to every
other.^ The possible solution, mentioned above, of the
two houses of our legislatures and parhaments dividing
neighborhood and occupational representation, seems a
httle crude now to our further analysis unless some
practical integration is being worked out at the same
time in the local unit. But all this must be a matter of
experiment and experience, of patient trial and open-
minded observation.^
The sahent fact, however, is that neighborhood and
occupational groups, either independently or one through
the other, must both find representation in the state.
But we must remember that it is industry which must be
included in the state, not labor, but labor and capital.
This war certainly shows us the importance of the great
' See pp. 199-201.
2 Some writers talk of trade representation vs. party organization as
if in the trade group you are rid of party. Have they studied the poli¬
tics of trade unionism P In neither the trade group nor the neighborhood
group do you automatically get rid of the party spirit. That will be a
slow growth indeed.
322
THE NEW STATE
organizations of industry. Let them be integrated openly
with the state on the side of their pubhc service, rather
theui allow a back-stairs connection on the side of their
"interests." And let them be integrated in such manner
that labor itself is at last included in our pohticed organi¬
zation. This will not be easy; as a matter of fact we
have no more difiScult, as we have no more important,
problem before us than the relation within the state of
one powerful organized body to another and of these
bodies to the state. The average Americem is against the
growth of corporate bodies. But this prejudice must
go: we need strong corporate bodies not to compete
with the state but to minister to the state. Individ¬
ualism and concentrated authority have been strug¬
gling for supremacy with us since the beginning of our
government. From the beginning of our government we
have been seeking the synthesis of the two. That syn¬
thesis is to be found in the recognition of organized
groups, but not, I beUeve, by taking away power from
the state and giving to the group. Some of the pluralista,
in their reaction to the present fear of powerful groups,
advocate that groups shoxild be given more and more
power. I agree with them so far, but their implication
is that we shall thereby have shorn the Samson locks of
the state. This I do not believe we want to do.
Every one sees the necessity to-day of the increase of
state control as a weu- measure, but some tell us that we
should guard against its dangers by giving to certain
orgEuiizations within the state enough power to "bal¬
ance" the state. I insist that balance can never be the
aim of sormd political method. We must first change
our conception of the state — substitute the Service
State for the Sovereign State — then methods must be
devised within which such new conception can operate.
We should, indeed, give more and more power to the
THE OCCUPATIONAL GROUP 323
groups, or rather, because we can never "give" power,
we should recognize edl the power which springs up
spontaneously within the state, and seek merely those
methods by which that self-generating power shall tend
immediately to become part of the strength of the state.
How absurd our logic has been. We knew that it took
strong men to make a strong state; we did not reahze
that those groups which represent the whole industry
and business of the country need not be rivals of the
state, but must be made to contribute to the state, must
be the means by which the state becomes great and
powerful at the SEune time that it uses that power for the
weU-being and growth of aU. Our timidity has been but
the reflection of our ignorance. A larger understanding
is what we need to-day. There is no need to condemn
the state, as do the pluralists; there is no need to con¬
demn om great corporate bodies, as do their opponents.
But full of distrust we shall surely be, on one side or
the other, until we come truly to understand a state
and to create a state which ministers continuously to
its parts, while its parts from hour to hour serve only the
enhancement of its hfe, and through it, the enhancement
of the hfe of its humblest member.
The tendency to which we have long been subject, to
do away with everything which stood between man and
the state, must go, but that does not mean that we must
fly to the other extreme and do away with either the
individual or the state. One of the chief weaknesses of
pohticcd plurahsm is that it has so many of the earmarks
of a reaction — the truth is that we have groups and
man and the state, all to deal with.
Neighborhood groups, economic groups, unifying groups,
these have been my themes, and yet the point which
I wish to emphasize is not the kind of group, but that
the group whatever its nature shall be a genuine group.
324
THE NEW STATE
that we can have no genuine state at all which does
not rest on genuine groups. Few trade-unionists in de¬
manding that their organization shall be the basis of
the new state examine that organization to see what
right it has to make this demand. Most trade-unionists
are satisfied in their own organizations with a central¬
ized government or an outworn representative system.
Labor can never have its full share in the control of
industry until it has leeu'nt the secrets of the group
process. Collective bargaining must first be the result
of a genuine collective wiU before it can successfully pass
on to directorate representation, to complete joint
control.^
It is significant, that the guild socialists, in considering
how acrimonious disputes between guilds are to be
avoided, say that "the labor emd brains of each Guild
naturally [wiU evolve^ a hierarchy to which large issues
of industrial policy might with confidence be referred,"
emd "at the back of this hierarchy and finally dominat¬
ing it, is the Guild democracy. ..." But then guild
sociahsm is to have no different psychological basis
from our present system. This is exactly what we rely
on now so patiently, so unsuccessfully — the lead of the
few, the following of the crowd, with the fiction that,
as our government is based on numbers, the crowd ceux
always have what it wEmts; therefore, at Emy moment
what we have is what we have chosen — Tammany
1 Yet perhaps the trade-union has been one of the truest groups, one
of the most effective teachers of genuine group lessons which we have yet
seen. Increased wages, improved conditions, are always for the group.
The trade-unionist feels group-wants; he seeks to satisfy these through
group action. Moreover the terms of a collective bargain cannot be
enforced without a certain amount of group solidarity. In strikes work¬
men often sacrifice their own interests for what will benefit the union:
the individual-I may prefer his present wages to the privations of a
strike; the group-I wants to raise the wages of the whole union.
THE OCCUPATIONAL GROUP 325
rule for instance. We need a new method: the group
process must be apphed to industrial groups as well as
to neighborhood groups, to business groups, to profes¬
sional societies — to every form of human association.
If the labor question is to be solved by a system of
economic control based on economic representation in¬
stead of upon vital modes of association, "industrial
democracy" wiU fail exactly as so-called pohtical democ¬
racy has failed.
Perhaps this warning is particularly necessary at the
present moment because "group" control of industry
seems imminent. Through the pressure of the war
guild socialism has made practical as well as theoretical
headway in Englemd. There are two movements going
on side by side, both due it is true to the emergency of
war, but neither of which wiU be wholly lost when the
weu- is over; it is the opinion of many, on the contrary,
that these movements are destined to shape a new state
for England. First, the government has assumed a cer-
tedn amoimt of control over munition plants, railroads,
mines, breweries, flour mills and factories of various
kinds, and it has undertaken the regulation of wages
and prices, control of markets and food consiunption,
taxation of profits etc.^
Secondly, at the same time that the state is assuming
a larger control of industry, it is inviting the workmen
themselves to take part in the control of industry. " The
Whitley Report, adopted by the Reconstruction Commit¬
tee of the Cabinet, proposes not only a Joint Stand¬
ing Industrial Council for each great national industry,
for the regular consideration of matters affecting the
progress and well-being of the trade, but District Councils
^ I have not in this brief statement distinguished between government
"ownership," "control," "regulation," etc. See "War-Time Control of
Industry" by Howard L. Gray.
326
THE NEW STATE
and Works Committees within each business upon which
capital and labor shall be equally represented." These
bodies wiU take up "questions of standard wages, hours,
overtime, apprenticeship, shop discipline, . . . technical
training, industrial research and invention, the adoption of
improved machinery and processes, emd all those matters
which are included under ' scientific management.'
This is a step which goes far beyond arbitration and
concihation boards. It gives to labor a positive share
in the control of industry. "Although it is not at pres¬
ent proposed to give any legal recognition to this new
machinery of economic government or any legal enforce¬
ment of its decision, ... it may reasonably be expected
that [these national industrial councils] will soon become
the effective legislature of the industry."
Most noteworthy is the general acceptemce of this plan.
"All classes appear to be willing and even anxious to
apply the principle of representative self-government not
only to the conduct of the great trades but to their con¬
stituent businesses." Undoubtedly the English laborer has
an increasing fear of bureaucracy and this is turning him
from state socialism: his practical experience dming the
war of "tyremnical" bureaucracy in the government con¬
trolled industries has lost state socialism many supporters.
The establishment of the Standing Industrial Councils
is a step towards guild socialism although (1) the deter¬
mination of lines of production, the buying and selling
processes, questions of finance, everything in fact out¬
side shop-management, is at present left to the employers,
and (2) the capitalist is left in possession of his capital.
But this movement taken together with the one men¬
tioned above, that is, the trend towards state-ownership
or joint ownership or partial control, has large signifi-
^ " Representative Government in British Industry" by J. A. Hobson»
in New Republic^ September 1, 1917.
THE OCCUPATIONAL GROUP 327
cance: the state to own the means of production, the
producéis to control the conditions of production, seems
like the next step in industrial development, in govern¬
ment form, — the fact that these two go together, that
govermnent form is to follow industrial development,
gives us large hope for the future.
The British Labor Party in 1917 formulated a care¬
ful plan for reorganization with a declared object of
common ownership of means of production and "a
steadily increasing participation of the organized work¬
ers in the management."^ This wording is significant.
In America also the pressure of war has led to the
recognition of labor in the control of industry. Adjust¬
ment boards containing leibor representatives have been
required of almost all private employers signing con¬
tracts with the War and Navy Departments.^ The
pohcy of the administration is to recognize collective
bargaining. And the President's Mediation Commis¬
sion, which imposed collective agreements on the copper
industry of Arizona, stated in its ofiBcial report, "The
leaders of industry must . . . [enable] labor to teike
its place as a coöperator in the industrial enterprise."
Moreover, the workman is geiining recognition not only
in the management of the industry in which he is engaged,
but eJso at Washington. On most of the important
government boards which deal with matters affecting
labor, labor is represented. The work of the War Labor
Board and the War Labor Policies Board meak our ad¬
vance in the treatment of labor questions.
The "National Party," inaugurated in Chicago in
1 See p. 120.
2 Following the precedent of England which provided, under the
Munitions of War act and other legislation, machinery (joint boards
representing employers and employed) for the prevention and adjustment
of labor disputes.
328
THE NEW STATE
October, 1917, composed largely of socialists, had for one
plank in its platform, "The chief industries should he
controlled hy administrative hoards upon which the
workers, the managers and the government should all
he represented." Thus the old state socialism is passing.
In France long before the war we see the beginnings
of syndicahsm in the steps taken to give to the actual
teaching force of universities a shcure in the administra¬
tion of the depsatment of education. In 1896-1897 uni¬
versity councils were established, composed of deans and
two delegates elected hy each university faculty. While
these councils are under ministeried control, this is hailed
as the beginning of functionarist decentralization in
France. In 1910 was organized the representation of aU
the personnel of the service of post, telephone and tele¬
graph in regional and central councils of discipline, and
also advisory representation to the heads of the service.
The best part of syndicalism is its recognition that
every department of our hfe must he controlled hy those
who know most about that depentment, hy those who
have most to do with that department. Teachers should
share both in the legislation and the administration
affecting education. Factory laws should not he made
hy a Parhament in which factory managers and em¬
ployees are not, or are only partially, represented.
One movement toward syndicalism we see everywhere:
the forming of professional groups — commercial, Hter-
ary, scientific, artistic — is as marked as the forming of
industrial groups. Any analysis of society to-day must
study its groupings faithfully. We are told too that in
France these professional groups are beginning to have
pohtical power, as was seen in several large towns in
the municipal elections before the war. Similar in¬
stances are not wanting in England and America.
In Germany there are three strong "interest" organ-
THE OCCUPATIONAL GROUP 329
izations which have a large influence on politics: the
"Landlords' League" which represents the conserva¬
tives, the "Social Democrats" who represent leibor, and
the "Hanseatic League for Manufactures, Trade and
Industry" founded in 1909 with the express object of
bringing forward its members as candidates for the
Reichstag and Landtags.^
We have an interesting instance in the United States
of pohtical organization on occupational lines from which
we may learn much—I refer to the Nonpartisan league
of North Dakota composed of farmers which, inaugurated
in 1915, in 1916-7 carried the state elections of North
Dakota, electing a farmer-governor, and putting their
candidates in three of the supreme court judgeships, and
gaining 105 out of the 138 seats in the state legislature.
The first object of the league was the redress of economic
injustice suffered by the farmer. They saw that this
must be done through concerted control of the political
machinery. Of the legislation they wished, they secured:
(1) a new office of State Inspector of Grains, Weights
and Measmes, (2) partial exemption of farm improve¬
ments from taxation, (3) a new cooperative corporation
law, and (4) a law to prevent railroads from discriminat¬
ing, in supplying freight-cars, against elevators owned
by farmers' cooperative societies.
In 1917 a Feirmers' Nonpartisan League of the state
of New York was organized. In September, 1917, the
North Dakota League became the "National Non¬
partisan League," the organization spreading to several
of the neighboring states: Minnesota, South Dakota,
Idaho, Montana, etc. At the North Dakota state
primaries held in the smnmer of 1918, nearly all the
League's candidates were nominated, thus insuring the
continuance of its control of the state government.
^ Ghristensen, PoKtics and Crowd MoraKty," p. 238.
330
THE NEW STATE
In Denmark we are told the battle rages between the
agrarian party and the labor party. More and more the
struggle in Parbamentary cormtries is becoming a strug¬
gle between interests rather than between parties based
on abstract principles. This must be fully taken into
account in the new state.
The hoped-for relation of industry to the state might
be summed up thus : we want a state which shall include
industry without on the one hemd abdicating to industry,
or on the other controlling industry bureaucratically.
The present plans for guild socialism or syndicate con¬
trol, while they point to a possible future development,
and while they may be a step on the way, as a scheme of
political orgemization have many weak points. Such
experiments as the Industrial Councils of Englemd are
interesting, but until fmther technique is worked out
we shall find that individual selQshness merely gives
way to group selfishness. From such experiments we
shall learn much, but the new ship of state cannot ride
on such turbulent waters.
The part labor will take in the new state depends now
largely upon labor itself. Labor must see that it can¬
not reiterate its old cries, that it need no longer demand
"rights." It is a question of a new conception of the
state and labor seeing its place within it. For a new
state is coming — we cannot be blind to the signs on
every side, we cannot be deaf to the voices within.
Labor needs leaders to-day who are edive not to the
needs of labor, but to the needs of the whole state : then
it will be seen as a corollary how labor fits in, what the
state needs from Icibor, what labor needs from the state,
what part labor is to have in the state.
PART IV
THE DUAL ASPECT OF THE GROUP:
A UNION OF INDIVIDUALS, AN INDIVIDUAL IN A
LARGER UNION
XXXIV
THE MORAL STATE AND CREATIVE CITIZENSHIP
WE see now that the state as the appearance
of the federal principle must be more than
a coordinating agency. It must appear as
the great moral leader. Its supreme function is moral
ordering. What is morality.!* The fulfilment of rela¬
tion by man to man, since it is impossible to conceive an
isolated man: the father and mother appear in our mind
and with the three the whole infinite series. The state
is the ordering of this infinite series into their right
relations that the greatest possible welfare of the total
may be worked out. This ordering of relations is
morality in its essence and completeness. The state
must gather up into itself all the moral power of its day,
and more than this, as our relations are widening con¬
stantly it must be the explorer which discovers the kind
of ordering, the kind of grouping, which best expresses
its intent.
But "things are rotten in Denmark." The world is
at present a moral bankrupt, for nations are immoral
and men worship their nations. We have for centuries
been thinking out the morals of individueds. The moral¬
ity of the state must now have equal consideration. We
spring to that duty to-day. We have the ten command¬
ments for the individual; we want the ten command¬
ments for the state.
How is the state to gain moral and spiritual authority ?
Only through its citizens in their growing understand-
mg of the widening promise of relation. The neighbor¬
hood group feeds the imagination because we have daily
333
334
THE NEW STATE
to consider the wants of all in order to make a synthesis
of those wants ; we have to recognize the rights of others
and adapt ourselves to them. Men must recognize and
unify difference emd then the moral law appears in all its
majesty in concrete form. This is the universal striving.
This is the trend of all nature — the harmonious uni¬
fying of all. The caU of the moral law is constantly to
recognize this. Our neighborhood group gives us pre¬
eminently the opportunity for moral training, the asso¬
ciated groups continue it, the goal, the infinite goal, the
emergence of the aU-inclusive state which is the visible
appearance of the total relativity of man in eiU right
connections and articulations.
The state accinnulates moral power only through the
spiritual activity of its citizens. There is no state except
through me. James' deep-seated antagonism to the
idealists is because of their assertion that the absolute is,
always has been and always wfil be. The contribution
of pragmatism is that we must work out the absolute.
You are drugging yourselves, cries James, the absolute
is real as far as you make it real, as feu* as you bring forth
in tangible, concrete form aU its potentiaHties. In the
same way we have no state xmtil we make one. This is
the teaching of the new psychology. We have not to
"postulate" all sorts of things as the philosophers do
("organic actuality of the morid order" etc.), we have to
live it; if we can make a moral whole then we shall know
whether or not there is one. We cannot become the
state imaginatively, but only actually through our group
relations. Stamped with the image of All-State-poten-
tiality we must be forever making the state. We are
pragmatists in pohtics as the new school of philosophy
is in religion: just as they say that we are one with God
not by prayer and conmnmion alone, but by doing the
God-deed every moment, so we ene one with the state
THE MORAL STATE
335
by actualizing the latent state at every instant of our
lives. As God appears only through us, so is the state
made visible through the pohtical man. We must gird
up our loins, we must light our lamp and set forth, we
must do it.
The federal state can be the moral state only through
its being built smew from hour to hour by the activity
of all its members. We have had within our memory
three ideas of the individual's relation to society: the
individual as deserving "rights" from society, next with
a duty to society, and now the idea of the individual
as an activity of society. Our relation to society is so
close that there is no room for either rights or duties.
This means a new ethics and a new pohtics. Citizen¬
ship is not a right nor a privilege nor a duty, but an
activity to be exercised every moment of the time.
Democracy does not exist unless each man is doing his
part fully every minute, unless every one is taking his
share in building the state-to-be. This is the trumpet
call to men to-day. A creative citizenship must be made
the force of Americem pohtical hfe, a trained, responsi¬
ble citizenship always in control creating always its own
hfe. In most of the writing on American pohtics we find
the demand for a "creative statesmanship" as the most
pressing need of America to-day. It is indeed true that
with so much crystahized conservatism and chaotic
radicahsm we need leadership and a constructive leader¬
ship, but the doctrine of true democracy is that every
man is and must be a creative citizen.
We are now awaking to this need. In the past the
American conception of government has been a machine-
made not a man-made thing. We have wanted a perfect
machine which could be set going hke an international
exhibition by pressing the button, but who is going to
press the button? We have talked about the pubhc
336
THE NEW STATE
without thinking that we were the public, of puhhc
opinion as something quite distinct from any opinion of
our own. It is partly because men have not wanted the
trouble of governing themselves that they have put all
their faith in "good" officials and "good" charters.
"I hate this school, I wish it would burn up," wrote a
boy home, "there's too much old self-government about
it, you can't have any fun." Many of us have not
wanted that kind of government.
The idea of the state as a collection of units has fatally
misled us in regard to our duty as citizens. A man often
thinks of his share in the collective responsibihty for
Boston as a 1/500,000 part of the whole responsibihty.
This is too small a part to interest him, and therefore
he often disregards such an infinitesimal duty altogether.
Of course we teU him about httle drops of water, httle
grains of semd etc., but hitherto such eloquence has pro¬
duced little effect. This is because it is untrue. We must
somehow make it clear that the part of every man in a
great city is not analagous to the grain of sand in the
desert, it is not a 1/500,000 part of the whole duty. It
is a part so boimd up with every other part that no
fraction of a whole can represent it. It is hke the key
of a piemo, the value of which is not in its being 1/56 of
all the notes, but in its infinite relations to all the other
notes. If that note is lacking every other note loses its
value.
Another twist in our ideas which has tended to reduce
our sense of personal responsibihty has been that we
have often thought of democracy as a happy method by
which all our particular limitations are lost sight of in
the general strength. Matthew Arnold said, "Democ¬
racy is a force in which the concert of a great number
of men makes up for the weakness of each man taken
by himself." But there is no mysterious value in people
THE MORAL STATE
337
conceived of all together. A lot of ignorant or a lot
of bad people do not acquire wisdom and virtue the
moment we conceive them collectively. There is no
alchemy by which the poornesses and weaknesses of the
individual get transmuted in the group; there is no
trick by which we can lose them in the whole. The
truth is that all that the individual has or is enhemces
society, all that the individual lacks, detracts from
society. The state wiU become a splendid thing when
each one of us becomes a splendid individual. Democ¬
racy does not mean being lost in the mass, it means
the contribution of every power I possess to social uses.
The individual is not lost in the whole, he makes the
whole.
A striking exception to the attitude of the average
American in the matter of his personal responsibihty
was Mr. John Jay Chapman's visit to Coatesville, Penn¬
sylvania, to do penance for "that blot on American
history"—the bnrning a negro to death in the public
square of CoatesviUe — because he felt that "it was not
the wickedness of Coatesville but the wickedness of all
America."
But there are signs to-day of a new spirit among us.
We have begun to be restless under our present pohtical
forms: we are demanding that the machine give way to
the man, we want a world of men governed by the wiU
of men. What signs have we that we are now ready for
a creative citizenship.^
Every one is claiming to-day a share in the larger hfe
of society. Each of us wants to pour forth in commun¬
ity use the life that we feel weUing up within us. Cit¬
izens' associations, civic clubs and forums are springing up
every day in every part of the country. Men are seek¬
ing through direct government a closer share in law¬
making. The woman suffrage movement, the labor
338
THE NEW STATE
movement, are parts of this vital and irresistible current.
They have not come from surface springs, their sources
are deep in the life forces of our age. There is a more
fundamental cause of our present unrest than the super¬
ficial ones given for the woman movement, or the selfish
ones given for our labor troubles: it is not the "demand
for justice" from women nor the "economic greed" of
labor, but the desire for one's place, for each to give his
share, for each to control his own fife — this is the under¬
lying thought which is so profoundly moving both men
and women to-day.
But a greater awakening has come since April, 1917.
It has taken the ploughshare of fire to reveal our true
selves: this war is running the furrows deep in the
hearts of men and turning up desires of which they
were unconscious themselves in their days of ease. Men
are flocking to Washington at the sacrifice of business
and personal interests willing to pom out their all for
the great stake of democracy; the moment came when
the possession of self-government was imperilled and
all leapt forward ready to lay down their lives to preserve
it. This war has revealed the deeper self with its deeper
wishes to every man and he sees that he prizes beyond
life the power to govern himself. Now is the moment
to use aU this rush of patriotism and devotion and love
of Kberty and willingness to serve, and not let it sink
back again into its hidden and subterranean depths.
Let us develop the kind of institutions which will call
forth and utilize these powers and energies for peace as
for war, for the works of peace are glorious if men can
but see the goal. Let us make a fitting abiding place
for men's innate grandeur. Let us build high the walls
of democracy and enlarge its comts for om daily dwelling.
Then must men understand that in peace as in war
cms is to be a fife of endeavor, of work, of conscious
THE MORAL STATE
339
effort towards conscious ends. The ordinary man is
not to do his work and then play a little in order to re¬
fresh himself, with the understemding that the world of
industry and the government of his country are to he
run by experts. They are to be run by him euid he is to
prepare himself to tackle his job. The leisure-time
problem is not how the workman can have more time
for play, it is how he can have more time for association,
to take his share in the integrated thought and will and
responsibility which is to make the new world. The
"good citizen" is not he who obeys the laws, but he who
has an active sense of being an integral part of the state.
This is the essence and the basis of effective good citizen¬
ship. We are not part of a nation because we are living
within its boundaries, because we feel in sympathy with
it and have accepted its ideas, because we have become
naturalized. We are part of a nation only in so far as
we are helping to make that nation.
For this we must provide methods by which every
man is enabled to take his part. We are no longer to
put business and political affairs in the hands of one
set of men and then appoint another set as watch-dogs
over them, with the people at best a sort of chorus in
the backgroimd, at the worst practically non-existent.
But we are so to democratize our industrial and our
pohtical methods that all will have a share in policy
and in responsibility. Exhortation to good citizenship
is useless. We get good citizenship by creating those
forms within which good citizenship can operate, by
making it possible to acquire the habit of good citizen¬
ship by the practice of good citizenship.
The neighborhood group gives the best opportunity
for the training and for the practice of citizenship. The
leader of a neighborhood group should he able to help
every one discover his greatest abihty, he should see
340
THE NEW STATE
the stimulus to apply, the path of approach, that the
constituents of his neighborhood should not merely
serve, but should serve in exactly that way which wül
best fit themselves into the community's needs. The
system of war registration where men and women record
what they are best able to do, might, through the medium
of the neighborhood group, be apphed to the whole
country. The chief object of neighborhood orgemization
is not to right wrongs, as is often supposed, but to found
more firmly and build more widely the right.
Moreover, neighborhood organization gives us a defi¬
nite objective for individual responsibility. We cannot
understemd our duty or perform our duty unless it is a
duty to something. It is because of the erroneous notion
that the individual is related to "society" rather than
to a group or groups that we can trace much of our lack
of responsibility. A man trusts vaguely that he is doing
his duty to "society," but such vagueness gets him
nowhere. There is no "society," and therefore he
often does no duty. But let him once understand that
his duty is to his group — to his neighborhood group, to
his industrial group — and he wül begin to see his duty
as a specific, concrete thing taking definite shape for him.
But my gospel is not for a moment of citizenship as a
mere duty. We must bring to pofitics passion and joy.
It is not through the cramping and stultification of desire
that life is nobly lived, it is through seeing life in its ful¬
ness. We want to use the whole of man. You cannot
put some of his energies on one side and some on the
other and say some are good and some bad — all are
good £md should be put to good use. Men fofiow their
passions and should do so, but they must purify their
passions, educate them, disciphne and direct them. We
turn our impulses to wrong uses, but our impulses are
not wrong. The forces of life should be used, not stifled.
THE MORAL STATE
341
It is not corruption, dishonesty, we have to fight; it is
ignorance, lack of insight, desires not transmuted. We
want a state which will transmute the instincts of men
into the energies of the nation. You cannot dam the
stream entirely, you can only see that it flows so as to
irrigate and fructify. It edl comes down to our fern of
men. If we could believe in men, if we could see that
circle which imites human passion and divine achieve¬
ment as a halo round the head of each human being,
then social and politiced reorganization would no longer
be a hope but a fact. The old individualism feared men;
the corner-stone of the new individualism is faith in
men. We need a constructive faith and a robust faith,
faith in men, in this world, in this day, in the Here and
the Now.
From the belief of savages in the spirits who ruled
their fate to the "power outside ourselves that makes for
righteousness," through the weak man's rebanee on luck
and the strong man's reliance on his isolated individ-
UEibty, we have had innumerable forms of the misunder-
stemding of responsibibty. But aU this is now changing.
The distinguishing mark of our age is that we are com¬
ing to a keen sense of personal responsibibty, that we
are taking upon ourselves the blame for ab our evils,
the charge for aU our progress. We are beginning to
reabze that the redemptive power is within the social
bond, that we have creative evolution only through indi¬
vidual responsibibty.
The old ways of thinking are breaking up. The New
Life is before us. Are we ready Are we making our¬
selves ready!* A new man is needed for the New Life —
a man who understands self-discipbne, who understands
training, who is willing to purge himself of his particu-
larist desires, who is conscious of relations as the stuff of
his existence.
342
THE NEW STATE
To sum up this chapter: the moral state is the task of
man. This must be achieved through the creative power
of man as brought into visibility and actuahty through
his group hfe. The great cosmic force in the womb of
humanity is latent in the group as its creative energy;
that it may appear the individual must do his duty every
moment. We do not get the whole power of the group
unless every individual is given full value, is giving full
value. It is the creative spontaneity of each which
makes life march on irresistibly to the purposes of the
wholê. Om* social and poUtical organization must be
such that this group hfe is possible. We hear much of
"the wasted forces of our nation." The neighborhood
organization movement is a movement to use some of
the wasted forces of this nation — it is the biggest move¬
ment yet conceived for conservation. Have we more
"value" in forests and water-power in America than
in human beings.!^ The new generation cries, "No, this
releEise of the spiritual energy of human beings is to be
the salvation of the nation, for the Hfe of aU these hrnnan
beings is the nation." The success of democracy de¬
pends (1) upon the degree of responsibihty it is possible
to arouse in every man and woman, (2) on the opportu¬
nity they are given to exercise that responsibihty. The
new democracy depends upon you and me. It depends
upon you and me because there is no one else in the
world but you and me. If I pledge myself to the new
democracy and you pledge yourself to the new democ¬
racy, a new motor force will be born in the world.
We need to-day new principles. We can reform and
reform but ah this is on the surface. What we have got
to do is to change some of the fundamental ideas of our
American hfe. This is not being disloyal to our past,
it is exactly the opposite. Let us be loyal to our inherit¬
ance and tradition, but let us understand what that in-
THE MORAL STATE
343
heritance and tradition truly is. It is not our tradition
to stick to an outworn past, a conventional ideal, a rigid
religion. We eœe children of men who have not been
afraid of new continents or new ideas. In our blood is
the impulse to leap to the highest we can see, as the wills
of our fathers fixed themselves on the convictions of their
hearts. To spring forward and then to follow the path
steadfastly is forever the duty of Americans. We must
live democracv.
V
XXXV
THE WORLD STATE
WE have seen the true state emerging through
the working of the federal principle, dual
in its nature: (1) created by the law of
interpénétration, the unifying of difference, and (2)
representing the multiple man in his essential nature.
Through the further working of this principle the world-
state appears.
The lesson of the group is imperative for our interna¬
tional relations. No "aUiances," no balance of power,
no agreements, no Hague tribunals will now satisfy us;
we know that it is only by creating a genuine community
of nations that we can have stabihty and growth —
world peace, world progress. What are the contribu¬
tions of group psychology to the League of Nations?
There is no way out of the hell of our present Euro¬
pean situation until we find a method of compounding
difference. Superficial moralists try to get us to like
some other nationality by emphasizing all the things we
have in common, but war can never cease until we see
the value of differences, that they are to be maintained
not blotted out. The white-man's burden is not to make
others like himself. As we see the value of the individual,
of every individual, so we must see the value of each
nation, that all are needed. The pacifists have wanted
us to tolerate our enemies and the more extreme ones
to turn the other cheek when smitten. But tolerance is
intolerable. And we cannot dwell among enemies. The
ideal of this planet inhabited by Christian enemies aU
turning the cheek does not seem to me a happy one.
344
THE WORLD STATE
345
We must indeed, as the extreme militarists tell us, "wipe
out" our enemies, but we do not wipe out our enemies
by crushing them. The old-fashioned hero went out to
conquer his enemy; the modern hero goes out to disarm
his enemy through creating a mutual imderstanding.
The failure of international society in the past is a
fact fraught with deep significance: the differences be¬
tween nations are not to be overcome by one class of
people in a country uniting with the same class in another
country. The upper classes of Petrograd, Berhn, Paris
and London have very much the same manners and
habits. This has not brought peace. Artists the world
over have a common language. Workingmen have
tried to break down international barriers by assmning
that their interests were so identical that they could
unite across these barriers. But this has failed to bring
peace as. the other rapprochements have failed. Why ?
Because they are all on the wrong track. International
peace is never coming by an increase of similarities
(this is the old-fashioned crowd-philosophy); interna¬
tional peace is coming by the frankest and fuUest kind
of recognition of our differences. Internationalism and
cosmopolitanism must not be confused. The aim of
rosmopohtanism is for all to be alike; the aim of inter¬
nationalism is a rich content of widely varying cheir-
acteristic and experience.
If it were true that we ought to increase the hkenesses
between nations, then it would be legitimate for each
nation to try to impose its ideals upon others. In that
case England would try to spread her particular brand
of civihzation, and Germany hers, for if some one kind
of civihzation has to prevail, each will want it to be his
own. There is not room on this planet for a lot of simi¬
lar nations, but only for a lot of different nations. A
group of nations must create a group cultme which shall
346
THE NEW STATE
be broader than the culture of one nation alone. There
must he a world-ideal, a whole-civilization, in which the
ideals and the civilization of every nation can find a
place. The ideal of one nation is not antagonistic to the
ideal of another, nor do these ideeds exist in a row side
by side, hut these different kinds of civilization are
hound up in one another. I am told that this is mys¬
ticism. It is the most practical idea I have found in the
world.
It is said that a mighty struggle is before us hy-and-hy
when East meets West, and in that shock will he decided
which of these civilizations shall rule the world — that
this is to he the great world-decision. No, the great
world-decision is that each nation needs equally every
other, therefore each wiU not only protect, hut foster
and increase the other that thereby it may increase its
own stature.
Perhaps one of the most useful lessons to he learned
from the group process is a new definition of patriotism.
Patriotism must not he herd-instinct. Patriotism must
he the individual's rational, self-conscious building of
his country every moment. Loyalty means always to
create your group, not to wave a flag over it.^ We need
a patriotism which is not "following the lead" hut in¬
volved in a process in which all take part. In the place
of sentimental patriotism we want a common pmpose, a
purpose evolved by the common fife, to he used for the
common life. Some of our biologists mislead us when
they talk of the homogeneity of the herd as the aim of
nations. The nation may he a herd at present. What
we have to do is to make it a true group. International¬
ism must he based upon group miits, not upon herd or
crowd units, that is, upon people united not by herd
instinct hut by group conviction. If a nation is a crowd,
^ See pp. 58-59.
THE WORLD STATE
347
partiotism is mere hypnotism; if a nation is a true
federal state built up of interlocking and ascending
groups, then patriotism is self-evolved. When you are
building up an association or a nation you have to preach
loyalty; later it is part of the very substance which has
been built.
Then genuine loyalty, a self-evolved loyalty, wiU
always lead the way to higher units. NationalismJooks
out as weU as in. It means, in addition to its other
meanings, every nation being responsible to a larger
whole. It is this new definition of patriotism which
America is now learning. It is this new patriotism
which must be taught our children, which we must
repeat to one another on our special patriotic day, July
4th, and on every occasion when we meet. This new
patriotism looks in, it looks out: we have to learn that
we are not wholly patriotic when we are working with
aU our heart for America merely; we are truly patriotic
only when we are working also that America may take
her place worthily and helpfuUy in the world of nations.
Nationahsm is not my nation for itseK or my nation
against others or my nation dominating others, but
simply my nation taking its part as "an equal among
equals."
Shall this hideous war go on simply because people
wiU not understand nationedism Nationalism and
internationalism are not opposed. We do not lop off
just enough patriotism to om- country to make enough
for a world-state: he who is capable of the greatest
loyalty to his own country is most ready for a wider
loyalty. There is possible no world-citizenship the ranks
of which are to he filled by those who do not care very
much for their own country. We have passed through
a period when patriotism among cultivated people
seemed often to he at a discount — the ideal was to he
348
THE NEW STATE
"citizens of the world." But we see now that we can
never he "citizens of the world" until we learn how to
be citizens of America or England or France. Inter-
nationahsm is not going to swallow up nationedism.
Internationalism wiU accentuate, give point, significance,
meaning, value, reality, to nationalism.
Whether we can have a lasting peace or not depends
upon whether we have advanced far enough to be capa¬
ble of loyalty to a higher unit, not as a substitute for
our old patriotism to our country, but in addition to it.
Peace will come by the group consciousness rising from
the national to the international unit. This cannot be
done through the imagination alone but needs actued
experiments in world union, or rather experiments first
in the union of two or more nations. Men go round
lecturing to kind-hearted audiences and say, " Can you not
be loyal to something bigger than a nation!*" And the
kind-hearted audiences reply, " Certainly, we wiU now, at
your very interesting suggestion, be loyal to a league] of
nations." But this is only a wish on their part, its real¬
ization can never come by wishing but only by willing,
and willing is a process, you have to put yourself in a
certain place from which to will. We must, in other
words, try experiments with a league of nations, and out
of the actual life of that league will come loyalty to it.
We are not ready for the life of the larger group because
some teacher of ethics has taught us "to respect other
men's loyalties." We are ready for it when om* experi¬
ence has incorporated into every tissue of our thought-
life the knowledge that we need other men's loyalties.
Loyalty, therefore, is not the chickens running back to
the coop, also it is not a sentiment which we decide
arbitrarily to adopt, it is the outcome of a process, the
process of belonging.
Of course there must be some motive for the larger
THE WORLD STATE
349
vmion: we shall probably first get nations into an inter¬
national league tbrougb their economic interests; then
when we have a genuine imion the sense of belonging
begins. When men have felt the need of larger units
than nations and have formed "aUiemces," they have
not felt that they belonged to these alliances. The
sense of belonging ended at the British Empire or the
German Empire. But the reason Germemy became one
empire and Italy one nation was because an economic
union brought it home to the people daily that they
were Italians, not Venetians, Germans, not Bavarians.
We must feel the international bond exactly as we feel
the national bond. Some one in speaking of the diffi¬
culties of intemationabsm has said, " It is easier to make
sacrifices for those whom you know well, your own
countrymen, than for strangers." But intemationabsm
has not come when we decide that we are wibing to make
sacrifices for strangers. This fallacy has been the stum¬
bling block of some of the pacifists. To make sacrifices
for "strangers" will never succeed. We make sacrifices
for our own nation because of group feeling. We shall
make sacrifices for a league of nations when we get the
same feeling of a bond.
We may, perhaps, look forward to Europe gobig
tbrougb something of the same process which we have
gone tbrougb in the United States. The colonies joined
in a federal government. The union was something
entirely apart from themselves. The men of Massa¬
chusetts were first and last men of Massachusetts. We
belonged for good reasons to a larger unit, but it was
only very slowly that we gained any actual feeling of
belonging to the United States, of loving it because we
were a constituent part of it, because we were helping
to make it, not just as an external authority to which
we bad promised loyalty. The American colonies did
350
THE NEW STATE
not undertake to look pleasant and be kind to one
another, they went to work and learned how to live to¬
gether. And state jealousy has been diminished every
year, not by any one preaching to us, but by the process
of hving together. This is what may happen in a league
of nations.
The great lesson of the group process, in which all
others are involved, is that particularism, however
magnified, is no longer possible. There is no magic by
which selfishness becomes patriotism the moment we
can invoke the nation. The change must be this: as
we see now that a nation cannot be healthy and virile if
it is merely protecting the rights of its members, so we
must see that we can have no sound condition of world
affairs merely by the protection of each individual nation
— that is the old theory of individual rights. Each
nation must play its part in some larger whole. Nations
have fought for national rights. These are as obsolete
as the individual rights of the last century. What raises
this war to a place never reached by any war before is that
the Allies are not fighting for national rights. As long
as history is read the contribution of America to the
Great War will be told as America's taking her stand
squarely and responsibly on the position that national
particularism was in 1917 dead.
And as we are no longer to talk of the "rights" of
nations, so no longer must "independent" nations be
the basis of union. In our present international law a
sovereign nation is one that is independent of other
nations — surely a complete legal fiction. And when
stress is laid on independence in external relations as
the nature of sovereignty, it is but a step to the German
idea that independence of others can develop into au¬
thority over others. This tendency is avoided when we
think of sovereignty: (1) as looking in, as authority over
THE WORLD STATE
351
its own members, as the independence which is the result
of the complete interdependence of those members;
and when we at the same time (2) think of this indepen¬
dence as looking out to other independences to form
through a larger interdependence the larger sovereignty
of a larger whole. Interdependence is the keynote of
the relations of nations as it is the keynote of the rela¬
tions of individuals within a nation. As no man can be
entirely free except through his perfected relation to his
group, so no nation can be truly independent until a
genuine imion has brought about interdependence. As
we no longer think that every individual has a final pur¬
pose of his own independent of any community, so we
no longer think that each nation has a "destiny" inde¬
pendent of the "destiny" of other nations.
The error of om old political philosophy was that the
state always looks in: it has obligations to its members,
it has none to other states; it merely enters into agree¬
ments with them for mutual benefit thereby obtained.
International law of the futme must be based not on
nations sis "sovereigns" dealing with one another, but
on nations as members of a society dealing with one
another. The difference in these conceptions is enor¬
mous. We eu-e told that cessions of sovereignty must
be the basis of an international government. We cannot
have a lasting international union until we entirely re¬
form such notions of sovereignty: that the power of the
larger unit is produced mechanically by taking away
bits of power from aU the separate units. Sovereignty
is got by giving to every unit its fullest value and thereby
giving birth to a new power — the power of a larger
whole. We must give up "sovereign" nations in the
old sense, but with our present definition of sovereignty
we may keep all the real sovereignty we have and then
unite to evolve together a larger sovereignty.
352
THE NEW STATE
This idea must be carefully worked out: we can take
each so-caUed "sovereign power" which we are thinking
of "delegating" to a League of Nations and we can see
that that delegating does not meike us individual nations
less "sovereign" and less "free" hut more so — it is the
Great Paradox of our time. The object of every proper
"cession" of sovereignty is to make us freer than ever
before. Is it to he "sovereign" and "free" for nations
suspiciously and fearfuUy to keep sleepless watch on one
another while they build ship for ship, plane for pleme.»^
Have England and Germany been proudly conscious of
their "freedom" when thinking of Central Africa.^
When the individual nations give up their separate
sovereignty — as regards their armaments, as regards
the control of the regions which possess the raw materials,
as regards the great waterways of the world, as regards,
in fact, all which affects their joint lives — the falling
chains of a real slavery will reverberate through the world.
For unrelated sovereignty, with world conditions as they
are to-day, is slavery.
The idea of "sovereign" nations must go as completely
as is disappearing the idea of sovereign individuals.
The isolation of sovereign nations is so utterly complete
that they cannot really (and I mean this UteraUy) even
see each other. The International League is the one
solution for the relation of nations. Whenever we say
we can have a "moral" international law on any other
basis, we Avrite ourselves down pure sentimentalists.
There are many corollaries to this project. We do not
need, for instance, a more vigorous protection of neu¬
trals, hut the eihohtion of neutrals. The invasion of the
rights of neutrals in this war by both sides shows that
we can no longer have neutrals in our scheme of imion;
all must come within the bond.
Further, diplomatic relations will be entirely changed.
THE WORLD STATE
353
"Honor among thieves" means loyalty to your group:
while to lie or to try to get the better of your own partic¬
ular group is an unpardonable offence, you may deceive
an outsider. We see now the psychological reason for this.
Diplomatic lying wül not go until diplomatists instead of
treating with one another as members of alien groups
consider themeslves all as members of one larger group —
the League of Nations.
Moreover, one nation cannot injure another merely;
the injury will be against the community, and the com-
mimity of nations will look upon it as such. Under om
present international system the attack of one nation on
another is the same as the attack of one outlaw on another.
But under a civilized international system, the attack
of one individual on another is an attack on society emd
the whole society must punish it. The punishment,
however, will not consist in keeping the offender out of
the alliance. If the Allies win, Germany should not be
punished by keeping her out of a European league; she
must be shown how to take her place within it. And
it must be remembered that we do not join a league
of nations solely to work out our relations to one another,
but to learn to work for the larger whole, for interna¬
tional vedues. Until this lesson is learned no league of
nations can be successful.
Finally, the League of Nations is against the theory of
the balance of power, but this has been already con¬
sidered in the chapter on The Federal State.
To Sinn up all these particular ist fallacies: live and
let live can never be om international motto. Laissez-
faire fails as ignominiously in international relations as
within a single nation. Our new motto must be. Live
in such manner that the fulness of life may come to all.
This is "the ledge and the leap" for twentieth-century
thought.
S54
THE NEW STATE
Organized cooperation is in the future to be the basis
of international relations. We are intemationed in our
interests. We do not want an American education, an
English education, a French education. "Movements"
seek always an international society. We have inter¬
national finance. Our standards of living are becoming
intemationahzed. Socially, economically, in the world
of thought, national barriers eire being broken down. It
is only iu pohtics that we are national. This must soon
change: with all these rapprochements we cannot be
told much longer of fundamental differences between us
which can be settled only by murdermg each other.
People thought that Italy could not be united, that
the duchies of Germany would never join. Cavour and
Bismark had indeed no easy part. But if one himdred
millions of people in Central Europe can be made to see
the evils of separation, cannot others .i^ With om greater
facilities of communication, with our increased com¬
mercial intercourse and our increased realization of the
interdependence of nations (a manufacturing nation can¬
not get along without the food-producing nations, etc.),
this ought not now to be impossible. Or has the single
state exhausted om pohtical ability Are we willing to
acknowledge this.i^ We have had very httle idea yet of
a conummity of nations. The great fault of Germany is
not that she overestimates her own power of achieve¬
ment, which is indeed mmvellous, but that she has
never yet had any conception of a commxmity of nations.
Let her apply all her own theory of the subordination of
the mdividual to the whole to the subordination of Ger¬
many to an allied Europe, and she would be a most valu¬
able member of a European league.
The group process thus shows us that a genuine com¬
munity of nations means the correlation of interests,
the development of an international ethics, the creation
THE WORLD STATE
355
of an international will, the self-evolving of a higher
loyalty, and above aU and including all, the full responsi-
bihty of every nation for the welfare of every other.
With such an aim before us courts of arbitration seem
a sorry makeshift. We are told that as individuals no
longer fight duels but take their disputes into the courts,
so nations must now arbitrate, that is, take their dispute
to some court. But what has really ousted duels has not
been the courts but a different conception of the relation
between men; so what wül do away with war will not be
courts of arbitration, but a diEferent conception of the
relations between nations. We need machinery not
merely for settling disputes but for preventing disputes
from arismg; not merely for interpreting past relations,
but for giving expression to new relations; not merely
to administer international law, but to make interna¬
tional law — not a Hague court but an internationed
legislature.
A community of nations needs a constitution, not
treaties. Treaties are of the same nature as contract.
Just as in internal law contract is giving way to the truer
theory of community, so the same change must take
place in international law. It is true that the first step
must be more progressive treaties before we can hope
for a closer union, but let us keep clearly before us the
goal in order that in making these treaties they shall be
such that they will open the way in time to a real federa¬
tion, to an international law based not on "sovereign"
nations.
We have aheady seen that it is the creation of a collec¬
tive wiU which we need most in our social and political
fife, not the enforcing of it; it is the same with a league
of nations — we must create an international will. We
want neither concession nor compromise. And a vague
"brotherhood" is certainly not enough. As we have
356
THE NEW STATE
seen the group as the workshop for the making of the
collective will, so we see that we cannot have an inter¬
national win without creating a conmnmity of nations.
Group psychology will revolutionize international law.
The group gets its authority through the power it has
in itself of integrating ideas and interests. No so-called
collective will which is not a genuine collective wül, that
is, which is not evolved by this process, wiU have real
authority; therefore no stable international relations are
possible except those founded on the creation of an actued
community of nations.
What interests us most in aU the war hteratme is any
proposed method of union. The importance of an inter¬
national league as a peace plan is that you can never
aim directly at peace, peace is what you get through
other things. Much of the peace propaganda urges us
to choose peace rather than war. But the decision be¬
tween "war" or "peace" never hes within om power.
These are mere words to gather up in convenient form
of expression an enormous amount that is underneath.
All sorts of interests compete, all sorts of ideas compete
or join: if they can join, we have peace; if they must
compete, we have war. But weir or peace is merely an
outcome of the process; peace or war has come, by
other decisions, long before the question of peace or weir
ever eirises.
All our hope therefore of future international relations
lies, not in the ethical exhortations of the pacifists, nor
in plans for an economic war, but in the recognition of
the possibility of a community of nations.
In making a plea for some experiment in international
cooperation, I remember, with humihation, that we have
fought because it is the easy way. Fighting solves no
problems. The problems which brought on this war will
all be there to be settled when the war ends. But we
THE WORLD STATE
357
have war as the line of least resistance. We have war
when the mind gives up its job of agreeing as too diffi¬
cult.^ It is often stated that conffict is a necessity of the
human soul, and that if conflict should ever disappear
from among us, individuals would deteriorate and society
collapse. But the effort of agreeing is so much more
strenuous than the comparatively easy stunt of fighting
that we can harden our spiritual muscles much more
effectively on the former than the latter. Suppose I
disagree with you in a discussion and we make no effort
to join our ideas, but "fight it out." I hammer away with
my idea, I try to find all the weakest parts of yours, I
refuse to see anything good in what you think. That
is not nearly so difficult as trying to recognize all the
possible subtle interweavings of thought, how one part
of yom thought, or even one aspect of one part, may
unite with one part or one aspect of one part of mine etc.
Likewise with cooperation and competition in business:
cooperation is going to prove so much more difficult
than competition that there is not the slightest danger
of any one getting soft under it.
The choice of war or peace is not the choice between
effort and stagnation. We have thought of peace as the
lambs lying down together after browsing on the con¬
sciousness of their happy agreements. We have thought
of peace as a letting go and war as a girding up. We have
thought of peace as the passive and war as the active
way of living. The opposite is true. Wax is not the most
strenuous life. It is a kind of rest-cure compared to the
1 It has usually been supposed that wars have been the all-important
element in consolidating nations; I do not want to disregard this element,
I want only to warn against its over emphasis. Moreover, the way in
which wars have had a real and permanent influence in the consolidation
of nations is by the pressure which they have exerted upon them in showing
them that efficiency is obtained by the closest cooperation and coordination
of all our activities, by a high degree of internal organization.
358
THE NEW STATE
task of reconciling our differences. I knew a young
business mem who went to the Spanish war who said
when he came hack that it had been as good as going to
a sanitarium; he had simply obeyed commands and had
not made a decision or thought a thought since he left
home. From war to peace is not from the strenuous to
the easy existence; it is from the futile to the effective,
from the stagnant to the active, from the destructive to
the creative way of hfe.
If, however, peace means for you simply the absti¬
nence from bloodshed, if it means instead of the fight of
the battlefield, the fight of employer and employed, the
fight of different interests in the legislature, the fight
of competing business firms, that is a different matter.
But if you are going to try to solve the problems of capital
and labor, of competing business interests, of differing
nations, it is a tougher job than standing up on the
battlefield.
We are told that when the North Sea fishermen foimd
that they were bringing flabby codfish home to market,
they devised the scheme of introducing one catfish into
every large tank of codfish. The consequent struggle
hardened the flesh of the fish and they came firm to
market. The conclusion usually drawn from all such
stories is that men need fighting to keep them in mored
condition. But what I maintain is that if we want to
train oiu moral muscles we are devising a much harder
job for them if we try to agree with om catfish than to
fight him.
Civilization calls upon us to "Agree with thine adver¬
sary." It means a supreme effort on our part, and the
future of the world depends upon whether we can make
this effort, whether we are equal to the cry of civihzation
to the individual man, to the individual nation. It is a
supreme effort because it is not, as sometimes thought,
THE WORLD STATE
359
a matter of feeling. To feel kmdly, to desire peace — no,
we must sununon every force of oxn natures, trained
minds and disciplined characters, to find the methods of
agreement. We may be angry and fight, we may feel
kindly and want peace — it is aU about the same. The
world will be regenerated by the people who rise above
both these passive ways and heroically seek, by whatever
hmdship, by whatever toil, the methods by which people
can agree.
What has this young twentieth century gone out to
fighti^ Autocracy.!* The doctrine of the right of might?
Yes, and wherever found, in Germany or among our¬
selves. And wherever foxmd these rest on the con¬
sciousness of separateness. It is the conviction of
separateness which has to be conquered before civiliza¬
tion can proceed. Community must be the foundation
stone of the New State.
• ••••••••••• •
The history of modem times from the point of view
of pohtical science is the history of the growth of de¬
mocracy; from the point of view of social psychology it
is the history of the growth of the social consciousness.
These two are one. But the mere consciousness of the
social bond is not enough. Frenssen said of Jöm Uhl,
" He became conscious of his soul, but it was empty and
he had now to furnish it." We have become conscious of
a social soul, we have now to give it content. It is a
long way from the maxim, "Religion is an affair be¬
tween man and his Maker," to the cry of Mazzini,
"Italy is itself a religion," but we surely to-day have
come to see in the social bond and the Creative Will, a
compeUing power, a depth and force, as great as that
of any religion we have ever knoAvn. We eae ready for
a new revelation of God. It is not coming through any
360
THE NEW STATE
single man, but through the men and men who are band¬
ing together with one purpose, in one consecrated service,
for a great fulfilment. Many of us have felt bewildered
in a confused and chaotic world. We need to focus both
our aspirations and our energy; we need to make these
effective and at the same time to multiply them by their
continuous use. This book is a plea for the more abimd-
ant fife: for the fulness of fife and the growing life. It is
a plea against everything static, against the idea that
there need be any passive material within the social bond.
It is a plea for a splendid progress dependent upon every
splendid one of us. We need a new faith in humanity,
not a sentimental faith or a theological tenet or a philo¬
sophical conception, but an active faith in that creative
power of men which shedl shape govermnent and industry,
which shall give form equally to our daily life with our
neighbor and to a world league.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
THE TRAINING FOR THE NEW DEMOCRACY
The training for the new democracy must be from
the cradle — through nursery, school and play, and
on and on through every activity of our life.
Citizenship is not to be learned in good government classes
or current events courses or lessons in civics. It is to
be acquired only through those modes of living and acting
which shall teach us how to grow the social consciousness. This
should be the object of all day school education, of all night
school education, of all our supervised recreation, of all our
family life, of our club life, of our civic life.
When we change our ideas of the relation of the individual
to society, our whole system of education changes. What we
want to teach is interdependence, that efficiency waits on
discipline, that discipline is obedience to the whole of which I
am a part. Discipline has been a word long connected with
school life — when we know how to teach social discipline,
then we shall know how to "teach school."
The object of education is to fit children into the life of the
community.^ Every cooperative method conceivable, there¬
fore, must be used in our schools for this end. It is at school
that children should begin to learn group initiative, group
responsibility — in other words social functioning. The group
process must be learnt by practice. We should therefore
teach subjects which require a working together, we should
have group recitations, group investigations, and a gradual
plan of self-government. Every child must be shown his
place in the life that builds and his relation to all others who
are building. All the little daily and homly experiences of
^ The western states feel that they are training members of society
and not individuals and that is why it seems proper to them to take
public money to found state universities.
363
364
APPENDIX
his interrelations must be constantly interpreted to him. Indi¬
vidual competition must, of course, disappear. All must see
that the test of success is ability to work with others, not to
surpass others.
Group work is, indeed, being introduced into our more pro¬
gressive schools. Manual training, especially when the object
made is large enough to require the work of two or more,
cooking classes, school papers, printing classes etc., give oppor¬
tunity for organization into groups with the essential advan¬
tage of the group : coordinated effort.
Moreover, we should have, and are beginning to have, group
recitations. A recitation should not be to test the pupil but
to create something. Every pupil should be made to feel
that his point of view is slightly different from any one's else,
and that, therefore, he has something to contribute. He is not
to "recite" something which the teacher knows already; he
is to contribute not only to the ideas of his fellow-pupils but
also to those of his teacher. And this is not impossible even
for the youngest. Once when I was in Paris I made the ac¬
quaintance of little Michael, a charming English boy of five,
who upon being taken to the Louvre by his mother and asked
what he thought of the Mona Lisa, replied, with a most pa¬
thetic expression, "I don't think she looks as if she liked little
boys." That was certainly a contribution to Mona Lisa
criticism.
But after the child has been taught in his group recitation
to contribute his own point of view, he must immediately be
shown that he cannot over-insist upon it; he must be taught
that it is only a part of the truth, that he should be eager for
all the other points of view, that all together they can find
a point of view which no one could work out alone. In
other words we can teach collective thinking through group
recitations.
A group recitation may give each pupil the feeling that a
whole is being created: (1) by different points of view being
brought out and discussed, and (2) by every one contributing
something different: one will do some extra reading, one will
bring clippings from newspapers and periodicals, one will take
TRAINING FOR NEW DEMOCRACY 365
his camera to the Art Museum and take pictures of the casts.
Thus we get life, and the lesson of life, into that hour. Thus
may we learn the obligation and the joy of "belonging," not
only when our school goes to play some other school, but in
every recitation hour of the day. The old idea was that no
one should help another in a recitation; the new idea is that
every one is to help every one else. The kind of competition
you have in a group recitation is whether you have added as
much as any one else. You now feel responsible not only for
your contribution but that the recitation as a whole should be
a worthy thing. Such an aim will overcome much of the pres¬
ent class-room indifférence.
Many more of the regular school activities could be ar¬
ranged on a group basis than is now thought possible — inves¬
tigation for instance. This is a big word, but the youngest
children sent out to the woods in spring are being taught
"original research."
Again, every good teacher teaches her pupils to "assemble"
his different thoughts, shows them that a single thought is not
useful, but only as it is connected with others. The modern
teacher is like the modern curator who thinks the group signifi¬
cance of a particular classification more important than the
significance of each isolated piece. The modern teacher does
not wish his pupils' minds to be like an old-fashioned museum —
a hodge-podge of isolated facts — but a useful workshop.
Again, to learn genuine discussion should be considered an
essential part of our education. Every child must be trained
to meet the clash of difference — difference of opinion, dif¬
ference of interest—which life brings. In some universities
professors are putting aside one hour a week for a discussion
hour. This should be done in all colleges and schools, and
then it should be seen to that it is genuine discussion that
takes place in that hour.
Moreover, in many schools supervised playground and
gymnasium activities are being established, athletic clubs
encouraged, choruses and dramatic leagues developed, not
only because of their value from the health or art point of
view, but because they teach the social lesson.
366
APPENDIX
The question of self-government in the schools is too com¬
plicated a subject and has met with too many difficulties,
notwithstanding its brilliant successes, to take up here, but un¬
doubtedly some amount of self-control can be given to certain
groups, and in the upper grades to whole schools, and when
this can be done no training for democracy is equal to the
practice of democracy.
The aim is to create such a mental atmosphere for children
that it is natural for them to wish to take their part, to make
them understand that citizenship is not obeying the laws nor
voting, nor even being President,^ but that all the visions of
their highest moments, aU the aspirations of their spiritual
nature can be satisfied through their common life, that only
thus do we get "practical politics."
In our industrial schools it is obviously easier to carry further
the teaching of coordinated effort than in the regular day
schools.
Our evening schools must adopt the methods of the more
progressive day schools, and must, as they are doing in many
cases, add to the usual activities of evening schools.
The most conscious and deliberate preparation for citizen¬
ship is given by the "School Centres" now being established
all over the United States. The School Centre movement is
a movement to mould the futme, to direct evolution instead
of trusting to evolution. The subject of this book has been
the necessity for community organization, but the ability to
meet this necessity implies that we know how to do that most
difficult thing in the world — work with other people: that
we are ready to sacrifice individual interests to the general
good, that we have a fully developed sense of responsibility,
that we are trained in initiative and action. But this is not
true. If the School Centres are to fill an important place in
neighborhood life, they must not only give an opportunity
for the development of neighborhood consciousness and neigh¬
borhood organization, but they must train up young people
to be ready for neighborhood organization. We who believe
1 A Kttle girl I know said, "Mother, if women get the vote, shall I
have to be President P"
TRAINING FOR NEW DEMOCRACY 367
in the School Centre as one of the most effective means we
have for reconstructing city life believe that the School Centre
can furnish this training. We hear everywhere of the corrup¬
tion of American municipal pohtics, but why should the next
generation do any better than the present unless we are train¬
ing our young men and women to a proper understanding of
the meaning of good citizenship and the sense of their own
responsibility? The need of democracy to-day is a trained
citizenship. We must deliberately train for citizenship as
for music, art or trade. The School Centres are, in fact, both
the prophecy of the new democracy and a method of its ful¬
filment. They provide an opportunity for its expression, and
at the same time give to men and women the opportunity for
the training needed to bring it to its highest expression.
The training in the School Centres consists of: group-activ¬
ities, various forms of civic clubs and classes, and practice in
self-government.
First, we have in the Centres those activities which require
working together, such as dramatic and choral clubs, orches¬
tras and bands, civic and debating clubs, folk-dancing and
team-games. We want choral unions and orchestras, to be
sure, because they will enrich the community life at the same
time that they emphasize the neighborhood bond, we want
civic and debating clubs because we all need enlightenment on
the subjects taken up in these clubs, but the primary reason
for choosing such activities is that they are group activities
where each learns to identify himseh with a social whole.
This is the first lesson for all practical life. Take two young
men in business. One says of his firm, " They are doing so and
so": his attitude is that the business is a complete whole,
without him, to which he may indeed be ministering in some
degree. Another young man who has been a few weeks with
an old-established firm says ''We have done so and so for
years," "Our poUcy is so and so." You perhaps smile but
you know that he possesses one of the chief requirements for
rising.
In our group the centre of consciousness is transferred from
our private to our associate life. Thus through our group
368
APPENDIX
activities does neighborhood life become a preparation for
neighborhood life; thus does it prepare us for the pouring
out of strength and strain and effort in the common cause.
Then the consciousness of the solidarity of the group leads
directly to a sense of responsibility, responsibility in a group
and for a group. Sooner or later every one in a democracy
must ask himself, what am I worth to society? Our effort in
the Centres is to help the birth of that moment. This is the
social lesson: for people to understand that their every act,
their work, their home-life, the kind of recreation they demand,
the kind of newspapers they read, the bearing of their children,
the bringing up of their children — that all these so-called
private acts create the city in which they live. It is not just
when we vote, or meet together in political groups, or when
we take part in some charitable or philanthropic or social
scheme, that we are performing our duty to society. Every
single act of our life should be looked at as a social act.
Moreover, we learn responsibihty for our group as well as
to our group. We used to think, "I must do right no matter
what anyone else does." Now we know how little that ex¬
hausts our duty; we must feel an equally keen responsibility
for our whole group.
These then are the lessons which we hope group activities
will teach — solidarity, responsibility and initiative, — how to
take one's place worthily in a self-directed, self-governing
community.
In the first year of one of our Boston Centres, the people
of a certain nationality asked if they might meet regularly at
the Centre. At their first meeting, however, they broke up
without accomplishing aqything, without even deciding to
meet again, simply because those present had never learned
how to do things with other people. Each man seemed a
little island by himself. They explained to me the fact that
they made no plans for further meeting by saying that they
found they did not know parliamentary law, and some of them
must learn parhamentary law before they could organize. I
did not feel, however, that that was the real reason. I was
sure it was because they had never been accustomed to do
TRAINING FOR NEW DEMOCRACY 369
things in groups — they had probably never belonged to a
basket-baU team or a dramatic club — and we have to learn
the trick of association as we have to learn anything else.
But the Centres prepare for citizenship not only by group
activities but also by direct civic teaching. This takes the
form not only of lectures, classes in citizenship, but also of
societies like the "junior city councils" or the "legislatures"
where municipal and state questions are discussed, and young
men's and young women's civic clubs. And it must be remem¬
bered that the chief value of these clubs is not the information
acquired, not even the interest aroused, but the lesson learned
of genuine discussion with all the advantages therefrom.^
But I have written as if it were our young people who were
to be educated by the group activities of the Centres, as if the
young people were to have the training for democracy and the
older people the exercise of democracy. Nothing could be
further from my thoughts. The training for democracy can
never cease while we exercise democracy. We older ones need
it exactly as much as the younger ones. That education is a
continuous process is a truism. It does not end with gradua¬
tion day; it does not end when "life" begins. Life and educa¬
tion must never be separated. We must have more life in our
universities, more education in our Ufe. Chesterton says of
H. G. Wells, "One can Ke awake nights and hear him grow."
That it might be said of all of us! We need education all
the time and we all need education. The "ignorant vote"
does not (or should not) mean the vote of the ignorant, we
get an ignorant vote very often from educated people; an
ignorant vote means ignorance of some particular subject.
A successful business man said to me the other day, "I
graduated from college with honors, but all I learned there
has done me little good directly. What I got out of college
was an attitude towards life: that life was a matter of con¬
stantly learning, that my education had begun and was going
on as long as I lived." Then he went on to say, "This is the
attitude I want somehow to get into my factory. Boys and
^ See pp. 208-212.
370
APPENDIX
girls come to me with the idea, 'School is over, learning is
behind me, now work begins.' This is all wrong. I am now
planning a school in connection with my factory, not primarily
on account of what they will learn in the school, but in order
to make them see that their life of steady learning is just
beginning and that their whole career depends on their getting
this attitude." Now this is what we want the Centres to
do for people: to help them acquire the attitude of learning,
to make them see that education is for life, that it is as
valuable for adults as for young people.
We have many forms of adult education: extension courses,
continuation and night schools, correspondence schools, courses
in settlements. Young Men's Christian Associations etc. And
yet all these take a very small per cent of our adult population.
Where are people to get this necessary education.^ Our present
form of industry does not give enough. Tending a machine
all day is not conducive to thought; ^ a man thus employed
gets to rely entirely on his foreman. The man who lets his
foreman do his thinking for him all day tends to need a poUtical
boss at night. We must somehow counteract the paralyzing
effect of the methods of modern industry. In the School
Centre we have an opportunity for adult education in the only
forms in which many people, tired out with the day's work, can
take it: discussion, recreation, group activities and self-govern¬
ing clubs. The enormous value of that rapidly spreading
movement, the forum movement, and its connection with the
School Centres, there is space here only to mention.
Many people, however, even if not the majority, are eager
and hungry for what one man spoke to me of as "real
education." University extension work is spreading rapidly
and in many cases adapting itself marvellously to local needs;
a much closer connection could be made between the oppor¬
tunities of the university and the training of the citizen for
his proposed increased activity in the state by having univer¬
sity extension work a recognized part of the School Centre, so
that every one, the farmer or the humblest workman, might
^ Also men have less opportunity for discussion at work than formerly.
TRAINING FOR NEW DEMOCRACY 371
know that even although he cannot give all his time to
college life, he may have the advantage of its training. In
the School Centre should be opportunity for the study of
social and economic conditions, the work of constitutional
conventions, the European situation and our relation to it,
the South American situation and our relation to it, etc. etc.
Moreover, we must remember when we say we aU need
more education, that even if we could be "entirely" educated,
so to speak, at any one minute, the next minute life would
have set new lessons for us. The world is learning all the time
about health, food values, care of children etc. All that science
discovers must be spread. Adult education means largely the
assimilation of new ideas; from this point of view no one can
deny its necessity.
I have said that the Centres prepare for citizenship through
group activities, through civic clubs and classes and through
actual practice in self-government. The Centres may be a
real training in self-government, a real opportunity for the
development of those qualities upon which genuine self-direc¬
tion depends, by every club or group being self-governed, and
the whole Centre self-directed and self-controlled by means of
delegates elected from each club meeting regularly in a Central
Council. If we want a nation which shall be really self-governed
not just nominally self-governed, we must train up our young
people in the ways of self-direction.
Moreover, the development of responsibility and self-direc¬
tion wiU be the most effective means of raising standards.
We are hearing a great deal just now of regulated recreation,
regulated dance halls etc. We must give regulation a secon¬
dary place. There is something better than this which ought
to be the aim of all recreation leaders, that is, to educate our
young people to want higher standards by interpreting their
own experience to them and by getting them to think in terms
of cause and effect. You can force a moral code on people
from above yet this will change them very little, but by a
system of self-governing clubs with leaders who know how to
lead, we can make real progress in educating people to higher
standards. This is true of athletic games as well as of dances.
372
APPENDIX
We find, indeed, that it is true of all parts of our Centre work.
Through the stormy paths of club election of officers, I have
seen leaders often guide their young men to an understanding
of honest politics. It is usually easier, it is true, to do for
people, it is easier to "regulate" their lives, but it is not the
way to bring the results we wish. We need education, not
regulation.
Self-government in the Centres then means not only the
election of officers and the making of a constitution, but a real
management of club and Centre affairs, the opportunity to
take initiative, to make choices and decisions, to take responsi¬
bility. The test of our success in the Centres will always be
how far we are developing the self-shaping instinct. But we
must remember that we have not given self-govprnment by
allowing the members of a club to record their votes. Many
people think a neighborhood association or club is self-govern¬
ing if a question is put to them and every one votes upon it.
But if a club is to be really self-governed it must first learn
collective thinking. This is not a process which can be hurried,
it will take time and that time must not be grudged. Collec¬
tive thinking must be reverenced as an act of creation. The
time spent in evolving the group spirit is time spent in creat¬
ing the dynamic force of our civilization.
Moreover each Centre should be begun, directed and sup¬
ported (as far as possible) by the adult people of a community
acting together for that end. A Centre should not be an
undertaking begun by the School Committee and run by the
School Committee, but each Centre should be organized by
local initiative, to serve local needs, through methods chosen
by the people of a district to suit that particular district.
The ideal School Centre is a Community Centre. A group of
citizens asks for the use of a schoolhouse after school hours,
with heat, light, janitor, and a director to make the necessary
connection between the local undertaking and the city depart¬
ment. Then that group of citizens is responsible for the Cen¬
tre: for things worth while being done in the schoolhouse, and
for the support of the activities undertaken. By the time
such a School Centre is organized by such an association of
TRAINING FOR NEW DEMOCRACY 373
citizens, neighbors will have become acquainted with one
another in a more vital way than before, and they will have
begun to learn how to think and to act together as a neighbor¬
hood unit.
We are coming to a more general realization of this. In the
municipal buildings in the parks of Chicago, the people are
not given free lectures, free moving pictures, free music, free
dances etc.; they are invited to develop their own activities.
To the Recreation Centres of New York, operated by the Board
of Education, are being added the Community Centres con¬
trolled by local boards of neighbors. In Boston we have under
the School Committee a department of ''The Extended Use
of School Buildings," and the aim is to get the people of each
district to plan, carry out and supervise what civic, educa¬
tional and recreational activities they wish in the schoolhouses.
A Chicago minister said the other day that the south side
of Chicago was the only part of the city where interest in civic
problems and community welfare could be aroused, and this
he said was because of the South Park's work in field houses,
clubrooms and gymnasiums for the last ten or twelve years.
When the chairman of the Agricultural Council of Defense
of Virginia asked a citizen of a certain county what he thought
the prospects were of being able to rouse the people in his
county in regard to an increased food production, the prompt
reply was, " On the north side of the county we shall have no
trouble because we have several Community Leagues there,
but on the south side it will be a hard job."
The School or Community Centre is the real continuation
school of America, the true university of true democracy.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OP AMERICA
This book is a preservation facsimile
produced for the Northwestern University Library.
It is made in compliance with copyright law
and produced on acid-free archival
60# book weight paper
which meets the requirements of
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (permanence of paper)
Preservation facsimile printing and binding
by
Acme Bookbinding
Charlestown, Massachusetts
2011