Proposal
"It was the fundamental error of the jurists and lawmakers to think they could create life by means of a constitution and a code of laws. . . . Constitutions can only conclude real developments; they can never precede them. Artificial construction violates life." This is the Fascist philosophy of chaos in words ascribed to Hitler. "The pursuit of the random path of intelligence," he added, "was the real defection of man from his divine mission."
Intelligence, that is the divine in man, must accept the challenge. Its record in the creation of life stretches from the sages of Greece and the law-givers of Israel to
the Fathers of the American Constitution. Its will and purpose must rise anew against the blindness of instinct and the fury of perpetual revolution.
We believe that the endeavors of Plato and of his successors to outline a good Republic, a vital and durable society of men, must be resumed by men of today. We also believe that
the dangers of Utopian speculation can be avoided by a collective effort, enlightened by mutual criticism and help, and that the intellectual rigor which we must borrow from the ancient tradition of culture can acquire flexibility through alloy with the factual experimentalism in which the English-speaking nations always excelled.
I should like to ask you a question.
What is it?
Would you say that all men are equal in excellence, or is one man better than another?
The latter.
And in the commonwealth which we were founding do you conceive the guardians who have been brought up on our model system to be more perfect men, or the cobblers whose education has been cobbling?
What a ridiculous question!
You have answered me, I replied: Well, and may we not further say that our guardians are the best of our citizens?
By far the best.
And will not their wives be the best women?
Yes, by far the best.
And can there be anything better for the interests of the State than that the men and women of a State should be as good as possible?
There can be nothing better.
And this is what the arts of music and gymnastic, when present in such manner as we have described, will accomplish?
Certainly.
Then we have made an enactment not only possible but in the highest degree beneficial to the State?
True.
Then let the wives of our guardians strip, for their virtue will be their robe, and let them share in the toils of war and the defence of their country; only in the distribution of labours the lighter are to be assigned to the women, who are the weaker natures, but in other respects their duties are to be the same. And as for the man who laughs at naked women exercising their bodies from the best of motives, in his laughter he is plucking
A fruit of unripe wisdom,
and he himself is ignorant of what he is laughing at, or what he is about; — for that is, and ever will be, the best of sayings,
That the useful is the noble and the hurtful is the base.
Very true.
Here, then, is one difficulty in our law about women, which we may say that we have now escaped; the wave has not swallowed us up alive for enacting that the guardians of either sex should have all their pursuits in common; to the utility and also to the possibility of this arrangement the consistency of the argument with itself bears witness.
Yes, that was a mighty wave which you have escaped.
Yes, I said, but a greater is coming; you will of this when you see the next.
Go on; let me see.
The law, I said, which is the sequel of this and of all that has preceded, is to the following effect, —
"that the wives of our guardians are to be common, and their children are to be common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent."
Yes, he said, that is a much greater wave than the other; and the possibility as well as the utility of such a law are far more questionable.
I do not think, I said, that there can be any dispute about the very great utility of having wives and children in common; the possibility is quite another matter, and will be very much disputed.
I think that a good many doubts may be raised about both.
You imply that the two questions must be combined, I replied. Now I meant that you should admit the utility; and in this way, as I thought; I should escape from one of them, and then there would remain only the possibility.
But that little attempt is detected, and therefore you will please to give a defence of both.
Well, I said, I submit to my fate. Yet grant me a little favour: let me feast my mind with the dream as day dreamers are in the habit of feasting themselves when they are walking alone; for before they have discovered any means of effecting their wishes — that is a matter which never troubles them — they would rather not tire themselves by thinking about possibilities; but assuming that what they desire is already granted to them, they proceed with their plan, and delight in detailing what they mean to do when their wish has come true — that is a way which they have of not doing much good to a capacity which was never good for much. Now I myself am beginning to lose heart, and I should like, with your permission, to pass over the question of possibility at present. Assuming therefore the possibility of the proposal, I shall now proceed to enquire how the rulers will carry out these arrangements, and I shall demonstrate that our plan, if executed, will be of the greatest benefit to the State and to the guardians. First of all, then, if you have no objection, I will endeavour with your help to consider the advantages of the measure; and hereafter the question of possibility.
I have no objection; proceed.
First, I think that if our rulers and their auxiliaries are to be worthy of the name which they bear, there must be willingness to obey in the one and the power of command in the other; the guardians must themselves obey the laws, and they must also imitate the spirit of them in any details which are entrusted to their care.
That is right, he said.
You, I said, who are their legislator, having selected the men, will now select the women and give them to them; — they must be as far as possible of like natures with them; and they must live in common houses and meet at common meals, None of them will have anything specially his or her own; they will be together, and will be brought up together, and will associate at gymnastic exercises. And so they will be drawn by a necessity of their natures to have intercourse with each other — necessity is not too strong a word, I think?
Yes, he said; — necessity, not geometrical, but another sort of necessity which lovers know, and which is far more convincing and constraining to the mass of mankind.
True, I said; and this, Glaucon, like all the rest, must proceed after an orderly fashion; in a city of the blessed, licentiousness is an unholy thing which the rulers will forbid.
Yes, he said, and it ought not to be permitted.
Then clearly the next thing will be to make matrimony sacred in the highest degree, and what is most beneficial will be deemed sacred?
Exactly.
And how can marriages be made most beneficial? — that is a question which I put to you, because I see in your house dogs for hunting, and of the nobler sort of birds not a few. Now, I beseech you, do tell me, have you ever attended to their pairing and breeding?
In what particulars?
Why, in the first place, although they are all of a good sort, are not some better than others?
True.
And do you breed from them all indifferently, or do you take care to breed from the best only?
From the best.
And do you take the oldest or the youngest, or only those of ripe age?
I choose only those of ripe age.
And if care was not taken in the breeding, your dogs and birds would greatly deteriorate?
Certainly.
And the same of horses and animals in general?
Undoubtedly.
Good heavens! my dear friend, I said, what consummate skill will our rulers need if the same principle holds of the human species!
Certainly, the same principle holds; but why does this involve any particular skill?
Because, I said, our rulers will often have to practise upon the body corporate with medicines. Now you know that when patients do not require medicines, but have only to be put under a regimen, the inferior sort of practitioner is deemed to be good enough; but when medicine has to be given, then the doctor should be more of a man.
That is quite true, he said; but to what are you alluding?
I mean, I replied, that our rulers will find a considerable dose of falsehood and deceit necessary for the good of their subjects: we were saying that the use of all these things regarded as medicines might be of advantage.
And we were very right.
And this lawful use of them seems likely to be often needed in the regulations of marriages and births.
How so?
Why, I said, the principle has been already laid down that the best of either sex should be united with the best as often, and the inferior with the inferior, as seldom as possible; and that
they should rear the offspring of the one sort of union, but not of the other, if the flock is to be maintained in first-rate condition. Now these goings on must be a secret which the rulers only know, or there will be a further danger of our herd, as the guardians may be termed, breaking out into rebellion.
Very true.
Had we not better appoint certain festivals at which we will bring together the brides and bridegrooms, and sacrifices will be offered and suitable hymeneal songs composed by our poets: the number of weddings is a matter which must be left to the discretion of the rulers, whose aim will be to preserve the average of population? There are many other things which they will have to consider, such as the effects of wars and diseases and any similar agencies, in order as far as this is possible to prevent the State from becoming either too large or too small.
Certainly, he replied.
We shall have to invent some ingenious kind of lots which the less worthy may draw on each occasion of our bringing them together, and then they will accuse their own ill-luck and not the rulers.
To be sure, he said.
And I think that our braver and better youth, besides their other honours and rewards, might have greater facilities of intercourse with women given them; their bravery will be a reason, and such fathers ought to have as many sons as possible.
True.
And the proper officers, whether male or female or both, for offices are to be held by women as well as by men —
Yes —
The proper officers will take the offspring of the good parents to the pen or fold, and there they will deposit them with certain nurses who dwell in a separate quarter;
but the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be.
Yes, he said, that must be done if the breed of the guardians is to be kept pure.
They will provide for their nurture, and will bring the mothers to the fold when they are full of milk, taking the greatest possible care that no mother recognizes her own child; and other wet-nurses may be engaged if more are required. Care will also be taken that the process of suckling shall not be protracted too long; and the mothers will have no getting up at night or other trouble, but will hand over all this sort of thing to the nurses and attendants.
You suppose the wives of our guardians to have a fine easy time of it when they are having children.
Why, said I, and so they ought. Let us, however, proceed with our scheme. We were saying that the parents should be in the prime of life?
Very true.
And what is the prime of life? May it not be defined as a period of about twenty years in a woman's life, and thirty in a man's?
Which years do you mean to include?
A woman, I said, at twenty years of age may begin to bear children to the State, and continue to bear them until forty; a man may begin at five-and-twenty, when he has passed the point at which the pulse of life beats quickest, and continue to beget children until he be fifty-five.
Certainly, he said, both in men and women those years are the prime of physical as well as of intellectual vigour.
Any one above or below the prescribed ages who takes part in the public hymeneals shall be said to have done an unholy and unrighteous thing; the child of which he is the father, if it steals into life, will have been conceived under auspices very unlike the sacrifices and prayers, which at each hymeneal priestesses and priest and the whole city will offer, that the new generation may be better and more useful than their good and useful parents, whereas his child will be the offspring of darkness and strange lust.
Very true, he replied.
And the same law will apply to any one of those within the prescribed age who forms a connection with any woman in the prime of life without the sanction of the rulers; for we shall say that he is raising up a bastard to the State, uncertified and unconsecrated.
Very true, he replied.
This applies, however, only to those who are within the specified age: after that we allow them to range at will, except that a man may not marry his daughter or his daughter's daughter, or his mother or his mother's mother; and women, on the other hand, are prohibited from marrying their sons or fathers, or son's son or father's father, and so on in either direction. And we grant all this, accompanying the permission with strict orders to prevent any embryo which may come into being from seeing the light; and if any force a way to the birth, the parents must understand that the offspring of such an union cannot be maintained, and arrange accordingly.
That also, he said, is a reasonable proposition. But how will they know who are fathers and daughters, and so on?
They will never know. The way will be this: — dating from the day of the hymeneal, the bridegroom who was then married will call all the male children who are born in the seventh and tenth month afterwards his sons, and the female children his daughters, and they will call him father, and he will call their children his grandchildren, and they will call the elder generation grandfathers and grandmothers. All who were begotten at the time when their fathers and mothers came together will be called their brothers and sisters, and these, as I was saying, will be forbidden to inter-marry. This, however, is not to be understood as an absolute prohibition of the marriage of brothers and sisters; if the lot favours them, and they receive the sanction of the Pythian oracle, the law will allow them.
Quite right, he replied.
Such is the scheme, Glaucon, according to which the guardians of our State are to have their wives and families in common.
-- "The Republic," by Plato
Society may be likened to a triangular pyramid with its three faces representing the constitutional order, the economic order, the international order. None of them stands alone; each of them leans on the others. All three together converge toward the common apex, which is the freedom and dignity of human personality.
All three rise together from the common base, which is the moral belief and the religious faith of the community.
We therefore have agreed that four groups of experts should be appointed, under the guidance of a central committee, to study the four leading issues of American and world democracy. Definite proposals should be formulated at the end of a limited time and submitted to the public under the collective responsibility of the committee and of its staff.
1
The first of the four issues concerns the relations between democracy, or government by the people for the people, and individual liberties. It calls for a systematic description of freedom under a constitutional order so that the citizen may be protected not only against the threat of the external tyrant but against the treason of his fellow-citizen as well. Lincoln, in his final address, said that "important principles may and must be inflexible," but the hour has struck when such "inflexible principles" must be precisely stated in a renovated law, beyond which freedom is felony.
This, among the faces of the pyramid which symbolizes the structure of democracy, is the most patently exposed to the attack of Fascism. "We shall always be stronger than the democracies," Hitler is reported to have said, "in being able to guide their public opinion according to our wish. They cannot defend themselves against such attacks, for otherwise they would have to become authoritarian themselves. This creates such an inequality that even considerable differences in military strength are neutralized by it." While accepting the challenge, we must learn what is vital in the lesson.
Liberty, indeed, if it is not to offer a "more or less decomposed corpse" for conquerors or Quislings to tread down, must implement the promises of the Bill of Rights with the commandments of a Bill of Duties. The "enlightened self-interest" of pragmatic and utilitarian liberalism must fall in line with co-operation and service. A higher law than the will of a single and momentary majority -- which by a single act might destroy democracy itself -- was always recognized, whether written or not, by democracy in its creative periods. It protected the rights of future majorities against the landslide of passing emotions and the vicissitudes of ephemeral interests. This law, a law of permanence, must be restored -- and written.
Much of constitutional democracy no doubt will and must remain unwritten. No separation of powers, no checks and balances, no judicial guardianship can be substituted for the inner restraint of self-imposed tolerance and of devotion to human personality. The right to dissent must ever be upheld as the mainstay of democracy. Margins as wide as possible must be left to the fluidity of interpretation and change, to experiment even in doubtful ventures, if the spirit of democracy, which is perennial adolescence and growth, is not to calcify in the literalism of the written codes. On the other hand, a constitution of democracy cannot remain any longer negative only -- a mere outline of the limits prescribed by self-restraint and tolerance, a Palladium of freedom without the armor of discipline.
If American democracy is to live and become the pattern of a world to come, a constitutional reform is needed, both in the field of liberty and duty and in the relations between legislative and executive power.
The crisis of civil liberties in these fateful years has shown, and will show more definitely in the near future, how urgent is a redefinition of their meaning and scope. No less cogent is the evidence that the deterioration of parliamentarism has helped to wreck the democracies of Europe and saps our own.
The compulsions of survival and of social security dictate the necessity for strengthened executive authority within a stricter frame of responsibility before the electorate and the commonwealth, since responsibility, severed from this authority to act with power, and atomized among too many, becomes elusive or vanishes altogether. As soon as the representative system, grown obtrusive and riotous, glories in crippling the executive, democracy itself is castrated and paralyzed.
On the other hand, as soon as power is given by democracy to the executive enabling it to arrive at decisions of public interest and to overcome "the law's delay," democracy is confronted with the opposite threat of the "insolence of office." If the judiciary must abdicate some of its inhibitive censorship on innovation and speed, the electorate in turn must be provided with guarantees effective enough to hold in check the whims and usurpations of elected persons. These are new conflicts arising from new situations. They cannot be solved by evading them along the functional lines of a corporate state or by increasing still further the backstage play of pressure groups. To such conflicts, and to the possibility of mediating them in the structural harmony of a more sincere legislation, we call the attention of our colleagues and friends. The emergency of democracy must be the emergence of democracy.
It is true that the high temperature of war may weld vital democracies and bring back a renewed feeling of partnership. For years to come, our fight for survival will of necessity foster this democratic brotherhood of sacrifice -- if we are brothers enough to survive. But that brotherhood must survive even victory.
The primary groups of family, educational association, neighborhood, and church -- each of them with its specific attributes and all of them with their combined contributions to the general purpose -- must be restored in new forms with new life. This is tantamount to stating that
a constitutional reform of democracy cannot be founded but on the spirit of a new religion.
2
The second issue, therefore -- to whose basic quality we are immediately referred from our first approach to the most visible aspect of the democratic crisis -- contemplates
the relations between the community as a whole and the separate churches. It asks for definite tenets embodying the universal religion of Democracy, which shall underlie each and all of them. For virtually all of them have meddled in the anarchy of the nations and bowed to the powers that be. Lincoln already had noticed that "each invokes God's aid against the others" so that "the prayers of both could not be answered." But not yet at that time had a Hitler thanked, "in humility, God for His blessings" amidst the peals of Germany's Christian bells celebrating through seven days the triumphs of an Antichrist.
Therefore the hour has struck when we must know what limits are set by the religion of freedom, which is democracy, to the freedom of worship, and of what God we talk when we repeat, from the Gettysburg Address, that "this nation," and with this nation the world, "must have a new birth of freedom under God."
In broad terms the task here is to determine what religious and ethical traditions are of greater or lesser value for the preservation and growth of the democratic principle. This task is obviously one which cannot be fulfilled by amateurish attempts to emulsify in sentimental combinations the contrasting religions without any one of them forgoing any one of its claims or even so much as dulling the edge of its inherent dogmatic intolerance. The attempt which we propose is of another kind -- not toward confusion but toward clarification.
An inquiry into the religious heritage of the Western world should try to discover which of its elements are more apt to co-operate with the democratic community and consequently more deserving of protection and help by it, and whether other elements, conversely, are by their nature and content so committed to the support of Fascist and other autocratic philosophies and intrinsically so inimical to democracy, or at least so ambiguous, as to become a source of additional danger in the hour of peril. Such an inquiry also should help to disclose whether and in how far religious and ethical traditions which emphasize freedom and the rights of the individual may obscure or neglect the collective duties and responsibilities which democratic communities must assume. It should likewise make clear whether and to what extent perfectionist principles in religious faiths and cults, while helpful in detecting the relative evils and errors of specific historic conclusions, may enervate the will to defend and to extend relative justice, and bring confusion into the choices between greater and lesser evils which constitute the alternatives of all collective decisions.
The results of analyses of this kind would determine the attitudes of the sovereign democratic society toward the particular religious associations within it. That Nazism, like any other species of totalitarian nationalism, has tried to annihilate or at least humiliate all religious communities is a tribute to their virtue as bearers of supra-temporal and supra-national loyalties. But if such loyalties are not expressed and organized in the frame of uncompromising devotion to the universality of God and man, the confessions and churches within the nation are only too liable to succumb to enslavement by the state and to hire themselves for despotic purposes. This is the pitfall of Protestant sects. On the other hand, if the supra-national loyalties are expressed and organized in political terms, the members of a supra-national church may prove equally prone, although for different motives, to become the tools of political plans inimical to democracy and claiming universal validity while actually serving very special interests. This is the danger of Roman Catholicism. The Communist International, with its questionable relations to Russian foreign policy, is a secularized version of a supranational religion with political commitments. In some of its ways it acts as an heir to the Eastern or old Tsarist church.
The problem admits of no easy solution. Its juridical and constitutional alternatives are heavily strained between the opposite risks of democracy's forfeiting its freedom of worship and of democracy's inviting treason -- more effective when cloaked with piety and justified by faith. Yet the difficulties themselves testify to the gravity of the problem and to its compelling timeliness. Already the blundering and bungling of democracy whenever a new sect, like Jehovah's Witnesses, steps unexpectedly to the fore, or its helplessness whenever an older religion wins a degree of influence beyond the limits to which the era of pragmatic liberalism had been comfortably accustomed, is token enough of a situation which bids for a vigorous, however judicious, revision of habits and laws. To be sure, separation of state and church must remain the premise of the democratic law on religions. But separation, in this field too, was degraded to isolationism or pretended aloofness and willful ignorance. Its consequences are increasingly visible in practices of unctuous collusion and mutual bribery between state and churches. In this field too, as in the general field of civil liberties in constitutional order, the sovereignty of the democratic community must stand above the liberty of each particular group, and the negative outline of the limits prescribed by self-restraint and liberal tolerance must be filled with positive knowledge and criticism -- or even permit intervention when the latter becomes the lesser evil.
The same group of experts entrusted with the study of the issue of religion should explore the conflicts and solutions in the issue of education. The two are at bottom one and the same, since, as was authoritatively stated, "education in Western democracy has been the substitute for a national -- and supra-national -- religion." Here too the problem is to preserve the advantages of unhampered opinion and research while preventing the freedom of learning from being used as a cover for the evil-doings of the "historic relativism" and the "healthy skepticism" that have made our generations lose their way. The pruning of this tree of freedom will not make it less fruitful. The organization of learning, with colleges and universities at the top of its structure, has built and builds the preparatory ground where democratic aristocracies are trained for leadership. But no aristocracy or leadership can subsist without a firm footing in inflexible principles and unshakable values. A reorientation of education and a supervision of its aims should be undertaken from this angle.
It will not be forgotten, however, that the educational system of the Western democracies has been and still is, in spite of its shortcomings, the most conspicuous asset for the maintenance of our civilization. The obstacles to creative endeavor have been of the obstructive rather than of the destructive sort. Colleges and universities have even developed, almost spontaneously, in their chapel services and exercises a provisional model for an unsectarian liturgy -- virtually adequate to a new religion outside the literal fences of each separate faith and embracing the spiritual substance of all.
3
The third issue points to the need of a profound economic reform outlining in detail the law of the commonwealth, the era of distributive justice. For
there cannot be any birth or rebirth of freedom under God unless it be a God of justice, manifest in breath and bread, beyond and above the vicious era which saw monopolistic capitalism and materialistic communism concurrently lift to the dignity of supreme virtues the three capital sins of greed, pride, and envy. Therefore the Declaration of Independence shall be upheld not only in so far as it states each man's inalienable rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but in the final oath as well, which consecrates to a common duty beyond each individual's rights "our lives, our fortunes" and pledges to this duty "our sacred honor."
The need for opening to man's hope a new course, different both from the capitalism of big business and from the Communism of Marx and of the Soviet state, has been stressed only too often; but no such course has been so far recognizably charted. Discoverers in economics like Thorstein Veblen, or legislators and prophets like Henry George, usually have been overlooked by the public mind, either sated in the routine observance of a classic liberalism far from adjusted to the new standards of production and consumption, or swept by passionate proselytism or hostility toward the restless scheming of European revolutionary schools. The time seems ripe for competent students of economic history and theory, free from bigotry and prejudice, to examine the nature of our social disorder, with their attention bent on articulate projects designed to secure as much of stability and collective prosperity as may be attained in an age of reconstruction after the present ruin.
This field, no doubt, is that in which the requirements of technical precision and positive control are most exacting, since economic life has a bodily weight which anchors to the ground of immediate verifiable fact the inventions of the mind. In this field, therefore, even less than in any other can specific results be anticipated from a general proposal, and it is easily admissible that some of the more definite plans of reform as sketched in the foregoing Declaration are subject on further inquiry to interpretation and change. The main directions, however, may be pointed out as follows:
Projects of political and ethical interference in economic life remain Utopian unless they are in agreement with the interests of groups strong enough to enforce their ideal premises. So far we must accept the materialistic point of view. But, beyond this initial coincidence, such premises or principles act far more powerfully than as mere labels for material interests, and they acquire a dynamic power of their own. Marxism would hardly have gripped the masses if its economic motivation had not been implemented with the resources of a moral will to justice. In the same way, Washington's and Lincoln's wars would have collapsed in defeat at their very outbreak if Washington had cared for little more than the abolition of the tea-tax and Lincoln had fought as the condottiere of New England industrialism. This means that an economic reform must start from the twofold foundation of technical necessity and of moral, or religious, purpose. A real Realpolitik is applied ethics.
A return to slavery -- in a modern version of it, more thoroughgoing and widespread than history has ever known before -- is the general trend of this age. The origins of the evil are both moral and economic, and so must be the treatment. From the economic point of view, the workman is bought by the totalitarian state for a minimum of sustenance and security, the counterpart of which is the loss of everything else, and first of all of liberty. Vocational choice, the right to quit employment, the right of fair hearing, are eliminated, and it is the employer alone who assigns the kind of labor, who fixes the duration of employment, who administers "justice," and inflicts punishment. The employer, in turn, is shown by ultimate analysis to be none other than the state. Substantial residues of profit are conceded by it -- in Fascism and Nazism and perhaps already again, albeit in disguise, by totalitarian Communism -- to half-privileged groups, as connecting links between the past and the future, or between autocracy and the mob. But the concession is revocable without notice, and ownership is a sham as free enterprise is a remembrance. Neither in upper nor in lower social strata is there any room left for the "forgotten man," since the state and its police keep accurate record of each and everyone. This economy of servitude and waste, climaxing in production as armament and in war as loot, is misnamed "planned economy."
The planned economy which is implicit in the spirit of democracy is of a different sort.
The ideal goal here is to make bread and shelter as freely accessible to everybody as water, the use of roads, and a number of public services now are in areas of advanced civilization. In more realistic terms, the problem is to make everybody sure of a decent minimum of sustenance, without the counterpart of slavery enforced by courts-martial, and with the discipline of social service so distributed as to prevent a feeling of earned security from degenerating into the malcontent idleness of parasitical relief. If in the field of constitutional order the trend of a reformed democracy must be restrictive, tying the Bill of Rights to a Bill of Duties, in the economic field, conversely, it must be expansive, supplementing the Bill of Political Rights with a Bill of Economic Rights. Results of this kind can be approximated along a flexible line of compromise, since compromise -- not necessarily a foul one -- is in the very nature of democracy. There is no point in assailing, violently though but verbally, capitalism as merely the villain and in refurbishing the quaint battlecry, "Property is theft"; for
capitalism, the outcome of an earnest and toilsome historical process, is not wiped out with posters and slogans. Nor is there any point in excommunicating Socialism, for Socialism, or whatever other name may denote some form of collectivism and socialized democracy, is with us to stay, whether one likes it or not.
They are, indeed, the Janus faces of democracy, mutually conditioned.
From its principle of freedom democracy looks toward capitalism, which it envisions as natural, even if not unqualifiedly necessary; while from its principle of justice democracy looks toward collectivism, which it considers as necessary, even if not so conformant to nature. The balance between the two principles could be maintained as long as profit economy and consumers'-need economy were one and the same. It broke when these two economies went asunder. This, in turn, was partly due to moral deterioration in both the spheres of production and of consumption as in both the categories of employers and of employees; while, in a sequence of stricter economic forces, it was largely the blind effect of the immaturity and overgrowth of the machine age. This substituted mass production, often unnecessary and intrinsically vicious, for differentiated craftsmanship. It cast on the workman's hours the pall of passive drill, subduing the diligence of the human person serving the machine to the automatic beat of the machine itself. Together with concomitant causes and especially with the sudden dislocations of world-output and world-markets, it exposed both capital and labor to the threat and panic of idleness, as profit dwindled and unemployment simultaneously increased. Crisis followed crisis at shortening intervals, until they merged in one -- of universal size and chronic duration.
Yet, the perturbations of this greatest of all technological revolutions -- like those of the early ages of metallurgy and trade, as adumbrated in lurid myths by the shocked memory of antiquity -- must be regarded as the clouded dawn of a better day. If the machine, man's creature, seems to have developed a brutal power of its own, there abides in the human mind a presentiment that it can and must be domesticated somehow.
A further advance in mechanical ingenuity together with a change in man's purpose should provide the setup for a new extensive economy to replace in large measure the intensive one under which our world falters. It does not seem likely so far that the full benefits of technology can be reaped without rebuilding our big cities, but the possibility is already conceivable of stimulating with autonomous power minor and even minimal branches for renovated forms of home industry and individual artisanship. The centrifugal trend from urban conglomerations is a sign of the future; while production for use instead of for financial returns is abundantly exemplified in public works and institutions of welfare and learning, pointing to a society not wholly expressed in terms of money. Such signs and trends must and can be interpreted and activated;
cooperatives, whose early achievements in pre-Nazi Scandinavia and in pre-Fascist Italy bore implications of world-wide import, can and must be promoted and multiplied, as bridges across the gap between producers' and consumers' economy. But, whatever particular schemes may be devised by economists and social philosophers responsive to the objective suggestions of a changing world, one general inspiration will be behind them. Fascist totalitarianism, sprung from the diseases of a disintegrating democracy, has forced the two divergent tensions of the democratic spirit -- of freedom toward capitalism, of justice toward collectivism -- into one circular unity, the strangling ring of National Socialism.
This calamitous circle, of Capitalism-Communism as enemy brothers or as mutual accomplices, must be broken, and the two components of democracy -- economic freedom and economic justice -- must be reconciled in associative and complementary work for an age of creative splendor in which neither the individual's rights emerge into anarchy nor his duties submerge him in slavery.
Much reliance should be put on the genius for selective and inventive social adjustments which marks the experience of the English-speaking nations, in their ability, tireless so far, to build, as it were, firm pile-dwellings amidst the turbulent waters of historic change.
Of all essays for the economic remolding of democracy, the most important to date has been the New Deal. Its failures, like the NRA, have been largely due to an empirical groping not sufficiently illuminated by a consistent philosophy. Its achievements, in endeavors like the TVA, the NYA, and others, survive both the murmurs of the Left, which suspects them as stratagems of an undefeated capitalism, and the resentment of the Right, which brands them as Communism in thin disguise. More relevant, however, than its specific merits and flaws is the general value of its experiment in introducing a nucleus of planned economy into the loosened texture of free enterprise; and, whatever its fortunes in an immediate future, its intention will remain directive in an era of evolutionary growth. For
evolution, not revolution, is the hope and will of creative democracy.
4
The fourth issue, finally, calls for a definite law of international, or supra-national order, and sovereignty of mankind. Wilson, the last prophet in the Old Testament of Americanism, said: "We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among the nations and their governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized states." It follows, then, that spontaneous observance of such standards in supra-national relations cannot be expected of groups and nations who do not respect them within their own boundaries, and that no plan of universal order can be detached from the relative degree of civilization attained by those who are to partake in it.
Therefore, the prerequisites for any world-structure that can be designed today are constitutional order, ethico-religious purpose, and economic justice inside the single communities that must build it; since total harmony is the homogeneity of particular ones, and the City of Man cannot but be made of cities of men. A positive plan for world-legislation such as the sobering experiences of these decades demand cannot be assigned any longer to pure theoretical thinking, even if
as masterly as Kant's, or to
the magic power of dream, even if as august as Mazzini's. It must be grounded in knowledge and patience, with a comprehensive estimate of the time required by gradual adjustments and of the difficulties and resistances that must be overcome on the road to unity. Students of international law approaching the ancient problem from contemporary angles will keep immune both to the quibbling legalistic spirit of the defunct League of Nations and to the rash, however generous, zeal of many a precursor who envisioned immediate democratic federations with the inclusion of
self-styled democracies so fragile as not to withstand the first shock of war or the first impact of propaganda.
Wilson said, in the preamble to the Fourteen Points: "For our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us." But we for our part see very clearly that justice to others and to ourselves cannot be done through bargains and balances; that Wilson's "program of the world's peace" cannot be enforced by Leagues and courts with judges but no sheriffs. Therefore,
"that program, the only possible program as we see it," even if its enactment should require the efforts of generations, is a universal law first promulgated to all humanity, entrusted to the good will of those groups and communities that are progressively disposed to adopt it, then enforced on the rebels, finally to become the common peace and freedom of all the peoples of the earth.
***
The four groups which we propose, while equipped with what is necessary for their purpose, should remain unhampered by the crowded staffs and the ponderous, however trivial, documentations which have "sicklied o'er" so many a reformatory intention with the pale cast of academic irrelevance.
The time accorded to their inquiry should be within the predictable limits of this decisive phase in the world-struggle -- so as to make for prompt effect on action rather than for bequests to the stacks and files of a studious posterity.
One concise volume, impersonally endorsed by a company of friends, should encompass the fourfold results of this study, outlining the historic antecedents, the present terms, and the probable outlook for each of the fundamental issues, together with their convergences toward a united aim.
Such results should be meant to help pave the way toward the restoration and establishment of a systematic and integral democracy without which the challenge of Fascism and Nazism must remain unanswered except by appeasement and defeat.
