Part Iii Is Mainly Directed.

But I am making no proposal for some hard and fast method by which every vote shall register the will of a definite, fixed number of men rather than of one man. I am talking of a new method of living by which the individual shall learn to be part of social wholes, through which he shall express social wholes. The individual not the group must be the basis of organization. But the individual is created by many groups, his vote cannot 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 life makes possible.

When shall we begin to understand what the ballot-box means in our political life? It creates nothing—it merely registers what is already created. If direct government is to be more than ballot-box democracy it must learn not to record what is on the surface, but 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 common ideas and willing its own social life. The dynamic thought is the thought which represents the most complete synthesis. In art the influence of a school does not depend upon the number of its adherents, but upon the extent to which that school represents a synthesis of thought. This is exactly so in 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 sum 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 our political life. Unless this is done before we make sweeping 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 will 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 practical politics. When we have an organized electorate, we shall begin to see the advantages of direct government.

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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 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) until 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 automatic blow-off. Gauge your boiler (society) at what it will 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 policies in favor of a constructive policy. 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 reinterpret or restate the fundamental principles of democracy.

But why do we consider our present constructive social policies more democratic? Are they necessarily so? Has not paternalistic Germany constructive social policies 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 responsibility, (2) an 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 policies. The two have gone on side by side. Moreover, the adoption of social policies has increased the powers of government and, therefore, it has more and more come to be seen that popular control of government is necessary. At the same time the making of campaign issues out of social policies has at once in itself made all the people more important in politics. Or it is equally true to say that giving the people a closer share in government means that our daily lives pass more naturally into the area of politics. 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 policies are not policies invented for the good of the people, but policies created by the people. The regulation theory was based on the same fallacy as the let-alone theory, namely, that government is something external to the structural life of the people. Government cannot leave us alone, it cannot regulate us, it can only express us. The scope of politics should be our whole social life. Our present idea of an omnipresent, ever-active, articulate 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 individualism, because it is legislation for the individual. We have had legislation to protect home industries, we have encouraged agriculture, we have helped the railroads by concessions and land grants, but we have not until recently had legislation for the individual. Social legislation 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 individualism. On the contrary it shows an increase of genuine individualism. 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 synthesizes the idea of individual and community through its view of the social individual as the community-unit. Law used to be for the particularist individual; now it serves the community, but the community-unit is the social individual.

In our most recent books we see the expression “the new individualism.” The meaning of this phrase, although never used by him, is clearly implied 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 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 line 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.

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Footnote 74:

With the executive and legislative limited in their powers, the decisions of the courts gradually came, especially as they developed constructive powers, to be a body of law which guided the American people.

Footnote 75:

For ways of doing this see Part III.

Footnote 76:

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.

Footnote 77:

See ch. XXX, “Political Pluralism and Functionalism.”

Footnote 78:

Laissez-faire was popular when there were great numbers of individual producers. When the large-scale business system made wage-earners of these, there was the beginning of the break-down of laissez-faire.

Footnote 79:

Besides the more obvious one of “universal suffrage.”

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