The Moral Economy

by Ralph Barton Perry

IV

I have said that it is possible to measure progress because of the persistence throughout the whole course of human history of certain identical interests and purposes. When such an interest or purpose is sufficiently broad in its scope, and gets itself permanently embodied, it is called an institution. Thus government embodies the need of the general regulation of interests within the social community. Education is due to the individual's prolonged period of helplessness and dependence, and the need of assimilating him to the order of his time. Science is man's {148} knowledge of the ways of nature in detail, when this is recorded, organized, and preserved as a permanent utility answering to the permanent need of adaptation. And religion expresses in outer form the human need of reckoning with the final day of judgment, of establishing right relations with the powers that underly and overrule the proximate sphere of life. There is no limited number of institutions, but these are notable examples. Government, education, science, and religion are fixed moral necessities. They arise out of those conditions of life which are general and constant. Hence each has a history coextensive with the history of society itself. And since the function of each remains identical throughout, the adequacy with which at any given time it fulfils that function may be taken as a measure of civilization. Government being the most prominent of institutions, and its improvement being the deepest concern of society, I shall select it for special consideration.[5]

I have already referred to the Platonic account of government, given in the Republic. It furnishes the starting-point of all political philosophy. In the First and Second Books, Plato examines two contrary sceptical criticisms of government, with a most illuminating result. In the First Book the sceptic urges the view that government represents the interest of the strong; {149} primarily of the ruler himself, enabling him to aggrandize himself at the expense of the weak. But in the Second Book the sceptic is made to suggest that government represents rather the interest of the weak, since it affords him a protection which he is not strong enough to afford himself. Now the moral of this paradox lies in the fact that government represents the interest neither of the strong nor of the weak, but of the community as a whole. This moral is virtually pointed in the reply which Plato makes to the first of these two sceptical positions. The ruler gains his power and prestige not from the exploitation of the interests of his subjects, but from his protection of them. His activity touches all the interests of the community, and is tolerated only in so far as it conciliates them. In other words, his strength is drawn wholly from the constituency which he serves. The many individual interests, on the other hand, owe their security to that concentration and organization which centres in the ruler. They only participate in a power which the ruler may exercise and enjoy as a unit. But unless that power be engaged in their service it ceases to exist. It is not a personal power, but a permanent function, through which the many interests of society unite, and so share severally the security, glory, and resourcefulness of the whole body.

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Government in this sense is both a necessity and an opportunity. Suppose men to be in contact through propinquity or common descent. Divided among themselves they are prey to natural forces, wild beasts, or human enemies. But acting as a unit they are sufficiently strong to protect themselves. He who wields them as a unit to this end is for the time-being the ruler; and to submit to his leadership is simply to submit to the necessity of protection. Or, divided among themselves, they remain in a condition of poverty and fear; while united they can wage an aggressive campaign against nature, and against those who threaten them or possess what they lack. Again, he who settles their internal differences, accomplishes their organization, and makes it effective, is their ruler; and he owes his authority to the opportunity of conquest which his leadership affords.

The fact that government is thus of natural origin, the inevitable solution of an inevitable problem, has been obscured through confusing its general necessity with the accidental circumstances connected with the selection of rulers. The first ruler may have been appointed by God; or, as is more likely, he may have owed his choice to his own brutal self-assertion. But this has no more to do with the origin of the function of government, than the present methods of ambitious {151} politicians have to do with the constitutional office of a republican presidency. Government meets a moral need; and no man has ever ruled over men who has not met that need, however cruel and greedy he may have been in his private motives.

From the very beginning, then, government exists by virtue of the good that it does. But there have been enormous differences in the price that men have paid for that good; and this constitutes its variable and progressive factor. Tyranny is, in the long run, the most unstable form of government, because it grossly overestimates the amount that men will pay for the benefit of order. In the Antigone of Sophocles, Creon thus justifies his rule:

Than lawlessness there is no greater ill. It ruins states, overturns homes, and joining with the spear-thrust breaks the ranks in rout. But in the steady lines what saves most lives is discipline. Therefore we must defend the public order.

But when his son Haemon protests against his tyranny, Creon states his understanding of the bargain:

CREON
Govern this land for others than myself?

HAEMON
No city is the property of one alone.

CREON
Is not the city reckoned his who rules?

HAEMON
Excellent ruling—you alone, the land deserted![6]

{152} In other words, Creon does not understand that if he exacts everything he will possess nothing. There will come a point when the cost to the community exceeds the gain; and when that point is reached government must either make more liberal terms or forfeit its power.

The principle of rationality in government is parsimony. When its benefit involves a wasteful sacrifice of interests and may be purchased more thriftily, the pressure of interest inevitably in the long run brings about the change. The interests upon which the burden weighs most heavily constitute the unstable factor, and since, in order that equilibrium may be restored, these must be relieved, there is necessarily a gradual liberalization of governmental institutions. In the light of these general considerations I wish briefly to examine three historical types of government, and then to present a summary of present tendencies.

There is an interesting estimate of the benefits and cost of the ancient military monarchy in the history of Israel, as recorded by the writer of the Book of Samuel. The elders have demanded that Samuel make them a king, to judge them, "like all the nations." But he first warns them of the price that they will have to pay:

And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons, and {153} appoint them unto him, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and they shall run before his chariots; and he will appoint them unto him for captains of thousands, and captains of fifties; and he will set some to plow his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and the instruments of his chariots. . . . And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. . . . And he will take your men servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king that ye shall have chosen you.

But the men of Israel were willing to pay even this price, saying:

Nay; but we will have a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.[7]

The benefits of monarchy, in which Israel sought to emulate her neighbors, were judgment and military prowess. Even where the evils of tyranny were most aggravated these benefits actually accrued and constituted a rational ground of authority. The king was, at least in a measure, worthy of his hire. But the cost was extravagant; the king exacted a disproportionate share of the plunder, and reduced his subjects to a condition of personal bondage. In the great monarchies, such as Assyria, Egypt, Persia, and the Roman {154} Empire in its later period, the benefits of his role were greatly attenuated before they reached to the depths and extremities of his kingdom, judgment being reduced to the caprice of an irresponsible officer, and military prowess to a faint reflection of national glory. Now the weakness of such a polity lay in its doubtful value to the governed, these failing to participate fairly in its achievements, and so lacking incentive to support it. There was no clear and convincing identification of individual interest and national purpose.

The strength of Greek and Roman oligarchies, on the other hand, lay in precisely this morale, or solidarity of interest. Their small size and racial homogeneity brought the ruler into direct relations with a constituency which was clearly conscious of its purpose and held him closely to it. So even where the kingship lingered on as a form, this polity was virtually a compact self-governing community. The benefits of government, to which every other interest was harshly subordinated, were still judgment and military prowess. But these benefits were effectually guaranteed; and the sacrifices which they required became a code of honor, both to be praised and gloried in as parts of happiness. Those who think that the Spartans felt their discipline to be essentially a hardship should read the song of Tyrtaeus, {155} which they recited in their tents on the eve of battle:

With spirit let us fight for this land, and for our children die, being no longer chary of our lives. Fight, then, young men, standing fast one by another, nor be beginners of cowardly flight or fear. But rouse a great and valiant spirit in your breasts, and love not life when ye contend with men. And the elders, whose limbs are no longer active, the old desert not or forsake. For surely this were shameful, that fallen amid the foremost champions, in front of the youths, an older man should lie low, having his head now white and his beard hoary, breathing out a valiant spirit in the dust. . . . Yet all this befits the young while he enjoys the brilliant bloom of youth. To mortal men and women he is lovely to look upon, whilst he lives; and noble when he has fallen in the foremost ranks.[8]

But the cost is none the less heavy because it is not felt. In the first place, there was the cost untold to those whom the oligarchy held in subjection, a hundred thousand Messenians and twice as many Helots. Their unequal participation in the benefits of government, necessary though it may have been, lent instability to the whole polity. It was the menace of their resentment that forced upon their rulers a policy of perpetual vigilance and military discipline. And in the second place, there was the cost to the Spartan himself of attaining to a physical efficiency equal to that of ten Helots.

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In the rival polity of Athens, the first of these abuses is only in a measure corrected. The liberal extension of the privileges of citizenship is the achievement of a later age. But the democracy of Athens did demonstrate the internal wastefulness of a polity dominated by purely military aims. The classic representation of this protest against sacrificing individual taste and capacity, together with all growth and abundance in the arts of peace, to the harsh rigors and passive obedience of a soldier's life, is to be found in Thucydides. In the funeral oration attributed to Pericles there is this account of the superiority of Athenian institutions:

It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service. . . . And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil; we have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year; at home the style of our living is refined; and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish melancholy. . . . And in the matter of education, whereas they [the Spartans] from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which they face. . . . If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart but without laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers? Since we do not anticipate the {157} pain, although, when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest; and thus too our city is equally admirable in peace and in war. For we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness.[9]

The political disorders of later Athenian history illustrate the difficulty of reconciling individualism with order and stability. But at the same time they prove that the task is a necessary one, and that until it has been successfully performed, government can enjoy at best only a false security. For no interests can safely be neglected, least of all those which arise from the natural activities of men and lie in the direction of the normal growth of human capacities.

Now these ancient polities illustrate the inevitable pressure in the direction of liberal government. The original and always the fundamental values of government are order and power. But these must be obtained with the minimum of personal exploitation on the part of the ruler; the function of government must be clearly understood and vigilantly guarded by a body of citizens who identify their interests with it. And secondly, order and power must be made compatible with individual initiative, with playfulness and leisure, and with the free development of all worthy interests. This pressure has been steadily operative in the evolution of modern political institutions.

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But there has also been another force at work of equally far-reaching importance. This force is the modern idea of democracy, in which justice is modified by good-will. With the ancients justice meant "that every man should practise one thing only, that being the thing to which his nature was most perfectly adapted." [10] Equality upon the highest plane of human capacity was limited even in theory to a privileged class. But since the advent of Christianity it has never been possible for European society to acquiesce with good conscience in a limited distribution of the benefits of civilization. For the new enlightenment teaches that when men's potentialities are considered, rather than their present condition, there are no classes. As a consequence men demand representation not for what they are, but for what they may become if given their just opportunity. The body of citizens whose good is the final end of government virtually includes, then, all men without exception. It is no longer possible simply to dismiss large groups of human beings from consideration on grounds of what is held to be their unfitness. For they now demand that they be made fit. Burke expresses this enlightenment when he says, in speaking of the lower strata of society:

As the blindness of mankind has caused their slavery, in return their state of slavery is made a pretence of keeping them in a state of blindness; for {159} the politician will tell you gravely, that their life of servitude disqualifies the greater part of the race of man for a search of truth, and supplies them with no other than mean and insufficient ideas. This is but too true; and this is one of the reasons for which I blame such institutions.[11]

And so does every man now demand of the community as a whole that he shall be permitted to share equally in its benefits, and also, in order that his claims may be represented, that he shall have a voice in its councils. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that all men, therefore, must here and now be held to be equal; but only that they must be held to be capable of being as good as the best until they have demonstrated the contrary by forfeiting their opportunity. Nor do I mean that all men must therefore be given the ballot. We are discussing a question not of instrument, but of principle. I do mean that there is an idea that the best of life is for all; and that if there are many that are incapable of entering into it, then they must be helped to be capable. And I mean, furthermore, that this idea works irresistibly. It commands the support of the whole army of interests. It will never be abandoned because it makes for the increase of life on the whole; and hence no social order will from henceforth be stable that is not based upon it.

This idea that all men alike shall be the beneficiaries of government, when taken together {160} with the ancient ideas that government shall be directly responsible to its beneficiaries, and shall make as liberal an allowance as possible for their individual claims and opinions, constitutes the general principle upon which the progressive modern state is founded. Let me briefly recapitulate certain characteristics of the modern state[12] which indicate its recognition of this principle, and hence its advance on the whole over earlier types.

1. In the first place, the modern state is essentially a territorial rather than a racial or proprietary unit. In other words, it is clearly defined as a necessity and utility arising out of the circumstance of propinquity. If men are to cast in their lot together they must submit to organization, and obey laws promulgated in the interest of the community as a whole. To-day men understand that if they had no government it would be necessary to invent one; that the existing government, whatever divinity doth hedge it, is thus virtually the instrument of their needs.

2. Secondly, this moral function of government is emphasized through being largely freed from personal or dynastic connections and expressed as a constitutional office.

3. Thirdly, the requirements of justice and good-will are reconciled with order through the principle of representation. Without this {161} principle it would be impossible for societies large enough to afford men protection, to admit all men to a share in their positive benefits and to a voice in their councils. Representative government is a method of political procedure through which authority is made answerable in the long run to all interests within its jurisdiction. The more recent tendencies in democratic communities to modify the representative system indicate the direction in which the pressure of interests is still urging society forward. It is no longer a question merely of the extension of the suffrage, but of directness and publicity. The procedure of government being recognized as of vital importance to all citizens, it must be straightforward and businesslike, with its books constantly open to inspection. The present distrust in elected representatives is not a sign of reaction, but of the evolution of the democratic intelligence. Where the machinery of representation becomes wasteful and clumsy, it ceases to serve the community. But this may mean either direct legislation, that is, a direct participation in public affairs by the people at large, or the intrusting of these affairs to a few conspicuously responsible agents selected for their businesslike competence and owing their tenure of office to the consent of their constituency. These methods are entirely consistent with one another; and they owe their {162} adoption entirely to their better execution of the intent of democracy. Both presuppose that political authority is empowered by all the interests of the community to serve them, and that these interests shall in the end decide whether or not that service is adequately performed.

4. Fourthly, the modern state lays a constantly greater stress on questions of internal policy, thus emphasizing its basal function of conserving and fostering the interests directly committed to its charge. It is less occupied with war, and more occupied with education, sanitation, the conservation of national resources, and the regulation of commerce and industry.

5. Fifthly, the sequel to this is the growing recognition of the folly and wastefulness of war. War is becoming a last resort, a hard necessity, rather than an opportunity of national glory. The growth of the idea of international peace, and the improvement and extension of the method of arbitration, are evidence of a yielding to the weight of the collective interests of humanity. They prove the priority of the principle of construction over that of destruction, and the essentially thrifty and provident function of the state.

The present form of progressive political institutions will serve as an index of the times and a pledge of the future. It reflects better than any other element of civilization that growth of {163} liberality and solidifying of interests which is the deep current of progress. Human society is becoming one enterprise, provident of all existing interests and covetous of the best. Now I know that this is to many but a dreary spectacle. There are those who feel diminished by it, overwhelmed by numbers, and degraded to the low level of average capacity and average attainment. Therefore I wish in conclusion to deal further with this spirit of the age, to guard it against misunderstanding, and make its fine quality more apparent.