IV
In democratic communities the sovereignty of the state is a residuum left over from the period of dynastic government; and though the divine right of kings is obsolete, we have not yet out-grown the derivative dogma of the divine right of governments. There still gathers around the state an odour of sanctity; and in minds that have a turn for abstraction it is apt to take shape as a sacrosanct objective reality. But soon or late the democratic peoples will have to look upon the state with a cold and business-like realism if they are to be delivered from the dangers that lurk in all quasi-religious and sentimental abasement to conventional idols. It is just this vague political devoutness that makes it easy for the common people to be stampeded into invidious commercial and military enterprises by statesmen schooled in a tradition either frankly dynastic or still deriving its main presuppositions from the dynastic period. There is no security for democracy except in a persistent posture of criticism towards its institutions; and there is no immediate hope of a sane restoration of our somewhat shattered fortunes except as we strip the halo away from the state and discuss it dispassionately in terms of its functions.
Its police responsibilities remain with it as a matter of course, so long as human nature needs policing; and it must provisionally remain the organ of the community in its intercourse across its frontiers. With this latter we are not for the moment concerned; what falls to be considered is the problem of the state’s function in respect of, first, the present tendency to form extraneous and independent (and on occasion conceivably hostile and intractable) centres of authority, and second, the recent process of investing the state with a sort of proprietorship and pastorate at large. Summarily it may be said that the office of the state in respect of these two developments is that it should be on the one hand the clearing house of the increasing functional and professional associations among which its ancient sovereignty is being distributed, and on the other, the trustee of the public in the matter of producing and distributing the goods that are essential to life. The state of the case and the course of events indicate a doctrine of public ownership with democratic functional control, with the necessary machinery for the due co-ordination of the centres of control.
It seems a fairly safe risk to say that the movement toward the public ownership of a certain range of utilities will suffer no abatement with the passing of time. That the means of communication should be public property should be as axiomatic as that a man’s nervous system should belong to himself; and no serious question can be raised as to the certainty of ultimate common proprietorship in this region. With respect to the means of production the case is less clear; but it is a fair assumption, that if a reasonable security of the maintenance of life and health is to be achieved, there must be an increasing public ownership of the sources of raw material and of the means of production so far as the essential commodities are concerned. That there is a range of industrial production beyond this limit which is quite legitimate but which is nevertheless not a matter of universal concern is obvious; and it seems very questionable whether it is the business of the state to do more than to secure that the conditions under which these industries are conducted are of a piece with those obtaining in the primary industries. Objects of differential and selective interest do not appear to enter into the province of the state; it has to do only with those for which the demand is universal because they correspond to a general need. It is a question (as has been previously suggested) whether in this region of production it should not be the general rule that every member of the community should share; in which case there would be ample time and occasion for the production of the secondary and more selective goods for life. There is nothing in this argument which should be construed into a suggestion that the things called in this connection secondary are unimportant. On the contrary they are very important; and with the cultural development of society their importance is likely to grow. The production of books and objects of æsthetic interest is likely to be stimulated very materially by any advance in the right sort of education. But (with the exception of a very narrow margin) these are probably things which are not suitably and fruitfully produced except as they are free from central regulation.
Within the limits so indicated, therefore, the trend of affairs is rightly in the direction of public ownership—in which case we shall require an organ in which this ownership shall be vested. For this purpose the state is already to hand, and is indeed, already assuming the office. Its first domestic office will consequently be that of a public trustee. But this raises the question whether the trustee is to be manager as well.
It is of course plain that the trust would be a pure fiction if some measure of control in the disposition of the property were not implied in it. Certainly the last word in such matters should belong to the state. This, however, appears to bring us back to that very doctrine of sovereignty from which, on our premises, it is our business to escape; and, indeed, if we have no different sort of state organisation in mind from that now current we should be starting out on a new cycle of authoritarianism, were we to vest in the state so much authority. But already the specifications of a new type of state-structure are being indicated by the course of events.