The Psychology of Nations / A Contribution to the Philosophy of History

by G. E. Partridge

Radical socialism that threatens to throw political power into the hands of a political class, or of any social or economic class, bolshevism which Dillon (speaking of Russia especially) says is doomed to failure because of its sheer economic impossibility, any plan which tends to concentrate authority in any class is threatening to our future. The democratic spirit must hold fast against the rising tide from the lower classes, just as it has been obliged to contend against autocracy. Democracy has on one side to assimilate aristocracy, and not overturn it. So it resists the rise of the proletariat, not to turn this force back, even if this were possible, but to control it. It is precisely because of the deep movement of the people—the world revelation and the world revolution, as Weyl calls it—that we must make all political institutions flexible and adjustible, and also throw into the balance all the powers of education and thus save democracy from itself.

These dangers to democracy are not to be taken too lightly. Democracy indeed faces two dangers. Hobson in "Democracy After the War" has stated one of them. He says that the war will result in no easy victory for democracy, for the system of caste and bureaucracy is very likely to become fixed. Democracy therefore must be worked for, and to that end there must be a union of all types of reformers. We must play off the special interests against one another, says Hobson, work for industrial democracy, educate the people. On the other hand there is that danger from the rising of the masses which Weyl heralds. This war underneath and after the war is as Weyl sees it, the war of the poor and exploited against all the exploiters. These elements are at heart antagonistic to government. Democracy, if all this be true, is neither well defined as an idea nor well established in the world. An unjust and privileged class above and an unwise and uneducated class beneath threaten it. But the case seems by no means hopeless. Indeed the remedies and the way of escape seem in a general way plain. Political changes on one side and political education on the other must become, we should suppose, the order of the day.

Of the actual political changes impending and those that ought to be advocated this is not the place to speak, except to say that they must by their nature be tentative and experimental. The radical mind is to-day one of the most dangerous elements in society, just because all the world over men are very ready to be influenced and are eager for change and are uncritical. Cleveland in an essay entitled Can Democracy be Efficient? exhibits a type of thinking about political questions that ought to appeal to all practical thinkers. It is his method rather than, in this connection, his conclusions that one should notice. Cleveland would study all countries with reference to the efficiency of their governments in fulfilling what seem to him to be the proper and essential functions of a government, working under our present conditions. Germany, France, England and America, he observes, have all adopted different ways of conducting the work of government. These essentials of government he reduces to five: 1) Strong executive leadership; 2) a well disciplined line organization; 3) a highly specialized staff organization; 4) adequate facilities for inquiry, criticism, and publicity by a responsible personnel independent of the executive; 5) means of effective control in the hands of the people and their representatives. Of these principles, Germany used only the first three, England left out the second and the third, France used all (but was late in seeing the need), America has left out all of them.

This is the type of thought, we suggest, that seems best adapted to meet present requirements for a practical theory of government. Analysis of the functions of government, critical examination of the needs of the present time, and a plan of modifying what already exists, rather than of making revolutionary changes, seem to be the right direction of progress.

If the source of power in the future is to be vested in the people, the education of the people with reference to their function as rulers will naturally be one of the most vital and permanent of the requirements of the social life. Dickinson says that the time has gone by for entrusting the destinies of nations to the wisdom of experts. If this be true, and popular opinion is to supersede the wisdom of the experts, if the people are really to have power, and be competent critics of good government, or merely to become good material in the hands of constructive statesmanship, education must include or be essentially political education. The people must be educated for democracy, but also made competent to create democracy.

Of course everything we do in the school, the intention of the school to represent what is best in civilization, and to be a center in which creative forces come together has some reference to education for the democratic life, but there are also more definite and more specifically political things to be taught. And yet, if what we have said before has any truth in it, it seems certain that no educational policy at the present time can include the teaching of specific political doctrines, or try to prejudice the minds of children or the people to any political creed. We are in a position in regard to political teaching very similar to that in which we stand about religion: we must not teach creed, but we may and must teach natural religion. We cannot teach politics as such, but we must teach natural democracy, or at least the fundamental social habits and functions.

There are two essential educational problems of democracy that have especial reference to the political aspects of it. The first is to teach universally in as practical a manner as possible the materials out of which political wisdom may be derived. We maintain that the lack of political education and experience is one of the most serious defects of the German people. These people are at first submissive to an extraordinary degree and then they become dangerously revolutionary. The lack of political competence is shown in both cases. We wish, of course, neither of these excesses in our own country. And yet we do have to cope at the present time with both a tendency to fanaticism, radicalism and intense partisanship, and with indifference and ignorance of the nature and purpose of our institutions and government. Both the indifference and the partisanship play into the hands of party politics, and no advantages gained by the balance of parties in opposition to one another can compensate for the loss of energy and the encouragement of inefficient service the system fosters.

To help offset these tendencies it must be possible to give to all youths, and of course we mean both sexes, through our educational system and otherwise an education in politics, and besides this some practical experience in public service in institutions and in organizations. This is a vital spot in education in a democracy; we have tried too much to reform or make progress in government from within the political system itself, and too little by going back to the ultimate sources of social life and educating the people as a whole with reference to playing their part in political life.

The work of education in the field of politics is not merely to give information, but to establish what we may best call morale. We need an attitude and spirit throughout the public life of the nation in which there shall be constantly displayed the same qualities which we see so quickly coming to light in time of war. Enthusiasm, seriousness of purpose, devotion of the individual to common purpose are the essential elements of this war spirit. To produce and sustain this in the activities of peace is an educational problem. The first task is presumably to establish the causes and the organizations through which they may be served, but political education itself consists largely in the production of public spirit. The correction of evils in the political system is of course but a small part of the work of political reform. Dowd says that it is the low personal idealism of mankind that creates our multitudinous social problems and strews the path of history with wreck and ruin. That is of course true. Raising the quality of the personal idealism of the people is the real work of political education. Political thought which is most concerned as it is now with securing advantage for party, class and individual must be superseded by a wider interest in government as a means of aiding the performance of the functions of the individual and the group. It is the purpose to be accomplished by government, not its form, and certainly not the interest of the few or of any class that must be emphasized, until partisan politics no longer dominates our political life. To accomplish this change means, we say, raising the quality of the personal idealism of the people. This may seem an ideal and impossible task, but we have some of our experiences of the war at least to give us encouragement.

If we wish to consider details, we may notice that in an educational process having such ends as we have suggested, the teaching of civics, for example, becomes more functional, the teaching of what an individual in a community and what all governments do, rather than analyzing the structure of government. Such civics teaches the meaning of individuals as having functions which are represented and fulfilled in the institutions and organizations of society, including every department of government. It is not the intention to enter here into the special problems in regard to the content and method of teaching civics in the schools, although it is evident that this subject must have an increased place in the future. We already see advances both in the purpose and the plan of civics teaching and in the literature prepared for the schools. Dunn, for example, makes fundamental in all the teaching of civics the question, What are the common interests which people in communities are seeking? Tufts also tries to deal with the fundamental ideas upon which government is based.