The Ethics of Coöperation

by James Hayden Tufts

3. The principle of nationalistic sentiment, itself based on coöperation, on social tradition and common ideals, but bound up so closely with political sovereignty and antagonisms as to become exclusive instead of coöperative in its attitude toward other cultures.

The principle of dominance deters from coöperation, not only the people that seeks to dominate, but peoples that fear to be dominated or to become involved in entangling alliances. Doubtless a policy of aloofness was long the safe policy for us. We could not trust political liberty to an alliance with monarchies, even as with equal right some European peoples might distrust the policies of a republic seemingly controlled by the slavery interest. At the present time one great power professes itself incredulous of the fairness of any world tribunal; smaller powers fear the commanding influence of the great; new national groups just struggling to expression fear that a league of nations would be based on present status and therefore give them no recognition, or else a measure of recognition conditioned by past injustices rather than by future aspirations and real desert. All these fears are justified in so far as the principle of dominance is still potent. The only league that can be trusted by peoples willing to live and let live, is one that is controlled by a coöperative spirit. And yet who can doubt that this spirit is spreading? Few governments are now organized on the avowed basis that military power, which embodies the spirit of dominance, should be superior to civil control, and even with them the principle of irresponsible rule, despite its reinforcement by military success, is likely to yield to the spirit of the age when once the pressure of war is removed which now holds former protesters against militarism solid in its support. For all powers that are genuine in their desire for coöperation there is overwhelming reason to try it; for only by the combined strength of those who accept this principle can liberty and justice be maintained against the aggression of powers capable of concentrating all their resources with a suddenness and ruthlessness in which dominance is probably superior.

Yet coöperation for protection of liberty and justice is liable to fall short of humanity's hopes unless liberty and justice be themselves defined in a coöperative sense. The great liberties which man has gained, as step by step he has risen from savagery, have not been chiefly the assertion of already existing powers or the striking-off of fetters forged by his fellows. They have been additions to previous powers. Science, art, invention, associated life in all its forms, have opened the windows of his dwelling, have given possibilities to his choice, have given the dream and the interpretation which have set him free from his prison. The liberty to which international coöperation points is not merely self-direction or self-determination, but a larger freedom from fear, a larger freedom from suspicion, a fuller control over nature and society, a new set of ideas, which will make men free in a far larger degree than ever before.

Similarly justice needs to be coöperatively defined. A justice that looks merely to existing status will not give lasting peace. Peoples change in needs as truly as they differ in needs. But no people can be trusted to judge its own needs any more than to judge its own right. A justice which adheres rigidly to vested interests, and a justice which is based on expanding interests, are likely to be deadlocked unless a constructive spirit is brought to bear. Abstract rights to the soil, to trade, to expansion, must be subordinate to the supreme question: How can peoples live together and help instead of destroy? This can be approached only from an international point of view.

The second obstacle, unsocial competition, is for trade what dominance is in politics. It prevents that solution for many of the delicate problems of international life which coöperation through trade might otherwise afford. Exchange of goods and services by voluntary trade accomplishes what once seemed attainable only by conquest or slavery. If Germany or Japan or Italy needs iron or coal; if England needs wheat, or if the United States sugar, it is possible, or should be possible, to obtain these without owning the country in which are the mines, grain, and sugar cane. The United States needs Canada's products; it has no desire to own Canada. But in recent years the exchange of products has been subjected to a new influence. National self-interest has been added to private self-interest. This has intensified and called out many of the worst features of antagonism and inequality.

Few in this country have realized the extent to which other countries have organized their foreign commerce on national lines. We are now becoming informed as to the carefully worked-out programmes of commercial education, merchant marines, trade agreements, consular service, financial and moral support from the home government, and mutual aid among various salesmen of the same nationality living in a foreign country. We are preparing to undertake similar enterprises. We are reminded that "eighty per cent of the world's people live in the countries bordering on the Pacific Ocean, and that as a result of the rearrangement of trade routes, San Francisco's chance of becoming the greatest distributing port of the Pacific for goods en route to the markets of the Orient, are now more promising than ever before." Can the United States take part in this commerce in such a way as to help, not hinder, international progress in harmony? Not unless we remember that commerce may be as predatory as armies, and that we must provide international guarantees against the exclusive types of competition which we have had to control by law in our own domestic affairs. An Indian or an African may be deprived of his possessions quite as effectively by trade as by violence. We need at least as high standards of social welfare as in domestic commerce. I cannot better present the situation than by quoting from a recent article by Mr. William Notz in the "Journal of Political Economy" (Feb. 1918):

During the past twenty-five years competition in the world markets became enormously keen. In the wild scramble for trade the standards of honest business were disregarded more and more by all the various rival nations. In the absence of any special regulation or legislation, it appeared as though a silent understanding prevailed in wide circles that foreign trade was subject to a code of business ethics widely at variance with the rules observed in domestic trade. What was frowned upon as unethical and poor business policy, if not illegal at home, was condoned and winked at or openly espoused when foreign markets formed the basis of operations and foreigners were the competitors. High-minded men of all nations have long observed with concern the growing tendency of modern international trade toward selfish exploitation, concession-hunting, cut-throat competition, and commercialistic practices of the most sordid type. Time and again complaints have been voiced, retaliatory measures threatened, and more than once serious friction has ensued.

Mr. Notz brings to our attention various efforts by official and commercial bodies looking toward remedies for such conditions and toward official recognition by all countries of unfair competition as a penal offense.

What more do we need than fair competition to constitute the coöperative international life which we dreamed yesterday and now must consider, not merely as a dream, but as the only alternative to a future of horror?

Free trade has been not unnaturally urged as at least one condition. Tariffs certainly isolate. To say to a country: "You shall manufacture nothing unless you own the raw material; you shall sell nothing unless at prices which I fix," is likely to provoke the reply: "Then I must acquire lands in which raw materials are found; I must acquire colonies which will buy my products." Trade agreements mean coöperation for those within, unless they are one-sided and made under duress; in any case they are exclusive of those without. Free trade, the open door, seems to offer a better way. But free trade in name is not free trade unless the parties are really free—free from ignorance, from pressure of want. If one party is weak and the other unscrupulous; if one competitor has a lower standard of living than the other, freedom of trade will not mean genuine coöperation. Such coöperation as means good for all requires either an equality of conditions between traders and laborers of competing nations and of nations which exchange goods, or else an international control to prevent unfair competition, exploitation of weaker peoples, and lowering of standards of living. Medical science is giving an object lesson which may well have a wide application. It is seeking to combat disease in its centers of diffusion. Instead of attempting to quarantine against the Orient, it is aiding the Orient to overcome those conditions which do harm alike to Orient and Occident. Plague, anthrax, yellow fever, cannot exist in one country without harm to all. Nor in the long run can men reach true coöperation so long as China and Africa are a prize for the exploiter rather than equals in the market. Not merely in the political sense, but in its larger meanings democracy here is not safe without democracy there. Education, and the lifting of all to a higher level, is the ultimate goal. And until education, invention, and intercommunication have done their work of elevation, international control must protect and regulate.