But this recognition cannot be legitimately converted into the monopolistic absorption of all associations into The State, nor of all social values into political value. The all-inclusive nature of the state signifies only that officers of the public (including, of course, law-makers) may act so as to fix conditions under which any form of association operates; its comprehensive character refers only to the impact of its behavior. A war like an earthquake may “include” in its consequences all elements in a given territory, but the inclusion is by way of effects, not by inherent nature or right. A beneficent law, like a condition of general economic prosperity, may favorably affect all interests in a particular region, but it cannot be called a whole of which the elements influenced are parts. Nor can the liberating and confirming results of public action be construed to yield a wholesale idealization of states in contrast with other associations. For state activity is often injurious to the latter. One of the chief occupations of states has been the waging of war and the suppression of dissentient minorities. Moreover, their action, even when benign, presupposes values due to non-political forms of living together which are but extended and reënforced by the public through its agents.
The hypothesis which we have supported has obvious points of contact with what is known as the pluralistic conception of the state. It presents also a marked point of difference. Our doctrine of plural forms is a statement of a fact: that there exist a plurality of social groupings, good, bad and indifferent. It is not a doctrine which prescribes inherent limits to state action. It does not intimate that the function of the state is limited to settling conflicts among other groups, as if each one of them had a fixed scope of action of its own. Were that true, the state would be only an umpire to avert and remedy trespasses of one group upon another. Our hypothesis is neutral as to any general, sweeping implications as to how far state activity may extend. It does not indicate any particular polity of public action. At times, the consequences of the conjoint behavior of some persons may be such that a large public interest is generated which can be fulfilled only by laying down conditions which involve a large measure of reconstruction within that group. There is no more an inherent sanctity in a church, trade-union, business corporation, or family institution than there is in the state. Their value is also to be measured by their consequences. The consequences vary with concrete conditions; hence at one time and place a large measure of state activity may be indicated and at another time a policy of quiescence and laissez-faire. Just as publics and states vary with conditions of time and place, so do the concrete functions which should be carried on by states. There is no antecedent universal proposition which can be laid down because of which the functions of a state should be limited or should be expanded. Their scope is something to be critically and experimentally determined.
CHAPTER III
THE DEMOCRATIC STATE
Singular persons are the foci of action, mental and moral, as well as overt. They are subject to all kinds of social influences which determine what they can think of, plan and choose. The conflicting streams of social influence come to a single and conclusive issue only in personal consciousness and deed. When a public is generated, the same law holds. It arrives at decisions, makes terms and executes resolves only through the medium of individuals. They are officers; they represent a Public, but the Public acts only through them. We say in a country like our own that legislators and executives are elected by the public. The phrase might appear to indicate that the Public acts. But, after all, individual men and women exercise the franchise; the public is here a collective name for a multitude of persons each voting as an anonymous unit. As a citizen-voter each one of these persons is, however, an officer of the public. He expresses his will as a representative of the public interest as much so as does a senator or sheriff. His vote may express his hope to profit in private purse by the election of some man or the ratification of some proposed law. He may fail, in other words, in effort to represent the interest entrusted to him. But in this respect he does not differ from those explicitly designated public officials who have also been known to betray the interest committed to them instead of faithfully representing it.
In other words, every officer of the public, whether he represents it as a voter or as a stated official, has a dual capacity. From this fact the most serious problem of government arises. We commonly speak of some governments as representative in contrast with others which are not. By our hypothesis all governments are representative in that they purport to stand for the interests which a public has in the behavior of individuals and groups. There is, however, no contradiction here. Those concerned in government are still human beings. They retain their share of the ordinary traits of human nature. They still have private interests to serve and interests of special groups, those of the family, clique or class to which they belong. Rarely can a person sink himself in his political function; the best which most men attain to is the domination by the public weal of their other desires. What is meant by “representative” government is that the public is definitely organized with the intent to secure this dominance. The dual capacity of every officer of the public leads to conflict in individuals between their genuinely political aims and acts and those which they possess in their non-political rôles. When the public adopts special measures to see to it that the conflict is minimized and that the representative function overrides the private one, political institutions are termed representative.
It may be said that not until recently have publics been conscious that they were publics, so that it is absurd to speak of their organizing themselves to protect and secure their interests. Hence states are a recent development. The facts are, indeed, fatally against attribution of any long history to states provided we use a hard and fast conceptual definition of states. But our definition is founded on the exercise of a function, not on any inherent essence or structural nature. Hence it is more or less a verbal matter just what countries and peoples are called states. What is of importance is that the facts which significantly differentiate various forms from one another be recognized. The objection just urged points to a fact of great significance, whether the word “state” be used or not. It indicates that for long stretches of time the public rôle of rulers has been incidental to other ends for which they have used their powers. There has been a machinery of government, but it has been employed for purposes which in the strict sense are non-political, the deliberate advancement of dynastic interests. Thus we come upon the primary problem of the public: to achieve such recognition of itself as will give it weight in the selection of official representatives and in the definition of their responsibilities and rights. Consideration of this problem leads us, as we shall see, into the discussion of the democratic state.
Taking history as a whole, the selection of rulers and equipment of them with powers has been a matter of political accident. Persons have been selected as judges, executives and administrators for reasons independent of capacity to serve public interests. Some of the Greek states of antiquity and the examination system of China stand out for the very reason that they are exceptions to this statement. History shows that, in the main, persons have ruled because of some prerogative and conspicuous place which was independent of their definitively public rôle. If we introduce the idea of the public at all, we are bound to say that it was assumed without question that certain persons were fit to be rulers because of traits independent of political considerations. Thus in many societies the male elders exercised such rule as obtained in virtue of the mere fact that they were old men. Gerontocracy is a familiar and widespread fact. Doubtless there was a presumption that age was a sign of knowledge of group traditions and of matured experience, but it can hardly be said that this presumption was consciously the influential factor in giving old men a monopoly of rule. Rather they had it ipso facto, because they had it. A principle of inertia, of least resistance and least action, operated. Those who were already conspicuous in some respect, were it only for long gray beards, had political powers conferred upon them.
Success in military achievement is an irrelevant factor which has controlled the selection of men to rule. Whether or no “camps are the true mothers of cities,” whether or no Herbert Spencer was right in declaring that government originated in chieftainship for war purposes, there is no doubt that, in most communities, the ability of a man to win battles has seemed to mark him out as a predestined manager of the civil affairs of a community. There is no need to argue that the two positions demand different gifts, and that achievement in one is no proof of fitness for the other. The fact remains. Nor do we have to look at ancient states for evidence of its effective operation. States nominally democratic show the same tendency to assume that a winning general has some quasi-divine appointment to political office. Reason would teach that oftentimes even the politicians who are most successful in instigating the willingness of the civilian population to support a war are by that very fact incapacitated for the offices of making a just and enduring peace. But the treaty of Versailles is there to show how difficult it is to make a shift of personnel even when conditions radically alter so that there is need for men of a changed outlook and interests. To those who have, it shall be given. It is human nature to think along the easiest lines, and this induces men when they want conspicuous leaders in the civil function to fasten upon those who are already conspicuous, no matter what the reason.
Aside from old men and warriors, medicine men and priests have had a ready-made, predestined vocation to rule. Where the community welfare is precarious and dependent upon the favor of supernatural beings, those skilled in the arts by which the wrath and jealousy of the gods are averted and their favor procured, have the marks of superior capacity to administer states. Success in living to an old age, in battle and in occult arts, have, however, been most signalized in the initiation of political régimes. What has counted most in the long run is the dynastic factor. Beati possidentes. The family from which a ruler has been taken occupies in virtue of that fact a conspicuous position and superior power. Preëminence in status is readily taken for excellence. Divine favor ex officio attends a family in which rule has been exercised for enough generations so that the memory of original exploits has grown dim or become legendary. The emoluments, pomp and power which go with rule are not thought to need justification. They not only embellish and dignify it, but are regarded as symbols of intrinsic worthiness to possess it. Custom consolidates what accident may have originated; established power has a way of legitimizing itself. Alliances with other potent families within and without the country, possession of large landed estates, a retinue of courtiers and access to revenues of the state, with a multitude of other things irrelevant to the public interest, establish a dynastic position at the same time that they divert the genuine political function to private ends.
An additional complication is introduced because the glory, wealth and power of rulers constitutes in itself an invitation to seize and exploit office. The causes which operate to induce men to strive for any shining object operate with increased appeal in the case of governmental power. The centralization and scope of functions which are needed in order to serve the interests of the public become, in other words, seductions to draw state officials into subserving private ends. All history shows how difficult it is for human beings to bear effectually in mind the objects for the nominal sake of which they are clothed with power and pomp; it shows the ease with which they employ their panoply to advance private and class interests. Were actual dishonesty the only, or even chief, foe, the problem would be much simpler. The ease of routine, the difficulty of ascertaining public needs, the intensity of the glare which attends the seat of the mighty, desire for immediate and visible results, play the larger part. One often hears it said by socialists justly impatient with the present economic régime that “industry should be taken out of private hands.” One recognizes what they intend: that it should cease to be regulated by desire for private profit and should function for the benefit of producers and consumers, instead of being sidetracked to the advantage of financiers and stockholders. But one wonders whether those who so readily utter this saying have asked themselves into whose hands industry is to pass? Into those of the public? But, alas, the public has no hands except those of individual human beings. The essential problem is that of transforming the action of such hands so that it will be animated by regard for social ends. There is no magic by which this result can be accomplished. The same causes which have led men to utilize concentrated political power to serve private purposes will continue to act to induce men to employ concentrated economic power in behalf of non-public aims. This fact does not imply the problem is insoluble. But it indicates where the problem resides, whatever guise it assumes. Since officers of the public have a dual make-up and capacity, what conditions and what technique are necessary in order that insight, loyalty and energy may be enlisted on the side of the public and political rôle?