The increasing number of states which are holding, or are considering holding, constitutional conventions for the reconstruction of state governments shows the wide-spread dissatisfaction with our state machinery. The principal object of nearly all of these conventions is increased efficiency through concentration of responsibility. In our fear of abuse of power there has been no one to use power; we must change this if we are to have administrative efficiency. Most of the schemes for a reconstruction of state governments are based on (1) concentration of executive leadership in the hands of the governor, and (2) direct responsibility to the electorate. The former implies appointment of administrative officials by the governor, an executive budget, and readjustment in the relation of executive and legislative so that the governor can introduce and defend bills. The latter necessitates the ability of the electorate to criticize work done and plans proposed.
Therefore the tendency towards an effective responsibility through the increased power of our executive does not mean that less is required of citizens, but more. To the initiative, referendum and recall is to be added the general control by the people themselves of our state policies. Executive leadership may reduce the power of legislatures, but it will increase the power of the electorate both directly and indirectly: indirectly by weakening party organization, and directly by giving the people more and more control. It has been suggested, for instance, that in any dispute between governor and legislature the people might be called on to decide, either directly by passing on the proposed legislation itself, or by a new election. At any rate ultimate control must somehow be with the people. That this was not sufficiently provided for in the New York constitution submitted to the voters of New York a few years ago was one of the reasons for its rejection. What frightened the men of New York was undoubtedly the increased power of the state administrative without any corresponding increase in democratic control. To increase at the same time democratic control and administrative responsibility, while not an easy thing to do, is the task of our new constitutions.
With regard to direct government we are at present making two mistakes: first, in thinking that we can get any benefit from it if it is operated from within the party organization;[[76]] secondly, in thinking that it is merely to record, that it is based on counting, on the preponderance of votes.
The question staring us in the face in American politics to-day is—What possible good can direct government do us if party organization remains in control? The movement for direct primaries, popular choice of United States senators, presidential primaries, initiative and referendum, the recall etc., will bear little fruit unless something is done at the same time to break the power of the party. Many people tell us that our present party system, with its method of caucuses, conventions, bosses etc., has failed, and they are now looking to the direct primary as their hope, but the direct primary in itself will not free us from the tyranny of party rule. Look at this much-lauded direct primary and see what it is actually giving us: the political machines have known from the beginning how to circumvent it, it often merely increases the power of the boss, and at its best it is accomplishing no integrating of the American people—the real task of democracy. No development of party machinery or reform of party machinery is going to give us the will of the people, only a new method.
Moreover, merely giving more power to the people does not automatically reduce the hold of the party; some positive measures must be taken if direct government is not to fail exactly as representative government has failed. The faith in direct government as a sure panacea is almost pathetic when we remember how in the past one stronghold after another has been captured by the party. Much has been written by advocates of direct government to show that it will destroy the arbitrary power of the party, destroy its relation to big business, etc., but we see little evidence of this. We all know, and we can see every year if we watch the history of referendum votes, that the party organization is quite able to use “direct government” for its own ends. Direct government worked by the machine will be subject to much the same abuses as representative government. And direct and representative government cannot be synthesized by executive leadership alone. All that is said in favor of the former may be true, but it can never be made operative unless we are able to find some way of breaking the power of the machine. Direct government can be beneficial to American politics only if accompanied by the organization of voters in non-partisan groups for the production of common ideas and a collective purpose. Of itself direct government can never become the responsible government of a people.
I have said that direct government will never succeed if operated from within the party organization, nor if it is considered, as it usually is, merely a method by which the people can accept or reject what is proposed to them. Let us now look at the second point. We have seen that party organization does not allow group methods, that the party is a crowd: suggestion by the boss, imitation by the mass, is the rule. But direct government also may and probably will be crowd government if it is merely a means of counting. As far as direct government can be given the technique of a genuine democracy, it is an advance step in political method, but the trouble is that many of its supporters do not see this necessity; they have given it their adherence because of their belief in majority rule, in their belief that to count one and one and one is to get at the will of the people. But for each to count as one means crowd rule—of course the party captures us. Yet even if it did not, we do not want direct government if we are to fall from party domination into the tyranny of numbers. That every man was to count as one was the contribution of the old psychology to politics; the new psychology goes deeper and further,—it teaches that each is to be the whole at one point. This changes our entire conception of politics. Voting at the polls is not to be the expression of one man after another. My vote should not be my freak will any more than it should be my adherence to party, but my individual expression of the common will. The particularist vote does not represent the individual will because the evolution of the individual will is bound up in a larger evolution. Therefore, my duty as a citizen is not exhausted by what I bring to the state; my test as a citizen is how fully the whole can be expressed in or through me.
The vote in itself does not give us democracy—we have yet to learn democracy’s method. We still think too much of the solidarity of the vote; what we need is solidarity of purpose, solidarity of will. To make my vote a genuine part of the expression of the collective will is the first purpose of politics; it is only through group organization that the individual learns this lesson, that he learns to be an effective political member. People often ask, “Why is democracy so unprogressive?” It is just because we have not democracy in this sense. As long as the vote is that of isolated individuals, the tendency will be for us to have an unprogressive vote. This state of things can be remedied, first, by a different system of education, secondly, by giving men opportunities to exercise that fundamental intermingling with others which is democracy. To the consideration of how this can be accomplished [Part III] is mainly directed.
But I am making no proposal for some hard and fast method by which every vote shall register the will of a definite, fixed number of men rather than of one man. I am talking of a new method of living by which the individual shall learn to be part of social wholes, through which he shall express social wholes. The individual not the group must be the basis of organization. But the individual is created by many groups, his vote cannot express his relation to one group; it must ideally, I have said, express the whole from his point of view, actually it must express as much of the whole as the variety of his group life makes possible.[[77]]
When shall we begin to understand what the ballot-box means in our political life? It creates nothing—it merely registers what is already created. If direct government is to be more than ballot-box democracy it must learn not to record what is on the surface, but to dig down underneath the surface. No “democracy” which is based on a preponderance of votes can ever succeed. The essence of democracy is an educated and responsible citizenship evolving common ideas and willing its own social life. The dynamic thought is the thought which represents the most complete synthesis. In art the influence of a school does not depend upon the number of its adherents, but upon the extent to which that school represents a synthesis of thought. This is exactly so in politics. Direct government must create. It can do this through group organization. We are at the cross-roads now: shall we give the initiative and referendum to a crowd or to an interpenetrating group?
To sum up: the corruption of politics is due largely to the conception of the people as a crowd. To change this idea is, I believe, the first step in the reform of our political life. Unless this is done before we make sweeping changes in the mechanism of government, such changes will not mean progress. If the people are a crowd capable of nothing but imitation, what is the use of all the direct government we are trying to bring about, how can a “crowd” be considered capable of political decisions? Direct government gives to every one the right to express his opinion. The question is whether that opinion is to be his particularist opinion or the imitation of the crowd or the creation of the group. The party has dominated us in the past chiefly because we have truly believed the people to be a crowd. When we understand the law of association as the law of psychic interplay, then indeed shall we be on the way towards the New Democracy.