On the surface there seems to be a danger lest such an arrangement may lead to an exclusive and particular fellowship within separate industries and therefore may militate against the larger fellowship of the community, a fellowship, that is, of producers against consumers. But it is not contemplated that the control of the workers—whether operative or administrative—shall be absolute over their industry. That will in turn be subject to the will of the commonwealth as a whole—this superior authority being made effective by such devices as the control of raw material. This particular danger may, however, be very easily exaggerated. After all, every producer is a consumer; and the co-operative societies have shown that it is possible to create a very fruitful fellowship of consumer and producer. Moreover, this is a danger which we imagine largely because we argue from existing conditions. It will be greatly diminished as the economic motive ceases to exercise its withering influence upon men.
But it stands to reason that men will do better and more faithful work under conditions which give them a direct interest in and control over their work. Both the quantity and quality of work suffer to-day because nothing is left to the worker’s sense of honour and responsibility. It is only a more or less irksome necessity to which the worker goes apathetically and from which he turns with relief. But convert it into a social task in which fellowship may be actually realised in a genuine participation in control, where management is an affair of common counsel and not of autocratic fiats, where the ideal of public service has superseded the purpose of private gain, and you set free potentialities both of quality and quantity of workmanship of which under the present demoralising conditions it is not possible to form a conception.
Clearly the reality of fellowship in industry must be validated by making every position of greater responsibility open to every worker; and appointment to such positions should be by choice of the workers. That the workers may be trusted to make good appointments is demonstrated by the sagacity which has generally been manifested in the selection of their Union leaders; and this is a far more certain guarantee of effective management than the present system which often assigns incompetent men to important positions on grounds of kinship or “influence.” It further goes without saying that a genuine partnership implies the right of withdrawal. A man must be free to choose his work and the place where he works. Freedom is of the very essence of fellowship. Anything of the nature of coercion or conscription would be deadly to the spirit which it is desired to create.
II
Naturally a living society will require a living fellowship in the ordering of its public affairs; and it is true that the arrest and corruption of democracy—wheresoever those ills have befallen it—are due more to the ignorance and the indifference of the mass of the people in respect of their common affairs than to any other single cause. This is ever the opportunity of the demagogue and the spoilsman. Where there is no vision, said the ancient scribe, the people perish; but the people perish no less certainly where there is no common thought. The mental indolence and inertia of the public and the incompetency of public criticism is the danger of the statesman, and the very life of the carpet-bagging politician. The extent of this ignorance and apathy—beyond the narrow limits where our pockets are concerned—is appalling. Especially in regard to the external relationships of their respective states, the common people have lived in the past in great darkness, and as the war has shown, in the shadow of death. If the masses of the European peoples had been in 1914, as well-informed concerning their neighbours as they are to-day (and this does not say very much), the war might well have never happened; and it is well that we should remember that the democratic control of foreign policy, of which we justly hope much, will prove a vain thing without systematic education of the people in the matters which are gathered up in the expression “foreign policy.”
And, indeed, the main root of indifference is ignorance; for we are vitally interested in nothing of which we do not know something. It is to education that we must look for our main remedy. Some gleams of light have indeed already begun to pierce our darkness. We have commenced to educate school children in the rudiments of civic obligation; and there is no reason why history and geography should not be taught, not as at present to stimulate national pride or commercial efficiency, but to generate a sympathetic and comprehensive outlook upon human relationships. To this subject we shall need to turn in more detail presently; here all we need is to premise that the stimulation and mobilisation of common thought requires an education which shall equip the citizen with a system of knowledge and ideas which will enable him to respond to the challenge of the problems of common life and approach them with intelligence and sympathy. No one who is familiar with the proceedings of parliaments and congresses will require proof of the existence of this need.
But this is no more than a beginning. To education must be added the opportunity of free and unfettered discussion. Every manner of embargo or restraint on thought must be removed. When a Cambridge don once said that morning chapel should be compulsory on the ground that if there were no compulsory religion there would be no religion at all, Thirlwall, afterwards Bishop of St. David’s, replied that the distinction was too subtle for his apprehension. No less does restraint upon thought lead to the destruction of thought. Yet thought, just because it is free, requires some method of test and correction; and this is supplied by discussion. In this region especially is fellowship the necessary co-efficient of freedom. At present the comparative paucity of opportunities of systematic discussion, outside small circles and coteries, has led to that lack of mental independence to which the modern press owes its ordinate power. The pathetic, not to say tragic, readiness of the multitude to follow any demagogue in the press who shouts loudly enough is a manifest sign of dangerous mental incompetency. The Northcliffes and the Hearsts owe their influence to the incapacity of the multitude to think for itself; and no multitude will ever be able to think which does not acquire the habit of thinking together.
It is impossible to estimate the value of the New England Town Meeting as an organ of discipline in common thought; and some such focus of public discussion there should be in every community. Nowadays the community elects a board or a council and relegates the function of discussion to this body, and so far as its local affairs are concerned goes to sleep until the next election, except perhaps for a small minority chiefly composed of hostile critics. This elected body rarely reaches a plane of initiative and leadership in thought even within the narrow province committed to its care. Its discussions chiefly gather around minor points of administration; rarely do they reveal any degree of constructive originality. Yet the public spirit which is the life of a community needs continual stimulus; and this stimulus is dependent on discussion. It is a frequent, almost a constant complaint against municipal bodies that they are composed of persons who have axes of their own to grind, or who, though they are not personally corrupt, are promoting the advantage of particular interests. There is no way out of this difficulty save by the creation of community centres for regular and free public discussion. Those who are charged with the conduct of public affairs—whether local or national—should be open to continuous and reasoned popular criticism for which an election allows no opportunity.
The rapid extension of the public Forum in America takes to some extent the place once filled by the Town Meeting; but its outlook is too general and its constitution too casual to enable it to discharge the functions of the latter. Yet it has a very important office to fill; and in many respects it is the most promising object in the outlook for democracy in America. As yet it is too dependent upon the platform; and questions do not form an adequate alternative to reasoned discussion. These are, however, defects which will be remedied as the movement develops. It is not at all improbable that the churches may find a way of recovering their social usefulness by the promotion of the Forum method. Dr. Kirsopp Lake has a theory that just as the sacramental stage of religion has passed, so now the “sermon” stage is passing, and we are entering upon the “discussion” stage. It may be so. Certainly no human concern so stands in need of vigorous and radical discussion as does religion; and now that it becomes increasingly evident that the day is wholly gone when religion could be cultivated as an isolated interest unrelated to the secular concerns of life, it will be of untold advantage to the church and to society, in the interests of truth and right thinking, that the free discussion of religion and public affairs in the closest possible relation to one another should be seriously fostered. Neither religion nor any view of the world which does not touch life at every point is likely to survive in an age which is slowly learning the unity of all life. In modern England, the Trade Union branches have in many cases proved to be educational centres of the utmost value; but even more than the Trade Unions has the Socialist propaganda, with its challenge to discussion, proved a fruitful organ of common thought on public affairs.
When we pass from the plane of local to that of national interests we find a state of things which provokes wonder that any shred of democracy has survived it. The system of political parties has its roots in human nature; and we are never likely to outlive it. The quip that we are all born either little Liberals or little Conservatives has beneath it the fact of a profound and perhaps permanent difference of temperament. There are those—and probably will always be—who take less kindly to change than others; and in this difference there will always be ample room and occasion for discussion and criticism. It is also well to remember that the conflict of sincerely held opinion is one of the most fruitful forms of co-operation in the search for truth. But there are few existing lines of party division which reflect a genuine cleavage of conviction. The present opposition of Republican and Democrat in America seems to have only a distant connection with that profound division of opinion in which the opposition first originated. In Great Britain, Liberal and Conservative have stood ideally for the two necessary principles of freedom and order, progress and stability; but the party conflict has raged chiefly in recent times around the question of power. It has been a duel of the “ins” and “outs.” There are, of course, Liberals like Lord Morley, and Conservatives like Lord Hugh Cecil, whose political attachments rest upon deep and reasoned conviction; but reasoned conviction is not the main subject of interest in the Whips’ offices. The final judgment upon the nature of the party struggle is to be sought in the practical business of electioneering. Direct corruption is on the whole rare in democratic countries; but the organisation of the party vote—whether in England or America—is a wholly scandalous and deplorable business. The practice of canvassing for votes, attended frequently with intimidation and generally with a good deal of insincere cajoling, the easily made and easily forgotten electioneering promises, the frantic shepherding of sluggish voters to the polling booth,—these things show how little substance of conviction and thought there is in the modern political game. Canvassing is sometimes defended as a method of political education; occasionally in competent hands it no doubt is so; but anyone who is acquainted with electioneering methods knows that the education is merely incidental to securing the promise of a vote. Canvassing would conceivably serve a useful purpose if the attempt to extract the promise of a vote were declared to be in fact what it is in spirit—a violation of the Ballot Act. It is questionable, however, how long the practice of canvassing would survive this curtailment. And in addition to this, all inducements to drag unwilling and indifferent citizens to the poll should be made illegal. Democracy is not necessarily government by the mob. It is rather government by the intelligent and the interested; and the remedy for popular apathy here, as elsewhere, is proper education.