“The people of England were then, as they are now, called upon to make Government strong. They thought it a great deal better to make it wise and honest.”—Burke.
“We may need and we may be moving towards a new conception of the state, and more especially a new conception of sovereignty.... We may have to regard every state, not only the federal state proper, but also the state which professes to be unitary, as in its nature federal. We may have to recognise that sovereignty is not single and indivisible, but multiple and multicellular.”—Ernest Barker.
“We find the true man only through group organisation. The potentialities of the individual remain potentialities until they are released by group life. Man discovers his true nature, gains his true freedom only through the group. Group organisation must be the new method of politics, because the modes by which the individual can be brought forth and made effective are the modes of practical politics.”—Mary P. Follett.
THE war has given the coup de grace to the Sovereign State. It was on its last legs before the war. It is certain that Mr. Combes’ affirmation of state absolutism during the debates on the disestablishment of the Catholic Church in France, was the last serious stand of this doctrine in democratic communities. In England the doctrine was never securely rooted; certainly it has not gained an unquestioned ascendency over political thought for any considerable period of time; and the exploit of Austinian legalism which (in the Scottish Churches’ case) denied to a church the right to govern itself had virtually to be annulled by a special Act of Parliament. During the war the claim of the State upon the individual has naturally attained a point which in normal times would have been unthinkable; but this was confessedly the result of an emergency and not a rule for ordinary conditions of life. The German performance during the war has revealed the logic of state-absolutism in far too vivid a fashion for any of the somewhat turgid exaltation of the state by academic people in the days previous to the war to survive on any terms. To rebut the doctrine of state-absolutism at this time would be merely to flog a dead horse.
But long before the war the absolutist theory was being undermined. In the region of law and political theory the criticism of F. W. Maitland, Nevill Figgis, Duguit, and others had raised a very definite challenge to the doctrine of state-omnicompetency. But of much greater influence in the actual business of modifying the current conception of the state was the growing tendency to form independent foci of authority within the commonwealth. One obvious case of the kind is the institution of the Bank Clearing House which represents the last stage in the process by which the business of exchange has passed from the state into the hands of an independent body which exercises in its own sphere an authority which is hardly to be resisted; and the present movement for the amalgamation of large banking concerns makes it not impossible that should the banking interest come into collision with the State, there would be a very exciting tug-of-war. The medical profession took up an attitude of organised opposition to the State in the matter of the British Health Insurance Act; and other professional associations are to-day so highly organised that in the event of a collision with the State, it is at least doubtful how the issue would be decided. In the case of the Taff Vale decision which rendered a Trade Union liable to prosecution for illegal action by its members, so threatening a protest ensued that the legal decision had virtually to be reversed by special legislation; and the growing solidarity of organised labour again creates a problem of state authority which is not easily soluble, and which (it is not inconceivable) may at last have to be solved by a trial of strength.[[37]] It is no longer possible to assume that the philosophy of government can be stated in terms of the state and the individual; it will have to take increasing account of the relation of the state to the powerful voluntary organisations of citizens within the state—organisations which, because they are voluntary, may exercise a more powerful influence upon their members than the state can possibly do. On the economic side this tendency toward the breaking up and the distribution of centralised authority among functional and professional groups, takes the form of Guild Socialism; and, while Syndicalism has not yet succeeded in gaining a wide footing in Europe, its challenge to the state has added a good deal to the minimising influences already afoot. It is worth while observing that these independent organisations are already so powerful that the British Government found it advisable to administer its National Insurance Act through Labour Unions and Friendly Societies.
[37]. Since these words were written, they have received very clear confirmation in the recent activities of the “Triple Alliance.”
But it is not the growth of powerful organisations within the Commonwealth alone that is making for the disintegration of state-sovereignty. We are living in a period when great international bodies are coming into being, and while most of these are at present of a cultural and professional type, it is evident that one at least is of a character which involves a very profound challenge to the sovereignty of the national state. The Socialist International has not been destroyed by the war; it has only been interrupted; and if the signs are not wholly misleading, we may look for a steady and wide extension of the international proletarian movement. In 1914 it proved too immature to resist the pressure of nationalism, but it is likely that in the future it will increasingly arm itself against a like collapse. As yet it is only in the case of the Socialist International that there is a direct challenge to the national state; but it would require considerable hardihood to deny the possibility that other international professional and functional associations may find themselves at variance with the constituted authorities of national states. For instance, the problem of hygiene is becoming more and more an international affair; and it is no unthinkable thing that a medical international may find itself at odds with the state authorities just as the British Medical Association found itself in conflict with its own national Government. One has only to add in this connection that the project of a League of Nations will require an abdication of the claim to absolute sovereignty on the part of the states constituting it.[[38]]
[38]. This cession of sovereignty may be hidden by a formal camouflage; but there can be no real League of Nations without it.
So that both from within and without, the march of events is disintegrating the dogma of state-sovereignty. The traditional political acceptances are rapidly becoming obsolete. In the main this would appear to be due to the new situation created by the swift development of the means of communication during the last century. The territorial factor in the delimitation of states and in their own internal economy, has ceased to have the importance it possessed in days when distance set sharp limits to the intercourse of men. Those days are now past; and national frontiers and county boundaries are being gradually effaced by steam, and the sea has been bridged by the electric current and the aeroplane.