Within the limits so indicated, therefore, the trend of affairs is rightly in the direction of public ownership—in which case we shall require an organ in which this ownership shall be vested. For this purpose the state is already to hand, and is indeed, already assuming the office. Its first domestic office will consequently be that of a public trustee. But this raises the question whether the trustee is to be manager as well.
It is of course plain that the trust would be a pure fiction if some measure of control in the disposition of the property were not implied in it. Certainly the last word in such matters should belong to the state. This, however, appears to bring us back to that very doctrine of sovereignty from which, on our premises, it is our business to escape; and, indeed, if we have no different sort of state organisation in mind from that now current we should be starting out on a new cycle of authoritarianism, were we to vest in the state so much authority. But already the specifications of a new type of state-structure are being indicated by the course of events.
V
It is of some significance at this point to observe that of the functional associations within the commonwealth to which reference has been made, the most powerful are those which are concerned with the production of the primary commodities, and the means of their distribution. This is no doubt chiefly due to the fact that these associations represent the most numerous sections of the community. Coal miners, engineers, transport workers, clothing makers—it is among these classes that the movement toward combination has been most effectual. One notable exception—namely, agricultural workers—is to be observed here, the significance of which exception will come up for discussion presently. It does not, however, affect the general run of the present argument. The constitution and activity of the labour unions are sufficiently well known to require no exposition here—the main point to be emphasised being that here within the commonwealth are large, growing and powerful groups formed around a particular interest; and that this interest is deemed to be vital is evident from the steady growth of the groups. But we may further infer that the existence of these groups is due chiefly to the fact that the particular interest which concerns them was not effectually regarded in the councils of the commonwealth at large. The interests of the workers were presumably neglected to such a degree that the class concerned deemed it necessary to organise itself in order to safeguard and to enforce these interests. Indeed on the workers’ showing the case was even worse. They argued that not only were their peculiar interests neglected by the existing powers, but that these powers were weighted in favour of those against whom more specifically the worker had to defend his interests. The formation and growth of the Non-partisan League in America is a recent instance of a class nucleation under the pressure of circumstances largely parallel to those here outlined.
The interests here discussed are of an economic kind, but they are vital and essential. It is to be observed, however, that these particular associations are not confined either to the worker or to interests purely economic. Reference has already been made to the Bank Clearing House. This is an instance of the formation of a powerful group to promote the common interests of its members, though in this case its formation was less due to the neglect of those interests by the state than to the fact that the interests concerned have become so extensive in range and so complex in character that the state was palpably incompetent to handle them profitably. In certain cases where the state has assumed liabilities of this kind (as in railway control) experience has not in the long run endorsed the competency of the state for the job. That, however, is less to the point than that we should observe the tendency to form voluntary associations for the protection and promotion of presumably necessary interests, and in some cases assuming (as in the case of the Bank Clearing House) a kind of police authority within its own field. Besides these economic and financial associations, there are also large and powerful professional associations which exist likewise to promote certain special interests. The British Medical Association affords an instance of such association; and here again we have an association which in the exercise of its office also assumes a function of discipline. Just as the Bank Clearing House can put a recalcitrant bank out of business, so the British Medical Association can “unfrock” a doctor who has offended against the professional code. It is true that the excommunicated culprit may in either case appeal to the civil courts for redress; but the rarity of such appeals shows how nearly complete is the authority exercised by these professional associations within their own province. With certain modifications the same general rule obtains in Teachers’ Unions, the Bar, the Co-operative Societies, Churches and other voluntary associations of persons, that gather around the nucleus of a special interest. The case is not so plain in regard to societies of a specially cultural character which do not so directly abut upon the general conduct of life, though the place of the Universities, Academies of Art, Author’s Associations and the like, in the total scheme of social life, makes it impossible to exclude them from consideration in any discussion which looks to the integration of all the legitimate interests of life in an organic full-growing social whole.
Such integration must, from the nature of the case, be a long and tedious process; and the difficulties involved in its extension to such distant and shadowy regions as Art and Authorship may be left for solution until they become more imminent. It is in any case doubtful whether the interests involved in these and similar cases are such as would be served by any formal connection with the machinery of government, except as regards certain narrow legal points (e.g. copyright). This is also true of the Churches whose sole point of contact with the State is in the matter of their temporalities. Fortunately for the moment the task need not take account of these remoter complexities; and it will be a matter for legitimate argument how far associations of a cultural kind are to enter into the organisation of government, when those associations which are already abutting on the province of the state and shearing it of some of its powers have been successfully co-ordinated in a scheme of political management.
VI
At this point it is important to bear in mind two things. First of all, the real interests which go to make up the sum of our life are precisely those which lead us to form ourselves into associations independent of the state. Indeed, the particular interest which binds a given individual to the state is generally fortuitous in its origin and largely imaginary in character. A man chances to be born into a certain geographical area, and in the great majority of cases that circumstance fixes his state affiliation for his entire life. An emigrant may transfer his affiliation to another state; but his case is exceptional. Moreover, the nature of the interests which bind him to the state is of a dubiously sentimental and imaginary order. This is not the place to discuss the significance of that temper of attachment to a particular political unity which is called patriotism; but it would appear to have comparatively little to do with any essential purpose of life. This must not be taken to mean that patriotism is to be decried as an evil or a futile thing. On the contrary, in so far as it represents a feeling of loyalty to a social group, it is admirable and of great value. Its value is, however, compromised by the invidious and divisive colour which it habitually appears to wear; and its historical uses—which chiefly consist in its exploitation by astute statesmen—constitute a record which is hardly flattering to human intelligence. In the main it plays comparatively little part in the sum total of the ordinary man’s life; and indeed it is hardly ever heard of in normal times until it is played up by politicians who want a national backing for a selfish enterprise at the expense of some other community. Its chief significance seems to be that it provides a reserve of sentimental devotion which may be drawn upon without limit in the cause of national prestige or national defence. Outside war-time, the state appears to touch the ordinary man’s life directly only when it requires him to pay the expenses of its upkeep or when he provokes the attention of the police. But on the other hand, when a man joins a Trade Union or a religious society it is because the new association bears some sort of vital and immediate relation to his life. The most authentic interests of life are those which move men to join together voluntarily for their defence and promotion; and for the purpose of social development, the associations that grow in this fashion are at least of no less importance to the common run of men than the state. It is no longer tolerable, therefore, that in the general management of the affairs of a community these associations should be virtually ignored in deference to a doctrine which presupposes that the state and the individual are the sole terms of political theory and practice, and that such associations exist within the commonwealth only on sufferance of the state.
Second, it has some bearing upon our present argument that these associations may conceivably come at any time into conflict with the interests of the social whole. A trade union may, for instance, make claims which are incongruous with the well-being of the general public; churches have been known to claim advantages which are inconsistent with the freedom and welfare of other religious societies. With the multiplication of societies within the commonwealth, and especially in view of the prospective great increase of strength in the case of trade unions, it is entirely essential that such bodies should be required directly to participate in the responsibility of promoting the general social good. They should—in their character of associations charging themselves with certain vital though particular interests—be introduced into the official management of public affairs. So long as they live more or less isolated and unco-ordinated lives they remain in danger of becoming antisocial in effect; and the only remedy is to provide for them a clearing-house in the conduct of which they are directly implicated; and once more, the state is already to hand and its machinery should be so ordered as to enable it to discharge this office.
Theoretically our movement is away from the “amoeba” conception of the national state, which regards it as an independent unicellular affair with the central state organisation as its nucleus, to a conception of it as multicellular, and finding a practical unity in the contribution of all its cells to the activity of a common brain. This may be bad biology but that is no argument against its political soundness.