Recent Developments in European Thought

by Unknown

When we come to the problem raised by the present position and claims of Trade Unions, differentiation of functions is less satisfactory. Let us first look at the problem as it confronts us to-day. There was a time when the state was doubtful whether it should allow trade unions to exist. The Political Economy prevalent in the earlier part of the nineteenth century taught that trade unions were either unnecessary or useless—unnecessary in so far as economic relations, if unhindered by regulations from the state or from combinations, were regarded by economic optimism as themselves producing satisfactory social conditions; useless where Political Economy had substituted for optimism a belief in 'iron laws' whose results no combination or government regulation could affect. We now see that economic relations, just because they are possible between men who have no common purpose, need regulation inspired by a common purpose, and can be affected by such regulation. The growth of governmental interference with industry and of trade unionism are part of the same movement to control the working of economic relations with a view to maintaining the conditions of the good life. Trade unions have grown and are still steadily growing in size and importance. For a large portion of the nation loyalty to a trade union has become the most obvious form of collective loyalty or general will. This has been accompanied by an inevitable decrease in what we may call territorial loyalty. The result of the increase in means of communication and the growth of large towns has been that men's common interests as members of the same trade or as employees in the same workshop are coming to mean more and to constitute a greater common bond between men than their common interests as dwellers in the same locality. The trade union has often a more live and real general will than the Parliamentary constituency. Men's aspirations and ideals for their common life are being expressed more truly through trade union organizations than through Parliament. The growth in the prestige of organized labour is therefore coincident with a decay in the prestige of Parliament. Parliament, however, based on a local sub-division of the nation, is at present the only political organization of the nation. Trade union organization, as a political organization, has no constitutional authority, and all the general will which it represents can find no regular national expression. The result is that it either uses the territorial organization by getting men who really represent their Trade Union elected as members for Parliamentary local constituencies, to the detriment of both the territorial and the trade union organization, or acts as an imperium in imperio by making demands on and issuing ultimata to Parliament. We seem to be approaching a crisis where the trade unions are asking whether they will allow the state to exist.

This is obviously an unsatisfactory state of affairs. What is the cure for it? Differentiation of functions, as I have said, will not help us here. Some writers have maintained that vocational organization should concern itself with industrial or economic matters, the state, as we know it, with political matters. But can we possibly distinguish between industrial and political matters? If the aim of politics is to regulate men's actions in the light of men's common interests, the action of a trade union is in its essence political. Its differentiation from government is that it is concerned with the common interests of a few rather than the common interests of all. The difference between a trade union and a parliamentary constituency is that the sub-division of the general common interest which each represents rests on a different basis of division. The whole community might as well be organized by vocations as it now is by localities. There would seem to be certain advantages in both principles of differentiation, and one obvious practical solution of our present difficulties is that the supreme organ of government should in its two chambers represent the nation as organized on both principles, vocational and territorial.

We seem to have come now to the discussion of political machinery, but, as in our discussion of the League of Nations, we can see that our attitude to such questions of machinery will vary as we regard the force-bearing organization with its national and territorial basis as the primary fact in the community, to be distinguished sharply from all other organizations, or regard the possession of organized force as the expression of men's settled and permanent will to maintain their common interests and safeguard the conditions of the good life. If we consistently follow out Green's dictum that will, not force, is the basis of the state, we shall be anxious that the political organization to which we render obedience shall follow the actual ramifications of common interests and of men's willingness to co-operate, and shall recognize that the national state with its territorial basis represents only one form of such ramification.

The view that political action is not confined to constitutional and governmental channels will not imply that we must give up the distinction between society and the state. For, on the one hand, trade unions have only arisen because of the special need for a common safeguarding of common interests produced by economic relations. Economic relations need to be controlled by, but cannot be superseded by, politics. On the other hand, as we have seen, the work of such associations as churches is different in kind from the work done by political organizations. The inculcation and development of moral ideals and the safeguarding of the conditions of the good life are complementary functions. Each is impossible without the other. But that does not make them identical, however closely interfused they may be.

If, then, we accept the political theory of idealism as a theory of society, we must recognize in social life the distinction between ethical, economic, and political relations, and the task before Political Theory is to define the relations between politics and economic activities on the one side and ethical activities on the other, and that in a society which is not confined within the bounds of a single nation state. The intricate ramifications of vast economic undertakings and the common aspirations and ideals of humanity are but signs of a solidarity of mankind that political philosophy must recognize in all the problems it has to face.

FOR REFERENCE

Green, Principles of Political Obligation.

Bosanquet, Philosophical Theory of the State.

Barker, Political Thought in England from Spencer to to-day.

Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State.