Richard Roberts - The Unfinished Programme of Democracy

THESE pages embody the attempt of a plain man to thread a way through the social confusion of our time. The book sets out with a profound faith in the validity of the democratic principle; and its object is to trace the path along which the logic of this principle appears to lead. No claim is made to expert knowledge of economics or political science; but the writer has endeavoured to acquaint himself with the recent literature of the subject and to understand the main currents of prevailing opinion and feeling.

Events are moving so rapidly at the present time that certain passages became impertinent before the book was finished. It is probable that before it finally leaves the writers hands, other passages may suffer in the same way. But the main drift of the argument remains unaffected.

No attempt has been made in the body of the book to discuss the methods by which the social and economic changes which are impending should be carried through. It has been assumed that in the English-speaking world, the traditional respect for constitutional processes would avail to prevent resort to what has come to be known as direct action. It is now clear that this assumption was ill-founded and that there is a considerable movement of opinion toward industrial or direct action. The writer would venture to state his conviction that recourse to this method would be unspeakably disastrous and would carry with it consequences which its present advocates cannot foresee. It will be no easy task to restore the normal constitutional and economic processes when once they have been scrapped in the pursuit of some immediate object; and it is as sure as anything can very well be that the first step in direct action will have to be followed by others and must end in a confusion out of which the forty years it took to deliver Israel out of Egypt would be all too short to extricate us.

At the same time it should in fairness be acknowledged that if organised labour decides to use this dubious weapon, it will be under great provocation. The tardiness of governments to fulfil their promises, their too obvious tenderness toward the vested interests, the blind and obstinate bourbonism of the privileged classes over against the new proletarian awakeningall these things combine to create a situation which labour may feel intolerable and may resolve to end by a summary process. It is indeed only the most resolute and speedy mobilisation of all the resources of practical goodwill and reasonableness that can avert a great catastrophe. Organised labour has proved itself to be neither vindictive nor unreasonable when it has been met with fair and square dealing; and if we are plunged into the chaos of a general strike or perhaps worse, the larger responsibility will rest with those who, possessed of power and privilege, either could or would not see that the clock had moved onward a great spaceand, during the years of war, with great rapidityand so were unwilling or unready to adapt themselves to the new circumstances.

One subject of fundamental importance is touched upon but incidentally in these pagesnamely, the land. What is said herein concerning property in general applies with even more point to land; and the plea which is made for the standardisation of the price of staple commodities clearly leads to the public ownership of land, which is indeed on every ground the only reasonable solution of the land question. But adequate discussion of the matter would carry the argument of the book too far afield. In these pages, attention is primarily directed to the situation which has been created by modern industrialism.

The obligations of the writer to friends and writers are legion; it would be hopeless to enumerate them. Some items of this indebtedness may be inferred from the footnotes. The writer in particular regrets that Mr. Laskis Authority in the Modern State did not fall into his hands sooner; but he is glad to find himself in substantial agreement with the argument and conclusions of that notable work.

What is democracy? Sometimes, it is the name for a form of government by which the ultimate control of the machinery of government is committed to a numerical majority of the community. Sometimes, and incorrectly, it is used to denote the numerical majority itself, the poor or the multitude existing in a state. Sometimes, and still more loosely, it is the name for a policy, directed exclusively or mainly to the advantage of the labouring class. Finally, in its broadest and deepest, most comprehensive and most interesting sense, democracy is the name for a certain general condition of society, having historic origins, springing from circumstances and the nature of things, not only involving the political doctrine of popular sovereignty but representing a cognate group of corresponding tendencies over the whole field of moral, social and even spiritual life within the democratic community. Lord Morley.

I speak the password primeval, I give the sign of Democracy, By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms. Walt Whitman.

To be a democrat is not to decide on a certain form of human association, it is to learn how to live with other men. Mary P. Follett.

THE inherent logic of the democratic idea calls for a society which will provide for all its members those conditions of equal opportunity that are within human control. It denies all forms of special and exclusive privilege, and affirms the sovereignty of the common man.

In practice, however, democracy has gone no further than the achievement of a form of government; and in popular discussion the word has usually a connotation exclusively political. It is even yet but slowly becoming clear that a democratic form of government is no more than the bare framework of a democratic society; and democracy as we know it is justly open to the criticism that it has not seriously taken in hand the task of clothing the political skeleton with a body of living social flesh.

Modern democracy is, of course, historically very young; and it may be reasonably maintained that it is premature to speak of its failure to realise its full promise. Nevertheless, it is of some consequence that already that part of the democratic programme which has been achieved and put to the proof is being exposed to heavy fire of destructive criticism. During the past few years, we have become familiar with the idea of a world made safe for democracy; and in the minds of many people democracy (which in this connection means representative popular government) stands as a sort of ultimate good which it is impious to challenge or to criticise. Yet this democracy, for which the world has been presumably made safe at so great and sorrowful a price, is by some roundly declared to be radically unsafe for the world and a hindrance to social progress. The syndicalists, for instance, believe the democratic state to be no more than the citadel of bourgeois and plutocratic privilege, and have decreed its destruction, proposing to substitute for it a modified anarchism. Others, like Paul Bourget and Brunetiere, so far from finding it the sanctuary of the privileged, fear it as a source of anarchy and social confusion, and invite us to retrace our steps to happier days when authority being less diffused was more speedily and effectually exercised. Neither the syndicalist nor the authoritarian criticism is wholly baseless; yet it is true that in neither case does it arise from an inherent defect in the democratic principle. The one arises from the circumstance that political democracy still lacks its logical economic corollary; the other from the fact that democracy is not sustained by its proper ethical coefficient.