A Preface to Politics

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They are men who have lost faith in political socialism. Why? Because,
like all other groups, the socialists tend to become routineers, to slip
into an easy reiteration. The direct actionists are a warning to the
Socialist Party that its tactics and its program are not adequate to
domesticating the deepest unrest of labor. Within that party, therefore,
a leadership is required which will ride the forces of "syndicalism" and
use them for a constructive purpose. The brilliant writer of the "Notes
of the Week" in the English New Age has shown how this might be done. He
has fused the insight of the syndicalist with the plans of the
collectivists under the name of Guild Socialism.

His plan calls for co-management of industry by the state and the labor
union. It steers a course between exploitation by a bureaucracy in the
interests of the consumer--the socialist danger--and oppressive
monopolies by industrial unions--the syndicalist danger. I shall not
attempt to argue here either for or against the scheme. My concern is
with method rather than with special pleadings. The Guild Socialism of
the "New Age" is merely an instance of statesmanlike dealing with a new
social force. Instead of throwing up its hands in horror at one
over-advertised tactical incident like sabotage, the "New Age" went
straight to the creative impulse of the syndicalist movement.

Every true craftsman, artist or professional man knows and sympathizes
with that impulse: you may call it a desire for self-direction in labor.
The deepest revolt implied in the term syndicalism is against the
impersonal, driven quality of modern industry--against the destruction of
that pride which alone distinguishes work from slavery. Some such impulse
as that is what marks off syndicalism from the other revolts of labor.
Our suspicion of the collectivist arrangement is aroused by the picture
of a vast state machine so horribly well-regulated that human impulse is
utterly subordinated. I believe too that the fighting qualities of
syndicalism are kept at the boiling point by a greater sense of outraged
human dignity than can be found among mere socialists or unionists. The
imagination is more vivid: the horror of capitalism is not alone in the
poverty and suffering it entails, but in its ruthless denial of life to
millions of men. The most cruel of all denials is to deprive a human
being of joyous activity. Syndicalism is shot through with the assertion
that an imposed drudgery is intolerable--that labor at a subsistence wage
as a cog in a meaningless machine is no condition upon which to found
civilization. That is a new kind of revolt--more dangerous to capitalism
than the demand for higher wages. You can not treat the syndicalists like
cattle because forsooth they have ceased to be cattle. "The damned
wantlessness of the poor," about which Oscar Wilde complained, the cry
for a little more fodder, gives way to an insistence upon the chance to
be interested in life.

To shut the door in the face of such a current of feeling because it is
occasionally exasperated into violence would be as futile as locking up
children because they get into mischief. The mind which rejects
syndicalism entirely because of the by-products of its despair has had
pearls cast before it in vain. I know that syndicalism means a revision
of some of our plans--that it is an intrusion upon many a glib prejudice.
But a human impulse is more important than any existing theory. We must
not throw an unexpected guest out of the window because no place is set
for him at table. For we lose not only the charm of his company: he may
in anger wreck the house.

* * * * *

Yet the whole nation can't sit at one table: the politician will object
that all human interests can't be embodied in a party program. That is
true, truer than most politicians would admit in public. No party can
represent a whole nation, although, with the exception of the socialists,
all of them pretend to do just that. The reason is very simple: a
platform is a list of performances that are possible within a few years.
It is concerned with more or less immediate proposals, and in a nation
split up by class, sectional and racial interests, these proposals are
sure to arouse hostility. No definite industrial and political platform,
for example, can satisfy rich and poor, black and white, Eastern creditor
and Western farmer. A party that tried to answer every conflicting
interest would stand still because people were pulling in so many
different directions. It would arouse the anger of every group and the
approval of its framers. It would have no dynamic power because the
forces would neutralize each other.

One comprehensive party platform fusing every interest is impossible and
undesirable. What is both possible and desirable is that every group
interest should be represented in public life--that it should have
spokesmen and influence in public affairs. This is almost impossible
to-day. Our blundering political system is pachydermic in its
irresponsiveness. The methods of securing representation are unfit
instruments for any flexible use. But the United States is evidently not
exceptional in this respect. England seems to suffer in the same way. In
May, 1912, the "Daily Mail" published a series of articles by H. G. Wells
on "The Labour Unrest." Is he not describing almost any session of
Congress when he says that "to go into the House of Commons is to go
aside out of the general stream of the community's vitality into a corner
where little is learnt and much is concocted, into a specialized Assembly
which is at once inattentive to and monstrously influential in our
affairs?" Further on Wells remarks that "this diminishing actuality of
our political life is a matter of almost universal comment to-day.... In
Great Britain we do not have Elections any more; we have Rejections.
What really happens at a general election is that the party
organizations--obscure and secretive conclaves with entirely mysterious
funds--appoint about 1200 men to be our rulers, and all that we, we
so-called self-governing people, are permitted to do is, in a muddled
angry way, to strike off the names of about half these selected
gentlemen."

A cynic might say that the people can't go far wrong in politics because
they can't be very right. Our so-called representative system is
unrepresentative in a deeper way than the reformers who talk about the
money power imagine. It is empty and thin: a stifling of living currents
in the interest of a mediocre regularity.

But suppose that politics were made responsive--suppose that the forces
of the community found avenues of expression into public life. Would not
our legislatures be cut up into antagonistic parties, would not the
conflicts of the nation be concentrated into one heated hall? If you
really represented the country in its government, would you not get its
partisanship in a quintessential form? After all group interests in the
nation are diluted by space and time: the mere separation in cities and
country prevents them from falling into the psychology of the crowd. But
let them all be represented in one room by men who are professionally
interested in their constituency's prejudices and what would you
accomplish but a deepening of the cleavages? Would the session not become
an interminable wrangle?

Nobody can answer these questions with any certainty. Most prophecies are
simply the masquerades of prejudice, and the people who love stability
and prefer to let their own well-being alone will see in a sensitive
political system little but an invitation to chaos. They will choose
facts to adorn their fears. History can be all things to all men: nothing
is easier than to summon the Terror, the Commune, lynchings in the
Southern States, as witnesses to the excesses and hysterias of the mob.
Those facts will prove the case conclusively to anyone who has already
made up his mind on the subject. Absolute democrats can also line up
their witnesses: the conservatism of the Swiss, Wisconsin's successful
experiments, the patience and judgment of the Danes. Both sides are
remarkably sure that the right is with them, whereas the only truth about
which an observer can be entirely certain is that in some places and in
certain instances democracy is admittedly successful.

There is no absolute case one way or the other. It would be silly from
the experience we have to make a simple judgment about the value of
direct expression. You cannot lump such a mass of events together and
come to a single conclusion about them. It is a crude habit of mind that
would attempt it. You might as well talk abstractly about the goodness or
badness of this universe which contains happiness, pain, exhilaration and
indifference in a thousand varying grades and quantities. There is no
such thing as Democracy; there are a number of more or less democratic
experiments which are not subject to wholesale eulogy or condemnation.

The questions about the success of a truly representative system are
pseudo-questions. And for this reason: success is not due to the system;
it does not flow from it automatically. The source of success is in the
people who use the system: as an instrument it may help or hinder them,
but they must operate it. Government is not a machine running on straight
tracks to a desired goal. It is a human work which may be facilitated by
good tools.

That is why the achievements of the Swiss may mean nothing whatever when
you come to prophesy about the people of New York. Because Wisconsin has
made good use of the direct primary it does not follow that it will
benefit the Filipino. It always seems curious to watch the satisfaction
of some reform magazines when China or Turkey or Persia imitates the
constitutional forms of Western democracies. Such enthusiasts postulate a
uniformity of human ability which every fact of life contradicts.

Present-day reform lays a great emphasis upon instruments and very little
on the skilful use of them. It says that human nature is all right, that
what is wrong is the "system." Now the effect of this has been to
concentrate attention on institutions and to slight men. A small step
further, institutions become an end in themselves. They may violate human
nature as the taboo does. That does not disturb the interest in them very
much, for by common consent reformers are to fix their minds upon the
"system."

A machine should be run by men for human uses. The preoccupation with the
"system" lays altogether too little stress on the men who operate it and
the men for whom it is run. It is as if you put all your effort into the
working of a plough and forgot the farmer and the consumer. I state the
case baldly and contradiction would be easy. The reformer might point to
phrases like "human welfare" which appear in his writings. And yet the
point stands, I believe. The emphasis which directs his thinking bears
most heavily upon the mechanics of life--only perfunctorily upon the
ability of the men who are to use them.

Even an able reformer like Mr. Frederic C. Howe does not escape entirely.
A recent book is devoted to a glowing eulogy of "Wisconsin, an Experiment
in Democracy." In a concluding chapter Mr. Howe states the philosophy of
the experiment. "What is the explanation of Wisconsin?" he asks. "Why has
it been able to eliminate corruption, machine politics, and rid itself of
the boss? What is the cause of the efficiency, the thoroughness, the
desire to serve which animate the state? Why has Wisconsin succeeded
where other states have uniformly failed? I think the explanation is
simple. It is also perfectly natural. It is traceable to democracy, to
the political freedom which had its beginning in the direct primary law,
and which has been continuously strengthened by later laws"; some pages
later, "Wisconsin assumed that the trouble with our politics is not with
our people, but with the machinery with which the people work.... It has
established a line of vision as direct as possible between the people and
the expression of their will." The impression Mr. Howe evidently wishes
to leave with his readers is that the success of the experiment is due to
the instruments rather than to the talent of the people of Wisconsin.
That would be a valuable and comforting assurance to propagandists, for
it means that other states with the same instruments can achieve the same
success. But the conclusion seems to me utterly unfounded. The reasoning
is perilously like that of the gifted lady amateur who expects to achieve
greatness by imitating the paint box and palette, oils and canvases of an
artist.

Mr. Howe's own book undermines his conclusions. He begins with an account
of La Follette--of a man with initiative and a constructive bent. The
forces La Follette set in motion are commented upon. The work of Van Hise
is shown. What Wisconsin had was leadership and a people that responded,
inventors, and constructive minds. They forged the direct primary and the
State University out of the impetus within themselves. No doubt they were
fortunate in their choice of instruments. They made the expression of the
people's will direct, yet that will surely is the more primary thing. It
makes and uses representative systems: but you cannot reverse the
process. A man can manufacture a plough and operate it, but no amount of
ploughs will create a man and endow him with skill.

All sorts of observers have pointed out that the Western States adopt
reform legislation more quickly than the Eastern. Yet no one would
seriously maintain that the West is more progressive because it has
progressive laws. The laws are a symptom and an aid but certainly not the
cause. Constitutions do not make people; people make constitutions. So
the task of reform consists not in presenting a state with progressive
laws, but in getting the people to want them.

The practical difference is extraordinary. I insist upon it so much
because the tendency of political discussion is to regard government as
automatic: a device that is sure to fail or sure to succeed. It is sure
of nothing. Effort moves it, intelligence directs it; its fate is in
human hands.

* * * * *

The politics I have urged in these chapters cannot be learned by rote.
What can be taught by rule of thumb is the administration of precedents.
That is at once the easiest and the most fruitless form of public
activity. Only a low degree of intelligence is required and of effort
merely a persistent repetition. Men fall into a routine when they are
tired and slack: it has all the appearance of activity with few of its
burdens. It was a profound observation when Bernard Shaw said that men
dread liberty because of the bewildering responsibility it imposes and
the uncommon alertness it demands. To do what has always been done, to
think in well-cut channels, to give up "the intolerable disease of
thought," is an almost constant demand of our natures. That is perhaps
why so many of the romantic rebels of the Nineteenth Century sank at last
into the comforting arms of Mother Church. That is perhaps the reason why
most oldish men acquire information, but learn very little. The
conservative who loves his routine is in nine cases out of ten a creature
too lazy to change its habits.

Confronted with a novelty, the first impulse is to snub it, and send it
into exile. When it becomes too persistent to be ignored a taboo is
erected and threats of fines and condign punishment are made if it
doesn't cease to appear. This is the level of culture at which Sherman
Anti-Trust acts are passed, brothels are raided, and labor agitators are
thrown into jail. If the taboo is effective it drives the evil under
cover, where it festers and emits a slow poison. This is the price we pay
for the appearance of suppression. But if the problem is more heavily
charged with power, the taboo irritates the force until it explodes. Not
infrequently what was once simply a factor of life becomes the dominating
part of it. At this point the whole routineer scheme of things collapses,
there is a period of convulsion and Caesarean births, and men weary of
excitement sink back into a newer routine. Thus the cycle of futility is
completed.

The process bears as much resemblance to statecraft as sitting backward
on a runaway horse does to horsemanship. The ordinary politician has no
real control, no direction, no insight into the power he rides. What he
has is an elevated, though temporary seat. Real statesmanship has a
different ambition. It begins by accepting human nature. No routine has
ever done that in spite of the conservative patter about "human nature";
mechanical politics has usually begun by ignoring and ended by violating
the nature of men.

To accept that nature does not mean that we accept its present character.
It is probably true that the impulses of men have changed very little
within recorded history. What has changed enormously from epoch to epoch
is the character in which these impulses appear. The impulses that at one
period work themselves out into cruelty and lust may at another produce
the richest values of civilized life. The statesman can affect that
choice. His business is to provide fine opportunities for the expression
of human impulses--to surround childhood, youth and age with homes and
schools, cities and countryside that shall be stocked with interest and
the chance for generous activity.

Government can play a leading part in this work, for with the decadence
of the church it has become the only truly catholic organization in the
land. Its task is essentially to carry out programs of service, to add
and build and increase the facilities of life. Repression is an
insignificant part of its work; the use of the club can never be
applauded, though it may be tolerated _faute de mieux_. Its use is a
confession of ignorance.

A sensitively representative machinery will probably serve such
statesmanship best. For the easy expression of public opinion in
government is a clue to what services are needed and a test of their
success. It keeps the processes of politics well ventilated and reminds
politicians of their excuse for existence.

In that kind of statesmanship there will be a premium on inventiveness,
on the ingenuity to devise and plan. There will be much less use for
lawyers and a great deal more for scientists. The work requires
industrial organizers, engineers, architects, educators, sanitists to
achieve what leadership brings into the program of politics.

This leadership is the distinctive fact about politics. The statesman
acts in part as an intermediary between the experts and his constituency.
He makes social movements conscious of themselves, expresses their needs,
gathers their power and then thrusts them behind the inventor and the
technician in the task of actual achievement. What Roosevelt did in the
conservation movement was typical of the statesman's work. He recognized
the need of attention to natural resources, made it public, crystallized
its force and delegated the technical accomplishment to Pinchot and his
subordinates.

* * * * *

But creative statesmanship requires a culture to support it. It can
neither be taught by rule nor produced out of a vacuum. A community that
clatters along with its rusty habits of thought unquestioned, making no
distinction between instruments and idols, with a dull consumption of
machine-made romantic fiction, no criticism, an empty pulpit and an
unreliable press, will find itself faithfully mirrored in public affairs.
The one thing that no democrat may assume is that the people are dear
good souls, fully competent for their task. The most valuable leaders
never assume that. No one, for example, would accuse Karl Marx of
disloyalty to workingmen. Yet in 1850 he could write at the demagogues
among his friends: "While we draw the attention of the German workman to
the _undeveloped state_ of the proletariat in Germany, you flatter the
national spirit and the guild prejudices of the German artisans in the
grossest manner, a method of procedure without doubt the more popular of
the two. Just as the democrats made a sort of fetich of the words, 'the
people,' so you make one of the word 'proletariat.'" John Spargo quotes
this statement in his "Life." Marx, we are told, could use phrases like
"democratic miasma." He never seems to have made the mistake of confusing
democracy with demolatry. Spargo is perfectly clear about this
characteristic of Marx: "He admired most of all, perhaps, that fine
devotion to truth as he understood it, and disregard of popularity which
marked Owen's life. Contempt for popular opinion was one of his most
strongly developed characteristics. He was fond, says Liebknecht, of
quoting as his motto the defiant line of Dante, with which he afterwards
concluded his preface to 'Das Kapital':

'Segui il tuo corso e lascia dir le genti.'"

It is to Marx's everlasting credit that he set the intellectual standard
of socialism on the most vigorous intellectual basis he could find. He
knew better than to be satisfied with loose thinking and fairly good
intentions. He knew that the vast change he contemplated needed every
ounce of intellectual power that the world possessed. A fine boast it was
that socialism was equipped with all the culture of the age. I wonder
what he would have thought of an enthusiastic socialist candidate for
Governor of New York who could write that "until men are free the world
has no need of any more literary efforts, of any more paintings, of any
more poems. It is better to have said one word for the emancipation of
the race than to have written the greatest novel of the times.... The
world doesn't need any more literature."

I will not venture a guess as to what Marx would have said, but I know
what we must say: "Without a literature the people is dumb, without
novels and poems, plays and criticism, without books of philosophy, there
is neither the intelligence to plan, the imagination to conceive, nor the
understanding of a common purpose. Without culture you can knock down
governments, overturn property relations, you can create excitement, but
you cannot create a genuine revolution in the lives of men." The reply of
the workingmen in 1847 to Cabet's proposal that they found Icaria, "a new
terrestrial Paradise," in Texas if you please, contains this interesting
objection: "Because although those comrades who intend to emigrate with
Cabet may be eager Communists, yet they still possess too many of the
faults and prejudices of present-day society by reason of their past
education to be able to get rid of them at once by joining Icaria."

That simple statement might be taken to heart by all the reformers and
socialists who insist that the people are all right, that only
institutions are wrong. The politics of reconstruction require a nation
vastly better educated, a nation freed from its slovenly ways of
thinking, stimulated by wider interests, and jacked up constantly by the
sharpest kind of criticism. It is puerile to say that institutions must
be changed from top to bottom and then assume that their victims are
prepared to make the change. No amount of charters, direct primaries, or
short ballots make a democracy out of an illiterate people. Those
portions of America where there are voting booths but no schools cannot
possibly be described as democracies. Nor can the person who reads one
corrupt newspaper and then goes out to vote make any claim to having
registered his will. He may have a will, but he has not used it.

For politics whose only ideal is the routine, it is just as well that men
shouldn't know what they want or how to express it. Education has always
been a considerable nuisance to the conservative intellect. In the
Southern States, culture among the negroes is openly deplored, and I do
not blame any patriarch for dreading the education of women. It is out of
culture that the substance of real revolutions is made. If by some magic
force you could grant women the vote and then keep them from schools and
colleges, newspapers and lectures, the suffrage would be no more
effective than a Blue Law against kissing your wife on Sunday. It is
democratic machinery with an educated citizenship behind it that embodies
all the fears of the conservative and the hopes of the radical.

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts,
their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their
table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific
training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire.
All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.
Without a favorable culture political schemes are a mere imposition. They
will not work without a people to work them.

The real preparation for a creative statesmanship lies deeper than
parties and legislatures. It is the work of publicists and educators,
scientists, preachers and artists. Through all the agents that make and
popularize thought must come a bent of mind interested in invention and
freed from the authority of ideas. The democratic culture must, with
critical persistence, make man the measure of all things. I have tried
again and again to point out the iconoclasm that is constantly necessary
to avoid the distraction that comes of idolizing our own methods of
thought. Without an unrelaxing effort to center the mind upon human uses,
human purposes, and human results, it drops into idolatry and becomes
hostile to creation.

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