It will appear to the idealist who has contemplated the heavens more closely than the earth that the policy I advocate is one which only tardily could be put into operation, and would be paltry and inadequate as a basis for society. The idealist with the Golden Age already in his heart believes he has only to erect the Golden Banner and display it for multitudes to array themselves beneath its folds; therefore he advocates not, as I do, a way to the life, but the life itself. I am sympathetic with idealists in a hurry, but I do not think the world can be changed suddenly by some heavenly alchemy, as St. Paul was smitten by a light from the overworld. Such light from heaven is vouchsafed to individuals, but never to nations, who progress by an orderly evolution in society. Though the heart in us cries out continually, "Oh, hurry, hurry to the Golden Age," though we think of revolutions, we know that the patient marshalling of human forces is wisdom. We have to devise ways and means and light every step clearly before the nation will leave its footing in some safe if unattractive locality to plant itself elsewhere. The individual may be reckless. The race never can be so, for it carries too great a burden and too high destinies, and it is only when the gods wish to destroy or chastise a race that they first make it mad. Not by revolutions can humanity be perfected. I might quote from an old oracle, "The gods are never so turned away from man as when he ascends to them by disorderly methods." Our spirits may live in the Golden Age, but our bodily life moves on slow feet, and needs the lantern on the path and the staff struck carefully into the darkness before us to see that the path beyond is not a morass, and the light not a will o' the wisp.
Other critics may say I would destroy the variety of civilization by the inflexible application of a single idea. Well, I realize that the net which is spread for Leviathan will not capture all the creatures of the deep; and the complexity of human nature is such that it is impossible to imagine a policy, however fitting in certain spheres of human activity, which could be applied to the whole of life. What I think we should aim at is making the co-operative idea fundamental in Irish life. But to say fundamental is not to say absolute. Always there will be enter rising persons—men of creative minds—who will break away from the mass and who will insist, perhaps rightly, on an autocratic control of the enterprises they found, which were made possible alone by their genius, and which would not succeed unless every worker in the enterprise was malleable by their will. It is unlikely that State action will cease, or that any Government we may have will not respond to the appeal of the people to do this, that, or the other for them which they are too indolent to do for themselves, or which by the nature of things only governments can undertake. For a principle to be fundamental in a country does not mean that it must be absolute. I hope society in Ireland will be organized that the idea of democratic control of its economic life will so pervade Irish thought that it will be in the body politic what the spinal column is to the body—the pillar on which it rests, the strongest single factor in the body. Another illustration may make still clearer my meaning. In a red sunsetting the glow is so powerful that green hills, white houses, and blue waters, touched by its light, assume a ruddy color, partly a local color, and partly a reflected light from the sun. Now in the same way, what is most powerful in society multiplies images and shadows of itself, and produces harmonies with itself which are yet not identities. It is by a predominating idea that nations achieve the practical unity of their citizens, and national progress becomes possible. In the future structure of society I have no doubt there will be elements to which the socialist, the syndicalist, the capitalist, and the individualist will have contributed. By degrees it will be discovered what enterprises are best directed by the State, by municipalities, by groups, or by individuals. But if the idea of democratic control is predominant, those enterprises which are otherwise directed will yet meet the prevalent mood by adopting the ideas of the treatment of the workers enforced in democratically controlled enterprises, and will in every respect, except control, make their standards equal. All the needles of being point to the centres where power is most manifested. The effects of the French revolution—a democratic upheaval—invaded men's minds everywhere. Even the autocratically ruled States, hitherto careless about the people in their underworlds, had to make advances to democracy, and give it some measure of the justice democracy threatened to deal to itself. Without demanding absolutism I do desire a predominant democratic character in our national enterprises, rather than a confused muddle or struggle of interests where nothing really emerges except the egoism of those who struggle.
It will be noticed that in all that has preceded I have referred little to action by government, though it is on governments that democracies over the world are now fixing all their hopes. They believe the State is the right agency to bring about reforms and changes in society. And I must here explain why I do not share their hopes. My distrust of the State in economic reform is based on the belief that governments in great nation-states, even representative governments, are not malleable by the general will. They are too easily dominated by the holders of economic power, are, in fact, always dominated by aristocracies with land or by the aristocracies of wealth. It is the hand at the helm guides the ship. The larger the State is the more easily do the holders of economic power gain political power. The theory of representative government held good in practice, I think, so long as parliaments were engaged in formulating general rights, the right, for example, of the individual to think or profess any religion he pleased; his right not to be deprived of liberty or life without open trial by his fellow-citizens. So long as legislatures were affirming or maintaining these rights, which rich and poor equally desired, they were justified. But when legislatures began to intervene in economic matters, in the struggles between rich and poor, between capital and labor, it became at once apparent the holders of economic power had also political power; and that the institution which operated fairly where universal rights were considered did not operate fairly when there was a conflict between particular interests.
The jury of the nation was found to be packed. At least nine-tenths of the population in Great Britain, for example, belong to the wage-earning class. At least nine-tenths of the members of legislatures belong to the classes possessing land or capital. Now, why any member of the wage-earning class should look with hope to such assemblies I cannot understand. Their ideal is, or should be, economic freedom, together with democratic control of industries, an ideal in every way opposed to the ideal of the majority of the members of the legislatures. The fiction that representative assemblies will work for the general good is proclaimed with enthusiasm; but the moment we examine their actions we see it is not so, and we discover the cause. Where the nation is capitalist and capitalism is the dominant economic factor, legislatures invariably act to uphold it, and legislation tends to fix the system more securely. We see in Great Britain that wage-earners are now openly regarded by the legislatures as a class who must not be allowed the same freedom in life as the wealthy. They must be registered, inspected, and controlled in a way which the wealthy would bitterly resent if the legislation referred to themselves. After economic inferiority has been enforced on them by capital, the stigma of human inferiority is attached to the wage-earners by the legislature. But I must not be led away from my theme by the bitter reflections which arise in one who lives in the Iron Age and knows it is Iron, who feels at times like the lost wanderer on trackless fields of ice, which never melt and will not until earth turns from its axis.
I wish to see society organized so that it shall be malleable to the general will. But political and economic progress are obstructed because existing political and economic organizations are almost entirely unmalleable by the general will. Public opinion does not control the press. The press, capitalistically controlled, creates public opinion. Our legislators have grown so secure that they confess openly they have passed measures which they knew would be hateful to the majority of citizens, and which, if they had been voted on, would never have been passed. The theory of representative government has broken down. To tell the truth, the life of the nation is so complicated that it is difficult for the private citizen to have any intelligent opinion about national policies, and we can hardly blame the politician for despising the judgment of the private citizen. Government departments are still less malleable by public opinion than the legislature. For an individual to attack the policy of a Government department is almost as hopeless a proceeding as if a laborer were to take pickaxe and shovel and determine to level a mountain which obstructed his view. Yet Government departments are supposed to be under popular control. The Castle in Ireland, theoretically, was under popular control, but it was adamantine in policy. If the cant about popular control of legislation and Government departments is obviously untrue, how much more is it in regard to public services like railways, gas works, mines, the distribution of goods, manufacture, purchase and sale, which are almost entirely under private control and where public interference is bitterly resented and effectively opposed. What chance has the individual who is aggrieved against the great carrying companies? To come lower down, let us take the farmer in the fairs. What way has he of influencing the jobbers and dealers to act honestly by him—they who have formed rings to keep down the prices of cattle? Are they malleable to public opinion? The farmers who have waited all day through a fair know they are not.
When we consider the agencies through which people buy we find the same thing. The increase of multiple shops, combines, and rings makes the use of the limited power a man had to affect a dealer by transferring his custom to another merchant to dwindle yearly. Everywhere we turn we find this adamantine front presented by the legislature, the State departments, by the agencies of production, distribution, or credit, and it is the undemocratic organization of society which is responsible for nine-tenths of our social troubles. All the vested interests backed up by economic and political power conflict with the public welfare, and the general will, which intends the good of all, can act no more than a paralyzed cripple can walk. We would all choose the physique of the athlete, with his swift, unfettered, easy movements, rather than the body of the cripple if we could, and we have this choice before us in Ireland.
If we concentrate our efforts mainly on voluntary action, striving to make the co-operative spirit predominant, the general will would manifest itself through organizations malleable to that will, flexible and readily adjusting themselves to the desires of the community. To effect reforms we have not first to labor at the gigantic task of affecting national opinion and securing the majorities necessary for national action. In any district a hundred or two hundred men can at any time form co-operative societies for production, purchase, sale, or credit, and can link themselves by federation with other organizations like their own to secure greater strength and economic efficiency. By following this policy steadily we simplify our economic system, and reduce to fewer factors the forces in conflict in society. We beget the predominance of one principle, and enable that general will for good, which Rousseau theorized about, to find agencies through which it can manifest freely, so changing society from the static condition begot by conflict and obstruction to a dynamic condition where energies and desires manifest freely.
The general will, as Rousseau demonstrated, always intends the good, and if permitted to act would act in a large and noble way. The change from static to dynamic, from fixed forms to fluid forms, has been coming swiftly over the world owing to the liberation of thought, and this in spite of the obstruction of a society organized, I might almost say, with egomania as the predominant psychological factor. The ancient conception of Nature as a manifestation of spirit is incarnating anew in the minds of modern thinkers, and Nature is not conceived of as material, but as force and continual motion; and they are trying to identify human will with this arcane energy, and let the forces of Nature have freer play in humanity. We begin to catch glimpses of civilizations as far exceeding ours as ours surpasses society in the Stone Age. In all our democratic movements, in these efforts towards the harmonious fusion of human forces, humanity is obscurely intent on mightier collective exploits than anything conceived of before. The nature of these energies manifesting in humanity I shall try to indicate later on. But to let the general will have free play ought to be the aim of those who wish to build up national organizations for whatever purpose; and to let the general will have free play we require something better than the English invention of representative government, which, as it exists at present, is simply a device to enable all kinds of compromises to be made on matters where there should be no compromise, as if right and wrong could come to an agreement honestly to let things be partly right and partly wrong. We are importing into Ireland some political machinery of this antiquated pattern. I have written the foregoing because I dread Irish people becoming slaves of this machine. I fear the importers of this machinery will desire to make it do things it can only do badly, and will set it to work with the ferocity of the new broom and will make it an obstruction, so that the real genius of the Irish people will be unable freely to manifest itself. The less we rely on this machinery at present, and the more we desire a machinery of progress, at once flexible and efficient, the better will it be for us later on. What must be embodied in State action is the national will and the national soul, and until that giant being is manifested it is dangerous to let the pygmies set powers in motion which may enchain us for centuries to come.
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