Читать книгу The Unfinished Programme of Democracy - Richard Roberts - Страница 5

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Few British people of liberal mind are able to look back upon that period of their history which gathers around the Boer War without a certain humiliation. Professor L. T. Hobhouse ascribes the popular defection of the British people from the democratic principle and temper during that time to four causes: (a) the decay of profound and vivid religious belief; (b) the diffusion of a stream of German idealism “which has swelled the current of retrogression from the plain rationalistic way of looking at life and its problems,” and which has stimulated the growth of the doctrine of the absolute state and its imperialistic corollaries; (c) the career of Prince Bismarck, and (d) “by far the most potent intellectual support of the reaction … the belief that physical science has given its verdict (for it came to this) in favour of violence against social justice.” This provides us with an instance (so plain that another were superfluous) of the inability of an unfulfilled democratic order to resist alien and hostile influences that may be “in the air,” and of its consequent perversion to ends which belie its own first principles. It is the permanent danger of democracy when it is not sustained and inspired by a generous moral impulse to be prostituted to undemocratic ends. “It is at best” (to quote Mr. Hobhouse again) “an instrument with which men who hold by the ideal of social justice and human progress can work; but when these ideals grow cold, it may, like other instruments, be turned to base uses.” Lord Morley, with a similar sensitiveness to the perils of democracy asks whether we mean by it “a doctrine or a force; constitutional parchment or a glorious evangel; perfected machinery for the wire-puller, the party-tactician, the spoils-man and the boss, or the high and stern ideals of a Mazzini or a Tolstoi.” It may, indeed, be reasonably held that worse has befallen it than Lord Morley’s fears. We have evidence how frequently democracy has in practice become the tool of strong and unscrupulous men and gangs of such men seeking selfish and corrupt ends; and how, for Lincoln’s famous formula, we have had government of the people by a well-to-do oligarchy in the interest of the privileged classes.

Nor have we any guarantee against this kind of degradation and degeneracy except in the perpetual reaffirmation and revitalising of the spiritual and moral grounds of democracy. It may indeed be possible to create political safeguards against the exploitation of the people and their government in the interest of individuals and classes; but there is no such safeguard against democracy, as it were, exploiting itself for undemocratic ends or sinking into undemocratic practices except in its continued education in the purposes for which it exists, in its extension into every region of life, and in its repeated solemn submission of itself to its principles and ideals. Until democracy becomes and is felt to be a personal and collective vocation, it is forever liable to corruption and apostasy. Democracy can only live and thrive while men remain sincerely and consciously democratic. Liberty and Equality are doubtful and precarious boons, and may—as they often have—become positive dangers without Fraternity. Democracy without its appropriate moral coefficient must be a vain and short-lived thing. So long as, while professing to give a fair field to every man, it does no more than provide an open field for the strong man, it will inevitably lead to the exploitation of the multitude and to the creation of new forms of privilege; and that in the main has been its recent history.

Not less than by the loss or the absence of moral impulse, is democracy endangered by ignorance or forgetfulness of what it exists for. Two words are usually taken to describe the characteristics of democracy, liberty and equality; and the atmosphere of a particular democracy depends upon whether it lays the larger emphasis on one or on the other of these. In England, for instance, the type is libertarian. The Briton has cared less for political equality than for what he calls freedom, the right of self-determination, the opportunity to live out his own life in his own way. He has been less doctrinaire than his French neighbours and has not been much troubled by the logical anomaly of an aristocracy so long as the aristocracy left him reasonable elbow-room. When the aristocracy was found to be obstructive, its pretensions were suitably abridged. In general, the idea of formal equality has played a less important part in England than it has in France or the United States. Democracy in the two latter countries is more specifically egalitarian. This difference is, however, mainly a difference of stress upon two aspects of the same thing, the egalitarian emphasis having to do with the formal status of the citizen, the libertarian with the personal independence which should belong to the status.

Yet the inadequate co-ordination of the two ideas may, and indeed does, lead to certain unhappy consequences. In Great Britain, an insufficient attention to equality has led to a too prolonged survival of the idea of a “governing class”; and social prestige still possesses an inordinate influence upon the distribution of political power. In France, on the other hand, an insufficient stress on liberty has tended to make Frenchmen étatistes. According to Emile Faguet, they are accustomed to submit to despotism and are eager in turn to practise it. They are liberals only when they are in a minority. In the United States, egalitarianism produces a kind of compulsory uniformitarianism. It is significant that, while in a state of war all nations are intolerant of dissent and free discussion, in the United States where the doctrine of political equality has reached its completest expression, dissent from the common view has been much more harshly treated than in any other belligerent country. The cardinal sin appears to be that of breaking the ranks. Liberty, according to Lord Acton, is “the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom, and opinion;” and if that be true, it does not necessarily follow that democracy is the home of liberty. An egalitarian democracy may indeed become the tomb of liberty. “Democracy,” says the same learned authority, “no less than monarchy or aristocracy sacrifices everything to maintain itself, and strives with an energy and a plausibility that kings and nobles cannot attain to override representation, to annul all the forces of resistance and deviation, and to secure by plebiscite, referendum, or caucus, free play for the will of the majority. The true democratic principle that none shall have power over the people is taken to mean that none shall be able to restrain or to evade its power; the true democratic principle that the people shall not be made to do what it does not like, is taken to mean that it shall not be required to tolerate what it does not like. The true democratic principle that every man’s free-will shall be as unfettered as possible is taken to mean that the free will of the sovereign people shall be fettered in nothing. … Democracy claims to be not only supreme, without authority above, but absolute, without independence below, to be its own master and not a trustee. The old sovereigns of the world are exchanged for a new one, who may be flattered and deceived but whom it is impossible to corrupt or to resist; and to whom must be rendered the things that are Cæsar’s, and also the things that are God’s.” Democracy appeared in order to deliver the individual from a dehumanising subjection; but it may become a dehumanising tyranny itself. A sovereign people may become as harsh and merciless as a sovereign lord.

The democratic idea is the corollary of the doctrine of the equal intrinsic worth of every individual soul. The modern democratic movement has started from a recognition of this principle; and the principle is meaningless unless it implies the prescriptive right of the individual to self-determination. Lord Acton’s definition of liberty is inadequate because he approaches it from the standpoint of one who was in a permanent religious minority in his own country, and in a permanent intellectual minority in his church. Liberty is surely the assurance that a man may have full opportunity to live out his own life and to grow to the full stature of his manhood, to be true to himself through everything. This requires the recognition of real personal independence and a definite minimum of obligatory uniformity. In another connection, Acton insists that “liberty is not a means to a higher political end; it is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society and of private life.” It is so frequently assumed that the function of government is the establishment and preservation of order that it is well to remember that it is a comparatively easy thing to secure some kind of order. The real difficulty is to establish and to secure liberty. We are far too ready to assume that liberty is capable of looking after itself and that the fragile plant which needs our solicitude is social order. But liberty stands in jeopardy every hour, not less in a democracy than in an autocracy. And in so far as a democracy, which was born of the craving for liberty fails to preserve and to extend liberty, it proves itself bankrupt.

And just as democracy is only made safe from corruption and subordination to undemocratic ends by repeated solemn affirmation of its moral and spiritual foundations, so it is only made safe from declining into absolutism and tyranny by constant return upon its metaphysical centre—the sanctity of the individual. In the modern world, the multitude is not in danger; our chief pre-occupation must be to save the individual from being swamped by the multitude. We are apt not to see the trees for the wood; we must be for ever reminding ourselves that the wood is made up of the trees. Democracy that tends to authority and uniformity is foreordained to decay; the democracy of life is one of freedom and infinite variety. Democracy has yet to solve the problem of setting the individual free without opening the door to individualism and anarchy.