Is there any easier way of denying the true nature and significance of our objective world than by persuading ourselves that that world is even now doomed, and is bound suddenly to be transformed into the land of our hearts desire? Is it not to be expected that people would soon learn how to give those desires greater unction, and to encourage one another in holding to the fictions by which those desires could find their compensation and escape, by resorting to precisely the crowd-devices which we have been discussing?
The Messianists of Bible times expected the great transformation and world cataclysm to come by means of a divine miracle. Those who are affected by the wave of premillennialism which is now running through certain evangelical Christian communions are experiencing a revival of this faith with much of its primitive terminology.
Evolutionary social revolutionists expect the great day to come as the culmination of a process of economic evolution. This is what is meant by "evolutionary and revolutionary socialism." The wish-fancy is here rationalized as a doctrine of evolution by revolution. Thus the difference between the social revolutionist and the Second Adventist is much smaller than either of them suspects. As Freud would doubtless say, the difference extends only to the "secondary elaboration of the manifest dream formation"—the latent dream thought is the same in both cases. The Adventist expresses the wish in the terminology of a prescientific age, while the social revolutionist makes use of modern scientific jargon. Each alike finds escape from reality in the contemplation of a new-world system. The faith of each is a scheme of redemption—that is, of "compensation." Each contemplates the sudden, cataclysmic destruction of the "present evil world," and its replacement by a new order in which the meek shall inherit the earth. To both alike the great event is destined, in the fullness of time, to come as a thief in the night. In the one case it is to come as the fulfillment of prophecy; in the other the promise is underwritten and guaranteed by impersonal forces of "economic evolution."
This determinism is in the one case what Bergson calls "radical finalism," and in the other "radical mechanism." But whether the universe exists but to reel off a divine plan conceived before all worlds, or be but the mechanical swinging of the shuttle of cause and effect, what difference is there if the point arrived at is the same? In both cases this point was fixed before the beginning of time, and the meaning of the universe is just that and nothing else, since that is what it all comes to in the end.
Whether the hand which turns the crank of the world-machine be called that of God or merely "Evolution," it is only a verbal difference; it is in both cases "a power not ourselves which makes for righteousness." And the righteousness? Why, it is just the righteousness of our own crowd—in other words, the crowds bill of rights painted in the sky by our own wish-fancy, and dancing over our heads like an aurora borealis. It is the history of all crowds that this dazzling pillar of fire in the Arctic night is hailed as the "rosy-fingered dawn" of the Day of the Lord.
Or, to change the figure somewhat, the faithful crowd has but to follow its fiery cloud to the promised land which flows with milk and honey; then march for an appointed time about the walls of the wicked bourgeois Jericho, playing its propaganda tune until the walls fall down by magic and the world is ours. No revolution is possible without a miracle and a brass band.
I have no desire to discourage those who have gone to work at the real tasks of social reconstruction—certainly no wish to make this study an apology for the existing social order. In the face of the ugly facts which on every hand stand as indictments of what is called "capitalism," it is doubtful if anyone could defend the present system without recourse to a certain amount of cynicism or cant. The widespread social unrest which has enlisted in its service so much of the intellectual spirit of this generation surely could never have come about without provocation more real than the work of a mere handful of "mischief-making agitators." The challenge to modern society is not wholly of crowd origin.
But it is one thing to face seriously the manifold problems of reconstruction of our social relations, and it is quite another thing to persuade oneself that all these entangled problems have but one imaginary neck which is waiting to be cut with a single stroke of the sword of revolution in the hands of "the people." Hundreds of times I have heard radicals, while discussing certain evils of present society, say, "All these things are but symptoms, effects; to get rid of them you must remove the cause." That cause is always, in substance, the present economic system.
If this argument means that, instead of thinking of the various phases of social behavior as isolated from one another, we should conceive of them as so interrelated as to form something like a more or less causally connected organic whole, I agree. But if it means something else—and it frequently does—the argument is based upon a logical fallacy. The word "system" is not a causal term; it is purely descriptive. The facts referred to, whatever connections we may discover among them, are not the effects of a mysterious "system" behind the facts of human behavior; the facts themselves, taken together, are the system.
The confusion of causal and descriptive ideas is a habit common to both the intellectualist philosopher and the crowd-minded. It enables people to turn their gaze from the empirical Many to the fictitious One, from the real to the imaginary. The idea of a system behind, over, outside, and something different from the related facts which the term "system" is properly used to describe, whether that system be a world-system, a logical system, or a social system, whether it be capitalism or socialism, "system" so conceived is a favorite crowd-spook. It is the same logical fallacy as if one spoke of the temperature of this May day as the effect of the climate, when all know that the term climate is simply (to paraphrase James) the term by which we characterize the temperature, weather, etc., which we experience on this and other days. We have already seen to what use the crowd-mind puts all such generalizations.
A popular revolutionary philosophy of history pictures the procession of the ages as made up of a pageant of spook-social systems, each distinct from the others and coming in its appointed time. But social systems do not follow in a row, like elephants in a circus parade—each huge beast with its trunk coiled about the end of his predecessors tail. The greater part of this "evolutionary and revolutionary" pageantry is simply dream-stuff. Those who try to march into Utopia in such an imaginary parade are not even trying to reconstruct society; they are sociological somnambulists.
The crowd-mind clings to such pageantry because, as we saw in another connection, the crowd desires to believe that evolution guarantees its own future supremacy. It then becomes unnecessary to solve concrete problems. One need only possess an official program of the order of the parade. In other words, the crowd must persuade itself that only one solution of the social problem is possible, and that one inevitable—its own.
Such thinking wholly misconceives the nature of the social problem. Like all the practical dilemmas of life, this problem, assuming it to be in any sense a single problem, is real just because more than one solution is possible. The task here is like that of choosing a career. Whole series of partially foreseen possibilities are contingent upon certain definite choices. Aside from our choosing, many sorts of futures may be equally possible. Our intervention at this or that definite point is an act by which we will one series of possibilities rather than another into reality. But the act of intervention is never performed once for all. Each intervention leads only to new dilemmas, among which we must again choose and intervene. It is mainly in order to escape from the necessity of facing this terrifying series of unforeseeable dilemmas that the crowd-man walketh in a vain show.
In pointing out the futility of present-day revolutionary crowd-thinking, I am only striving to direct, in however small a degree, our thought and energies into channels which lead toward desired results. It is not by trombones that we are to redeem society, nor is the old order going to tumble down like the walls of Jericho, and a complete new start be given. Civilization cannot be wiped out and begun all over again. It constitutes the environment within which our reconstructive thinking must, by tedious effort, make certain definite modifications. Each such modification is a problem in itself, to be dealt with, not by belief in miracle, but by what Dewey calls "creative intelligence." Each such modification must be achieved by taking all the known facts, which are relevant, into account. As such it is a new adaptation, and the result of a series of such adaptations may be as great and radical a social transformation as one may have the courage to set as the goal of a definite policy of social effort. But there is a world of difference between social thinking of this kind, where faith is a working hypothesis, and that which ignores the concrete problems that must be solved to reach the desired goal, and, after the manner of crowds, dreams of entering fairyland, or of pulling a new world en bloc down out of the blue, by the magic of substituting new tyrannies for old.
Revolutionary crowd-thinking is not "creative intelligence." It is hocus-pocus, a sort of social magic formula like the "mutabor" in the Arabian Nights; it is an Aladdins-lamp philosophy. And here we may sum up this part of our argument. The idea of the revolution is to the crowd a symbol, the function of which is compensation for the burdens of the struggle for existence, for the feeling of social inferiority, and for desires suppressed by civilization. It is an imaginary escape from hard reality, a new-world system in which the ego seeks refuge, a defense mechanism under the compulsive influence of which crowds behave like somnambulistic individuals. It is the apotheosis of the under crowd itself and the transcendental expression and justification of its will to rule. It is made up of just those broad generalizations which are of use in keeping that crowd together. It gives the new crowd unction in its fight with the old, since it was precisely these same dream-thoughts which the old crowd wrote on its banners in the day when it, too, was blowing trumpets outside the walls of Jericho.
So much for the psychology of the revolutionary propaganda. Now let us look at what happens in the moment of revolutionary outbreak. We have dwelt at some length on the fact that a revolution occurs when a new crowd succeeds in displacing an old one in position of social control. At first there is a general feeling of release and of freedom. There is a brief period of ecstasy, of good will, a strange, almost mystical magnanimity. A flood of oratory is released in praise of the "new day of the people." Everyone is a "comrade." Everyone is important. There is an inclination to trust everyone. This Easter-morning state of mind generally lasts for some days—until people are driven by the pinch of hunger to stop talking and take up again the routine tasks of daily living. We have all read how the "citizens" of the French Revolution danced in the streets for sheer joy in their new-won liberty. Those who were in Petrograd during the days which immediately followed the downfall of the Tsar bear witness to a like almost mystical sense of the general goodness of human kind and of joy in human fellowship.
With the return to the commonplace tasks of daily life, some effort, and indeed further rationalization, is needed to keep up the feeling that the new and wonderful age has really come to stay. Conflicts of interest and special grievances are viewed as involving the vital principles of the Revolution. People become impatient and censorious. There is a searching of hearts. People watch their neighbors, especially their rivals, to make sure that nothing in their behavior shall confirm the misgivings which are vaguely felt in their own minds. The rejoicing and comradeship which before were spontaneous are now demanded. Intolerance toward the vanquished crowd reappears with increased intensity, not a little augmented by the knowledge that the old enemies are now at "the peoples" mercy.
There is a demand for revenge for old abuses. The displaced crowd likely as not, foreseeing the doom which awaits its members, seeks escape by attempting a counter-revolution. A propaganda of sympathy is carried on among members of this same class who remain in the dominant crowd in communities not affected by the revolution. There is secret plotting and suspicion of treason on every hand. People resort to extravagant expressions of their revolutionary principles, not only to keep up their own faith in them, but to show their loyalty to the great cause. The most fanatical and uncompromising members of the group gain prominence because of their excessive devotion. By the very logic of crowd-thinking, leadership passes to men who are less and less competent to deal with facts and more and more extreme in their zeal. Hence the usual decline from the Mirabeaus to the Dantons and Cariers, and from these to the Marats and Robespierres, from the Milukoffs to the Kerenskys and from the Kerenskys to the Trotzkys. With each excess the crowd must erect some still new defense against the inevitable disclosure of the fact that the people are not behaving at all as if they were living in the kingdom of heaven. With each farther deviation from the plain meaning of facts, the revolution must resort to more severe measures to sustain itself, until finally an unsurmountable barrier is reached, such as the arrival on the scene of a Napoleon. Then the majority are forced to abandon the vain hope of really attaining Utopia, and content themselves with fictions to the effect that what they have really is Utopia—or with such other mechanisms as will serve to excuse and minimize the significance of existing facts and put off the complete realization of the ideal until some future stage of progress. It is needless to add that those who have most profited by the revolutionary change are also most ready to take the lead in persuading their neighbors to be content with these rational compromises.
Meanwhile, however, the revolutionary leaders have set up a dictatorship of their own, which, while necessary to "save the revolution," is itself a practical negation of the revolutionary dream of a free world. This dictatorship, finally passing into the hands of the more competent element of the revolutionary crowd, justifies itself to the many; professing and requiring of all a verbal assent to the revolutionary creed of which its very existence is a fundamental repudiation. This group becomes in time the nucleus about which society finally settles down again in comparative peace and equilibrium.
In general, then, it may be said that a revolution does not and cannot realize the age-long dream of a world set free. Its results may be summed up as follows: a newly dominant crowd, a new statement of old beliefs, new owners of property in the places of the old, new names for old tyrannies. Looking back over the history of the several great tidal waves of revolution which have swept over the civilization which is to-day ours, it would appear that one effect of them has been to intensify the hold which crowd-thinking has upon all of us, also to widen the range of the things which we submit to the crowd-mind for final judgment. In confirmation of this it is to be noted that it is on the whole those nations which have been burnt over by both the Reformation and the eighteenth-century revolution which exhibit the most chauvian brand of nationalism and crowd-patriotism. It is these same nations also which have most highly depersonalized their social relationships, political structures, and ideals. It is these nations also whose councils are most determined by spasms of crowd-propaganda.
The modern man doubtless has a sense of self in a degree unknown—except by the few—in earlier ages, but along with this there exists in "modern ideas," a complete system of crowd-ideas with which the conscious self comes into conflict at every turn. Just how far the revolutionary crowds of the past have operated to provide the stereotyped forms in which present crowd-thinking is carried on, it is almost impossible to learn. But that their influence has been great may be seen by anyone who attempts a psychological study of "public opinion."
Aside from the results mentioned, I think the deposit of revolutionary movements in history has been very small. It may be that, in the general shake-up of such a period, a few vigorous spirits are tossed into a place where their genius has an opportunity which it would otherwise have failed to get. But it would seem that on the whole the idea that revolutions help the progress of the race is a hoax. Where advancement has been achieved in freedom, in intelligence, in ethical values, in art or science, in consideration for humanity, in legislation, it has in each instance been achieved by unique individuals, and has spread chiefly by personal influence, never gaining assent except among those who have power to recreate the new values won in their own experience.
Whenever we take up a new idea as a crowd, we at once turn it into a catchword and a fad. Faddism, instead of being merely a hunger for the new is rather an expression of the crowd-will to uniformity. To be "old-fashioned" and out of date is as truly to be a nonconformist as to be a freak or an originator. Faddism is neither radicalism nor a symptom of progress. It is a mark of the passion for uniformity or the conservatism of the crowd-mind. It is change; but its change is insignificant.
It is often said that religious liberty is the fruit of the Reformation. If so it is an indirect result and one which the reformers certainly did not desire. They sought liberty only for their own particular propaganda, a fact which is abundantly proved by Calvins treatment of Servetus and of the Anabaptists, by Luthers attitude toward the Saxon peasants, by the treatment of Catholics in England, by the whole history of Cromwells rule, by the persecution of Quakers and all other "heretics" in our American colonies—Pennsylvania, I believe, excepted—down to the date of the American Revolution.
It just happened that Protestantism as the religion of the bourgeois fell into the hands of a group, who, outside their religious-crowd interests were destined to be the greatest practical beneficiaries of the advancement of applied science. Between applied science and science as a cultural discipline—that is, science as a humanistic study—the line is hard to draw. The Humanist spirit of the sciences attained a certain freedom, notwithstanding the fact that the whole Reformation was really a reactionary movement against the Renaissance; in spite, moreover, of the patent fact that the Protestant churches still, officially at least, resist the free spirit of scientific culture.
It is to the free spirits of the Italian Renaissance, also to the Jeffersons and Franklins and Paines, the Lincolns and Ingersolls, the Huxleys and Darwins and Spencers, the men who dared alone to resist the religious crowd-mind and to undermine the abstract ideas in which it had intrenched itself, to whom the modern world owes its religious and intellectual liberty.
The same is true of political liberty. England, which is the most free country in the world to-day, never really experienced the revolutionary crowd-movement of the eighteenth century. Instead, the changes came by a process of gradual reconstruction. And it is with just such an opportunist reconstructive process that England promises now to meet and solve the problems of the threatened social revolution. In contrast with Russia, Socialism in England has much ground for hope of success. The radical movement in England is on the whole wisely led by men who with few exceptions can think realistically and pragmatically, and refuse to be swept off their feet by crowd-abstractions. The British Labor party is the least crowd-minded of any of the socialistic organizations of our day. The Rochdale group has demonstrated that if it is co-operation that people desire as a solution of the economic problem, the way to solve it is to co-operate along definite and practicable lines; the co-operators have given up belief in the miracle of Jericho. The British trade-union movement has demonstrated the fact that organization of this kind succeeds in just the degree that it can rise above crowd-thinking and deal with a suggestion of concrete problems according to a statesmanlike policy of concerted action.
To be sure it cannot be denied that the social reconstruction in England is seriously menaced by the tendency to crowd-behavior. At best it reveals hardly more than the superior advantage to the whole community of a slightly less degree of crowd-behavior; but when compared with the Socialist movement in Russia, Germany, and the United States, it would seem that radicalism in England has at least a remote promise of reaching a working solution of the social problem; and that is more than can at present be said for the others.
In the light of what has been said about the psychology of revolution, I think we may hazard an opinion about the vaunted "Dictatorship of the Proletariat"—an idea that has provided some new catchwords for the crowd which is fascinated by the soviet revolution in Russia. Granting for the sake of argument that such a dictatorship would be desirable from any point of view—I do not see how the mere fact that people work proves their capacity to rule, horses also work—would it be possible? I think not. Even the temporary rule of Lenin in Russia can hardly be called a rule of the working class. Bolshevist propaganda will have it that such a dictatorship of the working class is positively necessary if we are ever to get away from the abuses of present "capitalistic society." Moreover, it is argued that this dictatorship of the organized workers could not be undemocratic, for since vested property is to be abolished and everyone forced to work for his living, all will belong to the working class, and therefore the dictatorship of the proletariat is but the dictatorship of all.
In the first place, assuming that it is the dictatorship of all who survive the revolution, this dictatorship of all over each is not liberty for anyone; it may leave not the tiniest corner where one may be permitted to be master of himself. The tyranny of all over each is as different from freedom as is pharisaism from spiritual living.
Again, what is there to show that this imagined dictatorship of all is to be shared equally by all, and if not have we not merely set up a new privileged class—the very thing which the Socialist Talmud has always declared it is the mission of the workers to destroy forever? While the workers are still a counter-crowd, struggling for power against the present ruling class, they are of course held together by a common cause—namely, their opposition to capital. But with labors triumph, everybody becomes a worker, and there is no one longer to oppose. That which held the various elements of labor together in a common crowd of revolt has now ceased to exist, "class consciousness" has therefore no longer any meaning. Labor itself has ceased to exist as a class by reason of its very triumph. What then remains to hold its various elements together in a common cause? Nothing at all. The solidarity of the workers vanishes, when the struggle which gave rise to that solidarity ceases. There remains now nothing but the humanitarian principle of the solidarity of the human race. Solidarity has ceased to be an economic fact, and has become purely "ideological."
Since by hypothesis everyone is a worker, the dictatorship of the workers is a dictatorship based not on labor as such, but upon a universal human quality. It would be quite as truly a dictatorship of everyone if based upon any other common human quality—say, the fact that we are all bipeds, that we all have noses, or the fact of the circulation of the blood. As the purely proletarian character of this dictatorship becomes meaningless, the crowd-struggle switches from that of labor as a whole against capital, to a series of struggles within the dominant labor group itself.
The experience of Russia has even now shown that if the soviets are to save themselves from nation-wide bankruptcy, specially trained men must be found to take charge of their industrial and political activities. Long training is necessary for the successful management of large affairs, and becomes all the more indispensable as industry, education, and political affairs are organized on a large scale. Are specially promising youths to be set apart from early childhood to prepare themselves for these positions of authority? Or shall such places be filled by those vigorous few who have the ambition and the strength to acquire the necessary training while at the same time working at their daily tasks? In either case an intellectual class must be developed. Does anyone imagine that this new class of rulers will hesitate to make use of every opportunity to make itself a privileged class?
"But what opportunity can there be," is the reply, "since private capital is to be abolished?" Very well, there have been ruling classes before in history who did not enjoy the privilege of owning private property. The clergy of the Middle Ages was such a class, and their dominance was quite as effective and as enduring as is that of our commercial classes today. But let us not deceive ourselves; in a soviet republic there would be opportunity aplenty for exploitation. As the solidarity of labor vanished, each important trade-group would enter into rivalry with the others for leadership in the co-operative commonwealth. Every economic advantage which any group possessed would be used in order to lord it over the rest.
For instance, let us suppose that the workers in a strategic industry, such as the railways, or coal mines, should make the discovery that by going on a strike they could starve the community as a whole into submission and gain practically anything they might demand. Loyalty to the rest of labor would act no more as a check to such ambitions than does loyalty to humanity in general now. As we have seen, the crowd is always formed for the unconscious purpose of relaxing the social control by mechanisms which mutually justify such antisocial conduct on the part of members of the crowd. There is every reason, both economic and psychological, why the workers in each industry would become organized crowds seeking to gain for their particular groups the lions share of the spoils of the social revolution. What would there be, then, to prevent the workers of the railroads or some other essential industry from exploiting the community quite as mercilessly as the capitalists are alleged to do at present? Nothing but the rivalry of other crowds who were seeking the same dominance. In time a modus vivendi would doubtless be reached whereby social control would be shared by a few of the stronger unions—and their leaders.
The strike has already demonstrated the fact that in the hands of a well-organized body of laborers, especially in those trades where the number of apprentices may be controlled, industrial power becomes a much more effective weapon than it is in the hands of the present capitalistic owners.
A new dictatorship, therefore, must inevitably follow the social revolution, in support of which a favored minority will make use of the industrial power of the community, just as earlier privileged classes used military power and the power of private property. And this new dominance would be just as predatory, and would justify itself, as did the others, by the platitudes of crowd-thinking. The so-called dictatorship turns out, on examination, to be the dictatorship of one section of the proletariat over the rest of it. The dream of social redemption by such means is a pure crowd-idea.
The whole philosophy of politics comes down at last to a question of four words. Who is to govern? Compared with this question the problem of the form of government is relatively unimportant. Crowd-men, whatever political faith they profess, behave much the same when they are in power. The particular forms of political organization through which their power is exerted are mere incidentals. There is the same self-laudation, the same tawdry array of abstract principles, the same exploitation of under crowds, the same cunning in keeping up appearances, the same preference of the charlatan for positions of leadership and authority. Machiavellis Prince, or Dostoievskys Grand Inquisitor, would serve just as well as the model for the guidance of a Cæsar Borgia, a leader of Tammany Hall, a chairman of the National Committee of a political party, or a Nicolai Lenin.
Ever since the days of Rousseau certain crowds have persisted in the conviction that all tyrannies were foisted upon an innocent humanity by a designing few. There may have been a few instances in history where such was the case, but tyrannies of that kind have never lasted long. For the most part the tyrant is merely the instrument and official symbol of a dominant crowd. His acts are his crowds acts, and without his crowd to support him he very soon goes the way of the late Sultan of Turkey. The Cæsars were hardly more than "walking delegates," representing the ancient Roman Soldiers soviet. They were made and unmade by the army which, though Cæsars might come and Cæsars might go, continued to lord it over the Roman world. While the army was pagan, even the mild Marcus Aurelius followed Neros example of killing Christians. When finally the army itself became largely Christian, and the fiction that the Christians drank human blood, worshiped the head of an ass, and were sexually promiscuous was no longer good patriotic propaganda, the Emperor Constantine began to see visions of the Cross in the sky. The Pope, who is doubtless the most absolute monarch in the Occident, is, however, "infallible" only when he speaks ex-cathedra—that is, as the "Church Herself." His infallibility is that of the Church. All crowds in one way or another claim infallibility. The tyrant Robespierre survived only so long as did his particular revolutionary crowd in France.
The fate of Savonarola was similar. From his pulpit he could rule Florence with absolute power just so long as he told his crowd what it wished to hear, and so long as his crowd was able to keep itself together and remain dominant. The Stuarts, Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs, and Romanoffs, with all their claims to divine rights, were little more than the living symbols of their respective nation-crowds. They vanished when they ceased to represent successfully the crowd-will.
In general, then, it may be said that where the crowd is, there is tyranny. Tyranny may be exercised through one agent or through many, but it nearly always comes from the same source—the crowd. Crowd-rule may exist in a monarchical form of government, or in a republic. The personnel of the dominant crowd will vary with a change in the form of the state, but the spirit will be much the same. Conservative writers are in the habit of assuming that democracy is the rule of crowds pure and simple. Whether crowd-government is more absolute in a democracy than in differently constituted states is a question. The aim of democratic constitutions like our own is to prevent any special crowd from intrenching itself in a position of social control and thus becoming a ruling class. As the experiment has worked out thus far it can hardly be said that it has freed us from the rule of crowds. It has, however, multiplied the number of mutually suspicious crowds, so that no one of them has for long enjoyed a sufficiently great majority to make itself clearly supreme, though it must be admitted that up to the present the business-man crowd has had the best of the deal. The story of the recent Eighteenth Amendment shows how easy it is for a determined crowd, even though in a minority, to force its favorite dogmas upon the whole community. We shall doubtless see a great deal more of this sort of thing in the future than we have in the past. And if the various labor groups should become sufficiently united in a "proletarian" crowd there is nothing to prevent their going to any extreme.
We are passing through a period of socialization. All signs point to the establishment of some sort of social state or industrial commonwealth. No one can foresee the extent, to which capital now privately owned is to be transferred to the public. It is doubtful if anything can be done to check this process. The tendency is no sooner blocked along one channel than it begins to seep through another. In itself there need be nothing alarming about this transition. If industry could be better co-ordinated and more wisely administered by non-crowd men for the common good, the change might work out to our national advantage.
It is possible to conceive of a society in which a high degree of social democracy, even communism, might exist along with a maximum of freedom and practical achievement. But we should first have to get over our crowd-ways of thinking and acting. People would have to regard the state as a purely administrative affair. They would have to organize for definite practical ends, and select their leaders and administrators very much as certain corporations now do, strictly on the basis of their competency. Political institutions would have to be made such that they could not be seized by special groups to enhance themselves at the expense of the rest. Partisanship would have to cease. Every effort would have to be made to loosen the social control over the individuals personal habits. The kind of people who have an inner gnawing to regulate their neighbors, the kind who cannot accept the fact of their psychic inferiority and must consequently make crowds by way of compensation, would have to be content to mind their own business. Police power would have to be reduced to the minimum necessary to protect life and keep the industries running. People would have to become much more capable of self-direction as well as of voluntary co-operation than they are now. They would have to be more resentful of petty official tyranny, more independent in their judgments and at the same time more willing to accept the advice and authority of experts. They would have to place the control of affairs in the hands of the type of man against whose dominance the weaker brethren have in all ages waged war—that is, the free spirits and natural masters of men. All pet dogmas and cult ideas that clashed with practical considerations would have to be swept away.
Such a conception of society is, of course, wholly utopian. It could not possibly be realized by people behaving and thinking as crowds. With our present crowd-making habits, the process of greater socialization of industry means only increased opportunities for crowd-tyranny. In the hands of a dominant crowd an industrial state would be indeed what Herbert Spencer called the "coming slavery."
As it is, the state has become overgrown and bureaucratic. Commissions of all sorts are being multiplied year by year. Public debts are piled up till they approach the point of bankruptcy. Taxes are increasing in the same degree. Statutes are increased in number until one can hardly breathe without violating some decree, ordinance, or bit of sumptuary legislation. Every legislative assembly is constantly besieged by the professional lobbyists of a swarm of reformist crowds. Busybodies of every description twist the making and the enforcement of law into conformity with their peculiar prejudices. Censorships of various kinds are growing in number and effrontery. Prohibition is insincerely put forth as a war measure. Ignorant societies for the "suppression of vice" maul over our literature and our art. Parents of already more children than they can support may not be permitted lawfully to possess scientific knowledge of the means of the prevention of conception. The government, both state and national, takes advantage of the war for freedom to pass again the hated sort of "alien and sedition" laws from which the country thought it had freed itself a century ago. A host of secret agents and volunteer "guardians of public safety" are ready to place every citizen under suspicion of disloyalty to the government. Any advocacy of significant change in established political practices is regarded as sedition. An inquisition is set up for the purpose of inquiring into peoples private political opinions. Reputable citizens are, on the flimsiest hearsay evidence or rumor that they entertain nonconformist views, subjected to public censure by notoriety-seeking "investigation commissions"—and by an irresponsible press. Only members of an established political party in good standing are permitted to criticize the acts of the President of the United States. Newspapers and magazines are suppressed and denied the privilege of the mails at the whim of opinionated post-office officers or of ignorant employees of the Department of Justice. An intensely patriotic weekly paper in New York, which happened to hold unconventional views on the subject of religion, has had certain issues of its paper suppressed for the offense of publishing accounts of the alleged misconduct of the Y. M. C. A.
The stupidity and irresponsibility of the Russian spy-system which has grown up in this country along with our overweening state is illustrated by an amusing little experience which happened to myself several months after the signing of the armistice with Germany. All through the trying months of the war the great audience at Cooper Union had followed me with a loyalty and tolerance which was truly wonderful. Though I knew that many had not always been in hearty accord with my rather spontaneous and outspoken Americanism, the Cooper Union Forum was one of the few places in America where foreign and labor elements were present in large numbers in which there was no outbreak or demonstration of any kind which could possibly be interpreted as un-American. We all felt that perhaps the Peoples Institute with its record of twenty years work behind it had been of some real service to the nation in adhering strictly to its educational method and keeping its discussions wholly above the level of any sort of crowd-propaganda.
However, in the course of our educational work, it became my task to give to a selected group of advanced students a course of lectures upon the Theory of Knowledge. The course was announced with the title, "How Free Men Think," and the little folder contained the statement that it was to be a study of the Humanist logic, with Professor F. C. S. Schiller's philosophical writings to be used as textbooks. The publication of this folder announcing the course was held up by the printer, and we learned that he had been told not to print it by some official personage whose identity was not revealed. Notwithstanding the fact that Schiller is professor of philosophy in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and is one of the best-known philosophical writers in the English-speaking world, and holds views practically identical with what is called the "American School," led by the late William James, it developed that the government agents—or whoever they were—objected to the publication of the announcement on the ground that they thought Schiller was a German. Such is our intellectual freedom regarding matters which have no political significance whatever, in a world made "safe for democracy." But we must not permit ourselves to despair or grow weary of life in this "safety first" world—waves of pseudo-patriotic panic often follow on the heels of easily won victory. Crowd-phenomena of such intensity are usually of short duration, as these very excesses soon produce the inevitable reaction.
The question, however, arises, is democracy more conducive to freedom than other forms of political organization? To most minds the terms "liberty" and "democracy" are almost synonymous. Those who consider that liberty consists in having a vote, in giving everyone a voice regardless of whether he has anything to say, will have no doubts in the matter. But to those whose thinking means more than the mere repetition of eighteenth-century crowd-ideas, the question will reduce itself to this: Is democracy more conducive to crowd-behavior than other forms of government? Le Bon and those who identify the crowd with the masses would answer with an a priori affirmative. I do not believe the question may be answered in any such off-hand manner. It is a question of fact rather than of theory. Theoretically, since we have demonstrated I think that the crowd is not the common people as such, but is a peculiar form of psychic behavior, it would seem that there is no logical necessity for holding that democracy must always and everywhere be the rule of the mob. And we have seen that other forms of society may also suffer from crowd-rule. I suspect that the repugnance which certain aristocratic, and bourgeois writers also, show for democracy is less the horror of crowd-rule as such, than dislike of seeing control pass over to a crowd other than their own. Theoretically at least, democracy calls for a maximum of self-government and personal freedom. The fact that democracy is rapidly degenerating into tyranny of all over each may be due, not to the democratic ideal itself, but the growing tendency to crowd-behavior in modern times. It may be that certain democratic ideals are not so much causes as effects of crowd-thinking and action. It cannot be denied that such ideals come in very handy these days in the way of furnishing crowds with effective catchwords for their propaganda and of providing them with ready-made justifications for their will to power. I should say that democracy has indirectly permitted, rather than directly caused, an extension in the range of thought and behavior over which the crowd assumes dictatorship.
In comparing democracy with more autocratic forms of government, this extent or range of crowd-control over the individual is important. Of course, human beings will never permit to one another a very large degree of personal freedom. It is to the advantage of everyone in the struggle for existence to reduce his neighbors as much as possible to automatons. In this way ones own adjustment to the behavior of others is made easier. If we can induce or compel all about us to confine their actions to perfect routine, then we may predict with a fair degree of accuracy their future behavior, and be prepared in advance to meet it. We all dread the element of the unexpected, and nowhere so much as in the conduct of our neighbors. If we could only get rid of the humanly unexpected, society would be almost fool-proof. Hence the resistance to new truths, social change, progress, nonconformity of any sort; hence our orthodoxies and conventions; hence our incessant preaching to our neighbors to "be good"; hence the fanaticism with which every crowd strives to keep its believers in line. Much of this insistence on regularity is positively necessary. Without it there could be no social or moral order at all. It is in fact the source and security of the accepted values of civilization, as Schiller has shown.
But the process of keeping one another in line is carried much farther than is necessary to preserve the social order. It is insisted upon to the extent that will guarantee the survival, even the dominance, of the spiritually sick, the morally timid, the trained-animal men, those who would revert to savagery, or stand utterly helpless the moment a new situation demanded that they do some original thinking in the place of performing the few stereotyped tricks which they have acquired; the dog-in-the-manger people, who because they can eat no meat insist that all play the dyspeptic lest the well-fed outdistance them in the race of life or set them an example in following which they get the stomach ache; the people who, because they cannot pass a saloon door without going in and getting drunk, cannot see a moving-picture, or read a modern book, or visit a bathing beach without being tormented with their gnawing promiscuous eroticism, insist upon setting up their own perverted dilemmas as the moral standard for everybody.
Such people exist in great numbers in every society. They are always strong for "brotherly love," for keeping up appearances, for removing temptation from the path of life, for uniform standards of belief and conduct. Each crowd, in its desire to become the majority, to hold the weaker brethren within its fold, and especially as everyone of us has a certain amount of this "little brother" weakness in his own nature, which longs to be pampered if only the pampering can be done without hurting our pride—the crowd invariably plays to this sort of thing and bids for its support. As the little brother always expresses his survival-values in terms of accepted crowd-ideas, no crowd can really turn him down without repudiating its abstract principles. In fact, it is just this weakness in our nature which, as we have seen, leads us to become crowd-men in the first place. Furthermore, we have seen that any assertion of personal independence is resented by the crowd because it weakens the crowd-faith of all.
The measure of freedom granted to men will depend, therefore, upon how many things the crowd attempts to consider its business. There is a law of inertia at work here. In monarchical forms of government, where the crowd-will is exercised through a single human agent, the monarch may be absolute in regard to certain things which are necessary to his own and his crowds survival. In such matters "he can do no wrong"; there is little or no appeal from his decisions. But the very thoroughness with which he hunts down nonconformity in matters which directly concern his authority, leaves him little energy for other things. Arbitrary power is therefore usually limited to relatively few things, since the autocrat cannot busy himself with everything that is going on. Within the radius of the things which the monarch attempts to regulate he may be an intolerable tyrant, but so long as he is obeyed in these matters, so long as things run on smoothly on the surface, there are all sorts of things which he would prefer not to have brought to his attention, as witness, for instance, the letter of Trajan to the younger Pliny.
With a democracy it is different. While the exercise of authority is never so inexorable—indeed democratic states frequently pass laws for the purpose of placing the community on record "for righteousness," rather than with the intention of enforcing such laws—the number of things which a democracy will presume to regulate is vastly greater than in monarchical states. As sovereignty is universal, everybody becomes lawmaker and regulator of his neighbors. As the lawmaking power is present everywhere, nothing can escape its multieyed scrutiny. All sorts of foibles, sectional interests, group demands, class prejudices become part of the law of the land. A democracy is no respecter of persons and can, under its dogma of equality before the law, admit of no exceptions. The whole body politic is weighed down with all the several bits of legislation which may be demanded by any of the various groups within it. An unusual inducement and opportunity are thus provided for every crowd to force its own crowd-dilemmas upon all.
The majority not only usurps the place of the king, but it tends to subject the whole range of human thought and behavior to its authority—everything, in fact, that anyone, disliking in his neighbors or finding himself tempted to do, may wish to "pass a law against." Every personal habit and private opinion becomes a matter for public concern. Custom no longer regulates; all is rationalized according to the logic of the crowd-mind. Public policy sits on the doorstep of every mans personal conscience. The citizen in us eats up the man. Not the tiniest personal comfort may yet be left us in private enjoyment. All that cannot be translated into propaganda or hold its own in a legislative lobby succumbs. If we are to preserve anything of our personal independence, we must organize ourselves into a crowd like the rest and get out in the streets and set up a public howl. Unless some one pretty soon starts a pro-tobacco crusade and proves to the newspaper-reading public that the use of nicotine by everybody in equal amount is absolutely necessary for the preservation of the American home, for economic efficiency and future military supremacy, we shall doubtless all soon be obliged to sneak down into the cellar and smoke our pipes in the dark.
Here we see the true argument for a written constitution, and also, I think, a psychological principle which helps us to decide what should be in a constitution and what should not. The aim of a constitution is to put a limit to the number of things concerning which a majority-crowd may lord it over the individual. I am aware that the appeal to the Constitution is often abused by predatory interests which skulk behind its phraseology in their defense of special economic privilege. But, nevertheless, people in a democracy may be free only so long as they submit to the dictation of the majority in just and only those few interests concerning which a monarch, were he in existence, would take advantage of them for his personal ends. There are certain political and economic relations which cannot be left to the chance exploitation of any individual or group that happens to come along. Some one is sure to come along, for you may be sure that if there is a possible opportunity to take advantage, some one will do it sooner or later.
Now because people have discovered that there is no possible individual freedom in respect to certain definite phases of their common life which are always exposed to seizure by exploiters, democrats have substituted a tyranny of the majority for the tyranny of the one or the favored few which would otherwise be erected at these points. Since it is necessary to give up freedom in these regions anyway, there is some compensation in spreading the tyrannizing around so that each gets a little share of it. But every effort should be made to limit the tyranny of the majority to just these points. And the line limiting the number of things that the majority may meddle with must be drawn as hard and fast as possible, since every dominant crowd, as we have seen, will squeeze the life out of everything human it can get its hands on. The minute a majority finds that it can extend its tyranny beyond this strictly constitutionally limited sphere, nothing remains to stop it; it becomes worse than an autocracy. Tyranny is no less abhorrent just because the number of tyrants is increased. A nation composed of a hundred million little tyrants snooping and prying into every corner may be democratic, but, personally, if that ever comes to be the choice I think I should prefer one tyrant. He might occasionally look the other way and leave me a free man, long enough at least for me to light my pipe.
True democrats will be very jealous of government. Necessary as it is, there is no magic about government, no saving grace. Government cannot redeem us from our sins; it will always require all the decency we possess to redeem the government. Government always represents the moral dilemmas of the worst people, not the best. It cannot give us freedom; it can give or grant us nothing but what it first takes from us. It is we who grant to the government certain powers and privileges necessary for its proper functioning. We do not exist for the government; it exists for us. We are not its servants; it is our servant. Government at best is a useful and necessary machine, a mechanism by which we protect ourselves from one another. It has no more rights and dignities of its own than are possessed by any other machine. Its laws should be obeyed, for the same reason that the laws of mechanics should be obeyed—otherwise the machine will not run.
As a matter of fact it is not so much government itself against which the democrat must be on guard, but the various crowds which are always seeking to make use of the machinery of government in order to impose their peculiar tyranny upon all and invade the privacy of everyone. By widening the radius of governmental control, the crowd thus pinches down the individuality of everyone with the same restrictions as are imposed by the crowd upon its own members.
Conway says:
Present-day Democracy rests on a few organized parties. What would a democracy be like if based on millions of independent Joneses each of whom decided to vote this or that way as he pleased? The dominion of the crowd would be at an end, both for better and for worse. We shall not behold any such revolution in the world as we know it....
Thus we must conclude that the crowd by its very nature tends, and always must tend, to diminish (if possible, to the vanishing point) the freedom of its members, and not in one or two respects alone, but in all. The crowds desire is to swallow up the individuality of its members and reduce them one and all to the condition of crowd units whose whole life is lived according to the crowd-pattern and is sacrificed and devoted to crowd-interests....
An excellent illustration of this crowd-dominance crops up in my afternoon paper.... It appears that in certain parts of the country artisans, by drinking too much alcohol, are reducing their capacity of doing their proper work, which happens at the moment to be of great importance to the country at war. Many interferences with liberty are permitted in war time by general consent. It is accordingly proposed to put difficulties in the way of these drinkers by executive orders. One would suppose that the just way to do this would be to make a list of the drinkers and prohibit their indulgence. But this is not the way the crowd works. To it everyone of its constituent members is like another, and all must be drilled and controlled alike.... Whatever measure is adopted must fall evenly on all classes, upon club, restaurant and hotel as upon public house. Could anything be more absurd? Lest a gunmaker or a shipbuilder in Glasgow should drink too much, Mr. Asquith must not take a glass of sherry with his lunch at the Athenæum!...
We live in days when crowd dominion over individuals has been advancing at a headlong pace.... If he is not to drink in London lest a Glasgow engineer should get drunk, why should not his eating be alike limited? Why not the style and cut of his clothes? Why not the size and character of his house? He must cause his children to be taught at least the minimum of muddled information which the government calls education. He must insure for his dependents the attention of an all-educated physician, and the administration of drugs known to be useless. If the crowd had its way every mother and infant would be under the orders of inspectors, regardless of the capacity of the parent. We should all be ordered about in every relation of life from infancy to manhood.... Freedom would utterly vanish, and this, not because the crowd can arrange things better than the individual. It cannot. It lacks the individuals brains. The ultimate reason for all this interference is the crowds desire to swallow up and control the unit. The instinct of all crowds is to dominate, to capture and overwhelm the individual, to make him their slave, to absorb all his life for their service.
The criticism has often been made of democracy that it permits too much freedom; the reverse of this is nearer the truth. It was de Tocqueville, I think, who first called attention to the "tyranny of the majority" in democratic America. Probably one of the most comprehensive and discriminating studies that have ever been made of the habits and institutions of any nation may be found in the work of this observing young Frenchman who visited our country at the close of its first half century of political independence. De Tocquevilles account of Democracy in America is still good reading, much of it being applicable to the present. This writer was in no sense an unfriendly critic. He praised much that he saw, but even in those days (the period of 1830) he was not taken in by the fiction that, because the American people live under laws of their own making, they are therefore free. Much of the following passages taken here and there from Chapters XIV and XV is as true today as it was when it was written:
America is therefore a free country in which, lest anybody be hurt by your remarks, you are not allowed to speak freely of private individuals, of the State, or the citizens, or the authorities, of public or private undertakings, in short of anything at all, except perhaps the climate and the soil, and even then Americans will be found ready to defend both as if they had concurred in producing them.
The American submits without a murmur to the authority of the pettiest magistrate. This truth prevails even in the trivial details of national life. An American cannot converse—he speaks to you as if he were addressing a meeting. If an American were condemned to confine himself to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one-half of his existence; his wretchedness would be unbearable....
The moral authority of the majority in America is based on the notion that there is more intelligence and wisdom in a number of men united than in a single individual.... The theory of equality is thus applied to the intellects of men.
The French, under the old regime, held it for a maxim that the King could do no wrong. The Americans entertain the same opinion with regard to the majority.
In the United States, all parties are willing to recognize the rights of the majority, because they all hope at some time to be able to exercise them to their own advantage. The majority therefore in that country exercises a prodigious actual authority and a power of opinion which is nearly as great (as that of the absolute autocrat). No obstacles exist which can impair or even retard its progress so as to make it heed the complaints of those whom it crushes upon its path. This state of things is harmful in itself and dangerous for the future.
As the majority is the only power which it is important to court, all its projects are taken up with the greatest ardor; but no sooner is its attention distracted than all this ardor ceases.
There is no power on earth so worthy of honor in itself, or clothed with rights so sacred, that I would admit its uncontrolled and all-predominant authority.
In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is so often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength.... I am not so much alarmed by the excessive liberty which reigns in that country, as by the inadequate securities which one finds against tyranny. When an individual or party is wronged in the United States, to whom can he apply for redress?
It is in the examination of the exercise of thought in the United States that we clearly perceive how far the power of the majority surpasses all the powers with which we are acquainted in Europe. At the present time the most absolute monarchs in Europe cannot prevent certain opinions hostile to their authority from circulating in secret through their dominions and even in their courts.
It is not so in America. So long as the majority is undecided, discussion is carried on, but as soon as its decision is announced everyone is silent....
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion. Within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. Not that he is in danger of an auto-da-fe, but he is exposed to continued obloquy and persecution. His political career is closed for ever. Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity, is refused him. Those who think like him have not the courage to speak out, and abandon him to silence. He yields at length, overcome by the daily effort which he has to make, and subsides into silence as if he felt remorse for having spoken the truth.
Fetters and headsmen were coarse instruments ... but civilization has perfected despotism itself. Under absolute despotism of one man, the body was attacked to subdue the soul, but the soul escaped the blows and rose superior. Such is not the course adopted in democratic republics; there the body is left free, but the soul is enslaved....
The ruling power in the United States is not to be made game of. The smallest reproach irritates its sensibilities. The slightest joke which has any foundation in truth renders it indignant. Everything must be the subject of encomium. No writer, whatever his eminence, can escape paying his tribute of adoration to his fellow citizens.
The majority lives in the perpetual utterance of self-applause, and there are certain truths which Americans can only learn from strangers, or from experience. If America has not yet had any great writers, the reason is given in these facts—there can be no literary genius without freedom of opinion, and freedom of opinion does not exist in America.
Such passages as the above, quoted from the words of a friendly student of American democracy, show the impression which, notwithstanding our popular prattle about freedom, thoughtful foreigners have since the beginning received. And de Tocqueville wrote long before crowd-thinking had reached anything like the development we see at present. To-day the tyrannizing is not confined to the majority-crowd. All sorts of minority-crowds, impatient of waiting until they can by fair means persuade the majority to agree with them, begin to practice coercion upon everyone within reach the minute they fall into possession of some slight advantage which may be used as a weapon. From the industrial side we were first menaced by the "invisible government" of organized vested interests; now, by a growing tendency to government by strikes. Organized gangs of all sorts have at last learned the amusing trick of pointing a pistol at the publics head and threatening it with starvation, and up go its hands, and the gang gains whatever it wants for itself, regardless of anyone else. But this "hold-up game" is by no means confined to labor. Capitalistic soviets have since the beginning of the war taken advantage of situations to enhance their special crowd-interests. The following, quoted from a letter written during the war to the Atlantic Monthly, by a thoroughly American writer, Charles D. Stewart, describes a type of mob rule which existed in almost every part of the nation while we were fighting for freedom abroad:
Carlyle said that "Of all forms of government, a government of busybodies is the worst." This is true. It is worse than Prussianism, because that is one form of government, at least; and worse than Socialism, because Socialism would be run by law, anyway. But government by busybodies has neither head nor tail; working outside the law, it becomes lawless; and having no law to support it, it finally depends for its enforcement upon hoodlums and mob rule. When the respectable and wealthy elements are resorting to this sort of government, abetted by the newspapers and by all sorts of busybody societies intent upon "government by public sentiment," we finally have a new thing in the world and a most obnoxious one—mob rule by the rich; with the able assistance of the hoodlums—always looking for a chance.
It starts as follows:
The government wishes a certain amount of money. It therefore appeals to local pride; it sets a "quota," which has been apportioned to each locality, and promises of a fine "over-the-top" flag to be hoisted over the courthouse. All well and good; local pride is a very fine thing, competition is wholesome.
But the struggle that ensues is not so much local pride as it looks to be.
Milwaukee, for instance, a big manufacturing center, is noted for its German population. This, the local proprietors fear, may affect its trade. It may be boycotted to some extent. A traveling man comes back and says that a certain dealer in stoves refuses to buy stoves made in Milwaukee!
Ha!—Milwaukee must redeem its reputation; it must always go over the top: it must be able to affix this stamp to all its letters.
Now, as the state has a quota, and the county and city has each its quota, so each individual must have his quota. Each individual must be "assessed" to buy a certain quota [government war loan] of bonds. Success must be made sure: the manufacturers must see the honor of Milwaukee, and Wisconsin, maintained.
It is not compulsory to give a certain "assessed" amount to the Y. M. C. A.; and the government does not make a certain quota of bonds compulsory on citizens—oh, no! it is not compulsory, only you must abide by your assessment. And we will see that you do. No excuse accepted....
Picture to yourself the following "collection committee" traveling out of the highly civilized, "kultured" city of Milwaukee.
Twenty-five automobiles containing sixty to seventy respectable citizens of Milwaukee.
One color guard (a flag at the head) with two home guardsmen in citizens clothes.
Two deputy sheriffs.
One "official" photographer.
One "official" stenographer.
One banker (this personage to make arrangements to lend a farmer the money in case he protests that he has subscribed too much already).
This phalanx, entirely lawless, moves down upon a farmer who is urging two horses along a cloddy furrow, doing his fall plowing.
They form a semicircle about him; the speechmaker says, "Let us salute the flag" (watching him to see that he does it promptly); and while his horses stand there the speechmaker delivers a speech. He must subscribe his "assessed" amount—no excuses accepted. If he owes for the farm, and has just paid his interest, and has only fifteen dollars to go on with, it makes no difference. He must subscribe the amount of his "assessment," and "sign here."
If not, what happens? The farmer all the time, of course, is probably scared out of his wits, or does not know what to make of this delegation of notables bearing down upon his solitary task in the fields. But if he argues too much, he finds this. They have a large package of yellow placards reading:
THE OCCUPANT OF THESE PREMISES HAS REFUSED TO TAKE HIS JUST SHARE OF LIBERTY BONDS.
And they put them all over his place. He probably signs.
Now bear in mind that this method is not practiced merely against farmers who have made unpatriotic remarks, or have refused to support the war. It is practiced against a farmer who has taken only one hundred dollars when he was assessed a hundred and fifty—and this is to make him "come across" with the remainder.
You might ask, Is this comic opera or is it government?
And now we come to the conclusion. Imagine yourself either a workman in Milwaukee, or a farmer out in the country. You are dealt with in this entirely Prussian manner—possibly the committee, which knows little of your financial difficulties in your home, has just assessed you arbitrarily.
Your constitutional rights do not count. There is no remedy. If you are painted yellow, the District Attorney will pass the buck—he knows what the manufacturer expects of him, and the financier. The state officers of these drives, Federal representatives, are always Milwaukee bankers.
But for you there is no remedy if you are "assessed" too high.
With the Y. M. C. A., and other religious society drives, the same assessment scheme is worked. You cannot give to the Y. M. C. A. You are told right off how much you are to pay.
It would seem that in our democracy freedom consists first of freedom to vote; second, of freedom to make commercial profit; third, of freedom to make propaganda; fourth, of freedom from intellectual and moral responsibility. Each of these "liberties" is little more than a characteristic form of crowd-behavior. The vote, our most highly prized modern right, is nearly always so determined by crowd-thinking that as an exercise of individual choice it is a joke. Men are herded in droves and delivered by counties in almost solid blocks by professional traders of political influence. Before each election a campaign of crowd-making is conducted in which every sort of vulgarity and insincerity has survival value, in which real issues are so lost in partisan propaganda as to become unrecognizable. When the vote is cast it is commonly a choice between professional crowd-leaders whose competency consists in their ability to Billy Sundayize the mob rather than in any marked fitness for the office to which they aspire—also between the horns of a dilemma which wholly misstates the issue involved and is trumped up chiefly for purposes of political advertising. Time and again the franchise thus becomes an agency by which rival crowds may fasten their own tyrannies upon one another.
Freedom to make commercial profit, to get ahead of others in the race for dollars, is what democracy generally means by "opportunity." Nothing is such a give-away of the modern man as the popular use of the word "individualism." It is no longer a philosophy of becoming something genuine and unique, but of getting something and using it according to your own whims and for personal ends regardless of the effect upon others. This pseudo-individualism encourages the rankest selfishness and exploitation to go hand in hand with the most deadly spiritual conformity and inanity. Such "individualism" is, as I have pointed out, a crowd-idea, for it is motivated by a cheaply disguised ideal of personal superiority through the mere fact of possessing things. Paradoxical as it may appear at first sight, this is really the old crowd notion of "equality," for, great as are the differences of wealth which result, every man may cherish the fiction that he possesses the sort of ability necessary for this kind of social distinction. Such superiority thus has little to do with personal excellence; it is the result of the external accident of success. One man may still be "as good as another."
Against this competitive struggle now there has grown up a counter-crowd ideal of collectivism. But here also the fiction of universal spiritual equality is maintained; the competitive struggle is changed from an individual to a gang struggle, while the notion that personal worth is the result of the environment and may be achieved by anyone whose belly is filled still persists. Proletarians for the most part wish, chinch-bug fashion, to crawl into the Elysian fields now occupied by the hated capitalists. The growing tendency to industrial democracy will probably in the near future cut off this freedom to make money, which has been the chief "liberty" of political democracy until now, but whether liberty in general will be the gainer thereby remains to be seen. One rather prominent Socialist in New York declares that liberty is a "myth." He is correct, in so far as the democratic movement, either political or social, is a crowd-phenomenon. Socialist agitators are always demanding "liberty" nevertheless, but the liberty which they demand is little more than freedom to make their own propaganda. And this leads us to the third liberty permitted by modern democracy.