PG73755.B01194
Genuine power, in the sense not of power actually possessed, but in the sense of a properly evolved power, is, we have seen, an actual psychological process. Invaluable, therefore, is the implicit warning of the pluralists that to attain this power is an infinite task. Sovereignty is always a-growing; our political forms must keep closely in touch with the specific stage of that growth. In rendering the state obedience, we assume that the state has genuine power (because the consequences of an opposite assumption would be too disastrous) while we are trying to approximate it. The great lesson of Mr. Laski’s book is in its implication that we do not have a sovereign state until we make one. Political theory will not _create_ sovereignty, acts of Parliament cannot _confer_ sovereignty, only living the life will turn us, subjects indeed at present, into kings of our own destiny.

PG73755.B01195
Moreover, recently some of the pluralists are beginning to use the phrase coöperative sovereignty[134] which seems happily to be taking them away from their earlier “strung-along” sovereignty. If they press along this path, we shall all be eager to follow.

PG73755.B01196
Secondly, they recognize the value of the group and they see that the variety of our group life to-day has a significance which must be immediately reckoned with in political method. Moreover they repudiate the idea that the groups are given authority by the state. An able political writer recently said, “All other societies rest on the authority given by the state. The state itself stands self-sufficient, self-directing....” It is this school of thought which the pluralists are combating and thereby rendering invaluable service to political theory.

PG73755.B01197
Third, and directly connected with the last point, they plead for a revivification of local life. It is interesting to note that the necessity of this is recognized both by those who think the state has failed and by those who wish to increase the power of the state. To the former, the group is to be the substitute for the repudiated state. As for the latter, the Fabians have long felt that local units should be vitalized and educated and interested, for they thought that socialism would begin with the city and other local units. Neighborhood education and neighborhood organization is then the pressing problem of 1918. All those who are looking towards a real democracy, not the pretence of one which we have now, feel that the most imminent of our needs is the awakening and invigorating, the educating and organizing of the local unit. All those who in the humblest way, in settlement or community centre, are working for this, are working at the greatest political problem of the twentieth century.

PG73755.B01198
In the fourth place the pluralists see that the interest of the state is not now always identical with the interests of its parts. It is to the interest of England to win this war, they say, but England has yet to prove that it is also for the interest of her working people.

PG73755.B01199
In the fifth place, we may hail the group school as the beginning of the disappearance of the crowd. Many people advocate vocational representation because they see in it a method of getting away from our present crowd rule, what they call numerical representation. They see our present voters hypnotized by their leaders and manipulated by “interests,” and propose the occupational group as a substitute for the crowd. New political experiments must indeed be along this line. We must guard only (1) that the “group” itself shall not be a crowd, (2) that the union of groups shall not be a numerical union.

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Finally, this new school contains the prophecy of the future because it has with keenest insight seized upon the problem of identity, of association, of federalism,[135] as the central problem of politics as it is the central problem of life. The force of the pluralist school is that it is not academic; it is considering a question which every thoughtful person is asking himself. We are faced to-day with a variety of group interests, with many objects demanding our enthusiasm and devotion; our duty itself shines, not a single light showing a single path, but shedding a larger radiance on a life which is most gloriously not a path at all. Shall Boston or Washington hold me, my family, my church, my union? With the complexity of interests increasing every day on the outside, inside with the power of the soul to “belong” expanding every day (the English and the French flags stir us hardly less than the American now), with the psychologists talking of pluralism and the political scientists of multiple sovereignty, with all this yet the soul of man seeks unity in obedience to his essential nature. How is this to be obtained? Social evolution is in the hands of those who can solve this problem.

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What is the law of politics that corresponds in importance to the law of gravitation in the physical world? It is the law of interpenetration and of multiples. I am the multiple man and the multiple man is the germ of the unified state. If I live fully I become so enriched by the manifold sides of life that I cannot be narrowed down to mere corporation or church or trade-union or any other special group. The miracle of spirit is that it can give itself utterly to all these things and yet remain unimpaired, unexhausted, undivided. I am not a serial story to be read only in the different instalments of my different groups. We do not give a part to one group and a part to another, but we give our whole to each and the whole remains for every other relation. Life escapes its classifications and this is what some of the writers on group organization do not seem to understand. This secret of the spirit is the power of the federal principle. True federation multiplies each individual. We have thought that federal government consisted of mechanical, artificial, external forms, but really it is the spirit which liveth and giveth life.

PG73755.B01202
Let the pluralists accept this principle and they will no longer tell us that they are torn by a divided allegiance. Let them carry their pragmatism a step further and they will see that it is only by actual living that we can understand an undivided allegiance. James tells us that “Reality falls in passing into conceptual analysis; it mounts in living its own undivided life—it buds and bourgeons, changes and creates.” This is the way we must understand an undivided allegiance. I live forever the undivided life. As an individual I am the undivided one, as the group-I, I am again the undivided one, as the state-I, I am the undivided one—I am always and forever the undivided one, mounting from height to height, always mounting, always the whole of me mounting.

PG73755.B01203
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PG73755.B01204
Footnote 133:

PG73755.B01205
See p. 39, note.

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Footnote 134:

PG73755.B01207
Mr. Laski, I think.

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Footnote 135:

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It does not matter in the terms of which branch of study you express it—philosophy, sociology, or political science—it is always the same problem.

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XXXIII

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INCREASING RECOGNITION OF THE OCCUPATIONAL GROUP

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FROM the confessedly embryonic stage of thinking in which the movement for group organization still is, two principal questions have emerged: (1) shall the groups form a pluralistic or a unifying state, (2) shall the economic group be the sole basis of representation? The first question I have tried to answer, the second offers greater difficulties with our present amount of experience. Men often discuss the occupational vs. the neighborhood group on the pivotal question—which of these is nearest a man? Benoist’s plea for the occupational group was that politics must represent _la vie_. But, agreed as to that, we still question whether the occupational group is the most complete embodiment of _la vie_.

PG73755.B01215
It is not, however, necessary to balance the advantages of neighborhood and occupational group, for I am not proposing that the neighborhood group take the place of the occupational. We may perhaps come to wish for an integration of neighborhood and industrial groups—and other groups too as their importance and usefulness demand—as their “objective” value appears. In our neighborhood group we shall find that we can correct many partial points of view which we get from our more specialized groups. A director of a corporation will be more valuable to his state and even to his corporation if he is at the same time the member of a neighborhood group. It may be that we shall work out some machinery by which the neighborhood group can include the occupational group. All our functions must be expressed, but somewhere must come that coördination which will give them their real effectiveness. We are not yet ready to say what the machinery will be, only to recognize some of the principles which should guide us in constructing that machinery. The power of an individual is his power to live a vital group life. The more your society is diversified in group life, the higher the stage of civilization. Perhaps the destiny of the neighborhood group is to interpret and correlate, to give full significance and value to, all the spontaneous association which our increasingly fuller and more varied life is constantly creating. It may be that the neighborhood group is not so much to _include_ the others as to make each see its relation through every other to every other.[136] The possible solution, mentioned above, of the two houses of our legislatures and parliaments dividing neighborhood and occupational representation, seems a little crude now to our further analysis unless some practical integration is being worked out at the same time in the local unit. But all this must be a matter of experiment and experience, of patient trial and open-minded observation.[137]

PG73755.B01216
The salient fact, however, is that neighborhood and occupational groups, either independently or one through the other, must both find representation in the state. But we must remember that it is industry which must be included in the state, not labor, but labor and capital. This war certainly shows us the importance of the great organizations of industry. Let them be integrated openly with the state on the side of their public service, rather than allow a back-stairs connection on the side of their “interests.” And let them be integrated in such manner that labor itself is at last included in our political organization. This will not be easy; as a matter of fact we have no more difficult, as we have no more important, problem before us than the relation within the state of one powerful organized body to another and of these bodies to the state. The average American is against the growth of corporate bodies. But this prejudice must go: we need strong corporate bodies not to compete with the state but to minister to the state. Individualism and concentrated authority have been struggling for supremacy with us since the beginning of our government. From the beginning of our government we have been seeking the synthesis of the two. That synthesis is to be found in the recognition of organized groups, but not, I believe, by taking away power from the state and giving to the group. Some of the pluralists, in their reaction to the present fear of powerful groups, advocate that groups should be given more and more power. I agree with them so far, but their implication is that we shall thereby have shorn the Samson locks of the state. This I do not believe we want to do.

PG73755.B01217
Every one sees the necessity to-day of the increase of state control as a war measure, but some tell us that we should guard against its dangers by giving to certain organizations within the state enough power to “balance” the state. I insist that balance can never be the aim of sound political method. We must first change our conception of the state—substitute the Service State for the Sovereign State—then methods must be devised within which such new conception can operate. We should, indeed, give more and more power to the groups, or rather, because we can never “give” power, we should recognize all the power which springs up spontaneously within the state, and seek merely those methods by which that self-generating power shall tend immediately to become part of the strength of the state.

PG73755.B01218
How absurd our logic has been. We knew that it took strong men to make a strong state; we did not realize that those groups which represent the whole industry and business of the country need not be rivals of the state, but must be made to contribute to the state, must be the means by which the state becomes great and powerful at the same time that it uses that power for the well-being and growth of all. Our timidity has been but the reflection of our ignorance. A larger understanding is what we need to-day. There is no need to condemn the state, as do the pluralists; there is no need to condemn our great corporate bodies, as do their opponents. But full of distrust we shall surely be, on one side or the other, until we come truly to understand a state and to create a state which ministers continuously to its parts, while its parts from hour to hour serve only the enhancement of its life, and through it, the enhancement of the life of its humblest member.

PG73755.B01219
The tendency to which we have long been subject, to do away with everything which stood between man and the state, must go, but that does not mean that we must fly to the other extreme and do away with either the individual or the state. One of the chief weaknesses of political pluralism is that it has so many of the earmarks of a reaction—the truth is that we have groups _and_ man _and_ the state, all to deal with.

PG73755.B01220
Neighborhood groups, economic groups, unifying groups, these have been my themes, and yet the point which I wish to emphasize is not the kind of group, but that the group whatever its nature shall be a genuine group, that we can have no genuine state at all which does not rest on genuine groups. Few trade-unionists in demanding that their organization shall be the basis of the new state examine that organization to see what right it has to make this demand. Most trade-unionists are satisfied in their own organizations with a centralized government or an outworn representative system. Labor can never have its full share in the control of industry until it has learnt the secrets of the group process. Collective bargaining must first be the result of a genuine collective will before it can successfully pass on to directorate representation, to complete joint control.[138]

PG73755.B01221
It is significant that the guild socialists, in considering how acrimonious disputes between guilds are to be avoided, say that “the labor and brains of each Guild naturally [will evolve] a hierarchy to which large issues of industrial policy might with confidence be referred,” and “at the back of this hierarchy and finally dominating it, is the Guild democracy....” But then guild socialism is to have no different psychological basis from our present system. This is exactly what we rely on now so patiently, so unsuccessfully—the lead of the few, the following of the crowd, with the fiction that, as our government is based on numbers, the crowd can always have what it wants; therefore, at any moment what we have is what we have chosen—Tammany rule for instance. We need a new method: the group process must be applied to industrial groups as well as to neighborhood groups, to business groups, to professional societies—to every form of human association. If the labor question is to be solved by a system of economic control based on economic representation instead of upon vital modes of association, “industrial democracy” will fail exactly as so-called political democracy has failed.

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Perhaps this warning is particularly necessary at the present moment because “group” control of industry seems imminent. Through the pressure of the war guild socialism has made practical as well as theoretical headway in England. There are two movements going on side by side, both due it is true to the emergency of war, but neither of which will be wholly lost when the war is over; it is the opinion of many, on the contrary, that these movements are destined to shape a new state for England. First, the government has assumed a certain amount of control over munition plants, railroads, mines, breweries, flour mills and factories of various kinds, and it has undertaken the regulation of wages and prices, control of markets and food consumption, taxation of profits etc.[139]

PG73755.B01223
Secondly, at the same time that the state is assuming a larger control of industry, it is inviting the workmen themselves to take part in the control of industry. “The Whitley Report, adopted by the Reconstruction Committee of the Cabinet, proposes not only a Joint Standing Industrial Council for each great national industry, for the regular consideration of matters affecting the progress and well-being of the trade, but District Councils and Works Committees within each business upon which capital and labor shall be equally represented.” These bodies will take up “questions of standard wages, hours, overtime, apprenticeship, shop discipline, ... technical training, industrial research and invention, the adoption of improved machinery and processes, and all those matters which are included under ‘scientific management.’”[140]

PG73755.B01224
This is a step which goes far beyond arbitration and conciliation boards. It gives to labor a positive share in the control of industry. “Although it is not at present proposed to give any legal recognition to this new machinery of economic government or any legal enforcement of its decision, ... it may reasonably be expected that [these national industrial councils] will soon become the effective legislature of the industry.”

PG73755.B01225
Most noteworthy is the general acceptance of this plan. “All classes appear to be willing and even anxious to apply the principle of representative self-government not only to the conduct of the great trades but to their constituent businesses.” Undoubtedly the English laborer has an increasing fear of bureaucracy and this is turning him from state socialism: his practical experience during the war of “tyrannical” bureaucracy in the government controlled industries has lost state socialism many supporters.

PG73755.B01226
The establishment of the Standing Industrial Councils is a step towards guild socialism although (1) the determination of lines of production, the buying and selling processes, questions of finance, everything in fact outside shop-management, is at present left to the employers, and (2) the capitalist is left in possession of his capital. But this movement taken together with the one mentioned above, that is, the trend towards state-ownership or joint ownership or partial control, has large significance: the state to own the means of production, the producers to control the conditions of production, seems like the next step in industrial development, in government form,—the fact that these two go together, that government form is to follow industrial development, gives us large hope for the future.

PG73755.B01227
The British Labor Party in 1917 formulated a careful plan for reorganization with a declared object of common ownership of means of production and “a steadily increasing participation of the organized workers in the management.”[141] This wording is significant.

PG73755.B01228
In America also the pressure of war has led to the recognition of labor in the control of industry. Adjustment boards containing labor representatives have been required of almost all private employers signing contracts with the War and Navy Departments.[142] The policy of the administration is to recognize collective bargaining. And the President’s Mediation Commission, which imposed collective agreements on the copper industry of Arizona, stated in its official report, “The leaders of industry must ... [enable] labor to take its place as a coöperator in the industrial enterprise.” Moreover, the workman is gaining recognition not only in the management of the industry in which he is engaged, but also at Washington. On most of the important government boards which deal with matters affecting labor, labor is represented. The work of the War Labor Board and the War Labor Policies Board mark our advance in the treatment of labor questions.

PG73755.B01229
The “National Party,” inaugurated in Chicago in October, 1917, composed largely of socialists, had for one plank in its platform, “The chief industries should be controlled by administrative boards upon which the workers, the managers and the government should all be represented.” Thus the old state socialism is passing.

PG73755.B01230
In France long before the war we see the beginnings of syndicalism in the steps taken to give to the actual teaching force of universities a share in the administration of the department of education. In 1896–1897 university councils were established, composed of deans and two delegates elected by each university faculty. While these councils are under ministerial control, this is hailed as the beginning of functionarist decentralization in France. In 1910 was organized the representation of all the personnel of the service of post, telephone and telegraph in regional and central councils of discipline, and also advisory representation to the heads of the service.

PG73755.B01231
The best part of syndicalism is its recognition that every department of our life must be controlled by those who know most about that department, by those who have most to do with that department. Teachers should share both in the legislation and the administration affecting education. Factory laws should not be made by a Parliament in which factory managers and employees are not, or are only partially, represented.

PG73755.B01232
One movement toward syndicalism we see everywhere: the forming of professional groups—commercial, literary, scientific, artistic—is as marked as the forming of industrial groups. Any analysis of society to-day must study its groupings faithfully. We are told too that in France these professional groups are beginning to have political power, as was seen in several large towns in the municipal elections before the war. Similar instances are not wanting in England and America.

PG73755.B01233
In Germany there are three strong “interest” organizations which have a large influence on politics: the “Landlords’ League” which represents the conservatives, the “Social Democrats” who represent labor, and the “Hanseatic League for Manufactures, Trade and Industry” founded in 1909 with the express object of bringing forward its members as candidates for the Reichstag and Landtags.[143]

PG73755.B01234
We have an interesting instance in the United States of political organization on occupational lines from which we may learn much—I refer to the Nonpartisan league of North Dakota composed of farmers which, inaugurated in 1915, in 1916–7 carried the state elections of North Dakota, electing a farmer-governor, and putting their candidates in three of the supreme court judgeships, and gaining 105 out of the 138 seats in the state legislature. The first object of the league was the redress of economic injustice suffered by the farmer. They saw that this must be done through concerted control of the political machinery. Of the legislation they wished, they secured: (1) a new office of State Inspector of Grains, Weights and Measures, (2) partial exemption of farm improvements from taxation, (3) a new coöperative corporation law, and (4) a law to prevent railroads from discriminating, in supplying freight-cars, against elevators owned by farmers’ coöperative societies.

PG73755.B01235
In 1917 a Farmers’ Nonpartisan League of the state of New York was organized. In September, 1917, the North Dakota League became the “National Nonpartisan League,” the organization spreading to several of the neighboring states: Minnesota, South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, etc. At the North Dakota state primaries held in the summer of 1918, nearly all the League’s candidates were nominated, thus insuring the continuance of its control of the state government.

PG73755.B01236
In Denmark we are told the battle rages between the agrarian party and the labor party. More and more the struggle in Parliamentary countries is becoming a struggle between interests rather than between parties based on abstract principles. This must be fully taken into account in the new state.

PG73755.B01237
The hoped-for relation of industry to the state might be summed up thus: we want a state which shall include industry without on the one hand abdicating to industry, or on the other controlling industry bureaucratically. The present plans for guild socialism or syndicate control, while they point to a possible future development, and while they may be a step on the way, as a scheme of political organization have many weak points. Such experiments as the Industrial Councils of England are interesting, but until further technique is worked out we shall find that individual selfishness merely gives way to group selfishness. From such experiments we shall learn much, but the new ship of state cannot ride on such turbulent waters.

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The part labor will take in the new state depends now largely upon labor itself. Labor must see that it cannot reiterate its old cries, that it need no longer demand “rights.” It is a question of a new conception of the state and labor seeing its place within it. For a new state is coming—we cannot be blind to the signs on every side, we cannot be deaf to the voices within. Labor needs leaders to-day who are alive not to the needs of labor, but to the needs of the whole state: then it will be seen as a corollary how labor fits in, what the state needs from labor, what labor needs from the state, what part labor is to have _in_ the state.

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PG73755.B01240
Footnote 136:

PG73755.B01241
See pp. 199–201.

PG73755.B01242
Footnote 137:

PG73755.B01243
Some writers talk of trade representation vs. party organization as if in the trade group you are rid of party. Have they studied the politics of trade unionism? In neither the trade group nor the neighborhood group do you automatically get rid of the party spirit. That will be a slow growth indeed.

PG73755.B01244
Footnote 138:
