CHAPTER XI. THE STATE. 161. Government is Natural.--All mankind, like the higher animals, are endowed by nature with a desire for power, and a tendency to worship such powers as they suppose to be above their own power. The former induces them to lead, the latter makes it their pride to obey leaders whom they feel to be stronger than themselves. By this conjunction of ambition and fear, the buffalo of the broadest shoulders and stoutest horns, or even the elephant of longest tusks and greatest sagacity, leads the herd. The wild goose of strongest wing guides the flock in its migrations, and the sparrows battle in the road-dust for leadership. In the human race the qualities which excel in fight-viz., courage, craft, cunning, and prompt assumption of responsibility, or readiness to usurp power, together with physical strength-are those which first promote to leadership. It is only when men are far advanced that eloquence, argument, public spirit, and later a sense of fairness and equity, begin to prevail. In the first instance, the governing class incur the danger and contests necessary to lift them to power, because they crave the power for the sake of the dignity and command over others which it brings. Later, this harsh selfishness of ambition is invested in politer forms, and is softened by public spirit and desire for the general welfare. It would not be safe to assume, however, that the dominant passion of ambition or love of power ever becomes, in fact, wholly subordinated to unselfish aims, or that any system of society would be successful, if its success depends upon such a subordination of ambition. The statesman calculates upon the perpetuity of the fundamental and basic passions of human nature, such as the love of power, of freedom, of life, of property, of law, of sex, of religion, of art, of beauty, and of society, as being constant and nearly unchangeable factors, with which government must deal, and whose existence it must assume, as the chemist assumes his simple substances, or as geometry assumes the three dimensions. Government exists, therefore, because man is, by virtue of his GOVERNMENT BY INTEREST. 399 inherent structure, a governing and obeying creature, in the same sense as life exists, because he is a breathing creature, and as pleasure and pain exist because he is a sentient creature. We could as easily think of man without sensation, or without breath, as without government. Nature, in constituting man, kindly ordains that the functions of life which are essential to his existence, shall not be subject to his will in any degree. These are the circulation of his blood, the digestion of his food, the transmission of his sensations, and the reaction of his passions of anger and resistance against those forces which threaten his life. Above these are a class of functions which can, in a partial degree, be left to his choice, but concerning which he is nerved to action by forces so predominating as to be but partially repressible factors in controlling his will, leaving him a measure of choice as to means, opportunities, and occasions, but binding him by the strongest ties of emotion to the general result. These are the maintenance of the family, the reproduction of his kind, the accumulation of property, and the appropriation of land. In relation to these duties man occupies an intermediate position between choice and necessity, or between judgment and instinct. He is permitted, as a race, no choice as to the general result, but is permitted, as an individual, to believe in his freedom as to means and occasions. Midway between the first and second class of functions is that of government. It is somewhat more consciously voluntary than the circulation of the blood or digestion, but it is far less so than industry or reproduction. 162. Interest Organizes Industry.—In the broadest sense, man in society may be said always to be under two forms of government, one of which, though involuntary in its origin, is conscious in its action, and this is that which is ordinarily called government, or the state. The other is a far more perfect and searching mode of government than the state, being that government of interest, inherent in human nature, arising in the desire to acquire property, which places mankind in the several relations to each other, of merchant and customer, employer and employee, seller and buyer, landlord and tenant, borrower and lender, the aggregate of which relations constitutes the organization of modern industrial society through capital. Industry, or business, is not ordinarily treated, or recognized, as a mode of government, because it is an unconscious government. The men who take part in it do not consciously intend to govern or to be governed. They intend, each and all, only to benefit, each man himself, and those immediately dependent on him. But the whole operates through the instinct of gain to effect a thorough, though unconscious, organization of society, in which each is assigned to the work he shows himself most nearly competent to do, is rewarded according to the value of his service to society, and is promoted according to his skill. In it promotion in command depends on economy in expenditure, sagacity in investment, and activity in promoting production. That it is a mode of service is shown by the ordinary phrases: "The merchant's success depends on the assiduity with which he serves his customers." "The manufacturer must be quick to perceive changes in the public taste and comply with the public demand." The borrower is servant to the lender." Those who would secure employment and thrift, in serving the powerful, must defer or bend in judgment to those they purport to serve, as neither the powerful nor the weak can make any trustworthy use of the services of one who substitutes his own judgment, or lack of judgment, for that of his employer. This rule is expressed in the mottoes, "Obey orders if you break owners"; "Hew to the line, let the chips fall where they may," etc. The same social action is subject to be described either in terms of praise or dispraise, according to the momentary bias of the describer. Thus Shakespeare at one time sneers at subserviency, in words of dispraise. It At another he not defer as a "-Crooks the pregnant hinges of the knee describes the opposite feeling of pride, which will "Vaulting ambition doth o'erleap itself, And fall on 'tother-" Merchants, accepting the services of clerks, require that they shall be "of good address and possessed of tact," meaning thereby the faculty of discovering adroitly, and serving readily, the wants of those seeking to buy. Society, outside the family, is thus welded together by links of reciprocal interest, and mutual service, into an organized body, having far more than the efficiency of an army, in accomplishing the daily miracle of equal, or nearly equal, universal supply of the necessaries required for human consumption. That this unconscious form of government, through industry or business, is more searching and pervasive in its influence over human conduct, than the conscious government which we call the state, is shown by the fact that the majority of men are WANT AND WEALTH. 401 It is seldom brought into contact with the state in any manner. only as they pay taxes, vote, sue, or are sued in the courts of law, are punished for some crime, sit as jurors or hold an office, that they are reminded of, or in any way governed by, the state. But every time they do any act, for hire or profit, buy, sell, or produce, contract or discharge, earn or pay any thing, indeed every move they make to better their lot, or increase their means of living, is an act of association or commerce with their fellow-men, whereby they, by an instinct of which they are themselves unconscious, become links, cogs, wheels, weights, pulleys, or pivots in the social mechanism commonly called industry or business, the aggregate effect of which is to compel each to work for all, and all for each, in mutual helpfulness. 163. The Motive Force in Industry.-The government, which is effected through industry, knows of but one form of coercion or punishment, viz., want. This spectre, stalking behind and stimulating all men to energy, can be laid only by one exorcism, viz., wealth, which is, in all cases, labor performed. Between these two natural inducements, want and wealth, the human soul swings like a pendulum, in all its efforts. These driving forces impel man on his career, being, in economics, exactly what ignorance and wisdom are in thought, what right and wrong are in ethics, what hope and fear are in emotion, what pleasure and pain are in sensation, and what time and space are in being, viz., the ultimate or first principles which must be assumed to exist before we can think of economics, ethics, thought, emotion, sensation or being, as having any existence. Nor is any one form of the state necessarily more favorable than another, to the promotion of Industry. In the domain of economics, the state is regarded as the product of the social conditions in which it arises, although, upon being created, it has also vast power to change and improve social conditions, for those who are to come. It may be likened to an individual. Every man is, in one sense, produced or caused to be what he is, by his environment, i. e., his parentage, race, health, sex, place of birth, education, etc. But, being so produced, he becomes an efficient actor in controlling the conditions into which future generations are to be born. So a state is what its antecedents in history make it, but it is the author of its own consequents, and to this extent, while previous history makes it, it makes subsequent history. The causes of the constitution of a state, therefore, must be sought in the material conditions of its people. If their possessions are both equal in distribution, and small in value, as among the North American Indians, and especially if their land be held in common, their mode of government will be that of a democratic tribe, choosing their chief, debating as equals, but as savages. If their properties are more considerable, and still equal, they will be a democratic state like Sparta, or if like the Spartans and Athenians they own slaves, the state will still be democratic as to the free citizens, and aristocratic as to the slaves, as was Sparta. The ownership of equal properties by the citizens of a state will, in turn, usually spring from certain race peculiarities, such as were possessed by the Greeks and early Romans, such as bravery in the contest for personal rights, monogamy, the inviolability of the family relation, and the mountainous and easily defensible condition of the country, a diet of meat, mixed foods, and wines on the part of the people, a moderately fertile soil, such an access to rivers or the sea as favors commerce, and such a variability of climate as makes forethought necessary to existence. A population of industrial, physical, and mental equals, like that of Switzerland, develop into a democracy in government. If they acquire wealth, like Athens, the democracy becomes æsthetic, poetic, philosophic, artistic. If they remain poor, like the Spartans, the government becomes heroic, truculent, barren in art, and warlike. Deprived of the stimulus of a changeable climate, as is China, which is shut in on the north by great ranges of mountains, and left open to the southward, a people will accept a vegetarian diet, will abhor innovation, and will shirk all contest, change, and revolution,—hence will come under a bureaucratic, paternal despotism. If, as in Tartary, the climate be severely changeable, the people will be wandering, nomadic, and tribal. A permanent subdivision of the land into large estates gives rise to a nobility, and the union of the church with the state helps still more to render the government aristocratic. Activity in manufactures and commerce causes money to be a potent factor in government, and eloquence to decline. In the infancy of society, power is apt to be in either the soldiers or the priesthood. Later on it is in the soldiers and lawyers. As suffrage extends to the masses of the people it passes to those who are apt popular orators or political leaders. Among these the great capitalists and corporations often buy their way to power. Rome, and probably Egypt, reached this stage shortly before either passed by conquest under barbarian sway. |