Part 15

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 people's 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 People's 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 one's 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 crowd's 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 man's 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 crowd's 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 individual's brains. The ultimate reason for all this interference is the crowd's 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 Tocqueville's 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.