Superficially it may seem that the present is an inappropriate time to suggest that either women or men go deliberately out of their way to undertake a process of self-education in the meaning of freedom. The dominant spirit among us is not only not hospitable to the idea of freedom; it is openly inimical to the idea. The United States is the richest and most powerful country in the world. It is in the midst of the most interesting experiment ever seen in the simplification of human life. It is undertaking to prove that human beings can live a generally satisfactory life without the exercise of the reflective intellect, without ideas, without ideals, and in a proper use of the word without emotions, so long as they may see the prospect of a moderate well-being, and so long as they are kept powerfully under the spell of a great number of mechanical devices for the enhancement of comfort, convenience and pleasure. This experiment is so universal and so preoccupying that while it is going on there would seem to be no chance to get any consideration for so unrelated a matter as freedom. Hence the only current notion of freedom is freedom to live and behave as the majority live and behave and to desire what the majority desire; and notions which diverge from this have not been under stronger suspicion and disapproval since the eighteenth century than they are in this country today. Not that any one, probably, fears any degree of liberty for himself, but every one has a nervous horror of too much liberty for others. Most people no doubt feel that they themselves would know exactly what to do with freedom and therefore might be safely trusted with any measure of it; it is the possible social effect of other people’s liberty that they dread. No idea, probably, is more distrusted and feared among us at the present time than that of freedom for someone else.
The dominant spirit at present—the spirit which gives tone to our society—is diametrically opposed to the spirit of freedom. It is a spirit of coercion and intolerance. Politically this spirit finds expression in a pronounced reaction from the “progressivism” which had gained so much support before the war; in an enormous strengthening of “the cohesive power of public plunder,” with a consequent reversion to the regimentation of strict party-government; in outrages committed by government, with popular approval—or at least indifference—upon the persons and property of people suspected of economic unorthodoxy; and in a cynical disregard by both government and populace of those guarantees of individual liberty which were wrested from government by more liberty-loving generations than our own. It is evident also in the development of extra-governmental organizations committed to a programme of violence actuated by religious bigotry, race-hatred, or inflamed chauvinism, such as the Hackenkreutzers and Fascists abroad—for the spirit of intolerance is not confined to the United States—and the Ku Klux Klan in this country; movements which, although they imply no menace to the exploiting classes themselves, do constitute a menace, at present imperfectly perceived, to the established organization through which those classes exercise exploitation, and an extremely threatening danger to the lives and liberties of millions among the governed.
Economically the spirit of coercion is in evidence in the struggles for advantage between capital and labour, each trying to force the other to its own terms; in attempts by employers to break up defensive organization among their workers; and in such laws as the Criminal Syndicalism Acts, most of which give criminal character to membership in an organization professing radical economic doctrine. Socially it is reflected in such laws as the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act, and in puerile and evil-minded attempts at censorship of individual conduct, of public amusement, and of literature and art. In religion it is manifest in the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, in the current controversy between Fundamentalism and Modernism in the Protestant churches, and in the attempt sponsored by bigoted and influential church-organizations to stop by edict the progress of biological and anthropological science, because it threatens the tenure of established superstitions. It is likewise evident in the concern of those organizations with such social behaviour of individuals as must rationally be held indifferent, and their efforts to get their particular code of conduct enforced through sumptuary law.
The recrudescence of this spirit is the immediate result of war, which always brings it about. War embodies in its crudest form the doctrine of government by violence; and when war is dominant, therefore, the ideals of justice and liberty, which are directly opposed to it, become so unpopular that those who continue to profess them are liable to persecution by government and by their war-mad compatriots. Governments, which never grant their citizens more freedom of opinion and action than is absolutely necessary in order to get themselves tolerated, take advantage of this war-spirit to revoke, in practice if not in law, those guarantees of individual rights which it suits their purpose to dispense with. When the popular orgy of patriotic bloodthirst and intolerance is over, and the populace begins to get back to sanity, it finds government more securely fixed upon its back than ever, and prepared to ride it without that easy rein and that sparing of the spur which fear compels. Thus it is that the Governments of the Western world, since the war, have been carrying on their imperialist activities abroad and persecuting dissenters at home, with an excess of cynicism which would have been effectively reprehended by public opinion before the war.
The chief reason why this policy of force continues to command a large measure of popular support is because fear of bolshevism has taken the place of that fear of the enemy which unifies public opinion behind Governments in war-time. Economic interests immediately consolidated against the influence of the Russian Revolution precisely as they did against that of the French Revolution, and in the same way. Governments have done all in their power to inculcate fear of this influence upon their peoples; and in this they command the assistance of practically the whole institutional organization of their respective countries. There is other and far better reason for this propaganda than the mere need of a new bogey with which to cow the timorous and keep the disaffected under control. The idea of freedom which bolshevist Russia has launched is a distinct menace to political government and its beneficiaries, the owning classes. If the expropriated and exploited masses in other countries once get it through their heads that their primary interest is not political but economic, the days of political government will be numbered. The propaganda against bolshevism is therefore inspired by two motives: the wish to frighten peoples into approving suppression of those suspected of political and economic heresy, and the wish to divert attention from the idea behind the Russian Revolution through the moral effect of real or supposititious misbehaviour by the Revolutionary Government. It is a curious twist of human psychology that makes supposed outrages committed by a foreign Government five thousand miles away appear to justify actual and equal outrages by one’s own Government in one’s own country; and a proletarian dictatorship five thousand miles away appear to justify a dictatorship of the exploiting classes at home. The Soviet Government’s alleged mistreatment of political dissenters is easily made effective in ranging popular opinion in this country behind governmental persecution and deportation of communists and anarchists. Reports of Red terror in Russia reconcile public opinion—or at least that portion of it which is articulate—to the reign of a White terror here. It would appear that the desirability of dictatorship and terrorism is not in question, but their colour. Civilized persons, perhaps, would find little to choose between Red terror and White terror, or a Red dictatorship and a White; they would probably elect to dispense with terrorism and dictatorship altogether; but civilized persons have nothing to do with framing the policies of government, and almost nothing to do with the formation of majority-opinion.
Superficially, then, an invitation to contemplate freedom seems untimely. The cause of freedom is neither popular nor fashionable; therefore it may seem unduly optimistic to expect that there will soon be an interest in it deep enough or general enough to move many people to inquire seriously into its meaning or its desirability. Such a study would imply a critical reappraisal of institutions to which fear of change impels the majority to cling with a tenacity out of proportion to the benefits to be derived from their preservation. In this country this fear of change is especially strong because, as I have remarked before, the exactions of monopoly have not yet advanced to the point of choking industry. Moreover, opportunities to enjoy monopoly are not as extensively pre-empted here as they are elsewhere; and therefore the chances of the individual to share in the loot of industry are much better. This fact tends to keep a great many people loyal to an economic and political order which offers them a chance, however remote, to live by the earnings of other people, and to make them inhospitable to an idea of freedom which threatens that chance. There is another factor, too, which must be taken into account, as explaining the hostility of our proletariat towards an experiment in proletarian government which might be expected to gain their tolerance if not their sympathetic interest: that factor is the tendency of human beings to prefer an immediate temporary well-being to an ultimate permanent well-being conditioned on the acceptance of immediate hardship or uncertainty. “Après nous le déluge” is a sentiment by no means peculiar to dissolute and irresponsible monarchs. Humankind has always shown a perfect willingness to let posterity pay its bills and atone for its misdeeds. Labour at present is comparatively well off in this country; and it is significant that just those sections of it that are most advantageously situated are strongest in their opposition to the bolshevist experiment, namely: the unions in the American Federation of Labour. One can not unreservedly condemn their attitude; there is much to be said for it. In a society organized as ours is, the mere loss of a job is, as I have remarked elsewhere, terrible enough to keep one’s thoughts from wandering on burning ground. The labourer stands to lose through any radical economic readjustment quite as much as the monopolist, that is, his all. If his all be sufficient to keep him from want, he will naturally regard with apprehension any proposal to take it away for the moment, even for the sake of his own possible future advantage. The poor man, especially if he have a family, is likely to feel that a present sufficiency is worth much more than a future surplus. It is only when people have literally nothing to lose but their chains that they can face without fear the prospect of revolutionary change. If the existing economic order remains in force, that time will come in this country as it came in pre-revolutionary France, and something over a century later in pre-revolutionary Russia; and when it does, there will be plenty of active interest in freedom, and of underground movements to bring it about by revolutionary methods. But at present the “dissidence of Dissent and the protestantism of the Protestant religion,” the Anti-Saloon League, the one-hundred-per-centers, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Republican party, are in unapproachable ascendancy.
This does not greatly matter. Force and proscription are in the long run invariably ineffectual against an idea. The idea released by the American and French revolutions—the idea of the right of individual self-expression in politics—prevailed over the combined forces of European feudalism; and the idea released by the Russian Revolution will prevail over the combined forces of European and American imperialism. For ideas can be fought neither with armies nor with persecutions; nor can attention be for ever diverted from them. The only thing that has effective force against an idea is a better one. Whether or not the Soviet Government succeeds in getting beyond dictatorship to the establishment of economic justice in Russia is not really important. If it should fail, its failure will not halt the progress of the idea that human freedom is fundamentally a matter of economics. Not even that acceptance in principle and denial in practice which is the chief characteristic of Liberal policy, can permanently defeat it. Sooner or later it will penetrate into human consciousness; it will become part of that consciousness; and it will prevail. Whether or not it will prevail during this era of the world’s history is another question, whose answer will depend upon the readiness of mankind to assimilate and be actuated by it. If it is not assimilated in time to prevent the ruin of European civilization, then its ultimate victory will take place in a future era, when European civilization has followed the way of other civilizations to oblivion.
The process of assimilation is even now at work; with what effectiveness one may deduce from the strength and determination of the forces arrayed against it. It was no love for the Czar and the Russian nobility that caused the Allied Governments to spend millions of dollars in support of Kolchak, Denikin, and Wrangel, just as it was no love for Louis XVI and the French nobility that sent the Duke of Brunswick into France at the head of the Allies’ army. It was fear of the idea which animates the Bolshevist Government. It was not because the Allied Governments hated Germany less but because they hated the Bolsheviki more that they failed to assent to the Soviet Government’s proposal to surrender Petrograd and Moscow, establish a front in the Ural mountains, and continue the war against Germany. It was not their belief in self-determination, but their desire to interpose a buffer State between the embattled proletariat of Russia and the embattled imperialists of Western Europe, that caused them to erect Poland into an independent State. Nor has anything but the most pressing economic necessity moved any one of the Western Governments to treat with the cynical realists of Moscow, who have repeatedly embarrassed Allied politicians by their persistent abstinence from the hypocritical cant of the diplomat who has predatory designs to justify. Nor was it any sudden access of friendliness for Germany, or any noble superiority to sectional jealousies and nationalist ambitions, that moved these same Governments to sign the agreement of Locarno; it was, rather, a desire to make common cause against a Government whose avowed purpose is to destroy the privileged interests by and for which they themselves exist. Need anyone suppose that they would do all these things if they believed that the Russian idea could be localized? Not even the desire of their privilegees to exploit the natural wealth of Russia could have brought about a Locarno agreement. It was their sense of a common danger that overcame their mutual jealousies and distrust; the danger that the proletarians of their own countries may, as their miseries increase, be moved to emulate the proletarians of Russia, that a sense of class-solidarity may overcome traditional and national antipathies, and move them to unite for the purpose of casting off their chains.
There are tendencies in post-war Europe and America which must be disturbing to the politician who knows how to interpret them, if there be such a politician; tendencies far more significant of future developments than the mere existence of organized revolutionary minorities or the activities of single communists or anarchists, and much more difficult to cope with. Chief among these is a growing disrespect for government; the progress of a healthy cynicism concerning its nature and purpose, and a promising disregard of those sumptuary laws which do not meet with the convictions or desires of citizens. This tendency is by no means confined to any disaffected group or class. The citizen who is most patriotic, and most wholeheartedly with his Government in its attempts to coerce other people, may not scruple to evade its attempts to coerce himself. There is no articulate sentiment in this country, for example, against the income-tax law; yet there are few citizens who will not evade its incidence if possible, and feel themselves quite justified in doing so. Or again, who has not heard people comfortably provided with contraband liquor remark that they believe prohibition to be an excellent thing for the country in general? People may support the policies of a Government who entertain no illusions whatever about the nature of its personnel—or about the policies themselves for that matter—but who support them as a matter of self-interest or because they see nothing better to do. But all this does not augur especially well for the hold of government upon the loyalty or imagination of the governed. It is a truism that the Government which tries to enforce one law to which its citizens do not subscribe, thereby engenders disrespect for all law, and thus weakens its authority. Again, the citizen who supports his Government through self-interest or inertia may oppose it through self-interest or because his inertia has been overcome. If he does not support it through respect, its hold upon him is tenuous and uncertain.
As for the growing numbers of the disaffected, they show their loss of faith in so-called representative government, and their sense of helplessness, by a practice of non-co-operation which is none the less real because it is spontaneous and unorganized. The number of qualified voters who abstain from using the ballot grows with every election; and this is not surprising, since every voter of any intelligence knows precisely what interests control government, and precisely what measure of self-determination his apparent choice between rival candidates involves. Even the old faith in Liberalism, or the belief that the masses may get some voice in government through “putting good men in office,” is not what it once was. Liberalism displayed its true colours during the war, and since the war it has not been able to fool a great many of the people even part of the time. It is worthy of note that every war-Government of 1914 was a Liberal Government except Russia’s. Mr. Wilson was a Liberal if there ever was one; and Mr. Wilson’s Administration led the American people into a costly war which was of practical moment to only an infinitesimal minority of our population, and used the opportunity created by war-hysteria to perpetrate the most high-handed outrages against dissenters from his war-policy. Mr. Wilson may have been sincerely insincere, as one clever critic put it; but whether he was so or not, he gave the American people a thorough, high-priced lesson in the essential hypocrisy of Liberalism. Mr. Wilson, and his fellow-Liberals of Europe, showed the world that the real interests of Liberalism and those of Toryism are identical, and that when those interests are endangered it is impossible to distinguish between Liberal and Tory behaviour.
It has, indeed, become abundantly clear since the war that a realignment of forces is inevitable; a realignment which shall represent not merely two factions differing slightly in regard to the non-essentials of government but one in the fundamental purpose of furthering economic exploitation; but a realignment which shall represent the cleavage which exists already, and will be widened as time goes on, between those who wish to perpetuate economic exploitation and those who wish it abolished. The remark which one frequently hears, that the two great parties in this country represent the same interests, means that they are both maintained by, and directly represent, the interest of monopoly which is engaged in exploiting industry. Their superficial differences, even, are notoriously insignificant, and fundamentally their interests and their source of power are identical. The logical cleavage, therefore, is between members of those two parties with all mere Liberals and reformers, on the one side, and advocates of economic justice on the other. It is really too late for compromise; too late for government to do everything for the exploited masses except get off their backs, as the German Imperial Government did so admirably before the war. Governments have become too corrupt and too ruthless, and the interests behind them too greedy, to perceive the wisdom of such a course. If the policy of coercion is in the ascendancy, if the executive arm of political government is everywhere usurping the function of the legislative arm, if parliamentarism and republicanism seem about to merge into dictatorship, it is because the ruling classes are much more aware of the coming struggle than are those classes whose interests will range them on the other side; and if many people now support government whose interests are against it, it is because they have not yet awakened to a realization of their true position. The increasing cynicism of the governed concerning the nature and purposes of government really marks an important advance toward the new alignment of forces. It is not a long step from the realization that government does not represent the general interest, to a discovery of the direction in which that interest lies.
Along with this cynicism go other signs of a changing attitude. There is a conspicuous falling off of faith in what might be called the unofficial adjuncts of government, namely: the press and the pulpit. The changing attitude towards organized religion was recognized and defined in the Pope’s recent Encyclical Letter condemning the progress of laicism in all the countries of the Christian world, and the accompanying tendency to discuss Christianity as if it were merely one of the historical faiths, like Mohammedanism or Buddhism, instead of the only true, revealed religion. It is recognized also in the attempts to which I have alluded above, by certain Protestant sects in this country to secure laws forbidding the teaching of the theory of evolution. It is true that science and the printing-press have robbed a secularized church of its main source of influence over the minds of men, the one by discovering and proclaiming the natural laws behind those phenomena which ignorance attributed to benign or evil spirits; and the other by facilitating the general dissemination of knowledge. The Church can no longer effectively appeal to fear. For a church which very early became a class-organization, and one of the large-scale promoters and beneficiaries of economic exploitation, this is a serious thing. Its promises and its comminations are becoming alike ineffectual in face of mankind’s growing concern with the spiritual effect of involuntary poverty and wretchedness upon the human spirit in this present world. The modern cynicism towards paternalism in government and industry finds its counterpart in cynicism concerning organized Christianity. In an age which questions the justice of mankind’s arbitrary division into classes, such an Encyclical as that of Pope Leo XIII which enjoined masters to be lenient and the subject masses to be patient is already an anachronism; and the injunction put by the Church of England upon candidates for confirmation to order themselves lowly and reverently unto all their betters is more likely to arouse antagonism than to win compliance. The churches do not understand the new psychology with which they have to deal. They are offering dogmatic creeds to an age which is suspicious of all dogma; they are upholding traditional moral criteria in an age when the foundations of factitious morality are being generally scrutinized by the light of reason and knowledge; they are preaching salvationist doctrine in terms which no longer edify or recommend themselves to serious attention. All this is merely to say that organized religion, like political government, remains static in the midst of flux; and like political government it faces a spontaneous and widespread if entirely unorganized popular movement of non-coöperation.
As for that large majority of prosperous newspaper-concerns which are stigmatized in socialist literature as the “kept press,” they have been so over-eager in the partisanship of their editorial writing and in the colouring of their news or its manufacture out of whole cloth, that there is discernible a decided change in the popular attitude towards them. The power of the printed word is still great out of all proportion to its weight; but editorial pronouncements, if they are read at all, are by no means swallowed as the undiluted milk of the word, as they were in the day when Horace Greeley used daily in the Tribune to dictate opinion to a large section of the American public. It is significant that since the advertising department has come to take precedence over the editorial department, there has been a decided falling-off in respect for journalism and a marked decrease in the number of honest and able people who take up journalistic work. This was to be expected. The modern newspaper is essentially an advertising medium, and its editorial writing and presentation of news must conform to its general character. Under these circumstances men of intellectual ability and integrity are no longer attracted by such work, as they are no longer, for an analogous reason, attracted to governmental office or to the pulpit. The consequent deterioration in journalistic personnel contributes further to the newspaper’s loss of prestige—again as in the case of the personnel of government and of the churches. As all those institutions lose the power to command respect and allegiance, they progressively lose power to attract able and honest minds to their service; and as they lose this power of attraction, their power to command respect progressively dwindles; and thus by alternate reactions they tend to disintegration. To return to the press, it is symptomatic of the loss of popular faith in its moral and intellectual character that people buy this newspaper or that so largely because of special features—local news, sporting news, this person’s column or that person’s cartoons. It is no exaggeration to say that the overwhelming majority of Americans look to their newspapers not for information but for entertainment or excitement; a fact which is amply attested by the amount of space devoted to special features, comic strips and cheap stories, and above all by the extraordinary success of a new tabloid type of newspaper devoted almost exclusively to pictures, accompanied by the most sensational kind of backstairs gossip. In the parlance of the street, the modern newspaper is “giving ’em what they want”; and while the preference is a sad reflection on public taste, its gratification is an equally sad reflection on the quality and standing of American journalism. The newspaper, in short, as I have said, no longer informs or guides opinion; it purveys amusement.
The same deterioration, with concomitant loss of prestige, that is proceeding in government, the church and the press, is evident in educational institutions. This is a natural and inevitable development, since education is so largely under political control. The powers which control government are in control of education; and those powers quite naturally will not tolerate any teaching which even implies a revaluation of the existing economic, political or social organization. This intolerance is effective even in institutions not under direct control by the State; for those institutions are largely dependent on wealthy benefactors, and wealth is almost entirely in control of people who have a direct interest in the preservation of the established order. Under these circumstances, the primary purpose of education, which is to develop the mind and help it to independent progress along the paths of truth and reason, is rendered impossible of fulfilment; and our schools have pretty generally substituted for this purpose another and lower one which is calculated neither to embarrass nor offend the powers on which they depend. This is the vocational purpose. Thus they have ceased to be centres of culture, and become centres of training whose object is to turn out graduates who shall resemble one another as closely as possible in all things save in special vocational training. As Professor Jerome Davis recently expressed it, our colleges are turning out machine-made minds. The deterioration in the personnel of the teaching profession is consequently quite as marked as that in government, the churches and the press. Independence of spirit is not tolerated by school-directors and boards of regents. Teaching, moreover, being held in little respect by the State, to whose interests it is obviously inimical if prosecuted intelligently and seriously, is so poorly paid that people who can possibly do better elsewhere are naturally unwilling to become teachers. It is needless to dwell upon the demoralizing and vulgarizing effect of these circumstances on the schools themselves and those who attend them. It is too obvious and has been already too often discussed, to require consideration here. What I do wish to note is the fact that this educational system does not escape criticism and distrust; and that the most interesting and promising manifestation of this distrust is evident not among outsiders or alumni, but among undergraduates. Too much may not be expected of it, but the “youth-movement” which is afoot among students may not be disregarded; it is symptomatic of a critical attitude and a spirit of revolt which may not be wholly without effect.
These are negative signs of progress, if one will, but none the less impressive for that. They indicate a growing sense of discomfort in the environment provided by established institutions, and a loss of faith in those institutions as they deteriorate under the spread of their own corruption. On the positive side one may cite the growing power of economic organization, and its tendency to displace political organization. The appearance in the American Congress of a group known as the “farm-bloc” is an interesting instance of this tendency. Here is a group of political representatives with whom an economic interest is frankly placed ahead of political affiliation. They are primarily neither Democrats nor Republicans, neither conservatives nor progressives; they are primarily representative of a producing group. As such, they stand for a departure from the theory of representative political government, which assumes that representation shall be not industrial but geographic. According to this theory, the representatives from each arbitrarily fixed geographical unit are supposed to represent the interests of all the citizens within that unit. This evidently leaves out of account not only the fact that economic interests are primarily industrial or occupational and only secondarily and fortuitously sectional, but also the fact that the economic interests within a given area may be mutually inimical. In practice, of course, political representatives have really represented the dominant economic interest within their allotted territory, the interest which has exercised the strongest political influence; but since in theory they must represent all interests, they have not been able to represent that dominant interest openly, but have had to resort to subterfuge and dishonesty. Even the members of the farm-bloc, were they representing districts where agriculture was not the dominant industry, would no doubt be less open in their espousal of its interest. None the less they have dared, in disregard of party-discipline, to form a bloc which stands squarely for the interest of a producing class; and in doing so they have taken a step towards the system of industrial representation which has of late made great strides in European countries, more especially in Russia and Germany. Although the group which has taken this step may be unimportant politically, save when a close division chances to throw the balance of power into its hands, the step it has taken is of the utmost importance; for if economic representation should proceed until it eventually superseded geographical representation, the change would not only involve the destruction of the bipartisan machine which controls government in this country; it would naturally bring about an open alignment of the producing interests against the interests of exploitation, and thus make clear the final and fundamental issue of which I have spoken—the question whether economic exploitation is to be perpetuated or abolished.
A good deal of non-political organization shows the same trend. The growth of co-operation, for example, in production, marketing, and consumption, is evidence of an attempt to evade through group-action those exactions of government’s beneficiaries against which the single individual is powerless to protect himself. The growth of offensive and defensive organization among capitalists on the one side and workers on the other, not only implies recognition of the primary importance of economic interests and the value of co-operation among groups whose economic interests are identical; it implies also an acknowledgment that neither capital nor labour receives from government what it will accept as adequate protection of its interests—as, of course, neither can, since the interest that government exists to protect—the interest of monopoly—is directly inimical to both. Moreover, as this organization becomes international in scope it constitutes a negation of the political differences which bolster up rival national organizations. That it has not yet become strong enough to prevent nationalistic wars, is true; but this is because the fact that war is a clash, not of rival producing interests, but of rival exploiting interests has not yet become sufficiently clear to overcome a specious patriotism and the traditional distrust and prejudice which governments have assiduously inculcated upon the governed. The producing classes are really behind the exploiting classes in discovering that their interests are pretty much the same, whatever their various nationalities may be. Governments have always co-operated when any rebellious move by the governed in any country threatened the established economic and political order; as they co-operated in the Holy Alliance against France, or in a similar alliance against Russia, and as they are now co-operating in the League of Nations against the exploited classes in all countries. When the exploited classes understand their own position as clearly as the exploiting classes have understood theirs, organization for defense and offense will no longer be national and vertical but horizontal and international. The real issue will be drawn at last. Hence the tendency of capital and labour toward international organization along the lines of economic interest is an extremely hopeful sign that the producing classes are beginning to realize that their major interests are not political but economic, and that the quarrels of Governments are injurious to those interests; that they are beginning to outgrow the narrow nationalism which has facilitated their exploitation in the past, and made it possible to pit them against one another in the quarrels of rival exploiting classes.
All these signs of disaffection under the old order of things and the gropings towards a new, do not imply, of course, any growth of the spirit of freedom, or any new consciousness of its nature. They do indicate, however, the progress of a temper which, when it shall have become more pervasive and more deeply rooted, will be hospitable to the doctrine of freedom. Discontent with the established order must necessarily precede any serious move toward its displacement by a new order; and discontent, while it is by no means dominant at present, is widespread enough to cause Governments a good deal of anxiety. The very tightening of the grip of government which is evident in the present tendency to suppress legislative bodies, and in ruthless persecution of economic dissenters, is, as I have already remarked, a sure indication of the extent and strength of the dissenting forces. When those people who now endure the harassment of governmental waste and industrial exploitation, shall perceive that relief is to be gained not through futile political reforms aimed at amelioration of their lot, but through a radical readjustment of the whole economic system—when, in other words, they realize “what is to be done”—then and not before, will come the real test of the tenacity of the old order and the strength of the forces moving towards the new. On its side the old order will have governmental organization and armed forces, and the enormous influence of the superstitious tendency to regard as right that which is established, supporting the interest of a compact, wealthy, and highly organized exploiting class. The new order will have on its side the newly realized need of the majority without whose acquiescence a highly organized minority can not long maintain itself in power. The issue will depend, obviously, not only on the intelligence, ability and determination of the majority’s leaders, but upon their clear understanding of the issue involved. If they compromise, as the leaders of the French Revolution compromised, the cause of justice will be lost, and the most that will be gained will be a shifting of privilege. The Western world is faced at present with the alternative of establishing an enduring civilization on the sure foundation of economic justice, or of sinking back into barbarism through a long series of civil and international struggles for possession of the power to exploit. If it follow the latter course, its civilization will go the way of the civilization of Egypt, Greece, and Rome; and its vitality, like theirs, will so decrease under the dual drain of exploitation and war that it will eventually fall, as they fell, an easy prey to some strong external force.
The task before those who wish to avert this fate, whose passionate desire is to bring about an enduring civilization based on the solid foundation of economic justice, is the task of educating themselves in the nature of freedom, of learning to face freedom without fear, and of communicating to others their understanding and their courage. The women of today, especially in this country, are in a peculiarly good position to undertake this task. They enjoy unprecedented advantages in the way of social and intellectual autonomy, and of educational opportunity. They have emerged successful from a long struggle for political equality with men, and they are still engaged in an organized effort to secure legal equality. Thus they have their hand in, as it were, with the work of removing the artificial disabilities which organized society imposes on a subject class in order to keep it subject; and this work should have engendered in those who have been active in it a healthy resentment of social injustice and a sense of the value of freedom to the human spirit. They will still have, moreover, even after legal equality is won, a considerable number of discriminations to combat, which should operate against the temptation to regard their fight as won, and to relax the vigilance which is always necessary to preserve individual rights against encroachment by organized society. The organizations through which they have worked remain intact; it is for them to determine whether those organizations shall continue as mere agencies for political lobbying or whether they will carry on the demand for freedom to its logical end.
The fact that women are in a good position to inquire into the nature of freedom offers, of course, no earnest that they will do so. In spite of the reasonableness of such a course, they may content themselves with trying to effect the ultimate equality of the sexes through political measures which in their nature can never effect it—provided, that is, that events do not move too fast for even a serious trial of such inept methods. A good deal of mirth has already been aroused in certain quarters by trivial and futile reform-measures which women politicians have sponsored. If this sort of thing shall prove to be the sum-total of women’s contribution to social problems, it will merely prove that they are quite as incapable of an intelligent understanding of those problems as men have hitherto shown themselves to be. If women are now in a good position to school themselves in the tradition of economic freedom, the men of Europe and America have been in an equally good position to do so since the political revolutions of the eighteenth century, and as yet they have given no very encouraging signs of progress. However much one may hope that women will make a better showing, it would be unfair to expect it of them; for they are but now emerging from the mental and spiritual condition induced by centuries of subjection. If, therefore, they fail to grasp their opportunity to contribute to the process of education which must precede the establishment of economic justice; if they are content to fix their minds upon this or that special aspect of social freedom or of political freedom, instead of looking steadily towards economic freedom—economic freedom for men and women alike—the judicious critic may lament their failure or disparage their tactics, but he can hardly attribute either to any stupidity or incapacity peculiar to their sex, since it is through the same failure and the same tactics that men have brought civilization to the critical state in which it is at present.
The great point, however, is that if they fail they are sure to pay for their failure a higher price than men will pay. As they have more to gain from freedom than men, so they have more to lose than men if the Western world shall fail to establish its civilization on the firm basis of economic justice. In the relapse into barbarism which must attend the ultimate breakdown of economic and social life under the monopolistic system, physical force will be even more strongly ascendant than it is at present; and when physical force dominates, the ideals of justice and liberty are, as I have already remarked, without effective influence—the only right is might. The well-being of women depends in very great measure on the prevalence of those ideals; for when force is dominant, woman’s physical disadvantage as the child-bearing sex places her in a position to be more readily subjected and exploited than man. Because of this disadvantage she was the first victim of exploitation; because of it, she will be the last to escape; and because of it she will be the greater sufferer from exploitation so long as exploitation shall be the basis of the economic and social order. There is potential tragedy in the fact that the Western world has become civilized enough to perceive the injustice involved in women’s subjection only when the economic order which determines its social life has become so corrupt that it threatens the destruction of civilization, with all such gains in humanity as civilization has yielded. Women have equality almost within their grasp; they may lose it if this civilization shall follow the path of its predecessors to ruin and oblivion. There is one way to avert this tragedy, and one only—the way of economic justice. If the women who have been active in the struggle to emancipate their sex shall enlarge their conception of freedom, and with it the scope of their demand, they can help mightily to preserve civilization through the establishment of justice. If they could win their sex away from the exploded formulas of the eighteenth century and bring them to understand that political and social freedom without economic freedom are utterly illusory, that true freedom proceeds from economic justice, and that justice and freedom offer the only hope for the salvaging of this civilization, they would have won half of humanity, and that would be a contribution of no small value. One thing is certain: the question of freedom for women can not proceed much farther as an independent issue. It has reached the point where it must necessarily merge in the greater question of human freedom. Upon the fate of the greater cause, that of the lesser will depend. It is for feminists to choose whether they will merge the feminist in the humanist, or whether they will play at political and social make-believe while the issue is being decided, and either suffer in the event the consequences of a failure which they shall have made no effort to avert, or enjoy the benefits of a success which they shall have done nothing to attain.
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