Will the system suggested by Mr.Cole have this result? I think it is clear that it would, in this respect, be an improvement on the existing system.Representative government cannot but be improved by any method which brings the representatives into closer touch with the interests concerned in their legislation; and this advantage probably would be secured by handing over questions of production to the Guild Congress.But if, in spite of the safeguards proposed by the Guild Socialists, the Guild Congress became all-powerful in such questions, if resistance to its will by a Guild which felt ill-used became practically hopeless, I fear that the evils now connected with the omnipotence of the State would soon reappear.Trade Union officials, as soon as they become part of the governing forces in the country, tend to become autocratic and conservative; they lose touch with their constituents and gravitate, by a psychological sympathy, into co-operation with the powers that be.Their formal installation in authority through the Guilds Congress would accelerate this process.They would soon tend to combine, in effect if not obviously, with those who wield authority in Parliament.Apart from occasional conflicts, comparable to the rivalry of opposing financiers which now sometimes disturbs the harmony of the capitalist world, there would, at most times, be agreement between the dominant personalities inthe two Houses.And such harmony would filch away from the individual the liberty which he had hoped to secure by the quarrels of his masters.
There is no method, if we are not mistaken, by which a body representing the whole community, whether as producers or consumers or both, can alone be a sufficient guardian of individual liberty.The only way of preserving sufficient liberty (and even this will be inadequate in the case of very small minorities) is the organization of citizens with special interests into groups, determined to preserve autonomy as regards their internal affairs, willing to resist interference by a strike if necessary, and sufficiently powerful (either in themselves or through their power of appealing to public sympathy) to be able to resist the organized forces of government successfully when their cause is such as many men think just.If this method is to be successful we must have not only suitable organizations but also a diffused respect for liberty, and an absence of submissiveness to government both in theory and practice.Some risk of disorder there must be in such a society, but this risk is as nothing compared to the danger of stagnation which is inseparable from an all- powerful central authority.
We may now sum up our discussion of the powers of Government.
The State, in spite of what Anarchists urge, seems a necessary institution for certain purposes.Peace and war, tariffs, regulation of sanitary conditions and of the sale of noxious drugs, the preservation of a just system of distribution: these, among others, are functions which could hardly be performed in a community in which there was no central government.Take, for example, the liquor traffic, or the opium traffic in China.If alcohol could be obtained at cost price without taxation, still more if it could be obtained for nothing, as Anarchists presumably desire, can we believe that there would not be a great and disastrous increase of drunkenness? China was brought to the verge of ruin by opium, and every patriotic Chinaman desired to see the traffic in opium restricted.In such matters freedom is not a panacea, and some degree of legal restriction seems imperative for the national health.
But granting that the State, in some form, must continue, we must also grant, I think, that its powers ought to be very strictly limited to what isabsolutely necessary.There is no way of limiting its powers except by means of groups which are jealous of their privileges and determined to preserve their autonomy, even if this should involve resistance to laws decreed by the State, when these laws interfere in the internal affairs of a group in ways not warranted by the public interest.The glorification of the State, and the doctrine that it is every citizen's duty to serve the State, are radically against progress and against liberty.The State, though at present a source of much evil, is also a means to certain good things, and will be needed so long as violent and destructive impulses remain common.But it is MERELY a means, and a means which needs to be very carefully and sparingly used if it is not to do more harm than good.It is not the State, but the community, the worldwide community of all human beings present and future, that we ought to serve.And a good community does not spring from the glory of the State, but from the unfettered development of individuals: from happiness in daily life, from congenial work giving opportunity for whatever constructiveness each man or woman may possess, from free personal relations embodying love and taking away the roots of envy in thwarted capacity from affection, and above all from the joy of life and its expression in the spontaneous creations of art and science.It is these things that make an age or a nation worthy of existence, and these things are not to be secured by bowing down before the State.It is the individual in whom all that is good must be realized, and the free growth of the individual must be the supreme end of a political system which is to re-fashion the world.
