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countries. Taxation is for defence, we are told, against the predatory instincts of other states. But the predatory instincts are directed not only outwards, but inwards; and to-day, as in the past, it will be admitted by the candid student that European and American history supports the contention that the state is an organ of economic exploitation. If the state were the servant of the community, why should it always show a jealous fear of democracy? The contentions of those who preach obedience to the state because it is an organ of public service, are more and more seen to involve serious contradictions regarding its origin. They must posit some more or less idyllic origin or divine sanction, whilst professing to believe in a necessary progression from lower to higher, a welding together of the chain of brotherhood by the hammer of force and compulsion under the ægis of a few world states. The fact is that the juristic conceptions of the state hide from us the fact that political and economic exploitation are identical in aim.

Human motives are extremely complex, and social events unpredictable, and because that is so there is a tendency to stress now one interpretation of events and now another, resulting in the one case in utopianism, and in the other in a pessimistic and sinister outlook. We must divest our minds of the sentimental fiction that primitive man was a peaceful and unarmed herdsman, roaming the steppes and prairies seeking fresh pasturage for his flocks, if we would understand how the organisation of the state arose. The herdsman was armed and predatory. The combative instinct was in him, although certainly he did not fight for the joy of the exercise, still less with any idea of chivalry or in pursuit of some code of honour. The warrior fought for loot in the shape of additions to his herds and slaves, in order that his fields might be tilled and his power over his neighbours increased, until, on some fortunate day, even they came under his dominion and he ruled as King of kings. His immediate neighbours, however, knew his resources more accurately than remote strangers. Two or three weaker men might combine to defeat his bid for domination, and in doing so cause anarchy in the community. There was room for compromise, as, compared to the

world outside, more prosperous and powerful men had a common interest in combination, as it would leave them free to exploit and rob more systematically and with greater impunity than ever, and this, moreover, in an ever increasing territory, or in the case of migrating pastoral peoples over a larger number of families. Thus, there came definitely into view the great organisation of the state, with its corollaries of law-makers, priests and a warrior caste.

It is fatally easy to be dogmatic concerning the origins of institutions, and some have stressed particular origins for the state, and dogmatised confidently where knowledge is scant. When we say the state arose in such and such a way, we mean that that was possibly the course in the majority of instances, knowing well that it may have arisen in different places and at different times in a variety of ways; at the best we are dealing only within the bounds of reasonable supposition. It is quite impossible, for instance, to say with certainty whether the main line of development of the modern capitalist state lay through the early maritime stateno doubt the early scene of the development of movable wealth and exploitation by slavery-or through the gradual fixing of location by wandering tribes into the pastoral state, developing into a feudalism of one form or another with a great regard for landed property rather than commerce.

For the present purpose, this part of the controversy may be left on one side. The prime fact is that early states practised exploitation in the political field, as an extension of economic exploitation, and in this respect the modern state is true to type. The exploitation is expressed in many ways, by the preserving of feudal rights and ancient privileges by the inheritors, to the exclusion of the rest of the community, no less than in the economic imperialism of Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Dutchmen and Japanese. The policies of modern states are devoted to the use of political instruments for the economic exploitation of less favoured lands. Thus we have cause for quarrel between all the great nations in every corner of the world, whether the material struggled for be oil or tropical raw products and markets. The certainty that those potential quarrels

will break out into war sooner or later causes each state to generate the maximum amount of warlike power and economic control. It may be that nationalisation is an unconscious step in the development of the warlike state. The national power for offence in turn is used to enable the nationals (or is it the internationals?) of each state to appropriate the real wealth of undeveloped countries to the exclusion of all others of a different nationality, and even its own less fortunate nationals. We are living in an age of mercantilism in the old narrow and exclusive sense, despite our lip deference to free trade and freedom of expansion, a mercantilism supported by armed and legal power, never before exercised to so great a degree.

This is not the conception of the state as held by the juristic historian, but it is one which is very much closer to the facts of to-day. The state has become the incarnation of unlimited power, power exercised by a small governing class, with the economic, military and legal resources of the nation at call. We cannot administer justice in a nation of great inequalities, as the very conception of justice assumes equality, for colour, property or culture bars are themselves injustices. Law does not enable good men to live amongst bad men, but rich men amongst poor men. No doubt the state ought to administer justice between equals and serve the public good, but it does not. That is what the necessary state will do when the historical state is shorn of much of its present activity, and when it is shown its duties where at present it merely demands so-called rights. We may hope, but not for a very early realisation of our hope. If we do not blind ourselves to the development of the past, we will know that great difficulties lie in the path in the future, one of which is the great sentimental appeal of a false patriotism when the state conceives itself to be in danger.

It may be asked what significance lies in theorising about the origins and purposes of the state, as we must take each individual state as we find it, with its mixed character of exploiter and policeman. The theory of the state is important in the creation of a functional democracy, because we must understand clearly what functions are proper to the state and can be performed

by it with efficiency, and what work should be done by other functional organisations in society. We have to realise that the social struggles of the future are not likely to be simple contests of will for the establishment of democracy. Democracy in its simplest terms has to all intents and purposes been achieved in the series of revolutions between the middle of the 17th century and to-day. The revolutions of the future will be less concerned with the general principles of liberty, equality and fraternity than with the practical content of those terms and with the elaboration of the details of functional democracy. The struggles will be for practical and detailed control and rights. It is this that will distinguish labour from radical movements.

To understand thoroughly the implication of functional democracy it is necessary to distinguish between the necessary state and the historical state, the latter of which has been primarily designed for economic exploitations, either of one nation by another, or of one class by another in the same nation. Indeed, the alignment of struggling forces in the future seems to be along a class division, an exploiting and an exploited class, the fundamental axiom of most socialist theorists, who have been concerned with something more than the trappings of power. This theory realises that the struggle of the future will take place on the economic field, although, by a confusion of ideas, it is somehow expected to solve that struggle in favour of the labouring classes by political means chiefly. The political solution, however, will leave the economic riddle where it was, and by increasing the power and prestige of the state will possibly make the problem less soluble than ever, because it will inevitably develop the state on lines of force and increased militarism. We are inclined in our social theorising, perhaps, to think too much in terms of warfare, and too little in terms of business organisation and social welfare. The problems of the future will be problems concerning efficient production, a just distribution of wealth, detailed government in industry and how to allow the labourer the opportunity of self-expression in craftsmanship and in the government of his own industry.

The word democracy has been a rallying cry throughVol. 248.-No. 491.

out the ages from the day of Pericles to that of the Chartists, a cry with a great tradition that one would not treat lightly. Where the borders of freedom have been most enlarged, the cry for freedom and justice has been most insistent. But even with the establishment of political democracy, freedom and justice have often seemed far off in the modern prevalence of squalor and luxury, great inequalities of wealth and opportunity. We have suffered the never-ending audacity of elected persons, whether state or municipal servants, or even those of the more democratic trade unions. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance; but vigilance has to be exercised in thinking out the principles upon which society is built, and adapting that society to a quickly changing world, rather than in spying and watching with jealousy, elected representatives. It is jealousy for freedom and for self-expression which is to be cultivated, not jealousy for office, for it must always be difficult to distinguish in many cases between public spirit and keenness in affairs and the simple audacity of office. It must be admitted that sometimes the elected person reads his mandate too amply and plays his part too narrowly; whilst the elector on his part fails to make any allowance for time and circumstance, as well as for human frailty. So long as we think in general terms, so long will the obstinate questionings of insurgent and suspicious democracy be heard.

Modern democracy is a new thing, however, and we can no longer face our problems as the men of the past did, for their use of the word and ours connote a different group of ideas. The Russian revolution is some evidence of this fact, and certainly those who have directed the storm there have shown considerable disregard for both theoretical and practical democracy as commonly understood. The scale and circumstances of the revolution, doubtless, made this necessary. The ideology of revolution during the last fifty or sixty years had stressed other elements more strongly than that of political democracy which was undoubtedly the aim of previous middle-class revolutions. It has been seen that democracy in the old sense was impossible of achievement and that its approximation, the representative system, did not and could not give the results

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