ASPECTS OF DEMOCRACY
(Concluded)
What is therefore American corruption and American Mammonism? Simply the consequence of American democracy no yet being complete A-cracy. This has prevented and is still preventing the United States from acclimatising and digesting rapidly the enormous immigration of European coolies. If the work of Washington and of Franklin could be isolated from international relations, nothing would prevent its machinery from running smoothly in spite of the grave fault of the constitution, the anti-democratic closing-in of the land.
From this point of view the oligocratic states have as little right to reproach the United States with corruption and capitalism as the wolf, standing up-stream, has a right to accuse the lamb down-stream of troubling the water!
Is it not insolent stupidity to suggest that Democracy could cleanse and dry up in the course of a century or so the swamps of crude violence and of unscrupulous application of the political means, created by thousands of years of oligocratic government? And what can be more impossible than to demand that millions of down trodden slaves and weak-kneed serfs be turned as by sleight of hand into upright and self-conscious citizens! Every unbiassed mind must fully recognize that, in the face of these difficulties American Democracy, imperfect as it is, has accomplished a work of unparalleled magnificence.
Is it now clear why the leaders of the French Revolution of 1789 could not but carry the war across the frontiers? They had grasped the fact that the democratic state can only remain clean on condition that the infectious centers of disease, as represented by the neighboring oligocratic states, be prevented from spreading their bacilli of political virulence over the frontier. If, in a family of imperfect states, there be not possible a perfect state, then the duty of Democracy is clearly traced. Democracy must become a ‘Demo- cratia’ militans, so as to cleanse and purify the World and thus secure the full attainment of its own ideal. Thus the program of the immediate future is International Hygiene.
If this is the outcome of our practical test as to what Democracy has accomplished, we now come to the second test; the ethical probing of the relative-values of the essence of Democracy and of Oligocracy, which brings the matter before the supreme tribunal of the immanent laws of human morality.
Generally the problem is taken to involve moral concepts of equal ethical value, something like the dispute between the partisans of Darwin and those of Lamarck, or between realists and idealists in Philosophy.
This indifference is but strengthened if we consider the question from the point of view of sociology, in the restricted sense of a science of present facts and future growth in their causal connection. It shows us that, from the very beginning of political government, the same two groups, the same two theories of classes were in opposition; the oligocratic “Legitimism” on the top and the democratic “Natural rights” at the bottom, the two theories that throughout all ages, in all climates and with all races always show the same characteristics.
Legitimism justifies everywhere authoritative government and exploitation by the assertion that the ruling class is of a higher type physically and mentally than the ruled class. Only the former is blessed with the gift of being able to steer safely the ship of state it has launched through all the dangers that beset her course; only by the authority,
strength and ability of the ruling class can the lower classes be preserved from the most fearful disasters, the lower classes consisting of elements so debased, so stupid and weakminded that pandemonium would break loose immediately, should the lording class quit the helm.
Against this the partisans of "natural rights" the defenders of the lower classes stigmatise the haughty pride of the race of the Oligocrats as ridiculous and preposterous arrogance, and assert that the lower classes are at least just as able to govern the State as their self-appointed masters; that only the full and complete realization of Democracy can bring about the untarnished happiness of the whole of the community, exposed to cruel deception and suffering under the reign of Oligocracy.
If one puts these two conceptions side by side it appears, at. first, impossible to accept either unreservedly. Both seem of equal value, both appear as the expression of the same principle of class-egotism. For this reason it is alleged not unfrequently that the so-called “natural rights” are nothing more than a eontemptible “philosophy of slaves.”
A closer analysis, however, shows both conceptions to differ and to differ fundamentally in one essential. Legit- imism is an exclusive political theory, the Natural rights are inclusive. The former refuses to the majority of citizens the right to political activity and responsibility; the latter may perhaps condemn nobility as such, but its partisans have never dreamt of making use of the same tactics and of refusing to the nobles the full rights of citizens.
This difference is the consequence of a profound disparity in the essence of the two conceptions. The legitimism of the upper class is in contradiction to the laws of morality, which the conception of natural rights realizes.
At this point, where it is no longer a question of the connection between cause and effect, but of values and the relations of values, sociology, the science of the things that be, must give away to the science of the things that ought to be, to social philosophy. Only social philosophy has qualified to judge in the great historical dispute with which we are concerned here. And the decision appears so self-evident, that in full confidence we can leave it to our opponents to pronounce judgment.
For there exists in every human being— unless he be mentally or morally deranged—and consequently in every Oli- gocrat, too, a clear and non-equivocal moral sentiment, the “Categorical Imperative”: “Let your actions be such as to serve as a rule for every other action,” “Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you.” This moral law is daily and hourly infringed in a thousand ways. Of this we are fully aware. In a thousand ways, daily and hourly, human beings are robbing and cheating and hurting and degrading other human beings, but this is ever accompanied by a reverence of honor of the Categorical Imperative! No one, unless he be of unsound mind, will dare to declare robbing and cheating, hurting and degrading to be good, to be rightful in themselves. There is always being put forth some excuse, whenever the Categorical Imperative is violated. Thus it will be alleged that the incriminated action is not really an infringement of moral laws; or it will be asserted, by calling in a sociological extension of the doctrines of Nietszche or of Darwin, that such actions are only the outcome of a cruel necessity, a sacrifice upon the altar of higher happiness in the future, for instance, in order to favor