Chapter III: What the State Is and Does

In the purification and exaltation of the Democratic National State rests the one hope of the salvation of Britain and the Empire. In a federation of Democratic National States resides the best prospect of the future peaceful and well-ordered government of the world. The individualism of Dr. Clifford leads straight to anarchy; the unchecked development of the party-system means the corrupt tyranny of the caucus; the triumph of Syndicalism would involve the tragedy of class war; the dream of the reunion of humanity in the bosom of a cosmopolitan church is a vain revival of a mediæval illusion. The individual must be brought to recognize that politically he has no separate existence, and must learn to limit his operations to his proper share in the constitution and determination of the general will; party must be remorselessly reduced to its legitimate subordination to the interests of the community as a whole; syndicates and trade unions must be prevented from cutting themselves loose from the body of the nation, must be compelled to recognize the supremacy of the law of the land, and must be deprived of any inequitable privileges which they may have secured; ecclesiastics of all orders must be persuaded to rest content with such autonomy as the general will may grant them, and must strive to become, not a separate corporation, but the indwelling and directing conscience of the people. The State must be supreme.

What is the State which is thus exalted above all rivals? Let Mr. Bernard Bosanquet answer. "The State," he says, "is not merely the political fabric. The term 'State' accents indeed the political aspect of the whole, and is opposed to the notion of an anarchic society. But it includes the entire hierarchy of institutions by which life is determined, from the family to the trade, and from the trade to the church and the university. It includes all of them, not as the mere collection of the growths of the country, but as the structures which give life and meaning to the political whole, while receiving from it mutual adjustment, and therefore expansion and a more liberal air."[51] In a similar strain T. H. Green says: "The State is for its members, the society of societies, the society in which all their claims upon each other are mutually adjusted."[52] The keynote of both of these profound utterances is "adjustment." They recognize the fact that the convictions and opinions of individuals differ, that the purposes of parties conflict, that the interests of racial units and social classes diverge from one another, that the demands of churches are mutually irreconcilable. They recognize further that unless individuals, parties, races, classes, churches agree in acknowledging the adjusting authority of the general will of the community to which all belong, endless struggle and hopeless chaos must supervene. No pretension is made that the State is of supernatural origin; no claim to divine right is advanced. It is admitted that the State at one time did not exist. It is foreseen that a day may come when it will be merged in a still larger community. But for the present it is the only possible organ by means of which the common will can operate in the interests of the common good. The basis of its claim for obedience rests upon the facts, first, that every individual subject, and every organized group of subjects, owes to the State, and to it alone, the conditions that make existence possible, and secondly, that only as a member of the State can the individual attain to his full development, and only under the protection of the State can the group achieve its purposes. The attainment of the common good, as that good is conceived of by the common intelligence, and by means which the common will determines--such is the ideal of the Democratic National State. Here surely is a sphere in which every man can find the fullness of life.

FOOTNOTES:

[51] Bosanquet. _Philosophical Theory of the State_, p. 150.

[52] Green. _Principles of Political Obligation_, p. 146.