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_ Chapter IV - Individual Liberty and Public Control
I
Society cannot exist without law and order, and cannot advance except
through the initiative of vigorous innovators. Yet law and order are
always hostile to innovations, and innovators are almost always, to
some extent, anarchists. Those whose minds are dominated by fear of a
relapse towards barbarism will emphasize the importance of law and
order, while those who are inspired by the hope of an advance towards
civilization will usually be more conscious of the need of individual
initiative. Both temperaments are necessary, and wisdom lies in
allowing each to operate freely where it is beneficent. But those who
are on the side of law and order, since they are reinforced by custom
and the instinct for upholding the _status quo_, have no need of a
reasoned defense. It is the innovators who have difficulty in being
allowed to exist and work. Each generation believes that this
difficulty is a thing of the past, but each generation is only
tolerant of _past_ innovations. Those of its own day are met with the
same persecution as though the principle of toleration had never been
heard of.
"In early society," says Westermarck, "customs are not only moral
rules, but the only moral rules ever thought of. The savage strictly
complies with the Hegelian command that no man must have a private
conscience. The following statement, which refers to the Tinnevelly
Shanars, may be quoted as a typical example: 'Solitary individuals
amongst them rarely adopt any new opinions, or any new course of
procedure. They follow the multitude to do evil, and they follow the
multitude to do good. They think in herds.'"[3]
[3] "The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas," 2d edition,
Vol. I, p. 119.
Those among ourselves who have never thought a thought or done a deed
in the slightest degree different from the thoughts and deeds of our
neighbors will congratulate themselves on the difference between us
and the savage. But those who have ever attempted any real innovation
cannot help feeling that the people they know are not so very unlike
the Tinnevelly Shanars.
Under the influence of socialism, even progressive opinion, in recent
years, has been hostile to individual liberty. Liberty is associated,
in the minds of reformers, with _laissez-faire_, the Manchester School,
and the exploitation of women and children which resulted from what
was euphemistically called "free competition." All these things were
evil, and required state interference; in fact, there is need of an
immense increase of state action in regard to cognate evils which
still exist. In everything that concerns the economic life of the
community, as regards both distribution and conditions of production,
what is required is more public control, not less--how much more, I
do not profess to know.
Another direction in which there is urgent need of the substitution of
law and order for anarchy is international relations. At present,
each sovereign state has complete individual freedom, subject only to
the sanction of war. This individual freedom will have to be
curtailed in regard to external relations if wars are ever to cease.
But when we pass outside the sphere of material possessions, we find
that the arguments in favor of public control almost entirely
disappear.
Religion, to begin with, is recognized as a matter in which the state
ought not to interfere. Whether a man is Christian, Mahometan, or Jew
is a question of no public concern, so long as he obeys the laws; and
the laws ought to be such as men of all religions can obey. Yet even
here there are limits. No civilized state would tolerate a religion
demanding human sacrifice. The English in India put an end to suttee,
in spite of a fixed principle of non-interference with native
religious customs. Perhaps they were wrong to prevent suttee, yet
almost every European would have done the same. We cannot _effectively_
doubt that such practices ought to be stopped, however we may theorize
in favor of religious liberty.
In such cases, the interference with liberty is imposed from without
by a higher civilization. But the more common case, and the more
interesting, is when an independent state interferes on behalf of
custom against individuals who are feeling their way toward more
civilized beliefs and institutions.
"In New South Wales," says Westermarck, "the first-born of every lubra
used to be eaten by the tribe 'as part of a religious ceremony.' In
the realm of Khai-muh, in China, according to a native account, it was
customary to kill and devour the eldest son alive. Among certain
tribes in British Columbia the first child is often sacrificed to the
sun. The Indians of Florida, according to Le Moyne de Morgues,
sacrificed the first-born son to the chief....'"[4]
[4] _Op cit._, p. 459.
There are pages and pages of such instances.
There is nothing analogous to these practices among ourselves. When
the first-born in Florida was told that his king and country needed
him, this was a mere mistake, and with us mistakes of this kind do not
occur. But it is interesting to inquire how these superstitions died
out, in such cases, for example, as that of Khai-muh, where foreign
compulsion is improbable. We may surmise that some parents, under the
selfish influence of parental affection, were led to doubt whether the
sun would really be angry if the eldest child were allowed to live.
Such rationalism would be regarded as very dangerous, since it was
calculated to damage the harvest. For generations the opinion would
be cherished in secret by a handful of cranks, who would not be able
to act upon it. At last, by concealment or flight, a few parents
would save their children from the sacrifice. Such parents would be
regarded as lacking all public spirit, and as willing to endanger the
community for their private pleasure. But gradually it would appear
that the state remained intact, and the crops were no worse than in
former years. Then, by a fiction, a child would be deemed to have
been sacrificed if it was solemnly dedicated to agriculture or some
other work of national importance chosen by the chief. It would be
many generations before the child would be allowed to choose its own
occupation after it had grown old enough to know its own tastes and
capacities. And during all those generations, children would be
reminded that only an act of grace had allowed them to live at all,
and would exist under the shadow of a purely imaginary duty to the
state.
The position of those parents who first disbelieved in the utility of
infant sacrifice illustrates all the difficulties which arise in
connection with the adjustment of individual freedom to public
control. The authorities, believing the sacrifice necessary for the
good of the community, were bound to insist upon it; the parents,
believing it useless, were equally bound to do everything in their
power toward saving the child. How ought both parties to act in such
a case?
The duty of the skeptical parent is plain: to save the child by any
possible means, to preach the uselessness of the sacrifice in season
and out of season, and to endure patiently whatever penalty the law
may indict for evasion. But the duty of the authorities is far less
clear. So long as they remain firmly persuaded that the universal
sacrifice of the first-born is indispensable, they are bound to
persecute those who seek to undermine this belief. But they will, if
they are conscientious, very carefully examine the arguments of
opponents, and be willing in advance to admit that these arguments
_may_ be sound. They will carefully search their own hearts to see
whether hatred of children or pleasure in cruelty has anything to do
with their belief. They will remember that in the past history of
Khai-muh there are innumerable instances of beliefs, now known to be
false, on account of which those who disagreed with the prevalent view
were put to death. Finally they will reflect that, though errors
which are traditional are often wide-spread, new beliefs seldom win
acceptance unless they are nearer to the truth than what they replace;
and they will conclude that a new belief is probably either an
advance, or so unlikely to become common as to be innocuous. All
these considerations will make them hesitate before they resort to
punishment.
II
The study of past times and uncivilized races makes it clear beyond
question that the customary beliefs of tribes or nations are almost
invariably false. It is difficult to divest ourselves completely of
the customary beliefs of our own age and nation, but it is not very
difficult to achieve a certain degree of doubt in regard to them. The
Inquisitor who burnt men at the stake was acting with true humanity if
all his beliefs were correct; but if they were in error at any point,
he was inflicting a wholly unnecessary cruelty. A good working maxim
in such matters is this: Do not trust customary beliefs so far as to
perform actions which must be disastrous unless the beliefs in
question are wholly true. The world would be utterly bad, in the
opinion of the average Englishman, unless he could say "Britannia
rules the waves"; in the opinion of the average German, unless he
could say "Deutschland Ÿber alles." For the sake of these beliefs,
they are willing to destroy European civilization. If the beliefs
should happen to be false, their action is regrettable.
One fact which emerges from these considerations is that no obstacle
should be placed in the way of thought and its expression, nor yet in
the way of statements of fact. This was formerly common ground among
liberal thinkers, though it was never quite realized in the practice
of civilized countries. But it has recently become, throughout
Europe, a dangerous paradox, on account of which men suffer
imprisonment or starvation. For this reason it has again become worth
stating. The grounds for it are so evident that I should be ashamed
to repeat them if they were not universally ignored. But in the
actual world it is very necessary to repeat them.
To attain complete truth is not given to mortals, but to advance
toward it by successive steps is not impossible. On any matter of
general interest, there is usually, in any given community at any
given time, a received opinion, which is accepted as a matter of
course by all who give no special thought to the matter. Any
questioning of the received opinion rouses hostility, for a number of
reasons.
The most important of these is the instinct of conventionality, which
exists in all gregarious animals and often leads them to put to death
any markedly peculiar member of the herd.
The next most important is the feeling of insecurity aroused by doubt
as to the beliefs by which we are in the habit of regulating our
lives. Whoever has tried to explain the philosophy of Berkeley to a
plain man will have seen in its unadulterated form the anger aroused
by this feeling. What the plain man derives from Berkeley's
philosophy at a first hearing is an uncomfortable suspicion that
nothing is solid, so that it is rash to sit on a chair or to expect
the floor to sustain us. Because this suspicion is uncomfortable, it
is irritating, except to those who regard the whole argument as merely
nonsense. And in a more or less analogous way any questioning of what
has been taken for granted destroys the feeling of standing on solid
ground, and produces a condition of bewildered fear.
A third reason which makes men dislike novel opinions is that vested
interests are bound up with old beliefs. The long fight of the church
against science, from Giordano Bruno to Darwin, is attributable to
this motive among others. The horror of socialism which existed in
the remote past was entirely attributable to this cause. But it would
be a mistake to assume, as is done by those who seek economic motives
everywhere, that vested interests are the principal source of anger
against novelties in thought. If this were the case, intellectual
progress would be much more rapid than it is.
The instinct of conventionality, horror of uncertainty, and vested
interests, all militate against the acceptance of a new idea. And it
is even harder to think of a new idea than to get it accepted; most
people might spend a lifetime in reflection without ever making a
genuinely original discovery.
In view of all these obstacles, it is not likely that any society at
any time will suffer from a plethora of heretical opinions. Least of
all is this likely in a modern civilized society, where the conditions
of life are in constant rapid change, and demand, for successful
adaptation, an equally rapid change in intellectual outlook. There
should be an attempt, therefore, to encourage, rather than discourage,
the expression of new beliefs and the dissemination of knowledge
tending to support them. But the very opposite is, in fact, the case.
From childhood upward, everything is done to make the minds of men and
women conventional and sterile. And if, by misadventure, some spark
of imagination remains, its unfortunate possessor is considered
unsound and dangerous, worthy only of contempt in time of peace and of
prison or a traitor's death in time of war. Yet such men are known to
have been in the past the chief benefactors of mankind, and are the
very men who receive most honor as soon as they are safely dead.
The whole realm of thought and opinion is utterly unsuited to public
control; it ought to be as free, and as spontaneous as is possible to
those who know what others have believed. The state is justified in
insisting that children shall be educated, but it is not justified in
forcing their education to proceed on a uniform plan and to be
directed to the production of a dead level of glib uniformity.
Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which
individual initiative is the chief thing needed; the function of the
state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education,
and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a
kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government
officials.
III
Questions of practical morals raise more difficult problems than
questions of mere opinion. The thugs honestly believe it their duty
to commit murders, but the government does not acquiesce. The
conscientious objectors honestly hold the opposite opinion, and again
the government does not acquiesce. Killing is a state prerogative; it
is equally criminal to do it unbidden and not to do it when bidden.
The same applies to theft, unless it is on a large scale or by one who
is already rich. Thugs and thieves are men who use force in their
dealings with their neighbors, and we may lay it down broadly that the
private use of force should be prohibited except in rare cases,
however conscientious may be its motive. But this principle will not
justify compelling men to use force at the bidding of the state, when
they do not believe it justified by the occasion. The punishment of
conscientious objectors seems clearly a violation of individual
liberty within its legitimate sphere.
It is generally assumed without question that the state has a right to
punish certain kinds of sexual irregularity. No one doubts that the
Mormons sincerely believed polygamy to be a desirable practice, yet
the United States required them to abandon its legal recognition, and
probably any other Christian country would have done likewise.
Nevertheless, I do not think this prohibition was wise. Polygamy is
legally permitted in many parts of the world, but is not much
practised except by chiefs and potentates. If, as Europeans generally
believe, it is an undesirable custom, it is probable that the Mormons
would have soon abandoned it, except perhaps for a few men of
exceptional position. If, on the other hand, it had proved a
successful experiment, the world would have acquired a piece of
knowledge which it is now unable to possess. I think in all such
cases the law should only intervene when there is some injury
inflicted without the consent of the injured person.
It is obvious that men and women would not tolerate having their wives
or husbands selected by the state, whatever eugenists might have to
say in favor of such a plan. In this it seems clear that ordinary
public opinion is in the right, not because people choose wisely, but
because any choice of their own is better than a forced marriage.
What applies to marriage ought also to apply to the choice of a trade
or profession; although some men have no marked preferences, most men
greatly prefer some occupations to others, and are far more likely to
be useful citizens if they follow their preferences than if they are
thwarted by a public authority.
The case of the man who has an intense conviction that he ought to do
a certain kind of work is peculiar, and perhaps not very common; but
it is important because it includes some very important individuals.
Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale defied convention in obedience to
a feeling of this sort; reformers and agitators in unpopular causes,
such as Mazzini, have belonged to this class; so have many men of
science. In cases of this kind the individual conviction deserves the
greatest respect, even if there seems no obvious justification for it.
Obedience to the impulse is very unlikely to do much harm, and may
well do great good. The practical difficulty is to distinguish such
impulses from desires which produce similar manifestations. Many
young people wish to be authors without having an impulse to write any
particular book, or wish to be painters without having an impulse to
create any particular picture. But a little experience will usually
show the difference between a genuine and a spurious impulse; and
there is less harm in indulging the spurious impulse for a time than
in thwarting the impulse which is genuine. Nevertheless, the plain
man almost always has a tendency to thwart the genuine impulse,
because it seems anarchic and unreasonable, and is seldom able to give
a good account of itself in advance.
What is markedly true of some notable personalities is true, in a
lesser degree, of almost every individual who has much vigor or force
of life; there is an impulse towards activity of some kind, as a rule
not very definite in youth, but growing gradually more sharply
outlined under the influence of education and opportunity. The direct
impulse toward a kind of activity for its own sake must be
distinguished from the desire for the expected effects of the
activity. A young man may desire the rewards of great achievement
without having any spontaneous impulse toward the activities which
lead to achievement. But those who actually achieve much, although
they may desire the rewards, have also something in their nature which
inclines them to choose a certain kind of work as the road which they
must travel if their ambition is to be satisfied. This artist's
impulse, as it may be called, is a thing of infinite value to the
individual, and often to the world; to respect it in oneself and in
others makes up nine tenths of the good life. In most human beings it
is rather frail, rather easily destroyed or disturbed; parents and
teachers are too often hostile to it, and our economic system crushes
out its last remnants in young men and young women. The result is
that human beings cease to be individual, or to retain the native
pride that is their birthright; they become machine-made, tame,
convenient for the bureaucrat and the drill-sergeant, capable of being
tabulated in statistics without anything being omitted. This is the
fundamental evil resulting from lack of liberty; and it is an evil
which is being continually intensified as population grows more dense
and the machinery of organization grows more efficient.
The things that men desire are many and various: admiration,
affection, power, security, ease, outlets for energy, are among the
commonest of motives. But such abstractions do not touch what makes
the difference between one man and another. Whenever I go to the
zošlogical gardens, I am struck by the fact that all the movements of
a stork have some common quality, differing from the movements of a
parrot or an ostrich. It is impossible to put in words what the
common quality is, and yet we feel that each thing an animal does is
the sort of thing we might expect that animal to do. This indefinable
quality constitutes the individuality of the animal, and gives rise to
the pleasure we feel in watching the animal's actions. In a human
being, provided he has not been crushed by an economic or governmental
machine, there is the same kind of individuality, a something
distinctive without which no man or woman can achieve much of
importance, or retain the full dignity which is native to human
beings. It is this distinctive individuality that is loved by the
artist, whether painter or writer. The artist himself, and the man
who is creative in no matter what direction, has more of it than the
average man. Any society which crushes this quality, whether
intentionally or by accident, must soon become utterly lifeless and
traditional, without hope of progress and without any purpose in its
being. To preserve and strengthen the impulse that makes
individuality should be the foremost object of all political
institutions.
IV
We now arrive at certain general principles in regard to individual
liberty and public control.
The greater part of human impulses may be divided into two classes,
those which are possessive and those which are constructive or
creative. Social institutions are the garments or embodiments of
impulses, and may be classified roughly according to the impulses
which they embody. Property is the direct expression of
possessiveness; science and art are among the most direct expressions
of creativeness. Possessiveness is either defensive or aggressive; it
seeks either to retain against a robber, or to acquire from a present
holder. In either case an attitude of hostility toward others is of
its essence. It would be a mistake to suppose that defensive
possessiveness is always justifiable, while the aggressive kind is
always blameworthy; where there is great injustice in the _status
quo_, the exact opposite may be the case, and ordinarily neither is
justifiable.
State interference with the actions of individuals is necessitated by
possessiveness. Some goods can be acquired or retained by force,
while others cannot. A wife can be acquired by force, as the Romans
acquired the Sabine women; but a wife's affection cannot be acquired
in this way. There is no record that the Romans desired the affection
of the Sabine women; and those in whom possessive impulses are strong
tend to care chiefly for the goods that force can secure. All
material goods belong to this class. Liberty in regard to such goods,
if it were unrestricted, would make the strong rich and the weak poor.
In a capitalistic society, owing to the partial restraints imposed by
law, it makes cunning men rich and honest men poor, because the force
of the state is put at men's disposal, not according to any just or
rational principle, but according to a set of traditional maxims of
which the explanation is purely historical.
In all that concerns possession and the use of force, unrestrained
liberty involves anarchy and injustice. Freedom to kill, freedom to
rob, freedom to defraud, no longer belong to individuals, though they
still belong to great states, and are exercised by them in the name of
patriotism. Neither individuals nor states ought to be free to exert
force on their own initiative, except in such sudden emergencies as
will subsequently be admitted in justification by a court of law. The
reason for this is that the exertion of force by one individual
against another is always an evil on both sides, and can only be
tolerated when it is compensated by some overwhelming resultant good.
In order to minimize the amount of force actually exerted in the
world, it is necessary that there should be a public authority, a
repository of practically irresistible force, whose function should be
primarily to repress the private use of force. A use of force is
_private_ when it is exerted by one of the interested parties, or by
his friends or accomplices, not by a public neutral authority
according to some rule which is intended to be in the public interest.
The rŽgime of private property under which we live does much too
little to restrain the private use of force. When a man owns a piece
of land, for example, he may use force against trespassers, though
they must not use force against him. It is clear that some
restriction of the liberty of trespass is necessary for the
cultivation of the land. But if such powers are to be given to an
individual, the state ought to satisfy itself that he occupies no more
land than he is warranted in occupying in the public interest, and
that the share of the produce of the land that comes to him is no more
than a just reward for his labors. Probably the only way in which
such ends can be achieved is by state ownership of land. The
possessors of land and capital are able at present, by economic
pressure, to use force against those who have no possessions. This
force is sanctioned by law, while force exercised by the poor against
the rich is illegal. Such a state of things is unjust, and does not
diminish the use of private force as much as it might be diminished.
The whole realm of the possessive impulses, and of the use of force to
which they give rise, stands in need of control by a public neutral
authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice.
Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state; in
relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will
have to be some international parliament.
But the motive underlying the public control of men's possessive
impulses should always be the increase of liberty, both by the
prevention of private tyranny and by the liberation of creative
impulses. If public control is not to do more harm than good, it must
be so exercised as to leave the utmost freedom of private initiative
in all those ways that do not involve the private use of force. In
this respect all governments have always failed egregiously, and there
is no evidence that they are improving.
The creative impulses, unlike those that are possessive, are directed
to ends in which one man's gain is not another man's loss. The man
who makes a scientific discovery or writes a poem is enriching others
at the same time as himself. Any increase in knowledge or good-will
is a gain to all who are affected by it, not only to the actual
possessor. Those who feel the joy of life are a happiness to others
as well as to themselves. Force cannot create such things, though it
can destroy them; no principle of distributive justice applies to
them, since the gain of each is the gain of all. For these reasons,
the creative part of a man's activity ought to be as free as possible
from all public control, in order that it may remain spontaneous and
full of vigor. The only function of the state in regard to this part
of the individual life should be to do everything possible toward
providing outlets and opportunities.
In every life a part is governed by the community, and a part by
private initiative. The part governed by private initiative is
greatest in the most important individuals, such as men of genius and
creative thinkers. This part ought only to be restricted when it is
predatory; otherwise, everything ought to be done to make it as great
and as vigorous as possible. The object of education ought not to be
to make all men think alike, but to make each think in the way which
is the fullest expression of his own personality. In the choice of a
means of livelihood all young men and young women ought, as far as
possible, to be able to choose what is attractive to them; if no
money-making occupation is attractive, they ought to be free to do
little work for little pay, and spend their leisure as they choose.
Any kind of censure on freedom of thought or on the dissemination of
knowledge is, of course, to be condemned utterly.
Huge organizations, both political and economic, are one of the
distinguishing characteristics of the modern world. These
organizations have immense power, and often use their power to
discourage originality in thought and action. They ought, on the
contrary, to give the freest scope that is possible without producing
anarchy or violent conflict. They ought not to take cognizance of any
part of a man's life except what is concerned with the legitimate
objects of public control, namely, possessions and the use of force.
And they ought, by devolution, to leave as large a share of control as
possible in the hands of individuals and small groups. If this is not
done, the men at the head of these vast organizations will infallibly
become tyrannous through the habit of excessive power, and will in
time interfere in ways that crush out individual initiative.
The problem which faces the modern world is the combination of
individual initiative with the increase in the scope and size of
organizations. Unless it is solved, individuals will grow less and
less full of life and vigor, and more and more passively submissive to
conditions imposed upon them. A society composed of such individuals
cannot be progressive or add much to the world's stock of mental and
spiritual possessions. Only personal liberty and the encouragement of
initiative can secure these things. Those who resist authority when
it encroaches upon the legitimate sphere of the individual are
performing a service to society, however little society may value it.
In regard to the past, this is universally acknowledged; but it is no
less true in regard to the present and the future.
___
End ofChapter IV - Individual Liberty and Public Control
[Bertrand Russell's essay: Political Ideals] _
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