all would have gone well. But the beneficiaries
of privilege, the Bourbon reactionaries, the short-
sighted ulta-conservatlves, turned down Turgot;
and then found that Instead of him they had
obtained Robespierre. They gained twenty years'
freedom from all restraint and reform at the cost
of the whirlwind of the red terror; and In their
turn the unbridled extremists of the terror In-
duced a blind reaction; and so, with convulsion
and oscillation from one extreme to another, with
alterations of violent radicalism and violent
Bourbonism, the French people went through
misery to a shattered goal."

Profound changes are not only necessary, but
highly desirable. Even if this country were com-
fortably well-off, healthy, prosperous, and edu-
cated, men would go on Inventing and creating
opportunities to amplify the possibilities of life.
These inventions would mean radical transforma-

284



REVOLUTION AND CULTURE

tions. For we are bent upon establishing more
in this nation than a minimum of comfort. A
liberal people would welcome social Inventions as
gladly as we do mechanical ones. What it would
fear Is a hard-shell resistance to change which
brings It about explosively.

Catastrophes are disastrous to radical and con-
servative alike: they do not preserve what was
worth maintaining; they allow a deformed and
often monstrous perversion of the original plan.
The emancipation of the slaves might teach us
the lesson that an explosion followed by recon-
struction is satisfactory to nobody.

Statesmanship would go out to meet a crisis
before It had become acute. The thing It would
emphatically not do Is to dam up an insurgent
current until It overflowed the countryside. Fight
labor's demands to the last ditch and there will
come a time when it seizes the whole of power,
makes itself sovereign, and takes v/hat It used
to ask. That is a poor way for a nation to pro-
ceed. For the insurgent become master is a
fanatic from the struggle, and as George San-
tayana says, he is only too likely to redouble his
effort after he has forgotten his aim.

Nobody need waste his time debating whether
or not there are to be great changes. That is

285



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

settled for us whether we like It or not. What
is worth debating Is the method by which change
is to come about. Our choice, It seems to me, lies
between a bhnd push and a deliberate leadership,
between thwarting movements until they master
us, and domesticating them until they are an-
swered.

When Roosevelt formed the Progressive Party
on a platform of social reform he crystallized
a deep unrest, brought it out of the cellars of
resentment Into the agora of political discussion.
He performed the real task of a leader — a task
which has essentially two dimensions. By be-
coming part of the dynamics of unrest he gathered
a power of effectiveness: by formulating a pro-
gram for Insurgency he translated it into terms of
public service.

What Roosevelt did at the middle-class level,
the socialists have done at the proletarian. The
world has been slow to recognize the work of
the Socialist Party in transmuting a dumb mutter-
ing into a civilized program. It has found an
intelligent outlet for forces that would otherwise
be purely cataclysmic. The truth of this has
been tested recently in the appearance of the
**dlrect actlonists."

They are men who have lost faith in political



REVOLUTION AND CULTURE

socialism. Why? Because, like all other groups,
the socialists tend to become routineers, to slip
into an easy reiteration. The direct actionists
are a warning to the Socialist Party that its tactics
and its program are not adequate to domesticating
the deepest unrest of labor. Within that party,
therefore, a leadership is required which will ride
the forces of ''syndicalism" and use them for a
constructive purpose. The brilliant writer of the
"Notes of the Week" in the English New Age
has shown how this might be done. He has
fused the insight of the syndicalist with the plans
of the coUectivists under the name of Guild
Socialism.

His plan calls for co-management of industry
by the state and the labor union. It steers a
course between exploitation by a bureaucracy in
the interests of the consumer — the socialist dan-
ger — and oppressive monopolies by industrial
unions — the syndicalist danger. I shall not at-
tempt to argue here either for or against the
scheme. My concern is with method rather than
with special pleadings. The Guild Socialism of
the ''New Age" is merely an instance of states-
manlike dealing with a new social force. Instead
of throwing up its hands in horror at one over-
advertised tactical incident like sabotage, the

287



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

*'New Age" went straight to the creative impulse
of the syndlcahst movement.

Every true craftsman, artist or professional
man knows and sympathizes with that impulse:
you may call it a desire for self-direction in labor.
The deepest revolt implied in the term syndic-
alism is against the impersonal, driven quality
of modern industry — against the destruction of
that pride which alone distinguishes work from
slavery. Some such impulse as that is what marks
off syndicalism from the other revolts of labor.
Our suspicion of the coUectivist arrangement is
aroused by the picture of a vast state machine so
horribly well-regulated that human impulse is ut-
terly subordinated. I believe too that the fighting
qualities of syndicalism are kept at the boiling
point by a greater sense of outraged human
dignity than can be found among mere socialists
or unionists. The imagination is more vivid:
the horror of capitalism Is not alone In the poverty
and suffering it entails, but in its ruthless denial
of life to millions of men. The most cruel of
all denials is to deprive a human being of joyous
activity. Syndicalism is shot through with the
assertion that an imposed drudgery Is intolerable
— that labor at a subsistence wage as a cog in a
meaningless machine is no condition upon which

^88



REVOLUTION AND CULTURE

to found civilization. That is a new kind of
revolt — more dangerous to capitalism than the
demand for higher wages. You can not treat
the syndicalists like cattle because forsooth they
have ceased to be cattle. *'The damned wantless-
ness of the poor," about which Oscar Wilde com-
plained, the cry for a little more fodder, gives
way to an insistence upon the chance to be in-
terested in life.

To shut the door in the face of such a current
of feeling because it is occasionally exasperated
into violence would be as futile as locking up
children because they get into mischief. The
mind which rejects syndicalism entirely because
of the by-products of its despair has had pearls
cast before it in vain. I know that syndicalism
means a revision of some of our plans — that it
is an intrusion upon many a glib prejudice. But
a human impulse is more important than any ex-
isting theory. We must not throw an unex^
pected guest out of the window because no place
is set for him at table. For we lose not only
the charm of his company: he may in anger
wreck the house.

Yet the whole nation can't sit at one table : the
politician will object that all human interests can't

289



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

be embodied in a party program. That is true,
truer than most politicians would admit in public.
No party can represent a whole nation, although,
with the exception of the socialists, all of them
pretend to do just that. The reason is very
simple: a platform is a list of performances that
are possible within a few years. It is concerned
with more or less immediate proposals, and in
a nation split up by class, sectional and racial
interests, these proposals are sure to arouse hos-
tility. No definite industrial and political plat-
form, for example, can satisfy rich and poor,
black and white. Eastern creditor and Western
farmer. A party that tried to answer every con-
flicting interest would stand still because people
were pulling in so many different directions. It
would arouse the anger of every group and the
approval of its framers. It would have no
dynamic power because the forces would neutralize
each other.

One comprehensive party platform fusing every
interest is impossible and undesirable. What is
both possible and desirable is that every group
interest should be represented in public life —
that It should have spokesmen and influence in
public affairs. This is almost impossible to-day.
Our blundering political system is pachydermic in

^90



REVOLUTION AND CULTURE

its irresponslveness. The methods of securing
representation are unfit instruments for any flex-
ible use. But the United States is evidently not
exceptional in this respect. England seems to
suffer in the same way. In May, 19 12, the
"Daily Mail" published a series of articles by
H. G. Wells on 'The Labour Unrest.'^ Is he
not describing almost any session of Congress
when he says that "to go Into the House of
Commons is to go aside out of the general stream
of the community's vitality Into a corner where
little is learnt and much is concocted, into a
specialized Assembly which is at once inattentive
to and monstrously Influential in our affairs?'*
Further on Wells remarks that "this diminishing
actuality of our political life is a matter of almost
universal comment to-day. ... In Great
Britain we do not have Elections any more; we
have Rejections. What really happens at a
general election is that the party organizations —
obscure and secretive conclaves with entirely
mysterious funds — appoint about 1200 men to be
our rulers, and all that we, we so-called self-
governing people, are permitted to do Is, in a
muddled angry way, to strike off the names of
about half these selected gentlemen."

A cynic might say that the people can't go far
^91



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

wrong In politics because they can't be very right.
Our so-called representative system is unrepresen-
tative in a deeper way than the reformers who
talk about the money power imagine. It is empty
and thin: a stifling of living currents in the in-
terest of a mediocre regularity.

But suppose that politics were made responsive
— suppose that the forces of the community found
avenues of expression into public life. Would
not our legislatures be cut up into antagonistic
parties, would not the conflicts of the nation be
concentrated into one heated hall? If you really
represented the country in its government, would
you not get its partisanship in a quintessential
form? After all group interests in the nation
are diluted by space and time: the mere separa-
tion In cities and country prevents them from
falling into the psychology of the crowd. But
let them all be represented in one room by men
who are professionally interested In their con-
stituency's prejudices and what would you accom-
plish but a deepening of the cleavages? Would
the session not become an Interminable wrangle?

Nobody can answer these questions with any
certainty. Most prophecies are simply the mas-
querades of prejudice, and the people who love
stability and prefer to let their own well-being

^92



REVOLUTION AND CULTURE

alone will see in a sensitive political system little
but an invitation to chaos. They will choose
facts to adorn their fears. History can be all
things to all men: nothing is easier than to sum-
mon the Terror, the Commune, lynchings in the
Southern States, as witnesses to the excesses and
hysterias of the mob. Those facts will prove the
case conclusively to anyone who has already made
up his mind on the subject. Absolute democrats
can also line up their witnesses: the conservatism
of the Swiss, Wisconsin's successful experiments,
the patience and judgment of the Danes. Both
sides are remarkably sure that the right is with
them, whereas the only truth about which an
observer can be entirely certain is that in some
places and in certain instances democracy is ad-
mittedly successful.

There is no absolute case one way or the other.
It would be silly from the experience we have
to make a simple judgment about the value of
direct expression. You cannot lump such a mass
of events together and come to a single conclusion
about them. It is a crude habit of mind that
would attempt it. You might as well talk ab-
stractly about the goodness or badness of this
universe which contains happiness, pain, exhilara-
tion and indifference in a thousand varying grades

293



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

and quantities. There is no such thing as Democ-
racy; there are a number of more or less demo-
cratic experiments which are not subject to whole-
sale eulogy or condemnation.

The questions about the success of a truly rep-
resentative system are pseudo-questions. And
for this reason: success is not due to the system;
it does not flow from it automatically. The
source of success is in the people who use the
system: as an instrument it may help or hinder
them, but they must operate it. Government is
not a machine running on straight tracks to a
desired goal. It is a human work which may be
facilitated by good tools.

That is why the achievements of the Swiss
may mean nothing whatever when you come to
prophesy about the people of New York. Be-
cause Wisconsin has made good use of the direct
primary it does not follow that it will benefit the
Filipino. It always seems curious to watch the
satisfaction of some reform magazines when
China or Turkey or Persia imitates the consti-
tutional forms of Western democracies. Such
enthusiasts postulate a uniformity of human ability
which every fact of life contradicts.

Present-day reform lays a great emphasis upon
instruments and very little on the skilful use of

294^



REVOLUTION AND CULTURE

them. It says that human nature is all right,
that what is wrong is the "system." Now the
effect of this has been to concentrate attention
on institutions and to slight men. A small step
further, institutions become an end in themselves.
They may violate human nature as the taboo
does. That does not disturb the interest in them
very much, for by common consent reformers are
to fix their minds upon the "system."

A machine should be run by men for human
uses. The preoccupation with the "system" lays
altogether too little stress on the men who operate
it and the men for whom it is run. It is as if
you put all your effort into the working of a
plough and forgot the farmer and the consumer.
I state the case baldly and contradiction would
be easy. The reformer might point to phrases
like "human welfare" which appear in his writ-
ings. And yet the point stands, I believe. The
emphasis which directs his thinking bears most
heavily upon the mechanics of life — only per-
functorily upon the ability of the men who are to
use them.

Even an able reformer like Mr. Frederic C.
Howe does not escape entirely. A recent book is
devoted to a glowing eulogy of "Wisconsin, an
Experiment in Democracy." In a concluding

295



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

chapter Mr. Howe states the philosophy of the
experiment. "What is the explanation of Wis-
consin?" he asks. "Why has it been able to
eliminate corruption, machine politics, and rid it-
self of the boss? What is the cause of the effi-
ciency, the thoroughness, the desire to serve which
animate the state? Why has Wisconsin suc-
ceeded where other states have uniformly failed?
I think the explanation is simple. It is also per-
fectly natural. It is traceable to democracy, to
the political freedom which had its beginning in
the direct primary law, and which has been con-
tinuously strengthened by later laws"; some pages
later, "Wisconsin assumed that the trouble with
our politics is not with our people, but with the
machinery with which the people work. . . .
It has established a line of vision as direct as
possible between the people and the expression
of their will." The impression Mr. Howe evi-
dently wishes to leave with his readers Is that
the success of the experiment is due to the instru-
ments rather than to the talent of the people of
Wisconsin. That would be a valuable and com-
forting assurance to propagandists, for it means
that other states with the same instruments can
achieve the same success. But the conclusion
seems to me utterly unfounded. The reasoning

^96



REVOLUTION AND CULTURE

is perilously like that of the gifted lady amateur
who expects to achieve greatness by imitating
the paint box and palette, oils and canvases of an
artist.

Mr. Howe's own book undermines his con-
clusions. He begins with an account of La
Follette — of a man with initiative and a con-
structive bent. The forces La Follette set in
motion are commented upon. The work of Van
Hise is shown. What Wisconsin had was leader-
ship and a people that responded, inventors, and
constructive minds. They forged the direct
primary and the State University out of the im-
petus within themselves. No doubt they were
fortunate in their choice of instruments. They
made the expression of the people's will direct,
yet that will surely is the more primary thing.
It makes and uses representative systems : but you
cannot reverse the process. A man can manu-
facture a plough and operate it, but no amount
of ploughs will create a man and endow him
with skill.

All sorts of observers have pointed out that
the Western States adopt reform legislation more
quickly than the Eastern. Yet no one would
seriously maintain that the West is more progres-
sive because it has progressive laws. The laws

297



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

are a symptom and an aid but certainly not the
cause. Constitutions do not make people; people
make constitutions. So the task of reform con-
sists not in presenting a state with progressive
laws, but in getting the people to want them.

The practical difference is extraordinary. I
insist upon It so much because the tendency of
political discussion is to regard government as
automatic: a device that is sure to fail or sure
to succeed. It is sure of nothing. Effort moves
it, InteUIgence directs it; its fate is in human
hands.

The politics I have urged in these chapters
cannot be learned by rote. What can be taught
by rule of thumb Is the administration of prece-
dents. That is at once the easiest and the most
fruitless form of public activity. Only a low
degree of intelligence is required and of effort
merely a persistent repetition. Men fall into a
routine when they are tired and slack: it has all
the appearance of activity with few of its burdens.
It was a profound observation when Bernard
Shaw said that men dread liberty because of the
bewildering responsibility it imposes and the un-
common alertness it demands. To do what has
always been done, to think in well-cut channels,

^98



REVOLUTION AND CULTURE

to give up **the Intolerable disease of thought,"
is an almost constant demand of our natures.
That Is perhaps why so many of the romantic
rebels of the Nineteenth Century sank at last
Into the comforting arms of Mother Church.
That Is perhaps the reason why most oldish men
acquire Information, but learn very little. The
conservative who loves his routine Is In nine cases
out of ten a creature too lazy to change Its habits.
Confronted with a novelty, the first Impulse
is to snub It, and send It Into exile. When It
becomes too persistent to be Ignored a taboo Is
erected and threats of fines and condign punish-
ment are made If It doesn't cease to appear. This
Is the level of culture at which Sherman Anti-
Trust acts are passed, brothels are raided, and
labor agitators are thrown Into jail. If the taboo
Is effective It drives the evil under cover, where
It festers and emits a slow poison. This Is the
price we pay for the appearance of suppression.
But if the problem Is more heavily charged with
power, the taboo Irritates the force until It ex-
plodes. Not Infrequently what was once simply
a factor of life becomes the dominating part of
it. At this point the whole routineer scheme of
things collapses, there Is a period of convulsion
and Caesarean births, and men weary of exclte-

299



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

ment sink back into a newer routine. Thus the
cycle of futility is completed.

The process bears as much resemblance to
statecraft as sitting backward on a runaway horse
does to horsemanship. The ordinary politician
has no real control, no direction, no insight into
the power he rides. What he has is an elevated,
though temporary seat. Real statesmanship has
a different ambition. It begins by accepting
human nature. No routine has ever done that in
spite of the conservative patter about "human
nature"; mechanical politics has usually begun by
ignoring and ended by violating the nature of
men.

To accept that nature does not mean that we
accept its present character. It is probably true
that the impulses of men have changed very little
within recorded history. What has changed enor-
mously from epoch to epoch is the character
in which these impulses appear. The im-
pulses that at one period work themselves out
into cruelty and lust may at another produce the
richest values of civilized life. The statesman
can affect that choice. His business is to provide
fine opportunities for the expression of human
impulses — to surround childhood, youth and age
with homes and schools, cities and countryside

SOO



REVOLUTION AND CULTURE

that shall be stocked with interest and the chance
for generous activity.

Government can play a leading part in this
work, for with the decadence of the church it
has become the only truly catholic organization
in the land. Its task is essentially to carry out
programs of service, to add and build and increase
the facilities of life. Repression is an insigni-
ficant part of its work; the use of the club can
never be applauded, though it may be tolerated
faute de mieux. Its use is a confession of ig-
norance.

A sensitively representative machinery will
probably serve such statesmanship best. For the
easy expression of public opinion in government
is a clue to what services are needed and a test
of their success. It keeps the processes of politics
well ventilated and reminds politicians of their
excuse for existence.

In that kind of statesmanship there will be a
premium on inventiveness, on the ingenuity to
devise and plan. There will be much less use for
lawyers and a great deal more for scientists. The
work requires industrial organizers, engineers,
architects, educators, sanitists to achieve what
leadership brings into the program of politics.

This leadership is the distinctive fact about
301



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

politics. The statesman acts In part as an inter-
mediary between the experts and his constituency.
He makes social movements conscious of them-
selves, expresses their needs, gathers their power
and then thrusts them behind the Inventor and
the technician In the task of actual achievement.
What Roosevelt did In the conservation move-
ment was typical of the statesman's work. He
recognized the need of attention to natural re-
sources, made It public, crystallized Its force and
delegated the technical accomplishment to PInchot
and his subordinates.

But creative statesmanship requires a culture to
support It. It can neither be taught by rule nor
produced out of a vacuum. A community that
clatters along with Its rusty habits of thought
unquestioned, making no distinction between in-
struments and Idols, with a dull consumption of
machine-made romantic fiction, no criticism, an
empty pulpit and an unreliable press, will find
itself faithfully mirrored In public affairs. The
one thing that no democrat may assume Is that
the people are dear good souls, fully competent
for their task. The most valuable leaders never
assume that. No one, for example, would accuse
Karl Marx of disloyalty to worklngmen. Yet in

302



REVOLUTION AND CULTURE

1850 he could write at the demagogues among his
friends: "While we draw the attention of the
German workman to the undeveloped state of the
proletariat in Germany, you flatter the national
spirit and the guild prejudices of the German
artisans in the grossest manner, a method of pro-
cedure without doubt the more popular of the
two. Just as the democrats made a sort of fetich
of the words, 'the people,' so you make one of
the word 'proletariat.' " John Spargo quotes this
statement in his "Life." Marx, we are told,
could use phrases like "democratic miasma." He
never seems to have made the mistake of confus-
ing democracy with demolatry. Spargo is per-