Sidney Hook

“ In a democratic community education must pitch the ideal of the hero in a different key from that of the event-making man. The heroes in a democracy should be the great figures in the Pantheon of thought, the men of ideas, of social vision, of scientific achievement and artistic power. For it is these men who mould the intellectual ideals and social attitudes of the citizens, who without knowledge, quickened perception, and educated taste cannot realize the promise of democracy. ”

“ But the Bolshevik Party became the instrument it did because of Lenin. It is doubtful whether any man before him ever wielded such power in a political party; certainly not in an organization that professed to be democratic or socialistic.
If Lenin had not been on the scene, not a single revolutionary leader could have substituted for him. Not Stalin, by his own confession. Not Zinoviev, Lenin’s closest follower, who ran out on the October Revolution. Not Kamenev, whose mind Lenin changed at the same time he changed Stalin’s, but who acted like Zinoviev. Not Trotsky. ”

“ On Engels’ assumption that a great man is a necessary response to a social need, he should always be present. History would still be a domain of economic necessity, but the mode of its assertion would always be through great men. Yet Engels admits that great men make their bows only infrequently on the stage of history.
For Engels social need is not only a necessary condition for the appearance of a great man but also sufficient. But how does he know that, even when a great and urgent social need is present, a great man must arise to cope with it? Who or what guarantees this blessed event? ”

“ Men gratify their errant wishes, carry out their urgent duties, pit their intelligence and courage against the obstacles of nature and society—but all the time they are building something different from what they intend. In the dim fight of his understanding, each one weaves a strand in the web of destiny which is the Meaning or Reason of history. The great man is the one who is aware that the Reason of things speaks through his words and deeds. ”

“ And it is true that, in a troubled world, no democratic community can survive for long unless it entrusts its leaders with great powers. At the same time, what it gives with reluctance, it must take back with eagerness. The timing is all—and it is not likely that the hero and the community will agree on what time it is.
There cannot be any guarantee that a leader will not usurp delegated power to carry out a heroic event-making task. But a democracy would be foolish to refuse delegation of power for this reason if the situation is so crucial that decisive action must be taken at once. ”

“ The amount and quality of freedom and democracy in a society are determined by many things—economic organization, education, tradition, religion, to name only a few. But they depend just as much upon our willingness, to fight for them as upon any other thing.
Democracy is difficult, and it is made more difficult because many who call themselves democrats are totalitarians in disguise. The moral is not to call off the struggle but to struggle all the more. ”

“ Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in History a plot, a rhythm, a pre-determined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows wave; only one great fact, with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations; only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and unforeseen. ”

“ A successful democracy, therefore, may honour its statesmen; but it must honour its teachers more—whether they be prophets, scientists, poets, jurists, or philosophers. The true hero of democracy, then, should be not the soldier, or the political leader, great as their services may be, but the teacher—the Jeffersons, Holmeses, Deweys, Whitmans, and all others who have given the people vision, method, and knowledge.
It is the task of a democratic society to break down the invidious distinctions reflected in current linguistic usage between the hero and the masses or the average man. ”

“ Great men, then, may be good men. And still a democracy must be suspicious of them! For essential to democracy is the participation of the governed in determining their own welfare. This participation is coupled with the hope that the governed will select and elect their governors wisely, that is, in such a way as to gratify as many of their needs and wants as the situation permits. But more important than this hope, which is sometimes sadly at variance with the facts, is the belief that it is more worthy of men to decide their own fate than to let others decide it for them. ”

“ A sharp crisis in social and political affairs—when something must be done and done quickly—naturally intensifies interest in the hero. No matter what one’s political complexion, hope for the resolution of a crisis is always bound up with hope for the appearance of strong or intelligent leadership to cope with difficulties and perils. The more urgent the crisis, the more intense is the loning, whether it be a silent prayer or public exhortation, for the proper man to master it. ”

“ In a world where the engines of human destruction are becoming more and more deadly, the problem of preventing war must be met before modern civilization goes down into shambles. Few people profess to enjoy war, everyone deplores its costs, and although the different sides lose unequally in a war, it is questionable whether any long war is economically profitable to anybody. Why then should not the universal acceptance of an absolute pacifism like Tolstoy’s be the solution to the problem? ”

“ No one can plausibly maintain that Shakespeare had any influence on the occurrence or non-occurrence of decisive historical events. It is not precluded that heroes of thought might also be great men of action or that the consequences of their ideas, as in the case of inventors, religious leaders, and social philosophers, might have impressive historical effects. But it is to the record of events that we must turn to evaluate their claims. In the history of the ancient world, it is Alexander, whose name does not appear on the list, who emerges as a historical hero rather than Aristotle. ”

“ Daily toil on any level has its own occasions of struggle, victory, and quiet death. A democracy should contrive its affairs, not to give one or a few the chance to reach heroic stature, but rather to take as a regulative ideal the slogan, “every man a hero.”
We call this a “regulative ideal” because It would be Utopian to imagine that it could ever be literally embodied. As a regulative ideal it gives direction to policies that enable society to make the best of whatever powers are available to men. ”

“ They find their own way to the tasks they feel called to fulfil, unless crushed by a hostile environment or isolated by the tide of events. Democracies do not have to seek these heroes when it seeks leaders. For if they exist, they will make themselves heard. A democracy must always be girded to protect itself against them even as it uses them, relying not on their intentions, which are always honourable but not infrequently messianic, but on the mechanisms of its own democratic institutions, on the plurality of centres of power and interest, and on the spirit of its education and morale. ”

“ It is to the machine then and not to the social class that we must look to uncover the chief dependence of the hero. Whether it be a political party, a Jesuit religious order, a military camarilla, the hero must bind it to himself with hoops stronger than steel. If he is to play the man of the hour and pay his debts to the social class that supported him, the machine is a convenient instrument. If he decides to take a course independent from the one he was expected to follow, its iron loyalty is all the more necessary. In either case the machine must become his machine if he is to triumph. ”

“ But one wonders by what specific chain of causation it guides the union of sperm and egg out of which is generated the individual whose qualities enable him in season to achieve greatness. And how does the dialectical mode of economic production go about finding a substitute for the great man it produces but fails to keep alive? How long must the run be before the substitute is found? What happens to the urgent social need or historical crisis in the meantime? Does it obligingly wait until he turns up? The resolution of economic contradictions is historically necessary, says Engels. ”

“ The past closes silently behind us with the awful finality of a divine judgment. But the finality means that historical events are irreversible, not that they are all necessary, and certainly not that they are all good. A deceptive backward glance mistakes the unforeseen for the predetermined. The hypnotic influence of the long-established, of what cannot be changed, often misleads the innocent into believing that it has a hidden purpose and the pious into the blasphemy that the judgment of history is the judgment of God. ”

“ There are those who say that once collectivism in this sense is introduced we have no longer a genuine if but a foregone conclusion. To avoid the conclusion, we have to forswear collectivism. As opposed to this position it seems to us that the collective control of industry is a “foregone” conclusion, that is, “very probable” independent of our efforts to reverse the trend; whereas the if—the total monopoly of power in the hands of the economic planners—depends almost completely upon our faith in democracy and willingness to fight and suffer for it, not only in war but in peace. ”

“ It is the most plausible account the Bolsheviks have given of themselves.
But does it confirm his thesis?
In all of his historical writing two souls struggle within Trotsky’s breasts—the soul of the orthodox Marxist who must interpret history in line with the dogmas of his monistic creed, and the soul of the empirical investigator who must follow the evidence where it leads. Events can never refute the creed of historical materialism: it is necessary only to interpret them properly. The scientific historian, however, must bow before the stubborn fact. ”

“ What would have happened if Chamberlain and Daladier, who dragged after him in reluctant tow, had presented an ultimatum of war to Hitler instead of flying to Munich and coming to terms with him? Would Hitler have marched into the Sudetenland as he later marched into Poland, despite the fact that Russia had not yet assured him that he would have no second front? If he had, would the English and French have been able in the ensuing war to put up a better defence than they did when war came a year later? ”

“ But in a world where we choose to continue to live, it Is wiser to explore the alternatives on this path, since it is before these alternatives that we have not only the power to wish but the power to act. No matter what alternative we take, in time we will come to other alternatives, perhaps, less ambitious in scope than those we left behind but not necessarily less poignant or meaningful. History and politics, not to speak of personal life, confront us daily with alternatives, in which we forge part of our own destiny and for which we therefore assume some responsibility. ”

“ For these heroes are not responsible for their ruthless deeds. They are the instruments of the morality of to-morrow—unhappy instruments discarded by the historical process when their work is done. “Their whole life is labour and trouble.... They die early, like Alexander; they are murdered like Cæsar; transported to St. Helena like Napoleon.” This is the price of greatness. The hero may die or appear to suffer defeat, but “history” will always vindicate him.
But we are not deceived by Hegel’s plea. ”

“ Those who were so fearful of the encroachment of the State on the freedoms of advanced capitalism would have to encroach just as much on the freedom of the agrarian society in order to prevent it from developing in the way it historically did develop. The philosophy and practice of democracy would be sacrificed for a standard of living which would be lower than the existing standards, and far lower than the potential living standard of an industrialized culture that has not yet lost its democracy. ”

“ But the hero may master the arts of the demagogue and use the very instruments of democracy to debase its quality. Yet as long as democratic controls are not abolished, the hero as demagogue must still build up, cajole, and cater for the majority. He acquires a contempt for the group he leads by virtue of the methods by which he corrupts them. In the process, if his own will and insight grow uncertain and cloudy, he becomes just another politician. He is a hero who has missed his chance. ”

“ Whether the leading men or the conjecture of circumstances are more decisive in explaining some specific event of momentous consequence, is an inescapable question. Was Hitler responsible for the anti-Semitic obsession of German Nazidom, an obsession that hindered not helped the Nazi international programme of fraud and conquest, or did the cultural environment and history of Germany make it obligatory upon Hitler to presecute the Jews? ”

“ To hark back to the era of free enterprise is just another futile call, of the same kind but not of the same desperate degree as the call to return to an agrarian economy. We can make the attempt, but the overwhelming probability is that we shall disastrously fail. Where our intelligent choice lies is not in trying to contest what seems an irreversible trend but in determining who the State shall be, how it shall intervene, and the extent to which collectivism in production shall go. Therein lies our freedom. ”

“ To believe that in 1905 two mutually jealous sovereign states, the United States of the North and the Confederate States of the South, whose interests conflicted at many points, would surrender their sovereignty for union with a third, the United Kingdom of Great Britain—regarded as a hereditary enemy by at least one of them—is a tribute to Mr. Churchill’s high hopes and aspirations, not to his insight as a historian. It has no precedent in human history. ”