John R. Commons

“ The sociologist must, therefore, look first for the germ which later was differentiated out from society and became the state, and, second, for the stages of growth of this germ and the exact point when it can properly be called the state. He looks not for an ultimate repository of sovereignty which comes into play on occasion, as does the lawyer, but he looks for a constant pervasive psychic influence existing every- where in society and affecting all social relations. He looks, not for an event, but for a "flow." The object which he seeks is dynamic, evolutionary. ”

“ Just as the state does not leave the definition of citizen- ship and the machinery of naturalization to the private interests of any body of men, so it cannot leave the definition of party membership to even the party organization. Political parties are no longer private concerns organized for agitation, but they are public institutions organized to name the officers of government and so to control the government itself. ”

“ State coercion is necessary as against private coercion, not because the state can elevate the people to a higher level than that attained by the free exercise of their own persuasive powers, but in order to prevent the lower and selfish elements of society from dragging the several institutions down. The state sets the minimum level below which the struggle for existence shall not be permitted to force an institution. ”

“ The persuasive faculties of its members will evoke from one another such a lively exercise of all the passions and abilities of human nature that in the resulting devotion to family, church, industry, and country, the people will effect the greatest con- quest of nature and production of wealth, will promote the purest family life, will plant morality and religion deepest in the individual heart, will inspire the intensest patriotism, and so will construct the equipment for national survival. ”

“ Thus the freedom of labor prepared the way for industrial corporations, and the extension of the right of suffrage prepared the way for the rise of political parties. These have reached their highest development in the United States, because here labor has been earliest freed and suffrage widest extended. Political parties are now generally recognized as essential to popular government. But our federal and state constitutions were originally framed under the conviction that parties were the deadliest rocks in the path of freedom. ”

“ Its principles are all the selfish and the patriotic interests which its members strive to have enacted into law and enforced upon the people. Its organization is the machinery by which it marshals together a majority or plurality of the voters. The success of organization depends not only upon the number of voters, but also upon their discipline. Discipline depends upon control over the privative and remuneratory sanctions, that is, the appointment, discharge, promotion, and reward of the party workers. Consequently discipline and organization tend to monopoly and centralization. ”

“ Organization, in biology, is the means of economizing the vital forces and increasing the chances of the organism for survival. The same is true of social organization, which economizes the social forces. But there is an important difference. Biological organization is physical and compact, and consists of bony, muscular, and other structure. Social organization is psychic, and consists of those coercive sanctions which subordinate individuals to a single will, notwithstanding their inclinations to satisfy their desires at cross purposes in their own private ways. ”

“ Thus primary-election laws are one of the steps away from the early dread of political parties toward their legalization as a constituent of the governing machinery. Only when recognized as such can they be controlled in the interests of the ethical ideals of the state. They have in themselves what larger patriotism does not always possess, the powerful motive of self-interest. Their so-called principles are mainly the common self-interest of their members. ”

“ The state is primarily coercive, but where technical work has been absorbed by it, just as its officials must be equipped in knowledge and skill, so also must they learn tact. Penology, pedagogy, "scientific" charity, are highly successful only when the iron hand of coercion is gloved by the arts of persuasion. The state extracts coercion from private hands in order that the latter may be compelled to rely on persuasion, and the criterion of the success of state coercion itself is the extent to which the officials have learned to make it unnecessary. ”

“ The problem of politics is how to direct this self-interest for the common good. At first the problem was attacked negatively, the endeavor being to prevent one party from getting unfair advantage over the other. ”

“ In so far as coercion is used, whether by private parties or by the state, the end is attained, not by knowledge nor skill nor per- suasion. These are successful only as they observe and "obey" the forces of nature and the passions of men. Coercion over- rides these passions. It is obedient, therefore, only to the desires of the agent. What he wants he commands and gets. Coer- cion is, therefore, solely an ethical problem. It is the problem of right and wrong choices. ”

“ Everything that the indi- vidual man uses in his work and in his pleasures, the tools with which he works, the food, clothing, luxuries which he enjoys, even the language with which he thinks, is the joint product of all society past and present. These are all simply the services which his fellow-men everywhere are contributing to his life. Society is mutual service. But the motive which leads each individual to contribute his share to the joint pro- duct is mainly the share which he and those whom he loves can get in return. Society is opportunity. ”

“ The state expresses the cooperative or mutual-veto will of that part of society which is politically organized for this purpose. Private property expresses the individual will of the several private owners, or of the private chief, whether patriarch, pope, suzerain, boss, or industrial monopolist, who is at the head of the particular institution. The sociological view, being strictly inductive, does not impart to the theory of the state that which is potential and ideal, but only that which is actual and historical. ”

“ Private property is strictly competitive, a necessity of the struggle for life, and has no ethical implication. Neither is it subject to the will of any person outside the proprietor him- self. When, therefore, order and right are injected into property, we may say the state has appeared. ”

“ Having legally incorporated the party machinery into the system of government, the law must now more carefully define what is meant by a party. A party is not its general com- mittee nor even its party convention as the official ballot law assumes ; it is primarily all the voters who support its principles. The election law leaves this definition to those in control of the organization an instance of the suppression of the individual citizen by the conquering power of monopoly. ”

“ The same abilities of leadership, instead, are made subservient to the party as a whole rather than to the demands of a faction in the party or to the love of power on the part of their fortunate possessors. ”

“ Being a social relation, its essential qualities are found in the kind of dealings with one another which the members of the institution carry on. The motive which responds to the persuasive sanction is that elementary psychic suceptibility which is the basis of the institution, while the motive responding to the coercive sanction is the fear of pain or material privation. We have, then, in each institution a threefold problem, corresponding to the threefold division of the material basis, the psychic basis and coercion. ”

“ The established or coercive church, having power over all the people, derived not from per- suasion, but from coercion, has an advantage over other bodies without being compelled to rise to their moral-persuasive level. When the people have risen to a religious level above that which the coercive church is exhibiting, then, in their own protection, acting through the state, they take this extraneous power from the church and compel it to compete with the others on the same basis of persuasion. It is religion that elevates the people, not the state ”

“ The problem of persuasion in each institution requires much the same mental qualities as in business. But in addition there must exist the peculiar quality belonging to the institution in question. In the family, tact, self-control, self-sacrifice, integrity, deception, or what not, are summoned to aid the underlying sanctions and motives of sexual and parental love. ”

“ But the state proper, with its partnership and mutual veto of social classes in determining the sovereign will, cannot, from its very nature, evoke the highest industry and inventiveness, that is, the highest stimulation of the indus- trial susceptibility, love of work. ”

“ The state becomes a larger institution, by deepening its hold on a subordinate institution which had grown up as private property under the law of survival and centralization, until it reached the point where organization tended to suppress the free movement of the persuasive principle animating its members. ”

“ Successful business discipline at present depends on the power to appoint, promote, and discharge subordinates. But this power exists only in so far as the laws of property permit and enforce it. Here the business problem depends upon the political forces that regulate property. The business manager is allowed to use compulsion only to the extent that the people through their laws have chosen. His success within this area is based primarily on tact and persuasion. ”

“ Next the attack was positive, in the interests of the people at large, endeavoring through the official ballot to deprive parties of those artificial and factitious means of success which depend only upon the machinery of organization. Later the problem is the internal organization of the parties themselves, the legalized primary, the very heart of the party situation. The party primary is peculiar to American self-government. The primary is democratic in its origin. It has become oligarchical through the necessity of organization. ”

“ Upon the utilitarian explanation, organization would be immoral, for it tends to suppress individuals to the passions of a few. As it is, organization is neither moral nor immoral simply necessary.
Here the sociological view leads from biology to the philo- sophical or ethical view. The ethical motive is, indeed, a human and not an animal attribute. But it cannot assert dominion during the period of struggle for survival. ”

“ The moral level of the people, or at least of the dominant social classes, first inaugurates in its own institution the reign of persuasion and then secures the adoption of a mini- mum somewhat below its own actual attainment, to be imposed upon those who have not yet reached this higher level. ”

“ There may be also a certain class of industries, like the post-office, streets and roads, railways, sewers, water supply, in which the state goes still farther in its sovereign function of redistributing property among the people, and, by means of public monopoly of owner- ship and operation at cost or free of charges, attempts to place the poorer classes and sections upon an equal basis with wealth- ier classes and sections in the use of these services. ”

“ It is settled by opinion, prejudice, and preference, not by knowledge, skill, and tact.
It is for this reason that the ethical or political problem takes precedence of the technical and persuasive problems, both in the management of subordinate institutions, and in the exer- cise of public coercion. Men are, first of all, creatures of desire. The individual may choose to use his control of his fellows in industry, in the family, in the church, for self-aggran- dizement, for political power, for social promotion, for philan- thropy, education, or religion. ”

“ Only in the lulls of competition, or in the final victory of per- fected and centralized organization, is it possible to introduce the ethical purpose. The sociological view of sovereignty, there- fore, in distinguishing between that necessity which builds up organizations through survival of the fittest and that freedom which characterizes victorious monopoly, reveals the state as the peculiarly ethical institution, emerging after monopoly and free- dom have been reached, and then injecting into each monopolized institution in turn its conception of right ”

“ In the technical field there is no power of compulsion. One must act according to unchangeable laws governing human nature and physical nature. " We conquer nature by obeying her," that is, by knowledge and skill, not by opinions and prejudice. ”

“ Just as the control of the ballot paper constituted the party leaders the dictators of the party, so the power to appoint, remove, promote, and reward the party workers, who in turn have charge of the enrollment, the registration, the marshaling of the member- ship at the polls, has constituted the boss the private proprietor of the institution. ”