# The Hero in History/Chapter 12

XII
LAW, FREEDOM, AND HUMAN ACTION
The understanding of history, like other forms of human evaluation, has its fashions. They range all the way from the view that men are creatures of environment and circumstance to the view that everything is possible to them. Neither of these views can be sustained by evidence. In fact, they are usually so formulated that it is hard to know what would constitute evidence for them. Nonetheless, they have important bearings on the way in which specific problems are approached.
The attitude that man’s future is already determined, that the shape of things to come is now settled and cannot be escaped, makes for a slighting of the concrete problems of choice that face us at every turn. On the other hand, the attitude that man can storm the heavens at any historic occasion, that all he needs is a good will or a strong one, leads to a disregard of the limiting conditions of intelligent action. To-day the first of these general attitudes is very much in evidence among the opinion makers of the Western world. The wave of the future is described as a kind of predetermined fatality that not only will transform our economy but will destroy the last refuges of democratic culture. The drift toward totalitarian political controls is accepted or bemoaned as a natural consequence of the development of our economy and as an inescapable consequence of total war. Those who scoffed at economic determinism during the heyday of capitalism are now become converts to its chief dogma, namely, that the character of a given economic system can determine one, and only one, political and cultural pattern. Although they were able to conceive of capitalism and many political variants, socialism to them seems simply to be what Hitter and Stalin have made of it.
Widespread attitudes and beliefs of this kind have their ​causes in the objective conditions of the times. But we wish to discuss not the causes of these ideas about history but their validity. What assumptions are involved, and are they true? ••••• To begin with, let us note that those who believe that the future of human society is determined by laws already known set great store on our knowledge of these laws. It makes a difference, they insist, whether we know them or ignore them. Why? Because the knowledge of these laws gives us power to direct the future. But this admission means that a considerable area of social history, the area affected by man’s knowledge or ignorance, is not determined by the original set of laws but by other laws that come into operation as a consequence of what we know, value, and do. As long as we grant, then, that knowledge makes a difference, we cannot really believe that the future is fixed to a degree where there are no alternatives.
What, after all, shall we understand by historical laws whose iron sway is supposed to determine our future? Roughly speaking, a law in history is a determinate relation between classes of events which we discover can be relied on in solving a problem, overcoming an obstacle, or predicting the future. This covers, however, physical and biological laws, too. Distinctive of historical laws is that the classes of events which they relate designate the behaviour patterns of human beings as members of organized social groups. As members of social groups, the behaviour of individuals is marked by ideals, habits, traditions, and other ways of acting associated with the anthropological term “culture.”
The subject matter, then, of historical laws always involves reference to the associated, interacting behaviour of human beings as members of a society or culture. This remains true even when we seek to explain historical activity by reference to conditions and to events that are themselves controlled by physical laws, like the presence or absence of precious metals or oil in the soil, or the occurrence of drought, floods, and earthquakes. These physical conditions and events have great significance in history and social affairs, but not as physical elements. It is only in relation to some activity or interest of men that they assume significance. That is why the presence of coal and iron and oil in America explains nothing about the history and social life of the American Indians, and so much about the ​history and social life of the American settlers. “Gold in the ground is a cipher for a study of society so long as we are doing nothing and not tending to do anything in connection with it. Gold that does not exist is an important factor when we are in a turmoil of chasing for it.”
The subject matter of historical law, since it concerns the relations of groups of socially organized human beings to each other, involves reference to human behaviour that can be often described by psychological laws. But these psychological laws alone can never explain historical or social events. For historical and social events are determined by the way human beings interact with the physical elements of their environment. Before we can have knowledge of history and society we must have some prior knowledge of Nature. Before we can say that it was Brutus who slew Cæsar, we must understand something about the biology of death and the physics of the instruments of death. The variable historical and social behaviour of men, who are subject to the same psychological laws, indicates that the latter cannot explain the former. Such laws are relevant in history only when they are taken together with physical and cultural conditions. “Let desires, skills, purposes, beliefs be what they will, what happens is the product of the interacting intervention of physical conditions like soil, sea, mountains, climate, tools, and machines, in all their vast variety, with the human factor.”
Having won the right to consider social and historical laws as relatively autonomous, it remains to ask to what extent they are conditions of human action and to what extent they are modifiable by human action. Let us consider a few typical situations. We present them as purely illustrative of the position to be developed.
1. Suppose a political organization has before it a proposal to nominate a man of Catholic or Jewish faith for the office of President of the United States. It is objected that, although there are no constitutional bars to his election, the history of the country reveals a law of American political behaviour that “dooms” him to defeat, despite the fact that in every other respect he is an ideal candidate. This law states that “no Catholic or Jew can be successful in a race for the highest political office in the United States.” It is presented as an induction from experience and fortified by social and psychological generalizations about ​other aspects of the behaviour of American citizens, for instance, their religious traditions and social prejudices.
What is the character of such a “law?” Note that at does not rule out the election of a Catholic or Jew as something literately impossible. It asserts not the impossibility but the unlikelihood of such an election. Second, the law does not assert that every Protestant will vote against the candidate or that every non-Protestant will vote for him, or that any particular person will vote in this way rather than in that. It states that a sufficient number of Protestants will vote against the candidate solely on the grounds of his religious faith to ensure his defeat. Third, it tells us something about patterns of distribution in a series of human choices or decisions. And we know that human choices or decisions are “influenceable” in certain ways, that they may be changed and modified by changing the conditions under which they have developed. Fourth, its validity is restricted to a certain historical domain. It would be false to apply it to the selection of presidents or prime ministers in countries like England, where the majority of the population is also of the Protestant faith.
Here we have a “law” which every realistic practitioner of politics must take into account. Nonetheless it would be foolish for those responsible for the nomination to accept the law as binding, or even as a decisive guide to action in all cases. The candidate may be a national military hero. His nomination may be pressed on the ground of another “law” that the American people are always grateful to successful military heroes and they show their gratitude by electing them to office. Under the circumstances, we may believe that the second law will be fulfilled rather than the first. Whichever “law” is invoked, if our decision were based on it alone, we would be assuming that the future of the election is determined by fixed patterns of behaviour that have operated in the past. We would be assuming that our decision and the actions following from it made no appreciable difference to the outcome, that the future is determined by the past and not by the past together with the intervening present. In the situation considered, of course, me assumptions would be obviously mistaken. The law that “Catholics and Jews cannot be elected to the highest national office” may cease to be true as a result of changes introduced by our efforts to elect one. The more we know about the conditions under which the attitudes of people have been set, the more ​intelligently we can go about the task of changing them. If it happens that the country is involved in a war for the survival of of democratic faith, we may go to the country with the demand for an expression of its sincerity in respect to its professed principles. We rely on other laws when we do so, but it is we who give them an opportunity to come into operation by the changes in the physical, psychological, and social scene produced by our activities.
We might discover, if our efforts are well organized and if our political campaign is tied into a genuine educational crusade for democracy, that the law “no Catholic or Jew can be President of the United States” holds no more than the “law” which previously had been regarded as just as valid, viz. “no President can be elected to more than two terms of office.” We have not abolished the law, but as a result of our action in changing the conditions we have rendered it nugatory. The extent to which our intervention in the present will affect the future outcome, when this is projected as a simple induction from the past, is a matter of degree. In some affairs the future may be accurately predicted with little concern over what we can do about it. In other affairs what we do or leave undone may have more determining significance than any other known factor.
2. Consider another rather different situation. Suppose we were trying to foretell who the next Pope of the Catholic Church will be. We would have to take note of at least the following “laws:” (a) “No Protestant or Jew could be Pope.” (b) “No Catholic woman could be Pope.” (c) “Whoever the Pope was, he would be an Italian Cardinal.” None of these laws is certain, but the first is more binding on our prediction than the second, the second more than the third. By this we mean that the chances of electing a non-Italian Catholic man as Pope would be much better than the chances of electing a Catholic woman, and as small as the chances of doing the latter, they would be better than the chances of electing a Protestant or Jew. The reasons are obvious. For the first law to be violated or to cease operating would practically require the entire transformation of the nature of the Church organization and the abandonment of basic theological doctrines. This would be tantamount to virtual dissolution of the Church. At the present time this organization is growing in power. The pressures against which it had to contend in the past are diminishing in intensity, while its own influence on public affairs is growing. Further, without hostile ​pressure or opposition those who control a successful organization that serves their interests effectively never liquidate it, or even profoundly modify the doctrines that have been useful to it.
The second law is less binding than the first because if it ceased holding it would not require basic organizational changes but primarily changes in theological doctrine. No longer could the doctrine be accepted that women are a negative element to Holy Orders. And theological changes, as Church history eloquently shows, are always easier to make than organizational revolutions. But so far as the calculable future goes, both of these laws are binding upon our prediction. It is extremely improbable that anything that could now be done would lead to their abrogation.
The third law, however, has a different status in so far as the possibility of modifying it is concerned. In the past there have been non-Italian Popes. In the last few centuries we know that Popes have been Italian primarily because of the pressure of the Italian hierarchy. It is easy to see the complications that might ensue if an alien, a citizen of a foreign country with personal and social ties abroad, were to occupy the Holy See and exercise the very real power that a Pope can employ in the internal affairs of Italy. Nonetheless, if Catholic sentiment were organized against existing Italian Fascism, and if the defeat of Italian Fascism were followed by a progressive and democratic regime, the next Pope might well be non-Italian. Out of intelligent self-interest the Catholic hierarchies in countries other than Italy encouraged by their own governments, might bring influences to bear on the College of Cardinals. Together with the moral pressure of anti-Fascist Italian Catholics on the Italian Cardinals, this might result in the election of a non-Italian Pope. Even if the outcome of activity in this direction were doubtful, the chances of success would not be overwhelmingly unfavourable.
Our next situation is more complicated.
3. 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? Let us grant that if everyone, or almost everyone, actually adopted the Tolstoyian or Gandhian position, war would be impossible. We shall consider the proposal only from the point of view of its efficacy in bringing about the desired results.
It is logically not inconceivable that enough human beings may be converted to pacifist doctrine to prevent wars in the future. But there are so many "laws” of social behaviour that would have to be suspended for the doctrine to spread, that the prospect of its adoption must be dismissed as Utopian. Some men will risk their lives because of the intrinsic nobility of an ideal or the truth of a doctrine. But the vast majority of individuals, past and present, have fought for ideals in order to further interests of a more concrete kind, like security, a longer life, or a materially better one. It is not absolutely excluded that in time the vast majority of men might be won to the position of Tolstoy that to be holy is better than to be, and that to forgive one’s enemies is better than to insist on justice from them. But long before enough have been converted, the situation will enable some unpacific men to further their existing interests by profiting from the non-resisting behaviour of those who practise absolute pacifism. The latter will not fight for their own lives and possessions or for the lives and possessions of friends, children, and countrymen. In that case, others, perhaps from countries and regions in which the ideals of pacifism are held in scorn, will discover that it is truly to their interest to be aggressively militant and to cut down and enslave the pacifists. The pacifist argument that it pays everyone not to have wars runs up against the fact that it would pay some people, in a world where others were pacifist, to make war on the pacifists. Consequently, for the pacifist position to be truly effective, the vast majority of mankind would have to adopt it at once in order to achieve its universal benefits. For until it is adopted by everyone, it pays those who are not pacifists to reject it. The only kind of war that is always profitable is a war against pacifists.
What is the chance that everyone, or almost everyone,would adopt the pacifist position at once? So small that it would be the height of foolishness to rely upon it in order to prevent war. The more want, the more boredom, the more fear there is in the world, the smaller the chance. We must therefore declare that, as a practical means of preventing war, absolute pacifism is bound to fail, barring a miraculous change in the natures of men ​in present-day society. It is significant that every absolute pacifist, although he hopes that the propagation of his philosophy will prevent war, will never surrender his philosophy even if he is compelled by the evidence to admit that it cannot be successful. In other words, the ground on which he holds it, ultimately, has nothing to do with its instrumental efficacy in preventing war.
Does this mean that we must accept a law to the effect that there will always be wars between nations and classes in world society? Yes, if we accept the major institutions, economic, educational, ethnic, political, that have so far existed in history as permanent features of the social scene. No, if we believe that we can use our knowledge of other laws of human behaviour to modify these institutions, to experiment and devise new ones, and to correct them in the light of their consequences. The frequency and intensity of wars can be diminished in a world society in which through peaceful social processes men can actually get at a lesser cost the things they believe—often mistakenly—that war can win for them. It is not a matter of fate that men must war on one another. Nor are men altogether free not to fight when conflicts of basic interests cannot be resolved to their mutual satisfaction through means other than war.
4. The philosophy and practices of modern democracy to a large extent developed with the growth of a capitalist society. As the capitalist economy matured through the phase of industrial capitalism to finance and monopoly capitalism, a great many of the freedoms associated with the democratic philosophy became progressively restricted. The economic and social restrictions flowed from the consequences of large-scale industrial organization under capitalism. Political restrictions resulted when the State actively intervened in industry, sometimes to co-operate with, and sometimes to curb, monopolistic practices. Equality of opportunity, central to the philosophy and practice of democracy, was much more in evidence in the agrarian economy of Jefferson’s day than in the twentieth-century era of gigantic corporations, trusts, cartels, and monopolies.
Many who are loyal to Jefferson’s democratic philosophy believe that it is dying in the present-day capitalist world and that it will certainly be dead in the collectivist world of to-morrow. Unable to convince themselves that his philosophy can be modified so as to vivify and redirect the world of modern ​industrialism, they urge a return to the earlier agrarian economy, to the simpler capitalist ways of yesterday, as the only material basis upon which the democratic philosophy of life can be restored and defended.
The reply to such proposals is that they are economically impossible. The economically impossible implies a counter-concept of economic necessity. What do we understand by economic necessity here, and why is the reply to the agrarian democrats a valid one? What we say will apply a fortiori to all proposals which suggest, as a programme of action, a return to earlier systems of economy, whose ideals and values we would keep as integral elements of our own democratic philosophy.
Why not, then, go back to an earlier economy? After all, an economic system is a set of social relationships that regulate the behaviour of men. It is a scheme of human arrangements, not a God-given or nature-given fact, but something that has resulted historically from the activities of men. True. As a logical possibility we can conceive of any economic system prevailing at any time. But precisely because an economic system is both a human economy and a historical economy, its basic relations cannot be made over at will.
We could not return to an agrarian economy without destroying our large cities, decentralizing mass-production industries, transforming our banking and transportation systems, producing catastrophic unemployment, making huge plants and many skills obsolescent, and depriving the existing farm population of its market—to mention only a few things. Almost every group in the population would have a vested interest immediately imperilled by the change, and with only the promise of an agrarian Utopia to console them. Even if the promise had a hypnotic effect, the disaster attendant upon any effort to carry out such a programme would awaken the populace from their trance. It would require the profoundest modification in present human motives, modes of appreciation, standards of living and taste—all once historically acquired but now set and hardened into habit or second nature. All of men’s habits can be altered, but not so many of them at the same time. So long as human beings did not lose their memories, it is even doubtful whether the devastation produced by an earthquake or war would incline them to return to the economies of the past. They would begin to rebuild where they had left off because it would be easier and more “natural” for them to do so. They would choose sites ​which they believed less subject to earthquakes, or they would turn their cities into impregnable bomb shelters.
The compounding of improbabilities is so great in this projected return to an earlier economy that we call it an economic impossibility.
But even suppose the economically “impossible” happened? How could this agrarian economy be stabilized? The free market would still exist. Small commercial enterprises would exist. The human inventive spirit would not remain dormant. New needs would spring up as effects of existing manufacture and as causes of expanding manufacture. There would be wage labour. It would be legally free. The demand for it would make itself felt in the offer of more money than could be made on the farm. An expanding market for the products of industry would be set up. An industrial revolution would begin again. The small cities would become large cities. In short, the agrarian economy would be booming on its way toward industrial capitalism once more.
Left to itself, the social relationships between human beings would acquire, if not the same, then a similar character to that they had when the call for a return to the past was sounded. That is an illustration of what is meant by a historic-economic necessity.
But the system would not have to be left to itself! Have we not admitted that a historic-economic necessity is not absolute? True, but in that case, all sorts of controls and restrictions on the glorious freedoms of the agrarian economy would have to be enforced. 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.
5. We turn now to the present situation in which the problem is to preserve the democratic way of life, as described in the previous chapter, in an industrial economy moving toward collectivism. This illustration is more topical. If the cultural and political horrors of collectivism as practised in totalitarian countries of the world were the inescapable concomitants of ​collectivism, even the futile attempt to return to the agrarian past would be preferable. For the end of such an effort would be death, not the degradation of death-in-life.
The important thing is to determine what is meant by collectivism. Collectivism or socialism can be so defined that the presence of a set of totalitarian techniques of cultural and political rule follows logically from the definition. But we don’t have to define it that way. The problem becomes the empirical one of whether these totalitarian techniques in fact would be required for the functioning of such a socialist system.
It would be unfair both to the question and the author to attempt to settle this problem in a few pages, but since we are using it as purely illustrative of our views on law, freedom, and human action, it is hoped that allowance will be made for the apparent dogmatism of our remarks.
By a collectivist system we mean one in which the basic instruments of production—the great industries, mines, rail-roads, unties, etc.—are owned by the community and operated for public use instead of private profit. This involves a form of planned and continuously planning society in order to provide full employment, equal opportunities of education, and a rising standard of living. The fact that the State or community is the employer gives it a great power over the lives of ordinary citizens, since it can deny them access to the use of these instruments. But the State is not an abstraction but a group of men—clerks, bureaucrats, politicians, statesmen, philosophers—call them what you will. What is to prevent them from becoming the dictators of the community if all political and economic and educational power is concentrated in their hands? Nothing, if such concentration takes place. For any group of men who had such power would, in fact, be dictators, no matter how benevolent they were!
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.
​The trend toward collectivism in the capitalist economies of all nations in the world is the result of the ever-renewed quest for profit which is at the basis of these systems. The consequence of the quest for profit is the accumulation of huge masses of capital that increase the productive powers of society. At the same time, because of the gross inequalities of income between the different classes engaged in the process of production, the effective purchasing power of the masses for consumers goods is reduced. The disproportion becomes progressively acute, resulting on the one hand in the narrowing of the field for profitable investment and in large-scale unemployment. More and more the State steps in as a partner in industry and sometimes as independent producer in an attempt to keep production going, to induce new capital investments, and to relieve the growing burden and political dangers of unemployment. Left to the rationale of its own processes, capitalist economy cannot guarantee profits, generate full employment, and provide a standard of living commensurate with the technological potentialities of modern industry. It periodically convulses itself in crises that can only be partially resolved at ever-growing social costs.
The trend toward collectivism and the intervention of the State into economy are “unavoidable.” 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. Whether in the collectivist economy there will exist certain sectors of private enterprise will be decided by the State. If those who control the State are not interested in preserving the traditional freedoms of democracy, citizens who work in the free sectors will have no greater safeguard from persecution than those who work in the collectivized sector, just as under a Fascist régime professors in private universities have no more freedom of inquiry than professors in public universities. On the other hand, a democratic collectivist society can evolve adequate safeguards against the economic outlawing of heretics by writing into its Bill of Rights the provisions that every citizen has a vested interest in a job, ​that trade unions, co-operatives, courts. Press, Churches, and certain institutions of higher education be organized in permanent independence of the State. But whether what is written into a constitution will be enforced in fact again depends upon us. No safeguard can be automatic. That is why freedom is never safe, and intelligence should never slumber. ••••• The illustrations considered indicate how we regard the interplay of law and human freedom in social and historical affairs. At any period there are no realistic alternatives to certain paths of development because of the number and cumulative weight of “the laws” that stand in the way of our striking out in a new direction. We may explore theoretically the ideal alternatives to this path and lament that we cannot follow them without risking destruction. 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. Every man knows he will die: yet in how many different ways can a man live!
There is no complete catalogue of the mistakes men commit when they make history. But in the light of the past we can list the most common among them. They are the failure to see alternatives when they are present; the limitation of alternatives to an oversimplified either-or where more than two are present; false estimates of their relative likelihoods; and, as a special case of this last, a disregard of the effects of our own activity in striving for one rather than another. What these mistakes amount to is a systematic underestimation of man’s power to control his future.
The development of societies as well as of individuals along certain lines is sometimes the result of cosmic or earthly accidents. A drought or a tidal wave may undo the planned labour of generations; madness may cloud over the well-cultivated ​mind before it can reap its golden harvest. Social control and intelligence can mitigate the effects of such contingencies and prevent many of them, but they cannot be eliminated. For man is limited, and the world he can control is much smaller than the world beyond his control. From this no counsel of resignation follows, precisely because these events are accidents. Wise resignation can be made only before what is certain, and, by definition, these events are not.
All genuine opportunities of choice are specific. Every resolution of a choice involves to some degree a reconstruction of the self, society, and the world. Every intelligent reconstruction is an experiment, guided by laws already known, to achieve mastery over concrete problems. To the extent that we are committed to a democratic philosophy, we cannot entrust the present political and social choices before us to an event-making man, or to an uncontrolled élite. As democrats, whatever planning we do must be planning for a free society in which every citizen can participate in the determination of collective policy. Intelligent policies of planning, directed toward the liberation of diversity of talents, can also safeguard the preservation of areas of personal life in which each personality is free to make his own decisions.
* ↑ “Like a log on the brink of Niagara Falls we are impelled by unforeseen and irresistible socio-cultural currents, helplessly drifting from one crisis and catastrophe to another.” Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age, p. 130, New York, 1941. See also Cultural and Social Dynamics, vol. 4, p. 768. A similar mystical view of social fatality is presented in the more influential works of Spengler and Toynbee.
* ↑ Bentley, op. cit., p. 193.
* ↑ John Dewey, Logic: Theory of Inquiry, p. 492, New York, 1939.
* ↑ I have briefly discussed some of the safeguards that might be devised in a democratic socialist society. Op. cit., pp. 125 ff.