Political Ideals | Page 4

whom nature has endowed with great creative gifts become
infected with the poison of competition. Men combine in groups to attain more strength
in the scramble for material goods, and loyalty to the group spreads a halo of
quasi-idealism round the central impulse of greed. Trade-unions and the Labor party are
no more exempt from this vice than other parties and other sections of society; though
they are largely inspired by the hope of a radically better world. They are too often led
astray by the immediate object of securing for themselves a large share of material goods.
That this desire is in accordance with justice, it is impossible to deny; but something
larger and more constructive is needed as a political ideal, if the victors of to-morrow are
not to become the oppressors of the day after. The inspiration and outcome of a reforming
movement ought to be freedom and a generous spirit, not niggling restrictions and

regulations.
The present economic system concentrates initiative in the hands of a small number of
very rich men. Those who are not capitalists have, almost always, very little choice as to
their activities when once they have selected a trade or profession; they are not part of the
power that moves the mechanism, but only a passive portion of the machinery. Despite
political democracy, there is still an extraordinary degree of difference in the power of
self-direction belonging to a capitalist and to a man who has to earn his living. Economic
affairs touch men's lives, at most times, much more intimately than political questions. At
present the man who has no capital usually has to sell himself to some large organization,
such as a railway company, for example. He has no voice in its management, and no
liberty in politics except what his trade-union can secure for him. If he happens to desire
a form of liberty which is not thought important by his trade-union, he is powerless; he
must submit or starve.
Exactly the same thing happens to professional men. Probably a majority of journalists
are engaged in writing for newspapers whose politics they disagree with; only a man of
wealth can own a large newspaper, and only an accident can enable the point of view or
the interests of those who are not wealthy to find expression in a newspaper. A large part
of the best brains of the country are in the civil service, where the condition of their
employment is silence about the evils which cannot be concealed from them. A
Nonconformist minister loses his livelihood if his views displease his congregation; a
member of Parliament loses his seat if he is not sufficiently supple or sufficiently stupid
to follow or share all the turns and twists of public opinion. In every walk of life,
independence of mind is punished by failure, more and more as economic organizations
grow larger and more rigid. Is it surprising that men become increasingly docile,
increasingly ready to submit to dictation and to forego the right of thinking for
themselves? Yet along such lines civilization can only sink into a Byzantine immobility.
Fear of destitution is not a motive out of which a free creative life can grow, yet it is the
chief motive which inspires the daily work of most wage-earners. The hope of possessing
more wealth and power than any man ought to have, which is the corresponding motive
of the rich, is quite as bad in its effects; it compels men to close their minds against
justice, and to prevent themselves from thinking honestly on social questions while in the
depths of their hearts they uneasily feel that their pleasures are bought by the miseries of
others. The injustices of destitution and wealth alike ought to be rendered impossible.
Then a great fear would be removed from the lives of the many, and hope would have to
take on a better form in the lives of the few.
But security and liberty are only the negative conditions for good political institutions.
When they have been won, we need also the positive condition: encouragement of
creative energy. Security alone might produce a smug and stationary society; it demands
creativeness as its counterpart, in order to keep alive the adventure and interest of life,
and the movement toward perpetually new and better things. There can be no final goal
for human institutions; the best are those that most encourage progress toward others still
better. Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished
Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and

active.
It is a sad evidence of the weariness mankind has suffered from excessive toil that his
heavens have usually been places where nothing ever happened or changed.