Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

but even this attempt to take civic education entirely out of the hands of private individuals and of the clergy did not contemplate any interference with the liberty of religious education or any other special training in addition to that provided in the public schools. Such measures involve the danger, however, of undue interference with the right of parents to care for those interests of their children which are not properly civic in nature. They may easily become the means of expressing religious intolerance or other forms of discrimination not consistent with the character of a commonwealth.

educational

Another danger in the development of a national demo- Danger of cratic educational policy is that the opinions of teachers intolerance will be subjected to undue restraint. This was one of the nationalistic dangers which caused Mill to distrust the modern policy policy of state control of education. There has been some ground for this distrust in recent years. In New York State the so-called Lusk bills, proposed in 1920, were designed to set up a licensing system for the control of private schools, in order to prevent communist and other revolutionary propaganda in such schools, and to provide for the censorship of the opinions of public school teachers, in order to prevent such propaganda by them in the public schools or elsewhere. The danger in such legislation was widely recognized and the bills themselves, though passed by the legislature, were vetoed by the governor. It may well be doubted whether such measures would not weaken rather than strengthen the authority of any government which might adopt them.

of the

of modern

The educational activities of modern states in general Results have undoubtedly strengthened the authority of their gov- educational ernments and enhanced the stability of the states them- activities selves. Unfortunately, on the continent of Europe, too much of the energy that should have gone into cultural and vocational training has been diverted into the training of

states

The charitable activities of modern states and the policy of social insurance

armies. Compulsory military service, to say nothing of war itself, has drained the resources which might have richly sustained the other branches of the training for citizenship. State education has glorified the triumphs of war and made too little of the victories of peace. True, the people of the modern commonwealth must not underrate the importance of the power of the state. They must not forget that they constitute a state partly in order that they may provide for the common defense and ensure domestic tranquillity. But they must also not fail to appreciate the importance of the other qualities which give their state its character. They must ever bear in mind their purposes to promote the general welfare, to secure the blessings of liberty, and above all to establish justice.

The extension of the welfare function of modern states to include the organization of public education has been accompanied by a similar extension of its activity in the organization of charity. The policy of those who have advocated the energetic development of the caritative function of the state has culminated in the modern program of social insurance. The state, they propose, should assume all the ordinary predictable risks of life in modern society, such as those of industrial accident, sickness, untimely death, permanent disability, involuntary unemployment, and dependent old age, and organize the community for the purpose of sharing these risks most equitably. Socalled paternalistic governments, notably that of Germany, began the execution of such a policy a generation ago. The British Labor Party has proposed its complete adoption. This program, and indeed the whole process of extending the caritative function of the state, has produced conflicts of interest no less difficult to adjust than those which arose out of the educational policy of modern states. Similar arguments have been used in justification of support for,

or opposition to, these policies. But the arguments that have been most confidently relied upon by the advocates and opponents of social insurance have related more particularly to the economic, rather than the educational or cultural, functions of the state.

3

economic

of the

state

The differences of opinion that have existed in modern The times with respect to the economic functions of the state, functions especially with respect to the relations between government and industry, have been very great. We may disregard the Utopian socialists and communists, who would have no business except politics, and also the philosophical anarchists, who hold that there should be no government at all. Within these limits, however, opinion has varied from that of the ultra-individualists, like Herbert Spencer, who would have restricted the economic functions of governments within the narrowest possible limits, and the ultra-collectivists, like Marx and Lenin, who thought that all capitalistic enterprise could be transformed into an affair of state. No precise classification of these various opinions is practicable. It is enough, perhaps, to say that, by and large, there are two competing theories concerning the economic functions of the state, which have challenged attention in recent times, the individualistic and the collectivistic.

ism versus

The former expresses the point of view of those who Individualwish to restrain the activity of governments within com- collectivism paratively narrow limits; the latter, that of those who desire to extend governmental operations throughout comparatively broad areas of productive activity. The former distrust the value of governmental action, and believe that the true function of government is to keep the peace and enforce private agreements, and otherwise leave the world's work in the main to unfettered and unfostered

Utilitarian individual

ism

The

opinion of J. S. Mill

private enterprise. The latter put more faith in the assertion of social control over the individual, and believe that the state should undertake to promote the general welfare by all promising means. The former tend to regard government as at best a necessary evil; the latter, as an active instrument of good. According to the former, laissez faire is the cardinal rule of statecraft; according to the latter, the best state is what the Germans call an Unternehmerstaat, an energetic and enterprising

commonwealth.

Among the individualists, J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer are the writers who have exerted the greatest influence upon the development of opinion in recent times in English-speaking countries. Mill's views concerning the proper economic functions of the state are set forth in a series of able writings, above all in his Principles of Political Economy,' published in 1848, and in his Essay on Liberty. He distinguishes between two sorts of what he calls government "interference." The first is that which involves a direct infringement of "liberty," and is the necessary result, he thought, of the exercise of the police and war powers. There can be no coercion of any kind for any purpose, he believed, without a loss of "liberty." His objections to this kind of government "interference," as well as those of Herbert Spencer, have already been considered in connection with the discussion of liberty and of the police power. The second is that which arises when the government undertakes an enterprise of its own, such as a system of education or water supply, and involves an indirect abridgment of the "liberty" of private individuals to do the same thing. All government ownership and operation of public utilities of any

1 See Book V, "On the Influence of Government," and especially chapter XI, "Of the Grounds and Limits of the Laissez Faire or NonInterference Principle."

kind, therefore, was deemed by the utilitarian individualists a sort of indirect government "interference."

tions to

Mill enumerates in his Essay on Liberty three general The objecobjections to indirect government interference. The first indirect is that ordinarily the thing is likely to be better done by interfergovernment individuals than by the government. "Speaking gen- ence" erally," Mill writes, "there is no one so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or by whom it shall be conducted, as those who are personally interested in it." This principle, he thought, would condemn all governmental interferences with the ordinary processes of industry. The second objection is that "in many cases, though individuals may not do the particular thing so well, on the average, as the officers of government, it is nevertheless desirable that it should be done by them rather than by the government, as a means to their own mental education." Mill feared the sapping of individual initiative and self-reliance by a habit of dependence upon the government for action in any matter which individuals could dispose of by themselves. The third and most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government, he wrote, "is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power."

dread of

Mill was at great pains to show the evil resulting from Mill's the increase of the power of the government. He pointed bureaucracy out how every function added to those already exercised by a government increases its influence over men of ambition and talent. The growth of governmental activity is inevitably accompanied, he believed, by a corresponding growth of political patronage, until the point is reached. at which either the desire to control such a volume of patronage demoralizes all parties and disturbs the tranquillity of the state, or a powerful bureaucracy develops which escapes control and dominates the state. If such a bureaucracy were inefficient, as well it might be, if it became the prey of contending factions within the govern

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »