Ethics · John Dewey
CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE POLITICAL STATE
Every act brings the agent who performs it into association with others, whether he so intends or not. His act takes effect in an organized world of action; in social arrangement and institutions. So far as such combinations of individuals are recurrent or stable, their nature and operations are definitely formulated and definitely enforceable. Partnerships, clubs, corporations, guilds, families are such stable unions, with their definite spheres of action. Buying and selling, teaching and learning, producing and consuming, are recurrent activities whose legitimate methods get prescribed. These specific provinces and methods of action are defined in Civil Rights. They express the guaranteed and regular ways in which an individual, through action, voluntarily enters into association or combination with others for the sake of a common end. They differ from political rights and obligations in that the latter concern modes of social organization which are so fundamental that they are not left to the voluntary choice and purpose of an individual. As a social being, he must have political relationships, must be subject to law, pay taxes, etc.
Peace and tranquillity are not merely the absence of open friction and disorder. They mean specific, easily-known, and generally recognized principles which determine the province and limits of the legitimate activity of every person. Publicity, standards, rules of procedure, remedies acknowledged in common, are their essence. _Res publica_, the common concern, remains vague and latent till defined by impartial, disinterested social organs. Then it is expressed in regular and guaranteed modes of activity. In the pregnant phrase of Aristotle, the administration of justice is also its determination: that is, its discovery and promulgation. Sec. 2. DEVELOPMENT OF CIVIL RIGHTS =Contrast of Primitive with Present Justice.=--The significance of the accomplishments and the defects of the present administration of law may be brought out by a sketch of its contrast with primitive methods. In savage and barbarian society, on account of the solidarity of the kin-group, any member of the group is likely to be attacked for the offense of any other (see p. 28). He may not have participated in the act, or have had complicity in planning it. His guilt is that the same blood runs in his veins.[204] The punitive attack, moreover, is made directly and promiscuously by the injured man and by his blood-relatives; it is made in the heat of passion or in the vengeance of stealth as custom may decree. Says Hearn, the state "did not interfere in the private quarrels of its citizens. Every man took care of his own property and his own household, and every hand guarded its own head. If any injury were done to any person, he retaliated, or made reprisals, or otherwise sought redress, as custom prescribed."[205] The reprisal may itself have called for another, and the blood-feud was on. In any case, the state of affairs was one literally, not metaphorically, described as "private war."
Now it is hardly necessary to point out the effect of such conceptions in restricting the freedom and responsibility of the individual person. Man is hemmed in as to thought and action on all sides by all kinds of mysterious forces working in unforeseeable ways. This is true enough in his best estate. When to this limitation is added a direction of energy into magical channels, away from those controllable sources of evil which reside in human disposition, the amount of effective freedom possible is slight. This same misplacing of liability holds men accountable for acts they have not committed, because some magic tendency for evil is imputed to them. Famine, pestilence, defeat in war are evils to be remedied by sacrifice of goods or persons or by ritualistic ceremonies; while the remediable causes of harm in human ignorance and negligence go without attention. =2. Accident and Intention.=--Under such circumstances, little distinction can be made between the good and evil which an individual _meant_ to do and that which he _happened_ to do. The working presumption of society, up to a comparatively late stage of its history, was that every harmful consequence is an evidence of evil disposition in those who were in any way concerned. This limitation of freedom was accompanied by a counterpart limitation of responsibility. Where no harm actually resulted, there was thought to be no harmful intent. Animals and even inanimate objects which do injury are baleful things and come under disapprobation and penalty. Even in civilized Athens there was a survival of the practice of holding inanimate things liable. If a tree fell on a man and killed him, the tree was to be brought to trial, and after condemnation cast beyond the civic borders, i.e., outlawed.[208] Anyhow, the owner of an offending article was almost always penalized.
Westermarck,[209] with reference to the guilt of animals, cites an instance, dated in 1457, "when a sow and her six young ones were tried on a charge of their having murdered and partly eaten a child; the sow, being found guilty, was condemned to death, the young pigs were acquitted on account of their youth and the bad example of their mother." When sticks, stones, and animals are held accountable for evil results, there is little chance of discriminating intent and accident or misadventure in the case of personal agents. "The devil himself knoweth not the intent, the 'thought' of man" was the mediaeval maxim; all that can be certain is that harm has come and the one who caused it must suffer; or else no overt harm has come and no one is to blame.[210] Harm has been done and any one concerned, even remotely, in the injurious situation, is _ex officio_ guilty; it will not do to take chances. The remoteness of an implication which may involve liability is seen in the condition of English law in the thirteenth century: "At your request I accompany you when you are about your own affairs: my enemies fall upon and kill me: you must pay for my death. You take me to see a wild-beast show, or that interesting spectacle a madman: beast or madman kills me; you must pay. You hang up your sword; some one else knocks it down so that it cuts me; you must pay."[211] Only gradually did intent clearly evolve as the central element in an act, and thus lead to the idea of a voluntary or free act.
That the limitation upon the side of responsibility was equally great is obvious. If a man is held liable for what he did not and could not foresee or desire, there is no ground for his _holding himself_ responsible for anticipating the consequences of his acts, and forming his plans according as he foresees. This comes out clearly in the obverse of what has just been said. If no harm results from a willful attempt to do evil, the individual is not blamed. He goes scot free. "An attempt to commit a crime is no crime."[212] =3. Character and Circumstances.=--Even in law, to say nothing of personal moral judgments, we now almost as a matter of course take into account, in judging an agent's intent, both circumstances, and character as inferred from past behavior. We extend our view of consequences, taking into account in judging the moral quality of a particular deed, consequences its doer is _habitually_ found to effect. We blame the individual less for a deed if we find it contrary to his habitual course. We blame him more, if we find he has a character given to that sort of thing. We take into account, in short, the permanent attitude and disposition of the agent. We also discriminate the conditions and consequences of a deed much more carefully. Self-defense, protection of others or of property, come in as "extenuating circumstances"; the degree of provocation, the presence of immediate impulsive fear or anger, as distinct from a definitely formed, long-cherished idea, are considered. The questions of first or of repeated offense, of prior criminality or good behavior, enter in. Questions of heredity, of early environment, of early education and opportunity are being brought to-day into account.
We are still very backward in this respect, both in personal and in public morals; in private judgment and in legal procedure and penalty. Only recently have we, for example, begun to treat juvenile delinquents in special ways; and the effort to carry appropriate methods further meets with strong opposition and the even stronger inertia of indifference. It is regarded by many good people as lowering the bars of responsibility to consider early training and opportunity, just as in its day it was so regarded to plead absence of intent in cases where evil had actually resulted. It is not "safe" to let any one off from the rigor of the law. The serious barrier, now as earlier, is upon the scientific or intellectual side. There was a time when it did not seem feasible to pass upon intent; it was hidden, known only to God. But we have now devised ways, adequate in principle, though faulty in detail, to judge immediate intent; similarly, with the growth of anthropology, psychology, statistics, and the resources of publicity in social science, we shall in time find it possible to consider the effects of heredity, early environment, and training upon character and so upon intent. We shall then regard present methods of judging intent to be almost as barbarous as we now consider the earlier disregard of accident and provocation. Above all we shall learn that increased, not relaxed responsibility, comes with every increase of discrimination of causes lying in character and conditions.[213]
The case seems paradoxical and is crucial. Others hold us responsible because we _were_ irresponsible in action and _in order_ that we may _become_ responsible. We blame ourselves precisely because we discover that an unconscious preference for a private or exclusive good led us to be careless of the good of others. The effect (if the regret is genuine, not simulated) is to develop a habit of greater thoughtfulness in the future. Less and less do men accept for others or for themselves ignorance as an excuse for bad consequences, when the ignorance itself flows from character. Our chief moral business is to become acquainted with consequences. Our moral character surely does not depend in this case, then, upon the fact that we had alternatives clearly in mind and chose the worse; the difficulty is that we had only one alternative in mind and did not _consciously_ choose at all. Our freedom lies in the _capacity_ to alter our mode of action, through having our ignorance enlightened by being held for the neglected consequences when brought to accountability by others, or by holding ourselves accountable in subsequent reflection. Cases of careless acts and of acts omitted through negligence are thus crucial for any theory of freedom and responsibility.
Either we are all wrong in blaming ourselves or others in such cases, because there is no free or voluntary element in them; or else there is responsibility when deliberate comparison of alternatives and conscious preference are absent. There is responsibility for the absence of deliberation. Nature does not forbear to attach consequences to acts because of the ignorance of the one who does the deed. The evil results that follow in the wake of a thoughtless act are precisely the reminders that make one take thought the next time. Similarly, to be held liable by others or to take ourselves to task for forgetfulness, inconsiderateness, and negligence, is the way in which to build up conscientious foresight and deliberate choice. The increased complexity and danger of modern industrial activity, the menace of electric power, of high explosives, of railway trains and trolley cars, of powerful machines, have done much to quicken recognition that negligence may be criminal, and to reawaken the conviction of Greek thought that thoughtless ignorance, where knowledge is possible, is the worst of evils. The increased interdependence of men, through travel and transportation, collective methods of production, and crowding of population in cities, has widened the area of the harm likely to result from inconsiderate action, and has strengthened the belief that adequate thoughtfulness is possible only where there is sympathetic interest in others.
On the other hand, there is as yet no general recognition of the possibility of an unbiased scientific investigation into all the antecedents (hereditary and environmental) of evildoers; an investigation which would connect the wrong done with the _character of the individual_ committing it, and not merely with one of a number of technical degrees of crime, laid down in the statute books in the abstract, without reference to particular characters and circumstances. Thus while the evildoer has in one direction altogether too much of a chance to evade justice, he has in another direction a chance at only technical, rather than at moral, justice--justice as an individual human being. It is not possible to discuss here various methods which have been proposed for remedying these defects. But it is clearly the business of the more thoughtful members of society to consider the evils seriously and to interest themselves actively in their reform. We need, above all, a change in two respects: (a) recognition of the possibilities of new methods of judgment which the sciences of physiology, psychology, and sociology have brought about; and (b) surrender of that feudal conception according to which men are divided, as it were essentially, into two classes: one the criminal and the other the meritorious. We need to consider the ways in which the pressure and the opportunities of environment and education, of poverty and comfortable living, of extraneous suggestion and stimulation, make the differences between one man and another; and to recognize how fundamentally one human nature is at bottom. Juvenile courts, probation officers, detention officers, mark the beginnings of what is possible, but only the beginnings. For the most part crime is still treated sordidly and by routine, except when, being sensational, it is the occasion for a great battle of wits between keen prosecuting attorney and clever "criminal lawyer," with the world through the newspapers watching the display.
We face these problems, moreover, with traditions which are averse to "bureaucratic" administration and public "interference." Public regulation is regarded as a "paternalistic" survival, quite unsuited to a free and independent people. It would be foolish, indeed, to overlook or deny the great gains that have come from our American individualistic convictions: the quickening of private generosity, the growth of a generalized sense of _noblesse oblige_--of what every successful individual owes to his community; of personal initiative, self-reliance, and versatile "faculty"; of interest in all the voluntary agencies which by education and otherwise develop the individuality of every one; and of a demand for equality of opportunity, a fair chance, and a square deal for all. But it is certain that the country has reached a state of development, in which these individual achievements and possibilities require new civic and political agencies if they are to be maintained as realities. Individualism means inequity, harshness, and retrogression to barbarism (no matter under what veneer of display and luxury), unless it is a _generalized_ individualism: an individualism which takes into account the real good and effective--not merely formal--freedom of _every_ social member. Hence the demand for civic organs--city, state, and federal,--of expert inquiry, inspection, and supervision with respect to a large number of interests which are too widespread and too intricate to be well cared for by private or voluntary initiative. The well-to-do in great cities may segregate themselves in the more healthful quarters; they may rely upon their automobiles for local transportation; they may secure pure milk and unadulterated foods from personal resources; they may, by their combined "pull," secure good schools, policing, lighting, and well-paved streets for their own localities. But the great masses are dependent upon public agencies for proper air, light, sanitary conditions of work and residence, cheap and effective transportation, pure food, decent educative and recreative facilities in schools, libraries, museums, parks.
No hard and fast line can be drawn between civil society and the State. By the State, however, we denote those conditions of social organization and regulation which are most fundamental and most general:--conditions which are summed up in and expressed through the general will as manifested in legislation and its execution. As a civil right is technically focused in the right to use the courts, "to sue and be sued," that is in the right to have other claims adjudicated and enforced by a public, impartial authority, so a political right is technically summed up in the power to vote--either to vote directly upon laws or to vote for those who make and carry out laws. To have the right in a legislative assembly to speak for or against a certain measure; to be able to say "yea" or "nay" upon a roll-call; to be able to put into a ballot-box a piece of paper with a number of names written thereon, are not acts which of themselves possess the inherent value of many of the most ordinary transactions of daily life. But the representative and potential significance of political rights exceeds that of any other class of rights. Suffrage stands for direct and active participation in the regulation of the terms upon which associated life shall be sustained, and the pursuit of the good carried on. Political freedom and responsibility _express an individual's power and obligation to make effective all his other capacities by fixing the social conditions of their exercise_.
Upon its face, the struggle for individual liberty was a struggle against the overbearing menace of despotic rulers. This fact has survived in an attitude towards government which cripples its usefulness as an agency of the general will. Government, even in the most democratic countries, is still thought of as an external "ruler," operating from above, rather than as an organ by which people associated in pursuit of common ends can most effectively cooperate for the realization of their own aims. Distrust of government was one of the chief traits of the situation in which the American nation was born. It is embodied not only in popular tradition, and party creeds, but in our organic laws, which contain many provisions expressly calculated to prevent the corporate social body from effecting its ends freely and easily through governmental agencies.[222] There can be no doubt that the movement to restrict the functions of government, the _laissez-faire_ movement, was in its time an important step in human freedom, because so much of governmental action was despotic in intention and stupid in execution. But it is also a mistake to continue to think of a government which is only the people associated for the assuring of their own ends as if it were the same sort of thing as a government which represented the will of an irresponsible class. The advance of means of publicity, and of natural and social science, provides not only protection against ignorant and unwise public action, but also constructive instrumentalities of intelligent administrative activities. One of the chief moral problems of the present day is, then, that of making governmental machinery such a prompt and flexible organ for expressing the _common_ interest and purpose as will do away with that distrust of government which properly must endure so long as "government" is something imposed from above and exercised from without.
In our own day, a special field has been opened within which corruption may flourish, in the development of public utility companies. Railways, city transportation systems, telegraph and telephone systems, the distribution of water and light, require public franchises, for they either employ public highways or they call upon the State to exercise its power of eminent domain. These enterprises can be carried on efficiently and economically only as they are either monopolies, or quasi-monopolies. All modern life, however, is completely bound up with and dependent upon facilities of communication, intercourse, and distribution. Power to control the various public-service corporations carries with it, therefore, power to control and to tax all industries, power to build up and cast down communities, companies, and individuals, to an extent which might well have been envied by royal houses of the past. It becomes then a very special object for great corporations to control the agencies of legislation and administration; and it becomes a very special object for party leaders and bosses to get control of party machinery in order to act as brokers in franchises and in special favors--sometimes directly for money, sometimes for the perpetuation and extension of their own power and influence, sometimes for the success, through influential support and contribution to party funds, of the national party with which they are identified.
It is not necessary to point out the advantages which parties have subserved in concentrating and defining public opinion and responsibility in large issues; nor to dwell upon their value in counteracting tendencies which break up and divide men into a multitude of small groups having little in common with one another. But behind these advantages a vast number of abuses have sheltered themselves. Recent legislation and recent discussion have shown a marked tendency formally to recognize the part actually played by party machinery in the conduct of the State, and to take measures to make this factor more responsible in its exercise. Since these measures directly affect the conditions under which the government as the organ of the general will does its work of securing the fundamental conditions of equal opportunity for all, they have a direct moral import. Such questions as the Australian ballot, the recognition of party emblems and party groupings of names; laws for direct primary nominations; the registering of voters for primary as well as for final elections; legal control of party committees and party conventions; publicity of accounts as to the reception and use of party funds; forbidding of contributions by corporations, are thus as distinctly moral questions as are bribery and ballot-box stuffing.
These conditions have naturally brought forth a large crop of suggestions for reforms. It is not intended to discuss them here, but the more important of them, so far as involving moral questions, may be briefly noted. The proposals termed the initiative and the referendum and the "recall" (this last intended to enable the people to withdraw from office any one with whose conduct of affairs they are dissatisfied) are clearly intended to make the ideal of democratic control more effective in practice. Proposals for limited or complete woman's suffrage call attention to the fact that one-half of the citizenship does the political thinking for the other half, and emphasize the difficulty under such conditions of getting a comprehensive social standpoint (which, as we have already seen, is the sympathetic and reasonable standpoint) from which to judge social issues. Many sporadic propositions from this and that quarter indicate a desire to revise constitutions so as to temper their cast-iron quality and increase their flexible adaptation to the present popular will, and so as to emancipate local communities from subjection to State legislatures in such a way as to give them greater autonomy and hence greater responsibility, in the management of their own corporate affairs. It is not the arguments _pro_ and _con_ that we are here concerned with; but we are interested to point out that moral issues are involved in the settlement of these questions. It may, moreover, be noted that dividing lines in the discussion are generally drawn, consciously or unconsciously, on the basis of the degree of faith which exists in the democratic principle and ideal, as against the class idea in some of its many forms.
Sec. 4. THE MORAL CRITERION OF POLITICAL ACTIVITY The moral criterion by which to try social institutions and political measures may be summed up as follows: The test is whether a given custom or law sets free individual capacities in such a way as to make them available for the development of the general happiness or the common good. This formula states the test with the emphasis falling upon the side of the individual. It may be stated from the side of associated life as follows: The test is whether the general, the public, organization and order are promoted in such a way as to equalize opportunity for all. =Comparison with the Individualistic Formula.=--The formula of the individualistic school (in the narrow sense of that term--the _laissez-faire_ school) reads: The moral end of political institutions and measures is the maximum possible freedom of the individual consistent with his not interfering with like freedom on the part of other individuals. It is quite possible to interpret this formula in such a way as to make it equivalent to that just given. But it is not employed in that sense by those who advance it. An illustration will bring out the difference. Imagine one hundred workingmen banded together in a desire to improve their standard of living by securing higher wages, shorter hours, and more sanitary conditions of work. Imagine one hundred other men who, because they have no families to support, no children to educate, or because they do not care about their standard of life, are desirous of replacing the first hundred at lower wages, and upon conditions generally more favorable to the employer of labor. It is quite clear that in offering themselves and crowding out the others, they are not interfering with the _like_ freedom on the part of others. The men already engaged are "free" to work for lower wages and longer time, if they want to. But it is equally certain that they are interfering with the _real_ freedom of the others: that is, with the effective expression of their _whole_ body of activities.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.