Democracy and
Industrialism
G.K.
Chesterton
(From the
essay "On Industrialism" from ALL I SURVEY. The
original essay appeared as a column
in The
ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, July 16, 1932).
It grows plainer, every day, that those of us who
cling to crumbling creeds and dogmas, and defend the dying traditions of the
Dark Ages, will soon be left alone defending the most obviously decaying of all
those ancient dogmas: the idea called Democracy. It has taken not quite a
lifetime, roughly my own lifetime, to bring it from the top of its success, or
alleged success, to the bottom of its failure, or reputed failure. By the end
of the nineteenth century, millions of men were accepting democracy without
knowing why. By the end of the twentieth century, it looks as if millions of
people will be rejecting democracy, also without knowing why. In such a
straight, strictly logical and unwavering line does the Mind of Man advance
along the great Path of Progress.
Anyhow, at the moment, democracy is not only being
abused, but being very unfairly abused. Men are blaming universal suffrage,
merely because they are not enlightened enough to blame original sin. There is
one simple test for deciding whether popular political evils are due to
original sin. And that is to do what none or very few of these modern
malcontents are doing; to state any sort of moral claim for any other sort of
political system. The essence of democracy is very simple and, as Jefferson said,
self-evident. If ten men are wrecked together on a desert island, the community
consists of those ten men, their welfare is the social object, and normally
their will is the social law. If they have not a natural claim to rule
themselves, which of them has a natural claim to rule the rest? To say that the
cleverest or boldest will rule is to beg the moral question. If his talents are
used for the community, in planning voyages or distilling water, then he is the
servant of the community; which is, in that sense, his sovereign. If his
talents are used against the community by stealing rum or poisoning water, why
should the community submit to him? and is it in the
least likely that it will? In such a simple case as that, everybody can see the
popular basis of the thing, and the advantage of
government by consent. The trouble with democracy is that it has never, in
modern times, had to do with such a simple case as that. In other words, the
trouble with democracy is not democracy. It is certain artificial anti-democratic
things that have, in fact, thrust themselves into the modern world to thwart
and destroy democracy.
Modernity is not democracy; machinery is not
democracy; the surrender of everything to trade and commerce is not democracy.
Capitalism is not democracy; and is admittedly, by trend and savour, rather
against democracy. Plutocracy by definition is not democracy. But all these
modern things forced themselves into the world at about the time, or shortly
after the time, when great idealists like Rousseau and Jefferson happened to
have been thinking about the democratic ideal of democracy. It is tenable that
the ideal was too idealist to succeed. It is not tenable that the ideal that
failed was the same as the realities that did succeed. It is one thing to say
that a fool went into a jungle and was devoured by wild beasts; it is quite
another to say that he himself survives as the one and only wild beast.
Democracy has had everything against it in practice, and that very fact may be
something against it in theory. It may be argued that it has human life against
it. But, at any rate, it is quite certain that it has modern life against it.
The industrial and scientific world of the last hundred years has been much
more unsuitable a setting for the experiment of the self-government than would
have been found in old conditions of agrarian or even nomadic life. Feudal
manorial life was a not a democracy; but it could have been much more easily
turned into a democracy. Later peasant life, as in France or Switzerland,
actually has been quite easily turned into a democracy. But it is horribly hard
to turn what is called modern industrial democracy into a democracy.
That is why many men are now beginning to say that
the democratic ideal is no longer in touch with the modern spirit. I strongly
agree; and I naturally prefer the democratic ideal, which is at least an ideal,
and therefore, an idea, to the modern spirit, which is simply modern,
therefore, already becoming ancient. I notice that the cranks, whom it would be
more polite to call the idealists, are already hastening to shed this ideal. A
well-known Pacifist, with whom I argued in Radical papers in my Radical days,
and who then passed as a pattern Republican of the new Republic, went out of
his way the other day to say, 'The voice of the people is commonly the voice of
Satan.' The truth is that these Liberals never did really believe in popular
government, any more than in anything else that was popular, such as pubs or
the Dublin Sweepstake. They did not believe in the democracy they invoked
against kings and priests. But I did believe in it; and I do believe in it,
though I much preferred to invoke it against prigs and faddists. I still
believe it would be the most human sort of government, if it could be once more
attempted in a more human time.
Unfortunately, humanitarianism has been the mark of
an inhuman time. And by inhumanity I do not mean merely cruelty; I mean the
condition in which even cruelty ceases to be human. I mean the condition in
which the rich man, instead of hanging six or seven of his enemies because he
hates them, merely beggars and starves to death six or seven thousand people
whom he does not hate, and has never seen, because they live at the other side
of the world. I mean the condition in which the courtier or pander of the rich
man, instead of excitedly mixing a rare, original poison for the Borgias, or carving exquisite ornamental poignard for the political purposes of the Medici, works
monotonously in a factory turning out a small type of screw, which will fit
into a plate he will never see; to form part of a gun he will never see; to be
used in a battle he will never see, and about the merits of which he knows far
less than the Renaissance rascal knew about the purposes of the poison and the
dagger. In short, what is the matter with industrialism is indirection; the
fact that nothing is straightforward; that all its ways are crooked even when
they are meant to be straight. Into this most indirect of all systems we tried
to fit the most direct of all ideas. Democracy, an ideal which is simple to
excess, was vainly applied to a society which was complex to the point of
craziness. It is not so very surprising that such a vision has faded in such an
environment. Personally, I like the vision; but it takes all sorts to make a
world, and there actually are human beings, walking about quite calmly in the
daylight, who appear to like the environment.