A Lukewarm Democrat
TILE jacket of Dr. Madariaga's book informs us that he stands for liberal democracy, albeit not uncritically. His distinguished record in academic as Well as in public life, his recent services to the Spanish democracy, his important work at Geneva in connexion with the Abyssinian crisis make one turn eagerly to see how this redoubtable personality will champion the cause against the menacing creeds of our latter-day autocracies. Whose pen should be more adept than his at this task ? What more fluent and cultivated,- what more knowledgeable and experienced advocate could we ask ?
Whoso goes beyond the jacket, however, will be destined to grave disappointment. Dr. Madariaga would revise liberal democracy to unanimous organic democracy," first cousin to totalitarianism. It must be said in fairness that Dr. Madariaga is a friend of the League of Nations, that he dislikes violence, the suppression of free thought, class-war and excessive nationalism. To that extent he is a friend of liberal democracy. But something more positive is required as a counterblast to the fierce autocratic creeds, and in his constructive section Dr. Madariaga moves over to quite a different terrain. Liberty, equality, government by. the people, these are ideas which only make .a very mild appeal to Dr. Madariaga, and he is chiefly concerned with the dangers of over-emphasis. If in his lukewarm faith he is typical of the post-War spokesman for democracy, we need not be surprised that its star has seemed to many to be on the wane.
He is almost prepared to narrow down his definition of liberty to the rule of law, adding something, however, as befits a writer, about cultural liberty. In the economic sphere, on the other hand, stress should be laid on " authority, hierarchy and discipline." The right to strike he sweeps away with emphasis and gusto. He shares -the common illusion with regard to the importance of strikes in reducing output. Actually in England since the War the loss of working time due to them has been less than would have been caused by one extra Bank Holiday a year. He has the highest praise for English political wisdom. But he- seems to have no conception of our love of liberty, of how jealously we guard the ultimate right to resist the bully or the bureaucrat.
- He wishes democracy limited by a restricted franchise. The qualifications which render a man eligible for the vote are to be making charitable contributions, " taking part in properly controlled groups for the study of public problems, public or social services duly. recognised, competence objectively demonstrated, &c." He naively adds : --` The- most difficult point in carrying out this discrimination would be how to set up the authorities beyond all suspicion of- partiality who would decide the .granting of citizenship."
There is much that is jejune in his practical political proposals and still more in his economics, for which, in order to show that the banks need curbing, he quotes a page from Professor Soddy ; but there is a constructive section in his book, which lies in some midway place between philosophy and applied politics, that is worthy of serious consideration.
Dr. Madariaga presents a -view of social structure which- is closely analogous to that of Plato's Republic. He. holds that there must be classes in the State and these correspond to certain elements in the composition of the individual man. The mass of people are repositories of simple emotions, tradi- tions, memories ; the bourgeois represents that play of intel- ligence which is required for expertism of all kinds ; the aristocrat has intuition, creative imagination. Such classes must. exist because- they correspond to functions . which have to be performed in society. We may agree with Dr. Madariag,a that an extreme egalitarianism which takes no account of this may do harm by presenting a theory quite divorced from practice or by making revolutionaries seek a form of equality that can never in fact be realised. There is something to be said for the view that the existence of social classes should be more formally recognised as necessary and desirable by
liberal democratic theory. . . . . .
• But when we have said .this,. we are but at. the beginning of the problem. How are the classes to be carved out ? What part is the hereditary principle to play ? Is there any justification for our great inequalities of wealth and income ? Dr.' Madariaga does not get 'far with these questions. He does not give the impression that he sees before us great social problems to be solved, but rather that there is some state of society in the not too remote past which with a little touching up could be made to look quite a respectable Utopia. Dr. Madariaga's classes do not correspond exactly to those of the Republic. His large class, the mass of the people: consists of peasants, closely attached to the soil, conservative in outlook, full of homely aphorisms and romantic rusticity. Next above it comes the bourgeoisie. Clearly there is a great gap here which Dr. Madariaga recognises. But with the industrial worker he is utterly unsympathetic. " Either he feels drawn up towards the bourgeoisie, or lets himself go down the fatal slope leading towards the proletariat, or he remains closely attached to the warm popular countryside." Those who choose to take the middle way and become mere unskilled labourers are " not without parallel types in the other layers of society : in the people, the tramp ; in the middle classes, the hanger-on, good-for-nothing, Mr. Mieawber sort of person ; in the aristocracy, the young man about town, the bohemian artist, the futile intellectual or aesthete ; human beings whose life floats away, tossed here and there by collec- tive ebbs and eddies, between laziness and vanity." It is rather a large class (that of industrial labour) which has perforce in the modern world to be recruited from this material according to our author ; and especially is this so in his much- beloved England. He writes :
" England might have developed into one of the happiest com- munities in the world had she remained predominantly agricultural, for the balance between her countryside people, her university- educated middle classes, and her squirearchy and aristocracy would have become nearly perfect in the nineteenth century."
One may, or may not, agree with Dr. Madariaga in his love for a rose-tinted peasantry ; it is certain that one who has so little appreciation of the virtues of the industrial worker is unfitted to make even the most rudimentary sketch-plan of our future development.
Despite these manifest failings, there is much acute percep- tion and subtle writing in Dr. Madariaga's book. I give an example from his Introduction, in which he describes the post- War period
" Youth in particular was led away from ideas by the lure of sports. A kind of neo-paganism shifted the centre of interest from the mind to the body, from freedom of thought to freedom of ways, from philosophy to motor-driving, from silent meditation to the ever-present drona of gramophone and wireless. Thus by the action of apparently external and fortuitous causes the human soul migrated from its inner to its outer zone and evolved a tendency to dwell on the surface. Such an evolution was favourable to the political changes which wore in the air, since it sapped the strength of convictions and developed a kind of indifference towards the origins of such new material advantages as the individual liappened
to come by." IL F. Mallon.
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