BOOKS OF THE DAY

PAGE

PAGE

The Defence of Democracy (R. A. Scott-James) 99 Kilvert's Diary (C. E. Vulliamy)

102

The Dear Monster (E. H. Carr) ... roo Robbery Under Law (William Gower) .. The Modern House (Geoffrey Boumphrey)-

103 104

Modern Science (C. E. M. Joad) too

Pamphlets on World Affairs (W. T. Wells) 104

The Defence of Britain (Major B. T. Reynolds) tot Fiction (Kate O'Brien) ro6

CAN DEMOCRACY BE REALISED ?

By R. A. SCOTT-JAMES

SINCE Munich, says Mr. Middleton Murry, " we English have begun to wonder what we stand for, and whether we stand for anything. That is a new condition of soul for us to be in." For the past 40o years, he suggests, we have felt with varying degrees of distinctness that " we stood for ' freedom." But, " suddenly, we have become doubtful about it." He does not discuss the strong prevailing sentiment which already exists in this country, or distinguish it from the considerations which determine Government policy. These may or may not be identical. But his argument pre- supposes that whatever it may be that we " stand for " it is opposed to the standpoint of Herr Hitler and Signor Musso- lini, who repudiate the idea of international obligations and have no respect either for their own citizens or persons or for other countries as national societies possessed of rights. We call ourselves a " democracy," and Mr. Murry does not deny that in a certain sense we are a democracy. But what exactly do we mean by that? What is it that we pro- pose to defend when we say we will defend our democracy? What is it that we are putting before the world as our cause, our goal?

It is only in one, and a negative, sense, says Mr. Murry, that Fascism and National Socialism can be regarded as serious theories of society. Their existence is a potent criti- cism of the weakness of modern democracy. The dictators claim to have provided the will to action which was para- lysed by divided 'counsels or lethaigy in the democratic State —and substituted a rule based on terror and lies True, the democracies which the dictators overthrew were those of Italy and Germany, not the British democracy ; but even the last, in the author's opinion, is not " such that a just man can have faith in it." As democracy, it is a " sickly and back- ward child," brought into being and nurtured by Capitalism, its very freedom being " in the main the freedom of indi- viduals to make a profit out of others."

Mr. Murry's book is an attempt to track down that elusive principle, the principle of democracy, to its lair, and show it for what it is, not merely as an ideal, but as something that may be made to work and to hold its own against its enemies without self-violation. His method of inquiry is to examine the principles of its challenger, in the hope of discovering just wherein it differs from it, since it is likely that the differentia will belong to the essence of democracy. The challenger, it should be made clear, is not Fascism or Nazism. These, with their gangsterism and their worship of brute force, are based on no serious theory of society. But Communism is. There at least we have a reasoned and coherent view of the place of man in society and his sub- servience to the State—a view that is based on a philosophy and has the dynamic quality of a faith. For Karl Marx the object of faith was the proletariat, the oppressed victims of the wage system, destined to shape a future for themselves by vanquishing Capital and establishing the Communist State. This could only be accomplished by revolution ; and if it came about through the conquest of the democratic franchise, well and good ; but it was the Communist State, not democracy, that Marx cared about.

Mr. Murry, having pointed out the emptiness of an ideal in which human beings find their essence in an "ensemble of social relations " rather than in the rights of man or any defined human well-being, insists that Marxism, for modern England, is out of date, because it assumes a proletariat without rights such as no longer exists in England. The

The Defence of Democracy. By John Middleton Murry. (Cape. mos. 6d.)

working-classes have already captured the franchise, and with it the right to everything else they care to insist on ; they have acquired a status in society through the trade unions and through social legislation. They have already themselves become bourgeois; they have privileges in varying degrees; they have entered into the body of that society which they were invited to destroy. The difference between Marxism, whether it took a Social-Democratic form or a Marx-Leninist form, and Mr. Murry's ideal is that Marxism denied the spiritual force of the individual, which belongs to the essence of democracy ; it left out religion ; it left out man's faith in personal salvation and the salvation of others. Marx's over-ruling purpose was to change human society. That is also, Mr. Murry says, the purpose of Christianity. But it cannot be done without changing men themselves. It is their consciousness of their place in society and their responsibility to it which could effect the social revolution, the machinery of democracy being at their disposal.

Marxism retails Christianity to its duty of social revolution, to its fundamental rejection of the supremacy of property over persons, to the significance of its pristine impulse to community ; and Christianity recalls Marxism to the dangers, indeed to the inevitable disillusion, of a purely secular optimism.

It is the individual on whom in the last resort everything

rests, though his individuality is always conditioned by society. If a social revolution is to be brought about, it can only be by the conscious action of individuals, and its end can only be justified in proportion as it promotes the well- being of individuals. Christianity emphasises the claims of the individual soul to be saved—the spiritual rights of man.

Democracy emphasises the claim of the individual to be free —the social rights of man. And just as it is the virtue of the individual in the one case to lose his life, and thereby save

it, so it is his virtue in the second case to accept his respon- sibility to other men. Where there is democracy there cannot be sudden revolution, since the people will not consciously set about to destroy themselves. It will proceed therefore by way of gradual reform and social betterment, achieving its ends in proportion as a majority of the individuals composing it realise their interests and their responsibilities and consciously and purposefully contribute to the process of peaceful transformation—towards what Mr. Murry thinks of as the City of God.

Mr. Murry fears that the weakness of our democracy today lies in the fact that it forgets its Christian origins, and that the Christianity professed is a sham Christianity. We are shocked by Hitler. But why?

The question to be asked is whether we believe in any God at all. Our Christianity is professional. It is a vested interest—a solidly established department of capitalist society. The evidence of the Christian Church in England is no more evidence that we believe in God than the evidence of the Inns of Court is evidence that we believe in Justice.

Mr. Murry appeals for a real Christianity, a real Christian Church, a spiritualised social consciousness, as the means for making democracy an efficient and irresistible instrument of social justice at home and international justice abroad. His argument is closely woven and well sustained, and based on a careful examination of Marxist theory. There are many rele- vant economic questions which he does not attempt to probe

—he assumes that his ethico-political man, having the will, will have the power to solve them. His emphasis is on an aspect of the question of urgent importance today—the duty of democracy towards itself, the need that it should set an example, and its bounden obligation to take the initiative in

the world according to its own inner light.