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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Throughout the world governmental regulation of social and economic affairs has increased during the first half of the twentieth century. Whether prompted by the emergencies of two World Wars, by the wide-spread extension of social welfare measures, or by the rise of totalitarianism, this increase has caused apprehension among liberals and socialists alike. Enthusiasm for social reforms, whether they be moderate or radical, has declined in the face of these developments. The many social problems, which remain unsolved, call for reform measures as insistently as ever; yet the fear of governmental regulation besets the advocates of social change. They are confronted by the danger of regimentation in every extension of governmental power.
This concern with the danger of bureaucracy has grown apace with the realization that the countries of Western Europe and North America are on the road to a planned society. It is curious that among the advocates of a planned society, socialists are perhaps more apprehensive of these dangers of regimentation than are New-Deal liberals. In fact, fear of bureaucracy and dictatorial methods has been a recurrent theme of socialist thought. Before and after World War I the Revisionists advocated a gradual transition from capitalism to socialism in order to safeguard the institutions of democratic government; during the same period the Guild Socialists attempted to formulate a programme of industrial democracy, which would regularize worker-participation in the management of industry and government; and throughout the nineteenth century anarchists and “utopian socialists” sought to safeguard the freedom of the individual by conceiving of voluntary associations and co-operation in community organizations as the foundation of the ideal society of the future. Others, then as now, retained the belief that a proletarian revolution was necessary or inevitable; but they insisted that democracy could be preserved, if the people gave full support to the revolution; indeed, only then was a successful revolution possible. All these interpretations were concerned with the transition to a planned society. They were concerned to retain democratic institutions in this transitional period. Yet it is fair to say that the interpreters who were specific in proposing organizational safeguards against a future tyranny were usually vague when they discussed the political means by which socialism was to be established. Conversely, those who specified the necessary political means were ordinarily vague when they discussed how a revolutionary dictatorship could avoid a new oppression.
1 Cf. the recent restatement of this view in Laski, Harold, Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (New York, 1943), chaps. I and IIIGoogle Scholar, where the author speaks of revolution by consent.
2 Marx, Karl, Critique of Political Economy (Chicago, 1913), p. 11.Google Scholar
3 See Marx, Karl, Capital (New York, 1936), pp. 708–9Google Scholar:“ … in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the laborer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse.” (My italics.)
4 This philosophical, rather than economic interpretation of the fate of the industrial worker was not unique with Marx, although nobody at the time drew similar conclusions. For an interesting statement concerning the dehumanizing effect of the division of labour, see de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America (New York, n.d.), vol. II, chap. XX, pp. 169–72.Google Scholar On the similarity of the conservative and the radical reaction to industrialization, cf. Mannheim, Karl, “Das konservative Denken,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, vol. LVII (1927), pp. 68–142.Google Scholar
5 This statement refers to an important part of Marx's thinking. See, for example, an early description of the condition of man in a society which has overcome the division of labour in The German Ideology (New York, 1939), p. 22 Google Scholar, and compare it with this statement written thirty years later in The Gotha Program (New York, 1935), p. 31 Google Scholar: “In the higher phase of Communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual under the division of labor has disappeared, and therewith also the opposition between manual and intellectual labor ….”
6 Gotha Program, p. 27.
7 Marx, Karl, The Civil War in France (Chicago, 1934), pp. 83–4.Google Scholar
8 Lenin, , State and Revolution (New York, 1932), p. 37.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., p. 38.
10 Ibid., p. 42-3.
11 Lenin, , What is to be Done? (New York, 1929), pp. 94–142.Google Scholar
12 Luxemburg, Rosa, The Russian Revolution (New York, 1940), p. 44.Google Scholar
13 It is interesting to note the parallel between Lenin and Andrew Jackson in this respect.
14 Luxemburg, , The Russian Revolution, pp. 45–6.Google Scholar
15 Marx, , Capital, pp. 90, 92, 534.Google Scholar
16 Lange, Oscar, On the Economic Theory of Socialism (Minneapolis, 1938), pp. 109–10.Google Scholar
17 The urgency of this problem has prompted one socialist to turn to anarchism. See MacDonald, Dwight, “The Root Is Man,” Politics, vol. III (04, 1946), pp. 97–115 Google Scholar; (July, 1946), pp. 194-214.
18 Cf. Pound, Roscoe, The Spirit of the Common Law (Boston, 1921), pp. 32–59.Google Scholar
19 See, for instance, von Mises, Ludwig, Bureaucracy (New Haven, 1944).Google Scholar
20 Cf. Pound, Roscoe, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (New Haven, 1922), p. 89 Google Scholar: “Jurists began to think in terms of human wants or desires rather than of human wills …. They began to weigh or balance and reconcile claims or wants or desires, as formerly they had balanced or reconciled wills. They began to think of the end of law not as a maximum of self-assertion, but as a maximum satisfaction of wants.” To speak of freedom in this proximate sense will be unsatisfactory to many. They might raise the question, for instance, whether the removal of restraints was in each case experienced as an “increase of freedom.” Or did the abolition of existing restraints only lead to an experience of new restraints, not formerly thought of as such or only now brought into existence? There is the further question of the aggregate loss or gain in human freedom, since each new freedom depends on the imposition of new deprivations. Since no calculus of freedom exists, these questions can only be answered in terms of some ultimate value position. Apart from this philosophical inquiry it remains important to ascertain the experience of freedom and restraints in terms of (a) the absence of formal sanctions, (b) the existence of the individual's ability and willingness to choose, and (c) the actual exercise of choice. Cf. in this connection Frank H. Knight's definition: “Freedom refers … to the range of choices open to a person, and in its broad sense is nearly synonymous with power.” See Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (New York, 1921), p. 351.Google Scholar
21 Reported by A. H. Uhi in PM (September 27, 1944), p. 6.
22 Statement quoted in Spender, Stephen, European Witness (New York, 1946), p. 218.Google Scholar
23 Jane, Cecil, Liberty and Despotism in Spanish America (Oxford, 1929), pp. 26–7.Google Scholar
24 Lowe, Adolf, The Price of Liberty (London, 1937), p. 42.Google Scholar
25 Cf. in this connection Lenin's comment, quoted earlier, that “registration, filing and checking” have been simplified sufficiently for every literate person. The question is how much such jobs are desired “by every literate person,” but Lenin did not ask this question.
26 See Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia (New York, 1949), pp. 105–6.Google Scholar
27 See for an analysis of the arguments Knight, Frank H., Freedom and Reform (New York, 1947), pp. 1–18 Google Scholar and passim. Cf. also the brief review of the discussion concerning the scope of administrative regulation and the literature cited in this connection in Marx, F. Morstein, ed., Elements of Public Administration (New York, 1946), pp. 526–31.Google Scholar
28 The idea of an abolition of the division of labour is moreover inconsistent with the Marxian interpretation of history, which regards this division as one of the most important forces in historical change. See Marx, Karl, Capital (New York, 1936), pp. 386–94.Google Scholar
29 Cf. a recent statement along these lines by Weber, Alfred, “Buerokratie und Freiheit,” Die Wandlung (Heidelberg, Germany; 12, 1946), vol. I, pp. 1033–48.Google Scholar
30 Cf. Engel's letter to Conrad Schmidt of August 5, 1890, published in Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Correspondence 1846-95 (New York, 1936), p. 473.Google Scholar