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Liberty, Law, And Democracy

By Dora Marsden

Taken From "The Egoist: An Individualist Review." Formerly "The New
Freewoman."
No. 1. Vol. I. Thursday, January 1st, 1914.
THE concepts with which one age will preoccupy itself, and in which it will
invest its surplus emotional heat have shown themselves to be so
essentially casual as to be now a matter for mirth rather than wonder with
its successors. The subject of an age's master Passion round which its
interest rages will be anything accidental and contingent which will serve:
stand the heat, that is, and last out until enthusiasm- tires. The amount
of genuine enthusiasm which Athanasius, Arius and their followers were able
to cull from the numerical problems in the concept of the Trinity was-
incredible though it may seem-equal to that which this age culls from the
figures of the football scores. The Crusaders who were so concerned about
the possession of the Tomb of Christ looked forward to finding as much
diversion and profit as a Home Ruler expects to get from the possession of
a Parliament on Dublin Green. It is only from a distance that these dead
dogs look; so determinedly dead. Nearer to, one would swear the body had
stirred; and we who are so near to an age when the mere mention of
"Universal Law" would produce Lyrical intoxication, "All's love, All's
law," a very swoon of security, do not purpose here to break in upon the
belated obsequies of that dead or dying concept. As the sport of the ribald
and the mockers "Universal law" is the perquisite of the youth of 1950, not
of 1915. And we will not here trespass on the future.
The reference in the title of this article is limited to statutory law, a
prosaic and earth-bound branch which not even Apollo himself could have
strung to the Lyrical note, and it must be allowed that however excellent a
run "Universal Law" as a symbol and idealised concept may have been
accorded by a generation now settled in its obesity, its society
representative, so to speak, with which we are here concerned, has never
been in too high esteem. The increase in its bulk and scope of application,
which oddly enough, grows rapidly alongside something called the "Liberty
of the people" have proved matters for complexity even when they have not
created indignation and alarm. Visions of those not the least penetrating,
have seen in the steady advance of the statutory law a devastating plague
in which the parchment of thc politicias has seemed as capable of devouring
the spirit of the people as a swarm of locusts devouring green grass.
Proudhon writing in 1850 on the subject says:
"Laws and ordinances fall like hail on the poor populace. After a while the
political soil will be covered with a layer of paper, and all the
geologists will have to do will be to list it, under thc name of
papyraceuos formation, among thc epochs of the earth's history. The
Convention, in three years one month and four days, issued eleven thousand
six hundred laws and decrees; the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies
had produced hardly less; the empire and the later governments have wrought
as industriously. At present the ' Bulletin des Lois ' contains, they say,
more than fifty thousand; if our representatives did their duty this
enormous figure would soon be doubled. Do you believe that the populace, or
the government itself, can keep its sanity in this labyrinth?"
And yet, while no one would care to dispute these facts or deny they had
significance, it is the libertarian interpretation of them which provides
the clue to the mystery why the gospel of liberty carries with it so little
conviction. The Libertarian creed has no "bite" in it; "Liberty" remains
the "beautiful and ineffectual angel." In its devouter moments common
speech will accept the gospel, but common sense invariably slips past it.
While not wishing to hurt its feelings, so to speak, it refuses to have any
serious dealings with it. Now common sense is quite prepared to be serious
about statutory law, even where it is suspicious of it. It is willing to
hear law described as a threatening power and will think out ways and means
of cutting its claws: but "liberty" it does not discuss. The discussion for
and against the "principle of liberty" appears similar to a discussion on
the ultimate and eternal implications involved in the "principle" in which
one wins or loses a game of patience: or the principle of that popular
child's game where one "arranges" either to tread on every chink in the
pavement or to avoid treading on every chink. "You do, if you do, and don't
if you don't."
It is however only when one gets at the temper behind law and realises its
permanent nature that it becomes apparent why discussions concerning
liberty are more or less frivolous diversions, and nothing makes law more
clear than considering it under that form of "government" which has
promoted its luxuriant growth-democracy.
A law means that "state" support is guaranteed on behalf of an interest
which has obviously already sufficient power to command it. This law has a
reverse side to it which implies a "state" guarantee to repress another
interest or interests, too weak to command its support. Democracy, putting
aside its alliterative and rhetorical jargon, means just the quickening of
the pace at which these alliances of the State with owners of "interests"
are put through. Representation of people is an impossibility. It is
intended for platform purposes only, but representation of interests is a
very real thing, one which can be judged with precision as to its efficacy
or no. An "interest" is the particularised line of fulfilment which the
accomplishment of a willed purpose takes. At points it breaks into and
clashes with other interests: and at these points it becomes necessary for
their owners to fight the situation out.
These are the precise points where rhetoricians and moralists try to work
in their spoof. The people have "a right to" protection from invasion of
their interests, and owners of "interests" should "respect" each other's
interests. The "liberty" of each and all "should" be "respected." One
"should" repress one's interest when likely to interfere with another's.
The fact to be borne in mind is that whether one "should" or "should not,"
the strong natures never do. The powerful allow "respect for others'
interests" to remain the exclusive foible of the weak. The tolerance they
have for others' "interests rests" is not "respect" but indifference. The
importance of furthering one's own interests does not leave sufficient
energy really to accord much attention to those of others. It is only when
others' interests thrust themselves obtrudingly across one's own that
indifference vanishes: because they have become possible allies or
obstacles. If the latter, the fundamental lack of respect swiftly defines
itself. In face of opposition to a genuine interest, its owner respects
neither "his neighbour's ox, his ass, his wife, his manservant, his
maidservant, nor anything that is his." Not even his opinions. One has only
to think what jolly old proselytisers the world's "great" men have been to
realise what "respect" they have for their neighbour's interests. What each
has been concerned for has been to see his will worked upon any soul or
body upon which his whim or purpose has seen fit to direct it. Their
success has been proportional to the unformedness of the characters with
which they have had immediately to deal.
If it is borne in mind that genuine "interests" are things which are never
abandoned: that smaller interests are sacrificed ("sacrifice " being a word
which has no meaning apart from an audience: it means a virtue, i.e.
something likely to win the applause of an audience, for an act which did
no audience look on we should do as a matter of course) for a bigger
interest as we should "sacrifice" small change of, say, eight half-crowns
for a guinea, we can clear "democracy" of its bluff and remove the
complexity which the multiplicity of statutory laws creates. They are seen
to be two names for one phenomenon. Democracy is government, i.e. per
persuasion by compulsion exercised from a largely increased number of
centres. Multiplicity of laws indicates the detailed channels through which
it is effected. It is too vague to say that democracy represents the
liberty of the people: rather one would say democracy represented the
increase in the number of people who are prepared to take liberties (i.e.
per persuade by personal violence), with the people who refuse assistance
in the furthering of the audacious ones' interests. It is the increase in
the number of those who have the courage and ingenuity to become in an open
and unequivocal fashion the tyrants we all are subtly and by instinct. It
is part of the human trend towards explicitness. If "democracy" had no
"believers"-no followers whose voices break with Lyric intoxication at
mention of it, its clean swash buckling character would be in no danger of
being misunderstood. As it is, we are seldom permitted to view it, save
through the veil of brotherhood, love and what not, as it steps forward
like a mincing lady with a Clergyman on the one hand and a Wizard on the
other: Liberty and the State, companions not chosen in stupidity.
It is not by accident for instance that Democracy and Liberty preach in
pairs. Liberty is as necessary to Democracy as the second blade is to a
pair of shears. Democracy boldly affirms government: Liberty whispers
"Don't govern." Liberty plays 'Conscience with a task to't.' It is the
ghostly spirit the moralists would have the meek always carry inside their
waistcoats: it plays the policeman inside the man. Unfortunately for the
meek, it is only on them that Liberty is able to impose. Those who can
govern, i.e. forward their own interest to the detriment of those who let
them, will govern. Those who feel no stomach for "governing" will espouse
the gospel of liberty. That is why to those