EUROPEAN LIBERALISM

 AN ESSAY IN INTERPRETATION BY PROFESSOR LASKI

"The Rise of European Liberalism," by Harold J. Laski. Published by George Allen and Unwin, London.

LIBERTY OF THE INDIVIDUAL

IN the nineteenth century the dominating idea in the political and social thought of the period was the doctrine of the liberty of the individual. Political freedom was sought to be attained by democratic institutions, economic liberty by the restriction of State interference in industry. In general it was considered that not merely was the general welfare best attained by allowing a maximum of freedom of action to individuals, but that individual liberty of action and thought was a value in itself, something to be sought for its own sake. In medieval times no such doctrine prevailed. Authority was the keynote of the period. Freedom of thought and action was strictly controlled by the dogmas of revealed religion and the moral code of Christianity. In modern times the pursuit of economic gain is regarded as an allowable and even praiseworthy end in itself, but in medieval times the economic interest of the individual was subordinated to consideration of the general welfare. Men lived within an economic order in which the effective social institutions, whether church or state or guild, judged economic activity by criteria derived from outside itself. Material utility was not accepted as a valid justification of economic behaviour. Heaven was man's destination, and his activities in this world were controlled accordingly. Hence competition was controlled, commerce was forbidden on religious grounds prices and the rate of interest were fixed, wages and hours were regulated, and speculation was, within wide limits, prohibited. But in the sixteenth century these medieval ideas began to give way to the habit of thought and system of ideas that are known as liberalism, and the question is, why did they do so?

 PENETRATING ANALYSIS.

 IN his essay, Professor Laski seeks to supply an answer to this question. To his task he brings qualifications which are possessed by few if any other writers of the present day. Not only is he an accomplished historian, but he is also a political philosopher with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the political writings of the period under consideration: indeed he almost irritates at times by the copiousness of his familiar allusions to writers of whom most people have never heard. The result is a profound and penetrating analysis of the fundamental ideas of liberalism, and of their relation to the historical evolution of the last four centuries. Professor Laski sees in liberalism an ideology invented to justify the methods and the predominance of the commercial class which gradually came to power in the period following the Renaissance and Reformation. Seeing the opportunities which lay before them to take advantage of the new geographical and technological discoveries, merchants and manufacturers rejected the traditional ideas which would have hampered them in their pursuit of gain, and asserted the right of the individual to free enterprise in the acquisition of wealth. They challenged the right of absolute monarchy to rule independently of their consent, thus evolving the doctrines of political liberty, and they next denied the right of the State, however controlled, to interfere with the economic freedom of the individual in the pursuit of gain, thus laying down the doctrine of laissez faire. In place of a society resting on status they substituted one the basis of which was freedom of contract between individuals. They persuaded themselves further that the freedom of the individual to pursue his own personal gain would promote the general welfare of society.

 THE DOCTRINE OF LIBERALISM.

 THUS Professor Laski sees liberalism as fundamentally a doctrine intended to secure to the middle classes their right to property and their right to pursue individual gain. Its more idealistic exponents did not of course limit its benefits to the middle classes, but Professor Laski lays stress on the fact that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the founders of liberalism refused to extend their theories to cover the working classes in cases where middle class interests might be affected. Thus they energetically rejected the claim of the working classes to participation in the government of the State, and they denied them the right of combination against employers (which alone could give them equality of bargaining power) as being an infringement of the liberty of contract between employer and employee. In the end they were prepared to grant political rights to the working classes, but only on the understanding that rights of property were not to be interfered with — it probably never occurred to them that such rights would be questioned. Now that they are being questioned, Professor Laski notes a disposition on the part of the middle classes to throw overboard their liberal doctrines in favour of Fascism and similar anti-liberal theories. This supports the thesis that liberalism was intended to maintain middle-class interests. 

THE LONELY FURROW OF THE IDEALIST.

 HOWEVER, the thesis is one from which many people will violently dissent. They can point out that John Hampden was not a business man, and that many of the aristocracy fought against Charles I. They can point out that Quesnay, who founded the French school of Physiocrats, who propounded the doctrine of freedom of trade, was not a trader but a court physician. There is no doubt that John Stuart Mill when he wrote of liberty had much more in mind than to make the world safe for capitalists. And so on. But ideas have a habit of being carried further than their origin necessitated, and their extensions are accepted so long as they do not conflict too strongly with their essential basis. The notion of individual liberty is one which may well arouse the enthusiasm of a John Stuart Mill, and economic liberalism had practical advantages and triumphs which might easily persuade a man of its value even though he was not engaged in commerce himself. But theories do not gain general acceptance unless they meet the needs of a large and important class, and the idealist will plough a lonely furrow unless his ideas are such that the practical man of affairs can use them to further his own self-interest. An example was given above of how the doctrine of liberalism could be applied to maintain the position of the middle classes against other classes. On the whole Professor Laski's view would seem to be incontrovertible, and his essay constitutes a masterly analysis of the basis of the dominating political thought of the last four centuries.

W.N.H.

Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld.), 29 July 1936 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article181911415

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM.

 Vigilance and Faith in Democracy

Professor Laski's Warning

"The essential duty of British Socialists at the present time is to work for the conquest of a Parliamentary majority in a straightforward, constitutional way," says Professor Harold Laski, in a special article in the London "Daily Herald."

THE collapse of democratic systems in the post-war world has naturally tended to weaken the faith of all students of politics in both their validity and staying power.

Certainly nothing is gained from concealing from ourselves that they confront a crisis of the gravest magnitude, and that no realistic observer can doubt the profundity of the challenge they encounter.

But it is one thing to admit this; and it is quite a different thing to assume that the case for parliamentary democracy should be allowed to go by default.

Socialists, of all people, have the obligation to recognise the solid advantages it represents over most of its alternatives, and the justification they have for defending it as, so far in our experience, the surest path available to the conquest of political power.

A country which abandons Parliamentarism does so under conditions that involve a revolution either of the Left or of the Right.

In the former circumstance both the approach to and the maintenance of the revolutionary government depend upon conditions unlikely of realisation save in the aftermath of unsuccessful war.

European Examples.

This has been the experience both of Russia and Germany, and the strength of organised government in the Allied countries stands in striking contrast.

It would be folly to throw away the solid prospects we confront for an alternative that might well destroy the prospects of democracy in the next generation.

This, of course, applies not less to the idea of force used on behalf of reaction. The use of it is possible and in that event, no doubt, we should be ruled, in our special English fashion, by a Fascist dictatorship.

But only economic prosperity would justify this adventure to the masses ; and in the ill-will it would encounter we are entitled to doubt whether that prospect is even thinkable.

Major Disasters.

Were it to occur, every Socialist ought to realise from Continental experience that, compared with the habits of a Parliamentary system, this would be a major disaster. It would end trade-union freedom; it would destroy liberty of the press; it would destroy the prospect of any Socialist propaganda save in an obscure and underground form.

Almost certainly the masses would pay the price of its establishment by the loss of all social legislation passed in the last generation.

The whole effort of such a regime, as in Italy and Germany, would be to consolidate the powers of the propertied classes at the expense of the workers.

Experience Teaches.

The experience of Italy and Germany makes it clear:

(i) That this consolidation can, in terms of modern administrative technique, be very rapidly effected, and

(ii) That it can postpone the prospect of successful assault upon itself for a considerable period.

Duty of Socialists.

I believe, therefore, that the essential duty of Socialists at the present time is to work for the conquest of a Parliamentary majority in a straight-forward, constitutional way. Once that majority is obtained, it is their duty to use it for fully Socialist purposes, and if challenged to protect its right to such a use by all the means at its disposal.

It seems to me clear that such an attitude is far more likely to secure the purposes of Socialism than any alternative strategy.

It throws the onus of conflict, if there be a desire for it, on our opponents at a period when they are least likely to be successful in its promotion.

It rallies to the side of a Socialist Government that great body of middle opinion which is habituated to a belief in law and order. It splits, therefore, the ranks of the enemies of Socialism by compelling them, in circumstances where legal authority is hostile to them, to stake their cause upon a gambler's throw.

These, I think, are the circumstances, in which a reaction of violence from the Right has the least chance of obtaining its objectives.

Appeal To Reason.

My argument, up to this point, has been one built essentially upon strategic considerations. But there are other reasons of importance which make the defence of the Democratic system an urgent matter for Socialists.

There is an unfortunate tendency abroad, both on the extreme Right and on the extreme Left, to belittle the importance of reason and persuasion in the settlement of human affairs.

We speak of war as inevitable; the Right to do so on the ground of some alleged need of human nature, the Left as a necessary consequence of a capitalist society. We speak of dictatorship as inevitable; the Right do so because they see no other way of arresting the progress of Socialism, the Communists because they insist that only force can break the will of the opponents of Communism.

False Assumption.

The underlying assumption of this attitude is the futility of any method save that of force in the settlement of human differences.

I do not myself deny that there are occasions in the history of the world when these differences are so final that there is, in fact, no alternative but force to their settlement.

But I do not believe that the use of force is likely to be successful unless its employment is related to a previously widespread conviction of its necessity; and it is then at least a matter for discussion as to whether it will be necessary to employ it.

The enforcement of the Peace of Versailles by the victorious allies is an instance of the use of force to settle a dispute: I do not think it can be called a striking success.

The Case of Hitler.

The regime of Hitler is an example of the forcible imposition of a philosophy upon a population 13 millions of whom at least dissent vehemently from its implications; and it is, I suggest, obvious to most thinking persons that it will provoke its own violent overthrow sooner or later.

Because the use of reason is the high-road to the consolidation of power it seems to me urgent to rely upon it until it has been demonstrated that no attention to, or respect for, its conclusions is likely to be displayed by our opponents.

No Blind Faith.

This does not, in my judgment, imply that the task of the Labor Movement must be founded upon a blind faith in the hypotheses of democracy.

The old maxim that perpetual vigilance is the price of freedom was never so obviously true as in our day.

But it does mean that Socialists, with the example of Italy and Germany before them, have the duty to take freedom seriously, and to recognise that the secret of its persistence is courage in those whose business is its defence.

Democracy the Goal.

The way to lose freedom is to be careless of its importance, to spurn its opportunities, to belittle its significance. There has been a good deal of that temper in the Labor Movement; above all, as in the case of India and the unemployed, an inertia before attacks upon its foundations which has encouraged the reactionaries to go on with their work of destruction.

It is useless to deny that the next years are likely to be a period of momentous challenge to Socialists. They may well have to prove their faith on the battlefield. At least let them remember that the goal at which they aim is a democratic society; they cannot abandon their struggle to secure it while the power remains to keep the flame of reason alight.

Daily Standard (Brisbane, Qld.), 13 July 1933 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article183074262

A PESSIMISTIC OUTLOOK

 "Democracy in Crisis," by Harold J. Laski London: Allen and Unwin Ltd) 11/3

The critical position of democratic government is Professor Laski's theme. In the United States, he points out, banking, power, oil, transport, coal—all the essential services upon which the public welfare depends,—are vested interests in private hands; in Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and Jugoslavia the pretence of Parliamentary democracy has been abandoned; in Japan a military oligarchy is in charge; Spain has revived a Parliamentary regime, "but who can call it stable?" The South American republics continue their unenviable record of casual revolution; China is the prey of bandits; and Turkey and Persia have changed from dictatorships on the Eastern to dictatorships on the Western model. Only the British Dominions, Holland, Belgium, and the Scandinavian countries remain, with Switzerland, at all firmly wedded to a Parliamentary system; but the economic position of Australia makes the persistence of parliamentarainism a matter upon which doubt is permissible. In explanation of his contention about Australia, Professor Laski says :—" A country mortgaged to absentee creditors cannot easily maintain a high standard of life for the masses and continue to pay the interest on its debt abroad. If it defaults upon the debt its international position becomes dubious; if it meets its obligations a high standard of life becomes inaccessible to all save a small wealthy class. Is it likely that universal suffrage will produce the conditions upon which the security of capitalism depends?" For all the evils that are afflicting the world Professor Laski blames Capitalist democracy and the disturbing effect of the war. Certainty has been replaced by pessimism. The Western way of life is in the melting pot. The ancient East, so long content with a passive aquiescence in the ascendancy of the West, has issued a challenge to those who seek to preserve the conditions of tutelage. Professor Laski makes this ominous addition to this gloomy summary :— 

"The search by the intelligentsia for new canons of behaviour is like nothing so much as the last period of the ancient French regime." Obsessed by his own conception of what is happening, Professor Laski looks for the remedies. The first that he finds is the realisation that the central fact of the age is economic international independence. We should, he advises, try to discover the formulæ of an international society. The sovereign national state should be abrogated and there should be international control of currency, tariffs, migration, foreign investment and conditions of labour. "We are dominated," he declares "by a communal psychology, which thinks essentially in terms of the national state; can we rapidly transfer our thinking to the new plane that an international society implies?" Speaking of Great Britain in particular, he discusses the wisdom of transferring "a capitalist into an egalitarian democracy," and he predicts that the attempt will be made when the Labour party obtains an electoral majority in Parliament with consequences that he himself does not contemplate with equanimity.

Argus (Melbourne, Vic.), 8 July 1933 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4747508

"NO CLEAR DIRECTION."

 Professor Laski Discusses Roosevelt.

CONTEMPORARY America is a bewildering spectacle; I returned to England after five weeks with a sense that here, in comparison, were stability of purpose and direction of effort! It is true that the new American Government is the best since the end of the war.

It has courage, it has initiative, and, in an important degrees, it has good will. But one cannot avoid the sense, as one watches it at work, that it is overwhelmed by the complexity of its task; that it has no clear direction in which it is seeking to move; and, not least important, that the stage of evolution the American economic system has reached is unlikely to permit it the luxury of the wholesale economic reconstruction America so patently requires (says Professor Laski in the London "Herald").

What is being decided in America? Essentially, I think, the present phase is the end of the struggle between the little man and the great combination for the control of the sources of productive power. As yet, in a European sense, there is no Labor movement in America; the trade unions, with, but one notable exception, lack any serious political sense of the technique required for the defence of the wage-earning classes.

Political Issues.

The major political issues are, therefore, what they were in Great Britain when Liberals and Conservatives dominated the scene. The policies pursued by the Democrats do not think of issues in terms of the nation's mastery of its life.

They conceive of the achievement of an equilibrium in which the independence of the small owner-merchant, farmer, manufacturer, or what not, is secured.

But this is a futile attempt to arrest a technological evolution in which the small producer is bound to go to the wall. Mr. Roosevelt is seeking to protect him by a policy of regulating capitalism.

At the moment, he has a free hand simply because the Republicans are so discredited. But his effort depends upon a rapid recovery of prosperity. If that does not come, he will lose his hold of Congress at the next election, and, with it, his initiative in legislation.

In that event his last year of office will be barren; and he will hand over to the Republicans—who stand essentially for big business—a highly centralised political machine more apt to the development of industrial feudalism than the world has seen in modern times.

Workers' Outlook.

The American working man will, under those circumstances, be proletarianised under conditions which will make the task of organisation more arduous and more bitter than it has been anywhere since the industrial revolution.

What I felt in America was that the whirlwind of depression had come so quickly that no Government could bridge the gap between the historic psychology of its electorate and the measure required for reconstruction. That is why, I think, the Presidential policy will be regulation, where the facts require socialisation.

Roosevelt Doomed.

That is why I believe that, despite his profound desire to help "the forgotten man," President Roosevelt is doomed to defeat; he is trying to do with the American economic order things its environment does not make possible.

And this is why I come back to England with a profound sense that our outlook is a more hopeful one. For though the experimental temper of Washington is incomparably better than the reactionary do-nothingism of our own Government, here, at least, the lines of division in policy are clear.

The British people have given their Government as wide a mandate for private enterprise as it has ever received; it is terribly and convincingly clear that it has no notion how to make use of it.

The alternative in this country is not, as in the United States, a policy of limited control. The alternative is a clear policy of wide, and rapid socialisation for which the  psychology of the people is being increasingly prepared.

If there is no European catastrophe, if, further, we can count upon respect for constitutional principles, the next years in England ought to give the Labor Party the most creative opportunity in its history.

Compare that situation with the American position. There are 15 million unemployed who with their dependents probably constitute a population greater in number than the whole of our people.

Great schemes must develop, like unemployment insurance, of social welfare, for which the necessary Civil Service will have to be improvised. Control of banking, hours of labor, property-rights, will have to be invented; and these experiments will have to run the gamut of a Supreme Court which is nothing so much as the final defender of economic privilege. That is not all.

States And Federation

The relation of the States to the Federal Government is largely archaic; yet it will be astonishingly difficult to secure its radical amendment. The temper of the people is ardent for change, but it is still set in an overwhelmingly individualist environment. Labor is badly organised and politically unconscious.

 There is no well-developed co-operative movement. The whole social life of America, in a word, is still planned upon the assumption that it is the fabled land of opportunity. And only the actual vision of America can make the observer realise the volume of reconstruction, psychological and institutional, which the new environment requires.

I did not feel that the American Government has either the power or the institutions essential to the task it confronts. It is still, as a Government, largely thinking in terms that the conditions have made obsolete.

It is a "Liberal" Government at a time when the recipe of Liberalism has no applicability to the issues before us.

Inflation?

It may do something by inflation to relieve the terrible pressure of mortgages and debt-interests. It may ease the tariff-barriers which have so woefully handicapped international trade.

It may establish a sounder banking system and offer a greater security to the investor. It may promote schemes of social welfare on the lines of the legislation fostered by the Liberal Government of 1906. But even supposing that it achieves all these things, it will still have left the effective economic power of the community in the hands of the few.

It will still not have been able to plan an America in which there is even an approximation to an equal claim on the common good.

It is no doubt true that the motives of Mr. Roosevelt and his colleagues reveal a far more liberal and creative temper than those of the "National" Government. 

No Organised Workers

But what is lacking in America is a seriously organised and self-conscious working class which sees the problems of power and is prepared to think in those terms. Until that epoch arrives in the United States I find it hard to see how any progressive movement can have behind it the driving force which brings success.

There may be sporadic improvement. There may be well-meant effort to anticipate and stem working-class discontent before it assumes unmanageable proportions. But there will be no decisive attack on the central citadel of power.

In Great Britain it is toward that decisive attack that we are marching. There is no need, Heaven knows, to anticipate that the task will be other than a very difficult one; the British Labor Movement is learning slowly, but, I think, steadily the lessons of 1931.

But at least the character of the alternatives is with us one that is increasingly obvious. To retain the present social order means to retain the present drift and misery and inability to plan in a wholesale way.

A government of the Left in these next years means experiment with the vital foundations of the national life. We have reached a stage in our evolution where that experiment is the alternative to disaster. And it is because a government of the Left may still be the choice of the British people that I find here a prospect of hope not yet discernible on the American horizon.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article185468576

SOCIALISM LOOKS AT UNIVERSITY

 SUBVERSION BY SUBSIDISED PEDANTRY

— PROFESSORS AND PLANNED ECONOMY

(By SOLOMON BRIGG.)

 (No, 24.)

IN previous articles we have been examining the technique of Capitalism facing this the major crisis of its existence. In turn we have analysed the Fascist experiment, the position of the Press, certain phases of financial control, and the insidious attempt to undermine responsible working-class organisation by suborning responsible working-class executives.

 One of the most recent phases of declining capitalism has been its growing consciousness that an enlightened democracy represents the most serious challenge to the continuance of its exploitation of the masses. In America, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Upton Sinclair and John Dos Passos have brought to literature a recognition of the social necessities of the times, and ripped away the conventional hypocrisy cloaking the vices of a materialistic age.

 In England, Bernard Shaw with his mordant pen has in the "Apple Cart" and similar works, shown the true significance of the social struggle, Harold Laski has remorselessly analysed the political concepts from London University; G. H. D. Cole has advocated Fabianism from the shelter of Oxford; whilst in literature J. Middleton Murry, the late D. H. Lawrence and more recently Aldous Huxley have shown that the intellectuals of the period all realise its deficiencies due to the failure of capitalism to assess true social values.

 Aldous Huxley in "Brave New Worlds" is seen by John Strachey as sending the "long, delicate, probing fingers of his analysis into every corner of capitalist society. Go where you like, 'do what you will,' you will never escape from the smell of ordure and decay." 

That the Australian Government censored this volume from the gifted pen of England's most brilliant young literary giant is thus seen in its true perspective. His Utopia is a repugnant one, machine conceived and machine built, and its automata may well be accepted as the most devastating destructive criticism of the machine age yet essayed in literature. But authority is even more restive under satire than the philippics of its avowed opponents.

 Effective Contribution

 In England the London University has been long a meeting place for intellectuals and social theorists, free to promulgate their views, however dangerous from the point of view of the established order. Such freedom of thought was rightly regarded as the most effective contribution to intellectual democracy achieved in any part of the world. Laski in his recent work, "Democracy in Crisis," felt himself free to pursue his analysis even as far as a consideration of the possible reactions of the Crown itself, and Middleton Murry in the "Adelphi" is free to consider the application of revolutionary Communism to Britain without calling down the wrath of the authorities.

 Professor Albert Einstein, the world's greatest physicist, found sanctuary from the excesses of Nazi-ism in a Chair at Oxford University, and no one questioned his political views prior to his appointment, although everyone recognised that they were not in harmony with present-day Capitalism. Nevertheless, when he appeared in the gallery of the Lords during a debate on the Semitic question, members of that House, models of Conservative propriety, broke the traditions of ages by rising in their places to applaud his appearance.

 Professor Soddy, Professor of Physics at Oxford, feels himself free to advocate radical monetary theories, and even officials of the British Treasury itself, like Mr. R. G. Hawtrey and Dr. Wm. Shaw, are free to enter the field of monetary controversy, expounding heterodox views on occasions in direct opposition  to those of their own department.

 Mr. J. M. Keynes, in his "Essays in Persuasion," finds that "the Economic Problem,  as one may call it for short, the problem of want and poverty, and the economic struggle between classes and nations, is nothing but a frightful muddle, a transitory and unnecessary muddle," but if he held the views of Marx he would still be free to practise his profession at Cambridge without restraint. So Marx himself, after conflicts in Prussia and expulsion from Paris, found sanctuary in London, and "Das Kapital'" represents the fruits of his research in the British Museum and London libraries.

 This led, no doubt, to his observation that Britain was the only country in which he had been that could achieve the emancipation of the working classes without recourse to violence but could, in fact, achieve it by utilising the constitutional processes at hand.

 All of which leads up to an examination of the position of the intellectuals in Australia, and the attitude adopted by the University administrators to freedom of thought and discussion. The noble conception of the University presented by Cardinal Newman has lost much of its lustre during recent years. As the economic struggle has intensified, Capitalism has realised the necessity of regimenting every agency to assist it in its fight.

 Politically-minded

 So the University as Australia knows it has become politically-minded in the very narrow sense of the term, and we have witnessed of late developments which show that it no longer can be regarded as an institution of scholarship and research, but rather as a very pliant instrument for the cultivation of a ''correct attitude." It is, indeed, significant that professors of history, and economics in particular, who have shown a disposition to examine facts from a detached intellectual standpoint and convey their judgement judicially and honestly to their students, have invariably been frozen out. In the realm of history, obviously, the man who essays a true economic interpretation of the principal phases of historic development and the motives actuating the leading figures engaged, may be regarded as a "social menace" by those desirous of maintaining the present system.

 If he exposes the cant teachings of the schools regarding the many "fights for freedom" and shows how Imperialism meant the exploitation of helpless colored races, how unscrupulous employers were protected by an equally unscrupulous State when exploiting the workers, particularly the women and children, he is immediately out of court— and incidentally out of a job. Obviously the results of such teaching will be quickly apparent in a new attitude in the schools, and instead of the vicious sentimentalism and gross misrepresentations of facts now posturing in the guise of history, the children who are not destined to reach the higher stages of the educational regime will be informed of the truth regarding the mistakes of the past.

 How many are conversant with the terrible story of the transportation of the early industrialists, who had the temerity to advocate some relief from the sufferings of their fellows? The history professor who deals with even the objective data of the Five Years' Plan is regarded as a dangerous influence, although in every other country in the world this experiment is being studied in order to ascertain the benefits of a planned economy, and already its principles have been adopted in a modified form in the tottering citadels of Capitalism itself.

 Banks' Briefs.

 But when we turn to Economics, the position is even more desperate. Indeed, in many of our public institutions we find occupants of teaching positions who are at the same time obviously in receipt of briefs from private banks and large trusts. How they reconcile their dual positions it is impossible to say, as in a crisis like the present they are called upon to interpret the functions of the institutions they are sponsoring, and analyse for their students the effects of the policy being pursued by the financial institutions.

 If they consent to become paid propagandists in a quasi-private capacity, how may they avoid becoming partisans in the lecture hall? But their position becomes altogether intolerable when called upon in their public capacity to act in the advisory capacity as monetary technicians to the State in defining relief measures. As the private banking institutions occupy the keystone of the present monetary arch their views are impossible of acceptance as the unbiassed judgment of independent experts.

 The Chicago economic professor, charged with being the presiding genius behind one of the most lucrative "rackets" in that exotic centre of the modern technique of speedy expropriation, is, if guilty, merely pursuing the present liberal tendencies of his profession to their logical conclusion. The threadbare plaint of the University pedant that he is removed from the worldly taints of commercialism is every day proving a mockery and sham.

 So the lecture hall has become the forum for the political and commercial aspirations of its dons. If it is intellectually and politically dangerous for a University teacher to examine in a controversial manner the teachings and practices of Communism it must be equally intellectually and politically dangerous for another professor to openly espouse the revolutionary philosophy of Fascism, or advocate the destruction of the existing Parliamentary instrument.

 Labor believes that it should be the function of the University teacher to examine untrammelled every modern political, social and economic phenomenon as it arises, without the interference of any group of muddling administrative penguins. The first duty of every teacher must be that he thoroughly examines all the data available, forms his independent judgment, and is then free to indicate his views. Otherwise he must submit all the objective facts in a dispassionate manner pro. and con., and leave his students to formulate their own opinions. Either method properly handled gives to posterity a chance, but there must be no suppression of material facts, as so often happens at present for the sole reason that such do not happen to coincide with the views of the teacher.

Labor however, must be determined that the channels of true education shall not be polluted by capitalistic subversion, by making the various University faculties merely a convenient method of subsidising propaganda to be disseminated there-from through every aspect of public life. Hitler in his expulsion of the University professors because of their refusal to embrace Nazi-ism or because of their religious beliefs, Jewish or Roman Catholic, has revealed the ultimate results of such a policy. 

Repugnant

 Similarly in Russia the historic pronouncement that the intellectuals of the old regime would provide a satisfactory "manure" is repugnant to our ideals of intellectual freedom. The Universities must remain sanctuaries for free and independent research and erudition, and, with the growing reliance upon technicians for guidance in a planned economy, it is more urgently necessary than ever before that they should remain such.

 Unfortunately Labor administrators in the past have often failed to appreciate the necessity of policing these important avenues by failing to secure adequate representation of working class thought on the administrative executives of these institutions. In the future development of our country this must be regarded as one of the most urgent tasks, and no excuse accepted for failing to carry out the declared will of the Movement in this connection. 

 The true conception of the position of the University teacher should be that he is equal in status with our present conception of the position of a Supreme Court Judge. His remuneration must be sufficient to enable him to devote his time entirely to his duties; and, being thus economically independent, a condition of his employment must be that he cannot accept retainers from outside institutions. He is indeed a servant of society and he should be at all times prepared to give his services to solving the problems confronting the State.

 Apart from these conditions, he must be free to advance any views which his studies inform him to be intellectually and socially correct. By adopting these principles, the University might be restored to its former position of honor in the community.

Labor Daily (Sydney, NSW), August 1933 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article236575880

"The Goose Step"

 Study of Education

In America.

In "The Goose-Step," Upton Sinclair has performed another service for the working-class propagandist. In "The Profits of Religion" he revealed the controlling economic forces in the American churches; in "The Brass Check" he vividly portrayed the stranglehold upon society, which the power of money exerts through its press; in "The Goose-Step" he presents a vivid analysis and description of the same forces at work in the realm of higher education.

His main thesis is that "our educational system is an instrument of special privilege." In this conclusion there is nothing new. It is at least obvious that the money-masters who dominate the economic, political, and social life of the modern capitalist State have a direct interest in determining the character of that higher education which exists upon their bounty. "Do you really think," he asks, "that the masters of the money trust, having bought up the last newspaper and the last popular magazine, would overlook your schools and colleges? If so, you are exactly the kind of foolish person they count upon you to be!"

Sinclair spares no pains to substantiate and make clear by specific instances the truth of his general thesis. He spent a full year studying American education; he read exhaustively upon the subject; travelled over the United States from coast to coast, interviewed over a thousand educators, students, parents, and administrators, and, having turned this mass of information over in his mind, he presented a case which is complete in every detail, startling even to those who know what to expect, vivid as a first-hand record. Its only defects are the dreary intellectual atmosphere revealed, and the almost monotonous reiteration of the vested interests controlling these institutions, and the petty suppressions and victimisations of which they are guilty—for neither of which features of the book we can in any way hold the author responsible. He merely describes what he finds.

Despicable Espionage.

The book is a wholesale indictment of American education under capitalist control. From Harvard, the University of Lee Higginson. and Leland Stanford founded by the Railway King, to Oregon, the University of the Lumber Trust. Chicago, the University of Standard Oil, the University of Automobiles, and the Western Colleges of the Smelter Trust, the same method of the interlocking directorates secures the same direct control by vested interests, with the same objects, and the same results as in Columbia, the University of the House of Morgan.

"To avoid misunderstanding." he sums up "let me state that I have not been able to find a single one of the great American Universities which is truly liberal or truly free." Professors and lecturers are carefully watched—in many cases there exist despicable systems of espionage. Those who come under the suspicion of the authorities are sacked, kept down or miserably forced to resign. Sometimes dismissal comes without explanation, like a "bolt from the blue," in others it is preceded by a personal interview, a close examination into religious beliefs and political opinions, a warning, an appeal for submission or a threat. Says Professor Charles Beard, joint author with James Harvey Robinson of text-books on modern European history; which show an appreciation of economic determinism and of modern industrial problems: "The status of a professor in Columbia is lower than that of a manual laborer." Says Harold J. Laski, who was forced to resign from Harvard by bitter personal attacks and who found a haven in the London School of Economics, where less attention was given to his political views: "The results of the American atmosphere are quite clear: (1) Many men deliberately adopt reactionary views to secure promotion; (2) many more never express opinions lest the penalty be exacted; (3) those who do are penalised when the chance of promotion comes." Some resist, like Professor Scott Nearing, who was dismissed from Pennsylvania for alleged blasphemy because he would not suppress his interest in the local abuse of child labor. The majority are broken and remain chained to the machine. They march in time to the "goose step" which is imposed upon them.

Lecturers are not free to express their views; students are not encouraged to think. What should be a stream of enlightenment is poisoned at its source. Anything modern in literature, history or social science is taboo. Sinclair recalls his embarrassment when, on leaving Columbia, he discovered that someone living had written a work of genius. "The students are living in a state of mind precisely as if the last 150 years had never happened to anybody." "Class ignorance, class fear and class repression are written over the modern curricula at Harvard, as at all other American universities." "More money is appropriated, more buildings erected, more students come piling in, but the soul of the place is dead."

Efficient Wage Slavery.

The final product of the system, concludes Sinclair, is dulness. There is obviously no place for truth and a vital interest in modern thought in a capitalist educational institution. This fact is not peculiar to America.

The value of this book is that here a competent investigator has taken what is probably the most complete development of the most direct control of education by the capitalist plutocracy, held it up for detailed examination, as it were, under a microscope, and enabled us to see what such control means.

The same conditions of ultimate capitalist control govern education in Australia. Here it is perhaps less direct and obvious, but the same atmosphere, the same limitations, the same resulting dulness all prevail, since capitalism requires of its educational system, for the most part, only efficiently trained wage-slaves, and its controllers fear the challenge of free discussion and enlightened education.

Daily Standard (Brisbane, Qld.),  January 1924 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article178974539

A NEW AMERICA

 AMERICA remains, after Soviet Russia, the most exhilarating country in the world. It is a whirlpool of ideas.

 It has a receptivity to experiment, a passion for discussion, the intensity of which is literally bewildering. No one, I think, can say in what direction it is moving with any certitude. But that its pattern of life is changing at a speed greater than at any previous period is, I think, equally undeniable.

 The crisis has left changes of profound significance. The traditional belief in the leadership of business men has been rudely shaken. The conservatism of the universities has been greatly modified; even at places like Harvard and Yale intellectual leadership is in the hands of 'radical' undergraduates.

 The emphatic note of all significant American literature is one of protest; there is not today in American letters a single figure of any real importance on the conservative side.

 There is an awakening of labor to political consciousness, slow, indeed, but in a new way profound. There is a new zest among the younger generation for public service; Government work as an official has a new prestige value. There is a new sense of the State, a recognition that the old way of laissez-faire is decisively over.

 One constantly has the impression in the United States that its temper is like nothing so much as that of France in the generation before 1789. Doubt of all accepted values, eager exploration of novelty, a general atmosphere of insecurity, the widespread sense that great events are in the making—these are universal. Something new is being made. The one thing we do not know is the nature of the new thing. 

We do not know because, above all, those in America who have learned least from the crisis are its business men and the corporation lawyers who are their dependents. They are the Bourbons of contemporary America.

 Frightened out of their wits in 1933, now that profits are being earned again, their one anxiety is the repression of disturbing ideas. They are terrified even by the mild liberalism of the President. They are angry at any hint of radicalism from a university teacher. They even believe that the New Deal is, as one eminent professor put it, ten out of the twelve points of the Communist Manifesto. They have no programme to meet the problems of the new time. They hate the trade unions. The militancy of the farmer disturbs them greatly.

 One sound thing in America seems to them the immovable conservatism of the Supreme Court. They are beginning to find democracy a very dubious inheritance now that democracy is beginning to think in economic terms.

 * * * 

THE intellectuals, the mass of the workers outside the old craft trade unions, the bulk of youth, a growing section of the professional classes, not least of them the teachers, are aware that liberal America, the fabled land of opportunity, is in grave danger if big business regains its power.

 There is not, I think, any great increase in a steadfast adherence to Left opinion. But there is a deeper interest in Left opinion, a more constant sense of the importance of its thinking, than at any time in the history of the United States.

 That is not to say that the Left is going to win. Big business in America is very conscious of its power. It is more willing than any similar class in Europe to exhaust all its energy and its ingenuity to maintain it. Its latent Fascist temper is intense: and the vast army of unemployed is a fertile soil for Fascist ideas.

 The appeal of what Mr. Wells calls the "raucous voices," Dr. Townsend, Father Coughlin, and a score of lesser men, to the angry, the disappointed, the half-educated is an important one. Their link with big business is no more apparent to the multitude in America than was Hitler's to big business in Germany, or Mussolini's in Italy.

 There is a new America in the making, even though its contours are undetermined. If liberal America triumphs, it will make a new and fundamental contribution to our common civilisation; for the elements are there of a renaissance of the human spirit.

 But its victory has still to be won, while its defeat might open a grim and ugly chapter in the history of mankind. — By Professor Harold Laski, in 'The Daily Herald,' London.

Daily News (Perth, WA ), 6 April 1937 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article85698508