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Walter E. Weyl, the New Democracy (1912)1 AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT Keith E. Whittington Supplementary Material Chapter 8: The Progressive Era – Democracy and Liberty Walter E. Weyl, The New Democracy (1912)1 Walter Edward Weyl was born into a working-class family in Philadelphia during Reconstruction. He earned a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania and in 1897 completed his Ph.D. there in economics under the tutelage of Simon N. Patten. He dabbled in social activism but did not immediately find a career. He eventually settled into political journalism and became a founding editor of The New Republic magazine in 1914. His major work was the book, The New Democracy, which was published in support of Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive campaign for president and argued that the nation had reached a point of economic development in which social justice should trump economic production. He died young of cancer in 1919. What we see today is not the promise of a permanent plutocracy, nor democratic institutions graciously conceded by repentant money lords, but the native growth of a democratic spirit. At the moment when maturing forces culminate in the florescence of our powerful plutocracy, when the cleavage between Americans at the top and Americans at the bottom appears deepest, when millions seem doomed to an ambitionless, ignoble, precarious existence in a preempted land, the new social democracy is born. The new spirit is social. Its base is broad. It involves common action and a common lot. It emphasizes social rather than private ethics, social rather than individual responsibility. This new spirit, which is marked by a social unrest, a new altruism, a changed patriotism, an uncomfortable sense of social gulf, was not born of any sudden enthusiasm or quickening revelation. It grew slowly in the dark places of men’s minds out of the new conditions. The old individualism—carried to its logical sequence—would have meant impotence and social bankruptcy. Individualism struck its frontier when the pioneer struck his, and society, falling back upon itself, found itself. New problems arose, requiring for their solution slight amendments of our former canons of judgment and modes of action. In many spheres of economic life the individual began to find more profit in his undivided share of the common lot than in his chance of individual gain. On the foundation of an individual interest in the common lot, the new social spirit was laid. This egoistic interest, however, was shared by so many interdependent millions, that men passed insensibly from an ideal of reckless individual gaining to a new ideal, which urged the conservation and thrifty utilization of the patrimony of all in the interest of all. In obedience to this new spirit we are slowly changing our perception and evaluation of the goods of life. We are freeing ourselves from the unique standard of pecuniary preeminence and are substituting new standards of excellence. We are ceasing solely to adore successful greed, and are evolving a tentative theory of the trusteeship of wealth. We are emphasizing the overlordship of the 1 Excerpt taken from Walter E. Weyl, The New Democracy: An Essay on Certain Political and Economic Tendencies in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1912). 1 public over property and rights formerly held to be private. A new insistence is laid upon human life, upon human happiness. What is attainable by the majority—life, health, leisure, a share in our natural resources, a dignified existence in society—is contended for by the majority against the opposition of men who hold exorbitant claims upon the continent. The inner soul of our new democracy is not the unalienable rights, negatively and individualistically interpreted, but those same rights “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” extended and given a social interpretation. It is this social interpretation of rights which characterizes the democracy coming into being, and makes it different in kind from the so-called individualistic democracy of Jefferson and Jackson. It is this social concept which is the common feature of many widely divergent democratic policies. The close of the merely expansive period of America showed that an individualistic democracy must end in its own negation, the subjection of the individual to an economically privileged class of rich men. The political weapons of our forefathers might avail against political despotism, but were farcically useless against economic aggression. The right of habeas corpus, the right to bear arms, the rights of free speech and free press could not secure a job to the gray-haired citizen, could not protect him against low wages or high prices, could not save him from a jail sentence for the crime of having no visible means of support. The force of our individualistic democracy might suffice to supplant one economic despot by another, but it could not prevent economic despotism. Today no democracy is possible in America except a socialized democracy, which conceives of society as a whole and not as a more or less adventitious assemblage of myriads of individuals. The old individualistic system pictured the individual freely bargaining with the state, not only in a mythical social contract, but in the everyday affairs of taxation and governmental expenditure. For so much protection the individual would pay the state so much taxes. The individualistic point of view halts social development at every point. Why should the childless man pay in taxes for the education of other people’s children? Why should the rich and innocent pay for better almshouses and better prisons for the poor and guilty? Why should those who do not use the public parks and public playgrounds pay for them in taxes? To the individualist taxation above what is absolutely necessary for the individual’s welfare is an aggression upon his rights and a circumscription of his powers. All the inspiring texts of democracy fall into nonsense or worse when given a strict individualistic interpretation. “Government should rest upon the consent of the governed” is a great political truth, if by “the governed” is meant the whole people, or an effective majority of the people; but if each individual governed retains the right at all times to withhold his consent, government and social union itself become impossible. So, too, the phrase “taxation without representation is tyranny,” if interpreted strictly in an individualistic sense, leads to the theory that government should be in the hands of property owners, that they who pay the piper (in taxes) should set the tune, that they who are without “a stake in the country” should not participate, or at least not equally, in a government designed to raise money and to expend it. In the socialized democracy towards which we are moving, all these conceptions will fall to the ground. It will be sought to make taxes conform more or less to the ability of each to pay; but the engine of taxation, like all other social engines, will be used to accomplish great social ends, among which will be the more equal distribution of wealth and income. The state will tax to improve education, health, recreation, communication, “to provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare,” and from these taxes no social group will be immune because it fails to benefit in proportion to cost. The government of the nation, in the hands of the people, will establish its unquestioned sovereignty over the industry of the nation, so largely in the hands of individuals. The political liberties of the people will be supplemented by other provisions which will safeguard their industrial liberties. Today the chief restrictions upon liberty are economic, not legal, and the chief prerogatives desired are economic, not political. It is a curious, but not inexplicable, development, moreover, that our 2 constitutional provisions, safeguarding our political liberties, are often used to deprive us of economic liberties. The constitutional provisions that “no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” has seldom prevented an Alabama Negro from illegally being sent to the chain gang, but it has often prevented the people of a State from securing relief from great interstate corporations. The restraints upon liberty of the poor are today economic. A law forbidding a woman to work in the textile mills at night is a law increasing rather than restricting her liberty, simply because it takes from the employer his former right to compel her through sheer economic pressure to work at night when she would prefer to work by day. So a law against adulteration of food products increases the economic liberty of food purchases, as a tenement house law increases the liberty of tenement dwellers. In two respects, the democracy towards which we are striving differs from that of today. First, the democracy of tomorrow, being a real and not a merely formal democracy, does not content itself with the mere right to vote, with political immunities, and generalizations about the rights of men. Secondly, it is a plenary, socialized democracy, emphasizing social rather than merely individual aims, and carrying over its ideals from the political into the industrial and social fields. Because of this wideness of its aims, the new spirit, in a curiously cautious, conservative way, is profoundly revolutionary. The mind of the people slowly awakens to the realization of the people’s needs; the new social spirit gradually undermines the crust of inherited and promulgated ideas; the rising popular will overflows old barriers and converts former institutions to new uses. It is a deep-lying, potent, swelling movement. I use the word “revolution,” despite its fringe of misleading suggestion, because no other word so aptly designates the completeness of the transformation now in process.
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