DEMOCRACY

In the last days of 1945 I received a letter from Gothenburg, from a gathering of progressive Swedish students, begging to be advised by me as to what was the task of intellectuals in the present condition of the world. Their letter was dated July 26, the day of my defeat at Berwick, and I sent them an answer from the heart: 'The task of intellectuals in Sweden, as elsewhere, is to introduce reason and foresight into practical affairs. Only if it is governed by reason will democracy be sufficiently successful in practical affairs, to make certain of survival'.

Democracy is better than despotism, offers the only hope for mankind of freedom, of justice, and of peace. But is democracy, as we know it, good enough? A general election in any of the larger democracies today, in the United States or in Britain, in France or in Italy, is not conspicuously a feast of reason. If democracy is not all that nineteenth-century fancy used to paint, how should it be made better? Can it be made to do well enough to be sure of survival?

In an Epilogue to another story I can only ask these questions. I cannot attempt the answers. But, having regard to Britain's internal revolutions since the beginning of my story, it may be worthwhile to name some of the problems illustrated by the story, and facing us today. We have to learn as a democracy to choose our governors wisely, by reason, not greed. We have in an economically flattened society to find men who will undertake office in a public spirit, not for personal gain or glory; we must carry on the aristocratic tradition without the aristocrats. We have to keep open channels for new ideas of unknown men to reach and influence the temporary holders of power. We seem to have solved for the present the problems of full employment, but we have not solved two of the problems to which full employment in a free society gives rise-how to preserve the value of our money against endless rise of costs, wages and prices, and how without fear of unemployment to secure the maximum of output.

Democracy must be efficient in practical affairs, as efficient as the nearest despotism. Democracy must be democratic in substance, not only in form. This means that the process of choosing and changing holders of power shall be unaffected by privilege of established organization and wealth, that the holders of political power, when an election comes, shall compete with their opponents on equal terms. Power must not be used to prolong itself. Power, the stupid necessary mule, should have neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity. In the leading democracies of today many special measures have been taken to secure this. But, at any risk of causing offence, a question must be asked about Britain. Is it consistent with democratic principle that organizations like the trade unions which have received special privileges for industrial work should become tied to a political party? Ought it to be difficult for an individual to earn his living by employment without contributing from his wages to the retention of power by one set of politicians rather than another? A one-party State in any form is the destruction of freedom.

Democracies need to look within. They must look without as well. They must, in one way or another, abandon and lead others to abandon any claim to absolute sovereignty-the claim to kill in one's own cause without selection or limit. The headnote of this Epilogue is not a paradox but a truism. If with our growing control over nature we could abolish war, we should be in Utopia. If we cannot abolish war, we shall plunge ever deeper into a hell of evil imagining and evil doing.

The theme of my story returns at its end. Power as a means of getting things done appeals to that which men share with brutes; to fear and to greed; power leads those who wield it to desire it for its own sake, not for the service it may render, and to seek its continuance in their own hands. Influence as a means of getting things done appeals to that which distinguishes men from brutes. The way out of the world's troubles today is to treat men as men, to enthrone influence over power, and to make power revocable.

(From Power and influence: An autobiography by Lord Beveridge)