Confessions of an Economic Heretic/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
POLITICS AND JOURNALISM
Settling down for the winter in Boston after my Canadian travels in 1905, I was recalled by an urgent request of Hobhouse to join him in the editorial work of the newly established Tribune. The venture was short-lived and unfortunate. My own connection was brief, for I soon discovered how ill fitted I was for a daily journalism that needed resources of information and presentation which I did not possess. After ceasing my daily attendance, I continued, however, to write special articles until the paper passed out of existence.
Then came a new and a far more interesting experience as a writer in the Nation under the brilliant editorship of H. W. Massingham. From 1906 to 1920 much of my political and other writing went into this weekly publication. While in its earlier years many of my articles were devoted to current politics, I had scope in the form of ‘‘middles’’ and reviews for other topics of a broader sociological character, many of them relating to my growing sense of the interdependence of politics, economics, and ethics.
But an even more valuable influence upon my views and sentiments was the free talk at the weekly lunches where for many years the regular contributors to the Nation met and to which distinguished outside visitors of this and other countries were invited. Its unique value lay in the frank utterances of men representing wide divergencies of mentality and political opinions, yet holding the common title of liberal. I have only to mention a few names in order to make good this statement. A company containing H. W. Massingham, L. T. Hobhouse, H. W. Nevinson, F. W. Hirst, C. F. G. Masterman, J. L. Hammond, the Rev. W. D. Morrison was bound to exhibit wide diversity of opinions upon many topics of current interest. Yet the skill of Massingham and of our friend Richard Cross, Chairman of the Directors, and a master in the art of conciliation, not merely kept our controversies within bounds, but gave to our writings a reasonable measure of consistency which made the Nation a real influence in the new trend of Liberalism.
I have sometimes felt regret that I was never able to pursue my economic studies in the quiet atmosphere of an academic life where I could have developed in a more orderly way my humanist theory, and tested it by lectures and discussions among serious-minded students. But I never had this opportunity. Though I spent most of my time in early middle life as a University Extension Lecturer, I was never invited to apply for any professorship in an English University. I had one or two invitations to posts in America, which I declined. Though I was in friendly contact with the founders of the London School of Economics, it was never suggested that I should go upon the staff. Though I once allowed my name to be put forward for membership of the Political Economy Club, I heard no more of the proposal, and I have never written for the Economic Journal, though I have been for many years a member of the Society. My exclusion from organized academic economics has, therefore, been almost complete. I have already explained why this happened, and must have happened, as an inevitable consequence of an early heresy. Looking back, I do not now regret this exclusion from orthodox economic circles. For the mixed life of lecturing, controversial politics, and journalism into which I was driven, though in some ways damaging to orderly thinking, had compensations that were very valuable. Brought into touch with active leaders of political, economic, and ethical reform in various countries, I became increasingly aware of the common human element in these movements and of the distinctive part played by economic interests and urges. Nor was it only the experience of travel in various countries that enlarged my understanding of economic theory and processes, taking them out of the textbook mould and putting them in their proper human significance. During the most formative period of my thinking, I was fortunate in living near a little Surrey village sometimes described as “a nest of Socialists,” because Sydney Olivier, Edward Pease, and one or two other Fabians lived near by, and other “revolutionaries” were frequent residents or visitors. Kropotkin was one of the most remarkable figures, and gave me interesting instruction in the theory and right practice of anarchism, while Bernstein preached the milder strain of Marxism. My anti-Imperialism was fed by visits from the South African statesmen Merriman and Sauer, while conversations with the greatest of Indian political thinkers, Gokhale, helped me to understand something of the amazing difficulties of our Imperial Government in its attempt to combine liberal development with forcible repression.
Here I would put in a plea for the free and fragmentary intercourse I have been describing as a mode for the discovery and communication of truth: In certain high intellectual quarters journalism has always been treated as the lowest form of printed matter, as vulgar necessity, no doubt, but degrading in its thought and literary form, with injurious reactions alike upon the mind of its writers and its readers. Now such disparagement is lacking in discrimination, and savours too much of intellectual arrogance. The hasty unchecked publication of news and opinions which strict “journalism” implies has obvious dangers to truth and literary style. Even weekly journalism (a contradiction in terms!) must in some degree be open to these charges. But in its best form, in the current commentary upon important events, it has virtues of its own to set against and qualify the defects of its hasty production. Not only has it a vitality and bite of thought, feeling, and expression, caught from the immediacy of the happenings it handles, but its very fragmentation evades some of the dangers that beset the longer, formal, more scientific, and philosophical expositions which claim the seats of intellectual authority. For thinking is in itself a brief fragmentary process, and the piecing together of these fragments into a system of thought, a science, or a philosophy, is seldom (never in the sphere of human conduct) the purely objective, disinterested, reasonable process it professes to be. A completely consistent history, or still more a philosophy, is invalidated, partly because it overrates the rationality of evolutionary thinking, partly because it is hampered by deficiencies of the instrument of language invented for purely practical purposes of communication.
If, however, we agree that nearly all thinking is done in brief spurts, mostly suggested or directed by some personal experience or current event, and is accompanied by some emotional activity which helps to determine its aims and values, we shall recognize a unique position for the best kind of journalism as current commentary. When we realize life in terms of values, we shall realize how the source of value and the processes of relation differs not only in different persons but in the same person with the changes and chances of life. The philosophic demand for absolute values, in truth, beauty, and goodness, lose much of their authority and meaning when confronted with the actual concrete experiences of life. It is no idle taunt to say that philosophy bakes no cakes, or is of no help to a philosopher with toothache. There is no doubt an intellectual satisfaction in pushing consistency and law into their highest reaches. But this does not justify the contempt for fragmentary thought and feeling and their expression in journalism. It is, however, right for me to limit this defence of journalism to writing done under fair and free conditions. The “middles” of the best weekly papers are here “the golden mean,” giving the best expression to the fragmentary wisdom of the mind and pen. In the prose writings of our generation there have been many large literary and philosophic treatises of high intellectual merit. But their very height and length are limitations to the influence which they exert: for such prolonged expositions in high thinking evoke some suspicion of artificiality even among the minority of qualified readers. I think that there exists a widespread feeling, almost a belief, that wisdom comes in short runs. Perhaps the most striking instance in our literature is Bacon’s Essays, the force and drive of which far exceed those of his more formal treatises. Coming nearer to journalism, one might cite the piecemeal utterances of Addison and Steele, of Johnson, Hazlitt, as examples of portable wit and wisdom which outlive most larger literary edifices. Within the last generation I find more vitality and fineness of expression in the journalistic work of Lowes Dickinson, H. W. Nevinson, Havelock Ellis, J. A. Spender, A. G. Gardiner, H. N. Brailsford, and Ivor Brown than in all the more formal volumes of contemporary prose. It is not merely that these able, well-equipped writers have embarked, as editors and writers, upon a distinctively journalistic career — one or two of them have not — but because the article or essay furnishes a better vehicle for their variety and versatility of interests in the life in which they live and move and have their being, are in other words, a better expression for their humanism.
But, it may be said, do not your own pretensions as a reformer in economic theory transcend the fragmentation you here approve? If you do not lay claim to a complete system of humanist economics, you do pretend to put a logically defensible order on to the several heresies you have evoked. Psychology, with the secret defensive weapons rightly imputed to it, obliges me to hesitate here between a defence and an admission. The chief attraction of modern psychology, with its inhibitions and sublimations, lies in the humour of its revelations. It pleases us to discover underneath the parade of public spirit, disinterested regard for truth, justice, and the good of others, the secret play of some natural urge towards self-importance, acquisition, or other private satisfaction. But in its endeavour to spread its net over a wide field of inquiry, is there not some risk of neglecting the finest and most profitable fruits of humorous revelation, oneself. Psychology should make every man his own humorist, for the study of other psyches can only be derived from study of our own; the standards which every objective study requires can only be those which form our own inner experience. The finest, the most penetrating, humour lies in the discovery that the disinterested motives that have been figuring in the foreground of our own consciousness and have been feeding our sense of self-approval are to a large extent the servile tools of the primitive lusts for power and self-importance, or else protective weapons for the customary habits and institutions which give us status and security. But though the most ancient of psychologists bade us “Know thyself,” few have been willing to follow that knowledge when it damages our customary self-esteem. Now intellectual self-esteem requires us to believe that our thinking is purely disinterested and that our public spirit and philanthropy are untainted by any self-seeking. The terminology of psychology in its elevated character promotes this self-deception, and is in part designed to do so. Pugnacity is “sublimated” on the football field, and is feigned to be subordinate to skill and dexterity, but the processes of kicking, scrum, and tackling are none the less fighting processes. Applied to man’s work in science and philosophy, though the outside student of the mental processes may succeed in imputing pure logic to the reasoning involved, no faithful observer of his own scientific or philosophic thinking can fail to recognize the moulding influence of pre-existent interests and devices, hopes and fears, in the selection, direction, and evaluation of the mental movements. In economics and other social “sciences” this secret psychical play is more apparent than in other’s thinking. I have already indicated how the laisser-faire economics of the nineteenth century and the Marxian economics which accompanied and followed were, with a crudity itself humorous, moulded by class interests and desires. I am now faced with the reasonable request “Physician, heal thyself.” For it “stands to reason” that I cannot claim for myself an objectivity and disinterestedness which I have denied to others. Indeed, the biographic details in which I have indulged ought to help to explain not only the steps along which my economic thinking has proceeded, but the slipperiness of these very steps, and the likelihood, perhaps certainty, that my economic humanism, a composition of successive heresies, is defective when regarded as a whole. The psychology of heresy is a subject that has not received the attention it deserves. Orthodoxy, the acceptance: of authoritative theories and opinions, apart from their intrinsic truth or value, is an attitude of mental and social security, a disposition to swim with the tide and to enjoy the benefits of respectability. Orthodoxy may be the right creed it claims to be, and its followers may give a reasonable acceptance to it. But it carries an inertia, an indisposition to question and criticize, and this pacific tendency is an enemy of progress. For progress can only come by a break away from authority or convention. But this break-away disposition is not necessarily the free play of a reasonable mind. It may be a pugnacious self-assertion of superiority over the accepted thought or faith of others. It is more attractive to fight for one’s own property than for the common good. It is undeniable that a heresy becomes an intellectual property which rouses in its owner a sense of scarcity value and of personal attachment that are liable to lead him into methods of defence which carry stormy emotional bias and may cause him to transgress the bounds of sweet reasonableness. Thus it is difficult to determine at the outset whether a heresy is a genuinely rational product, the logical correction of wrong thinking, or whether it is a more or less plausible attempt to be peculiar, and to feel superior, in one’s thinking. Even when one heresy is followed by others which appear to be its reasonable consequences, the sequence may be inspired by a sub-conscious personal urge towards a system which shall be our property and shall force its way into a newly won authority. How far I have succumbed to these temptations it is not possible for me to know. But as part of my interest as heretic has lain in watching the origins of my beliefs, and in enjoying the humour of the unexpected, as ideas come out of the sub-conscious, I may hope to have escaped some of that dogmatic overconfidence which is the besetting sin of heretics. At any rate, I can formally disclaim the pretence that I have woven my heresies into a complete economic system which will stand the test of future changes and the inroads of future heretics. Some order and causative connection I claim for my heresies, but not the unity, still less the permanence, of an economic system.