Liberty or Equality

CHAPTER I DEFINITIONS AND BASIC PRINCIPLES

THIS book is an essay in the narrowest sense of the term—an effort to throw some light on certain phases and aspects of the century-old struggle between the principles of freedom and those of equality, between the ideologies of liberalism and of democracy (in their classic sense, of course). It is obvious that this study cannot be exhaustive; nevertheless, the subjects of our analysis have not been chosen at random, but have been selected for special reasons.

Before defining our terms we think it important to “show our hand” and to declare our philosophical baggage. It is obvious that any writer trying to analyze political or sociological phenomena critically and methodically will be motivated by a more or less coherent system of philosophy. Since the present author is a Catholic, his philosophy has an intimate relationship with the theology of his Church—a relationship which can best be defined as co-ordination. The principle that “philosophy is the handmaid of theology” has for him only a personal, but not an intellectual meaning. Although his philosophy is predominantly Thomistic, he is also deeply influenced by a theistic existentialism, and by certain cognitions of the phenomenological school. The Catholic reader who is curious as to the reasons which prompt him to deviate from Neo-Thomism—today so strongly dominating the philosophical scene in Catholic North America—is invited to peruse the note on this subject on pages 164–167.

The non-Catholic reader will not, we hope, be discouraged by the admission just made. We want to assure him that Thomism, the basis of our philosophy, is not a strange, esoteric creed full of mysterious allusions; it is, on the contrary, a philosophy characterized by the utmost respect for human reason and one which strives towards objective reality. It is a philosophy of “horse-sense” with no patience for solipsism, the denial of sensory apperception and the rejection of the simple laws of logic. Its realism will insist that if statement A is correct, and statement B contradicts A, the latter must be considered to be false. There is nothing magical or mysterious about the tenets of Thomism insofar as they underlie the philosophy of these pages; they represent common sense.

At the same time we are deeply concerned about the psychological reactions of man (either as a person or as an individual lost in a crowd), and about myths and superstitions. Yet we will, naturally, subordinate psychology to philosophy, and feelings, emotions and affections to objective reality—without forgetting the existence of the former.

When we talk about freedom and equality we must realize that we are faced here, to all practical purposes, by relative, not by absolute terms; by trends and tendencies rather than by unalloyed abstractions. Freedom in this study means the greatest amount of self-determination which in a given situation is feasible, reasonable and possible. As a means to safeguarding man’s happiness and protecting his personality it is an intermediary end, and thus forms part of the common good. It is obvious that under these circumstances it cannot be brutally sacrificed to the demands of absolute efficiency nor to efforts towards a maximum of material welfare. Man does not live by bread alone. Here, as in some other basic matters, most readers will probably admit that they see with us eye to eye because, although not belonging to the Church, they are nevertheless adherents (and beneficiaries) of the Hebrew-Greek-Christian tradition which has something approaching a common denominator.

The philosophical and psychological motives for the liberal position show a great variety. The driving force in a Christian liberalism will always be affection and generosity. Yet we also know of a liberalism derived from a basic philosophic nihilism, which declares that truth is either a mere prejudice, a piece of intellectual arrogance, a sensory fraud, or that it is humanly unattainable, outside the reach of the faculty of reason. It is obvious that such a philosophy of despair—which we reject—does not necessarily result in a liberal attitude; it may wind up in its opposite, and the type of its evolution thus depends merely on personal preference or temperament.

These changes of attitude, on the other hand, have nothing to do with the adamant insistence on the infallibility of the Teaching Church in dogmatic matters. Today the possibility of an honest, tragic conflict between conscience and truth is fully admitted; it was bad psychology, not bad philosophy, which imputed bad faith to every heretic or dissenter.

There is a classic concept of democracy, which lasted with minor variations from 500 B.C. until the middle of the last century. Some people still cling to the classic sense of the term because it alone has a modicum of conciseness and clearness. Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas, St. Robert Bellarmine, Father Mariana, S.J., Alexander Hamilton, Marshall, Madison, Gouverneur Morris, Fustel de Coulanges, all vaguely agreed on the content of the term “democracy.”

Jefferson actually was an Agrarian Romantic who dreamt of a republic governed by an élite of character and intellect, and based on the support of a free yeomanry. This is evident when he writes in a letter to John Adams, dated October 28, 1814:

And in another page of the same letter he adds:

His rejection of an urban proletariat was so outspoken that it is difficult to see how he could have been elevated, even temporarily, to the august position of Patron Saint of the Common Man. He wrote, for instance:

The expressions “democrat” and “democracy” hardly occur in the Monticello edition of Jefferson’s works. In a letter addressed to Washington on May 17, 1792, he called himself a “republican federalist,” and in his first inaugural address he insisted that he was a “federalist and a republican.” But when Andrew Jackson ran against John Quincy Adams for the presidency in 1828, he was called by some of his supporters a “democratic-republican” (since both candidates used the “republican” label). Van Buren prided himself on being a republican, but the term “democratic “was again used by Pierce in 1852. Yet the founder of American democracy undoubtedly remains Andrew Jackson, whose monument in Washington is in front of the White House—surrounded by the statues of four European noblemen who fought in America for liberty, but not for equality or majority rule: Tadeusz Kościuszko, Baron von Steuben, the Marquis de Lafayette and the Comte de Rochambeau. (Pulaski and Baron de Kalb have their representations in stone elsewhere.)

On the other hand we can imagine an absolute ruler—an autocratic emperor, for instance—who is a thoroughgoing liberal . . . although it is obvious that he cannot be democratic in the political sense. Fifty-one per cent of a nation can establish a totalitarian régime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic; while an old-fashioned dictator might reserve to himself only a very few prerogatives, scrupulously refraining from interfering in the private sphere of the citizens. There is little doubt that the American Congress or the French Chambers have a power over their nations which would rouse the envy of a Louis XIV or a George III, were they alive today. Not only prohibition, but also the income tax declaration, selective service, obligatory schooling, the finger-printing of blameless citizens, premarital blood tests—none of these totalitarian measures would even the royal absolutism of the seventeenth century have dared to introduce.

After having established the character of the difference between democracy and liberalism, we would like to give a few hints as to the plan of this book, which consists of selected chapters on this subject—studies and essays which do not cover the whole ground, but represent an effort to throw some light on various aspects of the problem.

The first, “Democracy and Totalitarianism: the Prophets,” deals with the apprehensions of thinkers and observers who lived between 1790 and 1914 and, in true Platonic fashion, feared the rise of totalitarian tyranny as an evolutionary or dialectic process from the very essence of democracy. We have tried to co-ordinate their views with those of our contemporaries, and thus to offer to the reader a sample of the history of ideas.

The second, “A Critique of Democracy,” which has been previously published in a somewhat different form (in New Scholasticism, July, 1946), deals with the weaknesses and inherent dangers of the democratic doctrine. In this as well as in the two following essays our field of investigation is that of political sciences, and our investigation itself is based on a specific philosophy.

The third, “Democracy and Monarchy,” a study in comparative government, is a continuation of the second; while the fourth, “The Political Temper of Catholic Nations,” tries to revise the picture as to the inherent liberalism (and anarchic tendencies) of the Catholic nations, as well as to analyze the probability of democracy becoming a “going concern” in the larger part of Europe. The fact that only thirteen per cent of the European continent is Protestant, and that Catholicism is also the dominant religion in the Western Hemisphere, shows the importance of such research.

The next two studies are of a historical nature. The fifth, “Hus, Luther and National Socialism,” traces the direct influence of Hus on Mussolini, his Italian interpreter, and on the Czech National Socialists of 1897; and also the influence of Hus on Luther and of Luther on the German National Socialists. The last contribution tries to clear up a most dangerous misunderstanding; it deals with the historical and intellectual background of the Nazi party, and we have given it the title “The Rise of the National Socialist Party.” It is based on thorough factual documentation. A slightly condensed version has already appeared in the Journal of the History of Ideas, IX, No. 3 (June, 1948), 338–71.

We conclude with a short summary, pointing out some conclusions from the facts assembled. We leave it to the reader to draw others. And although at present the dice are heavily loaded, only time will tell whether freedom, equality, or, perhaps, inequality with a new servitude will prevail.