[ p. 126 ]
THE fundamental problem of peace is the A problem of sovereignty. The welfare, the happiness, the very existence of a miner in Pennsylvania, Wales, Lorraine or the Don Basin, a farmer in the Ukraine, the Argentine, the American Middle West or the Chinese rice fields—the very existence of every individual or family in every country of the five continents depends upon the correct interpretation and application of sovereignty. This is not a theoretical debate but a question more vital than wages, prices, taxes, food or any other major issue of immediate interest to the common man everywhere, because in the final analysis, the solution of all the everyday problems of two thousand million human beings depends upon the solution of the central problem of war. And whether we are to have war or peace and progress depends upon whether we can create proper institutions to insure the security of the peoples.
Schopenhauer pointed out that health is a negative feeling of which we are never aware, while pain produces a positive sensation. If we cut our Htde finger, we concentrate on that completely dominating pain, excluding from our consciousness the many other parts of our body which remain uninjured and healthy.
[ p. 127 ]
This observation has also heen proved true in other fields of human activity—certainly in the field of social science. Great social and political structures and revolutionary ideas are usually born in times of crisis.
The very fact that today there is so much talk of sovereignty—a word that was hardly mentioned in political discussions a decade or two ago proves the existence of a sore spot in the body politic. It leaves no doubt that something is wrong with sovereignty, that the present interpretation of this notion is passing through a crisis and that clarification, restatement and reinterpretation are necessary.
In discussing this most intricate problem, it is essential to make a clear distinction between its two entirely different aspects.
The first is scientific: a realization of exactly what sovereignty is, what it meant historically during the various phases of human development, and what it means in a democracy in the middle of the twentieth century.
The second—which we must eliminate from consideration while searching for definitions and principles is: What would the people be capable of understanding, and what would they accept politically right now?
In our endeavor to arrive at a dear definition and correct interpretation of democratic sovereignty, we must not be deterred by the argument that the quest is futile because the people are nationalist and would resist any changes in the present political construction of the world. Such an outlook a sort of government by polls of public opinion is not democracy, but its caricature.
[ p. 128 ]
New ideas always take shape within a small group of men whose task it is to spread them and get them accepted by the people.
When Pasteur discovered that contagious diseases were caused by living organisms and explained how such diseases could be cured, almost everybody, including the overwhelming majority of doctors, laughed at him. At the time Hertz and Marconi declared that sound and signals could be transmitted around the world by radio waves, a public opinion poll would certainly have shown that ninety-nine per cent of the people believed such a thing impossible and for all purposes, impractical. Those who, at the time of the Thirty Years. War, declared that it was possible for Catholics and Protestants to worship in freedom according to their beliefs and to live together peacefully under law, were regarded as dreamers and most impractical men.
Democracy does not mean that governments have to ask the people their opinions on complicated issues and then carry them out. It is essentially a form of society within which the conception of new ideas, their diffusion in view of their acceptance by the majority, the fight for leadership, is open to everybody.
The first problem, therefore, is that those who, for one reason or another, are in a position to influence public opinion and events should know the exact meaning of the words they are using and clearly define the ideas they are advocating.
The first step toward realism is the clarification of principles.
[ p. 129 ]
It seems one of the absurdities of our unhappy generation that hopeless Utopians who live entirely in the past and are incapable of visualizing the future otherwise than as a projection of the past, call themselves realists and practical men and deride any attempt at rational thinking as “idealism.”
What does this word “sovereignty” mean?
By now most people must realize that humai> beings are exceptionally perverted and ferocious creatures, capable of murdering, torturing, persecuting and exploiting each other more ruthlessly than any other species in this world.
At a very early stage of human society, it was discovered that before we could live together, in a family, in a tribe, it was necessary to impose certain restraints upon our natural impulses, to forbid certain things we like to do, and to compel us to do certain things we do not like to do.
The day the first legal imposition of a compulsion was forced upon a community was the greatest day in history.
That day, freedom was born.
How did this happen?
Human nature is such ttat man does not accept rules unless they are imposed upon him by constituted authority. The first absolute authority was God.
So it was necessary to make people believe that the required rules and regulations were the express commands of God. They were proclaimed with all the magic at their command by priests, who had direct access to God and who knew how to proclaim [ p. 130 ] His will, amid so much thunder and lightning that the people were frightened into accepting them.
Here we have the first sovereign authority—the first source of law—a supernatural symbol.
Later on as human society developed and kw and order grew, it was necessary to separate that which was Caesar’s from that which was God’s. During that long period of history when peoples were ruled hy the divine right of absolute monarchs, chiefs, emperors and kings, to maintain their authority and lawmaking power, to make people recognize them as the supreme source of law, the rulers linked themselves as closely as possible with religion and proclaimed that they derived their power from God.
The monarchs ruling by divine right were called sovereigns and their lawgiving capacity was designated as “sovereign.”
Between the Renaissance and the eighteenth century, as a result of the revival of learning and new methods of rational and scientific thinking, a revolutionary social ideal took shape and found fertile soil among the masses suffering under absolutism. This revolutionary ideal was the principle that no individual, no family, no dynasty, could any longer be regarded as sovereign, that the sovereign lawgiving authority was the people and that “sovereignty resides in the community.”
This revolutionary principle led to the great popular uprisings of the eighteenth century, to the establishment of the American and French republics, and to the “king reigns but does not rule” parliamentary system in England and many other countries.
[ p. 131 ]
The ideal of national sovereignty and national independence springs from long eras of monarchy and colonization. At its inception, it was a great forward step and an incentive to human progress. The American Declaration of Independence, the French Revolution, following on the development of representative institutions in England, were an enormous incentive to other peoples to fight for their own sovereignty and independence. The climax of this evolution was reached in the peace treaties of 1919, when more nations than ever before became completely sovereign and independent. Twenty years late all those proud national sovereignties lay trampled in the dust and today more people than ever before in modem history are enslaved and plunged into misery.
Why did this happen?
It happened because the political system established in 1919, an apotheosis of eighteenth century ideals, was an anachronism, and in total contradiction to things as they are in the twentieth century. The great ideals of national sovereignty, independence, nationality as the basis of states, were wonderful achievements in the eighteenth century, in a world which was so vast before the industrial revolution had begun.
The democratic form of government adopted by the great Western powers brought about a century of wealth, a spiritual, scientific and material progress unique in history. But nothing is eternal in this world, and we are again in the throes of a crisis which demands reinterpretation of the foundations of our social life.
Our present conception of national sovereignty [ p. 132 ] shows how an ideal once realized, can be distorted in the span of a single century.
According to the eighteenth century French philosophers, the most articulate among the founders of modern democracy, the democratic conception of sovereignty meant the transfer of sovereign rights from one man, the king; to all men, the people. In the democratic sense, sovereignty resided in the community.
By “community” they meant the totality of people. It was quite clear that no individual or groups of individuals could exercise sovereign rights unless derived from the sovereignty of the community.
We must try to visualize the world as it was in the eighteenth century. The industrial revolution had not even begun. The stagecoach was the fastest means of transportation. Everybody lived a rural life and any territory of one hundred thousand or even ten thousand square miles was an entirely self-sufficient and self-supporting unit.
Under such conditions, the widest horizon of the forebears of democracy was—the Nation. When they proclaimed the sovereignty of the nation, they meant the sovereignty of the community; they meant sovereignty to have the broadest possible basis.
Today, a hundred and fifty years kter, when we can fly around the globe in less time than it took to go from Boston to New York, from London to Glasgow or from Paris to Marseille, the situation is completely different.
As the world is organized today, sovereignty does mot reside in the community, but is exercised in an [ p. 133 ] absolute form by groups of individuals we call nations. This is in total contradiction to the original democratic conception of sovereignty. Today, sovereignty has far too narrow a basis; it no longer has the power it should and was meant to have. The word is the same. The conception it expresses is the same. But the surroundings have changed. The conditions of the world have changed. And this changed situation calls for corresponding changes in the interpretation of this basic principle, if we desire to preserve this, the only foundation of democratic society yet discovered.
The great change brought about by the technical and industrial achievements of the nineteenth century is that the nation, which in the eighteenth century was the 'broadest imaginable basis of sovereignty, today is far too narrow a basis.
The seeds of the twentieth century crisis began to germinate almost immediately after the establishment of the modern democratic nation-states. Quite independently of the organization of the nation-states and the political conceptions of eighteenth century democracy, almost at the same time something happened which was destined to become an equally strong movement and an equally powerful factor of human progress. That something was: Industrialism.
These two dominating currents of our age, nationalism and industrialism, are in constant and inevitable conflict with each other.
Industrialism tends to embrace the whole globe within its sphere of activity. Modern industrial mass production needs raw materials from all over the [ p. 134 ] earth, and seeks markets in every corner of the world. It strives to achieve its purposes irrespective of any political, geographic, racial, religious, linguistic or national barriers.
Nationalism, on the other hand, tends to divide this world into smaller and smaller compartments and to segregate the human race into smaller and smaller independent groups.
For about a century it was possible for these conflicting currents to flow side by side. The political constitution of the eighteenth century nation-state structure of the world had some compartments large enough for industrialism to develop.
But since the beginning of this century these two forces have clashed with titanic violence. It is this collision between our political life and our economic and technological life that is the cause of the twentieth century crisis with which we have been struggling since 1914, as helpless as guinea pigs.
The meaning of this convulsion is clear. The political framework of our world with its seventy or eighty sovereign nation-states is an insurmountable obstacle to free industrial progress, to individual liberty and to social security.
Either we understand this problem and create a political framework in this world within which industrialism, individual liberties and peaceful human relationship are possible or we dogmatically refuse to change the foundation of our obsolete political structure.
We can remain as we are. It is perfectly possible. But if this is our choice, then democracy is finished [ p. 135 ] and we are bound to march with increasing speed toward totalitarianism.
The first step toward ending the present chaos is to overcome the tremendous emotional obstacle which prevents us from realizing and admitting that the ideal of sovereign nation-states, with all its great record of success during the nineteenth century, is today the cause of all the immeasurable suffering and misery of this world. We are living in complete anarchy, because in a small world, interrelated in every other respect, there are seventy or eighty separate sources of law—seventy or eighty sovereignties.
The situation is identical with that period of history when feudal lords of the land had absolute sovereign power over their fiefs and spent their lives fighting and killing each other, until the over-all rulers, the kings, imposed a higher sovereignty upon them, based on a broader framework. Within such a broader framework, the knights continued to envy and to dislike each other. But they were obliged to envy and dislike each other peacefully.
Our present system of national sovereignty is in absolute contradiction to the original democratic conception of sovereignty, which, meant—and still means—sovereignty of the community.
Why is it so urgently necessary to revive this notion and to re-establish the democratic conception of sovereignty of the community, which means authority of the people, standing above any individual or any group of individuals?
We all reject the monstrous totalitarian conception that the state is the absolute ultimate goal, with [ p. 136 ] supreme power over its citizens, that the individual is merely the abject slave of the Moloch—state.
We accept the democratic conception that the state, created by the people, exists only to protect them and maintain law and order, safeguarding their lives and liberty.
The significant thing about the present crisis is that the nation-states, even the most powerful, even the United States of America, Great Britain and the Soviet Union, are no longer strong enough, no longer powerful enough to fulfill the purpose for which they were created.
They cannot prevent disasters like the first and second world wars. They cannot protect their peoples against the devastation of international war.
However sincerely the American, British and Russian governments sought to keep out of this war, they were forced into it in spite of themselves. Millions of their citizens have died, hundreds of billions of dollars of their national wealth have been wasted, for sheer survival. They had to fight for their lives.
If the sovereignty of the United States of America, the sovereignty of Great Britain and the sovereignty of the Soviet Union do not suffice to protect their citizens, then we need not even talk about the fiction of sovereignty in Latvia, Luxembourg or Rumania.
To put it plainly, the ideal of the nation-state is bankrupt. The nation-state is impotent to prevent foreign aggression, it no longer serves as the supreme institution capable of protecting its people against war and all the miseries and misfortunes that war brings.
[ p. 137 ]
The second World War has finally demonstrated that not a single one of the existing nations, even the most powerful, is economically self-sufficient
These indisputable facts prove that our present conception of national sovereignty is obsolete and pregnant with deadly danger to us all.
The inescapable economic and technical realities of our age make it imperative to re-examine and reinterpret the notion of sovereignty and to create sovereign institutions based on the community, according to the original democratic conception. Sovereignty of the people must stand above the nations so that under it each nation may be equal, just as each individual is equal under the law in a civilized state.
The question is not one of “surrendering” national sovereignty. The problem is not negative and does not involve giving up something we already have. The problem is positive creating something we lack, something we have never had, but that we imperatively need.
The creation of institutions with universal sovereign power is merely another phase of the same process in the development of human history—the extension of law and order into another field of human association which heretofore has remained unregulated and in anarchy.
A few centuries ago, many cities held full sovereign rights. Later some portion of municipal sovereignty was transferred to provinces. Then to larger units and finally, at the end of the eighteenth century, to the nation-states.
In the United States of America today, the problems [ p. 138 ] of fire prevention, water supply, street cleaning and other similar matters are under municipal authority.
The construction of roads, marital legislation, education, legislation regarding industrial and commercial enterprises, and endless other issues are under state sovereignty.
And finally, problems affecting the United States Army, Navy, foreign policy, currency and other matters, are under Federal sovereignty.
The development is crystal clear. As human progress continues, conditions require an ever-broader basis for sovereignty, for absolute power, to fulfill its purpose: the protection of the people.
New Yorkers are citizens of the city of New York, of the state of New York and of the United States of America. But they are also citizens of the world. Their lives, their security, their liberties are protected in a very wide field by the sovereign authority which resides in the people, who have delegated its exercise partly to the city of New York, partly to the state of New York and partly to the Federal government of the United States of America.
The situation as to the delegation of sovereign power by the people to authorities on different levels is the same in all democratic countries. Just as in the United States, so in Great Britain, France, Switzerland and in the other countries, the sovereign peoples have delegated parts of their sovereignties to municipalities, boroughs, counties, departments, cantons and national state institutions.
But during the past three decades, we have learned that these highest sovereign units created by the [ p. 139 ] people—the nation-states—are not strong enough, are not sovereign enough, to protect them against international war, against attack by a foreign power over which existing sovereignties have no control whatever.
If the state of New York enacted economic or social legislation that reacted harmfully on economic and labor conditions in Connecticut, and no higher sovereignty existed, such an act on the part of the sovereign state of New York could not be prevented by the sovereign state of Connecticut, except by war.
But a higher sovereignty—the Federal sovereignty—exists, and under it the state of New York and the state of Connecticut are equal. This higher sovereignty alone protects the people against such danger.
The same dangers would exist in the relations of counties in England, departments in France and cantons in Switzerland, without higher sovereign national authority.
Democratic sovereignty of the people can be correctly expressed and effectively instituted only if local affairs are handled by local government, national affairs by national government, and international, world affairs, by international, world government
Only if the people, in whom rests all sovereign power, delegate parts of their sovereignty to institutions created for and capable of dealing with specific problems, can we say that we have a democratic form of government. Only through such separation of sovereignties, through the organization of independent institutions, deriving their authority from the sovereignty of the community, can we have a social order in [ p. 140 ] which men may live in peace with each other, endowed with equal rights and equal obligations before law. Only in a xvorld order based on such separation of sovereignties can individual freedom be real.
Such separation of sovereignties, such gradation of governmental functions, has proved to be the only real, enduring instrument of democracy in any country.
It is irrelevant whether the delegation of sovereignty proceeds from local government to national government, as in the United States, or from national government to local government, as in Great Britain. Whether the delegation of sovereignty develops historically one way or the other, does not modify the fact that democracy needs separation of sovereignties and separate institutions to deal with affairs on different levels, adequately to express the sovereignty of the community.
Existing anarchy in international relations, due to absolute national sovereignty, must be superseded by universal statutory law, enacted by a duly elected legislative body. Such universal law must take the place of the utterly fallacious, ineffectual and precarious rule of unenforceable treaty obligations entered into by sovereign nation-states and disregarded by them whenever it suits their purpose.
The conception of sovereignty is not an end but a means to an end.
It is an instrument necessary to create law and order in the relations of men. Sovereignty finds expression in institutions, but in itself, is not and never can be identical with any institution.
[ p. 141 ]
Institutions derive their sovereignty from where sovereignty resides. In ancient times, in religion, in absolute monarchies—from God. In democracies—from the people.
If our inherited institutions, established in the past, are no longer capable of maintaining law and order and protecting us, then their claims to sovereignty, their insistence upon sovereign power jeopardizes our very lives and liberty, the well-being of society to which we belong, and the sovereignty of . . . “we, the people.”
Institutions—churches, dynasties, municipalities, kingdoms, nation-states—can be recognized to exercise sovereign power and to incarnate sovereign rights only so long as they are able to solve concrete and tangible problems, to fulfill the purposes for which they were created. To identify sovereign institutions with sovereignty itself, to assume that sovereign rights must eternally reside in any specific institution—today the nation-state—to believe that the nation-state is the expression of sovereignty, is pure totalitarianism, the greatest foe of democracy, the greatest political and social heresy imaginable, ranking with the making of graven images of God and their identification with God Himself in the Christian religion.
The nation-states were originally instituted and received their power from their peoples to carry out clearly defined tasks, i.e., to protect their citizens, to guarantee security to their peoples, to maintain law and order. The moment established institutions fail to keep abreast of conditions in society and are unable [ p. 142 ] to maintain peace, they become a source of great danger and must be reformed if violent social convulsions and wars are to be averted.
Through such reform and transformation of obsolete and ineffective human institutions into more adequate and more powerful institutions adapted to realities, nothing whatsoever is “sacrificed” or “surrendered.” Quite certainly not sovereignty.
Such a reform does not require the abolition of nations and national boundaries. Widiin each nationstate, we still have state lines, county demarcations, city limits, boundaries of our home lots or of houses and apartments. Families have names of their own different from those of other families. We like, protect and defend our own families more than other families. We love our homes, pay allegiance to our own communities, our countrysides, our provinces.
But sovereign power is not vested in these units which divide us.
Sovereign ppwer is vested in the state, which unites us.
Those who talk of “surrendering” the sovereignty of the United States, of Great Britain, France or of any other democratic country, simply do not understand the meaning of “sovereignty.”
A democratic state cannot “surrender” sovereignty, for the simple reason that it is not sovereign. Only a totalitarian or Fascist state is sovereign. A democratic state is sovereign only to the extent to which sovereignty is delegated to it by those in whom, under the democratic concept, sovereignty is vested—the people.
[ p. 143 ]
The real source of sovereign power cannot be emphasized too strongly and must never be lost sight of if we would understand the political problem we face. It is the people who create governments and not—as the Fascists say—governments that make nations.
The nation-states as they were set up in the eighteenth century, and as they are organized in the democracies today, are nothing but the instruments of the sovereign people, created for the specific purpose of achieving certain objectives. Should the people realize and come to the conclusion that in certain fields they would be better protected by delegating part of their sovereignty to bodies other than the nation-states, then nothing would be “surrendered.” Rather something would be created for the better protection of the lives and liberties of all peoples.
Sovereignty would continue to reside in the people in accordance with the original conception of democracy, but institutions would be created to give realistic and effective expression to the democratic sovereignty of the people in place of the inefficient and tyrannical institutions of the nation-states.
The people would “surrender” their sovereignty only if sovereign power to create law were abandoned to an arbitrary authority or a lawless power.
But to transfer certain aspects of our sovereign rights from national legislative, judiciary and executive bodies to equally democratically elected and democratically controlled universal legislative, judiciary and executive bodies in order to create, apply and execute for the regulation of human relation [ p. 144 ] ships in the international field in a field where such law has never existed is not “surrender” but acquisition. It is an exchange of a phantom asset, the product of unfulfilled and unfulfillable promises, for a real and tangible asset