In the last two chapters I have taken up the two fundamental laws of life⁠—the law of interpenetration and the law of multiples. (1) Sovereignty, we have seen, is the power generated within the group⁠—dependent on the principle of interpenetration. (2) Man joins many groups⁠—in order to express his multiple nature. These two principles give us federalism.

Let us, before considering the conception of federalism in detail, sum up in a few sentences what has already been said of these two principles. The fundamental truth of life we have seen is self-perpetuating activity⁠—activity so regnant, so omnipresent, so all-embracing, that it banishes even the conception of anything static from the world of being. Conscious evolution means that we must discover the essential principle of this activity and see that it is at work in the humblest of its modes, the smallest group or meeting of even two or three. The new psychology has brought to political science the recognition of interpenetration and the “compounding of consciousness” as the very condition of all life. Our political methods must conform to life’s methods. We must understand and follow the laws of association that the state may appear, that our own little purposes may be fulfilled. Little purposes? Is there any great and small? The humblest man and the price of his daily loaf⁠—is this a small matter⁠—it hangs upon the whole world situation today. In order that the needs of the humblest shall be satisfied, or in order that world purposes shall be fulfilled⁠—it matters not which⁠—this principle of “compounding” must be fully recognized and embodied in our political methods. It is this vital intermingling which creates the real individual and knits men into the myriad relations of life. We win through life our individuality, it is not presented to us at the beginning to be exploited as we will. We win a multiple individuality through our manifold relations. In the workings of this dual law are rooted all of social and political progress, all the hope and the potency of human evolution.

Only the federal state can express this dual principle of existence⁠—the compounding and the multiple compounding. It is an incomplete understanding of this dual law which is responsible for the mistaken interpretation of federalism held by some of the pluralists: a conception which includes the false doctrines of division of power, the idea that the group not the individual should be the unit of the state, the old consent of governed theory, an almost discarded particularism (group rights), and the worn-out balance theory.

The distributive sovereignty school assumes that the essential, the basic part of federalism is the division of power between the central and separate parts: while the parts may be considered as ceding power to the central state, or the central state may be considered as granting power to the parts, yet in one form or another federalism means a divided sovereignty. Esmein says definitely, “L’État fédératif⁠ ⁠… fractionne la souveraineté.⁠ ⁠…”123 No, it should unite sovereignty. There should be no absolute division of power or conferring of power. The activity of whole and parts should be one.

In spite of all our American doctrines of the end of the eighteenth century, in spite of our whole history of states-right theory and sentiment, the division of sovereignty is not the main fact of the United States government. From 1789 to 1861 the idea of a divided sovereignty⁠—that the United States was a voluntary agreement between free, sovereign and independent states, that authority was “divided” between nation and states⁠—dictated the history of the United States. The war of 1861 was fought (some of the pluralists seem not to know) to settle this question.124 The two ideas of federalism came to a death grapple in our Civil War and the true doctrine triumphed. That war decided that the United States was not a delegated affair, that it had a “real” existence, and that it was sovereign, yet not sovereign over the states as an external party, for it is composed of the states, but sovereign over itself, merely over itself. You have not to be a mystic to understand this but only an American. Those who see in a federal union a mere league with rights and powers granted to a central government, those who see in a federal union a balancing of sovereign powers, do not understand true federalism. When we enumerate the powers of the states as distinct from the powers of our national government, some people regard this distinction as a dividing line between nation and states, but the true “federalist” is always seeing the relation of these powers to those of the central government. There are no absolute divisions in a true federal union.

Do we then want a central government which shall override the parts until they become practically nonexistent? The moment federalism attempts to transcend the parts it has become vitiated. Our Civil War was not, as some writers assert, the blow to states-rights and the victory of centralization. We shall yet, I believe, show that it was a victory for true federalism.125 The United States is neither to ignore the states, transcend the states, nor to balance the states, it is to be the states in their united capacity.

Of course it is true that many Americans do think of our government as a division of powers between central and local authority, therefore there is as a matter of fact much balancing of interests. But as far as we are doing this at Washington it is exactly what we must get rid of. The first lesson for every member of a federal government to learn is that the interests of the different parts, or the interests of the whole and the interests of the parts, are never to be pitted against each other. As far as the United States represents an interpenetration of thought and feeling and interest and will, it is carrying out the aims of federalism.

We have not indeed a true federalism in the United States today; we are now learning the lesson of federalism. Someone must analyze for us the difference between centralization and true federalism, which is neither nationalization, states-rights, nor balance, and then we must work for true federalism. For the federal government to attempt to do that which the states should do, or perhaps even are doing, means loss of force, and loss of education-by-experience for the states. On the other hand, not to see when federal action means at the same time local development and national strength, means a serious retarding of our growth. It is equally true that when the states attempt what the federal government alone should undertake, the consequence is general muddle.

And it is by no means a question only of what the federal government should do and what it should not do. It is a question of the way of doing. It is a question of guiding, where necessary, without losing local initiative or local responsibility. It is a question of so framing measures that true federation, not centralization, be obtained. Recently, even before the war, the tendency has been towards increased federal action and federal control, as seen, for instance, in the control of railroad transportation, of vocational education etc. The latter is an excellent example of the possibility of central action being true federal and not nationalized action. The federal government upon application from a state grants to that state an amount for vocational education equal to what the state itself will appropriate. The administration of the fund rests with the state. The federal government thus makes no assumptions. It recognizes existing facts. And it does not impose something from without. The state must understand its needs, must know how those needs can best be satisfied; it must take responsibility. The experience of one state joins with the experience of other states to form a collective experience.

As we watch federalism being worked out in actual practice at Washington, we see in that practice the necessity of a distinction which has been emphasized throughout this book as the contribution of contemporary psychology to politics: nationalization is the Hegelian reconciliation, true federalism is the integration of present psychology. This means a genuine integration of the interests of all the parts. If our present tendency is towards nationalization, we must learn the difference between that and federalism and change it into the latter. We need a new order of statesmen in the world today⁠—for our nation, for our international league⁠—those who understand federalism.

But I have been talking of federalism as the integration of parts (the states). We should remember also, and this is of the greatest importance, that the United States is not only to be the states in their united capacity, but it is to be all the men and women of the United States in their united capacity. This it seems difficult for many Europeans to understand; it breaks across their traditional conception of federalism which has been a league, a confederation of “sovereign” parts, not a true federal state. We of Massachusetts feel ourselves not first children of Massachusetts and then through Massachusetts of the United States. We belong directly to the United States not merely through Massachusetts. True federalism means that the individual, not the group, is the unit. A true federal government acts directly on its citizens, not merely through the groups.

America has not led the world in democracy through methods of representation, social legislation, ballot laws or industrial organization. She has been surpassed by other countries in all of these. She leads the world in democracy because through federalism she is working out the secret of the universe actively. Multiple citizenship in its spontaneous unifying is the foundation of the new state. Federalism and democracy go together, you do not decide to have one or the other as your fancy may be. We did not establish federalism in the United States, we are growing federalism. Cohesion imposed upon us externally will lack in significance and duration. Federalism must live through: (1) the reality of the group, (2) the expanding group, (3) the ascending group or unifying process.

The federal state is the unifying state. The political pluralists, following James, use the “trailing and”126 argument to prove that we can never have a unified state, that there is always something which never gets included. I should use it to prove that we can and must have a unifying state, that this “and” is the very unifying principle. The “trailing and” is the deepest truth of psychology. It is because of this “and” that our goal must always be the unified state⁠—the unified state to be attained through the federal form. Our spirit it is true is by nature federal, but this means not infinite unrelation but infinite possibility of relation, not infinite strung-alongness but infinite seeking for the unifying of the strung-alongness. I forever discover undeveloped powers. This is the glory of our exhaustless nature. We are the expression of the principle of endless growth, of endless appearing, and democracy must, therefore, so shape its forms as to allow for the manifestation of each new appearing. I grow possibilities; new opportunities should always be arising to meet these new possibilities.

Then through group and group and ascending group I actualize more and more. The “trailing and” is man’s task forever and ever⁠—to drag in more spirit, more knowledge, more harmony. Federalism is the only possible form for the state because it leaves room for the new forces which are coming through these spiritual “ands,” for the myriad centres of life which must be forever springing up, group after group, within a vital state. Our impulse is at one and the same time to develop self and to transcend self. It is this ever transcending self which needs the federal state. The federal state is not a unified state, I agree, but it is a unifying state, not a “strung-along” state.

Thus it is the federal state which expresses the two fundamental principles of life⁠—the compounding of consciousness and the endless appearings of new forces.

I have said that the pluralists’ mistaken interpretation of federalism includes the particularist notions of “consent” and “rights” and “balance,” and that all these come from a false conception of sovereignty. What does the new psychology teach us of “consent”? Power is generated within the true group not by one or several assuming authority and the others “consenting,” but solely by the process of intermingling. Only by the same method can the true state be grown.

If divorce is to be allowed between the state and this group or that, what are the grounds on which it is to be granted? Will incompatibility be sufficient? Are the manufacturing north and agricultural south of Ireland incompatible? Does a certain trade association want, like Nora, a “larger life”? The pluralists open the gates to too much. They wish to throw open the doors of the state to labor: yes, they are right, but let them beware what veiled shapes may slip between those open portals. Labor must indeed be included in the state, it is our most immediate task, but let us ponder well the method.

The pluralists assume that the unified state must always claim authority over “other groups.”127 But as he who expresses the unity of my group has no authority over me but is simply the symbol and the organ of the group, so that group which expresses the unity of all groups⁠—that is, the state⁠—should have no authority as a separate group, but only so far as it gathers up into itself the whole meaning of these constituent groups. Just here is the crux of the disagreement between the upholders of the pluralistic and of the true monistic state: the former think of the other groups as “coextensive” or “complementary” to the state⁠—the state is one of the groups to which we owe obedience; to the latter they and all individuals are the constituents of the state.128

I have said that our progress is from Contract to Community.129 This those pluralists cannot accept who take the consent of the group as part of their theory of the state. They thereby keep themselves in the contract stage of thinking, they thereby and in so far range themselves with all particularists.130

Secondly, in the divided sovereignty theory the old particularist doctrine of individual rights gives way merely to a new doctrine of group rights, the “inherent rights” of trade-unions or ecclesiastical bodies. “Natural rights” and “social compact” went together; the “inherent rights” of groups again tend to make the federal bond a compact.131 The state resting on a numerical basis, composed of an aggregate of individuals, gives way only to a state still resting on a numerical basis although composed now of groups instead of individuals. As in the old days the individuals were to be “free,” now the groups are to be “independent.” These new particularists are as zealous and as jealous for the group as any nineteenth-century “individualist” was for the individual. Mr. Barker, who warns us, it is true, against inherent rights which are not adjusted to other inherent rights, nevertheless says, “If we are individualists now, we are corporate individualists. Our individuals are becoming groups. We no longer write Man vs. the State but The Group vs. the State.” But does Mr. Barker really think it progress to write Group vs. the State? If the principle of individual vs. the state is wrong, what difference does it make whether that individual is one man or a group of men? In so far as these rights are based on function, we have an advance in political theory; in so far as we can talk of group vs. the state, we are held in the thralls of another form of social atomism. It is the pluralists themselves who are always saying, when they oppose crowd-sovereignty, that atomism means anarchy. Agreed, but atomism in any form, of groups as well as individuals, means anarchy, and this they do not always seem to realize.

Mr. Barker speaks of the present tendency “to restrict the activity of the state in order to safeguard the rights of the groups.” Many pluralists and syndicalists are afraid of the state because for them the old dualism is unsolvable. But as I have tried to show in the chapter on “Our Political Dualism” that the rights of the state and the citizen are never, ideally, incompatible, so now we should understand that our present task is to develop those political forms within which rights of group and state can be approaching coincidence.

As long as we settle down within any one group, we are in danger of the old particularism. Many a trade-unionist succumbs to this danger. Love of a group will not get us out of particularism. We can have egoism of the group as well as egoism of the individual. Indeed the group may have all the evils of the individual⁠—aggrandizement of self, exploitation of others etc. Nothing will get us out of particularism but the constant recognition that any whole is always the element of a larger whole. Group life has two meanings, one as important as the other: (1) it looks in to its own integrated, coordinated activity, (2) it sees that activity in relation to other activities, in relation to a larger whole of which it is a part. The group which does not look out deteriorates into caste. The group which thinks only of itself is a menace to society; the group which looks to its manifold relations is part of social progress. President Wilson as head of a national group has just as clear a duty to other national groups as to his own country.

Particularism of the individual is dead, in theory if not in practice. Let us not now fall into the specious error of clinging to our particularism while changing its name from individual to group.

The outcome of group particularism is the balance of power theory, perhaps the most pernicious part of the pluralists’ doctrine. The pluralist state is to be composed of sovereign groups. What is their life to be? They are to be left alone to fight, to compete, or, word most favored by this school, to balance. With de Maeztu the balance of power is confessedly the cornerstone of the new state. “The dilemma which would make us choose between the State and anarchy is false. There is another alternative, that of plurality and the balance of powers, not merely within the nation but in the family of nations.”132

But whenever you have balance in your premise, you have anarchy in your conclusion.

The weakness of the reasoning involved in the balance of power argument has been exposed in so much of the war literature of the last three years, which has exploded the balance of power theory between nations, that little further criticism is needed here. Unity must be our aim today. When you have not unity, you have balance or struggle or domination⁠—of one over others. The nations of Europe refuse domination, aim at balance, and war is the result.

It seems curious that these two movements should be going on side by side: that we are giving up the idea of the balance of nations, that we are refusing to think any longer in terms of “sovereign” nations, and yet at the same time an increasing number of men should be advocating balancing, “sovereign” groups within nations. The pluralists object to unity, but unity and plurality are surely not incompatible. The true monistic state is merely the multiple state working out its own unity from infinite diversity. But the unifying state shows us what to do with that diversity. What advantage is that diversity if it is to be always “competing,” “fighting,” “balancing?” Only in the unifying state do we get the full advantage of diversity where it is gathered up into significance and pointed action.

The practical outcome of the balance theory will be first antagonistic interests, then jealous interests, then competing interests, then dominating interests⁠—a fatal climax.

The trouble with the balance theory is that by the time the representatives of the balancing groups meet, it is too late to expect agreement. The chief objection to pluralism is, perhaps, that it is usually merely a scheme of representation, that its advocates are usually talking of the kind of roof they want before they have laid the foundation stones. No theory of the state can have vitality which is merely a plan of representation. The new state must rest on a new conception of living, on a true understanding of the vital modes of association. The reason why occupational representation must bring balance and competition is because the integrating of differences, the essential social process, does not take place far enough back in our life. If Parliaments are composed of various groups or interests, the unification of those interests has to take place in Parliament. But then it is too late. The ideas of the different groups must mingle earlier than Parliament. We must go further back than our legislatures for the necessary unifying. We do not want legislatures full of opposing interests. The ideas of the groups become too crystallized by the time their representatives get to the Parliament, in fact they have often hardened into prejudices. Moreover, the representatives could not go against their constituencies, they would be pledged to specific measures. The different groups would come together each to try to prevail, not to go through the only genuine democratic process, that of trying to integrate their ideas and interests.

When the desire to prevail is once keenly upon us, we behave very differently than when our object is the seeking of truth. Suppose I am the representative in Congress of a group or a party. A bill is under consideration. I see a weakness in that bill; if I point it out someone else may see a remedy for it and the bill may be immensely improved. But do I do this? Certainly not. I am so afraid of the bill being lost if I show any weakness in it that I keep this insight to myself and my country loses just so much. I cannot believe that occupational representation will foster truth seeking or truth speaking. It seems to me quite a case of the frying pan into the fire. Compromise and swapping will be the order in Parliaments based solely on the vocational principle. The different interests must fight it out in Parliament. This is fundamentally against democracy because it is against the psychological foundation of democracy, the fundamental law of association. Democracy depends on the blending, not the balancing, of interests and thoughts and wills. Occupational representation assumes that you secure the interests of the whole by securing the interests of every class, the old particularist fallacy transferred to the group.

Moreover, it is often assumed that because the occupational group is composed of men of similar interests we shall have agreement in the occupational group; it is taken for granted that in these economic groups the agreement of opinion necessary for voting will be automatic. But do poets or carpenters or photographers think alike on more than a very few questions? What we must do is to get behind these electoral methods to some fundamental method which shall produce agreement.

Moreover, if the Cabinet were made up of these warring elements, administration would be almost impossible. Lloyd-George’s Cabinet at present is hampered by too much “difference.” I have throughout, to be sure, been advocating the compounding of difference as the secret of politics, but the compounding must begin further back in our life than Parliaments or Cabinets.

And if you had group representation in England would not the Cabinet be made up of the most powerful of the groups, and would not a fear of defeat at any particular time mean overtures to enough of the other groups to make success in the Cabinet? And would not an entirely improper amount of power drift to the Premier under these circumstances? Have we any leaders who would, could anyone trust himself to, guide the British Cabinet for the best interests of Great Britain under such conditions as these?

To sum up: a true federalism cannot rest on balance or group-rights or consent. Authority, obedience, liberty, can never be understood without an understanding of the group process. Some of the advocates of guild socialism oppose function to authority and liberty, but we can have function and liberty and authority: authority of the whole through the liberty of all by means of the functions of each. These three are inescapably united. A genuine group, a small or large group, association or state, has the right to the obedience of its members. No group should be sovereign over another group. The only right the state has to authority over “other” groups is as far as those groups are constituent parts of the state. All groups are not constituent parts of the state today, as the pluralists clearly see. Possibly or probably all groups never will be, but such perpetually self-actualizing unity should be the process. Groups are sovereign over themselves, but in their relation to the state they are interdependent groups, each recognizing the claims of every other. Our multiple group life is the fact we have to reckon with; unity is the aim of all our seeking. And with this unity will appear a sovereignty spontaneously and joyfully acknowledged. In true federalism, voided of division and balance, lies such sovereignty.