From the confessedly embryonic stage of thinking in which the movement for group organization still is, two principal questions have emerged: (1) shall the groups form a pluralistic or a unifying state, (2) shall the economic group be the sole basis of representation? The first question I have tried to answer, the second offers greater difficulties with our present amount of experience. Men often discuss the occupational vs. the neighborhood group on the pivotal question⁠—which of these is nearest a man? Benoist’s plea for the occupational group was that politics must represent la vie. But, agreed as to that, we still question whether the occupational group is the most complete embodiment of la vie.

It is not, however, necessary to balance the advantages of neighborhood and occupational group, for I am not proposing that the neighborhood group take the place of the occupational. We may perhaps come to wish for an integration of neighborhood and industrial groups⁠—and other groups too as their importance and usefulness demand⁠—as their “objective” value appears. In our neighborhood group we shall find that we can correct many partial points of view which we get from our more specialized groups. A director of a corporation will be more valuable to his state and even to his corporation if he is at the same time the member of a neighborhood group. It may be that we shall work out some machinery by which the neighborhood group can include the occupational group. All our functions must be expressed, but somewhere must come that coordination which will give them their real effectiveness. We are not yet ready to say what the machinery will be, only to recognize some of the principles which should guide us in constructing that machinery. The power of an individual is his power to live a vital group life. The more your society is diversified in group life, the higher the stage of civilization. Perhaps the destiny of the neighborhood group is to interpret and correlate, to give full significance and value to, all the spontaneous association which our increasingly fuller and more varied life is constantly creating. It may be that the neighborhood group is not so much to include the others as to make each see its relation through every other to every other.136 The possible solution, mentioned above, of the two houses of our legislatures and parliaments dividing neighborhood and occupational representation, seems a little crude now to our further analysis unless some practical integration is being worked out at the same time in the local unit. But all this must be a matter of experiment and experience, of patient trial and open-minded observation.137

The salient fact, however, is that neighborhood and occupational groups, either independently or one through the other, must both find representation in the state. But we must remember that it is industry which must be included in the state, not labor, but labor and capital. This war certainly shows us the importance of the great organizations of industry. Let them be integrated openly with the state on the side of their public service, rather than allow a backstairs connection on the side of their “interests.” And let them be integrated in such manner that labor itself is at last included in our political organization. This will not be easy; as a matter of fact we have no more difficult, as we have no more important, problem before us than the relation within the state of one powerful organized body to another and of these bodies to the state. The average American is against the growth of corporate bodies. But this prejudice must go: we need strong corporate bodies not to compete with the state but to minister to the state. Individualism and concentrated authority have been struggling for supremacy with us since the beginning of our government. From the beginning of our government we have been seeking the synthesis of the two. That synthesis is to be found in the recognition of organized groups, but not, I believe, by taking away power from the state and giving to the group. Some of the pluralists, in their reaction to the present fear of powerful groups, advocate that groups should be given more and more power. I agree with them so far, but their implication is that we shall thereby have shorn the Samson locks of the state. This I do not believe we want to do.

Everyone sees the necessity today of the increase of state control as a war measure, but some tell us that we should guard against its dangers by giving to certain organizations within the state enough power to “balance” the state. I insist that balance can never be the aim of sound political method. We must first change our conception of the state⁠—substitute the Service State for the Sovereign State⁠—then methods must be devised within which such new conception can operate. We should, indeed, give more and more power to the groups, or rather, because we can never “give” power, we should recognize all the power which springs up spontaneously within the state, and seek merely those methods by which that self-generating power shall tend immediately to become part of the strength of the state.

How absurd our logic has been. We knew that it took strong men to make a strong state; we did not realize that those groups which represent the whole industry and business of the country need not be rivals of the state, but must be made to contribute to the state, must be the means by which the state becomes great and powerful at the same time that it uses that power for the well-being and growth of all. Our timidity has been but the reflection of our ignorance. A larger understanding is what we need today. There is no need to condemn the state, as do the pluralists; there is no need to condemn our great corporate bodies, as do their opponents. But full of distrust we shall surely be, on one side or the other, until we come truly to understand a state and to create a state which ministers continuously to its parts, while its parts from hour to hour serve only the enhancement of its life, and through it, the enhancement of the life of its humblest member.

The tendency to which we have long been subject, to do away with everything which stood between man and the state, must go, but that does not mean that we must fly to the other extreme and do away with either the individual or the state. One of the chief weaknesses of political pluralism is that it has so many of the earmarks of a reaction⁠—the truth is that we have groups and man and the state, all to deal with.

Neighborhood groups, economic groups, unifying groups, these have been my themes, and yet the point which I wish to emphasize is not the kind of group, but that the group whatever its nature shall be a genuine group, that we can have no genuine state at all which does not rest on genuine groups. Few trade-unionists in demanding that their organization shall be the basis of the new state examine that organization to see what right it has to make this demand. Most trade-unionists are satisfied in their own organizations with a centralized government or an outworn representative system. Labor can never have its full share in the control of industry until it has learnt the secrets of the group process. Collective bargaining must first be the result of a genuine collective will before it can successfully pass on to directorate representation, to complete joint control.138

It is significant that the guild socialists, in considering how acrimonious disputes between guilds are to be avoided, say that “the labor and brains of each Guild naturally [will evolve] a hierarchy to which large issues of industrial policy might with confidence be referred,” and “at the back of this hierarchy and finally dominating it, is the Guild democracy.⁠ ⁠…” But then guild socialism is to have no different psychological basis from our present system. This is exactly what we rely on now so patiently, so unsuccessfully⁠—the lead of the few, the following of the crowd, with the fiction that, as our government is based on numbers, the crowd can always have what it wants; therefore, at any moment what we have is what we have chosen⁠—Tammany rule for instance. We need a new method: the group process must be applied to industrial groups as well as to neighborhood groups, to business groups, to professional societies⁠—to every form of human association. If the labor question is to be solved by a system of economic control based on economic representation instead of upon vital modes of association, “industrial democracy” will fail exactly as so-called political democracy has failed.

Perhaps this warning is particularly necessary at the present moment because “group” control of industry seems imminent. Through the pressure of the war guild socialism has made practical as well as theoretical headway in England. There are two movements going on side by side, both due it is true to the emergency of war, but neither of which will be wholly lost when the war is over; it is the opinion of many, on the contrary, that these movements are destined to shape a new state for England. First, the government has assumed a certain amount of control over munition plants, railroads, mines, breweries, flour mills and factories of various kinds, and it has undertaken the regulation of wages and prices, control of markets and food consumption, taxation of profits etc.139

Secondly, at the same time that the state is assuming a larger control of industry, it is inviting the workmen themselves to take part in the control of industry. “The Whitley Report, adopted by the Reconstruction Committee of the Cabinet, proposes not only a Joint Standing Industrial Council for each great national industry, for the regular consideration of matters affecting the progress and well-being of the trade, but District Councils and Works Committees within each business upon which capital and labor shall be equally represented.” These bodies will take up “questions of standard wages, hours, overtime, apprenticeship, shop discipline,⁠ ⁠… technical training, industrial research and invention, the adoption of improved machinery and processes, and all those matters which are included under ‘scientific management.’ ”140

This is a step which goes far beyond arbitration and conciliation boards. It gives to labor a positive share in the control of industry. “Although it is not at present proposed to give any legal recognition to this new machinery of economic government or any legal enforcement of its decision,⁠ ⁠… it may reasonably be expected that [these national industrial councils] will soon become the effective legislature of the industry.”

Most noteworthy is the general acceptance of this plan. “All classes appear to be willing and even anxious to apply the principle of representative self-government not only to the conduct of the great trades but to their constituent businesses.” Undoubtedly the English laborer has an increasing fear of bureaucracy and this is turning him from state socialism: his practical experience during the war of “tyrannical” bureaucracy in the government controlled industries has lost state socialism many supporters.

The establishment of the Standing Industrial Councils is a step towards guild socialism although (1) the determination of lines of production, the buying and selling processes, questions of finance, everything in fact outside shop-management, is at present left to the employers, and (2) the capitalist is left in possession of his capital. But this movement taken together with the one mentioned above, that is, the trend towards state-ownership or joint ownership or partial control, has large significance: the state to own the means of production, the producers to control the conditions of production, seems like the next step in industrial development, in government form⁠—the fact that these two go together, that government form is to follow industrial development, gives us large hope for the future.

The British Labor Party in 1917 formulated a careful plan for reorganization with a declared object of common ownership of means of production and “a steadily increasing participation of the organized workers in the management.”141 This wording is significant.

In America also the pressure of war has led to the recognition of labor in the control of industry. Adjustment boards containing labor representatives have been required of almost all private employers signing contracts with the War and Navy Departments.142 The policy of the administration is to recognize collective bargaining. And the President’s Mediation Commission, which imposed collective agreements on the copper industry of Arizona, stated in its official report, “The leaders of industry must⁠ ⁠… [enable] labor to take its place as a cooperator in the industrial enterprise.” Moreover, the workman is gaining recognition not only in the management of the industry in which he is engaged, but also at Washington. On most of the important government boards which deal with matters affecting labor, labor is represented. The work of the War Labor Board and the War Labor Policies Board mark our advance in the treatment of labor questions.

The “National Party,” inaugurated in Chicago in October, 1917, composed largely of socialists, had for one plank in its platform, “The chief industries should be controlled by administrative boards upon which the workers, the managers and the government should all be represented.” Thus the old state socialism is passing.

In France long before the war we see the beginnings of syndicalism in the steps taken to give to the actual teaching force of universities a share in the administration of the department of education. In 1896⁠–⁠1897 university councils were established, composed of deans and two delegates elected by each university faculty. While these councils are under ministerial control, this is hailed as the beginning of functionarist decentralization in France. In 1910 was organized the representation of all the personnel of the service of post, telephone and telegraph in regional and central councils of discipline, and also advisory representation to the heads of the service.

The best part of syndicalism is its recognition that every department of our life must be controlled by those who know most about that department, by those who have most to do with that department. Teachers should share both in the legislation and the administration affecting education. Factory laws should not be made by a Parliament in which factory managers and employees are not, or are only partially, represented.

One movement toward syndicalism we see everywhere: the forming of professional groups⁠—commercial, literary, scientific, artistic⁠—is as marked as the forming of industrial groups. Any analysis of society today must study its groupings faithfully. We are told too that in France these professional groups are beginning to have political power, as was seen in several large towns in the municipal elections before the war. Similar instances are not wanting in England and America.

In Germany there are three strong “interest” organizations which have a large influence on politics: the “Landlords’ League” which represents the conservatives, the “Social Democrats” who represent labor, and the “Hanseatic League for Manufactures, Trade and Industry” founded in 1909 with the express object of bringing forward its members as candidates for the Reichstag and Landtags.143

We have an interesting instance in the United States of political organization on occupational lines from which we may learn much⁠—I refer to the Nonpartisan league of North Dakota composed of farmers which, inaugurated in 1915, in 1916⁠–⁠7 carried the state elections of North Dakota, electing a farmer-governor, and putting their candidates in three of the supreme court judgeships, and gaining 105 out of the 138 seats in the state legislature. The first object of the league was the redress of economic injustice suffered by the farmer. They saw that this must be done through concerted control of the political machinery. Of the legislation they wished, they secured: (1) a new office of State Inspector of Grains, Weights and Measures, (2) partial exemption of farm improvements from taxation, (3) a new cooperative corporation law, and (4) a law to prevent railroads from discriminating, in supplying freight-cars, against elevators owned by farmers’ cooperative societies.

In 1917 a Farmers’ Nonpartisan League of the state of New York was organized. In September, 1917, the North Dakota League became the “National Nonpartisan League,” the organization spreading to several of the neighboring states: Minnesota, South Dakota, Idaho, Montana, etc. At the North Dakota state primaries held in the summer of 1918, nearly all the League’s candidates were nominated, thus insuring the continuance of its control of the state government.

In Denmark we are told the battle rages between the agrarian party and the labor party. More and more the struggle in Parliamentary countries is becoming a struggle between interests rather than between parties based on abstract principles. This must be fully taken into account in the new state.

The hoped-for relation of industry to the state might be summed up thus: we want a state which shall include industry without on the one hand abdicating to industry, or on the other controlling industry bureaucratically. The present plans for guild socialism or syndicate control, while they point to a possible future development, and while they may be a step on the way, as a scheme of political organization have many weak points. Such experiments as the Industrial Councils of England are interesting, but until further technique is worked out we shall find that individual selfishness merely gives way to group selfishness. From such experiments we shall learn much, but the new ship of state cannot ride on such turbulent waters.

The part labor will take in the new state depends now largely upon labor itself. Labor must see that it cannot reiterate its old cries, that it need no longer demand “rights.” It is a question of a new conception of the state and labor seeing its place within it. For a new state is coming⁠—we cannot be blind to the signs on every side, we cannot be deaf to the voices within. Labor needs leaders today who are alive not to the needs of labor, but to the needs of the whole state: then it will be seen as a corollary how labor fits in, what the state needs from labor, what labor needs from the state, what part labor is to have in the state.