of those paritatic organisations which appointed to the Federal Economic Council. In both District Economic Councils and Federal Economic Councils the consumers and liberal professions would have a place. The abnormal views are not likely to be accepted. Instead it appears that there will be set up a constitution on the lines of Government Plan B, because Plan A does not take any account of the great vocational organisations such as the Industrial Alliances, or the Trade Unions, or the Central Association of German Big Industry. Plan B suffers, however, from the attempt to include a large proportion of delegates issuing from a process of indirect election from the District Economic Council. Territorial representation might well, perhaps, be left to the central vocational organisations. Whatever the outcome, the economic side, in all its stages, will be subordinated to, but will always effectively aid, the political bodies to introduce into their economic and social policy a substance more serviceable to the real demands of society than has hitherto been possible. We shall consider in the next chapter the development of the ideas and institutions relating to this Economic Constitution and estimate the lessons to be drawn from it. P CHAPTER VIII CONCLUSIONS AND REFLECTIONS: GERMANY AND ENGLAND I am tempted to believe that what we call necessary institutions are often no more than institutions to which we have grown accustomed, and that in matters of social constitution the field of possibilities is much more extensive than men living in their various societies are ready to imagine.-DE TOCQUEVILLE. A MENTAL review of the birth, the growth, the operation, and the discussions about the future of the Federal Economic Council will reveal how Germany's Stateform stands between the products of two Revolutions, Parliaments and Soviets. Between two world-shaking Revolutions, the French Revolution of 1789, which brought us formal democracy, and the Russian of 1917, which threatened to force upon us the Soviet system, stands Germany, the country in the centre, tottering and disrupted, as the spiritual battlefield of the western and eastern ideas of the State, as it may soon become the battlefield of the western and eastern armies. And yet it can find a synthesis between East and West in its own theory of the State-the vocational Parliament." 1 It stands so, because it stands between two civilisations: the capitalistic and the more socialistic.2 The present German constitution of course contains the declaration that sovereignty resides in the people ; 3 but the early nineteenth-century conception of Parlia 1 Oppeln-Bronikowski, op. cit. p. 7. 2 Cf. Appendix IV., Clause 1. "The supreme power proceeds from the people." 3 Art. I, ments no longer sufficed in a new civilisation to make. that declaration a reality. For that declaration implies the imperative nature of a majority vote in the constituencies and in the representative assembly as an act of will. And it was the task of the nineteenth-century constitution makers progressively to supply machinery for the adequate expression of that will, by regulating election expenditure, corrupt practices, bribery, instituting ballot-box voting, and even by the mechanism of the Referendum and the Initiative denying the omnipotence of the representative principle.1 Yet, at most, all these devices merely prevent the sovereignty of the people in Government from going violently wrong; they do not foster inventiveness. It may be said that the needs of the people will be more clearly stated in the representative assembly if a measure of Proportional Representation is adopted. It may; but such a system throws the elector into the hands of the party machine which is concerned with the drawing up of " lists " 2 of candidates for the large constituencies involved. It renders easy the introduction of mediocrities into lists of candidates, where, the top man being popular and the policy attractive, a veil is drawn over the lack of personality and intelligence in the "tail" of each list. It But it is exactly the introduction of eminent personalities at which the Economic Council idea aims. rejects the average party politician, and seeks out those men whose claim to be heard in the counsels of government arises from their rich acquaintance with the powers and needs of their vocation. In the end, it is realised, the majority must rule, not because it is possessed of divine illumination, but because it may suffer from innovations by rulers out of touch in knowledge and 1 Cf. Wallas, Human Nature in Politics, Part II. chap. ii.; and Bryce, Modern Democracies, 2 vols., 1921, is of course a magistral monument to the political striving of the nineteenth century. 2 I am referring more particularly to the German system of proportional representation established by the law of April 5, 1920; see Proportional Representation, No. 37. sympathy with ordinary human nature, and it may revolt. But this only asserts that the legal imperative must, in the last resort, lie with the votes of the majority, whatever its wisdom; it does not assert that the highest wisdom is implied in majority government. And so that will can never be sufficiently instructed. Given the vocational structure of the modern State it is possible to add to the elements of creation in government by drawing upon the best representatives of these vocations. They are usually men and women who, unless selected by the informed electorate of their own organisation, would never stand as "factotum candidates" for a political Parliament. That very process of selection is valuable, because, besides the attribute of popularity, it ensures the possession of the quality of expertness in the representative. It ensures the possession of a judgement independent of the claims of the excited audiences and the Press which mark government based upon General Elections.1 It was with the feeling of long experience that Walter Rathenau declared 2 to the Constitutional Committee of the Economic Council that the most popular and pleasant person is seldom the strongest. This principle (of the most popular instead of the most able being elected)," he said, which we have learnt to know in its complete fearfulness in connection with the Reichstag, reflects upon the whole of our economic system and political system, where you must admit that the number of really able people is very small, where people are always asking: How can this intellectual country of sixty million people bring forward only so few able men? Therefore the more you emancipate yourselves from the principle of popularity and move towards the principle of ability, so much more fruitful and effective will the organ be that you create." An essential, therefore, of the Council idea is the 1 Cf. Dawson, The Principle of Official Independence, chap. i. establishment of effective centres of creative policymaking. And this not only in connection with the central authority, the Federal Parliament and Departments, but equally with the local authorities. The latter idea is not new to England. It is to be found in an incipient stage in the co-option of outside interested and expert parties on to the Committees of local government authorities.1 But the German idea of the District Economic Councils and their advisory activity bears the advantages of the keen and careful discussion the suggestion passed through, and the scheme itself offers a systematic introduction of vocational control in local government. Why is there all this insistence upon the establishment of new bodies upon a vocational basis to advise Government and Parliaments, whether central or local? The circumstances which forced this opinion upon men are clamant for attention. The State more and more advances its sphere of authority over man's life in society.2 It claims political authority, and certainly possesses political power. It can coerce. But if its political power is to be converted into fruitful political authority it can achieve this ascent by conversion only through a previous constructive examination of its purposes and methods; for though its servants may by the force of imagination create appropriately to the needs of its clients, the citizens, a greater amount of satisfaction results (it has so resulted in Germany) from previous consultation with those who are to suffer or enjoy the product provided. A new content has to be inserted into the Rousseauite doctrine of consent as the basis of government and political obedience. And that content took, in Germany, 1 E.g. on to Education Committees and Maternity and Child Welfare Committees. 2 Cf. declaration of Second Division Clerks to Royal Commission on Civil Service, 1914, Second Report, App. V., pp. 493 et seq., for an expression of this fact and its implication. "The Civil Service is becoming more and more the indispensable servant of the community, and it is the business of the community to ensure that all who serve it are appointed on the score of capacity and character alone, and that those who reach the highest posts in that service shall do so by virtue of ability and merit." 3 Cf. Laski, Authority in the Modern State, chap. i. |