The New State

one giving up his sovereignty? Never. By someone from outside presenting it with authority? No, although that is the basis of much of our older legal theory. Real authority inheres in a genuine whole. The individual is sovereign over himself as far as he unifies the heterogeneous elements of his nature. Two people are sovereign over themselves as far as they are capable of creating one out of two. A group is sovereign over itself as far as it is capable of creating one out of several or many. A state is sovereign only as it has the power of creating one in which all are. Sovereignty is the power engendered by a complete interdependence becoming conscious of itself. Sovereignty is the imperative of a true collective will. It is not something academic, it is produced by actual living with others⁠—we learn it only through group life. By the subtle process of interpenetration a collective sovereignty is evolved from a distributed sovereignty. Just so can and must, by the law of their being, groups unite to form larger groups, these larger groups to form a world-group.

I have said that many of the pluralists are opposed to the monistic state because they do not see that a collective and distributive sovereignty can exist together. They talk of the Many and the One without analyzing the process by which the Many and the One are creating each other. We now see that the problem of the compounding of consciousness, of the One and the Many, need not be left either to an intellectualistic or to an intuitive metaphysics. It is to be solved through a laboratory study of group psychology. When we have that, we shall not have to argue any more about the One and the Many: we shall actually see the Many and the One emerging at the same time; we can then work out the laws of the relation of the One (the state) to the Many (the individual), and of the Many (the individual) to the One (the state), not as a metaphysical question but on a scientific basis. And the process of the Many becoming One is the process by which sovereignty is created. Our conceptions of sovereignty can no longer rest on mere abstractions, theory, speculative thought. How absurdly inadequate such processes are to explain the living, interweaving web of humanity. The question of sovereignty concerns the organization of men (which obviously must be fitted to their nature), hence it finds its answer through the psychological analysis of man.

The seeking of the organs of society which are the immediate source of legal sanctions, the seeking of the ultimate source of political control⁠—these are the quests of jurists and political philosophers. To their search must be added a study of the process by which a genuine sovereignty is created. The political pluralists are reacting against the sovereignty which our legal theory postulates, for they see that there is no such thing actually, but if sovereignty is at present a legal fiction, the matter need not rest there⁠—we must seek to find how a genuine social and political control can be produced. The understanding of self-government, of democracy, is bound up with the conception of sovereignty as a psychological process.

The idea of sovereignty held by guild socialists105 is based largely on the so-called “objective” theory of le droit expounded by M. Léon Duguit of Bordeaux. This theory is accepted as the “juridical basis” of a new state, what some call the functionarist state.106 Man, Duguit tells us, has no rights as man, but only as a member of the social order. His rights are based on the fact of social interdependence⁠—on his relations and consequent obligations. In fact he has no rights, but duties and powers. All power and all obligation is found in “social solidarity,” in a constantly evolving social solidarity.107

The elaboration of this theory is Duguit’s large contribution to political thought. His droit is a dynamic law⁠—it can never be captured and fixed. The essential weakness of his doctrine is that he denies the possibility of a collective will, which means that he ignores the psychology of the social process. He and his followers reject the notion of a collective will as “concept de l’esprit dénué de toute réalité positive.” If this is their idea of a collective will, they are right to reject it. I ask for its acceptance only so far as it can be proved to have positive reality. There is only one way in the world by which you can ever know whether there is a collective will, and that is by actually trying to make one; you need not discuss a collective will as a theory. If experiment proves to us that we cannot have a collective will, we must accept the verdict. Duguit thinks that when we talk of the sovereignty of the people we mean an abstract sovereignty; the new psychology means by the sovereignty of the people that which they actually create. It is true that we have none at present. Duguit is perfectly right in opposing the old theory of the “sovereign state.”

But Duguit says that if there were a collective will there is no reason why it should impose itself on the individual wills. “L’affirmation que la collectivité a le pouvoir légitime de commander force qu’elle est la collectivité, est une affirmation d’ordre métaphysique ou religieux.⁠ ⁠…” This in itself shows a misunderstanding of the evolution of a collective will. This school does not seem to understand that everyone must contribute to the collective will; ideally it would have no power unless this happened, actually we can only be constantly approaching this ideal.108 Duguit makes a thing-in-itself of la volonté nationale⁠—it is a most insidious fallacy which we all fall into again and again. But we can never accept that kind of a collective