It is easy to see, for example, how the hideous human suffering which accompanied the growth of the capitalist organization—and still exists!—caused the socialists to concentrate attention upon the subjects of ownership and profits, and long blinded them to the specific problems of organization, distribution, and control within the industries that might be affected by the program of socialization. This concentration upon the particular aspect of a problem, like the concentration upon a particular aspect of the solution, has the weakness of ignoring the total situation, and it too crudely simplifies the difficulties. In their haste to arrive at solutions and remedies—for the life of man is short and the needs of the moment are pressing—the partisans neglect to make a complete tally of the facts; and they are too ready to let “common knowledge” take the place of a thorough investigation of the data.
This weakness arises out of an almost instinctive tendency towards partisanship; and it is one of the reasons that partisanship continues. If nothing else prevents groups from getting together, their failure to agree about the facts, and their lack of a method for getting at the facts and focusing them, is responsible. If an examination of the facts did nothing else, it might show at least the impossibility of drawing any conclusion from them, and it might warn the partisan to step warily. Thus the testimony that was offered for and against Prohibition carne from fairly high authorities on both sides; and if there had been anything like right reason in the strategically stronger camp, it would have convinced those who were interested in the welfare of the community that nothing could be wisely done while the very basis for judgment—scientific knowledge as to the place of alcoholic stimuli in the life of the human organism—had not been established.
It is of course conceivable that men will quarrel and split when they are fully apprised of the facts: we may well remember the story of the British ambassador who confessed to his French colleague that the reason he did not get on very well with the Americans was that both countries unfortunately spoke the same language; but it is inconceivable that they should ever reach an intelligent agreement before they are in common possession of the facts. By ignoring the necessity for substantiating his claims and assertions the partisan frequently not merely fails to see his whole problem in all its implications, but also prevents anyone else from seeing it. Even when the partisan is not intentionally blind, he lacks the discipline which is essential to an open-eyed judgment of the case. What that discipline may be I shall attempt to discuss in the next chapter.
The second weakness of partisanship is that it breaks the community into vertical divisions, and promotes fictitious antagonisms and kinships which run against the horizontal affiliations and loyalties of a man’s life. This tendency was nicely illustrated in a play by Mr. St. John Ervine, called Mixed Marriage, which dealt with the love affair of a young girl and a young man who were separated by the religions that had been handed down by their parents. In Mr. Ervine’s wretched little Ulster community, these religions served as an excuse to keep people from being friendly and decent to their neighbors. Now it is obvious that mating, and making friends with those who have common interests and sentiments, and mixing freely within the whole community, are highly important horizontal interests; they tend to unite people in a common bond which is fundamental for the reason that these interests and activities are essentially human. The antagonism between two Christian sects, on the other hand, undermines the good life as a whole, because it insists that there is no other good than a religious good—a good embodied in a pope, or in the practice of scoffing at a pope—while it is obvious to anyone who has possession of his senses that kissing a pretty girl is good, and having a friendly pipe with one’s neighbor is good, and that institutions which prevent one from doing these things at appropriate times are perverted and antisocial. It is true that people who emphasize religious interests take “high ground,” as the saying is, and that those who value the friendly pipe seem by implication to take low ground: but what the partisans fail to see is that there is a good human case for low ground, and that, for the great majority of people it may prove to be not merely the only practicable ground, but in its own right a good and sufficient one.
Now for Catholic and Protestant in Mr. St. John Ervine’s play one may substitute Democrat and Republican, White Guard and Red Guard, Socialist and Financier, Prohibitionist and anti-Prohibitionist and the results will be just as deplorably the same. There are any number of interests in a well-wrought life which lie altogether beyond these categories, and it is the chief misdemeanor of partisanism, as
