Note 125 — Chapter V · THE ARGUMENT AS AN ATTACK ON THE STATE

I have in mind, of course, the writings of Cole, Laski, Figgis, and Webb. In A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain, Mr Webb writes:—

‘Whilst metaphysical philosophers had been debating what was the nature of the State—by which they always meant the sovereign Political State—the sovereignty, and even the moral authority of the State itself, in the sense of the political government, were being silently and almost unwittingly undermined by the growth of new forms of Democracy.’ (p. xv.)

In Social Theory, Mr Cole, speaking of the necessary co-ordination of the new forms of association, writes:—

‘To entrust the State with the function of co-ordination would be to entrust it in many cases with the task of arbitrating between itself and some other functional association, say a church or a trade union.’ There must be a co-ordinating body, but it ‘must be not any single association, but a combination of associations, a federal body in which some or all of the various functional associations are linked together.’ (pp. 101 and 134.) A reviewer summarises Mr Cole as saying: ‘I do not want any single supreme authority. It is the sovereignty of the State that I object to, as fatal to liberty. For single sovereignty I substitute a federal union of functions, and I see the guarantee of personal freedom in the severalty which prevents any one of them from undue encroachments.’