Note 130 — Part III GROUP ORGANIZATION DEMOCRACY’S METHOD (continued 3)

Mr. Laski is an exception to many writers on “consent.” When he speaks of consent he is referring only to the actual facts of to-day. Denying the sovereignty postulated by the lawyers (he says you can never find in a community any one will which is certain of obedience), he shows that as a matter of fact the state sovereignty we have now rests on consent. I do not wish to confuse the issue between facts of the present and hopes for the future, but I wish to make a distinction between the “sovereignty” of the present end the sovereignty which I hope we can grow. This distinction is implicit in Mr. Laski’s book, but it is lacking in much of the writing on the “consent of the governed.”