Graduation Address

"The Modern Ceasars vs. Democracy" (19 May 1960). (UA Case 67, Box 2)

At occasions such as these, one cannot help thinking back to the remote time when one underwent oneself this same splendid ritual of benediction and dismissal – when the college to which one has devoted what seemed the most sensitive and questing of years suddenly felt that the end had come, that it had done all it possibly could, and that nothing remained except to offer prayers – and send one callously into the storm.

It all happened in my own case some 22 years ago. And, as I look back on the golden June of 1938 and then turn to the improbable world you confront today, I cannot escape, I am bound to say, the impression of certain resemblances and recurrences. Let me quickly add that I do not mean that 1960, like 1938, is a last moment of calm before a frightful world explosion; for, despite the events of the last few days, I do not believe that we are on the verge of another world war; I cannot think that the insanity of our time has proceeded quite that far.

I have in mind rather another resemblance, more subdued, less immediately lethal, but still, in the longer run, disquieting – It is rather that in 1960, as in 1938, democracy as a system of government seems under grave challenge, that even admirers are doubting the resources of the free state, that an increasing number of people are questioning the capacity of representative institutions to deal with the hard problems which lie ahead.

The challenge to democracy was more frank and brutal in 1938 than it is in 1960. Yet it may well be that its very starkness made it easier for my generation to identify and to meet. The dictators of the Hitler-Mussolini schools were manifestly evil men strutting in the arrogance of infallibility. Happily, they are no longer with us. Yet, in a way so amiable and easy that it has scarcely been perceived, there has been in recent years a renewed drift throughout the world away from representative government toward one form or another of one-man rule.

Such resort has taken place in the new nations of Asia and Africa, seeking to compress centuries of social experience into a single generation and to advance from the ox-cart to the steel-mill in a single leap. The passion for forced-draft modernization imposes on these nations an exceedingly difficult economic problem; that is, to produce as much as possible and consume as little as possible so there will be savings enough to maintain a high rate of capital investment. It imposes an equally difficult social problem; that is, to revolutionize ways of work and life hardened in centuries of custom without releasing anxieties or inciting ambitions which will destroy national cohesion. The need in these new nations, in short, is for social discipline which will see traditional societies through the ordeal and tumult of a transition into relatively modern industrial states.

What political system is best adapted to bring about the necessary combination of discipline and progress? In countries like Britain, Canada and the United States, with plenty of time and resources, with traditions of education and self-government, without major population problems, multiparty democracy was able to do the job. But few of the new nations of the mid-20th century are comparably blessed; they are desperately in a hurry, their resources are inadequate compared to their populations, their level of education is low, their civic traditions are feeble, and modernization threatens nearly all the traditional institutions which hold society together. It is hardly surprising that powerful personal leadership should seem the most effective means of charging semi-literate people with a sense of national and social purpose. The thrust toward modernization in such countries thus requires a condition of national discipline of the sort which often seems best stimulated and enforced by a commanding personality: one need only mention Egypt, Thailand, Pakistan, Burma, Iraq, the Sudan, Tunisia, Lebanon, Indonesia, Ghana, Guinea, Cuba. Even in a nation like India, which has made an extra-ordinary effort to establish and use representative institutions, one feels that democracy would not have had its relative success if it had not been for the personal authority of Nehru.

Nor is this phenomenon confined to the new nations, seeking a sense of national purpose and identity. It has also taken place in older nations where strong personal leadership has seemed the only way to suspend divisive conflicts and avert social disintegration. In Europe, for example, countries struggling with problems beyond their control, watching national energies dissipate in the merry-go-round of multiparty democracy, have also sought discipline and purpose in the stronger leader. DeGaulle’s return to power in France is only the most spectacular example of a mood which has found milder expression in Adenauer of Germany, in the confusion which has overtaken Italy since the death of De Gasperi and even – it is solemnly argued – in the benign father image of Eisenhower in the United States.

To some social philosophers these developments have ceased to seem coincidental. Some argue that democracy is an exceedingly delicate art, which can be worked only by Englishmen and Canadians – and possibly by a few Americans and Scandinavians. Others regard these developments as an expression of an irresistible historic tendency, which may soon overwhelm even the few skilled practitioners of Northern Europe and Northern America.

The Caesars of 1938 were self-evident wicked men. The Caesars of 1960 are plainly a more admirable breed. Many are austere military men, dedicated with apparent selflessness to their nation’s welfare: so General de Gaulle. One recalls that General Ayub of Pakistan recently won the improbable endorsement of Mr. Kingsley Martin of the New Statesman. Even the less admirable life Mr. Krushchev, exhibit certain disarming personal traits which set them apart from their demonic predecessors; who would ever have supposed, for example, that there would sit in the seats of Lenin and Stalin a man who, in certain moods, - not alas recently on display – can only be described as impish or jolly? Yet the superior amiability of the contemporary group hardly alters the problem they purpose to the advocates of democracy. The question again arises for you, as it did a quarter of a century ago for my generation, of the implications for democracy of this reliance on the heroic individual. How far is heroic leadership necessary and under what conditions? How far legitimate? Is it compatible with democracy? At what stage does it become a menace? How can one distinguish heroic leadership which supports democracy from that which threatens democracy? In what circumstances, in short, if any, can believers in democracy accept the heroic leader?

In considering such questions, we must first recognize that the heroic leader has always constituted an anomaly in democratic theory. Since democratic theory arose historically as a protest against these of the “divine right” of particular personalities, its early proponents naturally put their major emphasis on the sufficiency of the people (or a majority thereof) as against the need for heroic leadership. Most democratic theory derives from Locke; and in Locke’s account the people assert their rightful control over the state through a process essentially of spontaneous combustion. Locke’s analysis of the requirements of a revolutionary situation proposed no special role for leadership; it stands in marked contrast, for example, to the Lenin of WHAT IS TO BE DONE? The Lockian assumption was that the people were endowed with sufficient purpose and intelligence to produce out of themselves, so to speak, the initiatives necessary both for successful revolution and for effective government thereafter.

Conventional democratic theory has accepted the Lockian bias on this matter ever since. If one defines democracy as a system in which the majority under constitutional procedures freely chooses among competing persons for limited-term control of the state, then the inescapable drift of democratic theory is against investing too much significance in any particular competitor.

Other inherent factors have reinforced this tendency to minimize the role of leadership. Thus democratic theory has resisted emphasis on leadership for ideological reasons – because this emphasis has seemed to imply that some men should lead and others should follow, a proposition which clashes with the traditional democratic commitment to equality and to majoritarianism. It has resisted this emphasis on emotional grounds – because it irritates that populist strain in democracy which often includes an envy of superior persons.

Most important of all, it has resisted this emphasis on compelling practical ground – because it has seemed to encourage the erosion of democracy. Since Lockian theory assumed the incompetence of majorities, most post-Lockian attempts to rehabilitate the idea of leadership have begun precisely by asserting the incompetence of majorities. Most ideologists of leadership have begun precisely by asserting the incompetence of majorities. Most ideologists of leadership – Carlyle, for example – have been, in fact, polemicists against democracy; they have invoked the supposed ignorance, fecklessness and instability of the crown as a chief reason for according special place to leaders. Historically the idea of leadership has thus become associated with elitist philosophies; leadership theory has seemed a weapon to be employed by reactionaries or revolutionaries against Lockian democracy. And history seems fully to have corroborated this supposed association. The FUHRERPRINZIP, the cult of personality, the rituals of hero-worship, have too often led to the suppression of freedom, the establishment of authoritarianism and the destruction of democracy.

All these considerations, both inherent and historical, have thus produced the implicit assumption in conventional democratic theory that numerical majorities provide a substitute for heroic leadership, and that too much speculation about the need for leadership may be subversive of democracy.

It is evident that one confronts here a curious discrepancy between democratic theory and democratic practice, because in practice democracy as a form of government has accepted – indeed, has required and demanded – strong leaders. There are several reasons, I believe, why democracy has employed in practice what is has rejected in principle.

For one thing democracy involves a functional need for strong leadership. When one gives political power to the masses, one risks the hopeless diffusion of decision and purpose – unless leadership arises to offset the centrifugal tendencies when power is dispersed. From the start, democracies have been able to concert their energies and focus their aspirations, only as strong individuals embodied in and clarified by the tendencies of their people. I need only mention the names in which one can read to an astonishing degree the public history of my own country: - Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt.

More than this, it can be contended, I deeply believe, that democracy involves a moral need for strong leadership. The Lockian bias in favor of the people as against the leaders implies a certain denigration of the role of the individual in history. Subsequent defenders of democracy reduced the role to the point where the individual no longer mattered and where impersonal forces, working through the masses, took control of human events. In Tolstoy, for example, the heroic leader became no more than “the slave of history.”

Yet this line of argument ends up in an historical determinism which deprives history of its moral dimension by relieving the individual of accountability for its acts. No historical philosophy, in its ultimate implications, could more profoundly contradict the democratic faith in the freedom, dignity and responsibility of man. By assuring us that individual choice can make no difference, fatalism, said Sir Isaiah Berlin, is “one of the great alibis” of history. One must therefore make the case against fatalism; but to do so, to restore the moral dimension to history, one must contend for the potency of human choice; individual decisions have to make a difference to history after all. This does not mean the decisions of all individuals; but it does mean those of some; and those individuals who do make a difference become the emblem and proof of man’s freedom. This is surely the role of the heroic leader – to affirm human freedom against the supposed inevitabilities of history. As he does this, he combats the infection of fatalism which might otherwise paralyze mass democracy. A purposeful and vital democracy must rest on a belief in the potency of choice – on the conviction that individual decisions do affect the course of events.

Both functional and moral necessities therefore argue for the inclusion of leadership in an adequate theory of democracy. This was perceived at an early point both in Britain and the United States. So in the 70th Federalist Paper Hamilton made his classic argument that "energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government." And though Hamilton and Jefferson wrote John Adams in 1813, "There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds for this are virtue and talents. The natural aristocracy I consider to be the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and the government of society." Jefferson added: "May we not even say, that form of government is best, which provides the most effectually for pure selection of the natural 'aristoi' into the offices of government?"

The United States and Britain, being empirical nations, were thus prepared to modify conventional democratic ideology. On the other hand, being empirical nations, they were not concerned with incorporating their deviations in a new grand synthesis of democratic theory. And on the continent of Europe, where people cared deeply about ideology, and the conventional democratic view lingered in its purity, democrats continued to mistrust strong leadership and to feel that dominant personalities imperiled free institutions. So, in spite of the insights of Hamilton and Jefferson, democratic theory stands to this day baffled and irresolute before the phenomenon of heroic leadership, - and this bafflement becomes all the more ominous when one notes the contemporary tendency to resort to such leadership in west as well as in east.

This is the problem we must face today. Does the resort to heroic leadership signify the existence of irresistible social tendencies with which democracy cannot cope and which will surely destroy it? Or is it possible to reconcile the existing situation to some degree, at least, with democratic theory, and propose criteria by which heroic leadership which helps democracy can be distinguished from that which hurts it?

The role of the speaker on such occasions, I believe, is to propound problems in the confidence that those to whom he is speaking will solve them. Since I do not wish to deny you these pleasures, during your idle moments in the years ahead, I will not seek in the next few minutes to resolve questions which have troubled political philosophers for several centuries. But I would suggest that dogmatic rejection of leadership provides no answers. It is evident that there are occasions when a measure of authoritarianism is necessary to preserve or establish democracy – war, for example, or revolution or depression. "It is obvious," said Rousseau, "that the People’s first concern must be to see that the State shall not perish." But the burden of proof always rests in those who would concentrate authority; and the test lies in both their acts an in their philosophy.

If the avowed philosophy of a leader, for example, is authoritarian, if the regime takes every opportunity to decry democracy and free institution, then there seems little hope that its ultimate impact may be democratic. Of course pro-democratic slogans are no guarantee of pro-democratic actions. Yet an ideology which identifies itself, however nominally, with values of individual freedom and dignity may plant seeds which could ultimately ripen into popular demands that the regime honor its professions.

Moreover, a leader often embodies democratic or totalitarian values in his personal style. The essence of the totalitarian leader is the demand for absolute obedience. He regards the members of his society as means to an end, and the end his own aggrandizement and glorification. The democratic leader, on the other hand, must regard the members of his society as ends in themselves. Their compliance with his proposals should come not through fear not through faith, but through free and rational choice. "The question is," as Jacques Maritian has put it, "are the people to be awakened or to be used?" The emergence of a cult of personality, for example, is an obvious danger sign. The first rule of democracy is to distrust all leaders who being to believe their own publicity.

The acts of a regime are almost as important a test as its ideology. "When societies first come to birth," says Montesquieu, "it is the leaders who produce the institutions of the republic. Later, it is the institutions which produce the leaders." A regime genuinely desirous of moving in a democratic direction will concentrate on developing appropriate institutions. It will increase both the quantity and quality of education. It will work for an equitable distribution of income and rising mass living standards. It will demand the emancipation of women and children. It will encourage a few and honest press. It will eliminate graft and corruption. It will draw men of talent and vigor from every class of the population into the governing process. It will work to establish the mechanisms of political opposition.

Nothing is foolproof: the future remains indeterminate. Heroic leadership can lead toward democracy or away from it – depending on what the leader does with his power and what his people permit or encourage him to do. But an adequate democratic theory will recognize that democracy is not self-executing; that the acceptance of the need for leadership implies no criticism of self government but is rather the indispensable means by which self government becomes possible; and that Caesarism has been more often produced by the ineffectuality of weak governments than by the success of strong ones. Plato rightly saw tyranny as the consequence, not the responsible authority, but of anarchy. Raymond Aron has said of modern France, "The republic was so afraid of great men that it was forced, from time to time, to have recourse to saviors." As democracy itself develops a realistic conception of the indispensable role of leadership as witness to man’s freedom – it will be in a better position to judge the pretensions of heroic leaders – and it will probably experience far less need for them.

I would say to you then that we are not necessarily confronted by an age of Caesars unless we ourselves would have it so. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." No matter how complex life may become, how towering the problems, how frail the talents of men, the need for human intelligence and purpose will remain. The best insurance against Caesarism is the ability of democracy to manifest strength and decision – to choose and respond to intelligent leadership. As Walt Whitman said long ago:

"There is no week nor day nor hour when tyranny may not enter upon this country, if the people lose their supreme confidence in themselves – and lost their roughness and spirit of defiance – Tyranny may always enter – there is no charm, no bar against it – the only bar against it is a large resolute breed of men."