The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of its Traditional Defense

“Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.”

“The preservation of a democratic civilization requires the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove.”

“Since the survival impulse in nature is transmuted into two different and contradictory spiritualized forms, which we may briefly designate as the will-to-live-truly and the will-to-power, man is at variance with himself. The power of the second impulse places him more fundamentally in conflict with his fellowman than democratic liberalism realizes.”

“The consistent optimism of our liberal culture has prevented modern democratic societies both from gauging the perils of freedom accurately and from appreciating democracy fully as the only alternative to injustice and oppression. When this optimism is not qualified to accord with the real and complex facts of human nature and history, there is always a danger that sentimentality will give way to despair and that a too consistent optimism will alternate with a too consistent pessimism.”

“This negative form of national egotism, most simply defined as isolationism, will remain a temptation for the great powers for some time to come, however incompatible it may be with the ultimate necessities of the world community. It has at least one element in common with the more dynamic and demonic form of imperialism which mankind has overcome at great cost. It also represents a compound of universalistic and egoistic elements in history; for the great nations which have achieved the strength to indulge in the illusory hope of security by their own power, have their strength by reason of a process of centralization of power in a technical society. Technical processes have accentuated the principle that “to him who hath, shall be given.” It operates in international relations, no less than in the economic life of nations.”

“Social justice is an application of the law of love to the sociopolitical sphere, and love is the motivating energy of the struggle for justice. The meaning of justice cannot be taken directly from the principles. It is determined only in the interaction of love and situation, through the mediation of the principles of equality, freedom, and order.10”

“Love is not merely the content of an impossible ethical ideal. It is the motive force of the struggle for justice.”

“We must seek to maintain a critical attitude toward our own power impulses; and our self-criticism must be informed by the humble realization of the fact that the possession of great power is a temptation to injustice for any nation. Relative innocency or inexperience in wielding power is no guarantee of virtue. It is on the contrary a hazard to the attainment of virtue. The possession of power on the other hand creates responsibilities which must not be evaded, even though it is known that they cannot be fulfilled without some egoistic corruption.”

“the fact that order precedes justice in the strategy of government; but that only an order which implicates justice can achieve a stable peace. An unjust order quickly invites the resentment and rebellion which lead to its undoing.”

“Every absolute devotion to relative political ends (and all political ends are relative) is a threat to communal peace.”

“If political democracy did not lead to significant gains in worker, community, and social ownership, the capitalist class would end up owning the political system, thus subverting democracy.”

“Liberal democracy is worth defending, not because it fulfills a moral ideal or because modern civilized types deserve nothing less, but because it is the best way to restrain human egotism and will-to-power.”

“Democracy may thus be destroyed by a confusion of class forces as well as by a civil war in which the extreme classes are pitted against each other and draw the mediating classes into their orbits. The ideal possibility is that the debate between classes should issue, not in an impasse which makes progressive justice impossible, but that it should gradually shift the political institutions of the community to conform to changing economic needs and unchanging demands for a higher justice.”

“The unequal power of one contestant is the product of the tendency toward centralization of power in the processes of a technical civilization. The power is a social and historical accretion; and the community must decide whether it is in the interest of justice to reduce monopolistic control artificially for the sake of reestablishing the old pattern of “fair competition,” or whether it is wiser to allow the process pf centralization of economic power to continue until the monopolistic centers have destroyed all competition. But, if the second alternative is chosen, the community faces the new problem of bringing the centralized economic power under communal control.”

“economic power becomes great enough, it seeks to transmute itself into political power. Whenever a power, which is generated in specific functions, becomes strong enough to make the step possible or plausible, it seeks to participate in organizing the community.”

“a lower middle class of small tradesmen and clerks, which is much larger and much more stubborn in maintaining itself than Marxism thought possible. It is on the whole a politically incompetent class; yet fascist demagogues have been able to weld the fears and resentments of this class into a positive and demonic political force.”

“Smith's conception the “wider interest” does not stop at the boundary of the national state. His was a real universalism in intent. Laissez faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation. Smith clearly belongs to the children of light. But the children of darkness were able to make good use of his creed. A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the “ideology” of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power.”

“The “children of light” may thus be defined as those who seek to bring self-interest under the discipline of a more universal law and in harmony with a more universal good.”