Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/99

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY 85

of their obedience, not only to the state minimum, but also to an even higher standard of right.

Similar principles are true of the church. State coercion does not elevate the people religiously, it only prevents private persons from degrading them. The established or coercive church, having power over all the people, derived not from per- suasion, but from coercion, has an advantage over other bodies without being compelled to rise to their moral-persuasive level. When the people have risen to a religious level above that which the coercive church is exhibiting, then, in their own protection, acting through the state, they take this extraneous power from the church and compel it to compete with the others on the same basis of persuasion. It is religion that elevates the people, not the state ; the latter only sets the minimum below which religion shall not be prostituted to private ends.

In the case of political parties coercion is necessary, not to lift people, but to lift the party organization up toward the moral level which the ruling majority of the people had attained. Otherwise those in control of the organization, directing it to their private ends, render it unrepresentative of the moral tone of the people, and the impression is conveyed that the people themselves are corrupt, whereas only the machinery of organi- zation fails of adjustment to the people's moral character.

Again, the state is not as competent to evoke industry as private persons. State coercion here is necessary, not to increase the productive power and inventiveness of the people, for the state is not a pioneer, except where it represents a higher civili- zation (India), or where it is a despotism, in both of which cases it is rather a private proprietor and acts under the motives of private enterprise. But the state proper, with its partnership and mutual veto of social classes in determining the sovereign will, cannot, from its very nature, evoke the highest industry and inventiveness, that is, the highest stimulation of the indus- trial susceptibility, love of work. The state only sets a minimum below which individual employers and employes shall not exer- cise coercion for private ends, and does this after the dominant elements of the people have reached so high an ethical level of