Ethics Is Personal; W. H. Chamberlin

ETHICS IS PERSONAL THERE has been a strong trend among some religious groups in the modern age to invoke religious sanctions for advocating secular decisions of policy and theories of social change, usually in the direction of socialism and collectivism. This trend, it may be noted, is in complete disregard of the spirit of all the great religions and ethi cal teachings. Common ground in the teachings of the Old and New Testament, of the Koran, of the Buddhist sacred writings, of moralists such as Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca, is that the relation of man to God and man's own ethical responsibilities is personal and un connected with the political, social, and economic insti tutions of any given time. Ethics is deeply and uncondi tionally an individual concern. A striking example of an attempt to give a religious coloration to a secular decision in the field of foreign policy was the recent action of the members of a World Order Study Conference, sponsored by the National Council of Churches of Christ, in passing a resolution calling for United States diplomatic recognition of the communist regime in control of mainland China and its admission to the United Nations. This proposal was 357 358 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN prefaced by the sentence: "With reference to China, Christians should urge reconsideration by our Govern ment of its policy in regard to the People's Republic of China."

The clear suggestion here is that there is something un..Christian in the United States policy of refusing to open diplomatic relations with a bloody atheistic des potism which has never submitted its power to the ver dict of a free election, which has subjected many Protes tant and Catholic missionaries to cruel tortures, which is still technically in a state of war with the United Nations, which is responsible for the death of many thousands of Americans in Korea and the savage maltreatment of thousands more who were unfortunate enough to be captured. It is not surprising that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, as good a churchman as any of the signatories of this resolution, was not impressed. What makes this epi sode still more puzzling is that the vote in favor of this resolution, which also included much more criticism of American than of communist policies, was adopted unanimously. Yet the Congress of the United States, a reasonably representative cross section of the American people, has twice put itself on record by virtually unani mous votes against the recognition of Red China or its admission to the United Nations.

The tie-up between purportedly religious agencies and advocates of radical social and economic change is also a familiar spectacle. A man who for many years was the leading spirit in a church "federation for social action"

ETHICS IS PERSONAL 359 was a vehement, polemical apologist for the political and economic institutions of the Soviet Union. This and other groups which uphold what they call "the social Gospel" proceed on the assumption that man agement is always wrong and trade unions are always right in labor disputes, that there is something inherently wrong and immoral in the capitalist-or individualist economic system, that the realization of socialist aims is an obligation of the professing Christian. But it is interesting to note that no great religious or moral teacher has set as his primary aim the changing of economic and social conditions according to a doctrinaire set pattern. The first aim of such teachers has always been the changing of men's hearts, minds, and souls. There can be no good society without good men. The cure for social evils is to train individuals to follow the path of righteousness.

Again and again enthusiastic leaders of revolutions have promised their followers a new heaven and a new earth as a result of substituting new institutions for old. Again and again these great expectations have been dis appointed. Jean Jacques Rousseau and some of the less remem bered French intellectuals of the nineteenth century, whose thinking preceded the French Revolution and in fluenced its course, were convinced that man is nothing but a product of the laws of the State and that there was nothing a government could not accomplish in the form ing of man; vice in society is not the result of corruption in human nature, but of defective laws.

360 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Side by side with this mechanical conception of man being made happy by the instruction of all-wise precep tors and the legislation of omniscient legislators went Rousseau's mystical notion of something he called "the general will," which must take precedence over all selfish individual wills and interests. This was an idea· made to order for a band of dedicated fanatics like the Jacobins, who dominated the extreme phase of the French Revolu tion. Identifying the "general will" with their own, Robespierre and his associates condemned all. dissent as counterrevolutionary and experienced no qualms of con science about sending to the guillotine all who disagreed with them as counterrevolutionaries who· were trying to lead the people astray. The Despotism of the Mob Anticipating and perhaps inspiring Lenin with his theory of the Hdictatorship of the proletariat" (which meant in practice the dictatorship of the Communist Party) Robespierre declared: "The Government of the Revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny:' This conception of a virtuous revolutionary elite mi nority bringing liberty and happiness to the people ran its bloody course and ended when Robespierre himself was overthrown and executed in July 1794.

But a very similar idea returned in a somewhat differ ent economic setting. when Lenin and his band of fanati cal, disciplined communists swept into power in Russia amid the chaos and disintegration that overwhelmed ETHICS IS PERSONAL 361 Russia in 1917. The communists, more lucky or more skillful than their French Jacobin predecessors, main tained continuity of power, although Stalin's purges dur ing the thirties were even more lethal than what hap pened to the more extreme Jacobins after Robespierre was guilIotined. Communism added to the old idea of a revolutionary elite governing the people for their own good until the millennium, when the State is supposed to "wither away," the newer idea that private ownership of wealth is the root of all evil. Nationalize factories, mines, railways, stores, abolish private profit-so ran the theme song of Lenin, Trotsky, and their associates-and the sins and frailities of human nature will automatically disappear.

But this promise has proved a mirage, like the prom ises of the Jacobin agitators of the French Revolution. In order to make the wheels of their economic machine turn, the communist rulers of the Soviet Union were compelled to throw out of the window the early slogans of material equality with which they had appealed to the envy and class hatred of the politically illiterate Russian masses. Differentiation by status, differentiation by the pocketbook are the rule, not the exception, in Russia today. As for the claim that a socialist or communist system would eliminate certain traits of fallible human nature, this has proved complete humbug. The Soviet news papers, the speeches of Soviet leaders, are full of denunci ations of hoodlum ism, drunkenness, juvenile delin quency. Corruption scandals are at least as common in 362 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN Moscow as mink (or vicuna) coats have been in Wash ington. To refer to these things as "remnants of the capi talist past" is rather ridiculous, as everyone under fifty in the Soviet Union today has spent his formative years under Soviet rule. Indeed, characteristics of oppression that had been moderated by the growth of a liberal pub lic opinion before the Revolution have heen repeated, often in aggravated form, under the communist dictator ship.

One is reminded of the words, bitter yet true, with which Joseph Conrad ended a preface to his novel, Under Western Eyes, referring to the Russian Bolshevik Revolu tion: "The ferocity and imbecility of an autocratic rule rejecting all legality and in fact basing itself upon com plete moral anarchism provokes the no less imbecile and atrocious answer of a purely utopian revolutionism en compassing destruction by the first means to hand, in the strange conviction that a fundamental change of hearts must follow the downfall of any given human institutions. These people are unCllble to see that all they can effect is merely a change of names. The oppressors and the op pressed are all Russians together; and the world is brought once more face to face with the truth of the saying that the tiger cannot change his stripes or the leopard his spots." (Italics supplied) Changes in the West This same truth, that a fundamental change of hearts does not follow even a profound modification of instituETHICS IS PERSONAL 363 tions, is evident, in a milder way, in the United States and Great Britain. Fifty years ago in these countries, and throughout the Western world, the government laid what would now seem negligibly light taxes on the individual -and expected the individual to look out for his own well-being.

Now Great Britain, partly as the result of a crushing burden of direct and indirect taxation, provides cradle to-the-grave security, i.e., subsistence livelihood to all. The United States has not gone quite so far in this direc tion as Great Britain; but the trend in the same direction is unmistakable. And the results should be disillusioning to those who have believed that poverty is the main cause of crime and that a notable improvement in public behavior would follow the enactment of legislation calculated to elimi nate or alleviate poverty. The American material stand ard of living has never been higher than in the postwar years. Unemployment has been sparse and very liberally cushioned. Little or no crime can be attributed to such a cause as a man stealing a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk to feed a starving family. Yet the figures of crime have soared with prosperity. Juvenile delinquency or criminality has reached heights never remotely approached in the· past in spite of, or per haps because of, the fact that young criminals have never received so much sympathetic attention from social work ers, psychiatrists, and assorted do-gooders.

81um housing is often regarded as a cause of crime. Yet it often happens that modern housing projects to which 364 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN slum dwellers have been moved turn into dens of vice, filth, criminality, and juvenile delinquency. This suggests that perhaps people make slums, at least as much as slums make people. There has been a similar experience in England, where the old law-abiding tradition has seriously declined, al though the Welfare State has certainly removed the old excuse that poverty is the cause of crime. British "Teddy boys" have been as obnoxious as the gangs of young hood Iums who make life and property unsafe in large areas of American cities. Some British students of this prob lem believe that part, at least, of the explanation. is that adolescents, earning comparatively high wages, have more money than they are able to spend wisely. The Individual Is the Key All these experiences after violent and gradual revolu tions indicate that the true hope of improving the worth and dignity and moral and cultural level of the human being lies in changing men, not in changing external conditions. That sonorous old moral code, the Ten Com mandments, is put in terms of what "thou" shalt or shalt not do. There is not a word in it to suggest that the in dividual can shuffle off his moral responsibilities onto some vague entity called society.

And this is characteristic of the spirit of both the Old and New Testaments. The Psalms and the Hebrew Prophets always lay stress on individual right thinking and right doing, irrespective of what may be the political ETHICS IS PERSONAL 365 and economic conditions in which the individual finds himself. Says Micah: "What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And there is this same concern with individual righteousness in other verses of the Old Testament: "The way of transgressors is hard." "Righteousness exalteth a nation." "He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." This is equally true in regard to the New Testament. Many Jews were discontented with the "colonial" status of their country under the rule of Rome. But Jesus sounded a call not to armed revolt but to personal right living and preparation for life everlasting. "Render there fore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's" was his reply to those who tried to tempt or provoke him into what would now be called a "nationalist" demonstration.

There is the same emphasis in the teachings of the great Apostle of Christianity, Saint Paul: "1 have learned, in whatsoever state I am, to be content." "Let us not be weary in well-doing." "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." It is not that Jesus and Paul were ignorant of or in different to abuses of tyranny and slavery; but it was their conviction that the best and surest way to eliminate these abuses was by changing the sinful heart of the individual man. This is also the teaching of other religions that have 366 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN won many millions of followers. Buddhism, with its cen tral creed that the highest happiness lies in overcoming passion and desire, is a completely individual-centered faith, with its Four Truths and its Eightfold Path: right ness in views, intentions, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration. Mohammedanism also places the burden of responsi bilityon the individual believer. There is a like spirit in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the great Stoic philosopher who became Emperor of the Roman world, one of the very few men whom absolute power did not corrupt in the least. His ethical, message is em phatically and exclusively personal: "Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last."

"A man should be upright; not be kept upright." "Blot out vain pomp; check impulse; quench appetite; keep reason under its own control." Bit by hit, one may be confident, the wisdom ofthe great religious leaders and sages will prevail, and the truths will gain recognition that without basically good men no tinkering with institutions will be of much avail and that the only significant revolution would be one in the spirit of men.