Harold Laski on Resistance

That last phrase carries the argument. A grievance which is not pressed is not met. Laski's citizen is therefore not merely permitted to criticise but required to, because a silent population's needs will simply not be recognised. This is the same observation Module I made about the second face of power, put as a civic duty.

He adds a sentence worth remembering: the State is not ourselves save where we identify ourselves with what it does. It becomes ourselves as it seeks to give expression to our wants and desires.

The duty of resistance

Laski states the conclusion and then immediately limits it, and an answer must give both halves.

The conclusion. Analysis of the state may ethically compel a person to seek its overthrow. If he holds that its power is being exercised not for the ends implied in its nature but for ends incompatible with them, then the civic outcome of such perception is the duty of resistance. His reason is the one already given: I am a member of the state in order that, in common with my fellows, I may be myself at my best.

The first limit. He says he ought not to resist if he is convinced that the state is seeking, as best it may, to play its part, and adds that for most people that conviction will be the result of whatever inquiry they undertake. Resistance is for the case where the state is not trying, not for the case where it is trying and failing.

The second limit. He ought not to resist unless he has reasonable ground for the belief that the changes he advocates are likely to result in the end he has in view. Resistance that cannot succeed is not justified merely by the grievance.

The third limit. Elsewhere Laski puts the same point structurally: if the state is to be a moral entity it must be built upon the organised acquiescence of its members, and that demands their scrutiny of government orders, which in turn implies a right to disobedience. But, he says, such a right is reasonably exercised only at the margins of political conduct, because no community could fulfil its purpose if rebellion became a settled habit of the population.

And the corresponding limit on the state. In the same passage he insists that equally, no community could fulfil its purpose unless the will of its government were limited in a variety of ways: it must answer at stated periods to those from whom it derives its powers, and it must be powerless to touch certain fundamentals, of which freedom of speech is the supreme example, without which the benefits of social life will not be had.

Read those two together and Laski's system appears. A right to disobey at the margins, balanced by institutional limits on government, of which periodic elections and free speech are the two he names. A student who gives both halves has given Laski accurately.

The pluralist background

Laski's earlier work is pluralist, and one passage in the Grammar shows the idea at work on authority generally. Quoting Father Tyrrell, he writes that it is not their red robes but one's own judgment about them that gives a body of cardinals any title to distinction; the phrase he draws from it is that the authority of any group rests on the living and spontaneous trust it can command, and that if it betrays or stultifies itself it ceases to win the loyalty that is its life.

That is Laski's general theory of authority in one line, and it applies to the state exactly as it applies to a church: authority is not a possession but a standing achievement.

What Laski notices about ordinary citizens

He is not sentimental about the citizen he is empowering. He observes that people are conscious of their neighbours and rarely grasp that their neighbours are in truth the whole world; that they set their wills by the wills of institutions they rarely explore; that they obey the orders of government from inertia; and that even their resistance is too often a blind resentment rather than a reasoned desire to secure an alternative. The characteristic of social life, he says, is the unthinking obedience of the many to the will of the few.

This matters for an answer, because it shows Laski's duty to scrutinise is a demand made against the ordinary tendency, not a description of it. He knows most people do not do it. That is why he calls it a duty.

A worked example

A government facing an economic crisis suspends the publication of official statistics, postpones local elections for two years, and prohibits public discussion of the crisis in broadcast media.

Apply the first test. Is the state seeking, as best it may, to play its part? A government may make bad economic decisions while genuinely trying, and Laski says one ought not to resist in that case. But suspending statistics, postponing elections and prohibiting discussion are not economic decisions at all; they are measures directed at the citizens' capacity to judge.

So the condition is engaged. Power is being exercised for an end incompatible with the state's nature, because the state's purpose is that members may be themselves at their best, and that requires knowing what is happening and being able to say so.

And notice which limits are hit. Laski names two fundamentals: answering at stated periods to those from whom power derives, and freedom of speech. Both have been touched.

Apply the second test. Is there reasonable ground to believe that resistance will produce the change sought? If organised public pressure has previously forced this government to reverse decisions, yes. If the state is in a position to ignore any protest indefinitely, Laski's own condition is not met, and his answer is uncomfortable but honest: the grievance is real and resistance is not thereby justified.

Apply the third. Resistance belongs at the margins. Refusing to comply with the prohibition on discussion, publicly and with the consequences accepted, is at the margin. An attempt to bring down the state is not.

Distinctions that carry marks

What Laski is NOT

He is not an anarchist. He requires organised acquiescence and says explicitly that no community could fulfil its purpose if rebellion became a settled habit.

He is not saying you may disobey whenever you disagree. The state must be failing to try, and the resistance must be likely to work.

"We are the judges" is not a claim about courts. He means the citizens subject to the decision.

He is not describing how people behave. He records that people obey from inertia and resist from blind resentment. His duty of scrutiny is set against that, not derived from it.

Quick revision

1. "Our obligation to obey the State is, law apart, an obligation dependent upon the degree to which the State achieves its purpose. We are the judges of that achievement."
2. Power is always a trust, held upon conditions, and those within the ambit of its decisions have not only the right but the duty to pass judgment on the quality of its effort, because wants secure recognition only so far as they are forcibly articulate.
3. The State is not ourselves save where we identify ourselves with what it does.
4. The duty of resistance arises where power is exercised for ends incompatible with the state's nature.
5. Three limits: do not resist a state that is genuinely trying; do not resist without reasonable ground to believe the change will follow; exercise the right only at the margins of political conduct.
6. The matching limits on government: it must answer at stated periods to those from whom it derives its powers, and must be powerless to touch fundamentals, of which freedom of speech is the supreme example.
7. Authority rests on living and spontaneous trust, and a body that betrays itself ceases to win the loyalty that is its life.

Test yourself

1. On what does Laski say political obligation depends? On performance. He holds that our obligation to obey the state is, law apart, dependent on the degree to which the state achieves its purpose, that purpose being that each member, in common with their fellows, may be themselves at their best. We obey not because the state's theoretical purpose is a splendid one but because we are convinced it is genuinely pursuing it, and, in his own words, we are the judges of that achievement.

2. Why does Laski describe scrutiny of government as a duty rather than a right? Because power is always a trust held upon conditions and the will of the state is subject to the scrutiny of all whose lives it moulds, which gives them a right to judge the quality of its effort. He then says they have the duty so to judge, and gives the reason from history: the wants of men secure recognition only to the extent that they are forcibly articulate. A grievance never pressed is never met, so silence is not neutral, and a citizen who does not scrutinise fails not only themselves but everybody whose needs go unrecognised.

3. When does Laski say a duty of resistance arises, and what limits does he place on it? It arises where a person holds that the state's power is being exercised not for the ends implied in its nature but for ends incompatible with them. He limits it three ways. One ought not to resist a state that is seeking, as best it may, to play its part. One ought not to resist without reasonable ground for believing the changes advocated will produce the end sought. And the right of disobedience is reasonably exercised only at the margins of political conduct, since no community could fulfil its purpose if rebellion became a settled habit of the population.

4. What limits does Laski place on government, and why do they belong with the duty of resistance? That it must answer at stated periods to those from whom it derives its powers, and that it must be powerless to touch certain fundamentals, of which he names freedom of speech as the supreme example, without which the benefits of social life will not in practice be had. They belong with the duty of resistance because they are what make the duty ordinarily unnecessary: a government that must face the electorate and cannot silence criticism can be corrected without anybody disobeying anything.

5. What does Laski observe about ordinary citizens, and why does it matter? That they are conscious of their neighbours and rarely grasp that their neighbours are in truth the whole world; that they set their wills by the wills of institutions they rarely examine; that they obey government orders from inertia; and that their resistance is too often blind resentment rather than a reasoned desire for an alternative, the characteristic of social life being the unthinking obedience of the many to the will of the few. It matters because it shows his duty of scrutiny is a demand made against the ordinary tendency rather than a description of it, which is precisely why he states it as a duty.