People and Ideas; Adolph A. Berle; WNYC

Presenting people and ideas with Lee Graham, Mrs. Graham is a radio commentator, author and lecturer. To introduce this afternoon's guest, here now is Lee Graham. How do you do this is Lee Graham with a warm welcome to people and ideas. On Tuesday, our guest was at off a Burley, Jr., who was Assistant Secretary of State in this country from 1938 to 1944, our ambassador to Brazil, and addition to many professional and civic jobs, is Professor of Corporation Law at Columbia University Law School. Professor Burley could come here and many guys, there are so many things he's done, but he was invited here primarily to discuss with us the sixth report, which is issued from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which is on the question of democracy, or to be specific, the power of the democratic idea. The fund has become concerned about, as we all are, about whether democracy as we know it will continue in this country and in the world wherever it exists, and it felt that it should make a special study of the situation.

And so, Professor Burley, welcome again to the program, and tell me, why are we really so concerned about the democratic idea? We still have a democracy, there are no real signs that it won't continue, are there? There are no real signs that it won't continue. There are plenty of signs that it is going to have to endure strains and tests and competitions, possibly even struggles unknown and historical strength and scope. In other words, the burdens placed on it are going to be far heavier than those that it has handled up to now. That is the real question. As you know, if I may divert for a moment, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, looking at the world in mid-century, I decided to report on a series of major problems. The first five of them, as you know, had to do with foreign policy and military affairs, and the economic and social aspects, and it's foreign economic policy, and it's education to pursue to excellence that's caught.

Below all these, of course, is one essential factor. A country, a civilization, like ours, depends on the thrust of a set of ideas and on the organization that gives those ideas force. It is a conception that makes a country and a civilization go, and it is its organization that makes them effective. The problem was, is that conception still valid, and is the United States organized so that it can compete in a world with Mao Zedong's in red China and Christoph's in Soviet Union, and as it competed 20 years ago with the fascist autocracies of Hitler and of Mussolini. This was why they undertook to review and restate, as well as they could, the conception of democracy, which all of us had taken for granted, without re-examining.

Professor Burley, I think democracy, like many other words, is so loosely used, and so misunderstood, they were all to begin by defining it. I think perhaps the best I can do is to quote one sentence from the report here. Democracy says the report aims to provide a mobile society and a free political process that will give the individual the opportunity to participate in the affairs of his community, and to bring to bear on those affairs the best that is in his mind and spirit. I may add that the objective of a democracy is to permit the development of each individual to the fullest possible level of his own spiritual and intellectual capacity. That's what a democracy is all about.

But on the other hand, to protect the society of which he is a part, many restrictions are also put upon him, and many of his individual liberties are disappearing, even within our democracy. More accurately, the business of living in a democracy does mean an immense amount of interrelationship and of recognition, limitation, self-limitation, if you like, of the individual. We all of us agree on certain things. This may have to be imposed in a dictatorship, as apparently the old dictatorships did, current dictatorships do now. In a democracy, these are self-accepted by the individual. That's what's known as the public consensus. Democracy works on the fact that most of us agree that the rights and liberties of his neighbors should be respected as he expects them to respect his. This means that to all of us tacitly at least agree that we will not and do not do certain things that invade.

This is the general historical agreement in which we're all of us brought up. Well, yes, let's assume that most people are decent and don't want to invade the rights and property, let's say, of their neighbors. I'm thinking of something else now, such as taxation, against which many people protest in this country, feeling it's excessive. And which many people do their best to evade, I think, flagingly. I'm afraid there's more truth than that than I wish. So how democratic is that? I mean, since we're talking about democracy, to insist that so many people pay very high taxes when, say, a great majority of people simply don't want to pay them. And say they cannot afford to pay them. The tax evader is, of course, not living up to his duties in a democracy. It is perfectly clear that in a country, especially a large country, with many duties towards all of its people, considerable amount of what it does will have to be done through the public sector, or something very like it through the private philanthropy education and general assistance that has been more high. It has been more highly developed in the United States than in any country in the world.

We don't, I think, consider those restrictions on our liberties. If you eliminate the taxation and the services they pay for, everyone would, as a result, be less free and not more free. I don't think people object to paying taxes if they feel the money is being used to good purpose. But as you know, there have been so many exposés of money wasted that many people say, I'll pay my taxes, but not if it's going to go for such unfair purposes. That, I think, is a fair illustration of the democratic process acting as it does act, possibly even as it ought to act. What is meant there is that the public sentiment, the individual and the aggregate of them say, look here, I pay taxes, I don't mind doing that at all. But you, the government, I want to be sure are making respectable and good use of it. The answer to a political group, whether it be the city or the state or the federal government that wastes or misuses the money in a democracy is not to smash the organization and stop paying taxes, but to throw out that government and get a government that will act more responsibly. And a democracy provides for that. You see, in the other countries, or in other countries, non-democratic countries, the government can't be changed except by force.

Here it can. And this continuous critique of what goes on is a steady part of the democratic process. Sometimes it ought to be more rapid, work better, but if you take the combined results of the American democracy with other forms, it has been, I think, not less efficient in that regard. And in some sense, it's far more productive. This is something that appeared in the report about concern with the power of the democratic idea, which I think raises the question or challenges the fact that democracy may still have sufficient power and steam. This is written, quote, most men want a sense that large projects are underway and that they are part of some significant and enduring human enterprise. Now, I think the totalitarian states manage to give their people this feeling, whether it's true or not. Can a democracy do that? The report suggests, and I personally am very clear that it can, it does require leadership. Let me say that I defend to my last breath that the statement they are made, the men who do not feel men and women who do not feel that they participate in the active work of civilization, that they are merely taking what they can get having a good time and dying unwept and honored and unsung are very unhappy and unproductive people.

The totalitarian governments ram down your throat a doctrine and train the children to say, Heil Hitler or Fidel Fidel Fidel or the various slogans in the communist countries as they come along. How much participation the rank and file of their men and women feeling that we don't know because they do not as democracies do allow free press or free criticism, we only have their propaganda agents, these statements for it. I think in some sense there is the enlistment of participation in certain objectives with which the public has support. There probably is a great deal of mere propaganda parading which has no not much meaning.

Do we do this in democracy? That depends on the drive of an idea. The American democracy was built fundamentally on a religious base, by this I don't mean any one religion. But if actually were several great religious movements and to some extent they have weakened in the sense that there's a large irrationalist group but all of it, all of them assumed that there was a moral order of the universe and that while no one was wise enough to know it, we all of us were working towards its realization, the heart of the American democracy was built that way. It likewise assumed that because no one person was wise enough to tell anyone else what to think that you must liberate the minds of individuals and it was assumed that by throwing thousands or perhaps millions of minds at the great problem of life and the essential problems of government,

the government would be more stable and the resulting direction would be more sound. A democracy can make mistakes as fast as any other kind of government but it also can correct those mistakes. As a result the American government has been historically, perhaps the one of the stabilists, if not the stabilist government in the world. It has been extended and land to be cultivated and nature to be tamed in general and this drew us together. But that as we became more comfortable and more sophisticated, we have fewer physical problems and we're more apt to live unto ourselves within our own little islands. We've lost this collective group spirit which is so essential to keep our democracy alive. Yes, the report asks whether a comfortable people can respond to a chronic emergency like the foreign affairs emergency we have now whether it gets having reached an economic level beyond any other in which most of the country is more comfortable economically than anywhere else in the wide world.

Whether they can take a line and stick to it, I rather think they can. I agree. The first conquest of the United States was one of an unoccupied virgin continent. But I do not think that having done that the situation is such that anybody is going to be so very comfortable in his own mind that he won't go on thinking or will try to settle down into a quiet little nest and enjoy his plastic balloons. It seems to be a conditioning which is necessary and we apparently don't have it now. You say it may be due to lack of the right leadership, but in a country like Russia, which I visited last year, you notice that the people are always under a feeling that they may be invaded at any time.

They constantly reminded that the rest of the world is their enemy. This is Mother Russia, the soil is sacred, be prepared, work hard, it's for your benefit. And these people always kept it a high pitch as they apparently are in all totalitarian countries. We are not conditioned that way. I doubt if we would stand for it or if we believe it. And how can we therefore be stimulated into this alertness? We don't have a government to bawling at us by every means none. As you say, the Soviet government does, as indeed does. And yet, of course, here I have a little more faith in the intelligence of the American public and the individual members of it high or humble than many other people. We are under pressure if not attack morally or otherwise. And I think everyone knows it. The government doesn't push it on us with every device of radio owned propaganda as the Chinese government does, as the Cuban government does.

But I don't find anyone who isn't constantly asking himself, why? What is there a way out of it? What will I be doing about it? What can any of us do about it? In other words, I think there, if there is trouble, if we need to work harder and go at it more thoroughly, I don't think it is the failure of appreciation of the public. I think it is that we have not trained ourselves to provide leadership for the public to give it outlet in that kind of situation. I don't want to prolong this, but I'd like to make a point here for the first century and a half of its existence. The United States had a charmed life, it had a couple of oceans between it, any potential enemy, and its enemy was bad weather and the conquering wilderness.

We really only met the possibility that we could be attacked from outside in any large sense. It's our least for the first time in 150 years, we've met it at the developments that followed World War I. Then, suddenly, we discovered that the American revolution was one of the hopes, the democratic revolution, was one of the hopes of Europe that was being challenged by another. The communist conception of Europe, and from that time on, there has been this endemic conflict which finally became acute after World War II, and of course is now the Cold War today. I think we have just learned to appreciate that as other governments which have had different history have not had to appreciate it. Do you subscribe? Then you probably don't subscribe to this idea which I think was put quite well by the English writer Walter Landau who wrote states like men have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude, and their decay.

Do you think that this is an inevitable historical cycle which cannot perhaps be put off for a time but which must eventually take place? Well, that large statement of Walter Savage Landau is a fascinating statement, and for all I know it may be true, but the question is how long does it take? Yes, I see. Now, there are plenty of things wrong with the American democracy, but there is one thing that is not wrong with it. It is not decadent. Whatever is happening here is not the fault of failure to be able to move at all. The faults are energy in the wrong direction of unlimited capacity that may be misdirected to that sort of thing. You don't think that any decadence is set in our attitude that we don't have by now a certain amount of defeatism in our spirit? I don't see defeatism. Sometimes there is a lack of capacity to realize that how close you are to trouble. I think we are not too far away from a great deal of trouble.

Sometimes the children have to be spanked before they realize that that is really dangerous. But I don't see any decadence here, and I don't think that you can call this decadent. So I say, I don't all about the philosophy of unlimited cycles of unlimited cycles. Yes, it takes a thousand or two thousand years, but we've got mine. You are a successor. We'll be wrestling with that problem, but we're done for that. Since all ideas have in all institutions have their weaknesses, as well as their strengths, and I think we all know what the strengths and the good points of democracy are. Could we, for a moment, examine its weaknesses? Yes, the first and simplest weakness, I think, is that it takes a long time to mobilize the public opinion in the United States to adopt measures which obviously have to be adopted. In other words, it moves rather slowly. It was once said that a dictatorship was like a finely built ship that could be steered in any direction, but could be easily sunk, whereas the American Republic was like a raft that couldn't be sunk, but took a long time to change direction.

I think that there, we are looking towards some improvement in our democratic processes. For example, there are great many things which have to be determined on expert judgment now, and can't be submitted to a popular vote. To have a popular vote is to what the best engineering plan, for example, for a New York City water system is. What you do is get the first rate to best men and men who you trust until them to get the best engineers, to be absurd to have a popular vote on that. This separation of those things which have to be determined technically, and those things which ought to be determined on a basis of public sentiment is one of the solid problems here. That's peculiar, true and questions of defense, for example. Would you say that it was our main weakness, that the slowness and the machinery of making democracy work?

There is a second which may or may not be a weakness, I think it will not prove to be. Democracy turns on its leadership. By turns on, you mean revolves around. Yes, it means a group of men who may be possibly in the top political positions, possibly in the top intellectual positions, possibly even in the top business positions. It depends. But a group who can give leadership as precise problems come forward. I like to think myself that Franklin Roosevelt gave an amazing instance of that leadership. When I worked with him, I think Furella LaGuardia gave it to the City of New York. That kind of leadership is needed in a democracy. If there is a weakness, it is that it is not always available. I am not supposed to express political opinions on this program before these microphones, but may I say I do not disagree with you at all. I was treasurer of the city under LaGuardia, so I am prejudiced.

Yes, Ms. Burley, our time just grows short again and there is so much more I wanted to ask you. Perhaps I will have the pleasure of your returning on some other occasion. I will not dare to ask you that. No, because you have been kind enough to be a guest on two of our programs. But in closing, there was a short excerpt you wanted to read from this final report from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. We came to the conclusion that this democracy was not only a going concern, but afforded more hope than any other. Certain things we wanted done. They appear in this report. But we wound up. A man called kind is going through one of its fateful moments throughout the world. There are people who have never counted in the affairs of their society. Those powers never have been tested or used. Those feelings never have been trusted or given a full measure of respect. They are emerging now from their present condition. And this gives them the chance to many men and women to live in hope and to release human intelligence talent and vitality. It helps a barely junior. I am most appreciative of your being here, of your talking to us about the Rockefeller Brothers Fund special projects, because they're a immense value to all of us who live in this country.

Is this report available to the public, by the way? Yes, it is. Do be with us on Tuesday then, at the same time, and until then, goodbye for today. You've just heard people and ideas with Lee Graham. If you have any comments or suggestions on these programs, address your card or letter to people and ideas. People in ideas is produced by Robert A. Cooper and is a regular transcribed feature of your city station.