On Wallas, Mill, The Great Society, and the Art of Government

In a note in Volume 1 of Law, Legislation and Liberty: Rules and Order (1973), Hayek remarks that the term ‘great society’ “was revived by Graham Wallas” in “modern times… when he used it as the title for one of his books.” (p. 148) I have been unable to find an extended discussion of Wallas in the work of Hayek (but may have missed it). In the same note Hayek remarks that “The expression 'the Great Society', which we shall frequently use in the same sense in which we shall use Sir Karl Popper's term 'the Open Society.' This made me turn to Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies. In a “note” to the Introduction, he writes,

From the way my term ‘The Open Society’ is used in chapter 10, it may be seen that there is some resemblance to Graham Wallas’ term ‘The Great Society’; but my term may cover a ‘small society’ too, as it were, like that of Periclean Athens, while it is perhaps conceivable that a ‘Great Society’ may be arrested and thereby closed. There is also, perhaps, a similarity between my ‘open society’ and the term used by Walter Lippmann as the title of his most admirable book, The Good Society (1937).

Popper also doesn’t discuss Wallas in The Open Society. And not, unlike my sense with Hayek, I don’t get the impression that Wallas made a huge impact on Popper.

By contrast Walter Lippmann, mentions the “influence” of the “late” Wallas ahead of Mises, Hayek, and Keynes in the “acknowledgments” (p. vii) to his The Good Society (an important book to both Hayek and Popper.) In fact, in the “introduction,” Lippmann returns to Wallas in a moving fashion, “I did not understand the prophetic warning of my teacher, Graham Wallas, that there might be a war which would unsettle the foundations of society - indeed I was unable to imagine such a war and I did not know what were the foundations which might be unsettled.” (p. ix)

Later in the book, Lippmann writes with a footnote to Wallas’ The Great Society, “For it was in the nineteenth century that the self-sufficiency of nations, of local communities, and of individuals, gave way to a deep and intricate interdependence. Men found themselves living in a Great Society.” (p. 161) So here, a great society is understood in terms of an expansive interdependence. (Cf. on the definitions of ‘open society’ in Kukathas and Gaus here; and on the definitions of ‘'great society’ Hayek and Adam Smith here). Lippmann goes on toe connect it this “revolutionary” change to the expansion of the division of labor in the next section. (See also the summary on p. 192 with another reference to Wallas.)

This all got me interested in (1914) The Great Society: A psychological Analysis. (The book can be found here.) There are, I think, two natural ways of describing the book (which does not fit naturally in contemporary scholarship). First, one can treat it as an attempt, while drawing on the findings of then recent experimental psychology, to use the tools of social psychology to the describe, analyze, and tentatively propose social/institutional solutions to the discomfort that men (yes, it’s mostly gendered male) feel about living in the great society. Second, one can treat it as a contribution to the art of government in which the findings of social psychology are used to propose social/institutional solutions to the discomfort that men (yes, it’s mostly gendered male) feel about living in the great society. About the second more below.

Along the way, one also encounters Wallas’ attacks on war-mongering, as well his criticism for simple laissez-faire and socialism/syndicalism. There are hints he is open to some eugenics (but it doesn’t seem to be racialized) and he is not especially critical telepathy. In his politics, Wallas (1858 - 1932), thus, clearly belongs to the generation of reformist, social liberals commonly associated with Hobhouse and Hobson. (Like Hobson he seems fond of settler colonialism, but not so fond of imperial rule over non-Whites.) Some of the best bits of the book are his criticism of Benthamite utilitarianism, and the reductive nature of much social theorizing. He is also quite critical of views (he associates this with William James and Bergson) that over-emphasize instinct and tradition over reason in collective decision-making. (In creativity studies, Wallas’ (1926) The Art of Thought is much cited.)

I want to close today’s post by commenting on the intellectual roots of a very minor obsession of Wallas,’ and, thereby, illustrate my claim about his art of government. Wallas divides collective decision-making in three functions: the organisation of thought; the organisation of will; the organisation of happiness. He is very alert to the fact that the same institution can partake in any of these functions. At one point, after noting how many organizational meetings are pointless and inefficient (and the significance of good chairing), he makes the following remark: “[A] much better stimulus than mere discipline would be provided if the public and personal responsibility of civil servants were from time to time secured by sending administrative officials, who now spend all their time in Whitehall, to hold public “enquiries” into questions of local administration, or to do the local work themselves…”(p. 274; notice the psychological language of ‘stimulus.’) ‘Whitehall’ is the term used for the central administration offices in Britain (named after the London street that housed many).

A chapter later, while offering some critical comments on the expected limitations of the new quantitative work in Scientific Managements (associated with Taylor), Wallas returns to the theme in a note: “This limitation of the possibility of effortless intercourse [no, not sex; he means ‘socializing’] is one of the considerations which make advisable that occasional transference of officials of officials centralised to decentralised work which I have already advocated (p. 274). The number of persons of an official deals with in decentralised work is not too large for unforced personal acquaintance.” (p. 334, note 1.) He then offers anecdotal evidence from an ex-official of the State of Victoria, “I heard several men now promoted to the Melbourne offices speak of their time in country towns, when in daily contact with settlers as the part of their work in which they had taken most interest.” (p. 334, note 1.)

I called Wallas’ proposal ‘a minor obsession.’ But he echoes a rather important passage in the history of liberalism. I quote, nearly in full, the second to final paragraph of chapter 5 (“Applications) of J.S. Mill’s (1859) On Liberty:

To determine the point at which evils, so formidable to human freedom and advancement, begin, or rather at which they begin to predominate over the benefits attending the collective application of the force of society, under its recognised chiefs, for the removal of the obstacles which stand in the way of its well-being; to secure as much of the advantages of centralised power and intelligence as can be had without turning into governmental channels too great a proportion of the general activity—is one of the most difficult and complicated questions in the art of government. It is, in a great measure, a question of detail, in which many and various considerations must be kept in view, and no absolute rule can be laid down. But I believe that the practical principle in which safety resides, the ideal to be kept in view, the standard by which to test all arrangements intended for overcoming the difficulty, may be conveyed in these words: the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency; but the greatest possible centralisation of information, and diffusion of it from the centre. Thus, in municipal administration, there would be, as in the New England States, a very minute division among separate officers, chosen by the localities, of all business which is not better left to the persons directly interested; but besides this, there would be, in each department of local affairs, a central superintendence, forming a branch of the general government. The organ of this superintendence would concentrate, as in a focus, the variety of information and experience derived from the conduct of that branch of public business in all the localities, from everything analogous which is done in foreign countries, and from the general principles of political science. This central organ should have a right to know all that is done, and its special duty should be that of making the knowledge acquired in one place available for others. Emancipated from the petty prejudices and narrow views of a locality by its elevated position and comprehensive sphere of observation, its advice would naturally carry much authority; but its actual power, as a permanent institution, should, I conceive, be limited to compelling the local officers to obey the laws laid down for their guidance. In all things not provided for by general rules, those officers should be left to their own judgment, under responsibility to their constituents.

The reference to ‘new England municipalities’ signals that Mill is responding to Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and his own earlier review of the book (recall here). In the following paragraph (the final one of On Liberty), Mill makes clear that he has his eye on the relationship between the (centralized) “Poor Law Board” and (the local, parish level) “administrators of the Poor Rate.” To what degree these really secure “as much of the advantages of centralised power and intelligence,” I leave to another time. For Mill there are complex trade-offs among securing a competent, knowledgeable, and accountable bureaucracy with centralization and self-rule. Mill spent a quarter of a century as an administrator in a vast bureaucracy (the East India Company).

Throughout the last third of The Great Society, Wallas struggles with analyzing and evaluating the same trade-offs. And there is no reason to assume he has any substantive disagreement with Mill’s “practical principle or “standard.” Yet, there is a clear difference of emphasis. For Wallas thinks that bureaucrats need to be kept motivated not just through public spirit (a rather important theme to him), but by a personal interest in, a direct acquaintance with, the subjects they oversee.

Wallas (who also taught at LSE), spent a good part of his public life as an elected officer to the London School Board (then the first city-wide elected municipal board) overseeing municipal administration of schools. The LSB was the effect of a national mandate, the Elementary Education Act 1870, that created new local school boards (with tax-raising powers) and also created an interesting way to ensure minority representation under a system of weighted voting on these boards.