POWER AS THE INSTRUMENT OF JUSTICE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 223, 1 October 1943, Page 6

POWER AS THE INSTRUMENT

OF JUSTICE

From a BBC Home Service talk by the

Rev.

-Professor

REINHOLD

NIEBUHR

HERE were several reasons why we failed to establish a lasting peace after the last war. One was that the democratic world had very great illusions about the function of power in society. The idealists were inclined to believe that power is immoral in itself, and that in any case history was in the process of gradually eliminating all power from politics. We were to look forward to the day when social organisation of every kind would be a purely rational achieyement-a result of the meeting of mind with mind. We admitted that power still had to be used, under certain circumstances, but we regarded its use as a temporary expedient. For this reason we promised to disarm as quickly‘as possible. We did not keep this promise. As it turned out, we could not... The fact is that life shows no promise of becoming purely rational, for the simple reason that man is not a purely rational creature. He is a vital creature, who lives in a unity of body, mind and spirit. His life is an expression of power and not merely of reason. If we study the order and harmony of any ordinary family, remembering that the family is the most basic, as it may also be the most ideal, of all human communities, we gain a very nice picture in miniature of the interrelation between power and justice. The authority of father and mother is the basis of the family’s order. If this authority is challenged, most parents use physical force to maintain it. On the other hand if parental authority is maintained by physical force alone it quickly breeds rebellion among the children. Still, the fact remains that only the most doctrinnaire parents refuse to make any use of physical force. It is only in occasional and extreme instances, of course, that the real authority of parents depends upon their physical strength. None the less, physical power does enter into the relation. : The economic dependence of children upon their parents is an example of a covert form of physical power. When parents succeed in being the source of harmony in the family it is, generally speaking, both because they use their power wisely and gain the obedience of their children by their love and wisdom. But the filial respect of children is neither purely rational consent, nor yet purely fear of the physical power of the parents. It is made up of many elements. It is partly derived from love; yet it is both more and less than love. Respect is partly a reverence of age, but again, it may contain fear of the use of force as a possi-bility--even when that force has never actually been used. In short, parental authority is a power which is derived neither purely from reason nor purely from force. A Lesson From The Family In the business of establishing order, either within a nation or within the world community of nations, there is a lesson to be learned from the family. Governments are imitations of family authority. Their impartiality is never as perfect as that of loving parents; and we \

may assume that it will be a long time before any international authority approaches even the impartiality of national governments, It is clear, however, that we move in our social history not from power to powerlessness in government, but rather from imperfect to more perfect impartiality in holding a community in order through the agency of government. We can never get rid of power politics, either internally or internationally, because life is power and requires organisation in power terms. What we can do is strive for a-:type of power politics in which government will a¢t more and more as an impartial agent of justice in arbitrating competing claims and in composing incipient conflicts of interest. Organisation of Power Our epoch faces, for the first time in world history, the very difficult problem of providing some kind of organ for achieving peace and avoiding anarchy between the nations. It is silly to imagine og

that international peace can be accomplished by the periodic display of military force in times of crisis and the disavowal of the use of force at other times. The world requires not the disavowal of power, but its more and more perfect organisation. Such international order as the world may achieve!in the next generations must be created by power. In the organisation of this power, physical .force will be a stronger element than in the life of either families or nations. That is so, because there is as yet no reverence for established authority in the world community and there are few forces of racial or cultural unity like those which bring order in the life of nations and reduce the use of force there to a minimum. Corrupters of Justice Many good idealists look askance at such a solution of the world’s problems. This is not only because they object to the use of power in principle, but also {continued on next page) A

continued from previous page) because they are certain that the organisation of the world through the power of strong ruling nations will not be just. I think those of us who are realists and who see no other way of bringing order into the world ought to admit that the idealists are at least partly right. There is no possibility of establishing absolutely just relations after this or any war. The power which will maintain order will not be sufficiently impartial to do that. The treatment of a fallen foe, particularly if he had been a very cruel foe, lays an almost intolerable burden upon frail human nature. Nations are forced to be judges in their own cases after the war; and that does not make for pure justice. It can make for tolerable justice only if those who have been forced into the position of judges recognise humbly that egotism and vindictiveness always corrupt justice, in the absence of any completely impartial judges. The more we recognise that we will not be perfectly just, the better chance we have of attaining some measure of justice. Our Hope of Ordered Peace Obviously there will have to be ages of development before we find international instruments good enough to solve the problem of international order. We must find constitutional means to guarantee the rights of the weak against the strong. We must’also find constitutional means fo hold the strong nations together because no single nation is strong enough in the modern situation to do what Rome did in the ancient world. We must elaborate these constitutional forms gradually out of the actual processes of international partnership which our common struggle has already created. The complexities of this task are endless and they may well strike terror into those of faint heart. The task can be accomplished at all only if the realists, who know that order demands the use of power, have a sufficiently sensitive conscience to recognise that injustices easily flow from its use, If we are to solve the tremendous political tasks which face our generation we must borrow what is best from both the idealists and realists. When power is‘not the servant of justice it is a curse to mankind. But when justice does not avail itself of the service of power it degenerates into anarchy. Our hope of an otdered peace lies in an organised power which knows itself to be the instrument of justice. "4 --_-- ooo