The problem of the politician-statesman, which is touched upon in the following remarks, is brought in to illustrate the manner in which public opinion research may be employed very usefully, even if indirectly, in the service of the historian; indirectly, since the assistance would be rendered primarily not so much to the historian as to his collaborator, the sociologist of history.
Of all adventure stories, one of the most exciting and – assuredly – one of the most stirring is that of the victory of the great statesman over a narrow and recalcitrant public opinion. Historiography knows of no nobler subject. At the same time there are but few contemporary events concerning which the pollster can more readily draw on otherwise unprocurable facts. For the peripeteiaia of public opinion connected with the triumph of true statesmanship over common-run politics play precisely on that area of opinion formation where his research technique can claim precedence over all others. And so, in all seriousness, the question may arise as to whether public opinion surveying should not shoulder the task of attempting to provide the future historian with a clue to some of those unexpected changes of opinion that have made history. Or, to dramatize the subject as it is the historian's privilege to do, what can the pollster contribute to the unveiling of the secret of heroic statesmanship?
Now, the historian deals with history as a definite event that occurred at a definite time and place. His statesman is a singular, concrete figure; and what he wishes to ascertain is how this man solved his problem. Theories about the nature of statesmanship – whether produced by others, or even by himself – are, for him, no more than accessories. For the hub of his interest remains the singular case. In sharp contrast to this, the typical figure of the statesman belongs in the realm of the sociologist of history. For him, the taskb is to investigate the conditions in a society that make great statesmanship possible – and to inquire into the objective criteria of the success stories of those statesmen-politicians whom posterity ranked in this special class of eminence. Yet the sociologist's generalizations are not restricted to drawing from the historian's data. His field encompasses the liveborn and the stillborn events, those that lived in the consciousness of contemporaries and those that never achieved the dignity of historicalness, no less factual though they were than those rescued from limbo by Klio's pen. The sociology of statesmanship, similarly to the sociology of war and peace, of revolution and evolution, deals essentially with the laws of society. Eventually the sociology of history never loses touch with past actuality, and thus with the human interest that attaches to history; nevertheless it is not, by itself, an historical but a sociological discipline.
Before we define more closely the sociological problem of statesmanship as we understand it here, let us briefly recall the illuminated plates of the chronicle in which the statesman's picture is drawn by the sympathetic historian. It is this flamboyant portrait that inspires the imagination of the young, sustains the endeavor of the mature, and ultimately sets a meaning upon the featureless account of the ages. It is against this background of life and meaning that the bare skeleton of the sociological problem will eventually be viewed here.
The historian's figure of the statesman stands out, drawn in almost superhuman proportions. Here is the man who, towering above the crowd of run-of-the-mill politicians, serves his country's true and permanent interests at a crucial moment. His reward is the gratitude of a nation, maybe a tragic prize that he hardly lives to grasp. His means of achieving the grand purpose are superior courage and superior insight. Nations, great and small, have their Solons, Themistocles, and Aristeides; their Churchills, Lenins, and Weitzmans; their Smuts, Gandhis, and Abraham Lincolns. Each of these was a politician – and remained a politician – yet eventually, owing to his moral courage and political wisdom, each one managed to be a statesman whose name, resplendent of victory, is enshrined in the hearts of a whole people. And the formula for victory, too, is familiar: long, arduous, and seemingly hopeless struggle against public opinion, until unexpectedly the miracle of success intervenes.
The bare bones of the problem are here displayed. The statesman started as a politician. He rose to power through the favor of public opinion. This fact limited his effectiveness to conditions set by the climate of opinion that made his rise possible. Yet eventually we see him achieving a political feat that presupposes an entirely different climate, in which public opinion seems to have veered round by hundred and eighty degrees. However, the one thing that, on our assumption, a politician could not attain was to change the climate of opinion itself to which he owed his success. We are left with the question: What made the politically impossible historically possible? And what was the sociological mechanism of this piece of white magic? Clearly, we are facing here a scientific problem of public opinion research.
The answer is to be sought in the total structure of opinion: public opinion in the narrower sense, together with that much less changeable underlying phenomenon, the climate of opinion. Public opinion proper, by which we usually mean the surface pattern of beliefs and emotions in which the mass is organized, is always ambivalent: its reaction to any stimulus may be either positive or negative. By positive we mean here the direction in which the statesman himself happens to seek the ultimate solution; by negative we mean the opposite direction. A psychological stimulus such as a sensational warning, a passionate exhortation, an immediate threat, a sudden easing of the outlook or its aggravation – practically everything within the range of a politician's activities – may have, in principle, two different and contrary effects on opinion. Even deliberate propaganda has sometimes an effect opposite to the one intended. Which of the opposites will occur must ultimately depend on objective circumstances, which structure the situation. As long as the circumstances are what they are, the superficial field of opinion will continue to react by going in one and the same direction. In one instance, almost any stimulus will have a more or less positive effect; in the other, a negative effect.
The element by which the superficial pattern of public opinion is related to the objective circumstances that structure the situation is that deeper layer that has been called the climate of opinion. The sociology of the climate of opinion must provide us with the postulated link between the ambivalent surface opinion and the objectively structured situation.
What distinguishes the statesman from the mere politician is his superior understanding of the objective situation, and thereby also of the climate of opinion. While both he and the politician are limited, in their fight, to the sphere of surface opinion, the statesman consciously acts on surface opinion for the purpose of changing the situation – not only to maintain himself in power (as every politician must), but for aims that transcend the political sense. Briefly, he attempts to use his power partly to organize the public for the interim period until conditions change, partly (if at all possible) to bring about himself some favourable change in the conditions. Small though the change may be, it may just suffice to shift the climate of opinion and thus to give the political stimuli opposite effects, eventually releasing the pent-up flood of positive reactions.
As for examples, I will take them from Greek antiquity. Solon, Themistocles, and Aristeides rank among the greatest politician-statesmen of Athenian democracy. You will readily see how littlec the basic laws of social action are affected by the lapse of time. Franklin Roosevelt at his height bears a close resemblance to Solon in his memorable archonship.
Solon, a man of aristocratic extraction but of middle-class ways, was elected to the position of chief executive, as an arbitrator vested with dictatorial powers, at the height of an unprecedented total crisis of the political and economic life of the Athenian city-state. A free population was literally sinking into debt bondage and enslavement. Bloody strife was on the move, threating to engulf the community: on the one hand, the threat of mob rule and of the expropriation of all landed classes; on the other, the immediate threat of a massacre of the common people under a regime of white terror. In either case, the ruin of the state. Solon, with his genius for publicity, put his political program in verse and introduced it by the following words, as reported by Demosthenes:d
Lo, even now there cometh upon the whole city a plague which none may escape. The people have come quickly into degrading bondage; bondage rouseth from their sleep war and civil strife; and war destroyed many in the beauty of their youth. As if she were the prey of foreign foes, our beloved city is rapidly wasted and consumed…Thus public calamity cometh to the house of every individual, and a man is no longer safe within the gates of his own court…
Aristotle's account of the events makes it clear that the chief trouble was psychological and moral: the mass of the people, sunken into shameful debt bondage, were afraid to stand up for their constitutional rights. Solon first stopped famine conditions through an embargo on the export of corn; secondly, he proclaimed a disburdening of private and public debts, which were anyway hardly enforceable. With these measures, he restored the popular forces physically and morally. Eventually it was these relief measures that made it possible for him to steer a middle course of reform and to change the constitution only to an extent that was still tolerable to the propertied classes, so that they resigned themselves to their loss of privilege while they retained their property. Then only, in a less partisan atmosphere created by the great political compromise, did Solon proceed to those reconstruction policies in relation to the currency – a change in weights and measures that objectively improved the long-term balance of the country and – after a generation of transition – put Athens on a new foundation.
A hundred years later, Themistocles, foreseeing a Persian revanche in spite of the brilliant victory won by the Greeks over the Persians at Marathon in 490 bc, was full of apprehension for the military safety of the country. Plutarch relates:e
Now the rest of his countrymen thought that the defeat of the Barbarians at Marathon was the end of the war; but Themistocles thought it to be only the beginning of greater contests, and for these he anointed himself, as it were, to be the champion of all Hellas, and put his city into training, because, while it was yet far off, he expected the evil that was to come.
And so, in the first place, whereas the Athenians were wont to divide up among themselves the revenue coming form the silver mines at Laureion, he, and he alone, dared to come before the people with a motion that this division be given up, and that with these moneys triremes be constructed for the war against (the neighbouring island of) Aegina. This was the fiercest war then troubling Hellas, and the islanders controlled the sea, owing to the number of their ships. Where all the more easily did Themistocles carry his point, not by trying to terrify the citizens with dreadful pictures of Darius or the Persians – these were too far away and inspired no very serious fear of their coming, but by making opportune use of the bitter jealously which they cherished toward Aegina in order to secure the armament he desired. The result was that with those moneys they built a hundred triremes, with which they actually fought at Salamis against Xerxes.
According to one version, Themistocles tried to sell his plans in still another way. He suggested that the windfall silver be entrusted to the “wealthiest” citizens – dollar-a-year menf – who would safety return it to the people unless they had used it within a year for a satisfactory public purpose. Meanwhile the international situation became more and more acute, the climate of opinion changed; and the fleet was built that saved Athens at Salamis only one year later.
Lastly: only one year after Salamis Aristeides, Themistocles' great rival in statesmanship and a conservative politician, came out with a no less far-sighted, but intrinsically even more unpopular plan: namely that a large part of the people should quit the country districts and settle in the city. His purpose was to guard against a second Persian attempt at revenge, which would sooner or later overwhelm Athens by force of arms or starvation; and, as a means to this end, to set up, organize, and administer a defensive naval empire, which would provide the ships and the money contributions required to secure the importation of corn and to deny the sea to the Persians and their large Phoenician fleet. At Marathon and at Salamis, Athens had got away by the skin of her teeth. How often could the performance be repeated? But the idea of a voluntary synoecism – a moving into town – was naturally most unpopular with the farmers. The whole plan was therefore presented by him to the poor as a scheme of public maintenance at the government's expense, while the wealthy were induced to agree by the tempting prospect of booty and command. Yet the substance of the matter was that the minute city-state of Athens,g with its 30,000 to 40,000 families, could not undertake the dominance of the seas unless every free citizen personally participated in the organization of administration and defence. The plan was immensely daring. Perhaps the most surprising thing about it was that this supreme bid for a defensive empire was actually put into effect. Aristotle describes the details of the scheme as follows:h
He [Aristeides] pointed out to them that all would be able to gain a living there [in Athens], some by service in the army, others in the garrisons, others by taking a part in public affairs; and in this way they would secure the leadership. This advice was taken. […] They also secured an ample maintenance for the mass of the population in the way which Aristeides had pointed out to them. Out of the proceeds of the tributes and the taxes and the contributions of the allies more than 20,000 persons were maintained. There were 6,000 jurymen, 1,600 bowmen, 1,200 knights, 500 members of the Council, 500 guards of the dockyards, besides 50 guards in the city. There were some 700 magistrates at home, and some 700 abroad. Further, when they subsequently went to war, there were in addition 2,500 heavily armed troops, 20 guards' ships [each carrying 200 marines], and other ships which collected the tributes, with crews amounting to 2,000 men selected by lot; and besides these there were the persons maintained at the Prytaneion, and orphans, and gaolers, since all these were supported by the state.
If Themistocles “trapped” the Athenian people into an armament effort that very soon proved to be its salvation, Aristeides laid the foundations for an empire that, under his guidance, was a genuine federation of Hellene states for defense. It was not his fault that, under his successors, the grand alliance turned almost into a rule of Athens over her allies, thus eventually causing her downfall in the Peloponnesian War.
I suppose I need not add many words in order to bring my account of the politician-statesman of 2,500 years ago up to date. How – on American soil, in the early 1930s – to stem the general panic caused by economic disorganization and avoid a social catastrophe? How – again in the late 1930s – to prepare an isolationist public for internationalist tasks through clever maneuvering and wise judgment? That much discounted miracle happened: the transfiguration of the party politician into Franklin Roosevelt the statesman.
Yet the mechanism is at all times the same. In some deeper layer of public opinion there is an essentially correct appraisal of the objective situation: of the present danger and the oncoming dangers of the future. The statesman senses the coming change; or, if the calamity is on, he discerns the possibilities of overcoming the crisis. His superlative achievement is to employ the weak forces of politics as a lever in shifting the objective situation, until the danger is met.
When all is said, in his day's work he remains a politician whose profession is to handle public opinion, though in the depth of opinion slumber the forces of history. There is, as we have seen, a weighty content to the question of what enables the statesman to transcend the mere politician.
I believe that, with regard to problems of this type, the historian will draw on the work of the sociologically minded pollster.