GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THB IDEALIST THEORY OF THE STATE 581
happens to be supported by a majority of the people does
not constitute a justification for its representation, even
when the majority is a stable one. In so far, then, as die
question at issue is a moral question since everybody's
interest claims to be represented, whose interest is it that
ought to be represented? the answer to it is that the
interest which everybody has in common, that is to say,
the interest of the whole to which all equally belong, is
the one which deserves representation. This conclusion
has been historically held to justify the following further
propositions:
(i) Somebody or something actually wills this interest
which everybody has in common.
(tt) This somebody or something .is not any individual
person, but is a whole brought into being by the
coming together of individual persons, yet transcending
them.
(us) This whole is the State which represents all persons.
(itr) Therefore the State has a being and nature of its
own.
It is a matter for serious reflection that, by
one of the
ironies of history, the view that only the common interest,
that is to say, the interest which all members of a society
are deemed to have in promoting the well-being of that
society, deserves to be is represented, in the contemporary
world chiefly emphasized by sectional political parties,
the Fascist Party in Italy, and the National Socialist
Party in Germany, which, beginning as minorities, have
nevertheless insisted upon their right to impose their
conception of the public good upon the societies to which
they respectively belong, and have in these countries
succeeded. The Communist Party in Russia has insisted
upon the same right in the interests of a particular class.
The implications of the criticism ofrepresentative govern*
ment just outlined would certainly seem prima foci* to
concede to minorities even less right of representation than
they admit in the case of majorities. Aware, perhaps,