Thorstein Veblen
"The Modern Point of View and the New Order"
"DIAL. A Fortnightly", (New York: The Dial Publishing Company, Inc.)
Vol. LXVI (Dec., 28, 1918, to June, 28, 1919)
VII. LIVE AND LET LIVE
January 11, 1919, pp. 19-24
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[19]
The Modern Point of View and the New Order

VII. LIVE AND LET LIVE

THE NATION'S inalienable right of self-direction and self-help is of the same 
nature and derivation as the like inalienable right of self-help vested in an 
irresponsible king by the grace of God. In both cases alike it is a divine 
right, in the sense that it is irresponsible and will not bear scrutiny, 
being an arbitrary right of self-help at the cost of any whom it may concern. 
There is the further parallel that in both cases alike the ordinary exercise 
of these rights confers no material benefit on the underlying community. In 
practical effect the exercise of such divine rights, whether by a sovereign 
monarch or by the officials of a sovereign nation, works damage and 
discomfort to one and another, within the national frontiers or beyond them, 
with nothing better to show for it than some relatively slight gain in 
prestige or in wealth for some relatively small group of privileged persons 
or vested interests. And the gain of those who profit by this means is always 
got at the cost of the common man at home and abroad. These inalienable 
rights are an abundant source of grievances to be redressed at the cost of 
the common man.

It has long been a stale commonplace that the quarrels of competitive kings 
in pursuit of their divine rights have brought nothing but damage and 
discomfort to the peoples whose material wealth and man power have been made 
use of for national enterprise of this kind. And it is no less evident, 
though perhaps less notorious, that the pursuit of national advantages by 
competitive nations by use of the same material wealth and man power 
unavoidably brings nothing better than the same net output of damage and 
discomfort to all the peoples concerned. There is of course the reservation 
that in the one case the kings and their accomplices and pensioners have come 
in for some gain in prestige and in perquisites, while in the case of the 
competitive nations certain vested interests and certain groups of the kept 
classes stand to gain something in the way of perquisites and free income; 
but always and in the nature of the case the total gain is less than the 
cost, and always the gain goes to the kept classes and the cost falls on the 
common man. So much is notorious, particularly so far as it is a question of 
material gain and loss. So far as it is an immaterial question of jealousy 
and prestige, the line of division runs between nations, but as regards 
material gain and loss it is always a division between the kept classes and 
the common man; and always the common man has more to lose than the kept 
classes stand to gain.

The war is now concluded, provisionally, and peace is in prospect for the 
immediate future, also provisionally. As is true between individuals, so also 
among the nations, peace means the same thing as Live and Let Live, which 
also means the same thing as a world made safe for democracy. And the rule of 
Live and Let Live means the discontinuance of animosity and discrimination 
between the nations. Therefore it involves the disallowance of such 
incompatible national pretensions as are likely to afford ground for 
international grievances which comes near involving the disallowance of all 
those claims and perquisites that habitually go in under the captions of 
"national self-determination" and "national integrity," as these phrases are 
employed in diplomatic intercourse. At the same time it involves the 
disallowance of all those class pretensions and vested interests that make 
for dissension within the nation. Ill will is not a practicable basis of 
peace, whether within the nation or between the nations. So much is plain 
matter of course. What may be the chances of peace and war, at home and 
abroad, in the light of these blunt and obvious principles taken in 
conjunction with the diplomatic negotiations now going forward at home and 
abroad all that is sufficiently perplexing.

At home in America for the transient time being, the war administration has 
under pressure of necessity somewhat loosened the strangle-hold of the vested 
interests on the country's industry; and in so doing it has shocked the safe 
and sane business men [20] into a state of indignant trepidation and has at 
the same time doubled the country's industrial output. But all that has 
avowedly been only for the transient time being, "for the period of the war," 
as a distasteful concession to demands that would not wait. So that the 
country now faces a return to the precarious conditions of a provisional 
peace on the lines of the status quo ante. Already the vested interests are 
again tightening their hold and are busily arranging for a return to business 
as usual; which means working at cross-purposes as usual, waste of work and 
materials as usual, restriction of output as usual, unemployment as usual, 
labor quarrels as usual, competitive selling as usual, mendacious advertising 
as usual, waste of superfluities as usual by the kept classes, and privation 
as usual for the common man. All of which may conceivably be put up with by 
this people "lest a worse evil befall." All this runs blamelessly in under 
the rule of Live and Let Live as interpreted in the light of those 
enlightened principles of self-help that go to make up the modern point of 
view and the established scheme of law and order, although it does not meet 
the needs of the same rule as it would be enforced by the exigencies of the 
new order in industry.

Meanwhile, abroad, the gentlemen of the old school who direct the affairs of 
the nations are laying down the lines on which peace is to be established and 
maintained, with a painstaking regard for all those national pretensions and 
discriminations that have always made for international embroilment, and with 
an equally painstaking disregard for, all those exigencies of the new order 
that call for a de facto observance of the rule of Live and Let Live. It is 
notorious beyond need of specification that the new order in industry, even 
more insistently than any industrial situation that has gone before, calls 
for a wide and free intercourse in trade and industry, regardless of national 
frontiers and national jealousies. In this connection a national frontier, as 
it is commonly made use of in current state-craft, is a line of demarkation 
for working at cross-purposes, for mutual obstruction and distrust. It is 
only necessary to recall that the erection of a new national frontier across 
any community which has previously enjoyed the privilege of free intercourse 
unburdened with customs frontiers will be felt to be a grievous burden, and 
that the erection of such a line of demarkation for other diplomatic work at 
mutual cross-purposes is likewise an unmistakable nuisance.

Yet in the peace negotiations now going forward the gentlemen of the old 
school to whom the affairs of the nations have been "entrusted" by shrewd 
management on their own part continue to safeguard all this apparatus of 
mutual defeat and distrust and indeed this is the chief or sole object of 
their solicitude, as it also is the chief or sole object of these vested 
interests for whose benefit the diplomatic gentlemen of the old school 
continue to manage the affairs of the nations.

The state of the case is plainly to be seen in the proposals of those 
nationalities that are now coming forward with a new claim to national self-
determination. Invariably any examination of the bill of 
particulars set up by the spokesmen of these proposed new national 
establishments will show that the material point of it all is an endeavor to 
set up a national apparatus for working at mutual cross-purposes with their 
neighbors, to add something to the waste and confusion caused by the national 
discriminations already in force, to violate the rule of Live and Let Live at 
some new point and by some further apparatus of discomfort.

There are nationalities that get along well enough, to all appearance, 
without being "nations" in that militant and obstructive fashion that is 
aimed at in these projected creations of the diplomatic nation-makers. Such 
are the Welsh and the Scotch, for instance. But it is not the object-lesson 
of Welsh or Scottish experience that guides the new projects. The 
nationalities which are now escaping from a rapacious imperialism of the old 
order are being organized and managed by the safe and sane gentlemen of the 
old school, who have got their notions of safety and sanity from the 
diplomatic intrigue of that outworn imperialism out of which these oppressed 
nationalities aim to escape. And these gentlemen of the old school are making 
no move in the direction of tolerance and good will as how should they when 
all their conceptions of what is right and expedient are the diplomatic 
preconceptions of the old regime. They, being gentlemen of the old school, 
will have none of that amicable and unassuming nationality which contents the 
Welsh and the Scotch, who have tried out this matter and have in the end come 
to hold fast only so much of their national pretensions as will do no 
material harm. What is aimed at is not a disallowance of bootless national 
jealousies, but only a shift from an intolerable imperialism on a large scale 
to an ersatz-emperialism drawn on a smaller scale, conducted on the same 
general lines of competitive diplomacy and serving interests of the same 
general kind vested interests of business or of privilege.

The projected new nations are not patterned on the Welsh or the Scottish 
model, but for all that there is nothing novel in their design; and how 
should there be when they are the offspring of the imagination of these safe 
and sane gentlemen of [21] the old school fertilized with the ancient 
conceptions of imperialistic diplomacy and national prestige? In effect it is 
all drawn to the scale and pattern already made famous by the Balkan states. 
It should also be safe to presume that the place and value of these newly 
emerging nations in the comity of peoples under the prospective regime of 
provisional peace will be something not notably different from what the 
Balkan states have habitually placed on view which may be deprecated by many 
well-meaning persons, but which is scarcely to be undone by well-wishing. The 
chances of war and politics have thrown the fortunes of these projected new 
nations into the hands of these politic gentlemen of the old school, and by 
force of inveterate habit these very .practical persons are unable to 
conceive that anything else than a Balkan state is fit to take the place of 
that imperial rule that has now fallen into decay. So Balkan-state national 
establishments appear to be the best there is in prospect in the new world of 
safe democracy.

So true is this that even in those instances, such as the Finns and other 
fragments of the Russian imperial dominions, where a' newly emerging nation 
has set out to go on its way without taking pains to safeguard the grievances 
of the old order even in these instances that should seem to concern no one 
but themselves, the gentlemen of the old school who guard the political 
institutions of the old order in the world at large find it impossible to 
keep their hands off and to let these adventurous pilgrims of hope go about 
their own business in their own way. Self-determination proves to be 
insufferable if it partakes of the new order rather than of the old, at least 
so long as the safe and sane gentlemen of the old school can hinder it by any 
means at their command. It is felt that the vested interests which underlie 
the gentlemen of the old school would not be sufficiently secure in the 
keeping of these unshorn and unshaven pilgrims of hope, and the doubt may be 
well taken. So that, within the intellectual horizon of the practical 
statesmen, the only safe, sane, and profitable manner of national 
establishment and national policy for these newcomers is something after the 
familiar fashion of the Balkan states; and it may also be admitted quite 
broadly that these newly arriving peoples commonly are content to seek their 
national fortunes along precisely these Balkan-state lines, though the Finns 
and their like are perhaps to be counted as an unruly exception to the rule.

These Balkan states, whose spirit, aims, and ways are so admirable in the 
eyes of the gentlemanly keepers of the old political and economic order, are 
simply a case of imperialism in the raw. They are all and several still in 
the pickpocket stage of dynastic state-making, comparable with the state of 
Prussia before Frederick the Great Pickpocket came to the throne. And now, 
with much sage counsel from the safe and sane statesmen of the status quo 
ante, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Croats, Poles and 
Polaks are breathlessly elbowing their way into line with these minuscular 
Machiavellians. Quite unchastened by their age-long experience in adversity 
they are all alike clamoring for national establishments stocked up with all 
the time-tried contrivances for discomfort and defeat. With one hand they are 
making frantic gestures of distress for an "outlet to the sea" by means of 
which to escape obstruction of their over-seas trade by their nationally 
minded neighbors, while with the other hand they are feverishly at work to 
contrive a customs frontier of their own together with other devices for 
obstructing their neighbors' trade and their own, so soon as they shall have 
any trade to obstruct. Such is the force of habit and tradition. In other 
words, these peoples are aiming to become nations in full standing.

And all the while it is plain to all men that a national "outlet to the sea" 
has no meaning in time of peace and in the absence of national governments 
working at cross-purposes. Which comes near to saying that the sole material 
object of these new projects in nation-making is to work at cross-purposes 
with their neighbors across the new-found national frontiers. So also it is 
plain that this mutual working at cross-purposes between the nations hinders 
the keeping of the peace, even when it is all mitigated with all the approved 
apparatus of diplomatic make-believe, compromise, and intrigue just as it is 
plain that the peace is not to be kept by use of armaments, but all the while 
national armaments are also included as an indispensable adjunct of national 
life, in the projects of these new nations of the Balkan pattern. The right 
to carry arms is an inalienable right of national self-determination and an 
indispensable means of self-help, as understood by these nation-makers of the 
old school. So also it is plain that national pretensions in the field of 
foreign trade and investment, and all the diversified expedients for 
furthering and protecting the profitable enterprise of the vested interests 
in foreign parts, run consistently at cross-purposes with the keeping of the 
peace.

And all the while the rule of Live and Let Live, as it works out within the 
framework of the new industrial order, will not tolerate these things. But 
the rule of Live and Let Live, which embodies the world's hope of peace on 
earth and a practicable modicum of good will among men, is not of the essence 
of that timeworn statesmanship which is [22] now busily making the world safe 
for the vested interests. Neglect and disallowance of those things that make 
for embroilment does not enter into the counsels of the nation-makers or of 
those stupendous figures of veiled statecraft that now move in the background 
and are shaping the destinies of these and other nations with a view to the 
status quo ante.

All these peoples that now hope to be nations have long been nationalities. A 
nation is an organization for collective offense and defense, in peace and 
war essentially based on hate and fear of other nations; a nationality is a 
cultural group, bound together by home-bred affinities of language, 
tradition, use and wont, and commonly also by a supposed community of race 
essentially based on sympathies and sentiments of self-complacency within 
itself. The Welsh and the Scotch are nationalities, more or less well 
defined, although they are not nations in the ordinary meaning of the word; 
so also are the Irish, with a difference, and such others as the Finns and 
the Armenians. The American republic is a nation, but not a nationality in 
any full measure. The Welsh and the Scotch have learned the wisdom of Live 
and Let Live, within the peace of the Empire, and they are not moving to 
break bounds and set up a national integrity after the Balkan pattern.

The case of the Irish is peculiar; at least so they say. They, that is to say 
the Irish by sentiment rather than by domicile, the Irish people as 
contrasted with the vested interests of Ulster, of the landlords, of the 
Church, and of the bureaucracy these Irish have long been a nationality and 
are now mobilizing all their force to set up a Balkan state, autonomous and 
defensible, within the formal bounds of the Empire or without. Their case is 
peculiar and instructive. It throws a light on the margin of tolerance, of 
what the traffic will bear, beyond which an increased pressure on a subject 
population will bring no added profit to the vested interests for whose 
benefit the pressure is brought to bear. It is a case of the Common Man hard 
ridden in due legal form by the vested interests of the Island, and of the 
neighboring island, which are duly backed by an alien and biased bureaucracy 
aided and abetted by the priestly pickpockets of the poor. So caught in this 
way between the devil and the deep sea, it is small wonder if they choose in 
the end to follow counsels of desperation and are moving to throw their lot 
into the deep sea of national self-help and international intrigue. They have 
reached the point where they have ceased to say: "It might have been worse." 
The case of the Finns, Jews, and Armenians is not greatly different in 
general effect.

It is easy to fall into a state of perturbation about the evil case of the 
submerged, exploited, and oppressed minor nationalities; and it is not 
unusual to jump to the conclusion that national self-determination will 
surely mend their evil case. National self-determination and national 
integrity are words to conjure with, and there is no denying that very 
substantial results have been known to follow from such conjuring. But self-
determination is not a sovereign remedy, particularly not as regards the 
material conditions of life for the common man, for that somewhat more than 
nine-tenths of the population who always finally have to bear the cost of any 
national establishment. It has been tried, and the point is left in doubt. So 
the case of Belgium or of Serbia during the past four years has been scarcely 
less evil than that of the Armenians or the Poles. Belgium and Serbia were 
nations, in due form, very much after the pattern aimed at in the new 
projected nations already spoken of, whereas the Armenians and the Poles have 
been subject minor nationalities. Belgium, Serbia, and Poland have been 
subject to the ravages of an imperial power which claims rank as a civilized 
people, whereas the Armenians have been manhandled by the Turks. So again, 
the Irish are a subject minor nationality, whereas the Roumanians are a 
nation in due form. In fact the Roumanians are just such a Balkan state as 
the Irish aspire to become. But no doubt the common man is appreciably worse 
off in his material circumstances in Roumania than in Ireland. Japan, too, is 
not only a self-determining nation with a full charge of national integrity, 
but it is a Great Power; yet the common man the somewhat more than nine-
tenths of the population is doubtless worse off in point of hard usage and 
privation in Japan than in Ireland.

In further illustration of this doubt and perplexity with regard to the 
material value of national self-determination, the case of the three 
Scandinavian countries may be worth citing. They are all and several self-
determining nations, in that Pickwickian sense in which any country which is 
not a Great Power may be self-determining in the twentieth century. But they 
differ in size, population, wealth, power, and political consequence. In 
these respects the sequence runs: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the latter being 
the smallest, poorest, least self-determining, and altogether the most 
spectacularly foolish of the lot. But so far as concerns the material 
conditions of life for the common man, they are unmistakably the most 
favorable, or the most nearly tolerable, in Norway, and the least so in 
Sweden. The upshot of evidence from these, and from other instances that 
might be cited, is to leave the point [23] in doubt. It is not evident that 
the common man has anything to gain by national self-determination, so far as 
regards his material conditions of life; nor does it appear, on the evidence 
of these instances, that he has much to lose by that means. 

These Scandinavians differ from the Balkan states in that they perforce have 
no imperialistic ambitions. There may of course be a question on this head so 
far as concerns the frame of mind of the royal establishment in the greater 
one of the Scandinavian kingdoms; there is not much that is worth saying 
about that matter, and the less that is said, the less annoyance. It is a 
matter of no significance, anyway. The Scandinavians are in effect not 
imperialistic, perforce. Which means that in their international relations 
they formally adhere to the rule of Live and Let Live. Not so in their 
domestic policy, however. They have all endowed themselves with all the 
encumbrances of national pretensions and discrimination which their 
circumstances will admit. Apart from a court and church which foot up to 
nothing more comfortable than a gratuitious bill of expense, they are also 
content to carry the burden of a national armament, a protective tariff, a 
national consular service, and a diplomatic service which takes care of a 
moderately burdensome series of treaty agreements governing the trade 
relations of Scandinavian business community all designed for the benefit of 
the vested interests and the kept classes, and all at the cost of the common 
man.

The case of these relatively free, relatively unassuming, and relatively 
equitable national establishments is also instructive. They come as near the 
rule of Live and Let Live as any national establishment well can and still 
remain a national establishment actuated by notions of competitive self-help. 
But all the while the national administration runs along, with nothing better 
to show to any impartial scrutiny than a considerable fiscal burden and a 
moderate volume of hindrance to the country's industry, together with some 
incidental benefit to the vested interests and the kept classes at the cost 
of the underlying community. These Scandinavians occupy a peculiar position 
in the industrial world. They are each and several too small to make up 
anything like a self-contained industrial community, even under the most 
unreserved pressure of national exclusiveness. Their industries necessarily 
are part and parcel of the industrial system at large, with which they are 
bound in relations of give and take at every point. Yet they are content to 
carry a customs tariff of fairly grotesque dimensions and a national consular 
service of more grotesque dimensions still. This situation is heightened by 
their relatively sterile soil, their somewhat special and narrow range of 
natural resources, and their high latitude, which precludes any home growth 
of many of the indispensable materials of industry under the new order. Yet 
they are content to carry their customs tariff, their special commercial 
treaties, and their consular service for the benefit of their vested 
interests. 

It should seem that this elaborate superfluity of national outlay and 
obstruction should work great hardship to the underlying community whose 
industry is called on to carry this burden of lag, leak, and friction. And 
doubtless the burden is sufficiently real. It amounts of course to the 
nation's working at cross-purposes with itself, for the benefit of those 
special interests that stand to gain a little something by it all. But in 
this as in other works of sabotage there are compensating effects, and these 
should not be overlooked; particularly since the case is fairly typical of 
what commonly happens. The waste and sabotage of the national establishment 
and its obstructive policy works no intolerable hardship, because it all runs 
its course and eats its fill within that margin of sabotage and wasteful 
consumption that would have to be taken care of by some other agency in the 
absence of this one. That is to say, something like the same volume of 
sabotage and waste is indispensable to the prosperity 'of business under the 
conditions of the new order, so long as business and industry are managed 
under the conditions imposed by the price system. By one means or another 
prices must be maintained at a profitable level; therefore the output must be 
restricted to a reasonable rate and volume, and wasteful consumption must be 
provided for on pain of a failing market. And all this may as well be taken 
care of by use of a princely court, an otiose church, a picturesque army, a 
well-fed diplomatic and consular service, and a customs frontier. In the 
absence of all this national apparatus of sabotage substantially the same 
results would have to be got at by the less seemly means of a furtive 
conspiracy in restraint of trade among the vested interests. There is always 
something to be said for the national integrity.

The case of these Scandinavian nations, taken in connection and comparison 
with what is to be seen elsewhere, appears to say that a national 
establishment which has no pretensions to power and no imperialistic 
ambitions is preferable, in point of' economy and peaceable behavior, to an 
establishment which carries these attributes of self-determination and self-
help. The more nearly the national integrity and self-determination 
approaches to make-believe the less mischief is it likely to work at home and 
the more nearly will it be compatible with the [24] rule of Live and Let Live 
in dealing with its neighbors. And the further implication is plain without 
argument, that the most beneficent change that can conceivably overtake any 
national establishment would be to let it fall into "innocuous desuetude." 
Apparently, the less the better, with no apparent limit short of the 
vanishing point.

Such appears to be the object-lesson enforced by recent and current events, 
in so far as concerns the material fortunes of the underlying community at 
large as well as the keeping of the peace. But it does not therefore follow 
that all men and classes will have the same interest in so neutralizing the 
nation's powers and disallowing the national pretensions. The existing 
nations are not of a homogeneous make-up within themselves perhaps less so in 
proportion as they have progressively come under the rule of the new order in 
industry and in business. There is an increasingly evident cleavage of 
interest between industry and business, or between production and ownership, 
or between tangible performance and free income one phrase may serve as well 
as another, and neither is quite satisfactory to mark the contrast of 
interest between the common man on the one hand and the vested interests and 
kept classes on the other hand. But it should be sufficiently plain that the 
national establishment and its control of affairs has a value for the vested 
interests different from what it has for the underlying community. 

Quite plainly, the new order in industry has no use or place for national 
discrimination or national pretensions of any kind; and quite plainly such a 
phrase as "national integrity" has no shadow of meaning for this new 
industrial order which overruns national frontiers and overcomes national 
discrimination as best it can, in all directions and all the time. For 
industry as carried on under the new order, the overcoming of national 
discrimination is part of the ordinary day's work. But it is otherwise with 
the new order of business enterprise large-scale, corporate, resting on 
intangible assets, and turning on free income which flows from managerial 
sabotage; The business community has urgent need of an efficient national 
establishment both at home and abroad. A settled government, duly equipped 
with national pretensions, and with legal and military power to maintain the 
sacredness of contracts at home and to enforce the claims of its business men 
aboard such an establishment is invaluable for the conduct of business, 
though its industrial value may not unusually be less than nothing.

Industry is a matter of tangible performance in the way of producing goods 
and services. And in this connection it is well to recall that a vested 
interest is a prescriptive right to get something for nothing. Now any 
project of reconstruction the scope and method of which are governed by 
considerations of tangible performance is likely to allow only a subsidiary 
consideration or something less to the legitimate claims of the vested 
interests, whether they are vested interests of business or of privilege. It 
is more than probable that in such a case national pretensions in the way of 
preferential concessions in commerce and investment will be allowed to fall 
into neglect, so far as to lose all value to any vested interest whose 
fortunes they touch. These things have no effect in the way of net tangible 
performance. They only afford ground for preferential pecuniary rights, 
always at the cost of someone else; but they are of the essence of things in 
that pecuniary order within which the vested interests of business live and 
move. So also such a matter-of-fact project of reconstruction will be likely 
materially to revise out-standing credit obligations, including corporation 
securities, or perhaps even to disallow claims of this character to free 
income on the part of beneficiaries who can show no claim on grounds of 
current tangible performance. All of which is inimical to the best good of 
the vested interests and the kept classes.

Reconstruction which partakes of this character in any sensible degree will 
necessarily be viewed with the liveliest apprehension by the gentlemanly 
statesmen of the old school, by the kept classes, and by the captains of 
finance. It will be deplored as a subversion of the economic order, a 
destruction of the country's wealth, a disorganization of industry, and a 
sure way to poverty, bloodshed, and pestilence. In point of fact, of course, 
what such a project may be counted on to subvert is the dominion of ownership 
by which the vested interests control and retard the rate and volume of 
production. The destruction of wealth in such a case will touch, directly, 
only the value of the securities, not the material objects to which these 
securities have given title of ownership; it would be a disallowance of 
ownership, not a destruction of useful goods. Nor need any disorganization or 
disability of productive industry follow from such- a move; indeed, the 
apprehended cancelment of the claims to income covered by negotiable 
securities would by that much cancel the fixed overhead charges resting on 
industrial enterprise, and so further production by that much. But for those 
persons and classes whose keep is drawn from prescriptive rights of ownership 
or of privilege the consequences of such a shifting of ground from vested 
interest to tangible performance would doubtless be deplorable. In short, 
"Bolshevism is a menace"; and the wayfaring man is likely to ask: A menace to 
whom?

THORSTEIN VEBLEN.
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