THE COMMON LAW puts an end to the assumption that all entities are equal. In any situation, some will be acting on behalf of others; if indeed this is true, the latter must answer for what is done by the former ¾ the latter are, in a word, responsible.

Thus the problem arises, how is agreement reached when some are principals and others representatives? More than one solutions to this question can be imagined.

The first is familiar as authority; the principals agree, the executive merely executes. This solution may seem plausible, on the ground that one entity would hardly dare to differ from a number of entities, even if he were asked for his opinion. However, it has conceptual objections. Firstly, the principals must, occasionally, find that they were wrong: if the executive simply executes, then he will have done what is wrong, but it will be impossible for the principals to lay any responsibility upon him ¾ he had their authority.

Secondly, whoever takes executive office will be deprived of any voice in council: thus there will be an obvious likelihood that those who have much to contribute will decline to take office, and those who have little to contribute will seek office. This would mean that the officer would be one whom the principals did not regard highly ¾ they would be responsible for one for whom they would prefer not to be responsible.

If the principals choose not to take the risk of granting authority, they must allow the executive the opportunity to say, "Yes, I understand" or "No!" Thus the executive has the same position as the president of the council, viz. primus inter pares . And this is the form democracy takes; the executive is held responsible, equally with the principals. However, the principals have ¾ conceivably ¾ indefinitely many courses from which to choose, the executive has only two.

The question now arises, whether aristocracy† can be reconciled with common law. Is it acceptable for the executive to initiate and the principals respond?

The slightest scrutiny shows that aristocracy is not a system for reaching agreement. It is the nature of a council that it can only hypothesize: the judges, and the people, put its theories to the test. Thus the council must always be ready to learn that a law has failed and requires re-statement: and, normally, one person ¾ or, under some rules of order, two persons ¾ may raise such a question. But it defeats the very purpose of law to allow the executive himself to call the law into question ¾ the function of law is to decide in advance what the executive shall do, to exclude debate in any particular case. Again, the discussion would be prejudiced by the circumstance that the executive introduced the motion; the question, "is this motion unobjectionable?", must be confounded with the question, "does the executive retain our confidence?" (assuming that the council can remove the executive).

A further objection to aristocracy is that any proposal of the executive is at an advantage in a council which proceeds by majority, because he can veto any enactment other than the one he himself proposed, but no other member can veto every motion. Thus the executive would be not merely equal but, in the terminology of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, "more equal".

There is yet another possibility, bureaucracy† ¾ that, instead of principals and executive acting separately, they all meet together, as if they were equals. However, this system is incompatible with decision by majority. The question, "Shall we bell the cat?" would be transformed into, "Shall A, B, C, D, F, et al. send E to bell the cat?", and the question, "Shall we raise/lower the emoluments of the executive?" into, "Shall A, B, C, D, F, et al. give more/less money to E?" These are not motions which affect all entities equally; there would be a question whether a majority was sufficient to adopt the motion, it could plausibly be argued that E should be allowed more ¾ or perhaps less? ¾ voice than A and B.

It appears, then, that common law is incompatible with two forms of society, aristocracy and bureaucracy, and that a third, authority, is at least inadvisable even if not unlawful. Democracy alone remains (notice that under common law the term has its ordinary sense, that the people command someone or something, as contrasted with "direct democracy," where the people act themselves as the posse comitatus.)

Our theory of society has been based on the principle that all men equally are to agree in whatsoever is done. However, this theory is only plausible for public affairs; all men can indeed follow arguments such as those in these pages, common law is indeed only common sense. But in any realm other than public affairs, some people will have only partial knowledge, and some ¾ rather few, we may suppose ¾ will know the Big Picture: there will be generals and specialists. How are these elements to work together?

We can at once exclude authority, the many specialists over-ruling the few generalists; otherwise, there would be no incentive for anyone to become a general.

We are left with aristocracy and democracy; either the generals can agree on a plan and submit it to the specialists, or the other way around.

Imagine that the generals have worked out a plan which is an excellent plan, except for one detail ¾ possibly, such a small detail that only one specialist knows that it is wrong. Then, when the plan is offered by the generals to the assembly, there is a danger that the one specialist will be afraid to oppose it, or even that he will be persuaded to drop his objection because of the delay involved in changing the completed plan. Thus a plan will be adopted which is, certainly, not the right plan (presumably, the society wants to find a satisfactory plan before it acts.)

Now imagine the contrary system, that the specialists work together to develop plans. If one gunner, or one engineer, has an objection, then either his peers will agree with him and the plan will be improved, or else his peers will show him where he is wrong and they are right. Thus any plan that all the specialists agree upon must be good in every detail (unless there are some difficulties that no specialist has mastered.)

This latter method opens up a prospect even more attractive than never being wrong. Suppose the gunners think up a plan, and succeed in getting the other specialists to agree that it could work; that does not prevent the infantry thinking up a different plan, and getting the other specialists to agree that it too could work. Then the generals would have the opportunity to choose from two good plans (or even more than two.)

Is it proper to call the latter method democracy? It is indeed: the generals are "less equal;" they can only accept or reject, they cannot amend the specialists’ plans.

In war, one normally has to decide on the basis of inadequate information ¾ particularly, one does not know what the enemy is expecting one to do. If one can find two or more good plans, one has more chance of gaining the advantage of surprise. Thus even in war, where one expects to take risks and suffer losses, aristocracy is a handicap.

For the sake of secrecy in war, the plan may be made by only a small staff of specialists, but the relationship between generals and specialists remains the same. However, the system could not be relied upon if the chosen few specialists were selected by the generals, rather than by their peers among the specialists ¾ that is to say, if the society were not republican.

Is this only speculation? Far from it ¾ this is the system which was developed by Henry Ford I in his unrelenting campaign to cut costs (the contemporary accounts of Henry I never show him doing anything like work, only standing back and occasionally saying "No!": his payroll was devoid of bean counters and experts in "scientific management") was adopted all over the United States when war required innumerable firms to manufacture new and complex products urgently, was copied by the Japanese in their drive to rebuild a devastated nation, and is now being expounded to the generals as "Total Quality."

Authors by no means sympathetic to the "Total Quality Movement," Daniel C. Morris and Joel S. Brandon, in Re-Engineering Your Business [McGraw-Hill, New York: 1993] describe T. Q. M. as "managing [read, organizing] people who do the work so that the workforce will fine-tune the work processes, without management’s having to understand, analyze, and correct processes themselves."

There will, in a civilized society, be many organizations composed of specialists, for instance scientists. We can see that what these organizations afford to their members is the opportunity to expose their ideas to criticism, to learn from one another. The functioning of the professional society would be defeated if any members were excluded from criticizing any of the others. Intellectual bodies are quite different from the ordinary business, where there are usually representatives of many different specialities working together.

The popular conception of a business is that someone has an idea and then gathers a number of other people around him to put his idea into effect; the more helpers he has, the more profit he can make. This model appears to be essentially aristocratic; the many paid workers could neither have started, nor carry on, without the insight of the proprietor. There are no doubt businesses which work in this way, because the prevailing custom is to hire workers by the hour or the day or the month, rather than putting out the job to the lowest bidder: the hired workers do not lack know-how, but they are in a situation where doing good does not have sharply different results from doing bad. The illuminating counter-example is the giant moving business, Mayflower: this great corporation could claim every fleet-owners’ discount in the market, but it owns no trucks at all: every truck is owned by the man holding the wheel (the corporation does own the trailers.) An independent driver either finds how to keep his costs down, or finds himself losing money.

In business, the forces of competition decide who shall perform what function. In public affairs, officers are not exposed to competition; it is important ¾ even if the officer is required to do no more than follow the law ¾ to choose the right person for the post.

Choosing the officers is, plainly, a question that is best answered by a consensus; the fifteen sergeants know the three captains much better than does the one major.

Republicanism has, we see, an inherent advantage; if the sergeants have chosen their captain, they will be prepared to follow him. We notice that, when a major is killed in action, it is a captain and not a colonel who takes his place; the captain has some claim to represent the lieutenants and sergeants.

Choosing the officers is a political question only if the officer acts for all of the people equally. Thus a county officer must be elected by the county, a state officer by the whole state . . . .

Further, all of the voters must be equally interested. Tax-payers are more interested in democracy than tax-spenders; the latter have a vested interest in government being

The essential function of republicanism is to allow bad officers to be removed without any disturbance ¾ in other words, elections should be hard to win, easy to lose. This is true if one can win only with a majority of the votes, i. e. the winner must have more votes than all the other candidates put together. If an election can be won with a mere plurality, then an incumbent is the more likely to be returned, the more challengers run against him ¾ if there were ten candidates, one might win with only eleven per cent of the votes.