MERRIAM EXPLAINS NEED FOR DEMOCRATIC FAITH AVOWAL

"In the end all systems must rely upon the consent of the governed, however deviously obtained, as at present in Germany, Russia, and Italy," Charles E. Merriam of the University of Chicago stated last night before about 200 students in the second of series of six Godkin lectures given in Littauer Center.

"The advantage in the democratic state alone is that the consent of the governed is openly avowed and regularized in appropriate institutional form."

Merriam made a long attack on those political theorists who too closely associate methods of government and systems of economy. "Perhaps nothing in modern life has wrought more destruction than this assumption of the determining quality of factors vaguely called economic," he said.

"This has led to the constant sabotaging of the state on the part of the industrialists fearing regulation, and on the other hand to revolutionary movements directed against the Bourgeois state by Marxians."

The speaker pointed out that democracy has existed hand-in-hand with almost all economic systems from the rural and agrarian to the urban and industrial. "The democratic state is not a by-product of capitalism inseparable from it," he contended.

Some of the tragedies resulting from the confusion of capitalism and democracy, according to Merriam, were that French industrialists, anxious to protect their privileges, preferred Hitlerism to Communism; and "British Tories" wanted to appease Hitler in order save capitalist profits.

Primacy of Economics

"The first thing in democracy is not economics but the dignity of man, the perfectibility of man, the fraternal basis of treatment and government by the consent of the governed," Merriam maintained. "Those who are not willing to stand up and fight for this program will find themselves thrown into hopeless confusion."

Merriam emphasized the importance of the community's attitude in the maintenance and smooth working of democracy. "Relative willingness or unwillingness and relative competence or incompetence will determine the degree in which genuine democracy may operate."

"If there is neither the will for self-government nor the capacity for self-government, the form of democracy means little," he stated. "Those who will democracy must will it above any special form of economic system."