Correspondence

Ends and Means

Editors:

David Sachs’ article “On Ends Justifying Means” (DISSENT No. 2) seems to me to have treated too lightly certain ethical questions which have long been a source of division in radical movements. Western Socialism has been characterized by a libertarianism and a humanism which have been seldom equalled in other ideologies of the culture: socialists have often considered human freedom to be the highest value to be striven for and have decried all attempts to devaluate the individual human personality by treating it as instrumental and as an expendable quantity. It is perfectly obvious that the existence of the state is incompatible with the realization of these values. For the state is at least that institution “which possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence” ; it always means the organized constraint of individuals, the suppression of freedom, the systematization of murder, and the abandonment of human love and sympathy as principles of organization. If we accept the state we must, in a sense, accept this. Those who possess an “ethic of ultimate ends,” who believe that the good cannot be obtained by the institutionalization of evil, cannot do this and must always to an extent oppose the state. And such persons have always been of importance in radical movements.

An ethic of ultimate ends is properly opposed in politics by an “ethic of responsibility.” (The distinction is made by Max Weber in an essay which can be recommended to all libertarian socialists, “Politics as a Vocation,” which is reprinted in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, translated by Gerth and Mills.) If we believe that the crucial evaluation of our actions is to be found in an examination of their effects tomorrow, if we accept responsibility for the effects of our day-to-day actions, we cannot be so much concerned with responsibility for the natures of the actions themselves. Then our views concerning the state will be different. Then we must realize that any abandonment of power, state power included, means a rejection of responsibility. And then politics becomes of great relevance, and with it compromise, expediency, and a sharing in the responsibility for the evils committed by the state.

In opposition to Mr. Sachs, I would hold that we must make the choice between the two ethics—and that most of us have chosen an ethic of responsibility. And this acceptance of the state is no light matter, it is not like a taxi-cab that one can take at one’s will; it involves taking a share in administering a justice which is all too blind and taking part in a struggle for power which is often not to our tastes. (For example, I personally think it more or less follows from such an ethic and from the present state of affairs in the United States that socialists must give electoral support to something as inadequate a...