Matthew Arnold and the role of the State - Critical Essay

Contemporary Review, March, 2002 by Brendan A. Rapple

Arnold's doctrine of the 'aliens' and 'remnant', though stimulating, is highly ambiguous. If not politicians, how in fact, he asked in 'Numbers', could they 'recover the unsound majority?' Would they be paid by the State as some branch of a Civil Service? Would they constitute some sort of 'think-tank' or 'brains-trust' in either a private or public capacity? Would they influence society by writing letters to The Times, preaching in churches and chapels, teaching in educational institutions? Moreover, how exactly did Arnold propose to reconcile the ambivalence over his frequent championing of increased equality in society and his doctrine of the necessarily elite 'remnant'? The existence of a clerisy would seem to signify a meritocratic rather than an egalitarian society. Did he mean that everyone in his ideal State would have an equal chance to become one of the 'children of light?' Arnold did not provide clear-cut answers to these questions apart from maintaining that the 'aliens'/'remnant', whoever they we re, would somehow, transcending all individuals and social classes, embody the collective 'best self' of the State, that is the 'nation in its collective and corporate character', and in so doing help to lead the 'ordinary self' of the majority to true culture and perfection.

Though Arnold considered that the State is an entity independent of those who compose it, just as a contract exists outside of those who sign it, he clearly recognised, a government employee himself, that the State must have an executive to represent the community. Indeed, much of the time he referred to the State he was thinking of an entity with a monarch, a parliament, ministers, political parties, civil service, that is a State synonymous with a bureaucratic government. Frequently, when he argued for increased State involvement in society he had in mind specific policies to be set in motion and carried out by the government in power. So, what connection can be made between Arnold's two distinct treatments of the State? Though he certainly did not spell it out in any patent manner, it is likely that he believed that when the normal, practical State will have been transformed by means of increased public intervention on the Continental model, it will then constitute in an institutionalized manner the higher reason and the 'best self' of the theoretical State. One of Arnold's clearest statements detailing how a modern society could be best attained is found in the conclusion of his 1868 Schools and Universities on the Continent where his main intention was to reveal that England had much to learn from the Continent in this regard:

No one of open mind, and not hardened in routine and prejudice, could observe for so long and from so near as I observed it, the civil organisation of France, Germany. Italy, Switzerland, Holland, without having the conviction forced upon him that these countries have a civil organisation which has been framed with forethought and design to meet the wants of modern society; while our civil organisation in England still remains what time and chance have made it.