یکشنبه ۲۵ شهریور ۰۳ | ۱۴:۲۰ ۹ بازديد
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what they call the "farm population" landless workers, cottagers, and owners of
small plots of land, who have no interest in a protective tariff on agricultural
products. When the labor parties make some demand on behalf of a group of
workers, they always talk of the great mass of the working people and gloss over the
fact that the interests of trade-unionists employed in different branches of
production are not identical, but, on the contrary, actually antagonistic, and that
even within individual industries and concerns there are sharp conflicts of interest.
This is one of the two fundamental weaknesses of all parties aiming at privileges
on behalf of special interests. On the one hand, they are obliged to rely on only a
small group, because privileges cease to be privileges when they are granted to the
majority; but, on the other hand, it is only in their guise as the champions and
representatives of the majority that they have any prospect of realizing their
demands. The fact that many parties in different countries have sometimes
succeeded in overcoming this difficulty in carrying on their propaganda and have
managed to imbue each social stratum or group with the conviction that its members
may expect special advantages from the triumph of the party speaks only for the
diplomatic and tactical skill of the leadership and for the want of judgment and the
political immaturity of the voting masses. It by no means proves that a real solution
of the problem is, in fact, possible. Of course, one can simultaneously promise city-
dwellers cheaper bread and farmers higher prices for grain, but one cannot keep
both promises at the same time. It is easy enough to promise one group that one
will support an increase in certain government expenditures without a corresponding
reduction in other government expenditures, and at the same time hold out to
another group the prospect of lower taxes; but one cannot keep both these promises
at the same time either. The technique of these parties is based on the division of
society into producers and consumers. They are also wont to make use of the usual
hypostasis of the state in questions of fiscal policy that enables them to advocate
new expenditures to be paid out of the public treasury without any particular
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concern on their part over how such expenses are to be defrayed, and at the same
time to complain about the heavy burden of taxes.
The other basic defect of these parties is that the demands they raise for each
particular group are limitless. There is, in their eyes, only one limit to the quantity
to be demanded: the resistance put up by the other side. This is entirely in keeping
with their character as parties striving for privileges on behalf of special interests.
Yet parties that follow no definite program, but come into conflict in the pursuit of
unlimited desires for privileges on behalf of some and for legal disabilities for
others, must bring about the destruction of every political system. People have been
coming to recognize this ever more clearly and have begun to speak of a crisis of the
modern state and of a crisis of the parliamentary system. In reality, what is involved
is a crisis of the ideologies of the modern parties of special interests.
3. The Crisis of Parliamentarism and the Idea of a Diet
Representing Special Groups
Parliamentarism, as it has slowly developed in England and in some of her
colonies since the seventeenth century, and on the European continent since the
overthrow of Napoleon and the July and February Revolutions, presupposes the
general acceptance of the ideology of liberalism. All who enter a parliament
charged with the responsibility of there deciding how the country shall be governed
must be imbued with the conviction that the rightly understood interests of all parts
and members of society coincide and that every kind of special privilege for
particular groups and classes of the population is detrimental to the common good
and must be eliminated. The different parties in a parliament empowered to perform
the functions assigned to it by all the constitutions of recent times may, of course,
take different sides in regard to particular political questions, but they must consider
themselves as the representatives of the whole nation, not as representatives of
particular districts or social strata. Above all their differences of opinion there must
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prevail the conviction that, in the last analysis, they are united by a common purpose
and an identical aim and that only the means to the attainment of the goal toward
which they all aspire are in dispute. The parties are not separated by an
unbridgeable gulf nor by conflicts of interests that they are prepared to carry on to
the bitter end even if this means that the whole nation must suffer and the country be
brought to ruin. What divides the parties is the position they take in regard to
concrete problems of policy. There are, therefore, only two parties: the party in
power and the one that wants to be in power. Even the opposition does not seek to
obtain power in order to promote certain interests or to fill official posts with its
party members, but in order to translate its ideas into legislation and to put them into
effect in the administration of the country.
Only under these conditions are parliaments or parliamentary governments
practicable. For a time they were realized in the Anglo-Saxon countries, and some
traces of them can still be found there today. On the European continent, even
during the period usually characterized as the golden age of liberalism, one could
really speak only of a certain approximation to these conditions. For decades now,
conditions in the popular assemblies of Europe have been something like their direct
opposite. There are a great number of parties, and each particular party is itself
divided into various subgroups, which generally present a united front to the outside
world, but usually oppose one another within the party councils as vehemently as
they oppose the other parties publicly. Each particular party and faction feels itself
appointed to be the sole champion of certain special interests, which it undertakes to
lead to victory at any cost. To allot as much as possible from the public coffers to
"our own," to favor them by protective tariffs, immigration barriers, "social
legislation," and privileges of all kinds, at the expense of the rest of society, is the
whole sum and substance of their policy.
As their demands are, in principle, limitless, it is impossible for any one of these
parties ever to achieve all the ends it envisages. It is unthinkable that what the
agrarian or labor parties strive for could ever be entirely realized. Every party
seeks,
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nevertheless, to attain to such influence as will permit it to satisfy its desires as far
as possible, while also taking care always to be able to justify to its electors why all
their wishes could not be fulfilled. This can be done either by seeking to give in
public the appearance of being in the opposition, although the party is actually in
power, or by striving to shift the blame to some force not answerable to its
influence: the sovereign, in the monarchical state; or, under certain circumstances,
foreign powers or the like. The Bolsheviks cannot make Russia happy nor the
socialists Austria because "western capitalism" prevents it. For at least fifty years
antiliberal parties have ruled in Germany and Austria, yet we still read in their
manifestoes and public statements, even in those of their "scientific" champions,
that all existing evils are to be blamed on the dominance of "liberal" principles.
A parliament composed of the supporters of the antiliberal parties of special
interests is not capable of carrying on its business and must, in the long run,
disappoint everyone. This is what people mean today and have meant for many
years now when they speak of the crisis of parliamentarism.
As the solution for this crisis, some demand the abolition of democracy and the
parliamentary system and the institution of a dictatorship. We do not propose to
discuss once again the objections to dictatorship. This we have already done in
sufficient detail.
A second suggestion is directed toward remedying the alleged deficiencies of a
general assembly composed of members elected directly by all the citizens, by either
supplementing or replacing it altogether with a diet composed of delegates chosen
by autonomous corporative bodies or guilds formed by the different branches of
trade, industry, and the professions. The members of a general popular assembly, it
is said, lack the requisite objectivity and the knowledge of economic affairs. What
is needed is not so much a general policy as an economic policy. The
representatives of industrial and professional guilds would be able to come to an
agreement on questions whose solution either eludes entirely the delegates of
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constituencies formed on a merely geographical basis or becomes apparent to them
only after long delay.
In regard to an assembly composed of delegates representing different
occupational associations, the crucial question about which one must be clear is how
a vote is to be taken, or, if each member is to have one vote, how many
representatives are to be granted to each guild. This is a problem that must be
resolved before the diet convenes; but once this question is settled, one can spare
oneself the trouble of calling the assembly into session, for the outcome of the
voting is thereby already determined. To be sure, it is quite another question
whether the distribution of power among the guilds, once established, can be
maintained. It will always be—let us not cherish any delusions on this score—
unacceptable to the majority of the people. In order to create a parliament
acceptable to the majority, there is no need of an assembly divided along
occupational lines. Everything will depend on whether the discontent aroused by
the policies adopted by the deputies of the guilds is great enough to lead to the
violent overthrow of the whole system. In contrast to the democratic system, this
one offers no guarantee that a change in policy desired by the overwhelming
majority of the population will take place. In saying this, we have said everything
that needs to be said against the idea of an assembly constituted on the basis of
occupational divisions. For the liberal, any system which does not exclude every
violent interruption of peaceful development is, from the very outset, out of the
question.
Many supporters of the idea of a diet composed of guild representatives think that
conflicts should be settled, not by the submission of one faction to another, but by
the mutual adjustment of differences. But what is supposed to happen if the parties
cannot succeed in reaching agreement? Compromises come about only when the
threatening specter of an unfavorable issue induces each party to the dispute to make
some concession. No one prevents the different parties from coming to an
agreement even in a parliament composed of delegates elected directly by the whole
nation. No one will be able to compel agreement in a diet consisting of deputies
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chosen by the members of occupational associations.
Thus, an assembly so constituted cannot function like a parliament that serves as
the organ of a democratic system. It cannot be the place where differences of
political opinion are peacefully adjusted. It is not in a position to prevent the violent
interruption of the peaceful progress of society by insurrection, revolution, and civil
war. For the crucial decisions that determine the distribution of political power in
the state are not made within its chambers or during the elections that decide its
composition. The decisive factor in determining the distribution of power is the
relative weight assigned by the constitution to the different corporate associations in
the shaping of public policy. But this is a matter that is decided outside the
chambers of the diet and without any organic relationship to the elections by which
its members are chosen.
It is therefore quite correct to withhold the name "parliament" from an assembly
consisting of representatives of corporate associations organized along occupational
lines. Political terminology has been accustomed, in the last two centuries, to make
a sharp distinction between a parliament and such an assembly. If one does not
wish to confound all the concepts of political science, one does well to adhere to this
distinction.
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, as well as a number of syndicalists and guild
socialists, following in this respect recommendations already made in earlier days
by many continental advocates of a reform in the upper chamber, have proposed
letting two chambers exist side by side, one elected directly by the whole nation,
and the other composed of deputies elected from constituencies divided along
occupational lines. However, it is obvious that this suggestion in no way remedies
the defects of the system of guild representation. In practice, the bicameral System
can function only if one house has the upper hand and has the unconditional power
to impose its will on the other, or if, when the two chambers take different positions
on an issue, an attempt at a compromise solution must be made. In the absence of
such an attempt, however, the conflict remains to be settled outside the chambers of
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parliament, in the last resort by force alone. Twist and turn the problem as one will,
one always returns in the end to the same insurmountable difficulties. Such are the
stumbling blocks on which all proposals of this and a similar kind must come to
grief, whether they are called corporativism, guild socialism, or anything else. The
impracticability of these schemes is admitted when people finally content
themselves by recommending a completely inconsequential innovation: the
establishment of an economic council empowered to serve solely in an advisory
capacity.
The champions of the idea of an assembly composed of guild deputies labor
under a serious delusion if they think that the antagonisms that today rend the fabric
of national unity can be overcome by dividing the population and the popular
assembly along occupational lines. One cannot get rid of these antagonisms by
tinkering with technicalities in the constitution. They can be overcome only by the
liberal ideology.
4. Liberalism and the Parties of Special Interests
The parties of special interests, which see nothing more in politics than the
securing of privileges and prerogatives for their own groups, not only make the
parliamentary system impossible; they rupture the unity of the state and of society.
They lead not merely to the crisis of parliamentarism, but to a general political and
social crisis. Society cannot, in the long run, exist if it is divided into sharply
defined groups, each intent on wresting special privileges for its own members,
continually on the alert to see that it does not suffer any setback, and prepared, at
any moment, to sacrifice the most important political institutions for the sake of
winning some petty advantage.
To the parties of special interests, all political questions appear exclusively as
problems of political tactics. Their ultimate goal is fixed for them from the start.
Their aim is to obtain, at the cost of the rest of the population, the greatest possible
advantages and privileges for the groups they represent. The party platform is
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intended to disguise this objective and give it a certain appearance of justification,
but under no circumstances to announce it publicly as the goal of party policy. The
members of the party, in any case, know what their goal is; they do not need to have
it explained to them. How much of it ought to be imparted to the world is, however,
a purely tactical question.
All antiliberal parties want nothing but to secure special favors for their own
members, in complete disregard of the resulting disintegration of the whole structure
of society. They cannot withstand for a moment the criticism that liberalism makes
of their aims. They cannot deny, when their demands are subjected to the test of
logical scrutiny, that their activity, in the last analysis, has antisocial and destructive
effects and that even on the most cursory examination it must prove impossible for
any social order to arise from the operations of parties of special interests
continually working against one another. To be sure, the obviousness of these facts
has not been able to damage the parties of special interests in the eyes of those who
lack the capacity to look beyond the immediate present. The great mass of people
do not inquire what will happen the day after tomorrow or later on. They think of
today and, at most, of the next day. They do not ask what must follow if all other
groups too, in the pursuit of their special interests, were to display the same
unconcern for the general welfare. They hope to succeed not only in realizing their
own demands, but also in beating down those of others. For the few who apply
higher standards to the activities of political parties, who demand that even in
political action the categorical imperative be followed ("Act only on that principle
which you can will at the same time to be a universal law, i.e., so that no
contradiction results from the attempt to conceive of your action as a law to be
universally complied with"), the ideology of the parties of special interests certainly
has nothing to offer.
Socialism has gained a considerable advantage from this logical deficiency in the
position adopted by the parties of special interests. For many who are unable to
grasp the great ideal of liberalism, but who think too clearly to be content with
demands for privileged treatment on behalf of particular groups, the principle of
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socialism took on a special significance. The idea of a socialist society—to which
one cannot, in spite of its necessarily inherent defects, which we have already
discussed in detail, deny a certain grandeur of conception—served to conceal and, at
the same time, to vindicate the weakness of the position taken by the parties of
special interests. It had the effect of diverting the attention of the critic from the
activities of the party to a great problem, which, whatever one may think of it, was
at all events deserving of serious and exhaustive consideration.
In the last hundred years, the socialist ideal, in one form or another, has found
adherents among many sincere and honest people. A number of the best and noblest
men and women have accepted it with enthusiasm. It has been the guiding star of
distinguished statesmen. It has achieved a dominant position at the universities and
has served as a source of inspiration to youth. It has so filled the thoughts and fed
the emotions of both the past and the present generation that
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