On the Abolition of Political Parties - I
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“Nearly everywhere – often even when dealing with purely technical problems – instead of thinking, one merely takes sides: for or against. Such a choice replaces the activity of the mind. This is an intellectual leprosy; it originated in the political world and then spread through the land, contaminating all forms of thinking.”
“This leprosy is killing us; it is doubtful whether it can be cured without first starting with the abolition of all political parties.” — Simone Weil, On the Abolition of All Political Parties, 1943
Like the nation-state, the political party is a rather new social structure. Parties developed with the establishment of the modern representative republic. At the end of 17th century, the British parliamentary system had developed somewhat primitive political party structures, but it wasn’t until the 19th century these British structures were truly institutionalized as parties. It was in the last decades of the 18th century, with the adoption of the US constitution and then the French Revolution, what we recognize as the modern political party came into being.
Today, with crisis of governance affecting all contemporary republics, the failure of party systems adds to the dysfunction. The modern republican system of government, founded at the very end of the Agrarian Age with roots tracing all the way back to Ancient Rome and Greece, is in desperate need of reform. Such reform requires a necessary questioning of whether political parties need to exist. The wonderful 20th century French political thinker Simone Weil put it quite distinctly, “The evils of political parties are all too evident; therefore, the problem that should be examined is this: do they contain enough good to compensate for their evils and make their preservation desirable.”
Over last two centuries, the development of political parties took two basic tracks. The first is the creation of parties that began in America and followed in a number of other countries. Here the party system is largely dominated by two parties. At best, these parties provided a rudimentary pre-government politics, a politics that nonetheless both failed to evolve democratic government structures or, as it becomes increasingly clear, secure the established republican system. The second path was the one-party system. This was adopted almost as frequently as the two-party system. This model was first offered by the Jacobins during the French Revolution.
Products of their respective revolutions, party systems in the United States and France developed simultaneously. Both took radically different paths. The first party in the US was the Democratic-Republican party, now simply the Democratic party, founded by the realization of Thomas Jefferson and others the new constitutional representative republic needed such political organization. The constitution itself mentions nothing about parties. The parties evolved as essential elements of political process necessary for representative governance, including a politics both preceding and occurring outside the actual halls of government.
In the US, it had quickly became clear elected representatives were cut off from any direct citizen influence except on election day. It was deemed necessary to create an organization, the party, that offered a politics preceding the politics of the representative assembly and, in theory, instill some sort of order on those elected to represent the will of those who elected them. The party’s foundation was at the local level, specifically the county. Party structure provided a place for education, discussion, organization, and a validation of candidates chosen to stand for office.
Across the ocean in revolutionary France, Weil writes of party development, “At the time of the 1789 Revolution, the very notion of ‘party’ did not enter into French political thinking – except as an evil that ought to be prevented.” However, in relatively short order, the Club des Jacobins formed “at first merely providing an arena for free debate.” Weil writes how in revolutionary France, the practice of truly representative governance exited for only a short time. However, it wasn’t with elections that this representation was best manifested, but in the actual structure of politics. “They had something far more important than elections… through the means of the cahiers de revendications (statements of grievances). Most of those who were to become the people’s representatives first became known through their participation in this process, and they retained the warmth of the experience. They could feel that the people were listening to their words, watching to see if their aspirations would be correctly interpreted. For a while – all too briefly – these representatives truly were simple channels for the expression of public opinion.” She adds, “Such a thing was never to exist again.”
Today, our entire notion of politics is exclusively defined by the electoral process. A citizen’s role confined to casting a ballot once every two or four years. Politics is conceived of nothing more than an unending assault of marketing, advertising, and not too cleverly constructed PR comments and stunts. Organized education, deliberative, and decision making processes among the citizenry exist not at all. With only such experience, Weil’s understanding of the cahiers de revendications as an actual fundamental democratic process is inconceivable.
In France, as the Revolution descended into the Terror, “under the double pressure of war and the guillotine” the Jacobins “turned into a totalitarian party.” The Jacobins were to have a much shorter history than their American counterparts owing to the fact the first French republic was an ephemeral affair. Its failure more than a little due to the blood drenched hands of the Jacobins.
In On Revolution, democratic historian Hannah Arendt writes,
“For Robespierre's rule of terror was indeed nothing else but the attempt to organize the whole French people into a single gigantic party machinery - 'the great popular Society is the French people' - through which the Jacobin club would spread a net of party cells all over France; and their tasks were no longer discussion and exchange of opinions, mutual instruction and information on public business, but to spy upon one another and to denounce members and non-members alike.”
Unfortunately for Europe and much of the rest of the world, the Jacobins one-party rule of force, not Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, became exemplary of party process. A century later with the Russian Revolution, the Jacobin example was most tragically instituted by the Bolsheviks. Weil writes, “Factional infighting during the Terror is best summed up by Tomsky’s memorable saying: ‘One party in power and all the others in jail.’ Thus, in Continental Europe, totalitarianism was the original sin of all political parties.” (It should be noted Mikhail Tomsky was one of more than a few who represented a democratic element of the Bolsheviks. He was destroyed by Stalin for his efforts)
With the Bolsheviks' example in the Soviet Union, the one party state became widely adopted across the 20th century, including the CCP in China, and in many nations that gained independence from the European colonial experience. The best example of this Chama Cha Mapinduzi (The Party of the Revolution), which has ruled the United Republic of Tanzania since its independence six decades ago. All three had/have republic in their official title. The party system, whether one-party or two dominant parties, is a product of the modern representative republic.
Over the last century with the rise of broadcast media in the US, the local participatory party structures once populated by the citizenry degenerated. Just as industrialism saw government power transferred from the local and state levels to DC, so too party political processes and power became concentrated in various professional organizations, including the perpetual campaign processes of marketing, advertising, and PR, along with professional lobbyists and interest groups, all overwhelmingly funded by ever greater concentrated wealth. Basically, the parties in the US devolved into nothing more than codified ballot designations. As any greater political construct, the parties are empty vessels.
Arendt amusingly and astutely describes how the modern 20th century representative republic degenerated with the failure of the party system. She writes,
“Through pressure groups, lobbies, and other devices, the voters can indeed influence the actions of their representatives with respect to interest, that is, they can force their representatives to execute their wishes at the expense of the wishes and interests of other groups of voters. In all these instances the voter acts out of concern with his private life and well-being, and the residue of power he still holds in his hands resembles rather the reckless coercion with which a blackmailer forces his victim into obedience than the power that arises out of joint action and joint deliberation.”
Whether in the party experience represented by the US or those that followed the lead of Jacobin France, parties proved inauspicious as democratic organization. Weil diagnosed their greatest fault,
“In fact – and with very few exceptions – when a man joins a party, he submissively adopts a mental attitude which he will express later on with words such as, ‘As a monarchist, as a Socialist, I think that...’ It is so comfortable! It amounts to having no thoughts at all. Nothing is more comfortable than not having to think.”
What better description of the present American political landscape?
Continued
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