Society And its Purpose
Book 2 - The End of Society
CHAPTER 15
Political parties
265. All we have said clearly indicates that civil society, because of its intimate nature and end (which condition its existence and successful progress), requires 1. that the rights of all be respected and maintained, and 2. the use of rights be tempered and directed by special moral duties.
Political parties impede this justice and social morality; they corrode society, and are an evil, confounding the expectation of philosophers and rendering their fine theories useless. Political parties are formed by human beings who do not aim at what is just or morally upright and virtuous in what they do. Otherwise, they would not say they belonged to a party but to the ranks of upright citizens whose party (if we could call it that) is the whole of society itself.
266. The origin of political parties can be considered as threefold: 1. the effect of material interests; 2. the effect of opinionsfirmly held by a certain number of members of the society, and finally 3. the result of popular passion momentarily aroused by demagogues who themselves are moved by material interests, opinion or ambitious passion.
267. Parties originating from interests are formed by people from the different classes or conditions which compose civil society but whose social advantages collide. The proletariat, the rich people, the aristocracy, the heads of society naturally have different inclinations because they have interests which are partly different; these inclinations produce corresponding opinions. In turn the inclinations, expressed and supported by these opinions as they become hereditary, dynastic or corporative, are easily made into formal parties as soon as such classes of people unite in mutual understanding,.
This usually happens either when some energetic person places himself at their head to direct their complex action or when circumstances prompt mutual understanding among members who share the same condition. The extent of the parties corresponds more or less to the extent of interests: each interest can have its own party to represent and defend it. Agricultural workers can form a political party which collides with manufacturing and trading parties. Trade itself can be divided into as many parties as there are objects constituting the matter of trade: we see for instance in France how fiercely makers of sugar from beet and traders in sugar from the colonies defend their opposing interests. The size of a party must not be measured solely by the extent of interests which are its object, but also by the number of citizens involved. Thus, not long ago in the United States of America, we saw the North defend trade restrictions because of its manufacturing industry while the agricultural South fiercely upheld freedom of trade.
268. Parties formed by opinions do not normally enjoy great strength unless the opinions themselves have interests as their concealed origin and foundation. If so, parties belong to the first class we have discussed. Parties of this kind can also lack strength if their opinions are not supported by ancient beliefs and ingrained customs, of which the strongest and most tenacious are those going back to the oldest origins and more religiously rooted in families.
269. Finally, parties formed by popular passion are generally violent. Their strength can destroy the best established institutions, unless some outside cause intervenes to moderate them. However, as long as they are not supported by interests or ancient opinions and national and family customs, they are totally without durability.
270. Clearly, whatever the origin of these different kinds of parties, their source is always ignoble and ominous. Justice and morality do not enter the minds of party-people. Their excitement, which can become enthusiasm, delirium and fury, is the result of much lower principles. Nothing could be more harmful for the preservation and natural function of civil society than political parties founded within society. This observation is even more regrettable to the extent that each citizen, who must necessarily belong to one level or other of society, has inclinations, opinions, habits and passions corresponding to that level. Even those who cannot be said to take sides, and generally show they love what is just and upright, can scarcely lack a certain kind of hidden instinct which inclines them to one rather than another of the different parties. Consequently they favour different parties negatively or indirectly, and at critical times their inclination, hardly noticeable in time of calm, swings the social balance.
271. One of the most important questions for a politician, therefore, and one of the most difficult problems to be resolved by the philosophy of politics is how to defend civil association from the danger of parties, and make the peaceful principles of justice and moral rectitude, which alone can lead society to its true end, constantly prevail over the blind hotheadedness of party people.
272. Various measures have been proposed against the danger of parties, who remove from government and governed the necessary calm for discerning and using what is just and upright as the sole guide of personal actions. These measures, considered in general, can be reduced to the following:
1. No party should prevail over another, but each be so balanced that any two in conflict would collide at that level (system of balance or social antagonism).
2. One of the parties should so clearly prevail over the others that, having nothing to fear from the others, it loses any will for new enterprises; all the other parties are dominated, restrained and regulated by its overall power (system of absolutism).
273. If we examine these measures, both put forward as a defence of society against the danger of parties, we must conclude that the knowledge and ability of human beings to direct human society is limited and powerless. Society would lack any serious guarantee if, in addition to human provisions, it could not rely on a higher providence to keep continual watch over its preservation and government. Let us consider both measures briefly and simply.
274. A society preserved by ceaseless party antagonism is a society in which continual strife reigns; peaceful contentment of spirit, the very purpose of society, is totally lacking. Where the strength of each combating party is more or less equal, the struggle is continuous and indecisive. This may be sufficient to prevent the society’s being sacrificed to the power of one party, but will never suffice to procure the contentment of the individual spirits that compose the society. Indeed the members experience greater disturbance from the continual, indecisive fighting.(84)
275. In the second place, it is not difficult to imagine some equality of strength between the largest parties of society, for example, the democratic, aristocratic and monarchic parties, which can be maintained for a time. But minor parties, which could be as numerous as the possible different interests, opinions and customs, can never remain in a state of equilibrium. Equally balanced parties may produce a certain equity in public dispositions, but the imbalance of minor parties opens the way to injustice in direct proportion to the intensity of their heated emotions.
276. Finally, it can never be a maxim of State that a balanced antagonism must be established and maintained between parties, because no human being or power exists that is willing or able to put such a maxim into practice. If this power did exist, it would have to be far stronger than all the parties it holds in balance. But a power that is stronger than all the parties either is, or is not, a party itself. A party dominating and maintaining equality between other parties is not a case of equilibrium being used to save the society from parties, but, as we said, of making one party prevail outright over all the others. If on the other hand the power, which is greater than that of the parties, does not belong to any party, the antagonism of equal parties is not sufficient of itself to save society; something is needed from outside all the parties, like Archimedes’ fulcrum. The first of the proposed measures, therefore, is insufficient to obtain the end, that is, the protection of civil association from the harm threatened by the political parties formed within the association.
277. The second measure, which we now examine, is also subject to difficulties that do not give society much hope for better protection and guarantee. There is no doubt that whenever one party dominates all others, it can level and govern them. In the United States, for example, after 1801 when the democratic party came to power and prevailed completely over the aristocratic party, great political parties ceased to exist because the people were the majority and became all-powerful. In the case of the Venetian aristocracy considered as a party (although it should more correctly be considered a government), we can easily understand why there never was another State with so few political parties. We can say the same about absolute monarchies.
At this point, however, we must distinguish forms of government from dominant parties. The purpose of any form of government whatever is universal justice, equity and every moral virtue, as we have said. The purpose of a dominant party is, on the contrary, its own self, its own advantage. Clearly, therefore, whenever a party places itself at the head of public affairs, freedom perishes, because justice and virtue have perished — something which no one wants. It is true that a party which has taken over government and power acquires from its responsibility views of justice and equity not held previously. But, apart from the consideration that some time must pass before the newly governing party has acquired the habits of justice and morality proper to governments, this would be a case of things functioning well socially because a party has ceased to be a party and become a just government, not because one of the parties is the government.
278. In the second place, it is true that all the small parties are suppressed when a prevalent force makes itself felt in society. This is not the case with large parties. Great power becomes burdensome to all members of society. As intelligence slowly develops in those subject to government, injustice and arbitrary decisions are found in many of the ruling enactments. Times of great social crises then arrive when minorities increase in strength as feelings spill over into enthusiasm. Through these feelings the ideas of some become ferocious; the ideas of others, generous to the point of heroism. Many of the weak sacrifice themselves fearlessly and unhesitatingly to challenge strength immensely greater than theirs, and the place of those who succumb is taken by still greater numbers.
The spirit of freedom and independence, which harmonises so well with everyone’s self-love, spreads everywhere; the attacking party, smaller and weaker at first, nearly always wins. At these times, the anarchy of ideas in individual minds balances the anarchy manifested by the society. No one knows what kind of State will result or who will hold power; this is beyond human knowledge. Only Providence from on high determines the new destinies of nations, which undergo such a crisis without knowing why. What long-term guarantee therefore can be given to a society in which one party prevails over all others, or any force whatever comes to dominate all the parties?
279. My conclusion, drawn from the manifest inefficiency of the two measures proposed for protecting society from the harm done by parties, is the following. No political combination is sufficient to firmly guarantee society from the bad effect of political parties. This can be done only by preventing their formation, or, if they are formed, by reinforcing and encouraging them as little as possible. But how can their formation be prevented or, if formed, how can they be held in check?
280. As we have seen, by `political party’ I mean a certain number of people who associate expressly or tacitly for the purpose of using their combined strength to influence civil society and make it serve their own advantage. The purpose of a party is not justice, equity and moral virtue, but its own advantage. Justice, equity and virtue are the contrary of party. The only way therefore to impede the formation of political parties and keep them as moderate as possible is `to sow early in the spirit of the individuals who compose society the seeds of justice and moral, religious virtues, and above all to educate future generations in such a way that youth conceives a love for all that is just, upright and virtuous.’
281. The health of society must ultimately be sought in the probity and moral virtue of the individuals composing it. This is the only true and stable guarantee of its utility and existence. I repeat: public good must be sought in the private citizen; social justice in individual justice. The foundation stone of the social edifice must be virtue, buried deep in the human heart.(85)
282. No human being can lay this stone so that it remains immovable; only the Providence of God, who created the human race and never loses sight of it, is capable of the task. We will try to clarify this by the observations made in the next book.
Notes
(84) As we observed elsewhere, this growth in disturbance of human spirits reaches its extreme when the object of the political party is by its nature unobtainable; consequently, the efforts to obtain it remain perpetually frustrated. This truth is obvious if we consider the nature of those parties which aim at the perfect material equality of human beings, that is, not `equality before the law' but equality understood in the way the populace understand it, an equality in wealth and every other good. But this purpose can never be entirely obtained because it is contrary to the laws of nature. This explains the irritability, unrest and activity of all radicals and equalisers, in a word, of all those who cling to the most populist understanding of democratic principles.
(85) J. de Maistre made a noble affirmation when he said that `uprightness of heart and habitual purity of intention can have influences and results which extend much further than is generally thought' (Les soirées de Saint-Pétersburg, tom. 1, pag. 17). A difficult but very fruitful topic for moralists would be the investigation and description of these hidden, remote influences and results of habitual purity of intention and constant uprightness of heart.