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Essay |
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by Mortimer J.
Adler
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By Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.
I. INTRODUCTION 1. This paper has a twofold intention. a. The first is to discuss the problem of political parties, -- their justification and status, -- in a society which requires political democracy as the set of political institutions appropriate for the government of men living under modern social and economic conditions. (By these modern conditions I mean such things as the economic forms of production and distribution in the industrial era; the organization of labor in relation to economic enterprise; the intensity and extensity of communication among men living in geographical separation and, consequently, the physical enlargement of the civic association; the approximation to universal education; the spread of literacy, etc.) There are two points to be noted here: (1) That modern society is or tends toward a democracy in its physical and economic conditions, whether in a given instance its political forms are outwardly democratic, as in France, England and the United States, or antidemocratic, as in Italy, Germany and Russia.[1] (a) Not only does Russia publicize its claim to being democratic and make constitutional efforts in that direction which are, of course, at once vitiated by the persistence of its totalitarian regime; but even Germany and Italy give an appearance of democracy, -- though they abominate the thought and word, -- an appearance which is a reverse and distorted image.[2] Thus, by the pressure of propaganda and the exercise of brutal force, the rulers of Germany and Italy try to make it appear that they have a mandate from the people for their policies. The autocratic wolves of today must put on the sheep's clothing of democratic forms, even though the bark of the wolf is so blatant and continuous that no one can be deceived by the disguise. (b) This is perfect confirmation of an ancient and Aristotelian insight: that political institutions and arrangements do not exist in a social vacuum, nor are they prior to the society which they constitute. A constitution does not create the society which it organizes politically. The physical and economic conditions of community life determine the range of applicable constitutions. The question, What is the best government absolutely, always calls for utopian solutions, since the solutions are given quite apart from the actual conditions of any historic community. The practical question must always be, What is the best government for a community living under these determinate conditions, conditions which are physical or cultural, economic or social? (I mention all this to explain my use of the word 'democracy' in an essentially non-political sense to name the complex of conditions which characterize European communities today, and to announce that I shall try to approach the problem of parties in an Aristotelian rather than a Platonic manner, not seeking an ideal solution but a practicable one in view of determinations which are pre-political.) And, if I may be permitted one further digression, this must not be taken to mean that, in the order of human associations, the political form is not supreme. The conditions which I have called pre-political are as matter, -- not pure matter but relatively determinate and disposed matter, -- in relation to political constitutions as the ultimate form of human association. Though form is prior to matter in being and in the universe as a whole, it is not prior in the temporal order of generation, in which the limited potentialities of matter specifically disposed limit the range of corporeal forms which can be evoked in natural change. So in the historical order of social change, material dispositions of the sort we have called pre-political are temporally prior and impose restrictions upon the range of applicable constitutions. A determinate historical community does not have unlimited political potentialities. Thus, for instance, viewed as matter, economic, cultural and social democracy will not receive the political form of 'direct democracy' which Greek theorists discussed and Greek states tried. Direct and representative democracies are analogical, not univocal. The same may be said for every other political form known to Greek theory and practice: totalitarian despotism through the rulership of a forcefully dominant party is only analogical with the forms of ancient tyranny. The principle of analogy in political forms can be seen in terms of the radical difference in the pre-political matter which receives these forms. (2) This leads to our second point, namely, that the problem of political parties which we are about to consider is best viewed as a local and not a universal question in politics. To see it thus is, again, an insistence upon being practical rather than utopian, or theoretical, in our political thinking. The party today is an instrument of representative or even totalitarian government in any society which is democratic in a prepolitical sense. In that specific sense, there have not always been political parties. To confuse parties as they exist today with factions, classes or estates in ancient and medieval communities is to commit the error of generalization which always follows ignorance of analogy. If I may be permitted to use the words "social democracy" for that complex of pre-political conditions which determine the potentialities of existing European communities to receive political forms, then I can say that the problem of parties is a way of focusing the political problem of our day, which is the problem of inventing, or through analogy of adapting, a truly democratic constitution as the political form which is not the best absolutely, but the best for communities which are socially democratic. I do not think this problem is yet solved, either by contemporary political thinkers or as a matter of fact by currently prevailing democratic political institutions. John Dewey recently said: "The assumption… is that there are some nations, to which we belong, that have already realized the democratic ideal. In the sense that we still have forms of representative government, this is a true assumption. But the belief that we have actually attained a democratic society is a delusion which, if it is persisted in, may be fatal to whatever democracy we have managed to achieve."[3] In other words, the conditions of democracy exist, but they have not yet achieved their political fruition.[4] This is indicated not only by the failures of political democracy in the so-called democratic countries, but also, and most impressively, by the atavistic totalitarian regimes which are partly the consequence of the imperfections of existing democratic institutions to cope with modern conditions. And at the very center of this failure is the party which is both the offspring of political democracy or representative government and, like many an offspring, the thorn in its side. b. I said at the beginning that I had two intentions in this paper. The first, as indicated, is to discuss parties as involved in the practical, not utopian, problem of discovering, or inventing, political institutions which shall be democratic in the sense of being the best for the government of socially democratic communities. My second, and deeper, intention is to use this whole discussion as a pretext for raising some questions which seem to me crucial to the nature of politics as a practical science. I shall indicate the direction of these questions here only by saying that ethics and politics, as the two correlatively architectonic disciplines in the practical order, are not and cannot be equally adequate in the solution of their respective problems. It is, of course, politics, not ethics, which is deficient in this comparison. And it is the deficiency of politics which raises problems for the individual who morally has political as well as moral obligations. (1) That my second intention concerns me more deeply can be explained in two ways, which I report as a kind of confession relevant to these efforts: (a) Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, I am a man of books rather than of action. I have no political experience from which to speak, unless one can say that living in a university for twenty years is a more than sufficient substitute for immersion in the affairs of city or state. (And I might add that my present university is one in which the problems of democratic government are very much obscured by those of party politics.) However that may be, I remain more concerned with politics in discourse than in action, though I acknowledge this as a defect in character and apologize for it. (b) And, in the second place, I do not know the solution of the problem I have proposed, the problem of parties and truly democratic government, nor can I learn it from any writer whose works I have read. As a consequence I have been led to reflect upon the nature of political philosophy itself. Speaking now as an individual, I have been disturbed by what seems to me a lack of sufficient political wisdom to direct my participation in current political affairs. In contrast, there appears to be adequate ethical wisdom to direct me in the conduct of my private moral life. And this ethical wisdom seems to include the point that, being a citizen as well as a person, I have a moral obligation to act politically, in whatever position I may find myself, whether as ruler or ruled, or as both in different relations. But if political action inevitably leads under modern conditions to participation in parties, -- as perhaps it has always led in the past to affiliation with factions or estates, -- and if parties as presently constituted in democratic or totalitarian regimes seem to be opposed to the common good, which, of course, remains to be shown, then like Balaam's ass I am in suspended animation between alternatives, the difference being that in my case they are equally unattractive: no political action, on the one hand, or corrupt political action, on the other. Faced with this apparently insoluble dilemma, I tried to find in the nature of political problems and political science generally the reasons for such difficulties. (1) I have now exposed the two intentions of this paper and they are seen to be obviously related. They are in fact so reciprocally ordered to one another that it may be difficult to move in the dimension of either problem without being at the same time involved in the other. I shall, however, try to separate the question for the sake of clarity, begging the reader to perform the necessary acts of cross-reference and supplementation, as the discussion proceeds. 2. The discussion will proceed in the following order: a. The difference between ethics and politics as practical domains. b. The inadequacy of traditional political theory with respect to the present crisis of democracy and the problem of parties. c. Conclusions.
Footnotes: 1. It is a hundred years now since De Tocqueville made the point in his Democracy in America that the tendency toward an equality of conditions underlies the establishment of political democracy. More recently John Dewey has insisted upon the distinction between democracy as a social order and as a form of government. Vd. Democracy and Education, New York. 1926: pp. 100 ff. Cf. Political and Economic Democracy, ed. by Ascoli and Lehmann, New York, 1937. 2. This notion of "reversed democracy" is developed by Professor Simons in his essay on "Parliamentarism" in Political and Economic Democracy. Vd. pp. 200 ff. 3. In the first annual Felix Adler lecture, entitled "Democracy and Education in the World Today." Cf. the passage in De Tocqueville's preface where, speaking of France, he says that "the democratic revolution has been effected only in the material part of society, without that concomitant change in laws, ideas, customs and manners which was necessary to render such a revolution beneficial. We have gotten a democracy, but without the conditions which lessen its vices and render its natural advantages more prominent; and although we already perceive the evils it brings, we are ignorant of the benefit it may confer." 4. Vd. Laski's article on Democracy in the Social Science Encyclopedia: Vol. V, pp. 76-84.
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