University of Virginia Library

C. INTELLECTUAL FACTORS

1. CHAPTER I
SUPERIORITY OF THE PROFESSIONAL LEADERS IN RESPECT TO CULTURE, AND THEIR
INDISPENSABILITY; THE FORMAL AND REAL INCOMPETENCE OF THE MASS

IN the infancy of the socialist party, when the organization is still weak, when its membership is scanty, and when its principal aim is to diffuse a knowledge of the elementary principles of socialism, professional leaders are less numerous than are leaders whose work in this department is no more than an accessory occupation. But with the further progress of the organization, new needs continually arise, at once within the party and in respect of its relationships with the outer world. Thus the moment inevitably comes when neither the idealism and enthusiasm of the intellectuals, nor yet the goodwill with which the proletarians devote their free time on Sundays to the work of the party, suffice any longer to meet the requirements of the case. The provisional must then give place to the permanent, and dilettantism must yield to professionalism.

With the appearance of professional leadership, there ensues a great accentuation of the cultural differences between the leaders and the led. Long experience has shown that among the factors which secure the dominion of minorities over majorities—money and its equivalents (economic superiority), tradition and hereditary transmission (historical superiority)—the first place must be given to the formal instruction of the leaders (so-called intellectual superiority). Now the most superficial observation shows that in the parties of the proletariat the leaders are, in matters of education, greatly superior to the led.

Essentially, this superiority is purely formal. Its existence is plainly manifest in those countries in which, as in Italy, the course of political evolution and a widespread psychological predisposition have caused an afflux into the labour party of a great number of barristers, doctors, and, university professors. The deserters from the bourgeoisie become leaders of the proletariat, not in spite of, but because of, that superiority of formal instruction which they have acquired in the camp of the enemy and have brought with them thence.

It is obvious that the dynamic influence of these newcomers over the mass of workers will diminish in proportion as their own number increases, that a small nucleus of doctors and barristers in a great popular party will be more influential than a considerable quantity of intellectuals who are fiercely contending for supremacy. In other countries, however, such as Germany, whilst we find a few intellectuals among the leaders, by far the greater number of these are ex-manual workers. In these lands the bourgeois classes present so firm a front against the revolutionary workers that the deserters from the bourgeoisie who pass over to the socialist camp are exposed to a thoroughgoing social and political boycott, and, on the other hand, the proletarians, thanks to the wonderful organization of the state, and because highly developed capitalist manufacturing industry demands from its servitors high intelligence, have attained to the possession of a considerable, if elementary, degree of scholastic instruction, which they earnestly endeavour to amplify by private study. But the level of instruction among the leaders of working-class origin is no longer the same as that of their former workmates. The party mechanism, which, through the abundance of paid and honorary posts at its disposal, offers a career to the workers, and which consequently exercises a powerful attractive force, determines the transformation of a number of proletarians with considerable intellectual gifts into employees whose mode of life becomes that of the petty bourgeois. This change of condition at once creates the need and provides the opportunity for the acquisition, at the expense of the mass, of more elabourate instruction and a clearer view of existing social relationships. Whilst their occupation and the needs of daily life render it impossible for the masses to attain to a profound knowledge of the social machinery, and above all of the working of the political machine, the leader of working-class origin is enabled, thanks to his new situation, to make himself intimately familiar with all the technical details of public life, and thus to increase his superiority over the rank and file. In proportion as the profession of politician becomes a more complicated one, and in proportion as the rules of social legislation become more numerous, it is necessary for one who would understand politics to possess wider experience and more extensive knowledge. Thus the gulf between the leaders and the rest of the party becomes ever wider, until the moment arrives in which the leaders lose all true sense of solidarity with the class from which they have sprung, and there ensues a new class-division between ex-proletarian captains and proletarian common soldiers. When the workers choose leaders for themselves, they are with their own hands creating new masters whose principal means of dominion is found in their better instructed minds.

It is not only in the trade-union organization, in the party administration, and in the party press, that these new masters make their influence felt. Whether of working-class or of bourgeois origin, they also monopolize the party representation in parliament.

All parties to-day have a parliamentary aim. (There is only one exception, that of the anarchists, who are almost without political influence, and who, moreover, since they are the declared enemies of all organization, and who, when they form organizations, do so in defiance of their own principles, cannot be considered to constitute a political party in the proper sense of the term.) They pursue legal methods, appealing to the electors, making it their first aim to acquire parliamentary influence, and having for their ultimate goal “the conquest of political power.” It is for this reason that even the representatives of the revolutionary parties enter the legislature. Their parliamentary labours, undertaken at first with reluctance, but subsequently with increasing satisfaction and increasing professional zeal, remove them further and further from their electors. The questions which they have to decide, and whose effective decision demand on their part a serious work of preparation, involve an increase in their own technical competence, and a consequent increase in the distance between themselves and their comrades of the rank and file. Thus the leaders, if they were not “cultured” already, soon become so. But culture exercises a suggestive influence over the masses.

In proportion as they become initiated into the details of political life, as they become familiarized with the different aspects of the fiscal problem and with questions of foreign policy, the leaders gain an importance which renders them indispensable so long as their party continues to practice a parliamentary tactic, and which will perhaps render them important even should this tactic be abandoned. This is perfectly natural, for the leaders cannot be replaced at a moment's notice, since all the other members of the party are absorbed in their everyday occupations and are strangers to the bureaucratic mechanism. This special competence, this expert knowledge, which the leader acquires in matters inaccessible, or almost inaccessible, to the mass, gives him a security of tenure which conflicts with the essential principles of democracy.

The technical competence which definitely elevates the leaders above the mass and subjects the mass to the leaders, has its influence reinforced by certain other factors, such as routine, the social education which the deputies gain in the chamber, and their special training in the work of parliamentary committees. The leaders naturally endeavour to apply in the normal life of the parties the maneuvers they have learned in the parliamentary environment, and in this way they often succeed in diverting currents of opposition to their own dominance. The parliamentarians are past masters in the art of controlling meetings, of applying and interpreting rules, of proposing motions at opportune moments; in a word, they are skilled in the use of artifices of all kinds in order to avoid the discussion of controversial points, in order to extract from a hostile majority a vote favorable to themselves, or at least, if the worst comes to the worst, to reduce the hostile majority to silence. There is no lack of means, varying from an ingenious and often ambiguous manner of putting the question when the vote is to be taken, to the exercise on the crowd of a suggestive influence by insinuations which, while they have no real bearing on the question at issue, none the less produce a strong impression. As referendaries (rapporteurs) and experts, intimately acquainted with all the hidden aspects of the subject under discussion, many of the deputies are adepts in the art of employing digressions, periphrases, and terminological subtleties, by means of which they surround the simplest matter with a maze of obscurity to which they alone have the clue. In this way, whether acting in good faith or in bad, they render it impossible for the masses, whose “theoretical interpreters” they should be, to follow them, and to understand them, and they thus elude all possibility of technical control. They are masters of the situation. [72]

The intangibility of the deputies is increased and their privileged position is further consolidated by the renown which they acquire, at once among their political adversaries and among their own partisans, by their oratorical talent, by their specialized aptitudes, or by the charm of their intellectual or even their physical personalities. The dismissal by the organized masses of a universally esteemed leader would discredit the party throughout the country. Not only would the party suffer from being deprived of its leaders, if matters were thus pushed to an extreme, but the political reaction upon the status of the party would be immeasurably disastrous. Not only would it be necessary to find substitutes without delay for the dismissed leaders, who have only become familiar with political affairs after many years of arduous and unremitting toil (and where is the party which between one day and the next would be able to provide efficient substitutes?); but also it has to be remembered that it is largely to the personal influence of their old parliamentary chiefs that the masses owe their success in social legislation and in the struggle for the conquest of general political freedom.

The democratic masses are thus compelled to submit to a restriction of their own wills when they are forced to give their leaders an authority which is in the long run destructive to the very principle of democracy. The leader's principal source of power is found in his indispensability. One who is indispensable has in his power all the lords and masters of the earth. The history of the working-class parties continually furnishes instances in which the leader has been in flagrant contradiction with the fundamental principles of the movement, but in which the rank and file have not been able to make up their minds to draw the logical consequences of this conflict, because they feel that they cannot get along without the leader, and cannot dispense with the qualities he has acquired in virtue of the very position to which they have themselves elevated him, and because they do not see their way to find an adequate substitute. Numerous are the parliamentary orators and the trade-union leaders who are in opposition to the rank and file at once theoretically and practically, and who, none the less, continue to think and to act tranquilly on behalf of the rank and file. These latter, disconcerted and uneasy, look on at the behavior of the “great men,” but seldom dare to throw off their authority and to give them their dismissal.

The incompetence of the masses is almost universal throughout the domains of political life, and this constitutes the most solid foundation of the power of the leaders. The incompetence furnishes the leaders with a practical and to some extent with a moral justification. Since the rank and file are incapable of looking after their own interests, it is necessary that they should have experts to attend to their affairs. From this point of view it cannot be always considered a bad thing that the leaders should really lead. The free election of leaders by the rank and file presupposes that the latter possess the competence requisite for the recognition and appreciation of the competence of the leaders. To express it in French, la désignation des capacités suppose elle-même la capacité de la désignation.

The recognition of the political immaturity of the mass and of the impossibility of a complete practical application of the principle of mass-sovereignty, has led certain distinguished thinkers to propose that democracy should be limited by democracy itself. Condorcet wished that the mass should itself decide in what matters it was to renounce its right of direct control. [73] This would be the voluntary renunciation of sovereignty on the part of the sovereign mass. The French Revolution, which claimed to translate into practice the principle of free popular government and of human equality, and according to which the mutable will of the masses was in the abstract the supreme law, established through its National Assembly that the mere proposal to restore a monarchical form of government should be punishable by death. [74] In a point of such essential importance the deliberative power of the masses must yield to the threat of martial law. Even so fanatical an advocate of popular sovereignty as Victor Considérant was forced to acknowledge that at the first glance the machinery of government seemed too ponderous for it to appear possible for the people as such to make the machine work, and he therefore proposed the election of a group of specialists whose duty it should be to elabourate the text of the laws which the sovereign people had voted in principle. Bernstein also denies that the average man has sufficient political competence to render unrestricted popular sovereignty legitimate. He considers that a great part of the questions that have to be decided consist of peculiar problems concerning which, until all men become living encyclopedias, a few only will have interest and knowledge. To attain to an adequate degree of information regarding such questions, so that a carefully considered judgment can be given, requires a rare sense of responsibility such as cannot at present be attributed to the majority of the citizens. Even Kautsky could not but recognize the difficulty of the problem thus presented to the labour movement; he has pointed out that it is not every province of social life which is suitable for democratic administration, and that democracy must be introduced gradually, and will not be completely realized until those interested shall have become capable of forming an independent judgment upon all decisive questions; and he shows that the possibility of realizing democratic administration will be greater in proportion as the cooperation of all the persons concerned in the decision of the issues becomes possible.

The incompetence of the masses, which is in last analysis always recognized by the leaders, serves to provide a theoretical justification for the dominion of these. In England, which owes to Thomas Carlyle the theory of the supreme importance of great men, or “heroes,” and where that theory has not, as in Germany, been utterly expelled from the official doctrine of socialism by the theory of historical materialism, even socialist thought has been profoundly influenced by the great men theory. The English socialists, in fact, including those of the most various tendencies, have openly declared that if democracy is to be effective it must assume the aspect of a benevolent despotism. “He [the leader] has a scheme to which he works, and he has the power to make his will effective.” [75] In all the affairs of management for whose decision there is requisite specialized knowledge, and for whose performance a certain degree of authority is essential, a measure of despotism must be allowed, and thereby a deviation from the principles of pure democracy. From the democratic point of view this is perhaps an evil, but it is a necessary evil. Socialism does not signify everything by the people, but everything for the people. [76] Consequently the English socialists entrust the salvation of democracy solely to the good will and to the insight of the leaders. The majority determined by the counting of heads can do no more than lay down the general lines; all the rest, which is tactically of greater importance, devolves upon the leaders. The result is that quite a small number of individuals—three, suggests Bax—effectively controls the policy of the whole party. Social democracy is not democracy, but a party fighting to attain to democracy. In other words, democracy is the end, but not the means. [77] The impossibility of the means being really democratic is conspicuously shown by the character of the socialist party as an undertaking endowed with certain financial characteristics, and one which, though created for ideological aims, depends for its success, not only upon the play of economic forces, but also upon the quality of the persons who have assumed leadership and responsibility. Here, as elsewhere, the saying is true that no undertaking can succeed without leaders, without managers. In parallelism with the corresponding phenomena in industrial and commercial life, it is evident that with the growth of working-class organization there must be an accompanying growth in the value, the importance, and the authority of the leaders. The principle of the division of labour creates specialism, and it is with good reason that the necessity for expert leadership has been compared with that which gives rise to specialism in the medical profession and in technical chemistry. Specialism, however, implies authority. Just as the patient obeys the doctor, because the doctor knows better than the patient, having made a special study of the human body in health and disease, so must the political patient submit to the guidance of his party leaders, who possess a political competence impossible of attainment by the rank and file.

Thus democracy ends by undergoing transformation into a form of government by the best, into an aristocracy. At once materially and morally, the leaders are those who must be regarded as the most capable and the most mature. Is it not, therefore, their duty as well as their right to put themselves at the head, and to lead not merely as representatives of the party, but as individuals proudly conscious of their own personal value?