University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I
DEMOCRATIC ARISTOCRACY AND ARISTOCRATIC DEMOCRACY

THE most restricted form of oligarchy, absolute monarchy, is founded upon the will of a single individual. Sic volo sic jubeo. Tel est mon bon plaisir. One commands, all others obey. The will of one single person can countervail the will of the nation, and even to-day we have a relic of this in the constitutional monarch's right of veto. The legal justification of this regime derives its motives from transcendental metaphysics. The logical basis of every monarchy resides in an appeal to God. God is brought down from heaven to serve as a buttress to the monarchical stronghold, furnishing it with its foundation of constitutional law—the grace of God. Hence, inasmuch as it rests upon a supraterrestrial element, the monarchical system, considered from the outlook of constitutional law, is eternal and immutable, and cannot be affected by human laws or by the human will. It follows that the legal, juridical, legitimate abolition of the monarchy is impossible, a fable of a foolish political dreamer. Lawfully, the monarchy can be abolished by God alone—and God's will is inscrutable.

At the antipodes of the monarchical principle, in theory, stands democracy, denying the right of one over others. In abstracto, it makes all citizens equal before the law. It gives to each one of them the possibility of ascending to the top of the social scale, and thus facilitates the way for the rights of the community, annulling before the law all privileges of birth, and desiring that in human society the struggle for preeminence should be decided solely in accordance with individual capacity. Whereas the principle of monarchy stakes everything upon the character of a single individual, whence it results that the best possible monarchical government offers to the people as a whole no guarantee for permanently benevolent and technically efficient rule, democracy is, on principle, responsible to the community at large for the prevailing conditions of rule, of which it is the sole arbiter.

We know to-day that in the life of the nations the two theoretical principles of the ordering of the state are so elastic that they often come into reciprocal contact, “car la démocratie peut embrasser tout le peuple, ou se resserrer jusqu'à la moitié; l'aristocratie à son tour, peut de la moitié du peuple se resserrer jusqu'au plus petit nombre indéterminément” [1] Thus the two forms of government do not exhibit an absolute antithesis, but meet at that point where the participants in power number fifty per cent.

Our Age has destroyed once for all the ancient and rigid forms of aristocracy, has destroyed them, at least, in certain important regions of political constitutional life. Even conservatism assumes at times a democratic form. Before the assaults of the democratic masses it has long since abandoned its primitive aspect, and loves to change its disguise. Today we find it absolutist, tomorrow constitutional, the next day parliamentary. Where its power is still comparatively unrestricted, as in Germany, it appeals exclusively to the grace of God. But when, as in Italy, it feels insecure, it adds to the appeal to the deity an appeal to the popular will. In its outward forms it is capable of the most extensive modifications. In monarchical France the Franciæ et Navarræ Rex becomes the Roy de France, and the Roy de France becomes the Roi des Français.

The life of political parties, whether these are concerned chiefly with national or with local politics, must, in theory, necessarily exhibit an even stronger tendency towards democracy than that which is manifested by the state. The political party is founded in most cases on the principle of the majority, and is founded always on the principle of the mass. The result of this is that the parties of the aristocracy have irrevocably lost the aristocratic purity of their principles. While remaining essentially anti-democratic in nature, they find themselves compelled, at any rate in certain periods of political life, to make profession of the democratic faith, or at least to assume the democratic mask. Whereas the democratic principle, from its very nature, by reason of the mutability of the popular will and of the fluctuating character of the majority, tends in theory to transform the Πa̓υτα r̓εi̓ of Heraclitus into the reality of national and popular life, the conservative principle erects its edifice upon certain bases or norms which are immutable in their nature, determined by the test of experience to be the best or at any rate the least bad, and consequently claimed as valid sub specie æternitatis. Nevertheless, the conservative principle must not be understood in the sense of an unconditional maintenance of the status quo. If that principle consisted merely in the recognition of what already exists, above all in the matter of the legal forms prevailing in a given country or period, conservatism would lead to its own destruction. In periods and among nations where the old conservative elements have been expelled from direct participation in power, and have been replaced by innovators fighting under the banner of democracy, the conservative party assumes an aspect hostile to the existing order of the state, and sometimes even a revolutionary character. [2] Thus, however, is effected a metamorphosis of the conservative party, which, from a clique cherishing an aristocratic exclusivism at once by instinct and by conviction, now becomes a popular party. The recognition that only the masses can help to reintroduce the ancient aristocracy in its pristine purity, and to make an end of the democratic regime, transforms the very advocates of the conservative view into democrats. They recognize unreservedly the sufferings of the common people; they endeavour, as did very recently the royalists in the French Republic, to ally themselves with the revolutionary proletariat, promising to defend this against the exploitation of democratic capitalism and to support and even to extend labour organizations—all this is the hope of destroying the Republic and restoring the Monarchy, the ultimate fruit of the aristocratic principle. Le Roy et les camelots du Roy—the king and the king's poor—are to destroy the oligarchy of the bloated plutocrats. Democracy must be eliminated by the democratic way of the popular will. The democratic method is the sole one practicable by which an old aristocracy can attain to a renewed dominion. Moreover, the conservatives do not usually wait until they have been actually driven from power before appealing to the masses. In countries where a democratic regime prevails, as in England, they spontaneously turn to the working class wherever this forms the most conspicuous constituent of the masses. In other countries, also, where parliamentary government is unknown, but where there exists universal and equal suffrage, the parties of the aristocracy owe their political existence to the charity of the masses to whom in theory they deny political rights and political capacity. The very instinct of self-preservation forces the old groups of rulers to descent, during the elections, from their lofty seats, and to avail themselves of the same democratic and demagogic methods as are employed by the youngest, the widest, and the most uncultured of our social classes, the proletariat.

The aristocracy to-day maintains itself in power by other means than parliamentary; at any rate in most of the monarchies it does not need a parliamentary majority in order to be able to hold the reins by which is guided the political life of the state. But it does need, were it merely for decorative purposes and in order to influence public opinion in its favor, a respectable measure of parliamentary representation. It does not obtain this representation by divulging its true principles, or by making appeal to those who are truly of like mind with itself. A party of the landed gentry which should appeal only to the members of its own class and to those of identical economic interests, would not win a single seat, would not send a single representative to parliament. A conservative candidate who should present himself to his electors by declaring to them that he did not regard them as capable of playing an active part in influencing the destinies of the country, and should tell them that for this reason they ought to be deprived of the suffrage, would be a man of incomparable sincerity, but politically insane. If he is to find his way into parliament he can do so by one method only. With democratic mien he must descend into the electoral arena, must hail the farmers and agricultural labourers as professional colleagues, and must seek to convince them that their economic and social interests are identical with his own. Thus the aristocrat is constrained to secure his election in virtue of a principle which he does not himself accept, and which in his soul he abhors. His whole being demands authority, the maintenance of a restricted suffrage, the suppression of universal suffrage wherever it exists, since it touches his traditional privileges. Nevertheless, since he recognizes that in the democratic epoch by which he has been overwhelmed he stands alone with this political principle, and that by its open advocacy he could never hope to maintain a political party, he dissembles his true thoughts, and howls with the democratic wolves in order to secure the coveted majority.

The influence of popular suffrage upon the outward behavior of conservative candidates is so extensive that when two candidates of the same political views present themselves in a single constituency, each of them is forced to attempt to distinguish himself from his rival by a movement to the left, that is to say, by laying great stress upon his reputedly democratic principles.

Such occurrences serve to confirm the experience that the conservatives also endeavour to regulate their actions in conformity with the fundamental principle of modern politics, a principle destined to replace the religious dictum that many are called but few are chosen, and to replace also the psychological theory that ideals are accessible solely to a minority of choice spirits: this principle may be summed up in the terms of Curtius, who said that the conservative cannot gain his ends with the aid of a small and select body of troops, but must control the masses and rule through the masses. [3] The conservative spirit of the old master-caste, however deeply rooted it may be, is forced to assume, at least during times of election, a specious democratic mask.

Nor does the theory of liberalism primarily base its aspirations upon the masses. It appeals for support to certain definite classes, which in other fields of activity have already ripened for mastery, but which do not yet possess political privileges — appeals, that is to say, to the cultured and possessing classes. For the liberals also, the masses pure and simple are no more than a necessary evil, whose only use is to help others to the attainment of ends to which they themselves are strangers. The first great liberal writer of Germany, Rotteck, reproaches the Queen of France for having, during the Revolution, forced the bourgeoisie to appeal to the common people for aid. He distinguishes between two kinds of democracy, the rule of representatives and the rule of the masses. [4] During the revolution of June, 1830, Raumer, who was in Paris, broke into vigourous lamentation because the masses possessed power, and said that it would be extremely difficult “to deprive them of this power without giving them offense and without provoking them to a fresh revolt against their new chiefs”; [5] at the same time, in words expressing the dithyrambic spirit of romanticism, he refers to the conditions that obtain in his Prussian fatherland, where king and people “truly live in a higher and purer atmosphere,” and where the contented bourgeoisie is not endeavouring to secure additional rights. [6] From the history of the origin of the North German Reichstag we learn that another eminent liberal leader and advocate of liberal views, the historian Heinrich von Sybel, declared himself opposed to universal, equal, and direct suffrage, on the ground (which can be understood solely with reference to the explanations given above regarding the peculiar conceptions the liberals have of the masses) that such a right must signify “the beginning of the end for every kind of parliamentarism”; such a right, he said, was eminently a right of dominion; and he was impelled to utter an urgent warning to the German monarchy not to introduce these dangerous elements of democratic dictatorship into the new federal state. The inward dislike of liberalism for the masses is also apparent in the attitude of the liberal leaders to the principles and institutions of aristocracy. Since the inauguration of universal suffrage and the consequent prospect that there will in the near future be a majority of socialist tendencies among the electorate or in the Lower House, many liberals, so Roscher affirms, have come to take a different view of the powers of the Crown and of the Upper House, [7] as means by which it is possible to prevent decisions of the Lower House being immediately realized in legislative measures. The same author contends that an extension of the suffrage is undesirable “in the absence of a profound statistical inquiry,” that is to say, in the absence of a labourious analysis of the numerical relationships that obtain among the various classes of the population. [8] Recently, even in that liberal group which in Germany stands nearest to the socialists, the group of “national socialists,” there has been evidence of a tendency to consider that it is by no means a bad thing “for obstacles to be imposed upon the influence in political affairs of the mutable and incalculable popular will which finds expression in the Reichstag, for the national socialists consider it desirable that there should exist also aristocratic elements, independent of the popular will, ever vigilant, armed with the right of veto, to constitute a permanent moderating element.” [9]

For an entire century, from the days of Rolteck to those of Naumann, German writers have laboured in the sweat of their brow to effect a theoretical conciliation between democracy and military monarchy, and to unite these natural opposites in a higher unity. Hand in hand with their honorable endeavours on behalf of this loftier aim have proceeded their attempts to defeudalize the monarchy to the utmost, with the sole purpose of substituting for the aristocratic guardians of the throne guardians speaking with professorial authority. The task they set themselves was to lay the theoretical foundations, if not of the so-called social monarchy, at least of the popular monarchy. It is evident that such an objective involves a political tendency which has nothing in common with science, but which is not in necessary opposition to or in contradiction with science (it is the method which must decide this), being a political tendency which is, qua political, outside the domain of science. It cannot be made a reason for blaming German men of science that there exists in Germany a tendency towards the construction of something resembling the July Monarchy, for this tendency rests within the orbit of politics. But is it plainly a matter for historical censure when we find an attempt to identify the monarchical principle which has for some decades been dominant in Prussianized Germany with the cherished idea of the popular (or social) monarchy. In committing such an error, the majority of German liberal theorists and historians mistake dreams for reality. In this confusion rests the organic defect of all German liberalism, which since 1866 has continually endeavoured to disguise its change of front (that is to say, its partisan struggle against socialism and its simultaneous and voluntary renunciation of all attempts to complete the political emancipation of the German bourgeoisie), by the fallacious assertion that with the unification of Germany and the establishment of the empire of the Hohenzollerns all or almost all the aspirations of its democratic youth have been realized. The fundamental principle of modern monarchy (hereditary monarchy) is absolutely irreconcilable with the principles of democracy, even when these are understood in the most elastic sense. Caesarism is still democracy, or may at least still claim the name, when it is based upon the popular will; but automatic monarchy, never.

We may sum up the argument by saying that in modern party life aristocracy gladly presents itself in democratic guise, whilst the substance of democracy is permeated with aristocratic elements. On the one side we have aristocracy in a democratic form, and on the other democracy with an aristocratic content.

The democratic external form which characterizes the life of political parties may readily veil from superficial observers the tendency towards aristocracy, or rather towards oligarchy, which is inherent in all party organization. If we wish to obtain light upon this tendency, the best field of observation is offered by the intimate structure of the democratic parties, and, among these, of the socialist and revolutionary labour party. In the conservative parties, except during elections, the tendency to oligarchy manifests itself with that spontaneous vigour and clearness which corresponds with the essentially oligarchical character of these parties. But the parties which are subversive in their aims exhibit the like phenomena no less markedly. The study of the oligarchical manifestations in party life is most valuable and most decisive in its results when undertaken in relation to the revolutionary parties, for the reason that these parties, in respect of origin and of program, represent the negation of any such tendency, and have actually come into existence out of opposition thereto. Thus the appearance of oligarchical phenomena in the very bosom of the revolutionary parties is a conclusive proof of the existence of immanent oligarchical tendencies in every kind of human organization which strives for the attainment of definite ends.

In theory, the principal aim of socialist and democratic parties is the struggle against oligarchy in all its forms. The question therefore arises how we are to explain the development in such parties of the very tendencies against which they have declared war. To furnish an unprejudiced analytical answer to this question constitutes an important part of the task the author has undertaken.

In the society of to-day, the state of dependence that results from the existing economic and social conditions renders an ideal democracy impossible. This must be admitted without reserve. But the further question ensues, whether, and if so how far, within the contemporary social order, among the elements which are endeavouring to overthrow that order and to replace it by a new one, there may exist in the germ energies tending to approximate towards ideal democracy, to find outlet in that direction, or at least to work towards it as a necessary issue.