University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II
BONAPARTIST IDEOLOGY

NAPOLEON I, as head of the state, desired to be regarded as the chosen of the people. In his public activities, the emperor boasted that he owed his power to the French people alone. After the battle of the Pyramids, when his glory began to attain its acme, the general imperiously demanded that there should be conferred on him the title of premier représentant du peuple, although hitherto the style of “popular representative” had been exclusively reserved for members of the legislative bodies. [155] Later, when by a plebiscite he had been raised to the throne of France, he declared that he considered his power to repose exclusively upon the masses. [156] The Bonapartist interpretation of popular sovereignty was a personal dictatorship conferred by the people in accordance with constitutional rules.

The Cæsarism of Napoleon III was founded in still greater measure upon the principle of popular sovereignty. In his letter to the National Assembly written from London on May 24, 1848, the pretender to the crown recognized the French Republic which was the issue of the February revolution and was founded upon universal suffrage. At the same time he claimed for himself, and at the expense of the exiled king Louis Philippe, a hereditary right to insurrection and to the throne. This recognition and this claim were derived by him from the same principle. With simultaneous pride and humility he wrote: “En présence d'un roi élu par deux cent députés, je pouvais me rappeler être l'héritier d'un empire fondé sur l'assentiment de quatre millions de français; en présemce de la souveraineté nationale (résultante du suffrage universel), je ne peux et ne veux revendiquer que mes droits de citoyen français.” [157] But Napolean III did not merely recognize in popular sovereignty the source of his power, he further made that sovereignty the theoretical basis of all his practical activities. He made himself popular in France by declaring that he regarded himself as merely the executive organ of the collective will manifested in the elections, and that he was entirely at the disposition of that will, prepared in all things to accept its decisions. With great shrewdness, he continually repeated that he was no more than an instrument, a creature of the masses. While still president he declared in a speech that he was prepared as circumstances might dictate either for abnégation or for persévérance, or, in other words, that he was as ready to go or to remain. It was the pure Bonapartist spirit which was expressed by Ollivier, the keeper of the seals, when in the Chamber, in one of the stormy sittings of the summer of 1870, he declared: “Nous vous appartenons; vous nous reprendrez quand vous voudrez nous serons toujours là pour subir vos reproches et vos anathèmes.” [158]

Bonapartism recognized the validity of the popular will to such an extreme degree as to concede to that will the right of self-destruction: popular sovereignty could suppress itself. Yet if we look at the matter from a purely human point of view, popular sovereignty is inalienable. Moreover, if we think of succeeding generations, it seems illogical and unjust that those of this generation should claim the moral right of renouncing on behalf of their descendants. Consequently the democrats of the Napoleonic epoch insisted most energetically that the power of popular sovereignty was limited to this extent, that it did not carry with it any right of abdication. Bonapartism is the theory of individual dominion originating in the collective will, but tending to emancipate itself of that will and to become sovereign in its turn. In its democratic past it finds a shield against the dangers which may threaten its antidemocratic present. In Bonapartism, the rule of Caesar (as was said by a wit of the last years of the second empire) becomes a regular organ of the popular sovereignty. “Il sera la démocratie personnifiée, la nation faite homme.” [159] It is the synthesis of two antagonistic concepts, democracy and autocracy.

Once elected, the chosen of the people can no longer be opposed in any way. He personifies the majority, and all resistance to his will is antidemocratic. The leader of such a democracy is irremovable, for the nation, having once spoken, cannot contradict itself. He is, moreover, infallible, for “l'Elu de six millions de suffrages exécute les volontés du peuple, il ne les trahi pas.” [160] It is the electors themselves, we are assured, who demand from the chosen of the people that he should use severe repressive measures, should employ force, should concentrate all authority in his own hands. [161] One of the consequences of the theory of the popular will being subsumed in the supreme executive is that the elements which intervene between the latter and the former, the public officials, that is to say, must be kept in a state of the strictest possible dependence upon the central authority, which, in its turn, depends upon the people. [162] The least manifestation of liberty on the part of the bureaucracy would be tantamount to a rebellion against the sovereignty of the citizens. The most characteristic feature of this view is the idea that the power of the chief of the state rests exclusively upon the direct will of the nation. Bonapartism does not recognize any intermediate links. The coup d'état of December 2, 1851, was represented as an emancipation of the people from the yoke of parliament, and as having for its necessary corollary a plebiscite. Victor Hugo compared the relationship between the parliament and the ministry under Napoleon III to the relationship between master and servants, the master (the ministry) being appointed by the emperor, and the servants (the parliament) being elected by the people. [163] This affirmation, though incontestable in fact, is theoretically inexact. In theory, every act of Bonapartism was perfectly legitimate, even if it led to the shedding of the blood of the citizens. The plebiscite was a purifying bath which gave legitimate sanction to every illegality. Napoleon III, when he received the formal announcement of his triumph in the plebiscite, declared that if in the coup d'état he had infringed the laws it was only in order to reenter the paths of legality: “Je ne suis sorti de la legalité que pour rentrer dans le droit.” He was granted absolution by seven million votes. [164] This sanction by plebiscite, three times repeated by the French people, and given to the illegal government of the third Napoleon—confirmed as it was by innumerable and noisy demonstrations of popular sympathy—gave to accommodating republicans a ready pretext for passing from the side of the opposition to that of the monarchy. Was not this plebiscitary Caesarism established upon the same foundation as the republic of their dreams? Emilie Ollivier divided the forms of government into the two great categories of personal and national government. The ruler in the case of a national government is no more than “un délégué de la nation pour l'exercice des droits sociaux.” [165] In this manner his republican conscience was tranquilized and his conversion to Bonapartism could present itself as logical and in conformity with his principles.

The history of modern democratic and revolutionary parties and trade unions exhibits phenomena similar to those we have been analyzing. The reasons are not far to seek. In democratic crowds, Bonapartism finds an eminently favorable soil, for it gives the masses the illusion of being masters of their masters; moreover, by introducing the practice of delegation it gives this illusion a legal color which is pleasing to those who are struggling for their “rights.” Delegation and the abdication by the people of the direct exercise of power, are accomplished in strict accordance with all the rules by a deliberate act of the popular will and without that metaphysical divine intervention vaunted on its own behalf by the detested hereditary and legitimate monarchy. The chosen of the people thus seems to be invested in his functions by a spontaneous act of the popular will; he appears to be the creature of the people. This way of looking at the relations between the masses and the leaders is agreeable to the amour propre of every citizen, who says to himself: “Without me he would not be what he is; I have elected him; he belongs to me.”

There is another reason, at once psychological and historical, why the masses accept without protest a certain degree of tyranny on the part of their elected leaders: it is because the crowd submits to domination more readily when each one of its units shares the possibility of approximating to power, and even of acquiring some power for himself. The bourgeois and the French peasants in the middle of the nineteenth century, imbued with democratic ideas, detested legitimate monarchy, but they gladly gave their votes to the third Napoleon, remembering how readily many of their fathers had become great dignitaries under his glorious uncle. [166]

Similarly in the case of political parties, the weight of an oligarchy is rarely felt when the rights of the masses are codified, and when each member may in the abstract participate in power.

In virtue of the democratic nature of his election, the leader of a democratic organization has more right than the born leader of the aristocracy to regard himself as the emanation of the collective will, and therefore to demand obedience and submission to his personal will. As a socialist newspaper puts it: “The party executive is the authority imposed by the party as a whole and thus incorporating the party authority. The first demand of democratic discipline is respect for the executive.” [167] The absolute obedience which the organized mass owes to its leaders is the outcome of the democratic relationships existing between the leaders and the mass, and is merely the collective submission to the collective will.

The leaders themselves, whenever they are reproached for an anti-democratic attitude, appeal to the mass will from which their power is derived by election, saying: “Since the masses have elected us and re-elected us as leaders, we are the legitimate expression of their will and act only as their representatives.” [168] It was a tenet of the old aristocracy that to disobey the orders of the monarch was to sin against God. In modern democracy it is held that no one may disobey the orders of the oligarchs, for in so doing the people sin against themselves, defying their own will spontaneously transferred by them to their representatives, and thus infringing democratic principle. In democracies, the leaders base their right to command upon the democratic omnipotence of the masses. Every employee of the party owes his post to his comrades, and is entirely dependent upon their good will. We may thus say that in a democracy each individual himself issues, though indirectly, the orders which come to him from above. [169] Thus the reasoning by which the leaders' claim to obedience is defended and explained is, in theory, clear and unanswerable. In practice, however, the election of the leaders, and above all their re-election, is effected by such methods and under the influence of suggestions and other methods of coercion so powerful that the freedom of choice of the masses is considerably impaired. In the history of party life it is undeniable that the democratic system is reduced, in ultimate analysis, to the right of the masses, at stated intervals, to choose masters to whom in the interim they owe unconditional obedience.

Under these conditions, there develops everywhere in the leaders, alike in the democratic political parties and in the trade unions, the same habit of thought. They demand that the masses should not merely render obedience, but that they should blindly and without murmuring carry out the orders which they, the leaders, issue deliberately and with full understanding of the circumstances. To the leaders it is altogether inconceivable that the actions of the supreme authority can be subjected to criticism, for they are intimately convinced that they stand above criticism, that is to say above the party. Engels, who was endowed with an extremely keen sense of the essence of democracy, regarded it as deplorable that the leaders of the German Socialist Party could not accustom themselves to the idea that the mere fact of being installed in office did not give them the right to be treated with more respect than any other comrade. [170]

It is especially exasperating to the leaders when the comrades are not content with mere criticism, but act in opposition to the leaders' advice. When they speak of their differences with those whom they regard as inferiors in education and intelligence, they are unable to restrain their moral indignation at such a profound lack of discipline. When the masses “kick against the advice of the leaders they have themselves chosen,” they are accused of a great lack of tact and of intelligence. In the conference of trade union executives held from February 19 to 23, 1906—a conference which marks an important stage in the history of the German labour movement—Paul Müller, employee of a trade union, complained bitterly that his revolutionary comrades of the Socialist Party were endeavouring “to estrange the members of the unions from the leaders they had chosen for themselves. They have been directly incited to rebellion against their leaders. They have been openly urged to breaches of discipline. What other expressions can be used when in meetings we are told that the members ought to fight against their leaders?” [171]

Whenever a new current of opposition manifests itself within the party, the leaders immediately endeavour to discredit it with the charge of demagogy. If those of the comrades who are discontented with the leaders make a direct appeal to the masses, this appeal—however lofty may be its motives, however sincere the convictions of those who make it, however much they may be justified by a reference to fundamental democratic rights—is repudiated as inexpedient, and is even censured as a wicked attempt to break up the party, and as the work of vulgar intriguers. We have to remember, in this connection, that the leaders, who hold in their hands all the mechanism of power, have the advantage of being able to assume an aureole of legality, whereas the masses, or the subordinate leaders who are in rebellion, can always be placed in an unfavorable light of illegality. The magic phrase with which the leaders invariably succeed in stifling embarrassing opposition in the germ is “the general interest.” In such circumstances they exhibit a notable fondness for arguments drawn from the military sphere. They maintain, for instance, that, if only for tactical reasons, and in order to maintain a necessary cohesion in face of the enemy, the members of the party must never refuse to repose perfect confidence in the leaders they have freely chosen for themselves. It is in Germany, above all, that in the trade union organizations the authoritarian spirit is developed with especial force, and that the leaders are prone to attribute to their adversaries the “criminal intention” of attempting “to dissolve trade union discipline.” Even the socialist leaders make similar charges against their opponents. If we translate such an accusation from the language of the trade union leaders into that of government officials, the charge becomes one of “inciting to revolt against constituted authority.” If the critics are not officials of the party, if they are mere sympathizers or friends, they are then in the eyes of the attacked leaders intrusive and incompetent persons, without any right whatever to form an opinion on the matter. “On no account must the faith of the people be disturbed! Such is the principle in accordance with which all lively criticism of the objective errors of the movement are stigmatized as an attack on the movement itself, whilst the elements of opposition within the party are habitually execrated as enemies who wish to destroy the party.” [172]

The general conduct of the leaders of democratic parties and the phraseology typically employed by them (of which our examples might be multiplied a hundredfold) suffice to illustrate how fatal is the transition from an authority derived from “the favor of the people” to a right based upon “the grace of God”—in a word, to the system which in French history we know by the name of Bonapartism. A right of sovereignty born of the plebiscite soon becomes a permanent and inviolable dominion.