University of Virginia Library

1. PART ONE
LEADERSHIP IN DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATIONS

A. TECHNICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE CAUSES OF LEADERSHIP

1. CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY—THE NEED FOR ORGANIZATION

DEMOCRACY is inconceivable without organization. A few words will suffice to demonstrate this proposition.

A class which unfurls in the face of society the banner of certain definite claims, and which aspires to the realization of a complex of ideal aims deriving from the economic functions which that class fulfils, needs an organization. Be the claims economic or be they political, organization appears the only means for the creation of a collective will. Organization, based as it is upon the principle of least effort, that is to say, upon the greatest possible economy of energy, is the weapon of the weak in their struggle with the strong.

The chances of success in any struggle will depend upon the degree to which this struggle is carried out upon a basis of solidarity between individuals whose interests are identical. In objecting, therefore, to the theories of the individualist anarchists that nothing could please the employers better than the dispersion and disaggregation of the forces of the workers, the socialists, the most fanatical of all the partisans of the idea of organization, enunciate an argument which harmonizes well with the results of scientific study of the nature of parties.

We live in a time in which the idea of cooperation has become so firmly established that even millionaires perceive the necessity of common action. It is easy to understand, then, that organization has become a vital principle of the working class, for in default of it their success is a priori impossible. The refusal of the worker to participate in the collective life of his class cannot fail to entail disastrous consequences. In respect of culture and of economic, physical, and physiological conditions, the proletarian is the weakest element of our society. In fact, the isolated member of the working classes is defenseless in the hands of those who are economically stronger. It is only by combination to form a structural aggregate that the proletarians can acquire the faculty of political resistance and attain to a social dignity. The importance and the influence of the working class are directly proportional to its numerical strength. But for the representation of that numerical strength organization and coordination are indispensable. The principle of organization is an absolutely essential condition for the political struggle of the masses.

Yet this politically necessary principle of organization, while it overcomes that disorganization of forces which would be favorable to the adversary, brings other dangers in its train. We escape Scylla only to dash ourselves on Charybdis. Organization is, in fact, the source from which the conservative currents flow over the plain of democracy, occasioning there disastrous floods and rendering the plain unrecognizable.

2. CHAPTER II
MECHANICAL AND TECHNICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF DIRECT GOVERNMENT BY THE MASSES

IT was a Rhenish democrat, Moritz Rittinghausen, who first made a brilliant attempt to give a real basis for direct legislation by the people. [16]

According to this system the entire population was to be divided into sections, each containing a thousand inhabitants, as was done temporarily for some days in Prussia during the elections of the years 1848 and 1849. The members of each section were to assemble in some prearranged place—a school, townhall, or other public building—and to elect a president. Every citizen was to have the right of speech. In this way the intelligence of every individual would be placed at the service of the fatherland. When the discussion was finished, each one would record his vote. The president would transmit the result to the burgomaster, who would notify the higher authorities. The will of the majority would be decisive.

No legislative proposal was to come from above. The government should have no further initiative than to determine that on a given day all the sections should discuss a given argument. Whenever a certain number of the citizens demanded a new law of any kind, or the reform of an existing law, the ministry concerned must invite the people to exercise its sovereignty within a stated time, and to pass for itself the law in question. [17] The law takes organic form from the discussion itself. First of all, the president opens the debate upon the principal question. Subsequently subordinate points are discussed. Then comes the vote. That proposition which has received the majority of votes is adopted. As soon as all the returns of the voting have been sent to the ministry, a special commission must edit a clear and simple text of the law, formulating it in a manner which is not open to different interpretations, as is the case with most of the laws presented to modern parliaments, for these, as Rittinghausen sarcastically adds, would seem to incorporate a deliberate intention to favor the tendency of lawyers to ambiguity and hair-splitting.

The system here sketched is clear and concise, and it might seem at the first glance that its practical application would involve no serious difficulties. But if put to the test it would fail to fulfil the expectations of its creator.

The practical ideal of democracy consists in the self-government of the masses in conformity with the decisions of popular assemblies. But while this system limits the extension of the principle of delegation, it fails to provide any guarantee against the formation of an oligarchical camerilla. Undoubtedly it deprives the natural leaders of their quality as functionaries, for this quality is transferred to the people themselves. The crowd, however, is always subject to suggestion, being readily influenced by the eloquence of great popular orators; moreover, direct government by the people, admitting of no serious discussions or thoughtful deliberations, greatly facilitates coups de main of all kinds by men who are exceptionally bold, energetic, and adroit.

It is easier to dominate a large crowd than a small audience. The adhesion of the crowd is tumultuous, summary, and unconditional. Once the suggestions have taken effect, the crowd does not readily tolerate contradiction from a small minority, and still less from isolated individuals. A great multitude assembled within a small area is unquestionably more accessible to panic alarms, to unreflective enthusiasm, and the like, than is a small meeting, whose members can quietly discuss matters among themselves (Roscher). [18]

It is a fact of everyday experience that enormous public meetings commonly carry resolutions by acclamation or by general assent, whilst these same assemblies, if divided into small sections, say of fifty persons each, would be much more guarded in their assent. Great party congresses, in which are present the élite of the membership, usually act in this way. Words and actions are far less deliberately weighed by the crowd than by the individuals or the little groups of which this crowd is composed. The fact is incontestable—a manifestation of the pathology of the crowd. The individual disappears in the multitude, and therewith disappears also personality and sense of responsibility.

The most formidable argument against the sovereignty of the masses is, however, derived from the mechanical and technical impossibility of its realization.

The sovereign masses are altogether incapable of undertaking the most necessary resolutions. The impotence of direct democracy, like the power of indirect democracy, is a direct outcome of the influence of number. In a polemic against Proudhon (1849), Louis Blanc asks whether it is possible for thirty-four millions of human beings (the population of France at that time) to carry on their affairs without accepting what the pettiest man of business finds necessary, the intermediation of representatives. He answers his own question by saying that one who declares direct action on this scale to be possible is a fool, and that one who denies its possibility need not be an absolute opponent of the idea of the state. [19] The same question and the same answer could be repeated to-day in respect of party organization. Above all in the great industrial centers, where the labour party sometimes numbers its adherents by tens of thousands, it is impossible to carry on the affairs of this gigantic body without a system of representation. The great socialist organization of Berlin, which embraces the six constituencies of the city, as well as the two outlying areas of Niederbarnim and Teltow-Beeskow-Charlottenburg, has a member-roll of more than ninety thousand.

It is obvious that such a gigantic number of persons belonging to a unitary organization cannot do any practical work upon a system of direct discussion. The regular holding of deliberative assemblies of a thousand members encounters the gravest difficulties in respect of room and distance; while from the topographical point of view such an assembly would become altogether impossible if the members numbered ten thousand. Even if we imagined the means of communication to become much better than those which now exist, how would it be possible to assemble such a multitude in a given place, at a stated time, and with the frequency demanded by the exigencies of party life? In addition must be considered the physiological impossibility even for the most powerful orator of making himself heard by a crowd of ten thousand persons. [20] There are, however, other persons of a technical and administrative character which render impossible the direct selfgovernment of large groups. If Peter wrongs Paul, it is out of the question that all the other citizens should hasten to the spot to undertake a personal examination of the matter in dispute, and to take the part of Paul against Peter. [21] By parity of reasoning, in the modern democratic party, it is impossible for the collectivity to undertake the direct settlement of all the controversies that may arise.

Hence the need for delegation, for the system in which delegates represent the mass and carry out its will. Even in groups sincerely animated with the democratic spirit, current business, the preparation and the carrying out of the most important actions, is necessarily left in the hands of individuals. It is well known that the impossibility for the people to exercise a legislative power directly in popular assemblies led the democratic idealists of Spain to demand, as the least of evils, a system of popular representation and a parliamentary state. [22]

Originally the chief is merely the servant of the mass. The organization is based upon the absolute equality of all its members. Equality is here understood in its most general sense, as an equality of like men. In many countries, as in idealist Italy (and in certain regions in Germany where the socialist movement is still in its infancy), this equality is manifested, among other ways, by the mutual use of the familiar “thou,” which is employed by the most poorly paid wage-labourer in addressing the most distinguished intellectual. This generic conception of equality is, however, gradually replaced by the idea of equality among comrades belonging to the same organization, all of whose members enjoy the same rights. The democratic principle aims at guaranteeing to all an equal influence and an equal participation in the regulation of the common interests. All are electors, and all are eligible for office. The fundamental postulate of the Déclaration des Droits de I'Homme finds here its theoretical application. All the offices are filled by election. The officials, executive organs of the general will, play a merely subordinate part, are always dependent upon the collectivity, and can be deprived of their office at any moment. The mass of the party is omnipotent.

At the outset, the attempt is made to depart as little as possible from pure democracy by subordinating the delegates altogether to the will of the mass, by tieing them hand and foot. In the early days of the movement of the Italian agricultural workers, the chief of the league required a majority of four-fifths of the votes to secure election. When disputes arose with the employers about wages, the representative of the organization, before undertaking any negotiations, had to be furnished with a written authority, authorized by the signature of every member of the corporation. All the accounts of the body were open to the examination of the members, at any time. There were two reasons for this. First of all, the desire was to avoid the spread of mistrust through the mass, “this poison which gradually destroys even the strongest organism.” In the second place, this usage allowed each one of the members to learn bookkeeping, and to acquire such a general knowledge of the working of the corporation as to enable him at any time to take over its leadership. [23] It is obvious that democracy in this sense is applicable only on a very small scale. In the infancy of the English labour movement, in many of the trade unions, the delegates were either appointed in rotation from among all the members, or were chosen by lot. [24] Gradually, however, the delegates' duties became more complicated; some individual ability becomes essential, a certain oratorical gift, and a considerable amount of objective knowledge. It thus becomes impossible to trust to blind chance, to the fortune of alphabetic succession, or to the order of priority, in the choice of a delegation whose members must possess certain peculiar personal aptitudes if they are to discharge their mission to the general advantage.

Such were the methods which prevailed in the early days of the labour movement to enable the masses to participate in party and trade-union administration. Today they are falling into disuse, and in the development of the modern political aggregate there is a tendency to shorten and stereotype the process which transforms the led into a leader—a process which has hitherto developed by the natural course of events. Here and there voices make themselves heard demanding a sort of official consecration for the leaders, insisting that it is necessary to constitute a class of professional politicians, of approved and registered experts in political life. Ferdinand Tönnies advocates that the party should institute regular examinations for the nomination of socialist parliamentary candidates, and for the appointment of party secretaries. [25] Heinrich Herkner goes even farther. He contends that the great trade unions cannot long maintain their existence if they persist in entrusting the management of their affairs to persons drawn from the rank and tile, who have risen to command stage by stage solely in consequence of practical aptitudes acquired in the service of the organization. He refers, in this connection, to the unions that are controlled by the employers, whose officials are for the most part university men. He foresees that in the near future all the labour organizations will be forced to abandon proletarian exclusiveness, and in the choice of their officials to give the preference to persons of an education that is superior alike in economic, legal, technical, and commercial respects. [26]

Even to-day, the candidates for the secretaryship of a trade union are subject to examination as to their knowledge of legal matters and their capacity as letterwriters. The socialist organizations engaged in political action also directly undertake the training of their own officials. Everywhere there, are coming into existence “nurseries” for the rapid supply of officials possessing a certain amount of “scientific culture.” Since 1906 there has existed in Berlin a Party-School in which courses of instruction are given for the training of those who wish to take office in the socialist party or in trade unions. The instructors are paid out of the funds of the socialist party, which was directly responsible for the foundation of the school. The other expenses of the undertaking, including the maintenance of the pupils, are furnished from a common fund supplied by the party and the various trade unions interested. In addition, the families of the pupils, in so far as the attendance of these at the school deprives the families of their breadwinners, receive an allowance from the provincial branch of the party or from the local branch of the union to which each pupil belongs. The third course of this school, from October 1, 1908, to April 3, 1909, was attended by twenty-six pupils, while the first year there had been thirtyone and the second year thirty-three. As pupils, preference is given to comrades who already hold office in the party or in one of the labour unions. [27] Those who do not already belong to the labour bureaucracy make it their aim to enter that body, and cherish the secret hope that attendance at the school will smooth their path. Those who fail to attain this end are apt to exhibit a certain discontent with the party which, after having encouraged their studies, has sent them back to manual labour. Among the 141 students of the year 1910-11, three classes were to be distinguished: one of these consisted of old and tried employees in the different branches of the labour movement (fifty-two persons); a second consisted of those who obtained employment in the party or the trade unions directly the course was finished (forty-nine persons); the third consisted of those who had to return to manual labour (forty persons). [28]

In Italy, L'Umanitaria, a philanthropic organization run by the socialists, founded at Milan in 1905 a “Practical School of Social Legislation,” whose aim it is to give to a certain number of workers an education which will fit them for becoming factory inspectors, or for taking official positions in the various labour organizations, in the friendly societies, or in the labour exchanges. [29] The course of instruction lasts for two years, and at its close the pupils receive, after examination, a diploma which entitles them to the title of “Labor Expert.” In 1908 there were two hundred and two pupils, thirty-seven of whom were employees of trade unions or of cooperative societies, four were secretaries of labour exchanges, forty-five employees in or members of the liberal professions, and a hundred and twelve working men. [30] At the outset most of the pupils came to the school as a matter of personal taste, or with the aim of obtaining the diploma in order to secure some comparatively lucrative private employment. But quite recently the governing body has determined to suppress the diploma, and to institute a supplementary course open to those only who are already employed by some labour organization or who definitely intend to enter such employment. For those engaged upon this special course of study there will be provided scholarships of £2 a week, the funds for this purpose being supplied in part by L'Umanitaria and in part by the labour organizations which wish to send their employees to the school. [31] In the year 1909, under the auspices of the Bourse du Travail, there was founded at Turin a similar school (Scuola Pratica di Cultura e Legislazione Sociale), which, however, soon succumbed.

In England the trade unions and cooperative societies make use of Ruskin College, Oxford, sending thither those of their members who aspire to office in the labour organizations, and who have displayed special aptitudes for this career. In Austria it is proposed to found a party school upon the German model.

It is undeniable that all these educational institutions for the officials of the party and of the labour organizations tend, above all, towards the artificial creation of an élite of the working class, of a caste of cadets composed of persons who aspire to the command of the proletarian rank and file. Without wishing it, there is thus effected a continuous enlargement of the gulf which divides the leaders from the masses.

The technical specialization that inevitably results from all extensive organization renders necessary what is called expert leadership. Consequently the power of determination comes to be considered one of the specific attributes of leadership, and is gradually withdrawn from the masses to be concentrated in the hands of the leaders alone. Thus the leaders, who were at first no more than the executive organs of the collective will, soon emancipate themselves from the mass and become independent of its control.

Organization implies the tendency to oligarchy. In every organization, whether it be a political party, a professional union, or any other association of the kind, the aristocratic tendency manifests itself very clearly. The mechanism of the organization, while conferring a solidity of structure, induces serious changes in the organized mass, completely inverting the respective position of the leaders and the led. As a result of organization, every party or professional union becomes divided into a minority of directors and a majority of directed.

It has been remarked that in the lower stages of civilization tyranny is dominant. Democracy cannot come into existence until there is attained a subsequent and more highly developed stage of social life. Freedoms and privileges, and among these latter the privilege of taking part in the direction of public affairs, are at first restricted to the few. Recent times have been characterized by the gradual extension of these privileges to a widening circle. This is what we know as the era of democracy. But if we pass from the sphere of the state to the sphere of party, we may observe that as democracy continues to develop, a backwash sets in. With the advance of organization, democracy tends to decline. Democratic evolution has a parabolic course. At the present time, at any rate as far as party life is concerned, democracy is in the descending phase. It may be enunciated as a general rule that the increase in the power of the leaders is directly proportional with the extension of the organization. In the various parties and labour organizations of different countries the influence of the leaders is mainly determined (apart from racial and individual grounds) by the varying development of organization. Where organization is stronger, we find that there is a lesser degree of applied democracy.

Every solidly constructed organization, whether it be a democratic state, a political party, or a league of proletarians for the resistance of economic oppression, presents a soil eminently favorable for the differentiation of organs and of functions. The more extended and the more ramified the official apparatus of the organization, the greater the number of its members, the fuller its treasury, and the more widely circulated its press, the less efficient becomes the direct control exercised by the rank and file, and the more is this control replaced by, the increasing power of committees. Into all parties there insinuates itself that indirect electoral system which in public life the democratic parties fight against with all possible vigour. Yet in party life the influence of this system must be more disastrous than in the far more extensive life of the state. Even in the party congresses, which represent the partylife seven times sifted, we find that it becomes more and more general to refer all important questions to committees which debate in camera.

As organization develops, not only do the tasks of the administration become more difficult and more complicated, but, further, its duties become enlarged and specialized to such a degree that it is no longer possible to take them all in at a single glance. In a rapidly progressive movement, it is not only the growth in the number of duties, but also the higher quality of these, which imposes a more extensive differentiation of function. Nominally, and according to the letter of the rules, all the acts of the leaders are subject to the ever vigilant criticism of the rank and file. In theory the leader is merely an employee bound by the instruction he receives. He has to carry out the orders of the mass, of which he is no more than the executive organ. But in actual fact, as the organization increases in size, this control becomes purely fictitious. The members have to give up the idea of themselves conducting or even supervising the whole administration, and are compelled to hand these tasks over to trustworthy persons specially nominated for the purpose, to salaried officials. The rank and file must content themselves with summary reports, and with the appointment of occasional special committees of inquiry. Yet this does not derive from any special change in the rules of the organization. It is by very necessity that a simple employee gradually becomes a “leader,” acquiring a freedom of action which he ought not to possess. The chief then becomes accustomed to dispatch important business on his own responsibility, and to decide various questions relating to the life of the party without any attempt to consult the rank and file. It is obvious that democratic control thus undergoes a progressive diminution, and is ultimately reduced to an infinitesimal minimum. In all the socialist parties there is a continual increase in the number of functions withdrawn from the electoral assemblies and transferred to the executive committees. In this way there is constructed a powerful and complicated edifice. The principle of division of labour coming more and more into operation, executive authority undergoes division and subdivision. There is thus constituted a rigorously defined and hierarchical bureaucracy. In the catechism of party duties, the strict observance of hierarchical rules becomes the first article. The hierarchy comes into existence as the outcome of technical conditions, and its constitution is an essential postulate of the regular functioning of the party machine.

It is indisputable that the oligarchical and bureaucratic tendency of party organization is a matter of technical and practical necessity. It is the inevitable product of the very principle of organization. Not even the most radical wing of the various socialist parties raises any objection to this retrogressive evolution, the contention being that democracy is only a form of organization and that where it ceases to be possible to harmonize democracy with organization, it is better to abandon the former than the latter. Organization, since it is the only means of attaining the ends of socialism, is considered to comprise within itself the revolutionary content of the party, and this essential content must never be sacrificed for the sake of form.

In all times, in all phases of development, in all branches of human activity, there have been leaders. It is true that certain socialists, above all the orthodox Marxists of Germany, seek to convince us that socialism knows nothing of “leaders,” that the party has “employees” merely, being a democratic party, and the existence of leaders being incompatible with democracy. But a false assertion such as this cannot override a sociological law. Its only result is, in fact, to strengthen the rule of the leaders, for it serves to conceal from the mass a danger which really threatens democracy.

For technical and administrative reasons, no less than for tactical reasons, a strong organization needs an equally strong leadership. As long as an organization is loosely constructed and vague in its outlines, no professional leadership can arise. The anarchists, who have a horror of all fixed organization, have no regular leaders. In the early days of German socialism, the Vertrauensmann (homme de confiance) continued to exercise his ordinary occupation. If he received any pay for his work for the party, the remuneration was on an extremely modest scale, and was no more than a temporary grant. His function could never be regarded by him as a regular source of income. The employee of the organization was still a simple workmate, sharing the mode of life and the social condition of his fellows. Today he has been replaced for the most part by the professional politician, Berzirksleiter (U.S. wardboss), etc. The more solid the structure of an organization becomes in the course of the evolution of the modern political party, the more marked becomes the tendency to replace the emergency leader by the professional leader. Every party organization which has attained to a considerable degree of complication demands that there should be a certain number of persons who devote all their activities to the work of the party. The mass provides these by delegations, and the delegates, regularly appointed, become permanent representatives of the mass for the direction of its affairs.

For democracy, however, the first appearance of professional leadership marks the beginning of the end, and this, above all, “on account of the logical impossibility of the “representative” system, whether in parliamentary life or in party delegation. Jean Jacques Rousseau may be considered as the founder of this aspect of the criticism of democracy. He defines popular government as “l'exercice de la volonté générale,” and draws from this the logical inference, “elle ne peut jamais s'aliéner, et le souverain, qui n'est qu'un être collectif, ne peut être représenté que par lui-mê.” Consequently, "à l'instant qu'un peuple se donne des représentants, il n'est plus libre, il n'est plus.” [32] A mass which delegates its sovereignty, that is to say transfers its sovereignty to the hands of a few individuals, abdicates its sovereign functions. For the will of the people is not transferable, nor even the will of the single individual. However much in practice, during the confused years of the Terror, the doctrine was abandoned by the disciples of the philosopher of Geneva, it was at this time in theory universally admitted as incontrovertible. Robespierre himself accepted it, making a subtle distinction between the “représentant du peuple,” who has no right to exist, “parce que la volonté ne peut se représenter,” and “le mandataire du peuple, à qui le peuple a donné la première puissance.”

The experience of attentive observers of the working of the first attempts at a representative system contributed to establish more firmly the theory of the limits of democracy. Towards the middle of the nineteenth century this theory, the outcome of an empirical psychology, was notably enlarged, its claim to general validity was sustained, and it was formulated as the basis of definite rules and precepts. Carlo Pisacane, the theorist, too soon forgotten, of the national and social revolution in Italy, expounds in his Saggio sulla Rivoluzione how the men in whose hands supreme political power is placed must, from their very nature as human beings, be subject to passions and to the physical and mental imperfections therefrom resulting. For this reason the tendency and the acts of their rule are in direct contrast with the tendency and the acts of the mass, “for the latter represent the mean of all individual judgments and determinations, and are therefore free from the operation of such influences.” To maintain of a government that it represents public opinion and the will of the nation is simply to mistake a part for the whole. [33] He thus considers delegation to be an absurdity. Victor Considérant, a contemporary of Pisacane and the representative of a similar tendency, also followed in the tracks of Rousseau: “Si le peuple délègue sa souveraineté, il l'abdique. Le peuple ne se gouverne plus lui-même, on le gouverne.... Peuple, délègue donc ta souveraineté! Cela fait, je te garantis, à ta souveraineté sera devorée par la Délégation, ta fille.” [34] The theorists of democracy are never tired of asserting that, when voting, the people is at one and the same time exercising its sovereignty and renouncing it. The great democrat Ledru-Rollin, the father of universal and equal suffrage in France, goes so far as to demand the suppression of president and parliament, and the recognition of the general assembly of the people as the sole legislative organ. If people, he continues, find it possible in the course of the year to waste so much time upon public entertainments, holidays, and loafing, they could surely make a better use of their time by devoting it “à cimenter son indépendance, sa grandeur et sa prospérité.” [35]

Victor Considérant fiercely opposed the theory that popular sovereignty is guaranteed by the representative system. Even if we make the theoretical admission that in abstracto parliamentary government does indeed embody government by the masses, in practical life it is nothing but a continuous fraud on the part of the dominant class. Under representative government the difference between democracy and monarchy, which are both rooted in the representative system, is altogether insignificant—a difference not in substance but in form. The sovereign people elects, in place of a king, a number of kinglets. Not possessing sufficient freedom and independence to direct the life of the state, it tamely allows itself to be despoiled of its fundamental right. The one right which the people reserves is the “climatérique et dérisoire” [36] To this criticism of the representative system may be appended the remark of Proudhon, to the effect that the representatives of the people have no sooner been raised to power than they set to work to consolidate and reinforce their influence. They continue unceasingly to surround their positions by new lines of defense, until they have succeeded in emancipating themselves completely from popular control. All power thus proceeds in a natural cycle: issuing from the people, it ends by raising itself above the people. [37] In the forties of the last century these ideas were widely diffused and their truth was almost universally admitted, and in France more particularly by students of social science and by democratic statesmen. Even the clericals mingled their voices with those which condemned the representative system. Louis Veuillot, the Catholic, said: “Quand j'ai voté, mon égalité tombe dans la boîte avec mon bulletin; ils disparaissent ensemble.” [38] Today this theory is the central feature of the political criticism of the various schools of anarchists, who often expound it eloquently and acutely. [39] Finally Marx and his followers, who in theory regard parliamentary action as but one weapon among many, but who in practice employ this weapon alone, do not fail to recognize incidentally the perils of the representative system, even when based upon universal suffrage. But the Marxists hasten to add that the socialist party is quite free from these dangers. [40]

Popular sovereignty has recently been subjected to a profound criticism by a group of Italian writers conservative in their tendency. Gaetano Mosca speaks of “the falsity of the parliamentary legend.” He says that the idea of popular representation as a free and spontaneous transference of the sovereignty of the electors (collectivity) to a certain number of elected persons (minority) is based upon the absurd premise that the minority can be bound to the collective will by unbreakable bonds. [41] In actual fact, directly the election is finished, the power of the mass of electors over the delegate comes to an end. The deputy regards himself as authorized arbiter of the situation, and really is such. If among the electors any are to be found who possess some influence over the representative of the people, their number is very small; they are the big guns of the constituency or of the local branch of the party. In other words, they are persons who, whilst belonging by social position to the class of the ruled, have in fact come to form part of the ruling oligarchy. [42]

This criticism of the representative system is applicable above all in our own days, in which political life continually assumes more complex forms. As this complexity increases, it becomes more and more absurd to attempt to “represent” a heterogeneous mass in all the innumerable problems which arise out of the increasing differentiation of our political and economic life. To represent, in this sense, comes to mean that the purely individual desire masquerades and is accepted as the will of the mass. [43] In certain isolated cases, where the questions involved are extremely simple, and where the delegated authority is of brief duration, representation is possible. But permanent representation will always be tantamount to the exercise of dominion by the representatives over the represented.

3. CHAPTER III
THE MODERN DEMOCRATIC PARTY AS A FIGHTING PARTY, DOMINATED BY MILITARIST IDEAS AND METHODS

Louis XIV understood the art of government as have few princes either before or since, and this was the case, above all in the first half of his reign, when his spirit was still young and fresh. In his memoirs of the year 1666, he lays down for every branch of the adminstration, and more especially for the conduct of military affairs, the following essential rules: “que les résolutions doivent être promptes, la discipline exacte, les commandements absolus, l'obéissance ponctuelle.” [44] The essentials thus enumerated by the Roi Soleil (promptness of decision, unity of command, and strictness of discipline) are equally applicable, mutatis mutandis, to the various aggregates of modern political life, for these are in a perpetual condition of latent warfare.

The modern party is a fighting organization in the political sense of the term, and must as such conform to the laws of tactics. Now the first article of these laws is facility of mobilization. Ferdinand Lassalle, the founder of a revolutionary labour party, recognized this long ago, contending that the dictatorship which existed in fact in the society over which he presided was as thoroughly justified in theory as it was indispensable in practice. The rank and file, he said, must follow their chief blindly, and the whole organization must be like a hammer in the hands of its president.

This view of the matter was in correspondence with political necessity, especially in Lassalle's day, when the labour movement was in its infancy, and when it was only by a rigorous discipline that this movement could hope to obtain respect and consideration from the bourgeois parties. Centralization guaranteed, and always guarantees, the rapid formation of resolutions. An extensive organization is per se a heavy piece of mechanism, and one difficult to put in operation. When we have to do with a mass distributed over a considerable area, to consult the rank and file upon every question would involve an enormous loss of time, and the opinion thus obtained would moreover be summary and vague. But the problems of the hour need a speedy decision, and this is why democracy can no longer function in its primitive and genuine form, unless the policy pursued is to be temporizing, involving the loss of the most favorable opportunities for action. Under such guidance, the party becomes incapable of acting in alliance with others, and loses its political elasticity. A fighting party needs a hierarchical structure. In the absence of such a structure, the party will be comparable to a savage and shapeless Negro army, which is unable to withstand a single well-disciplined and welldrilled battalion of European soldiers.

In the daily struggle, nothing but a certain degree of caesarism will ensure the rapid transmission and the precise execution of orders. The Dutch socialist, van Kol, frankly declares that true democracy cannot be installed until the fight is over. Meanwhile, even a socialist leadership must possess authority, and sufficient force to maintain itself in power. A provisional despotism is, he contends, essential, and liberty itself must yield to the need for prompt action. Thus the submission of the masses to the will of a few individuals comes to be considered one of the highest of democratic virtues. “A ceux que sont appelés à nous conduire, nous promettons fidélité et soumission et nous leur disons: Hommes ennoblis par le choix du peuple, montrez nous le chemin, nous vous suivrons.” [45] It is such utterances as this which reveal to us the true nature of the modern party. In a party, and above all in a fighting political party, democracy is not for home consumption, but is rather an article made for export. Every political organization has need of “a light equipment which will not hamper its movements.” Democracy is utterly incompatible with strategic promptness, and the forces of democracy do not lend themselves to the rapid opening of a campaign. This is why political parties, even when democratic, exhibit so much hostility to the referendum and to all other measures for the safeguard of real democracy; and this is why in their constitution these parties exhibit, if not unconditional caesarism, at least extremely strong centralizing and oligarchical tendencies. Lagardelle puts the finishing touches to the picture in the following words: “Et ils ont reproduit à l'usage des prolétaires les moyens de domination des capitalistes; ils ont constitué un gouvernement ouvrier aussi dur que le gouvernement bourgeois, une bureaucratie ouvrière aussi lourde que la bureaucratie bourgeoise, un pouvoir central qui dit aux ouvriers ce qu'ils peuvent et ce qu'ils ne peuvent pas faire, qui brisent dans les syndicats et chez les syndiqués toute indépendance et toute initiative et qui doit parfois inspirer à ses victimes le regret des modes capitalistes de l'autorité.” [46]

The close resemblance between a fighting democratic party and a military organization is reflected in socialist terminology, which is largely borrowed, and especially in Germany, from military science. There is hardly one expression of military tactics and strategy, hardly even a phrase of barrack slang, which does not recur again and again in the leading articles of the socialist press. In the daily practice of the socialist struggle it is true that preference is almost invariably given to the temporizing tactics of Fabius Cunctator, but this depends upon special circumstances, which will be subsequently discussed (Part 6, Chap. 1). The intimate association between party life and military life is manifested also by the passionate interest which some of the most distinguished leaders of German socialism take in military affairs. During his residence in England, the German merchant Frederick Engels, who had once served in the Guards as a volunteer, devoted his leisure to the simultaneous exposition of socialist and of militarist theory. [47] To Bebel, the son of a Prussian non-commissioned officer, the world is indebted for a number of ideas of reform in matters of military technique which have nothing in common with the theoretical socialist anti-militarism. [48] Bebel and Engels, and especially the latter, may even be considered as essentially military writers. This tendency on the part of socialist leaders is not the outcome of mere chance, but depends upon an instinct of elective affinity.

B. PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSES OF LEADERSHIP

1. CHAPTER I
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A CUSTOMARY RIGHT TO THE OFFICE OF DELEGATE

One who holds the office of delegate acquires a moral right to that office, and delegates remain in office unless removed by extraordinary circumstances or in obedience to rules observed with exceptional strictness. An election made for a definite purpose becomes a life incumbency. Custom becomes a right. One who has for a certain time held the office of delegate ends by regarding that office as his own property. If refused reinstatement, he threatens reprisals (the threat of resignation being the least serious among these) which will tend to sow confusion among his comrades, and this confusion will continue until he is victorious.

Resignation of office, in so far as it is not a mere expression of discouragement or protest (such as disinclination to accept a candidature in an unpromising constituency), is in most cases a means for the retention and fortification of leadership. Even in political organizations greater than party, the leaders often employ this stratagem, thus disarming their adversaries by a deference which does not lack a specious democratic color. The opponent is forced to exhibit in return an even greater deference, and this above all when the leader who makes use of the method is really indispensable, or is considered indispensable by the mass. The recent history of Germany affords numerous examples showing the infallibility of this machiavellian device for the maintenance of leadership. During the troubled period of transition from absolute to constitutional monarchy, during the ministry of Ludolf Camphausen, King Frederick William IV of Prussia threatened to abdicate whenever liberal ideas were tending in Prussian politics to gain the upper hand over the romanticist conservatism which was dear to his heart. By this threat the liberals were placed in a dilemma. Either they must accept the king's abdication, which would involve the accession to the throne of Prince William of Prussia, a man of ultra-reactionary tendencies, whose reign was likely to be initiated by an uprising among the lower classes; or else they must abandon their liberal schemes, and maintain in power the king now become indispensable. Thus Frederick William always succeeded in getting his own way, and in defeating the schemes of his political opponents. Thirtyfive years later Prince Bismarck, establishing his strength with the weapon of his indispensability, consolidated his omnipotence over the German empire which he had recently created, by again and again handing in his resignation to the Emperor William I. His aim was to reduce the old monarch to obedience, whenever the latter showed any signs of exercising an independent will, by suggesting the chaos in internal and external policy which would necessarily result from the retirement of the “founder of the empire,” since the aged emperor was not competent to undertake the personal direction of affairs. [49] The present president of the Brazilian republic, Hermes da Fonseca, owes his position chiefly to a timely threat of resignation. Having been appointed Minister of War in 1907, Fonseca undertook the reorganization of the Brazilian army. He brought forward a bill for the introduction of universal compulsory military service, which was fiercely resisted in both houses of parliament. Through his energetic personal advocacy, sustained by a threat of resignation, the measure was ultimately carried, and secured for its promoter such renown, that not only did he remain in office, but in the year 1910 was elected President of the Republic by 102,000 votes against 52,000.

It is the same in all political parties. Whenever an obstacle is encountered, the leaders are apt to offer to resign, professing that they are weary of office, but really aiming to show to the dissentients the indispensability of their own leadership. In 1864, when Vahlteich proposed a change in the rules of the General Association of German Workers, Lassalle, the president, was very angry, and, conscious of his own value to the movement, propounded the following alternative: Either you protect me from the recurrence of such friction as this, or I throw up my office. The immediate result was the expulsion of the importunate critic. In Holland to-day, Troelstra, the Dutch Lassalle, likewise succeeds in disarming his opponents within the party by pathetically threatening to retire into private life, saying that if they go on subjecting his actions to an inopportune criticism, his injured idealism will force him to withdraw from the daily struggles of party life. The same thing has occurred more than once in the history of the Italian socialist party. It often happens that the socialist members of parliament find themselves in disagreement with the majority of the party upon some question of importance, such as that of the opportuneness of a general strike; or in the party congresses they may wish to record their votes in opposition to the views of their respective branches. It is easy for them to get their own way and to silence their opponents by threatening to resign. If necessary, they go still further, and actually resign their seats, appealing to the electors as the only authority competent to decide the question in dispute. In such cases they are nearly always re-elected, and thus attain to an incontestable position of power. At the socialist congress held at Bologna in 1904, some of the deputies voted in favor of the reformist resolution, in opposition to the wishes of the majority of the comrades whose views they were supposed to represent. When called to account, they offered to resign their seats, and the party electors, wishing to avoid the expense and trouble of a new election, and afraid of the loss of party seats, hastened to condone the deputies' action. In May, 1906, twenty-four out of the twentyseven members of the socialist group in the Chamber resigned their seats, in consequence of the difference of views between themselves and the rank and file on the subject of the general strike, which the deputies had repudiated. All but three were re-elected.

Such actions have a fine democratic air, and yet hardly serve to conceal the dictatorial spirit of those who perform them. The leader who asks for a vote of confidence is in appearance submitting to the judgment of his followers, but in reality he throws into the scale the entire weight of his own indispensability, real or supposed, and thus commonly forces submission to his will. The leaders are extremely careful never to admit that the true aim of their threat to resign is the reinforcement of their power over the rank and file. They declare, on the contrary, that their conduct is determined by the purest democratic spirit, that it is a striking proof of their fineness of feeling, of their sense of personal dignity, and of their deference for the mass. Yet if we really look into the matter we cannot fail to see that, whether they desire it or not., their action is an oligarchical demonstration, the manifestation of a tendency to enfranchise themselves from the control of the rank and file. Such resignations, even if not dictated by a self-seeking policy, but offered solely in order to prevent differences of opinion between the leaders and the mass, and in order to maintain the necessary harmony of views, always have as their practical outcome the subjection of the mass to the authority of the leader.

2. CHAPTER II
THE NEED FOR LEADERSHIP FELT BY THE MASS

A DISTINGUISHED French dramatist who devoted his leisure to writing prose studies of serious social questions, Alexandre Dumas fils, once observed that every human advance was, at its outset, opposed by ninety-nine per cent of humanity. “Mais c'est sans aucune importance puisque ce centième auquel nous appartenons, depuis le commencement du monde a fait faire aux quatre-vignt-dix-neuf autres toutes les rélformes dont ils se trouvent très bien aujourd'hui tout en protestant contre celles qui restent à faire.” In another passage he adds: “Les majorités ne sont que la preuve de ce qui est,” whereas “les minorotés sont souvent le germe de ce qui sera.” [50]

There is no exaggeration in the assertion that among the citizens who enjoy political rights the number of those who have a lively interest in public affairs is insignificant. In the majority of human beings the sense of an intimate relationship between the good of the individual and the good of the collectivity is but little developed. Most people are altogether devoid of understanding of the actions and reactions between that organism we call the state and their private interests, their prosperity, and their life. As de Tocqueville expresses it, they regard it as far more important to consider “s'il faut faire passer un chemin au bout de leur domaine” [51] than to interest themselves in the general work of public administration. The majority is content, with Stirner, to call out to the state, “Get away from between me and the sun!” Stirner makes fun of all those who, in accordance with the views of Kant, preach it to humanity as a “sacred duty” to take an interest in public affairs. “Let those persons who have a personal interest in political changes concern themselves with these. Neither now nor at any future time will 'sacred duty' lead people to trouble themselves about the state, just as little as it is by 'sacred duty' that they become men of science, artists, etc. Egoism alone can spur people to an interest in public affairs, and will spur them—when matters grow a good deal worse.” [52]

In the life of modern democratic parties we may observe signs of similar indifference. It is only a minority which participates in party decisions, and sometimes that minority is ludicrously small. The most important resolutions taken by the most democratic of all parties, the socialist party, always emanate from a handful of the members. It is true that the renouncement of the exercise of democratic rights is voluntary; except in those cases, which are common enough, where the. active participation of the organized mass in party life is prevented by geographical or topographical conditions. Speaking generally, it is the urban part of the organization which decides everything; the duties of the members living in country districts and in remote provincial towns are greatly restricted; they are expected to pay their subscriptions and to vote during elections in favor of the candidates selected by the organization of the great town. There is here at work the influence of tactical considerations as well as that of local conditions. The preponderance of the townsmen over the scattered country members corresponds to the necessity of promptness in decision and speed in action to which allusion was made in an earlier chapter.

Within the large towns there goes on a process of spontaneous selection, in virtue of which there is separated from the organized mass a certain number of members who participate more diligently than the others in the work of the organization. This inner group is composed, like that of the pious frequenters of the churches, of two very distinct categories: the category of those who are animated by a fine sense of duty, and the category of those whose attendance is merely a matter of habit. In all countries the number of this inner circle is comparatively small. The majority of the members are as indifferent to the organization as the majority of the electors are to parliament. Even in countries like France, where collective political education is of older date, the majority renounces all active participation in tactical and administrative questions, leaving these to the little group which makes a practice of attending meetings. The great struggles which go on among the leaders on behalf of one tactical method or another, struggles in fact for supremacy in the party, but carried out in the name of Marxism, reformism, or syndicalism, are not merely beyond the understanding of the rank and file, but leave them altogether cold. In almost all countries it is easy to observe that meetings held to discuss questions of the hour, whether political, sensational, or sentimental (such as protection, an attack upon the Government, the Russian revolution, and the like), or those for the discussion of matters of general interest (the discovery of the North Pole, personal hygiene, spiritualism), attract a far larger audience, even when reserved to members of the party, than do meetings for the discussion of tactical or theoretical questions, although these are of vital importance to the doctrine or to the organization. The present writer knows this from personal experience in three typical great cities, Paris, Frankfort-on-the-Main, and Turin. Notwithstanding differences of atmosphere, there was observable in each of these three centers the same indifference to party affairs and the same slackness of attendance at ordinary meetings. The great majority of the members will not attend meetings unless some noted orator is to speak, or unless some extremely striking warcry is sounded for their attraction, such as, in France, “A bas la vie chère!” or, in Germany, “Down with personal government!” A good meeting can also be held when there is a cinema-show, or a popular scientific lecture illustrated by lantern-slides. In a word, the ordinary members have a weakness for everything which appeals to their eyes and for such spectacles as will always attract a gaping crowd.

It may be added that the regular attendants at public meetings and committees are by no means always proletarians—especially where the smaller centers are concerned. When his work is finished, the proletarian can think only of rest, and of getting to bed in good time. His place at meetings is taken by petty bourgeois, by those who come to sell newspapers and picture-postcards, by clerks, by young intellectuals who have not yet got a position in their own circle, people who are all glad to hear themselves spoken of as authentic proletarians and to be glorified as the class of the future.

The same thing happens in party life as happens in the state. In both, the demand for monetary supplies is upon a coercive foundation, but the electoral system has no established sanction. An electoral right exists, but no electoral duty. Until this duty is superimposed upon the right, it appears probable that a small minority only will continue to avail itself of the right which the majority voluntarily renounces, and that the minority will always dictate laws for the indifferent and apathetic mass. The consequence is that, in the political groupings of democracy, the participation in party life has an echeloned aspect. The extensive base consists of the great mass of electors; upon this is superposed the enormously smaller mass of enrolled members of the local branch of the party, numbering perhaps one-tenth or even as few as onethirtieth of the electors; above this, again, comes the much smaller number of the members who regularly attend meetings; next comes the group of officials of the party; and highest of all, consisting in part of the same individuals as the last group, come the half-dozen or so members of the executive committee. Effective power is here in inverse ratio to the number of those who exercise it. Thus practical democracy is represented by the following diagram:— [53]

Though it grumbles occasionally, the majority is really delighted to find persons who will take the trouble to look after its affairs. In the mass, and even in the organized mass of the labour parties, there is an immense need for direction and guidance. This need is accompanied by a genuine cult for the leaders, who are regarded as heroes. Misoneism, the rock upon which so many serious reforms have at all times been wrecked, is at present rather increasing than diminishing. This increase is explicable owning to the more extensive division of labour in modern civilized society, which renders it more and more impossible to embrace in a single glance the totality of the political organization of the state and its ever more complicated mechanism. To this misoneism are superadded, and more particularly in the popular parties, profound differences of culture and education among the members. These differences give to the need for leadership felt by the masses a continually increasing dynamic tendency.

This tendency is manifest in the political parties of all countries. It is true that its intensity varies as between one nation and another, in accordance with contingencies of a historical character or with the influences of racial psychology. The German people in especial exhibits to an extreme degree the need for someone to point out the way and to issue orders. This peculiarity, common to all classes not excepting the proletariat, furnishes a psychological soil upon which a powerful directive hegemony can flourish luxuriantly. There exist among the Germans all the preconditions necessary for such a development: a psychical predisposition to subordination, a profound instinct for discipline, in a word, the whole still-persistent inheritance of the influence of the Prussian drill-sergeant, with all its advantages and all its disadvantages; in addition, a trust in authority which verges on the complete absence of a critical faculty. It is only the Rhinelanders, possessed of a somewhat more conspicuous individuality, who constitute, to a certain extent, an exception to this generalization. The risks to the democratic spirit that are involved by this peculiarity of the German character were well known to Karl Marx. Although himself a party leader in the fullest sense of the term, and although endowed to the highest degree with the qualities necessary for leadership, he thought it necessary to warn the German workers against entertaining too rigid a conception of organization. In a letter from Marx to Schweitzer we are told that in Germany, where the workers are bureaucratically controlled from birth upwards, and for this reason have a blind faith in constituted authority, it is above all necessary to teach them to walk by themselves. [54]

The indifference which in normal times the mass is accustomed to display in ordinary political life becomes in certain cases of particular importance, an obstacle to the extension of the party influence. The crowd may abandon the leaders at the very moment when these are preparing for energetic action. This happens even in connection with the organization of demonstrations of protest. At the Austrian socialist congress held at Salzburg in 1904, Dr. Ellenbogen complained: “I am always anxious when the party leaders undertake any kind of action. It seems simply impossible to arouse the interest of the workers even in matters which one would have expected them to understand. In the agitation against the new military schemes, we found it impossible to organize meetings of a respectable size.” [55] In Saxony, in 1895, when it was proposed to restrict the suffrage, that is to say to limit the political rights of thousands of workers, the socialist leaders vainly endeavoured to arouse a general agitation, their attempts being rendered nugatory by the general apathy of the masses. The language of the press was inflammatory. Millions of leaflets were distributed. Within the space of a few days a hundred and fifty meetings of protest were held. All was without effect. There was no genuine agitation. The meetings, especially in the outlying districts, were very scantily attended. [56] The leaders, alike the Central Committee and the district organizers, were overwhelmed with disgust at the calm indifference of the mass, which rendered serious agitation altogether impossible. [57] The failure of the movement was due to an error of omission on the part of the leaders. The rank and file did not recognize the importance of the loss they were to suffer because the leaders had neglected to point out all its consequences. Accustomed to being ruled, the rank and file needs a considerable work of preparation before they can be set in motion. In default of this, and when signals which the rank and file do not understand are unexpectedly made by the leaders, they pay no attention.

The most striking proof of the organic weakness of the mass is furnished by the way in which, when deprived of their leaders in time of action, they abandon the field of battle in disordered flight; they seem to have no power of instinctive reorganization, and are useless until new captains arise capable of replacing those that have been lost. The failure of innumerable strikes and political agitations is explained very simply by the opportune action of the authorities, who have placed the leaders under lock and key. It is this experience which has given rise to the view that popular movements are, generally speaking, artificial products, the work of isolated individuals termed agitators (Aufwiegler, Hetzer, Meneurs, Sobillatori), and that it suffices to suppress the agitators to get the upper hand of the agitation. This opinion is especially favored by certain narrow-minded conservatives. But such an idea shows only the incapacity of those who profess to understand the intimate nature of the mass. In collective movements, with rare exceptions, the process is natural and not “artificial.” Natural above all is the movement itself, at whose head the leader takes his place, not as a rule of his own initiative, but by force of circumstances. No less natural is the sudden collapse of the agitation as soon as the army is deprived of its chiefs.

The need which the mass feels for guidance, and its incapacity for acting in default of an initiative from without and from above, impose, however, heavy burdens upon the chiefs. The leaders of modern democratic parties do not lead an idle life. Their positions are anything but sinecures, and they have acquired their supremacy at the cost of extremely hard work. Their life is one of incessant effort. The tenacious, persistent, and indefatigable agitation characteristic of the socialist party, particularly in Germany, never relaxed in consequence of casual failures, nor ever abandoned because of casual successes, and which no other party has yet succeeded in imitating, has justly aroused the admiration even of critics and of bourgeois opponents. In democratic organizations the activity of the professional leader is extremely fatiguing, often destructive to health, and in general (despite the divison of labour) highly complex. He has continually to sacrifice his own vitality in the struggle, and when for reasons of health he ought to slacken his activities, he is not free to do so. The claims made upon him never wane. The crowd has an incurable passion for distinguished orators, for men of a great name, and if these are not obtainable, they insist at least upon an M.P. At anniversaries and other celebrations of which the democratic masses are so fond, and always during electoral meetings, demands pour in to the central organization, and close always on the same note, “we must have an M.P.!” In addition, the leaders have to undertake all kinds of literary work, and should they happen to be barristers, they must give their time to the numerous legal proceedings which are of importance to the party. As for the leaders of the highest grade, they are simply stifled under the honorary positions which are showered upon them. Accumulation of functions is, in fact, one of the characteristics of modern democratic parties. In the German socialist party we not infrequently find that the same individual is a towncouncilor, a member of the diet, and a member of the Reichstag, or that, in addition to two of these functions, he is editor of a newspaper, secretary of a trade union, or secretary of a cooperative society; the same thing is true of Belgium, of Holland, and of Italy. All this brings honor to the leader, gives him power over the mass, makes him more and more indispensable; but it also involves continuous overwork; for those who are not of exceptionally strong constitution it is apt to involve a premature death.

3. CHAPTER III
THE POLITICAL GRATITUDE OF THE MASSES

IN addition to the political indifference of the masses and to their need for guidance, there is another factor, and one of a loftier moral quality, which contributes to the supremacy of the leaders, and this is the gratitude felt by the crowd for those who speak and write on their behalf. The leaders acquire fame as defenders and advisers of the people; and while the mass, economically indispensable, goes quietly about its daily work, the leaders, for love of the cause, must often suffer persecution, imprisonment, and exile.

These men, who have often acquired, as it were, an aureole of sanctity and martyrdom, ask one reward only for their services, gratitude. Sometimes this demand for gratitude finds written expression. Among the masses themselves this sentiment of gratitude is extremely strong. If from time to time we encounter exceptions to this rule, if the masses display the blackest ingratitude towards their chosen leaders, we may be certain that there is on such occasions a drama of jealousy being played beneath the surface. There is a demagogic struggle, fierce, masked, and obstinate, between one leader and another, and the mass has to intervene in this struggle, and to decide between the adversaries. But in favoring one competitor, it necessarily displays “ingratitude” towards the other. Putting aside these exceptional cases, the mass is sincerely grateful to its leaders, regarding gratitude as a sacred duty. As a rule, this sentiment of gratitude is displayed in the continual re-election of the leaders who have deserved well of the party, so that leadership commonly becomes perpetual. It is the general feeling of the mass that it would be “ungrateful” if they failed to confirm in his functions every leader of long service.

4. CHAPTER IV
THE CULT OF VENERATION AMONG THE MASSES

THE socialist parties often identify themselves with their leaders to the extent of adopting the leaders' names. Thus, in Germany from 1863 to 1875 there were Lassallists and Marxists; whilst in France, until quite recently, there were Broussists, Allemanists, Guesdists, and Jaurèsists. The fact that these personal descriptive terms tend to pass out of use in such countries as Germany may be attributed to two distinct causes: in the first place, there has been an enormous increase in the membership and especially in the voting strength of the party; and secondly, within the party, dictatorship has given place to oligarchy, and the leaders of this oligarchy are inspired by sentiments of mutual jealousy. As a supplementary cause may be mentioned the general lack of leaders of conspicuous ability, capable of securing and maintaining an absolute and indisputable authority.

The English anthropo-sociologist Frazer contends that the maintenance of the order and authority of the state is to a large extent dependent upon the superstitious ideas of the masses, this being, in his view, a bad means used to a good end. Among such superstitious notions, Frazer draws attention to the belief so frequent among the people that their leaders belong to a higher order of humanity than themselves. [58] The phenomenon is, in fact, conspicuous in the history of the socialist parties during the last fifty years. The supremacy of the leaders over the mass depends, not solely upon the factors already discussed, but also upon the widespread superstitious reverence paid to the leaders on account of their superiority in formal culture—for which a much greater respect is commonly felt than for true intellectual worth.

The adoration of the led for the leaders is commonly latent. It reveals itself by signs that are barely perceptible, such as the tone of veneration in which the idol's name is pronounced, the perfect docility with which the least of his signs is obeyed, and the indignation which is aroused by any critical attack upon his personality. But where the individuality of the leader is truly exceptional, and also in periods of lively excitement, the latent fervor is conspicuously manifested with the violence of an acute paroxysm. In June 1864, the hot-blooded Rhinelanders received Lassalle like a god. Garlands were hung across the streets. Maids of honor showered flowers over him. Interminable lines of carriages followed the chariot of the “president” with overflowing and irresistible enthusiasm and with frenzied applause were received the words of the hero of the triumph, often extravagant and in the vein of the charlatan, for he spoke rather as if he wished to defy criticism than to provoke applause. It was in truth a triumphal march. Nothing was lacking—triumphal arches, hymns of welcome, solemn receptions of foreign deputations. Lassalle was ambitious in the grand style, and, as Bismarck said of him at a later date, his thoughts did not go far short of asking whether the future German Empire, in which he was greatly interested, ought to be ruled by a dynasty of Hohenzollerns or of Lassalles. We need feel no surprise that all this adulation excited Lassalle's imagination to such a degree that he soon afterwards felt able to promise his fiancee that he would one day enter the capital as president of the German republic, seated in a chariot drawn by six white horses.

In Sicily, in 1892, when the first agricultural labourers' unions, known as fasci, were constituted, the members had an almost supernatural faith in their leaders. In an ingenuous confusion of the social question with their religious practices, they often in their processions carried the crucifix side by side with the red flag and with placards inscribed with sentences from the works of Marx. The leaders were escorted on their way to the meetings with music, torches, and Japanese lanterns. Many, drunk with the sentiment of adoration, prostrated themselves before their leaders, as in former days they had prostrated themselves before their bishops. [59] A bourgeois journalist once asked an old peasant, member of a socialist fascio, if the proletarians did not think that Giuseppe De Felice Giuffrida, Garibaldi Bosco, and the other young students or lawyers who, though of bourgeois origin, were working on behalf of the fasci, were not really doing this with the sole aim of securing their own election as county councilors and deputies. “De Felice and Bosco are angels come down from heaven!” was the peasant's brief and eloquent reply. [60]

It may be admitted that not all the workers would have replied to such a question in this way, for the Sicilian populace has always had a peculiar tendency to heroworship. But throughout southern Italy, and to some extent in central Italy, the leaders are even to-day revered by the masses with rites of a semi-religious character. In Calabria, Enrico Ferri was for some time adored as a tutelary saint against governmental corruption. In Rome also, where the tradition of the classic forms of paganism still survives, Ferri was hailed in a public hall, in the name of all the “proletarian quirites,” as “the greatest among the great.” The occasion for this demonstration was that Ferri had broken a window as a sign of protest against a censure uttered by the President of the Chamber (1901). [61] In Holland, in the year 1886, when Domela Nieuwenhuis was liberated from prison, he received from the people, as he himself records, greater honors than had ever been paid to any sovereign, and the halls in which he addressed meetings were profusely adorned with flowers. Such an attitude pn the part of the mass is not peculiar to backward countries or remote periods; it is an atavistic survival of primitive psychology. A proof of this is afforded by the idolatrous worship paid to-day in the department of the Nord (the most advanced industrial region in France) to the Marxist prophet, Jules Guesde. Moreover, in certain parts of England, we find that the working classes give their leaders a reception which recalls the days of Lassalle.

The adoration of the chiefs survives their death. The greatest among them are canonized. After the death of Lassalle, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein, of which he had been absolute monarch, broke up into two sections, the “fraction of the Countess Hatzfeld” or “female line,” as the Marxist adversaries sarcastically styled it, and the “male line” led by J. B. von Schweitzer. While quarreling fiercely with one another, these two groups were at one, not only hi respect of the honor they paid to Lassalle's memory, but also in their faithful observance of every letter of his program. Nor has Karl Marx escaped this sort of socialist canonization, and the fanatical zeal with which some of his followers defend him to this day strongly recalls the hero-worship paid to Lassalle. Just as Christians used to give and still give to their infants the names of the founders of their religion, St. Peter and St. Paul, so socialist parents in certain parts of central Italy call their boys Lassallo and their girls Marxina, as an emblem of the new faith. Moreover, the zealots often have to pay heavily for their devotion, in quarrels with angry relatives and with recalcitrant registration officials, and sometimes even in the form of serious material injury, such as loss of employment. Whilst this practice is at times no more than a manifestation of that intellectual snobbery from which even the working-class environment is not wholly free, it is often the outward sign of a profound and sincere idealism. Whatever its cause, it proves the adoration felt by the masses for the leaders, an adoration transcending the limits of a simple sense of obligation for services rendered. Sometimes this sentiment of hero-worship is turned to practical account by speculative tradesmen, so that we see in the newspapers (especially in America, Italy, and the southern Slav lands) advertisements of “Karl Marx liqueurs” and “Karl Marx buttons”; and such articles are offered for sale at public meetings. A clear light is thrown upon the childish character of proletarian psychology by the fact that these speculative activities often prove extremely lucrative.

The masses experience a profound need to prostrate themselves, not simply before great ideals, but also before the individuals who in their eyes incorporate such ideals. Their adoration for these temporal divinities is the more blind in proportion as their lives are rude. There is considerable truth in the paradoxical phrases of Bernard Shaw, who defines democracy as a collection of idolaters, in contradistinction to aristocracy, which is a collection of idols. [62] This need to pay adoring worship is often the sole permanent element which survives all the changes in the ideas of the masses. The industrial workers of Saxony have during recent years passed from fervent Protestantism to socialism. It is possible that in the case of some of them this evolution has been accompanied by a complete reversal of all their former intellectual and moral valuations; but it is certain that if from their domestic shrines they have expelled the traditional image of Luther, it has only been in order to replace it by one of Bebel. In Emilia, where the peasantry has undergone a similar evolution, the oleograph of the Blessed Virgin has simply given place to one of Prampolini; and in southern Italy, faith in the annual miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius has yielded before a faith in the miracle of the superhuman power of Enrico Ferri, “the Scourge of the Camorra.” Amid the ruins of the old moral world of the masses, there remains intact the triumphal column of religious need. They often behave towards their leaders after the manner of the sculptor of ancient Greece who, having modelled a Jupiter Tonans, prostrated himself in adoration before the work of his own hands.

In the object of such adoration, megalomania is apt to ensue. [63] The immeasurable presumption, which is not without its comic side, sometimes found in modern popular leaders, is not dependent solely on their being self-made men, but also upon the atmosphere of adulation in which they live and breathe. This overweening selfesteem on the part of the leaders diffuses a powerful suggestive influence, whereby the masses are confirmed in their admiration for their leaders, and it thus proves a source of enhanced power.

5. CHAPTER V
ACCESSORY QUALITIES REQUISITE TO LEADERSHIP

IN the opening days of the labour movement, the foundation of leadership consisted mainly, if not exclusively, in oratorical skill. It is impossible for the crowd to escape the æsthetic and emotional influence of words. The fineness of the oratory exercises a suggestive influence whereby the crowd is completely subordinated to the will of the orator. Now the essential characteristic of democracy is found in the readiness with which it succumbs to the magic of words, written as well as spoken. In a democratic regime, the born leaders are orators and journalists. It suffices to mention Gambetta and Clemenceau in France; Gladstone and Lloyd George in England; Crispi and Luzzatti in Italy. In states under democratic rule it is a general belief that oratorical power is the only thing which renders a man competent for the direction of public affairs. The same maxim applies even more definitely to the control of the great democratic parties. The influence of the spoken word has been obvious above all in the country in which a democratic regime first came into existence. This was pointed out in 1826 by an acute Italian observer: “The English people, so prudent in the use of its time, experiences, in listening to a public speaker, the same pleasure which it enjoys at the theater when the works of the most celebrated dramatists are being played.” [64] A quarter of a century later, Carlyle wrote: “No British man can attain to be a statesman or chief of workers till he has first proved himself a chief of talkers.” [65] In France, Ernest-Charles, making a statistical study of the professions of the deputies, showed that, as far as the young, impetuous, lively, and progressive parties are concerned, almost all the parliamentary representatives are journalists and able speakers. [66] This applies not only to the socialists, but also to the nationalists and to the anti-Semites. The whole modern history of the political labour movement confirms the observation. Jaurès, Guesde, Lagardelle, Herve, Bebel, Ferri, Turati, Labriola, Ramsay Macdonald, Troelstra, Henriette Roland-Hoist, Adler, Daszynski5 — all, each in his own fashion, are powerful orators.

On the other hand, it is the lack of oratorical talent which largely explains why, in Germany, such a personality as that of Eduard Bernstein has remained in comparative obscurity, notwithstanding the vigour of his doctrinal views and his great intellectual influence; why, in Holland, Domela Nieuwenhuis has in the end lost his leading position; why, in France, a man possessed of so much talent and cultivation as Paul Lafargue, closely connected by family ties with Karl Marx, failed to attain such a position in the councils of the party as Guesde, who is far from being a man of science, or even a man of very powerful intelligence, but who is a notable orator.

Those who aspire to leadership in the labour organizations fully recognize the importance of the oratorical art. In March 1909 the socialist students of Ruskin College, Oxford, expressed discontent with their professors because these gave to sociology and to pure logic a more important place in the curriculum than to oratorical exercises. Embryo politicians, the students fully recognized the profit they would derive from oratory in their chosen career. Resolving to, back up their complaint by energetic action, they went on strike until they had got their own way.

The prestige acquired by the orator in the minds of the crowd is almost unlimited. What the masses appreciate above all are oratorical gifts as such, beauty and strength of voice, suppleness of mind, badinage; whilst the content of the speech is of quite secondary importance. A spouter who, as if bitten by a tarantula, rushes hither and thither to speak to the people, is apt to be regarded as a zealous and active comrade, whereas one who, speaking little but working much, does valuable service for the party, is regarded with disdain, and considered but an incomplete socialist.

Unquestionably, the fascination exercised by the beauty of a sonorous eloquence is often, for the masses, no more than the prelude to a long series of disillusionments, either because the speaker's practical activities bear no proportion to his oratorical abilities, or simply because he is a person of altogether common character. In most cases however, the masses, intoxicated by the speaker's powers, are hypnotized to such a degree that for long periods to come they see in him a magnified image of their own ego. Their admiration and enthusiasm for the orator are, in ultimate analysis, no more than admiration and enthusiasm for their own personalities, and these sentiments are fostered by the orator in that he undertakes to speak and to act in the name of the mass, in the name, that is, of every individual. In responding to the appeal of the great orator, the mass is unconsciously influenced by its own egoism.

Numerous and varied are the personal qualities thanks to which certain individuals succeed in ruling the masses. These qualities, which may be considered as specific qualities of leadership, are not necessarily all assembled in every leader. Among them, the chief is the force of will which reduces to obedience less powerful wills. Next in importance come the following: a wider extent of knowledge which impresses the members of the leader's environment; a catonian strength of conviction, a force of ideas often verging on fanaticism, and which arouses the respect of the masses by its very intensity; self-sufficiency, even if accompanied by arrogant pride, so long as the leader knows how to make the crowd share his own pride in himself; in exceptional cases, finally, goodness of heart and disinterestedness, qualities which recall in the minds of the crowd the figure of Christ, and reawaken religious sentiments which are decayed but not extinct.

The quality, however, which most of all impresses the crowd is the prestige of celebrity. As we learn from modern psychology, a notable factor in the suggestive influence exercised by a man is found in the elevation to which he has climbed on the path leading to the Parnassus of celebrity. Tarde writes: “En réalité, quand un esprit agit sur notre pensée, c'est avec la collaboration de beaucoup d'autres esprits à travers lesquels nous le voyons et dont l'opinion se réflète dans la nôtre, à notre insu. Nous songeons vaguement à la considération qu'on a pour lui... à l'admiration qu'il inspire.... S'il s'agit d'un homme célèbre, c'est en masse et confusément que le nombre considérable de ses appréciateurs nous impressionne, et cet influence revêt un air de solidarité objective, de réalité impersonelle, qui fait le prestige propre aux personnes glorieuses.” [67] It suffices for the celebrated man to raise a finger to make for himself a political position. It is a point of honor with the masses to put the conduct of their affairs in the hands of a celebrity. The crowd always submits willingly to the control of distinguished individuals. The man who appears before them crowned with laurels is considered a priori to be a demigod. If he consents to place himself at their head it matters little where he has gained his laurels, for he can count upon their applause and enthusiasm. It was because Lassalle was celebrated at once as poet, philosopher, and barrister that he was able to awaken the toiling masses, ordinarily slumbering or drawn in the wake of the bourgeois democracy, to group them round his own person. Lassalle was himself well aware of the effect which great names produce upon the crowd, and for this reason he always endeavoured to secure for his party the adhesion of men of note. In Italy, Enrico Ferri, who while still a young man was already a university professor, and had at the same time acquired wide distinction as the founder of the new Italian school of criminology, had merely to present himself at the Socialist Congress of Reggio Emilia in the year 1893 to secure the leadership of the Italian Socialist Party, a leadership which he retained for fifteen years. In like manner, Cesare Lombroso, the anthropologist, and Edmondo De Amicis, the author, had no sooner given in their adhesion to the socialist party than they were immediately raised to positions of honor, one becoming the confidential adviser and the other the official Homer of the militant Italian proletariat. Yet not one of these distinguished men had become a regular subscribing member; they had merely sent certain congratulatory telegrams and letters. In France, Jean Jaurès, already distinguished as an academic philosopher and as a radical politician, and Anatole France, the celebrated novelist, attained to leading positions in the labour movement as soon as they decided to join it, without having to undergo any period of probation. In England, when the poet William Morris, at the age of forty-eight, became a socialist, he immediately acquired great popularity in the socialist movement. Similar was the case in Holland of Herman Gorter, author of the fine lyric poem Mei, and the poetess Henriette Roland-Holst. In contemporary Germany there are certain great men, at the zenith of their fame, who are intimate sympathizers with the party, but have not decided to join it. It may, however, be regarded as certain that if Gerhard Hauptmann, after the success of his Weavers, and Werner Sombart, when his first published writings had attracted such wide attention, had given in their official adhesion to the German socialist party, they would now be amongst the most honored leaders of the famous three million socialists of Germany. In the popular view, to bear a name which is already familiar in certain respects constitutes the best title to leadership. Among the party leaders will be found men who have acquired fame solely within the ranks of the party, at the price of long and arduous struggles, but the masses have always instinctively preferred to these those leaders who have joined them when already full of honor and glory and possessing independent claims to immortality. Such fame won in other fields seems to them of greater value than that which is won under their own eyes.

Certain accessory facts are worth mentioning in this connection. History teaches that between the chiefs who have acquired high rank solely in consequence of work for the party and those who have entered the party with a prestige acquired in other fields, a conflict speedily arises, and there often ensues a prolonged struggle for dominion between two factions. As motives for this struggle, we have, on the one side, envy and jealousy, and, on the other, presumption and ambition. In addition to these subjective factors, objective and tactical factors are also in operation. The great man who has attained distinction solely within the party commonly possesses, when compared with the “outsider,” the advantage of a keener sense for the immediately practical, a better understanding of masspsychology, a fuller knowledge of the history of the labour movement, and in many cases clearer ideas concerning the doctrinal content of the party programme.

In this struggle between the two groups of leaders, two phases may almost always be distinguished. The new arrivals begin by detaching the masses from the power of the old leaders, and by preaching a new evangel which the crowd accepts with delirious enthusiasm. This evangel, however, is no longer illuminated by the treasury of ideas which as a whole constitute socialism properly so-called, but by ideas drawn from the science or from the art in which these great men have previously acquired fame, and it is given a suggestive weight owing to the admiration of the great amorphous public. Meanwhile, the old leaders, filled with rancor, having first organized for defense, end by openly assuming the offensive. They have the natural advantage of numbers. It often happens that the new leaders lose their heads because, as great men, they have cherished the illusion that they are quite safe from such surprises. Are not the old leaders persons of mediocre ability, who have acquired their present position only at the price of a long and arduous apprenticeship? In the view of the newcomers, this apprenticeship does not demand any distinguished intellectual qualities, and from their superior platform they look down with mingled disdain and compassion. There are, however, additional reasons why the men of independent distinction almost invariably succumb in such a struggle. Poets, æsthetes, or men of science, they refuse to submit to the general discipline of the party, and attack the external forms of democracy. But this weakens their position, for the mass cherishes such forms, even when it is ruled by an oligarchy. Consequently their adversaries, though no more truly democratic, since they are much cleverer in preserving the appearance of democracy, gain credit with the crowd. It may be added that the great men are not accustomed to confront systematic opposition. They become enervated when prolonged resistance is forced upon them. It is thus easy to understand why, in disgust and disillusion, they so often abandon the struggle, or create a little private clique for separate political action. The few among them who remain in the party are inevitably overthrown and thrust into the background by the old leaders. The great Lassalle had already found a dangerous competitor in the person of the simple ex-workman, Julius Vahlteich. It is true that Lassalle succeeded in disembarrassing himself of this opponent, but had he lived longer, he would have had to sustain a merciless struggle against Liebknecht and Bebel. William Morris, after he had broken with the old professional leaders of the English labour movement, was reduced to the leadership of his little guard of intellectuals at Hammersmith. Enrico Ferri, who at his first entrance into the party had to encounter the tenacious mistrust of the old leaders, subsequently committed theoretical and practical errors which ended by depriving him once for all of his position as official chief of the Italian socialists. Gorter and Henriette RolandHolst, after having for some years aroused intense enthusiasm, were finally overthrown and reduced to complete impotence by the old notables of the party.

Thus the dominion dependent upon distinction acquired outside the party is comparatively ephemeral. But age in itself is no barrier whatever to the power of the leaders. The ancient Greeks said that white hairs were the first crown which must decorate the leaders' foreheads. Today, however, we live in an epoch in which there is less need for accumulated personal experience of life, for science puts at every one's disposal efficient means of instruction that even the youngest may speedily become thoroughly well instructed. Today everything is quickly acquired, even that experience in which formerly consisted the sole and genuine superiority of the old over the young. Thus, not in consequence of democracy, but simply owing to the technical type of modern civilization, age has lost much of its value, and therefore has lost, in addition, the respect which it inspired and the influence which it exercised. It might rather be said that age is a hindrance to progress within the party, just as in any other career which it is better to enter in youth because there are so many steps to mount. This is true at least in the case of well organized parties, and where there is a great influx of new members. It is certainly different as far as concerns leaders who have grown old in the service of the party. Age here constitutes an element of superiority. Apart from the gratitude which the masses feel towards the old fighter on account of the services he has rendered to the cause, he also possesses this great advantage over the novice that he has a better knowledge of his trade. David Hume tells us that in practical agriculture the superiority of the old farmer over the young arises in consequence of a certain uniformity in the effects of the sun, the rain, and, the soil upon the growth of plants, and because practical experience teaches the rules that determine and guide these influences. [68] In party life, the old hand has a similar advantage. He possesses a profounder understanding of the relationships between cause and effect which form the framework of popular political life and the substance of popular psychology. The result is that his conduct is guided by a fineness of perception to which the young have not yet attained.

6. CHAPTER VI
ACCESSORY PECULIARITIES OF THE MASSES

TO enable us to understand and properly to appreciate the superiority of the leaders over the mass it is necessary to turn our attention to the characteristics of the rank and file. The question arises, what are these masses?

It has already been shown that a general sentiment of indifference towards the management of its own affairs is natural to the crowd, even when organized to form political parties.

The very composition of the mass is such as to render it unable to resist the power of an order of leaders aware of its own strength. An analysis of the German trade unions in respect of the age of their members gives a sufficiently faithful picture of the composition also of the various socialist parties. The great majority of the membership ranges in age from 25 to 39 years. [69] Quite young men find other ways of employing their leisure; they are heedless, their thoughts run in erotic channels, they are always hoping that some miracle will deliver them from the need of passing their whole lives as simple wage-earners, and for these reasons they are slow to join a trade union. The men over forty, weary and disillusioned, commonly resign their membership (unless retained in the union by purely personal interest, to secure out-of-work pay, insurance against illness, and the like). Consequently there is lacking in the organization the force of control of ardent and irreverent youth and also that of experienced maturity. In other words, the leaders have to do with a mass of members to whom they are superior in respect of age and experience of life, whilst they have nothing to fear from the relentless criticism which is so peculiarly characteristic of men who have just attained to virility.

Another important consideration as to the composition of the rank and file who have to be led is its fluctuating character. It seems, at any rate, that this may be deduced from a report of the socialist section of Munich for the year 1906. It contains statistics, showing analytically the individual duration of membership. The figures in parenthesis indicate the total number of members, including those members who had previously belonged to other sections.

MEMBERSHIP CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO DURATION.

Less than 6 months........................ 1,502 about 23% (1,582)
From 6 months to 2 years.............. 1,620 “ 24% (1,816)
“ 2 to 3 years.................. 684 “ 10% (995)
“ 3 to 4 “................ 1,020 “ 15% (1,965)
“ 4 to 5 “................ 507 “ 7 1/2% (891)
“ 5 to 6 “................ 270 “ 4% (844)
“ 6 to 7 “................ 127 “ 2% (604)
“ 7 to 8 “................ 131 “ 2% (1,289)
More than 8 “................... 833 “ 12 1/2% (1,666) [70]

The fluctuating character of the membership is manifest in even greater degree in the German trade unions. This has given rise to the saying that a trade union is like a pigeon-house where the pigeons enter and leave at their caprice. The German Metalworkers' Federation (Deutscher Metallarbeiterverband) had, during the years 1906 to 1908, 210,561 new members. But the percentage of withdrawals increased in 1906 to 60, in 1907 to 83, and in 1908 to 100. [71] This shows us that the bonds connecting the bulk of the masses to their organization are extremely slender, and that it is only a small proportion of the organized workers who feel themselves really at one with their unions. Hence the leaders, when compared with the masses, whose composition varies from moment to moment, constitute a more stable and more constant element of the organized membership.

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?