Observations on Some Aspects of the Structure of Political Parties in Periods of Organic Crisis
At a certain point in their historical life social groups detach themselves from their traditional parties; i.e. the political parties, in that given organisational form, with the particular men who constitute, represent and lead them, are no longer recognised as the proper expression of their class or fraction of a class. When these crises occur, the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous, since the field is open to solutions of force, to the activity of obscure powers represented by "men of destiny" or "divine" men.
How are these situations of opposition between “represented and representatives” formed, situations which from the field of the parties (party organisations in the strict sense of the parliamentary-electoral field, newspaper organisation), are reflected throughout the whole State organism, strengthening the relative position of power of the bureaucracy (civil and military), of high finance, of the Church, and in general of all the organisms which are relatively independent of the fluctuations of public opinion? In every country the process is different, although the content is the same. And the content is a crisis of hegemony of the ruling class, which comes about either because the ruling class has failed in some big political undertaking for which it asked, or imposed by force, the consent of the broad masses (like war), or because vast masses (especially of peasants and petty-bourgeois intellectuals) have passed suddenly from political passivity to a certain activity and put forward aims which in their disorganic complex constitute a revolution. One speaks of a “crisis of authority” and this in fact is the crisis of hegemony, or crisis of the State in all spheres.
The crisis creates immediately dangerous situations, because the different strata of the population do not possess the same capacity for rapid reorientation or for reorganising themselves with the same rhythm. The traditional ruling class, which has a numerous trained personnel, changes men and programmes and reabsorbs the control which was escaping it with a greater speed than occurs in the subordinate classes; it makes sacrifices, exposes itself to an uncertain future by making demagogical promises, but it maintains power, strengthens it for the moment and makes use of it in order to crush its opponent and disperse its leading personnel, which cannot be very numerous or well-trained. The transference of the effects of many parties under the banner of a single party which better represents and embodies the needs of the entire class, is an organic and normal phenomenon, even if its rhythm is very rapid and almost like a thunderbolt in comparison with calm times: it represents the fusion of a whole social group under a single leadership which is alone considered capable of solving an existing, predominant problem and removing a mortal danger. When the crisis does not find this organic solution, but the solution of a divine leader, it means that there exists a static equilibrium (whose factors may be unequal, but in which the immaturity of the progressive forces is decisive); that no group, either conservative or progressive, has the force for victory and that even the conservative group needs a master.1
This order of phenomena is connected with one of the most important questions relating to the political party; that is, to the capacity of the party for reacting against the spirit of habit, against the tendency to become mummified and anachronistic. Parties come into existence and are constituted organisationally in order to lead the situation in historically vital moments for their classes; but they are not always able to adapt themselves to new tasks and new periods, they are not always able to develop according to the development of the complex relations of force (and hence relative position of their classes) in the particular country or in the international field. In analysing this party development it is necessary to distinguish: the social group; the mass of the party; the bureaucracy and High Command of the party. The bureaucracy is the most dangerously habitual and conservative force; if it ends up by constituting a solid body, standing by itself and feeling independent from the masses, the party ends by becoming anachronistic, and in moments of acute crisis becomes emptied of all its social content, like an empty shell. One can see what happened to a number of German parties with the expansion of Hitlerism. The French parties are a rich field for this research they are all mummified and anachronistic, historico-political documents of different phases of past French history, whose outworn terminology they repeat; their crisis might become even more catastrophic than that of the German parties.
Those who examine this kind of event usually forget to give a correct place to the bureaucratic, civil and military, element, and in addition, do not keep in mind the fact, that such an analysis must not only include active military and bureaucratic elements, but also the social strata from which, in the given state complex, the bureaucracy is traditionally recruited. A political movement can be of a military character even if the army as such does not openly participate in it; a government can be of a military character even if the army as such does not openly participate in it. In certain situations it can happen that it is convenient not to "reveal" the army, not to make it step outside constitutionalism, not to bring politics among the soldiers, as it is said, in order to maintain homogeneity between officers and soldiers on a basis of apparent neutrality and superiority over factions; still it is the army, i.e. the General Staff and the officers, which determines the new situation and dominates it. On the other hand, it is not true that the army, according to the constitutions, must never be political; the army must in fact defend the constitution, i.e. the legal form of the State, together with its connected institutions; therefore the so-called neutrality means only support for the reactionary side; but it is necessary, in these situations, to pose the question in this way in order to prevent the army reproducing the dissent of the country which would lead to the disappearance of the determining power of the High Command through the disintegration of the military instrument. All these observations are certainly not absolute; at different historical moments and in various countries they have very different import.
Notes
- cf. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.↩