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Parties and the Common Good

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Mortimer Adler
Mortimer Adler
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

This paper has a twofold intention.

The first is to discuss the problem of political parties, — their justification and status, — in a society which requires political democracy as the set of political institutions appropriate for the government of men living under modern social and economic conditions. (By these modern conditions I mean such things as the economic forms of production and distribution in the industrial era; the organization of labor in relation to economic enterprise; the intensity and extensity of communication among men living in geographical separation and, consequently, the physical enlargement of the civic association; the approximation to universal education; the spread of literacy, etc.) There are two points to be noted here:

(1) That modern society is or tends toward a democracy in its physical and economic conditions, whether in a given instance its political forms are outwardly democratic, as in France, England and the United States, or anti-democratic, as in Italy, Germany and Russia.

(a) Not only does Russia publicize its claim to being democratic and make constitutional efforts in that direction which are, of course, at once vitiated by the persistence of its totalitarian regime; but even Germany and Italy give an appearance of democracy, — though they abominate the thought and word, — an appearance which is a reverse and distorted image. Thus, by the pressure of propaganda and the exercise of brutal force, the rulers of Germany and Italy try to make it appear that they have a mandate from the people for their policies.

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Articles
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , January 1939 , pp. 51 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1939

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References

1 It is a hundred years now since De Tocqueville made the point in his Democracy in America that the tendency toward an equality of conditions underlies the establishment of political democracy. More recently John Dewey has insisted upon the distinction between democracy as a social order and as a form of government. Vd. Democracy and Education, New York, 1926: pp. 100 ff. CfGoogle Scholar. Political and Economic Democracy, ed. by Ascoli and Lehmann, New York, 1937Google Scholar.

2 This notion of “reversed democracy” is developed by Professor Simons in his essay on “Parliamentarism” in Political and Economic Democracy. Vd. pp. 200 ff.

3 In the first annual Felix Adler lecture, entitled “Democracy and Education in the World Today.” Cf. the passage in De Tocqueville's preface where, speaking of France, he says that “the democratic revolution has been effected only in the material part of society, without that concomitant change in laws, ideas, customs and manners which was necessary to render such a revolution beneficial. We have gotten a democracy, but without the conditions which lessen its vices and render its natural advantages more prominent; and although we already perceive the evils it brings, we are ignorant of the benefits it may confer.”

4 Vd. Laski's, article on Democracy in the Social Science Encyclopedia: Vol. V, pp. 76–84Google Scholar.

5 Vd. Maritain, J., Les Degrés da Savoir, Paris, 1932: Annexe IIIGoogle Scholar; Science et Sagesse, Paris, 1935:pp. 228–374Google Scholar. Cf. Simon, Y., Critique de la Connaissance Morale, Paris, 1934; andGoogle ScholarTrois Lecora sur le Travail, Paris, 1938Google Scholar. Although these works have done much toward making an explicit formulation of the practical order in terms of traditional principles, many problems remain to be solved.

6 Vd. Aquinas, Thomas, In Libros Elhiconm, Bk. VI, 2: 1128–1132Google Scholar.

7 Nichomachean Ethics, II, 2, 1103b 26–30.

8 Nichomachean Eihia, I, 3, 1095a 1–10; X, 9, 1179b31–1180a13Google Scholar.

9 Vd. Marital, Freedom in the Modem World, New York, 1936Google Scholar: Appendix I. Cf. my discussion of these matters in Art and Prudence, New York, 1937: Ch. XII, esp. pp. 428–441Google Scholar. The Marxist notion of the “withering away of the state” as an ideal is based upon the false supposition that an adequate administration of things will completely dispense with the need for a government of men. Vd. Lenin, V. I., The State and Revolution, 1918; Eng. trans., London, 1934Google Scholar. This summarizes the views of Marx and Engels and extends them somewhat in view of later conditions. For a critique of this doctrine, vd. Hsiao, Kung Chuan, Political Pluralism, New York, 1927Google Scholar: Ch. V on pluralism as a solution of the problem of the relation between economics and politics.

10 Humanisme Intégral, Paris, 1936Google Scholar; pub. in English under the title of True Humanism, New York, 1938. Cf. Freedom in the Modem World, pp. 52 ff.Google Scholar

11 Vd. Aquinas, St Thomas, De Regimine Principum, I, 1Google Scholar, 2, 14, 15; II, 3.

11a I have not included in this comparison the difference between ethics and politics in their relation to theology, as differently requiring the supplementation of theology to be adequate practically. Moral theology is obviously a much more extensive body of doctrine than theological politics. The latter is concerned, for the most part, with two points: (1) the Divine government as the source of political authority; and (2) the movement of history, of both progress and decline in human affairs, as reflecting Providence. Vd. Note 35 infra.

12 It may be objected here that manners are local and subject to historical and ethnic variation; hence that there are changing, conventional determinations of moral principles. Thus, although courage and modesty are universal and invariant as moral virtues, the kinds of behavior which are recognized as courageous or modest are different at different times and in different cultures. But this objection fails to see what is involved in the distinction between shifting mores and enduring moral principles. Manners have to do with overt behavior, extrinsic, social operations. But the sphere of ethics is the interior domain of the will. Moral problems are all concerned, in one way or another, with the rectitude of the will, and only accidentally with the exteriorization or socialization of its commands. The fact that the moral virtues must express themselves socially in the varying dress of conventional manners does not affect the constancy of the virtues themselves as the basic moral forms, nor impair the adequacy of moral philosophy as directive of the moral life, an adequacy that transcends local conditions and historically determined mores. To suppose that moral philosophy must be essentially altered by an accommodation to the mores is to suppose that the principles of justice change with changes in positive law or national customs. The changing content of civil law as a set of determinations of natural law is relevant to the subjection of political principles to historic conditions for their fulfillment, but not to ethics. Cf. Art and Prudence, pp. 154–155, 165–166.

13 To say that political philosophy is not adequate in principle for all times and conditions is not to say that there are no political principles which have enduring practical truth. The difference between ethics and politics, here being discussed, is simply that casuistry, and casuistry alone, is needed to apply the principles and rules of moral wisdom for the guidance of life at any time or place; whereas changing conditions of human life and community call for new political principles and regulations. These are general, and not casuistical judgments about singular circumstances. Thus, the constitution as a political form is analogous to the virtues as moral forms. The virtues are constant because they are forms perfecting a constant human nature; but constitutions must vary with historic changes in social conditions. All the working institutions of the political order flow from the constitution as the arrangement of offices and as the principle of more determinate regulation of political processes. Thus, legal justice differs from natural justice in that it is measured by the constitution which confers legislative authority under specific restrictions, and not absolutely. If, then, it is true that a finite set of constitutions cannot be formulated for all times and conditions, political science is necessarily subject to history, and is always inadequate on the level of principles, as well as casuistically. To admit this is not to say that the ancient formulation of the principles of political justice and the ancient analysis of the generic kinds of government are not true today. These principles and forms are anterior in their generality to the specific constitutions and more determinate regulations. But the latter belong no less to politics as practical science and are the focal point of its temporal limitations. Vd. Note 37 infra. Cf. Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, I–II, Q. 97, A.IGoogle Scholar.

14 “James Mill, in his famous article on ‘Government,’ written in 1814 for the Encyclopedia Britlanica, called representation ‘the grand discovery of modern times,’ supplying the key to ‘the solution of all the difficulties, both spiritual and practical,’ in the way of organizing ‘good Government.’ Political scientists have yet to find the solution for the difficulties in the way of organizing good representation” (Coker, F. W. and Rodee, C. C., article on Representation in the Social Science Encyclopedia, Vol. XIII, p. 315)Google Scholar. Cf. Laski on the discovery of the idea of representation as early as the thirteenth century: op. cit., Vol. V, p. 79.

15 It is significant here that the Constitution of the United States did not anticipate the problem of parties as instruments of representation.

16 A text of Aristotle would appear to be inconsistent. He says: “As it is difficult to hit the mean exactly, we must take the second best course, as the saying goes, and choose the lesser of two evils” (Nichomachean Ethics, II, 9, 1109a 33–35). But this apparent inconsistency is removed by the context, for Aristotle is here suggesting practical rules for approximating the mean by tending away from the worse of the two extremes. This does not mean that the act which follows such advice is a vicious act. A vicious act cannot be a cause of virtuous habit; the act is not vicious by reason of approximating the mean rather than hitting it exactly. But in the political, as opposed to the moral, order evils may have to be chosen or endured for the sake of avoiding greater evils. Vd. Aquinas, St Thomas, De Regimine Principum, I, 6Google Scholar. In other words, a means which is intrinsically bad may have to be employed, because all the available means may be defective in one way or another. Under such conditions, of course, the common good can be approximated only in proportion as the means are not entirely corrupt. If it be argued that a man can act well politically if he direct himself to the right end, despite the corruption of the means he consents to employ, it must be answered that a man is responsible for the probable consequences of the instruments he uses; and if he use a corrupt political device which is probably contrary in effect to his intention, he is as culpable as a man who shoots another man intending only to cure him of a disease. If a revolver and poison are the only instruments at hand, would it not be better to abstain from action? Vd. Maritain's, discussion of the purification of means in Freedom in the Modem World: pp. 139–192Google Scholar.

17 Rhetoric, being a formal organon of persuasion, is not a branch of politics, whichas science deals with a restricted subject-matter, but so closely is it related to politics in fact that “rhetoric masquerades as political science, and the professors of it as political experts” (Aristotle, Rhetoric, I, 2, 1356a 28). Cf. ibid., I, 4, 1359b 10.

18 Vd., for example. Merriam, C. E., Political Power, New York, 1934Google Scholar; Lasswell, H. D., Politics, Who Gets What, When, How, New York, 1936Google Scholar.

19 Vd. Bryce, James, Modern Democracies, London, 1921Google Scholar; Lowell, A. Lawrence, Government and Parties in Continental Europe, Boston, 1896Google Scholar; Finer, H., The Theory and Practise of Modern Governments, London, 1932Google Scholar; Holcombe, A. N., The New Parly Politics, New York, 1933Google Scholar; Ostrogorskii, M., Democracy and the Organization of Political Parlies, New York, 1922Google Scholar.

19a Burke defined a party as “a body men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interst, upon some particular principle in which they all agreed;” and Bagehot declared that “party organization is the vital principle of representative government.”

20 Simons, H., “Parliamentarism,” in Political and Economic Democracy: p. 202Google Scholar.

21 Vd. A. Feiler, “Democracy by Class and Occupational Representations,” and M. Ascoli, “Political Parties,” in Political and Economic Democracy. Professor Ascoli's article is the most original defense of the party system in terms of the double function of parties to link society and state and also to maintain a certain distance between them. Vd. op. cit., p. 210.

22 Hsiao, Vd., Political Pluralism, esp. pp. 58–90Google Scholar, 115–125; A Feiler, “Democracy by Class and Occupational Representation” in Political and Economic Democracy; Cole, G. D. H., Social Theory, London, 1920Google Scholar; Laski, H. J. and others. The Development of the Representative System in our Times, Lausanne, 1928Google Scholar.

23 Vd. Coker, F. W. and Rodee, C. C., article on Representation in the Social Science Encyclopedia, Vol. V, pp. 314–315Google Scholar; Feiler, A., op. cit., p. 184Google Scholar; Simons, H., op. cit., p. 195Google Scholar; Hsiao, , op. cit., pp. 82–90Google Scholar.

24 Op. cit., p. 188, Vd. also pp. 186–7. The arguments for the ultimate supremacy of the political regime operate alike against the notion of purely vocational representation, advanced by the guild socialists, and against the Marxist hope for the withering away of the state. Cf. Note 9 supra.

25 The views here cited were expressed in a lecture on Democracy and Authority delivered at the University of Chicago in October, 1938, and not yet published. For Maritain's, M. espousal of political pluralism, vd. Humanisme Intégral, pp. 175 ffGoogle Scholar, Freedom in the Modem World, pp. 55 ff.

25a Vd. James Madison's arguments for a large plurality of parties in No. 10 of the Federalist Papers. It is not democracy, however, which Mr. Madison wishes to save. He argues that the causes of party oppositions cannot be removed; that, at best, relief can be obtained by mitigating their effects. He fears, most of all, the mob-like action of the multitude. Hence he seeks a purification of parties to protect the ruling oligarchy from being submerged by a popular majority. Washington's counsel against parties, — as essentially factious, — in his Farewell Address appears, in contrast, to spring from a genuine concern for the common good.

26 If there is a just cause of action against the iniquities of the capitalistic economy, the communist “party” is justified as a permanent organization devoted to promoting this cause by revolutionary measures but not otherwise. This “party,” in so far as it employs revolutionary tactics, does not operate as a medium of representative government, and hence is not a party, in the primary sense of that word. In so far as the communists support candidates for elective offices, “the party” functions as an ordinary party. The arguments against parties apply to communism only in the latter case.

27 It may be objected that as lawyers perform the function of serving the ends of justifiable litigation, so parties can perform the function of serving the ends of political controversy. But lawyers are not permanently associated with one set of clients, prosecuting or defending a single line of action; or, if they are, they are open to suspicion of serving the litigant in preference to the law. Their professional status has been subordinated to the partisan interests of their clients, in which they may even share. Therefore, this analogy permits the conclusion that parties can be permanently organized to perform a recognized political function, namely, facilitating debate, but only on the condition that they perform that function and do not become involved in the activities of government itself through the partisan occupation of public offices. This argument docs not, therefore, justify the permanence of parties as they now exist and function. And it is certainly a question whether a party, thus reduced to the office of a debating society, could receive that name univocally with parties as they now exist.

28 Another way of seeing that parties are essentially perverse, — that there cannot be parties to the common good, — is in terms of unity as an essential note of the common good. The community lias only so much being as it has unity, and its goodness is proportionate thereto. But parties are essentially divisive in their operation. They fractionalize rather than integrate. It should be added that the unity which constitutes the common good is not a simple unity. That is the error of the totalitarianisms seeking, as they do, to wipe out all differences by an enforced homogeneity. That is the error of one-party-rule as a cure for the defects of the party system. No, the unity of the state is complex and must be achieved by the organization of differences and not by their annihilation. “Is it not obvious,” says Aristotle, , “that a state may at length attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state, since the nature of a state is to be a plurality” (Politics, II, 2, 1261a 17–9)Google Scholar. Cf. ibid., II, 5, 1263b 30–38. But it does not follow that the pluralistic unity of the state requires a plurality of political parties. Just as one-party-rule tends toward a false unity, so the system of parties in opposition tends to create, not an organic heterogeneity, but divisions which thrive for their own sake and hence a false plurality. For the dissenting opinion of Professor Ascoli, see his article on “Political Parties” in Political and Economic Democracy.

29 Vd. Michels, R., Political Parties, a Sociological Study of Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, New York, 1915Google Scholar.

30 Hermens, F. A., “The Trojan Hone of Democracy” in Social Research, Nov., 1938: pp. 379–423.Google Scholar

31 Vd. Michel, Dom Virgil, The Theory of State, Paul, St., 1936: pp. 21–24Google Scholar.

32 The phrase “corporative state” is here used to refer to a pluralistic society with a corporative economy. It must not be understood as denying the supremacy or the unity of the political regime over the plurality of vocations operating on the economic level. Some writers, such as Feiler, prefer to speak of functional democracy; others, as Maritain, speak of organic democracy; and still others, such as Hsiao insist that corporative pluralism on the economic plane requires political monism. What is generally agreed on throughout, except by such extremists in pluralism as Laski and Cole, is that a truly pluralistic conception of the state as an order of corporations or vocations does not, in fact cannot, dispense with the supreme unity of political government, the government of men, not things. Fascism caricatures the corporative order, on the one hand, by assimilating the corporations into the governmental bureaucracy, instead of regulating them as quasi-autonomous functions; and socialism, on the other hand, goes to the opposite extreme of an unregulated plurality of economic functions, the corporations being vested with the autonomy of the state which has withered away. (Laski admits that his notion of a functional society is quasi-Marxian. Vd. Society Science Encyclopedia Vol V, pp. 83–84.)

33 Loc. cit., Note 25 supra.

34 The emphasis throughout this paper has been upon the role of analogy in political science. If the political philosophy of the ancients is inadequate in principle for solving modern problems, it is nevertheless rich in analogies which, if properly seen, may help us to invent new institutions or adapt old ones. To this end, we must avoid the stultifying error of using basic political terms as if they were univocal.

35 If democracy is understood as the kind of government which is adapted to the rule of a free people living under conditions of equality, then it is the embodiment of the basic principle of popular sovereignty, in terms of which the ruler, whether one or many, is merely the vicegerent for the whole people. Vd. Aquinas, St Thomas, Summa Theologica, I–II, Q. 90, A.3. Cf.Google Scholaribid., Q. 97, A.3, ad.3. In this sense, social and political democracy is the ideal toward which history tends, if history moves providentially toward the good. In fact, apart from a providential interpretation of historical trends, there is no ground for certainty in the prediction of progress in human affairs. Vd. Maritain, , Humanisme Intégral, Ch. VI, esp. p. 238Google Scholar.

36 Vd. Laski's, article on Democracy in the Social Science Encyclopedia, Vol. 5, esp. pp. 78Google Scholar ff. Laski fails to note the analogical transformation of political ideas which arise under one set of conditions and get embodiment at a later time in a different environment. Thus, he says that mediaeval conditions contributed ideas of great practical importance for democracy. “If the practise of democracy was largely dead, implicit in mediaeval life were notions important for later theory … All of them were premature in the sense that conditions as yet made their translation into institutional form impossible. But all of them were vital because they showed how easily they might be utilized for democratic ends in a suitable environment.”

37 Vd. Politics, IV, 1, 1288b21–1289a25; also III, 17. I287b36–I288a32. Throughout Books III and IV of the Politics, Aristotle argues against the too-simple analysis of the forms of government made by his predecessors. It is not enough to distinguish three good forms and three bad forms, as these are set forth in Politics, III, 7; for these are but the generic types of states, and in each genus there are many specifically different constitutions or practicable forms of government. The burden of the discussion from Book III, 14 to Book IV, 12 is to show how many different specific constitutions there are under each type. Furthermore, it is clear that it is not Democracy or Oligarchy as such, which can exist or be put into practise, but this or that specifically constituted democracy or oligarchy. That there are so many different constitutions is due to the fact that the forms of government must be specifically adapted to the political material, the varied circumstances of the time, place and people. In his insistence upon the correlation of specificity of form with specificity in matter, and by his efforts to acknowledge the great diversity in conditions which require constitutional variation, Aristotle would have been prepared to admit that he could not give in his day an exhaustive account of constitutions if he could not know the conditions exhaustively. The if-clause is affirmed by history.

38 Or subject-sovereign. For under parliamentary forms of government, “the people as a supposed unity rule the people as a practical plurality.” And parliamentarism, “in so far as it enables a majority of the people to identify themselves, as the ruled, with their representatives, as the rulers, remains the basis of democracy in spite of its deficiencies” (Simons, H., op. cit., p. 203)Google Scholar. Cf. Aristotle's discussion of the virtue of the citizen and of the ruler in Politics, III, 2–5. The points made are strictly relevant to the local conditions of the Greek city-states, but here as elsewhere Aristotle's historic limitations can be transcended if his insights are analogically transformed.