DEMOCRACY AND PARTY
By L. B. NAMIER
POLITICAL democracy requires party-organisation for its work. Occasionally it had to work without them, and the results were peculiar and instructive. In April, 1848, in Prussia, the elections for the German National Assembly which was summoned to Fraukfort, and for the Prussian Diet, which was to meet at Berlin, were held simultaneously and at the same places, but representations markedly different in character were returned. The voting was for individuals and not for parties —these had not yet been formed. Men with established repu- tations, therefore essentially men of the pre-Revolution period, were returned to the National Assembly, the more important and the more dignified of the two bodies. Moreover, member- ship of the Frankfort Assembly implied for these Prussians absence from home for a considerable time, for a good many at a considerable distance—it required private means. Con- sequently the older and richer men went to Frankfort, and the younger, poorer, and therefore more Radically-minded to Berlin, and these politically incongruous results were obtained at the same polls.
Another remarkable fact about Germany's democratically elected National Assembly was that in its social and professional composition it closely resembled the French Parliaments of the July Monarchy, returned by the very restricted suffrage of the " pays legal." Most of its members belonged to the good middle class, were officials, lawyers, teachers, business men, journalists, &c. Of a total of 831 about 600 had had a higher education. There was not a single workman among them, and only one peasant from the Polish-speaking part of Upper Silesia. But then, in the absence of party or class organisation, social superiority is bound to prevail, whatever the franchise. The " notable " is chosen, for he alone is outstanding, whereas the " common man," unknown outside a narrow circle and indis- tinguishable from thousands of his fellow-workers, cannot attract their votes unless there is some kind of organisation to direct them (hence the intense dislike which, in the early stages of political development, " notables " almost invariably evince for " party-politics ").
In the Prussian Diet in 1848, among its 402 members. there again was not a single workman, but 68 peasants, half of them from one province, Silesia. In the Vienna Parliament one- fourth of the members were peasants ; besides, there were many Czech intellectuals and Ruthene priests who were sons of peasants, politically and socially most intimately bound up with them. But again there was not a single workman. The strongly knit village community acted as a quasi trade union, and where the big landowners differed from the peasants in nationality or religion, these supplied a quasi party-organisation. Similarly at Westminster, the earliest socially democratic representation came from Southern Ireland.
In February, 1871, a French National Assembly was elected by manhood suffrage, more aristocratic, Conservative, and Royalist, than any since the Restoration. There appeared " those unexpected figures of Legitimists, who seemed to have stepped out of a pre-183o tapestry, to plunge into the water of universal suffrage and find new life and confidence from it." " As by a miracle," wrote the Vicomte de Meaux, " the France of olden times started from the soil." But when after only five months, in July, 1871, 118 vacancies "-lad to be filled, there was a most remarkable swing to the Left and a great victory for the Republic. " Nous etions monarchistes," remarked de Meaux, " et le pays ne l'itait pas." What then had happened? Before the war of 187o, Prevost-Paradol has said, to be elected to the French Parliament, a man had to be one of three things: an official candidate, a Red, or a big land- owner. In other words, the candidate required the political support either of the Government or of the Opposition—two party-organisations, or social pre-eminence. The disasters of 1870 had broken the Empire, Gambetta's failure to retrieve them had discredited the Left ; when France went to the polls in February, there was nothing left except social superiority. Hence the new "Cliambre introuvable," which did not, how- ever, represent the political mind of France. In the next months there was a revival of political life, party-organisations reconstituted themselves: the landed classes, who had long ceased to be the political representatives and leaders of the French nation, lost the advantage which the momentary eclipse of political organisations had given them in a thoroughly demo- cratic general election.
If by some miracle or disaster a general election were held in this country without the intervention• of parties and trade unions, the Parliament which would emerge fro_t it would undoubtedly be the most aristocratic and plutocratic body ever seen in the last fifty years. In the presence of social inequalities, parliamentary democracy without parties must inevitably result in a real " pluto-democracy."
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