Capitalism to enable you to understand what is going on in the world
industrially and politically. I shall not advise you to discuss these
matters with your friends. They would listen in distressed silence and
then tell the neighborhood that you are what they imagine a Bolshevik
to be.
It is possible, however, that you may be interested in current party
politics yourself, even to the extent of attending party meetings,
applauding party candidates, canvassing for party votes, and
experiencing all the emotions of party enthusiasm, party loyalty, and
party conviction that the other party and its candidate are enemies of
the human race. In that case I must give you a warning.
Do not rush to the conclusion that Socialism will be established by
a Socialist party and opposed by an anti-Socialist party. Within my
lifetime I have seen the Conservatives, when in opposition, vehemently
opposing and denouncing a measure proposed by the Liberals, and,
when they had defeated the Liberals and come into power, pass that
very measure themselves in a rather more advanced form. And I have
seen the Liberals do the same, and this, too, not in matters of no
great consequences, but in such far-reaching social changes as Free
Trade, the enfranchisement of the working classes, the democratization
of local government, and the buying-out of the Irish landlords.
The Spanish lady in Byron’s poem, who, “swearing she would ne’er
consent, consented”, was a model of consistency compared to our party
governments. We have at present a Capitalist party opposed by a Labor
party; but it is quite possible that all the legislative steps towards
Socialism will be taken when the anti-Socialist party is in power,
and pretty certain that at least half of them will. When they are
proposed by a Capitalist Government they will be opposed by the Labor
Opposition, and when they are proposed by a Labor Government they will
be opposed by the Capitalist Opposition, because “it is the business of
an Opposition to oppose”.
There is another possibility which may disappoint your expectation.
The Labor Party is growing rapidly. Twenty years ago it did not exist
officially in Parliament. Today it is the official Opposition. If it
continues to grow at this rate the time is not very far off when it
will take practically complete possession of the House of Commons. The
Conservatives and Liberals left will, even in coalition, be too few to
constitute an effective Opposition, much less form a Government. But
beware of assuming that the result will be a unanimous House of Commons
with an unopposed Labor Government carrying everything before it. Do
not even assume that the Labor Party will split into two parties, one
Conservative and the other Progressive. That would be the happiest of
the possibilities. The danger is that it may split into half a dozen or
more irreconcilable groups, making parliamentary government impossible.
That is what happened in the Long Parliament in the seventeenth
century, when men were just what they are now, except that they had no
telephones nor airplanes. The Long Parliament was united at first by
its opposition to the King. But when it cut off the King’s head, it
immediately became so disunited that Cromwell, like Signor Mussolini
today, had at last to suppress its dissensions by military force, and
rule more despotically than ever the King had dared. When Cromwell
died, it reassembled and split up again worse than ever, bringing about
such a hopeless deadlock in government that there was no way out of
the mess but to send for the dead King’s son and use him, under his
father’s title, as the figurehead of a plutocratic oligarchy exercising
all the old kingly powers and greatly extending them.
If six hundred Labor members were returned at the next General
Election history might repeat itself. The Socialists, the Trade
Unionists who are not Socialists, the Communists who are not
Communists but only pseudo-Bolshevists, the Republicans, the
Constitutional-Monarchists, the old Parliamentary hands who are pure
Opportunists, and the uncompromising Idealists, to say nothing of the
Churchmen and Anti-clericals (Episcopalians and Separatists), the
Deists and Atheists, would come to loggerheads at once. As far as I
can see, nothing could avert a repetition of the seventeenth century
catastrophe, or the modern Italian and Spanish ones, except a solid
Socialist majority of members who really know what Socialism means
and are prepared to subordinate all their traditional political and
religious differences to its establishment. Unfortunately most of the
people who call themselves Socialists at present do not know what
Socialism means, and attach its name to all sorts of fads and faiths
and resentments and follies that have nothing to do with it. A Labor
electoral triumph may end either in another Cromwell or Napoleon III
or Mussolini or General Primo di Rivera if there happens to be one at
hand, or in the passing of power to any party that is solid enough to
keep together and vote together, even though its solidarity be the
solidarity of sheepish stupidity or panic-stricken retreat. Stupidity
and cowardice never lose this advantage. You must have noticed among
your acquaintances that the very conventional ones have all the
same old opinions, and are quite impervious to new ones, whilst the
unconventional ones are all over the shop with all sorts of opinions,
and disagree with and despise oneanother furiously. That is why, though
all progress depends on the unconventional people who want to change
things, they have so little influence politically. They pull hard; but
they do not pull together; and they pull in different directions. The
people whom in your moments of impatience with their dullness you call
stick-in-the-muds either pull all together and in the same direction
(generally backwards), or, more formidably still, stand together solid
and foursquare, refusing to move in any direction. Against stupidity,
said Schiller, the gods themselves fight in vain. Long before Schiller,
Solomon said “Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a
fool in his folly”. They were both right.
Yet it is a mistake to vote for stupidity on the ground that
stupid people do not quarrel among themselves. Within the limits
of their conservatism they quarrel more irreconcilably, because
more unreasonably, than comparatively clever people. That is why we
call them pigheaded. If six hundred of them were returned at the
next General Election, so that they had no longer anything to fear
from Labor or Liberalism or any other section, it would be just as
impossible to keep them together as if they were proletarians. In 1924
the country was stampeded by a ridiculous anti-Russian scare into
returning anti-Socialists in a majority of more than two to one. The
result was, not a very solid Government, but a very fragmentary one. It
soon split up into reckless Diehard Coercionists, timid Compromisers,
cautious Opportunists, Low Church Protestants, Anglican Catholics,
Protectionists from the Midlands, Free Traders from the ports, country
gentlemen, city bosses, Imperialists, Little Englanders, innocents
who think that Trade Unions ought to be exterminated like nests of
vipers, and practical business men who know that big business could
not be carried on without them, advocates of high expenditure on the
fighting forces as Empire Insurance, blind resisters of taxation as
such, Inflationists, Gold Bugs, High Tories who would have Government
authority and interference everywhere, Laisser-faire doctrinaires who
would suffer it as nearly as possible nowhere, and Heaven knows how
many others, all pulling the Cabinet different ways, paralyzing it and
neutralizing oneanother, whilst the runaway car of Capitalism kept
rushing them into new places and dangerous situations all the time.
During the first half of my own lifetime: that is, during the latter
half of the nineteenth century, the Conservative and Liberal parties
were much more equally balanced than at present. The Governments were
on their good behavior because their majorities were narrow. The House
of Commons was then respected and powerful. With the South African
war a period of large majorities set in. Immediately the House of
Commons began to fall into something very like contempt in comparison
with its previous standing. The majorities were so large that every
Government felt that it could do what it liked. That quaint conscience
which was invented by English statesmen to keep themselves honest,
and called by everybody Public Opinion, was overthrown as an idol,
and the ignorance, forgetfulness, and follies of the electorate were
traded on cynically until the few thinkers who read the speeches of
the political leaders and could remember for longer than a week the
pledges and statements they contained, were amazed and scandalized
at the audacity with which the people were humbugged. The specific
preparations for war with Germany were concealed, and finally, when
suspicion became acute, denied; and when at last we floundered into
the horror of 1914-18, which left the English Church disgraced, and
the great European empires shattered into struggling Republics (the
very last thing that the contrivers of the war intended), the world
had lost faith in parliamentary government to such an extent that it
was suspended and replaced by dictatorship in Italy, Spain, and Russia
without provoking any general democratic protest beyond a weary shrug
of the shoulders. The old parliamentary democrats were accomplished and
endless talkers; but their unreal theory that nothing political must be
done until it was understood and demanded by a majority of the people
(which meant in effect that nothing political must ever be done at all)
had disabled them as men of action; and when casual bodies of impatient
and irresponsible proletarian men of action attempted to break up
Capitalism without knowing how to do it, or appreciating the nature and
necessity of government, a temper spread in which it was possible for
Signor Mussolini to be made absolute managing director (Dictator or
Duce) of the Italian nation as its savior from parliamentary impotence
and democratic indiscipline.
Socialism, however, cannot perish in these political storms and
changes. Socialists have courted Democracy, and even called Socialism
Social-Democracy to proclaim that the two are inseparable. They might
just as plausibly argue that the two are incompatible. Socialism is
committed neither way. It faces Caesars and Soviets, Presidents and
Patriarchs, British Cabinets and Italian Dictators or Popes, patrician
oligarchs and plebeian demagogues, with its unshaken demonstration
that they cannot have a stable and prosperous State without equality
of income. They may plead that such equality is ridiculous. That will
not save them from the consequences of inequality. They must equate or
perish. The despot who values his head and the crowd that fears for its
liberty are equally concerned. I should call Socialism not Democratic
but simply Catholic if that name had not been taken in vain so often by
so many Churches that nobody would understand me.
72
THE PARTY SYSTEM
Our Party System does not mean, as many people suppose, that
differences of opinion always divide human beings into parties. Such
differences existed ages before the Party System was ever dreamt of.
What it means is that our monarchs, instead of choosing whom they
please to advise them as Cabinet Ministers in ruling the realm (to form
a Government, as we say), must choose them all from whatever party has
a majority in the House of Commons, however much they may dislike them
or mistrust their ability, or however obvious it may be that a more
talented Cabinet could be formed by selecting the ablest men from both
parties.
This system carries with it some quaint consequences. Not only must
the King appoint to high offices persons whom he may privately regard
as disastrous noodles, or whose political and religious principles
he may abhor: the ordinary member of Parliament and the common voter
are placed in a similar predicament, because every vote given in the
House or at a parliamentary election becomes a vote on the question
whether the Party in office is to remain there or not. For instance,
a Bill is introduced by the Government to allow women to vote at
the same age as men, or to put a tax on bachelors, or to institute
pensions for widowed mothers, or to build ten more battleships, or to
abolish or extend divorce, or to raise the age for compulsory school
attendance, or to increase or diminish taxation, or anything else you
please. Suppose this Bill is brought in by a Conservative Government,
and you are a Conservative member of Parliament! You may think it a
most detestable and mischievous Bill. But if you vote against it, and
the Bill is thrown out, the Conservative Government will no longer be
in a majority, or, as we say, it will no longer possess the confidence
of the House. Therefore it must go to the King and resign, whereupon
the King will dissolve Parliament; and there will be a General Election
at which you will have to stand again (which will cost you a good deal
of money and perhaps end in your defeat) before anything else can be
done. Now if you are a good Conservative you always feel that however
much you may dislike this Bill or that Bill, yet its passing into law
would be a less evil than an overthrow of the Conservative Government,
and the possible accession to power of the Labor Party. Therefore you
swallow the Bill with a wry face, and vote just as the Government Whips
tell you to, flatly against your convictions.
But suppose you are a member of the Labor Party instead, and think the
Bill a good one. Then you are in the same fix: you must vote against it
and against your convictions, because however good you may think the
Bill, you think that a defeat of the Government and a chance for the
Labor Party to return to power would be still better. Besides, if the
Bill is good, the Labor Party can bring it in again and pass it when
Labor wins a majority.
If you are only a voter you are caught in the same cleft stick. It
may be plain to you that the candidate of your Party is a political
imbecile, a pompous snob, a vulgar ranter, a conceited self-seeker,
or anything else that you dislike, and his opponent an honest,
intelligent, public-spirited person. No matter: you must vote for the
Party candidate, because, if you do not, your Party may be defeated,
and the other Party come into power. And, anyhow, however disagreeable
your candidate may be personally, when he gets into the House he will
have to vote as the Party Whips tell him to; so his personal qualities
do not matter.
The advantage of this system is that a House of Commons consisting of
about a dozen capable ministers and their opponents: say twenty-five
effectives all told, and 590 idiots with just enough intelligence to
walk into the lobby pointed out to them by the Whips and give their
names at the door, can carry on the government of the country quite
smoothly, when 615 independents, with opinions and convictions of their
own, voting according to those opinions and convictions, would make
party government impossible. It was not, however, on this ground that
the party system was introduced, though it has a great deal to do with
its maintenance. It was introduced because our Dutch king William the
Third, of glorious, pious, and immortal memory, discovered that he
could not fight the French king, Louis XIV, _le Roi Soleil_, with a
House of Commons refusing him supplies and reducing the army just as
each member thought fit. A clever statesman of that time named Robert
Spencer, second Earl of Sunderland, pointed out to him that if he chose
his ministers always from the strongest party in the House of Commons,
which happened just then to be the Whig party, that party would have
to back him through the war and make its followers do the same, just
as I have described. King William hated the Whigs, being a strong Tory
himself; and he did not like Sunderland’s advice. But he took it, and
thereby set up the Party System under which we are ruled.
Is there any practicable alternative to the Party System? Suppose,
for instance, that there was a general revolt against being compelled
to vote for dummies and nincompoops, and that independent candidates
became so popular that all party candidates were defeated by them, or,
if you think that is going too far, suppose independent candidates
returned in such numbers that they could defeat any Government by
casting their votes in the House against it, like the old Irish
Nationalist Party! Such a revolt already exists and always will exist.
The upshot of the General Elections is determined, not by the voters
who always vote for their party right or wrong, but by a floating
body of independent electors who vote according to their interests
and preferences, and often support one party at one election and the
opposite party at the next. It is these unattached people who win the
odd trick which decides which party shall govern. They either know
nothing about the Party System, or snap their fingers at it and vote
just as they please. It is probable that they outnumber the party
voters, and return party members to Parliament only because, as no
others are selected as candidates by the party organizations, there is
seldom any independent candidate to vote for.
It is conceivable that the King might some day find himself confronted
by a House of Commons in which neither party had a majority, the
effective decision resting with members belonging to no party. In
that case His Majesty might appeal in vain to the party leaders to
form a Government. This situation has occurred several times of late
in France, where it has been brought about by the existence in the
French Chamber of so many parties that none of them is in a majority;
so that a leader can form a Government only by inducing several of
these parties to combine for the moment, and thus make what is called a
Block. But this is not always easy; and even when it is accomplished,
and the Blockmaker forms a Government, it is so hard to keep the Block
together that nobody expects it to last for five years, as our party
governments do: its lifetime is anything from a week to six months.
There have been moments lately in France when we did not know from one
day to another who was Prime Minister there, M. Briand, M. Herriot, M.
Painlevé, or M. Poincaré. And what has happened in France may happen
here, either through an overwhelming party majority causing the party
to split up into hostile groups and thus substitute half a dozen
parties, all in a minority, for the two parties which are necessary
to the working of the Party System, or through the return of enough
independent members to make any Party Government dependent on them.
You will therefore be justified if you ask me rather anxiously whether
Parliament can not be worked on some other than the Party System.
As a matter of fact in this country we have, beside the House of
Commons, parliaments all over the place. We have the great city
Corporations, the County Councils, the Borough Councils, the District
Councils, and so on down to the Parish meetings in the villages; and
not one of them is worked on the Party System. They get on quite well
without it. If you mention this, you will be at once contradicted,
because on many of these bodies party feeling is intense. The members
hold party meetings. The elections are fought on party cries. Votes
are taken on party lines, and members of the party which is in the
minority are sometimes excluded from the committee chairmanships,
which are the nearest things to ministerial offices available, though
such exclusion is considered sharp practice if pushed too far. But all
this does not involve the Party System any more than a pot of jam and
a pound of flour constitute a roly-poly pudding. There is no Prime
Minister and no Cabinet. The King does not meddle in the business:
he does not send for the most prominent men and ask them to form a
Government. There is no Government in the House of Commons sense of the
word, though the city or county is nevertheless governed, and often
governed with an efficiency which puts the House of Commons to shame.
Every member can vote as he thinks best without the slightest risk of
throwing his party out of power and bringing on a General Election.
If a motion is defeated, nobody resigns: if it is carried, nobody’s
position is changed. Things are not done in that very puzzling way.
The way they are done is simple enough. The Council is elected for
three years; and until the three years are up there can be no general
election. Its business is conducted by committees: Public Health
Committees, Electric Lighting Committees, Finance Committees, and
so forth. These committees meet separately, and set forth their
conclusions as to what the Council ought to do in their departments in
a series of resolutions. When the whole Council meets, these strings
of resolutions are brought up as the reports of the Committees, and
are confirmed or rejected or amended by the general vote. Many of our
Labor members of the House of Commons have served their parliamentary
apprenticeship on local bodies under this straightforward system.
The two systems, though widely different today, spring from the same
root. Before Sunderland prompted William III to introduce the Party
System, the King used to appoint committees, which were then all
called cabinets, to deal with the different departments of government.
These cabinets were committees of his Council; and in this stage they
were the model of the municipal committees I have just described. The
secretaries of the cabinets, called Secretaries of States, met to
concert their activities. The activities thus concerted formed their
policy; and they themselves, being all cabinet ministers, came to be
called THE Cabinet, after which the word was no longer applied to other
bodies. In politics it now means nothing else, the old cabinets being
called Offices (Home Office, War Office, Foreign Office, etc.), Boards,
Chanceries, Treasuries, or anything except cabinets.