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Title: Parliamentary Rule Author: Freedom Press (ed.) Date: February, 1887 Language: en Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 1, No. 5, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3090, retrieved on April 28, 2020.
One of the most mischievous prejudices we have to get rid of in order to
begin the new life of Socialism, is the belief in parliamentary rule.
Parliament has in this country rendered so many services in the struggle
against the rule of the Court, and the nation has been so much
accustomed to connect with Parliament its reminiscences of struggle for
political liberties, that even among Socialists some vague belief in
Parliament still lingers; a fancy that it may in future become an
instrument for ridding the nation of the rule of Capital.
Not that such a belief is always held consciously. Much has hap, on the
contrary, during the last twenty years to weaken to some extent the old
faith in Parliament. The intelligent workman already often asks himself
whether Parliament, which has been so powerful an instrument in
substituting the rule of the middle-classes for that of the aristocracy,
can possibly be utilized as an instrument for demolishing the rule of
those very classes ? Nevertheless, many Socialists, directing their
chief attention to the economic aspect of the Social Question, overlook
its political aspects.
They do not ask themselves whether some new form of social organization
must not be called into being in order to permit a new departure in
economics ; and therefore they continue to act as if they were persuaded
that parliamentary rule really is the hind of political organization
with which a society liberated from the yoke of Capital can set about
such a new departure. What, in fact, has been advocated by our
Social-Democratic friends, in this country and on the Continent, beyond
the ancient parliamentary rule, with occasional recourse to the
referendum, popular vote by yes or no- which has already been in action
for so many years in Switzerland ? What do they indicate as the, goal of
our endeavors beyond the parliamentary rule of a Democratic Republic:
that is, the same sort of political institution which has so admirably
favorised the growth of Capital-rule in the United States and
Switzerland, and so admirably adapts itself to capitalist exploitation,
capitalist wars, and capitalist oppression in France?
They argue, of course, that in a society where there will be no
individual owners of land and capital, parliamentary rule will be no
longer a failure ; that it will not check the free development of a free
society of workers without capitalists or middle-men. But in the
meantime Life is taking another direction, and is already elaborating 1
new forms of political organization, which will be as different from 1
parliamentary rule as parliamentary rule is different from Absolute
Monarchy.
Throughout our history we may see that a new form of political
organization has corresponded to each new form of economic organization
AN-lien the peasants were reduced to economic, if not to personal
serfdom ; when the city workman was a factor of no importance ; when the
richest and most powerful class were the landed aristocracy, -then
Absolute Monarchy was the corresponding form of government.
And as soon as trade and commerce began to enrich the middle-classes,
they refused to be ruled by a few courtiers taken from the aristocracy.
They revolted-from the middle of the seventeenth century to the
beginning of the nineteenth in this country, in 1789-93 in France, in
1848 in Germany. And, by cunningly taking advantage of the support they
found among the peasants and workmen, they reduced the monarch and his
courtiers to obedience, and substituted the rule of parliament. More
than that. Parliament was the instrument with which they succeeded in
accomplishing this revolution and rendering it permanent in its effects.
Further, if we revert to an earlier period we see that the cities when
freeing themselves, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, from the rule
of their lay and ecclesiastical lords and of the Crown, also started a
new form of political organization, based on the independence of the
city and the organization of the guilds. These guilds were not like the
trades'-unions of our time, but were independent corporations, having
their own laws, their own forms for the administration of justice, their
own arrangements for self-defense, etc-in short, they were political
organizations as well as trades' organizations. The cities conquered
their independence, and maintained it by producing a new kind of
political organization. A new phase of economic life brought about it
new phase of political life. Without the latter, the former would have
been impossible.
Again, going still further back, we find, after the fall of the Roman
Empire, the common possession of the soil going hand in hand with clan
organization, the gathering of all villagers for the discussion of the
affairs of the village, and the federation of villages and clans for the
discussion of business common to them all.
In short, throughout history we see that each change in the economic
relations of a community is accompanied by a corresponding change in
what may be called political organization. These two are so closely
connected with one another that they cannot be separated. The freed
citizen, beginning a new life on a new basis, proclaims the free commune
as the middle classes in similar circumstances convoke a parliament. The
free city in one case, the parliament in the other, are instrumental in
accomplishing the revolution. They render its results stable and
permanent, and afford scope for its further development.
Thus, too, it will be with Socialism. If it contemplates a new departure
in economics it must be prepared for a new departure in what is called
political organization. And this new departure cannot be the
parliamentary rule of a past era.
Many symptoms show that in Europe there is already a strong tendency in
men's minds towards the elaboration of this new Socialistic form of
political organization.
Nowhere is the belief in parliamentary rule so strong as in this
country. But even in this country the old faith has of late received
many a severe blow. Those who know what parliamentary rule is, are
agreed that some new departure must be made. 11 Things can no longer go
on as they have done,"-such is the growing opinion. In fact, as soon as
the necessity of Home Rule for Ireland was recognized, the idea rapidly
spread that Home Rule for Scotland, Home Rule for Wales, and Home Rule
for London are also necessary. But this movement is only a preliminary.
It dates but from yesterday. Let it grow, and the necessity of something
less parliamentary than a Scotch, or Welsh, or Cockney Parliament will
soon be recognized.
On the Continent the anti-parliamentary movement is still more
pronounced. In France, among those who reason instead of merely clinging
to what exists, you will hardly find one man in a thousand who still
believes in the National Parliament of the Republic. As to the workmen,
if they cherish any expectations for the future, it is from the
Commune-the autonomous Commune federated with other autonomous
Communes,and not from any National Parliament or Convention. -Nay, since
the defeat of the Paris Commune, the Commmunalist idea has become the
idea of modern France.
In Spain, the only political party of any consequence, besides the
International Working-men Association, which is Anarchist and not
political, is the "Cantonalist" party of Pi-y-Margal, the party of
communal and cantonal autonomy. It is the only party besides the
Anarchist International which the Republicans themselves consider worth
speaking of.
In Italy, as soon as the Monarchy shall be overthrown and the central
government be reduced to impotence (and that will shortly happen), each
province, each ethnographical portion of a province, each city, will
start upon its own independent career ; each will try to find by its own
endeavors a solution for the social question.
In Switzerland, where they have Home Rule for each small separate
Republic (or canton). where they have thoroughly democratic
institutions, and, moreover, the use of the referendum, they are
discussing at this moment how to modify their political organization ;
and it is a serious question with the democrats of Lausanne if it would
not be better, even in the larger cities, to revert to the forum, still
in use in smaller communes All the institutions which inspired so much
faith in 1848 are pronounced a failure.
Germany alone seems to be an exception to the rule. Its Radicals and
Socialists seem still to see their ideal in Robespierre's Jacobinism,
i.e., in a Republic strongly centralized. But this turn of mind is
easily explained by the historical phase that Germany is now going
through. The first shock will, however, loosen it to the foundations.
Something towards the destruction of Capital Rule will certainly be done
in Germany by the next revolution, but this something will not be
accomplished by the prescriptions of a German Parliament. It will be
done by the revolt of isolated centers, where Socialist life and thought
are growing rapidly.
We are deeply persuaded that if anything is to be done in a Socialist
sense in this country, it will be done in the same way. It will be
accomplished outside Parliament, by the free initiative of British
workmen, who will take possession for themselves of capital, land,
houses, and instruments of labor, and then combine in order to start
life on the new lines of local independence.
Parliamentary rule is Capital rule. It has served its time. No
Parliament, however noisy, will help to accomplish the Social
Revolution. And it is not to parliamentary rule that the revolted
workmen will look for the economic and political re-organization of the
People.