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Title: Federalism Author: Rudolf Rocker Date: 1937 Language: en Topics: federalism Source: Retrieved on 24 January, 2019 from https://www.panarchy.org/rocker/federalism.html Notes: These are two extracts from Nationalism and Culture (Book 2, Chapter 7) dealing with federalism. We find the useful brilliant insights that characterize so many of Rocker's writings.
The splendid culture which spread from Italy over most of the cities of
Europe and in them also gave the impulse to a reshaping of social life,
unfolded at a time when the country was completely split up politically
and the idea of national unity had as yet no power over the minds of
men. The whole country was covered with a network of self-contained
communities which defended their local independence with the same zeal
as did the city-republics of ancient Hellas. In the municipality artists
and craftsmen in their brotherhoods and guilds cooperated in a common
task. The guilds were not merely the directors and administrators of
economic life, they constituted also the sole basis for the political
structure of the community. There were no political parties nor
professional politicians in the modern sense. Each guild elected its
representatives to the municipal council, where they carried out the
instructions of their organizations and tried by conference with the
delegates from other organizations to reach a settlement of all
important questions on the basis of free agreement. And since every
guild felt itself closely identified with the general interests of the
city, things were decided by the vote of the corporations represented.
The same procedure held in the federations of cities, the tiniest market
town had the same rights as the richest municipality, since it had
joined the alliance of its own free choice and had the same interest in
its efficiency as all the other communities. At the same time every
guild within the city and every city within the federation remained an
independent organism which had control of its own finances, its own
courts, its own administration, and could make and dissolve treaties
with other associations on its own motion. Only the common requirements
of the same tasks and the same interests brought the several guilds and
municipalities together into corporate bodies of similar type so that
they might carry out plans of wider scope.
The great advantage of this system lay in the fact that each member of a
guild as well as the representatives of the guild in the corporation
could easily keep track of all its functioning. Everyone was dealing
with matters which he understood exactly and making decisions about
them - matters about which he could speak as expert and connoisseur. If
one compares this institution with the legislative and administrative
bodies of the modern state, its moral superiority becomes instantly
apparent. Neither the voter, today, nor the man who is said to represent
him, is in a position that enables him to supervise in any degree (not
to say completely) the monstrous mechanism of the central political
apparatus. Every delegate is compelled almost every day to decide upon
questions of which he has no personal knowledge and about which he must
rely on the judgment of others. That such a system must inevitably lead
to the worst sort of maladjustment and injustice is indisputable. And
since the individual voter is, for the same reason, in no better
position to keep track of and to control the acts of his so-called
"representatives," the caste of professional politicians, many of whom
have in view only their own advantage, is able more easily to profit by
the confusion and the gate is opened wide for every kind of moral
corruption.
Next to these notorious evils which are today so unambiguously and so
glaringly evident in every parliamentary state, the so-called
"centralized representation" is the greatest hindrance to any social
progress, standing in direct contradiction to all principles of natural
development. Experience teaches us that every social innovation first
permeates one little circle and only gradually achieves general
recognition. For just this reason federalism offers the best security
for unrestricted development, since it leaves to every community the
possibility of trying out within its own circle any measures which it
may think fitted to advance the welfare of its citizens. The community
is, therefore, in a position to apply practical tests and so to subject
immediately to the proof of positive experience any proposed
innovations. It thus exerts an enlivening and stimulating influence upon
neighboring communities, which are thus themselves put in a position to
judge of the fitness or unfitness of the innovations. With the central
representative bodies of our time such an education in social views is
completely excluded. In such a structure, in the very nature of things,
the most backward sections of the country have the strongest
representation. Instead of the most advanced and intellectually active
communities leading the others by their example, we have just the
opposite; the most downright mediocrity is always in the saddle and
every impulse toward innovation is nipped in the bud; the most backward
and intellectually sluggish sections of the country put fetters on the
culturally most developed groups and cripple their initiative by their
opposition. The best electoral system cannot alter this fact; it often
serves only to make the situation harsher and more hopeless; for the
reactionary germ lies in the system of central representation and is not
at all affected by the varying forms of the suffrage.
If one compares the superlative culture of the great federalistic epoch
in Italy with the rubbishy culture of the unified national state which
had hovered so long before the eyes of the Italian patriots as the
highest goal of their ambition, one comprehends at once the enormous
difference between the two organizations. Their cultural outcomes were
quite as different as the intellectual assumptions underlying their
whole social structure.
If today there still is a choice, it is not that between fascism and
"communism," but the choice between despotism and freedom, between
brutal compulsion and free agreement, between the exploitation of human
beings and cooperative industry for the benefit of all.
Fourier, Proudhon, Pi y Margall [1] and others believed that the
nineteenth century would begin the dissolution of the Great State and
prepare the way for an epoch of Federations of Free Leagues and
Municipalities which, in their opinion, would open for the people of
Europe a new period of their history. They were mistaken as to the time,
but their point of view is still correct, for governmental
centralization has assumed a scope which must fill even the least
suspicious with secret dread of the future in Europe and in the world at
large. Only a federalistic social organization, supported by the common
interest of all and based on the free agreement of all human groups, can
free us from the curse of the political machine which feeds on the sweat
and blood of the people.
Federalism is organic collaboration of all social forces towards a
common goal on the basis of covenants freely arrived at. Federalism is
not disintegration of creative activity, not chaotic running hither and
thither; it is the united work and effort of all members for the freedom
and welfare of all. It is unity of action, sprung from inner conviction,
which finds expression in the vital solidarity of all. It is the
voluntary spirit, working from within outward, which does not exhaust
itself in mindless imitation of prescribed patterns permitting no
personal initiative. Monopoly of power must disappear, together with
monopoly of property, that men may be eased of the weight which rests
like a mountain on their souls and cripples the wings of the spirit.
Liberation of economics from capitalism! Liberation of society from the
state! Under this sign the social struggles of the near future will take
place, smoothing the way for a new era of freedom, justice and
solidarity. Every movement which strikes capitalism in the core of its
being and seeks to free economics from the tyranny of monopoly; every
initiative which opposes the state's effective action and aims at the
elimination of force from the life of society, is a step nearer to
freedom and the coming of a new age. Everything which steers towards the
opposite goal - under whatever name - strengthens consciously or
unconsciously the forces of that political, social and economic reaction
which today raises its head more threateningly than ever before. And
with the state will disappear also the nation - which is only the
state-folk - in order that the concept of humanity may take on a new
meaning. This will reveal itself in its every part, and from it the rich
manifoldness of life will for the first time create a whole.
[1] Pi y Margall (1824-1901) libertarian federalist from Catalonia. He
translated into Spanish many of Proudhon's writings that shaped his
federalist outlook that he tried to implement when he shared some public
charges.