The Record Of Socialist Parties

As soon as we turn to an examination of the records of socialist parties, doubts will inevitably arise about the validity of their contention that they have uniformly championed the democratic creed.

In the first place, there is the great socialist commonwealth that is ruled by a party in a minority and does not offer any chance to any other. And the representatives of that party, assembled in their eighteenth congress, listened to reports and unanimously passed resolutions without anything resembling what we should call a discussion. They wound up by voting— as officially stated—that “the Russian people [?], in unconditional devotion to the party of Lenin-Stalin and to the great Leader, accept the program of the grand works which has been sketched in that most sublime document of our epoch, the report of comrade Stalin, in order to fulfill it unwaveringly” and that “our Bolshevik Party enters, under the leadership of the genius of the great Stalin, upon a new phase of development.” 3

3 I do not know Russian. The above passages have been translated faithfully from the German newspaper that used to be published in Moscow and are open to possible objections against its translation of the Russian text, though that news

That, and single-candidate elections, complemented by demonstration trials and GPU methods, may no doubt constitute “the most perfect democracy in the world,” if an appropriate meaning be assigned to that term—but it is not exactly what most Americans would understand by it.

Yet in essence and principle at least, this commonwealth is a socialist one, and so were the short-lived creations of this type of which Bavaria and especially Hungary were the scenes. Now there are no doubt socialist groups which to this day consistently keep to what in this country is meant by Democratic Ideals; they include for instance the majority of English socialists, the socialist parties in Belgium, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, the American party led by Mr. Norman Thomas, and German groups in exile. From their standpoint as well as from the standpoint of the observer it is tempting to deny that the Russian system constitutes “true” socialism and to hold that, in this respect at least, it is an aberration. But what does “true” socialism mean except “the socialism which we like”? Hence what do such statements signify except recognition of the fact that there are forms of socialism which do not command the allegiance of all socialists and which include non-democratic ones? That a socialist regime may be non-democratic is indeed undeniable, as we have seen before, on the purely logical ground that the defining feature of socialism does not imply anything about political procedure. As far as that goes the only question is whether and in what sense it can be democratic. In the second place, those socialist groups that have consistently upheld the democratic faith never had either a chance or a motive for professing any other. They lived in environments that would have strongly resented undemocratic talk and practice and in fact always turned against syndicalists. In some cases they had every reason to espouse democratic principles that sheltered them and their activity. In other cases most of them were satisfied with the results, political and other, that advance on democratic lines promised to yield. It is easy to visualize what would have happened to the socialist parties of, say, England or Sweden if they had displayed serious symptoms of anti-democratic propensities. They at the same time felt that they were steadily growing in power and that responsible office was slowly coming to them of itself. When it came, it satisfied them. Thus, in professing allegiance to democracy, they simply did the obvious thing all along. The fact that their policy did not give pleasure to Lenin does not prove that, had he been situated as they were, he would have behaved differently. In Germany where the party developed still better but where until 1918 the avenue to political responsibility paper was of course in no position to publish anything that was not fully approved by the authorities.

seemed to be blocked, socialists, facing a strong and hostile state and having to rely for protection on bourgeois sympathies and on the power of trade unions that were at best semi-socialistic, were still less free to deviate from the democratic creed, since by doing so they would only have played into the hands of their enemies. 4 To call themselves social democrats was for them a matter of common prudence. But, in the third place, the test cases that turned out favorably are few and not very convincing. 5 It is true in a sense that in 1918 the Social Democratic party of Germany had a choice, that it decided for democracy, and (if this is a proof of democratic faith) that it put down the communists with ruthless energy. But the party split on the issue. It lost heavily from its left wing and the seceding dissenters have more, not less, claim to the badge of socialism than those who stayed. Many of the latter moreover, though submitting to party discipline, disapproved. And many of those who approved did so merely on the ground that, from the summer of 1919 at least, chances of succeeding in more radical (i.e., in this case, anti-democratic) courses had become negligible and that, in particular, a leftist policy in Berlin would have meant serious danger of secession in the Rhine-land and the countries south of the Main even if it had not met smashing defeat immediately. Finally, to the majority, or at all events to the trade-union element in it, democracy gave everything they really cared for, including office. They had no doubt to share the spoils with the Centrist (Catholic) party. But the bargain was satisfactory to both. Presently the socialists did indeed become vociferously democratic. This however was when an opposition associated with an anti-democratic creed began to rise against them.

I am not going to blame German Social Democrats for the sense of responsibility they displayed or even for the complacency with which they settled down in the comfortable armchairs of officialdom. The second is a common human failing, the first was entirely to their credit as I shall try to show in the last part of this book. But it takes some optimism to cite them as witnesses for the unswerving allegiance of socialists to democratic procedure. Nor can-I think of any better test case—unless indeed we agree to accept the Russian and Hungarian cases both of which present the crucial combination of a possibility of the conquest of power with the impossibility of doing so by democratic means. Our difficulty is well illustrated by the Austrian case, the importance of which is enhanced much beyond the importance of the country by the exceptional standing of the leading (Neo-Marxist) group. The

4 These situations will be more fully discussed in Part V. 5 We are going to confine ourselves to the attitudes of socialist parties in national politics. Their practice and that of trade unions concerning non-socialist or non-union workmen is of course still less convincing.

Austrian socialists did adhere to democracy in 1918 and 1919 when it was not yet, as it soon afterwards became, a matter of self-defense. But during the few months when monopolization of power seemed within their reach, the position of many of them was not unequivocal. At that time Fritz Adler referred to the majority principle as the fetishism of the “vagaries of arithmetics” (Zufall der Arithmetik) and many others shrugged their shoulders at democratic rules of procedure. Yet these men were regular party members and not communists. When bolshevism ruled in Hungary, the question of the course to choose became burning. Nobody can have followed the discussion of that epoch without realizing that the sense of the party was not badly rendered by the formula: “We do not particularly relish the prospect of having to go left [=adopt soviet methods]. But if go we must, then we shall go all of us.”6 This appraisal both of the country’s general situation and of the party danger was eminently reasonable. So was the inference. Ardent loyalty to democratic principles, however, was not conspicuous in either. Conversion came to them eventually. But it did not come from repentance, it came in consequence of the Hungarian counter-revolution.

I am not accusing socialists of insincerity. I am not holding them up to scorn either as bad democrats or as unprincipled schemers and opportunists.

I fully believe, in spite of the childish Machiavellism in which some of their prophets indulge, that fundamentally most of them always have been as sincere in their professions as any other men. Besides, I do not believe in insincerity in social strife, for people always come to think what they want to think and what they incessantly profess. As regards democracy, socialist parties are presumably no more opportunists than are any others; they simply espouse democracy if, as, and when it serves their ideals and interests and not otherwise. Lest readers should be shocked and think so immoral a view worthy only of the most callous of political practitioners, we will at once make a mental experiment that will at the same time yield the starting point of our inquiry into the nature of democracy.