The Structure Of Socialist Parties

...In other respects, each parliamentarian, while remaining as a member free to express his opinion everywhere except on the Assembly's rostrum, must vote for the body directing the opposition...

...The former poster campaigns are almost useless, since voters rarely read posters...

...In his last televised speech, De Gaulle has called on the French for a direct dialogue between himself and each citizen, while rejecting all intermediaries, and—for the moment—De Gaulle has won...

...Throughout the country, educational groups, whose views exercise an increasing influence on public opinion, are growing in the form of clubs, forums, popular education centers...

...the discipline imposed on the member is in line with the program's general orientation and the fraternal style of necessary discussions...

...Huge meetings, while they have an indispensable ritual value in renewing the faith of believers, do very little to help form opinion...

...It is essential that these candidates be centrally designated by the party's executive committee because this is the only way to ensure liaison between the party membership and those who will constitute thereafter the parliamentary group...

...It must, in contact with the different groups which gravitate around it and in which its members hold responsible positions, prepare a political program, and at election time present clear-cut choices to the people...

...It is on this last matter that party discipline, on the other hand, should be extremely strict...

...But from the moment that the voter feels that a party leader, no matter who he is, does not say what he thinks but what he has been told to say, he loses all confidence in the party which, to him, has become deceitful...

...Such was also the case in the United States where the Knights of Labor was both a union and political movement...

...When he thus has been designated he will be responsible for forming the government and setting forth the political course to be taken, under the control of the entire parliament and he will not let himself be pressured by any external force whatsoever—even that of his own party...

...if the parties retain old dogmatic formulae, no one will follow them, and we will not extricate ourselves from the current crisis...

...To be a party member, one need not accept each detailed point in its program, but to accept its general orientation and to have confidence in the action of its parliamentary or governmental leadership— seeking at the same time to guide its action in a direction that one believes to be right...

...Here a contradiction arises: on the one hand, everybody will identify himself more strongly with his special group's decision than with the decision which the party might make on that particular question...

...Such seems to me to be the requirements for a modern party, capable of functioning in a renovated democracy and restoring liberty in our country...

...The function of a modern socialist party thus becomes evident...

...The mechanical application of discipline has thus engendered in the French Socialist Party first, a series of splits, and then a general disillusionment that has undermined the very bases of democracy...

...Thus, we find citizens involved in the European movement, in committees for secular action, in movements for mass education, in committees for peace in Algeria, etc...

...New techniques are required for this...

...Secondly, the program of action defines the party...

...it is superior to the groups in co-ordinated action...

...THE HIGHER STANDARD of living and the growing amount of leisure time have augmented the "privatization of life...

...The party, limited to a narrower political sphere, also has had to modify its methods...

...Whether it be early British trade-unionism, the AFL, or the French unionism of the Charter of Amiens, the working class declared its hostility to political action...

...the citizen is no longer interested in doctrine, generalities, or philosophies of history, but in concrete problems which demand immediate solution, and he wants to obtain tan be results...

...but the membership increasingly understands that in the long run, its interests are linked to the economic growth of the entire society, and thus they are led to take positions of a political nature...

...Conferences and debates on specific subjects are more useful, and especially so are study groups held in conjunction with the leadership of various social, economic, and cultural organi zations...

...Party discipline is subordinated to that of the groups in special decisions...

...Its essential function is to coordinate, through a master program, the activity of diverse groups, or that of individual members engaged elsewhere in groups with limited aims...

...The party, after having elaborated a program in liaison with these other organizations, will run its candidates, indicating the limited team which will direct the opposition, and, if successful, take over the government...

...Interest in political problems however has not diminished...

...In France before De Gaulle—and even now in Italy and Belgium—the government has verged on a regime of secretariats, where power depends on negotiations among party machines...

...Violent struggles have taken place within the party, but once the highest authority made its decision known, the minority was forced to give in, to keep quiet, or even to take part in the majority campaign...

...Thus men sometimes spoke publicly against their deepest beliefs, or restrained themselves from oral or written expressions of their opinions...

...Professional concerns are expressed by pressure groups, the most important of which are the trade unions...

...The re-establishment of parliamentary democracy presupposes governmental responsibility and the rejection of external intervention by the machines...

...The more sectarian the doctrine, the more necessary was compromise on practical matters...

...Even the Rochdale pioneers, who initiated the first consumers' cooperative, saw in it a means of radically transforming the lives of their members and preparing themselves for an integrated society...

...It must be, first of all, a cadre group to be used for study, education, and coordination...

...Today, this conception survives in the Communist party...

...lishing a communication network between responsible politicians and citizens engaged in diverse political activities...

...Actually, it is generally true that the same people are to be found in most interest, study, and action groups...

...Furthermore, party predominance has gradually destroyed the parliamentary system which assumes a government that can command— a government that is responsible to the people's representatives, and which determines general policy...

...the group is autonomous, but autonomous only in its choice of means to apply the program since it is to further this program that the deputies have been elected...

...hence these different groups must have something in common, which first needs to be denoted so that their action can be co-ordinated...

...The Socialist movement began as a revolutionary protest, expressing a desire to build a new society...

...But instead of adapting themselves to this diversity, they became all the more rigid, from a wish to present a monolithic image to the public...

...Finally, during election campaigns, radio and television become essential instruments of contact with the people...

...Now it happens that the very definition of democracy is the existence of intermediaries, assuring the exchange of views between the holders of power and the people...

...Finding it impossible to maintain an attitude of opposition which had grown more and more sterile, it has had to take responsibility in government, either directly — as in Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries—or as part of a coalition government...

...But the old intermediaries are discredited to-day...

...In effect, the parties no longer represent the masses, but a small group of professionals, capable of providing cadres for a mass movement on the day it comes to life...

...The CP encompasses man's entire life...

...Political participation is less intense and more incidental...

...THE PARTY Is, then, a permanent institution of popular education, estab...

...But the party's early structure made difficult the operation of the parliamentary system, especially in a coalition government...

...But the emphasis has shifted...

...First, unionism declared its independence...

...And most of the socialist parties, even when they have maintained some of their revolutionary myths and formulas, have ignored these in their realistic daily activities...

...thus, it is a sine qua non of democracy that the provision of information be an autonomous public service, independent of any government interference...

...Insofar as the party was rigidly dogmatic, it alienated many citizens, and thus could not obtain power except in coalition with other parties...

...It is our task to create new ones, commanding both moral authority and technical efficiency...

...In the party, union and cooperative alike, there are proportionately fewer members...

...but the party need not be in unanimous agreement on all points of this program—and, in time, it will agree less and less, for the more the party develops, the more it nurtures varieties of interest and diversities of opinion...

...Within the party, there must be intellectual life, and hence a permanent confrontation of differing ideologies...

...Finally, numerous action groups are formed, uniting men of diverse political origins to attain precise aims on specific matters...

...At one and the same time, it obtained better conditions within the framework of existing society and began to transform society's structure...

...Have no illusions...

...It linked together, as did the early Christian church, men who expected a revolutionary apocalypse and for whom the Party was their sole reason for being...

...These groups defend the interests of their members...

...To achieve this, any means are good, and individual preoccupations— including one's professed moral values—must be subordinated to the interests of the Party...

...But the working class, tired of waiting for the final apocalypse, began to act...

...At the same time, the more the parties participated in political life, attracting members or sympathizers, the more diverse became their social composition and their currents of opinion...

...As in the creation of the world, autonomous bodies emerged from the primitive socialist universe, increasingly independent of the state and the party and uncommitted to political action...

...It is this death-grip by the machines which killed parliamentary democracy in France...

...but given a majority decision taken on a programmatic point or a tactical means for its implementation, each man must be free to maintain his point of view in public—at the same time letting it be known that the majority decision is, for the moment, the official party position which will be supported by its executive organs and its parliamentary group...

...Toward this end, the citizen usually joins a number of interest, study or action groups...

...Thus there would exist, in the modern party, complete freedom of speech...

...Such was the case at the beginning of the Labor movement...

...In France, the Utopians of 1848, followed by the early Marxists, similarly sought to encompass the individual's entire being, and Jules Guesde's socialism endeavored to maintain control over the unions...

...Either it dreamed of a withering away of the state and the administration of industry by means of free workshops, or it was satisfied with exercising pressure on the political scene, rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies...

...hence ministerial instability, and the proliferation of crises engendered by a party's congress or executive, without any parliamentary decision-making...

...To understand the basic reasons for this, we have to glance at the parties' original nature, their present state and their internal problems...

...its goal is to attain centralized state power so that, finally, it may forcibly transform society from above...

...On the contrary, it is growing and the average citizen is interested increasingly in the great problems of national and international politics...

...that body which under the direction of its leader—one day to be the government—is responsible for interpreting and applying the program...

...This condition entails certain consequences: First, an effective party must reject all official ideology which might lead to schisms and to the proliferation of sects...

...in Great Britain, Chartism acted as a total movement engrossing .all the activities of its militants...

...On the other hand, everybody will feel the need to subordinate his own specialized activity to the party program which allows only co-ordinated political activity...

...the enrolled rarely attend meetings and those who make the decisions thus become less and less representative...

...Once constituted, this parliamentary group must inevitably become— like the other economic and social organizations—an autonomous group under the direction of the leader of the parliamentary group, the future prime minister...

...There should never be one party ideology...