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The Doctrine of Power and Party Conflict

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

G. E. G. Catlin
G. E. G. Catlin
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

The fundamental problem in politics is that of the balance of power. It is a balance which has to be struck not only in foreign affairs but, quite as much, in the domestic management of states. Only, it may be suggested, when real equilibrium has been secured, is that efficient, smooth and healthy working of the social system possible which finds external expression in a normal and resilient form of conservatism as distinct from the tetanus of the morbid and hysterical form. But it is futile to speak of striking a balance of social interests unless we are justified in supposing that the units have a certain constancy of characteristics and persistence of activity.

Now the units of social force are, in the last analysis, the so-called ‘free wills’ of the individuals necessarily brought into contact as component members of a society. The contact is necessary: civilization admits of no ‘wild ass freedom.’ To assert that these ‘persons with a will of their own’ behave in accordance not only with an ‘altruistic’ gregarious tendency but also with a differentiating, assertive tendency, is to make a psychological assumption. To affirm that this self-assertive tendency may perhaps be religiously sublimated but that it is under all circumstances inextinguishable, is to make another psychological assumption.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , November 1925 , pp. 718 - 734
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1925

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References

1 There is no more inherent impossibility in experimenting with men than in experimenting with pigs. This is not to deny that the political scientist has had to be observational rather than experimental in his methods, since hitherto the control of the laboratories of social experiment has been, perhaps fortunately, under the control of gentlemen amateurs at Westminster and Washington rather than of more pretentious students of social affairs.

2 This, as I understand it, is the fundamental thesis, underlying the theory of Condorcet. Cf. also Kant's Idea of a Universal History, §iv.

3 A. Adler: The Neurotic Constitution, and Individual Psychology.

4 Röhmer, : Lehre von den Politischen Parteien, §38.Google Scholar Cf. Bluntschli, : Charakter und Geist der Politischen Parteien, p. 27.Google Scholar The analogy drawn by these authors between the mentalities of the Radical, Liberal, Conservative and Absolutist parties and those of the four ages of man, is as misleading as are their speculation as to the genders of nations and institutions with its conclusion that ‘our modern World-epoch’ shows amoving away from Radicalism (Bluntschli: ibid. p. 105). Such analogies may easily lead to the tricking out of prejudice in the garb of science. In these writers the Platonic comparison between the structure of the community and the soul of man seems to be reduced to absurdity. Cf. contra Tarde, G.: Transformations du Pouvoir, ed. 1899, p. 141–2.Google Scholar

5 Maine, : Popular Government, ed. 1885, p. 124.Google Scholar

6 PresidentLowell, (Public Opinion in War and Peace, 1923, pp. 271 ff.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar while asserting that “human relations depend upon a vast and delicate adjustment of forces” and, accepting the division of parties into contented and discontented, introduces a cross-division into sanguine and nonsanguine. But the degree of sanguineness (a highly complex characteristic) would appear to vary with the degree to which men are willing to welcome the untried. As between Conservative, Liberal and Radical, this would appear to be explicable in terms of degrees of discontent or of confidence in one's own independent executive powers. At least this explanation would appear to be simpler than Mr.Lippmann's, W. “different intuitive estimates of the rate of change in social affairs” (Public Opinion, ed. 1922, p. 416).Google Scholar The Reactionary, however, is discontented and yet “non-sanguine.” What does this involve? History shows that, when the Reactionary has a policy of “bringing the people back to reason,” he is an optimist about the past, and often quixotically sanguine about the future success of his policy. Why then does he desire a return to the past, if not that he was, on the whole, better contented with the past condition of affairs than, not his temperament, but his judgment, convinces him that he is likely to be with any other distribution of power? The first three-party categories are, it is suggested, three degrees, and are, as such, for logical if not for pedagogical purposes, best described by their poles of contented and discontented. There is a very real danger in neat definitions, e.g., of liberalism. The Reactionary is a special case due to the introduction of the factor of time: it is Retrospective Radicalism. There does, however, appear to be a temperamental reactionary, characterized by suspicion and fear of any idea which would bid him launch away and relax his morbid grip of the terra firma of ancestral custom. This temperamental condition is perhaps due to nervous debility. It would appear to be too rare to be assigned as sole cause of reactionary movements. I can, moreover, feel no satisfaction in the assumption that the reactionary (a very subjective term) or the man who swings between radicalism and reaction, e.g., Plato, is a morbid case fit only for treatment in a social clinic.

7 Michels, R.: Les Partis Politiques, ed. 1914 (trans. S. Jankelevitch) p. 272Google Scholar: “L'organisation politique conduit au pouvoir. Mais le pouvoir est toujours conservateur.” Thus Professor Michels explains the tendency of radicals to become conservatives when in power.

8 Although his discontent may be of a very private nature, e.g. some physical disability or childhood inferiority which has balked his will and sets him against the successful according to the measure of this world and their system. Cf. Quand Israel est Roi, §iii.

9 Cf. Dicey, : Law and Public Opinion in England, ed. 1905, pp. 14–16.Google Scholar

10 Bryce, : Modern Democracies, I, p. 112, ed. 1924.Google Scholar

11 Cf. Lord Rosebery: “Socialism: the end of all—the negation of faith, of family, of property, of Monarchy, of Empire” (quoted by G. T. Raymond: Life of A. J. Balfour, p. 167).

12 Vide the London “Times,” Oct. 13, 1924, p. 15.

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