THE END OF THE PARTY SYSTEM

By Philip Spratt

PARTY politics is an institution proper to a ruling class which owes its predominance to wealth. This is the view of Burnham, and it seems to be true. Subject to the kind of reservations usually necessary with such broad generalisations, it can be defended.

The two-party system can work, and therefore persist, only if the parties refrain from pushing their differences beyond the limit set by the interests which they have in common. The necessary awareness of common interests, and the self-restraint necessary to bow to them in spite of the passions of political conflict, come naturally to a ruling class, but are unlikely to be attained by an electorate as broad as a whole nation unless its education and traditions are specially favourable. Futher, a ruling class whose members are satisfied with their economic and social position is interested in the limitation of state power, whereas a nation-wide electorate can always hope for advantages from state action. With this wide electorate therefore, the political contest tends to degenerate into a reckless competition in promising benefits. The powers of the state moreover tend to increase, its possession becomes a more tempting prize, the abuse of those powers becomes ever easier, and self-restraint becomes ever more difficult.

The facts are in accordance with this generalisation. In nearly all countries the vote was confined to the propertied classes until about fifty years ago. Since then it has been extended to the whole adult population, and after a short time-lag, the party system has given way to the one-party system. This however is not party politics at all. The party has ceased to be a part: it has become the whole. The election, the essential feature of genuine politics, has become a useless and ridiculous formality, but it continues to cost money and is bound eventually to be dropped. Ultimately, it may be, politics as we know it will be replaced by a purely administrative system such as that proposed by the Technocrats. But this is to look some way ahead.

There are some exceptions to these statements. Party politics is still in favour in America. But there the whole electorate is still convinced of the advantages of a non-interfering, limited state, and this situation favours the two-party system. The Presidential Election of 1948 may however mark a change. The public has voted in a time of prosperity for a New Deal policy, that is a broad policy of state intervention in economic affairs in the interests of the poorer classes. This is a big departure, a shedding of the traditional distrust of politics and the state. The American parties, with their spoils system, have always been nearer the one-party type than European parties of the old era. The attachment to party politics is of course very strong, but we can say that it has begun to break down.

In Europe its decay has gone much farther. It resists change most in small, prosperous and highly educated countries, which saw their best days under the two-party system and are therefore strongly attached to it. The Labour Party regime in Britain is putting an unwonted strain on it, and in a country less firmly bound by tradition it might be in danger. In France the old politics seems clearly to be doomed, unless it is rescued by Western Union. It is not certain however that even Western Union will save the party system. If a common government for these countries is eventually set up, the pooling of their political life which that implies will produce a situation so novel that prediction is impossible. It may well be that advantage will be taken of this drastic departure to dispense with what are now widely felt to be the tiresome conventions of the old political game.

It is therefore a resonably broad-based generalisation that the party system is an institution of the bourgeois era, and will disappear with it. In the era which is to succeed it, the productive system is likely to be more or less completely fused with the state. Power then will depend upon control of the key positions in the state and its economic apparatus, and in such a system party seems to have no place. Possible exceptions to the generalisation are on the one hand the small advanced countries in which the party system is deeply rooted, where it may persist for some lime; and on the other some of the backward countries, which are only now developing a modern political life. In these countries it is possible that the party system may persist, because they will for some time be led by what can be called a ruling class, though it will not be predominantly a bourgeois class. In such countries the educated class is very definitely marked off from the uneducated majority, so that it may be regarded as a ruling class; and the existence of a distinct ruling class is one of the conditions which made possible the two-party system of the bourgeois era. On the other hand, this class will be largely composed of state employees, and this is a condition very unfavourable to party politics.

How far are these general statements exemplified in India? The propertied class still plays a considerable part, but it can hardly be considered the ruling class: it is a part, but not the dominant part, of the ruling class. It is listened to in Delhi, but evidently it does not get entirely its own way. The ruling class is a broader group including officials, technicians, journalists, indeed potentially all the educated class, and most obvious of all the politicians. The great political leaders do not hold power as representing any interest: they hold it in their right, by virtue of commanding the allegiance of the party, and still more of the masses.

The theoretical convictions of this educated class as a whole, and in particular of its most powerful group, the politicians, are ostensibly in favour of the two-party system. Yet it can hardly be said that system prevails. The Mahasabha and the Communist Party have been and will be prevented–doubtless for excellent reasons–from as constitutional parties. The Socialist Party is tolerated, in principle, but its existence is not enough to make party politics a reality. When it broke away from the Congress a year ago it failed to carry with it a great number of congressmen whose support it had counted on, and the reaction in political circles and the press was discouraging. Since then discontent with the Congress governments has grown considerably, but this apparently has not led to large numbers of the politically-minded public going over to support of the Socialist Party. It leads rather to fear of a total collapse, and a reluctant rally to the Congress. Thus both within the Congress and outside it there is in practice a wide, if generally un-formulated, belief in the one-party system as a practical necessity. Moreover the tolerance extended to the Socialist Party by the governments is circumscribed. Its members are subject to arbitrary arrest, especially when elections are just ahead. At elections improper methods are adopted to ensure its candidates’ defeat. If its leaders had not opposed the threatened railway strike last month, its position as a tolerated opposition party would have been in immediate danger. It may be said without excessive cynicism that the Socialist Party is not yet strong enough to make party politics a reality; it shows no signs of growth to the necessary extent; and if it began to grow so strong as to threaten the ruling party, that party would use the state power to forestall it.

In general the two-party system is preferable to the one-party system. Political life sets the tone to a considerable extent for other public activities, so that where free discussion and respect for truth are preserved in politics they will be preserved in other departments of thought, whereas if they are suppressed in politics they tend to disappear elsewhere. In all the totalitarian states we notice a lowering of the intellectual and moral level of public life: propaganda dominates everything. The two-party system therefore, though its effect is mainly indirect, is favourable to culture, and it is the most effective safeguard of the civil liberties.

A two-party system in India would certainly be preferable to a one-party system. Nevertheless the conditions most congenial to the two-party system do not exist here, so that even if that system is established it will be in some measure artificial. The country cannot expect therefore to enjoy the full benefits of the system.

There is no deep conviction about such tolerance as is extended to opposition: it hovers on the verge of suppression, and may well be completely suppressed if it becomes powerful. This situation is not favourable to freedom of thought, and it can be said that public life generally, journalism, literature, the cinema, even the academic world, are still half-slave and half-free. The country has not yet felt the full benefit, in other spheres, of its national freedom. Many have been puzzled by the indifference of the public, their failure to celebrate their freedom with the expected outburst of creative energy. Here is part, at least, of the explanation: people do not feel free.

This lack of freedom is not a matter merely of a transition period until the new state is stabilised. It is inherent in the situation. Power is not in the hands of the capitalists: that might conduce to freedom. Power is mainly in the hands of officials and politicians, that is the state machine. The potential ruling class is not broad enough to challenge this power monopoly. The opposition parties are manned by members of this class, the educated class, but they have to address their appeals to an uneducated electorate, suffering from more or less acute poverty and other disabilities. This can only result–if the opposition have any serious hope of winning majorities in the legislatures–in a competition in demagogy. Such competition may perhaps be better than no discussion at all, but it can hardly be an elevating influence. Moreover it would inevitably provoke disorder, and lead to the suppression of the opposition. There is no room for parliamentary politics in our public life, and the freedom which would flow from it cannot be expected.

The parliamentary era is at an end, then, and this is true of India too. It is necessary therefore to think out new forms and methods whereby the things we value, culture, liberty, and the spirit of democracy, can be preserved. For the present, while our institutions remain parliamentary in form, they can be used only if not pressed too far. The monopoly of the ruling party cannot be threatened, and it would be wise of the opposition parties to refrain from any attempt to threaten it. But small opposition parties can play a useful part as critics.

For the present the method of the opposition parties, and their main function, must be intellectual. They are part of the new ruling class, which is essentially an intellectual class: it is moved as much by ideas as by interests. Rational discussion and propaganda are still permitted, and will remain so if freedom is not abused.

We have done far too little thinking. It is prima facie unlikely that nineteenth-century British institutions and methods will suit twentieth century India, yet that has been the unspoken assumption of our constitution makers, and of virtually everybody who has commented on their work. We have to dig deeper.

Unless public life is to stagnate in the anomalous and undesirable form of the one-party system, great changes must be effected. These changes cannot be prophesied in detail, but it may be said with confidence that democracy in a backward but increasingly equalitarian society will have to concern itself with the quality of its citizens as much as with the forms of their organisation. Nineteenth-century democracy was concerned primarily with forms. It assumed that the quality of its citizens was adequate, and it worked effectively only when the franchise was so restricted that the quality of the voters was high. As soon as the suffrage was extended it began to break down. The totalitarian societies met the difficulty with coercion and indoctrination. A democracy cannot adopt those methods, or it ceases to be a democracy; but it must educate.

A Westerner, considering the direction this education should take, is inevitably influenced by his own historical experience and the contrasts between India and the West which strike him so forcibly. However he cannot be wholly wrong.

A democracy cannot dispense with coercion, that is it cannot remain a democracy, unless a high proportion of its citizens are responsible, hard-working and honest. The essential long-term task of those who favour democracy is to develop those qualities. The necessity confronts us at every turn. Consider corruption. This causes so great a loss of efficiency, and so much discontent, that it can be a serious danger to political stability. To corruption is ascribed the main responsibility for the collapse of the Chinese Republic. Administrative measures have been tried, but have done little to improve matters. Obviously nothing will root it out except a change in the public mind.

Then a highly urgent task is to reduce the rate of growth of the population. Suitable medical techniques for this purpose do not exist, though they could probably be devised by research workers in a few months if the authorities gave the matter their attention, as they ought to do. But when suitable techniques are known they cannot be used except by people with a sense of responsibility and some degree of independence and emancipation from traditional ideas.

Consider again the equally urgent matter of production. Farmers are cultivating only a fraction of their land, workers are producing at about 70 per cent of the efficiency of ten years ago, capitalists are not risking their money in productive enterprise: the country is sinking swiftly towards bankruptcy. When our foreign balances are spent, as they will be in a few years, we shall just begin to starve. Nothing can remedy this, no technical improvements, credit, or other external aid, unless the ordinary man becomes a responsible citizen who feels that it is his duty to do his job properly.

These necessary changes all point the same way. Democracy cannot work, the country cannot be fed, the country cannot be saved from a regime of terror, except by a change in the national consciousness, a moral change. The Westerner thinks of the great moral reform which swept over Europe four hundred years ago, and made possible, among other things, the industrial revolution and democracy.

The task of bringing about such a change in India should be greatly facilitated by the fact that Mahatma Gandhi spent his life preaching it. If we put aside his antiquated economics and his cranky dietetics we see that what he was driving at, all the way through, was the cultivation of this post-reformation personality-type: hard-working, punctual, thrifty, honest, responsible, co-operative, public-spirited. His special symbol, the charka, stands more than anything else for hard work. Perhaps the most fundamental task of free India is to cultivate this personality-type. One can venture to say that this, rather than constitutions and programmes, ought to be the subject-matter of post-party democracy.

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