Arguments as to the relative merits of democracy and dictatorship are usually conducted on the assumption that it is possible (and desirable) to get the pure form of either. But a government in which all adult citizens share, or in which all power is in the hands of one man (or sharply defined group of men), is a laboratory conception. Democracy has, in fact, reached a high degree of perfection if it can truthfully be stated of any country that it is governed by that minority of its citizens who are sufficiently interested in politics to want to take a share in government.
Limitation of Dictatorship: Dictatorship seems a more clear-cut system, but actually no dictatorship can exist for long without at least the passive consent of most of its citizens, the active collaboration of a considerable number, and without doing something for them. The robber baron, exacting tribute from a backward village community and giving nothing in return but an inadequate protection from enemies he himself in the main created, is the nearest to pure dictatorship that has existed in history.
The tyrant Emperors of Old China built the Great Wall and were the centres of resistance to the Tartars. Similarly the tyrant Emperors of Rome, however vicious in their private life, guaranteed the unity that provided the Pax Romana, and benefited the masses accordingly. Their most important function was to exist, and so make it possible for the civil service to keep the empire together, and prevent its subdivision into semi-independent pro-consulates that the powerful senatorial families wanted for themselves. Propaganda is no modern invention. We owe our usual views of the Roman Emperors to historians who were the fierce propagandists of the senatorial party.
The more complicated the economic machine, the more it has to impinge on the private life of the citizens, the greater the demand made on their collaboration. The East India Company could rule India as a pirate tyranny till its exactions became too great. The most effective weapon against the complex and highly centralised bureaucracy of the British government of India has been non-cooperation. This weapon made necessary a White Paper which would satisfy sufficient of the Indian bourgeoisie to make non-cooperation ineffective. The Russian dictatorship, the strongest in the world, has to rule by persuading the people that its way is best, and emphasising the economic advantages of the system by a propaganda the expense of which would make a democratic government shudder.
Prætorian Guards can prevent the machine being disturbed. They cannot keep it going. This is the central problem of the Fascist dictatorships. That they can rule by their secret police, the OVRA or the Gestapo, is only a part and a temporary part of the truth. Police spies are only effective if the mass of the people is with them. The Czarist revolutionaries could laugh at the Okhrana when they were operating in territory where the people were with them. The Gestapo is complaining [1] that its work is much more difficult now than when the whole population was enthusiastic for Hitler. To individuals, even the most inefficient secret police can bring ruin, but as a means of keeping a dictatorial regime in power it can only operate if there is a generally favourable sentiment among the people. The assassination of Dr Dollfuss was not prevented by the numerous secret police in a capital where he had turned the general feeling against him by his shelling of the workers’ houses at Floridsdorf.
Limitations of Democracy: Democracy also has its limitations. Recent history has shown that there are two conditions for the existence of parliamentary democracy. One, that the vast majority of its citizens must agree about fundamentals, and second, that there must be machinery by which, in times of stress, the forms of democracy can cease to operate without being permanently superseded. In a capitalist parliamentary democracy the first condition means that the power and existence of capitalism are not to be seriously threatened. When a large section of the people, as in the Italy of 1920 and the Germany of 1930-32, shows actively that it no longer agrees with this basis, democracy is not allowed to function. The success of parliamentary democracy in England is due to the fact that the leaders of labour in Great Britain have, on the whole, tacitly accepted these two conditions. When, as in the General Strike of 1926, the trade unionists overstepped the implied limits, the Trades Disputes Act promptly limited their powers. Invergordon produced the Sedition Bill. In times of stress the Emergency Powers Act provides for England a quick and effective way of fulfilling the second conditions – the temporary suspension of democracy.
A democratic form of government can function quickly enough if there is this general agreement as to the basis of society. It is then more efficient than a dictatorship in a crisis, because it has not to waste time in smashing its opponents. But when this fundamental agreement does not exist, when, as in Germany, the parties are as equally matched as they were in the Reichstag, and at least two of the parties, the Communists and the Nazis, were admittedly determined that parliamentary democracy should not function, the parliamentary machine is clogged by obstruction. The demand arises for ‘firm’ government, which, washed into power by a wave of popular favour, soon becomes comparatively independent of it. The middle classes who in the last century led the fight for democracy, cry the loudest for the rule of a Strong Man.
Dictatorship takes the place of democracy in a modern state if the power and wealth of the plutocracy is seriously threatened by the working class. Whether that danger comes from the use of their majority voting power to change to a Socialist system, or whether the workers are organised in a mass revolutionary party, there has as yet been no instance of a capitalist class peacefully allowing their wealth and privileged position to be taken from them. The wealthy would then prefer to share their power with the Fascist party which they have helped to bring into existence, even if, by so doing, they have to agree to restrictions and concessions to secure a mass basis for Fascism. Any concession would be preferable to the ending of their privileges by Socialism.
A dictatorship may also get power if, from any variety of causes, internal or external, severe trouble occurs, and the stability of the social fabric is threatened. If both these conditions occur together, then parliamentary democracy disappears for a long time. If only the second condition is present, it may only be suspended for a short period – by emergency legislation or some similar device.
Those who try to fight for parliamentary democracy when these two conditions occur together are beaten before they start, however great their sacrifices, however heroic their conduct. In the struggle to maintain the democratic forms they are choked by the bonds of their own legality. While they observe the rules, their opponents glory in breaking them. The present state of Europe shows the inevitable end to that unequal struggle.
As the workers awake to a consciousness of the general conflict of their interests with those of the capitalists, and in the degree to which the capitalists unite their forces through the centralisation of capital, the use of parliament decreases, and the tendencies to abolish or modify it increase.
The extension of the suffrage to every adult man and woman gives to the workers in the political field for the first time the advantageous weight of their numbers. Nineteen-eighteen in the parliamentary democracies of Western Europe was the hey-day of the system. Votes were handed out as war souvenirs. The time to restrict parliamentary powers, to modify them, or to abolish them altogether, had arrived in capitalist Europe. Winston Churchill was therefore defining the real attitude of his class towards parliamentary democracy when he said, in an article written in 1934, that parliamentary democracy cannot survive unless the suffrage is restricted again. What he meant was that it would not be allowed to survive.
It seems rather simple sentimentalism to believe that the workers will be allowed to make effective use of the power of the their sheer numbers in a parliamentary system that has developed as a convenient means of maintaining such a balance between existing forces as will keep the capitalist state on an even keel. Looking back from the vantage point of recent events, it is plain that the process of the disintegration of capitalist democracy began with the turn of the century.
A party that preaches socialism to the workers must, therefore, be prepared to face a situation when the very success of that propaganda rouses the capitalists to the full danger of the democratic forms they were willing to accept so long as only concessions were asked of them, and the economic basis of their power was not seriously threatened. If the Socialist party at such a crisis has no other plan than to appeal to the forms of law, to the democratic institutions that have lost all meaning to their enemies, the tragedy of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany shows what the end will be. The democratic traditions themselves became the bonds that kept the workers helpless before the enemies of democracy.
The Treatment of the Opposition: There may, or may not, be much difference between the ways in which a democratic and a dictatorial government comes into power. Both Hitler and Mussolini were anxious to obtain legal and constitutional sanctions for their rule. [2] Hitler, by plebiscites, takes each important opportunity of getting mass consent, whether for leaving Geneva, [3] or straining the constitution by becoming President-Chancellor. If these votes are secured by terror, it is at least a mass terror. Nazi journalists outside Germany have enquired a little plaintively what is the exact difference in principle between a Zinoviev letter and a Reichstag fire. The practical difference lies not so much in the election trump card, as in the use that is made of the winnings.
It is in the treatment of the opposition that the chief difference between democracy and dictatorship lies. It is fundamental to democracy that the government in power allows the propaganda of the opposition, which thus has a means of itself coming to power. Modern dictatorship tries to crush its opponents permanently, and establish a lasting rule. For this an armed backing is essential. Mussolini remarked in March 1923: ‘If a group or party is in possession of power, it is its duty to maintain itself, and to defend itself against all the others.’
Under a Fascist dictatorship there is no question of the opposition being allowed to organise at all. Immediate steps are taken on achieving power to split up the various types of opposition into individuals who are prevented from coming into touch with each other and are thus prevented from acting unitedly. Active opponents who might become centres of opposition are either hunted down and killed as a matter of policy or kept in custody. Even differences of opinion within the Fascist Party itself have to take the form of conspiracies and are punished with the revolver and the firing squad, as when Röhm and Heines found the inevitable end of their discontent.
Not that democratic governments are quite guiltless of attempting to block the channels of appeal to the masses on occasion. The virtual monopoly of the BBC by the National Government has moved powerful leaders of political sections, such as Sir Austen Chamberlain, Mr Winston Churchill and Mr Lloyd George to protest, when for the first time they had the experience which politicians of the left find usual of being excluded from the use of a powerful means of influencing public opinion.
But in a Fascist dictatorship the opposition is completely cut off from the masses. The question that has yet to be decided is to what extent the opposition is thereby rendered completely impotent. Underground work is certainly going on in Italy and Germany, though with great danger. The figures of the persecutions in Italy would induce even a Nero to regard his successors with respect. [4]
In Germany the Socialist and Communist doctrine was accepted by so many millions that it is too early yet to say whether such an opposition can be held down sufficiently long and its pamphlets so completely destroyed that a new generation might arise which knew nothing of the old gospel. But if the social conditions that produce that gospel continue, no terror can prevent an appropriate gospel arising out of those conditions.
The second main difference between democracy and dictatorship is the personal liberty under democratic rule. The system of spying, of anonymous denunciation of persons carried from their homes and imprisoned without trial for months or years without even knowing the charges against them, these are distinctive signs of dictatorship. But in certain directions a dictatorship tends to allow greater liberty to the individual who does not want to meddle in politics. A dictatorship has not the same zealous moral interest in the private life of the individual. It allows him to drink more or less when he wants. The restrictions of DORA are unknown under Fascist dictatorships. The Russians, who for their Socialist reconstruction need citizens who are not addicted to drink or drugs, tend to be even more puritanical than democratic Britain.
Sir Oswald Mosley in his Greater Britain claims the right to make the same distinction. He says:
The Fascist principle is liberty in private life. Obligation in public life. In his public capacity a man must behave as befits a citizen and a member of the state; his actions must conform to the interest of the state which protects and governs him and guarantees his personal freedom. In private he may behave as he likes. Provided he does not interfere with the freedom and enjoyment of others, his conduct is a matter between himself and his own conscience.
This rather sinister distinction between what a dictator considers liberty and what is considered desirable for a free citizen of a democracy could hardly be better stated.
Popular and Unpopular Governments: The real distinction that is emerging in our time is not between democracy and dictatorship, but between popular and unpopular governments. The essential feature of popular government is that it uses its citizens for more than voting. The matters in which governments want their subjects to be interested depends not on whether they are democratic or dictatorial, but on their social aims. The Nazis, for example, foster interest in foreign policy because they want popular backing for their imperialist intentions, and also to keep the attention of the citizens distracted from the difficulties at home. The Völkische Beobachter says: ‘It is the daily task of every German to be occupied with foreign policy.’
The Soviet government, on the other hand, fosters the interest of the workers in matters of production. It encourages them to take the initiative, and draws them into collaboration, even at the cost of efficiency. The Fascists are particularly careful not only to suppress the interest of the workers in matters of production, but to canalise their attention into other channels. The Dopolavoro (After Work) organisation set up by the Italian Fascists is deliberately organised to interest the workers in organising leisure rather than production.
It is of the essence of Fascism to deny that the masses are interested in governing themselves, whether in industry or in politics. Hitler said to Strasser that what the masses want is ‘bread and circuses’, or he could have said ‘work and parades’. Dr Goebbels declared: ‘The masses want to be governed well, but they do not want to govern themselves.’
The separation of the workers from the organisation of production has been accentuated to a dangerous degree by the concentration of the means of production during the last century into the hands of a relatively small class. This is the economic basis which alone makes possible the political subjection of the masses of wage-dependent voters. Its attempt to alter this is one of the least understood, but most important political experiments of the Soviet system. Everything is being done deliberately to interest the workers themselves in the processes and organisation of production. The directors are regularly supervised, according to Stalin, by ‘production committees of workers who investigate the entire work of the directors, discuss the plan of the factory administration, and point out the mistakes in them’. [5] The immediate interest and initiative of the workers has been shown in the ‘Communist Saturdays’ (voluntary extra work) of the first years of War Communism, in the Socialist competition which in 1929 began to develop as a mass phenomenon so that by 1930 72.3 per cent of all workers took part in it. The broad development of the shock brigade movement and of the inventors’ groups, the continual and very severe self-criticism through the Workers’ Correspondents in the press, are important parts of the same process. Lenin said that the faith and the confidence in the creative powers of the masses is the distinctive characteristic of Communism, and in spite of an amount of bureaucratic degeneration in the Soviet Union the Russian Communists do their utmost to live up to this creed.
The Russians always try to drag the masses of the workers into the job and give them responsibility, whereas the Fascists regard the incompetence of the present-day worker with regard to the problems of production as a natural and desirable and permanent phenomenon. The Russian Communists give the responsibility to the workers, whereas the Fascists declare them to be unfit for it.
At the present, the Russians are paying a high price through the inefficiency which must necessarily accompany the first tentative efforts of inexperienced workers in the organisation of production, but they consider that the results so far justify the price they have paid for them.
This is a new conception of democracy, the economic democracy of a system of production which secures the wholehearted cooperation of the majority of workers and technicians engaged in it. This is the real alternative to Fascism. Its roots are the very foundations of society, for it is rooted in the masses. A democracy that depends on votes alone, in which the section with the least economic power possesses the majority, voting power is obviously unstable and unreal. It can survive only while conditions remain fairly stable. When the masses are united sufficiently to desire to use their voting strength to redress their economic inferiority, they may find that they need to accomplish their purpose far different forms of expression than capitalist democracy has provided for them.
1. Martin Sommerfeldt (friend of General Goering) in Kommune, 1934.
2. In 1924 the Fascists in Italy got 65 per cent of all votes; in 1929 8.5 million ‘yes’, 140,000 ‘no’.
3. In November 1933: 39.6 million for, 3.3 million against.
4. Political Terror in Italy, 1925-26.
1925 1926 Political trials 1,529 456 Accused 10,861 7,228 Condemned 5,409 1,145 In Political Conflicts Killed 118 51 Wounded 1,699 468 Arrested 11,308 18,663 Destruction of Anti-Fascist Premises Destroyed 380 143 House searches 10,982 11,186
5. JV Stalin, Probleme des Leninismus (1929 Edition), pp 33-34.