(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Simone Weil. The Abolition of All Political Parties. New York Review of Books, 2014
The recently departed social minister of the Danish party Radical Left Manu Sareen said in an interview in the newspaper Politiken that he was getting nauseous about not being able to say his own opinion and express his own position in important brand matters, but constantly had to comply with party top. He never said what he meant – only what he had to. "The failed promise of earmarked maternity leave for fathers was a regular 'bad experience'." "If you have party power, you have nothing to say." He states that "we have developed a very negative political culture".
The tombstone of party culture. He is not a unique case. Rather, it has become the norm that MPs do not practice independent thought, but merely follow the dictatorship of the party top. But if you read the French philosopher and author Simone Weil, this is not a simple result of a strategic competitive culture; it is the result of a particular logic that accompanies the party culture itself. In his book On the Abolition of All Political Parties (On the dissolution of all political parties), she argues that the first characteristic of a politician is integrity and that the independent integrity of judgment, rooted in a pursuit of justice and truth, can never be overridden by a party ideology. When these fundamental features are disregarded, the work of the parliament turns into a circus that can only create contempt from the public. When those who vote despise the representative politicians, democracy is jeopardized. Weil's writing is a tombstone of modern party and organizational culture.
Goodness as legitimacy. The text was written in 1943, shortly before Weil's tragic, short life found its end. She was in London where she co-founded the Free French Organization under the General de Gaulle, but was shocked and disappointed by French politicians' attempts to revert to old and destructive party political strategies – splitting, rivalry and dismantling the opponent. The text was first printed in French in 1950 in La Table Round and particularly highlighted by André Breton (the founder of surrealism) and Alain / Emile Chartier (the great essayist philosopher of Sorbonne and Simone Weil's former teacher). The root of "the word 'party' is Anglo-Saxon, and has an element of sport and play associated with institutions of aristocratic origin, while plebeian institutions were serious from the beginning". Even during the French Revolution (1789), the idea of a "party" was considered a direct evil it was necessary to avoid. The political party emerged in the wake of the horror regime during the French Revolution. Weil writes: "The only legitimate reason for holding a party is the idea of goodness." And: "Democracy, the rule of the majority, is not good in itself. They are merely means to the good. " "Only justice and truth can be a criterion for good." She praises Rousseau's book The social contractbut rejects it because a thing cannot be just because it is based on a general will. This is subject to random impulses. The result is a "caricature of the general will". Only the learning process of mindful thought and reason can form the basis of justice and truth. The question is whether a political party can take care of the two at all. According to Weil, a political party has three characteristics: «1. A political party is a machine that generates collective passions. 2. A political party is an organization designed to exert collective pressure on its individual members. 3. Self-growth and increase is the first and ultimate goal of any political party, without frontiers. ” Weil now claims that with these characteristics, any party would be potentially totalitarian. Reason: "What is being made is just means." For example, "money, power, the state, national pride, economic production". Only goodness, that is, justice and truth, can be goals. Parties that accept refugees only on the condition that they come to work as quickly as possible, camouflage financial means as targets. The examples are many.
Worship and thoughtlessness. A party's doctrine (program) must serve public interests, but a party's doctrine is vague and volatile, and does not demand attention and empathy as all sincere search for truth requires. Party programs become unreal because they must constantly invent the notion of «a public interest that is a fiction, an empty shell without reality». They become their own goal, with the result that blind worship of the program takes over. Hence the need for party growth and total power. Propaganda and ideological control take over – today called spin. Without this, the party disappears. That is why we do not hear more politicians speaking on behalf of justice and the truth about things. They say: «As a bourgeois or liberal I mean…», just as when you say: «As a Dane I mean…», «As a Catholic I mean…». Weil's critique: «You think what you think, not because you are French or Catholic or socialist, but because the irresistible light of truth forces one to think that way. " If a «party member is preoccupied with following the inner light and ignoring everything else, he will deceive his party». "He who is not true to the inner light installs the lie in the heart of the soul." Of the three lies – lying to the party, to the public, to himself, the former is the least evil. The result is automatic reactions and thoughtlessness in which one evades the obligation to pursue truth and justice. Very few today run the risk of expressing a reflected personal point of view rooted in the effort of attention.
Suppression of intellectual development is rooted in the Catholic Church's struggle against heresy.
Party control. Lying and wrongdoing will control people who do not seek the truth and justice. And those who do not decorate during the party pay with their lives and reputation. A new party member must submit to the party's authority. The result is a party spirit that infects everything. Television debates are not about pursuing the truth of the matter and thinking through the consequences, but "partying for or against". Weil is prophetic when she highlights how schools and educational institutions are no longer governed by independent truth-seeking, but by journals with specific ideological agendas. The result she envisions is "people guided by the desire for conformity" and "an intellectual leprosy that poisons all thinking". She concludes: «This leprosy kills us; it is doubtful whether it can be cured without first dissolving all political parties. "
The big beast. Weil's critique of party culture is a critique of modern organizational culture as such, going back to the structure of the Catholic Church. Modern parties 'suppression of members' own intellectual development is rooted in the Catholic Church's struggle against heresy, and not least an authoritarian ethic based on the group or institution. She was spiritually Christian, but could not reconcile with the church as an institution and was not baptized. She also rejected Marxism because its desire for truth and justice ended in a blind belief in a new group ethic that paved the way for "the great beast." For her, the crimes of the 19th century were a repetition of the Roman Empire of ancient times, the totalitarian state that destroys the struggle of justice and goodness of ancient civilizations. As Polish author Czeslaw Milosz writes in his postscript: "The basic social and political question of the 20th century is: 'Can the emancipation gained by society be transmitted to the individual?'" It is a difficult struggle, but an important lesson from Weil will be: “We do not like to think things to their bitter end. We flee in advance for the consequences. ” Her extraordinary intelligence is about showing the highest degree of attention to the weak and suffering humanity. Serious thinking is rooted in the awareness of the good.
Ability to pay attention. “It is when we crave the truth with an empty soul, without trying to guess the content, that we receive the light. This is all about the ability to pay attention. " In Weil's optics, the process of attention learning is another word for truth as it determines the human condition. Weil faces the modern idea that man makes his choices in a world without objective values. The mature ability of attention strives for an external authority, not a god or imagined imagination, but a normativity given with the good. Morality is an ability to act, but it is also an ability to see reality and one's fellow human beings in a true way, freed from prejudice and tenacity. In the main works Heaviness and grace (The painter and the grace) and The great expectation (Waiting for God) she turns attention to the focal point. The good is Weil's replacement for God. God is a picture of the good, but we must go beyond the picture. For Weil, this means that we must move through the images of the imagination, including the party or the doctrines of the organization that block us from selfish feelings and a pursuit of conformity in life and thought. Attention ability is the ability where we break through the imagined phantoms and party images, an ability to see others, see things, see the world. Therefore, the pursuit of good is a learning process that is more about receptivity than mastery.
Carnera is an essayist and author
ac.mpp@cbs.dk
