XXV. On the One-Party System

THERE are certain notions for which I have long argued, incompetently but industriously, in many places and for many years, seeking to make them prevail. Now nearly all of them are enjoying a triumph; and I do not like their triumph. This does not mean, the refined reader will be grieved to hear, that I have changed my mind about them; or that I feel even the faintest doubt that they are true. It only means that I fear that the world will see more of the triumph than of the truth. While they were hardly ever expressed, it was easier for them to be explained; when it is assumed that everybody understands them, it often only means that there are a great many more people to misunderstand them. It also means, I cannot but grieve to discover what many grey-bearded patriarchs must have discovered before me, that there are many more people than I had imagined who can only understand one idea at a time.

Sometimes the whole point of the real complaint is lost. The reaction is the very reverse of the right action. For instance, I was once concerned in controversy, along with Mr. Belloc and my friends, and did what I could to help a campaign against the old Party System, which reduced all the possibilities of politics to the rotation of the Two Front Benches. We dared to dispute the sacred oracle, which declared that every little boy and girl was either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative. It is not untrue to talk of it as a sacred oracle; for the Victorians, who are so much misunderstood when they are charged with mere solemnity, were really almost alone in human history the people who treated their comic poets and comic songs as a national religion. Their only fault was to be only too earnest in their enthusiasm and loyalty to Alice in Wonderland. Anyhow, we pointed out that it was an outrage to call a thing free government, when the voters are driven by their labels, into one of two narrow lobbies, by the activity (of all degrading images in the world) of Whips. We also pointed out other rather curious things that were done by Whips, such as the things concerned with Party Funds. Well, since those days several things have happened which might be regarded as corrections of that abuse or escape from that alternative. The Labour Party appeared; some time before the Liberal Party disappeared. So that, for a considerable period, there were no longer Two Parties but Three Parties. Then the Coalitions, in the time of the War, first began to preach the doctrine that there are not Three Parties but One Party. I know this sounds theological; but I can’t help that. Then there was again a sort of Two-party System, between Labour and the Tories. And then there was another great rally to the idea of a united National Government; a Government which still exists to charm and console the world. I cannot say I ever believed very much in that sort of thing myself. It seemed too like saying that people whom you dislike separately would look nicer together; or that a man who cried out impatiently ‘A plague on both your houses!’ would be quite satisfied to see both the houses side by side, like semi-detached villas. But whatever be the truth about that, it was at the time certainly regarded as a victory of a National System over the old Party System. And now the very groups and factions, that are in revolt against the National Government, are claiming to be more National than the National Government. Those of the Fascist or Hitlerite fashion of thought carry much further the theory of absolute Unification. They are not content to uphold the whole State against certain factions. They would apparently forbid the factions to uphold themselves against the State; or even apart from the State. But whether their view be right or no, or be here rightly described or no, it is certainly the whole trend of the reaction to override differences and concentrate political power. This is the common element in many such forms of social cure.

And yet it is not really a cure for the disease. It is not an attack on the original state of things at all. The real objection to the old Party System was not that it was a Two-party System; but that it pretended to be a Two-party System, when it was really a One-party System. The objection was not that there was too much conflict between the two Front Benches; but that there was too much collusion between the two Front Benches. It was not that the Government governed too zealously or the Opposition opposed too fiercely. It was that the Government only governed by arrangement with the Opposition and that the Opposition did not oppose at all. The unpopularity of Parliament did not arise from its being the scene of furious brawls and fanatical faction fights, like a medieval Italian city. It arose from its being the scene of tedious and trivial debates, like a tired debating club. As for the political power of government, that was already centralized; and a great deal too much centralized. It occupied a central position between the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition; not unfrequently in the form of an unknown financier who was advising them both. But, anyhow, it is not a real contradiction of the old Two-party System to set up the Totalitarian State. In that sense, the Two-party System was the Totalitarian State. That is, it monopolized the power of the State; and the power of the State was very much stronger even then than many innocent Liberals and theoretical democrats imagined. In other words, our old protest against professional politics has in one sense succeeded to a towering point of triumph. Many forms of corruption which were concealed are now confessed. The old tradition or travesty of representative government is unpopular. But it is by no means certain that it is unpopular for the right reason; or at least for all of the right reasons.

I have noticed the same ironical success in other departments. When I was young, it was very generally assumed that any man was a fool who was in possession of a faith. It was the fashion to assume that reason is the same as rationalism, and that rationalism is the same as scepticism; though it has since become obvious that the first real act of scepticism is to be doubtful about reason. Bullet-headed atheists went about in clubs and public-houses, who hit the table and said, ‘Prove it!’ if anybody suggested that anybody had a soul. Now there has certainly been a very strong and healthy reaction against this very dull and dowdy negation. So, for that matter, I quite admit that Fascism has been in some ways a healthy reaction against the irresponsible treason of corrupt politics. A great body of living and logical apologetics has restored theology to its place in the scheme of thought. But I cannot deny that there has also been a reaction against rationalism, which seems to me to be simply a reaction towards irrationalism. There was undoubtedly a growth of Fundamentalism in America; but it was not a growth of any kind of theology or thought about religion. It was simply the artificial protection of a prejudice. That American type of revival has undoubtedly spread to England, sometimes in a very emotional form; but I am not very much consoled when an English clergyman describes how the Holy Ghost pressed upon him the advisability of buying a new dressing. gown. I never wanted a revival of religion that abolished reason; any more than I ever wanted a reform of government that abolished liberty. I opposed what was called rationalism, because I did not admit that it was rational; just as I criticized what was called democracy, because I did not believe that it was democratic. There seems to me some danger that the reaction may endanger the just ends as well as the unjust methods of reform; and lose the very ideals which the world had only touched to desecrate and parody. Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue; but it is a rather dangerous form of homage, if it makes people hate the virtue because it has been aped by the vice. If the reaction is too simple, and sweeps away all that was really good in the nineteenth-century liberty or rationality, then it is easy to see what will happen. There will be a reaction against the reaction; and that in its turn will be as narrow as the reaction. The world will become at once monomaniac and mutable, always going mad on one notion at a time; and each returning after the temporary ruin of the other. In short, it will present a vast and ghastly parody of the theory of the old Two-party System.