Political Parties by Maurice Duverger (1964)

Book Review from the November 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Political Parties, by Maurice Duverger. (University Paperbacks, 16s.)

During the past few weeks we have had every opportunity to watch modern political parties in action. We have witnessed these parties using every possible method, both ancient and modern, to draw the voters to the polling booth, and to flatter, cajole or panic them into putting their crosses against the right names.

The performances of the two main parties in the last election were worth examining. They knew that scares must not be overdone and no drum must be banged for too long, less the public get bored. Because if they get bored they might not turn out to vote, and however stupid or ill-informed the voters may be, it is their vote that decides the election. The ultimate power rests in the hands of the mass of the people, the working class, and it is the tragedy of the age that they use this power—not to end their bondage, but to perpetuate it.

It is to secure the votes of the electorate, and to ensure that the power, both national and local, stays in the hands of the party caucus, that modern parties exist.

Although many of the present day parties, such as the Liberal and Conservative parties in Britain, have a long history and still retain their old names, they have changed so much in their organisation as to be really different bodies. The twentieth century party system is modern, and has little in common with the parties of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The parties that existed before universal suffrage were mere Parliamentary groupings with the object of getting a working majority in Parliament, to enable a group to operate as a government. They had little real existence outside of Parliament.

With the coming of the 19th century and a wider but still limited franchise the so-called “middle class” parties came into being. These were based on groups or caucuses, composed of influential or well-known people. Narrowly recruited and with a rather exclusive membership, they did not want the masses to join and made no effort to recruit them. Each party was very decentralised, with their local groups largely independent of the others. Often these groups centred round the leading family in an area.

Those who remember the late 1940’s will recall the frantic and, as it turned out, successful efforts of the Conservative Party to shed the last remnants of the 19th century, and to transform themselves into a modern party. Modern parties, with their mass membership, their constant drives for new members, and their high degree of centralisation, are products of a world in which the masses can no longer be ignored.

Political Parties, by Maurice Duverger, recently published as a paper back, is a very useful text-book. A trifle heavy going, it is nevertheless well worth reading. It deals with Political Parties throughout the world, and describes in detail the Parties and electoral systems of all the more highly developed countries, including totalitarian, one-party states.

Les Dale.

Politics (1966)

Book Review from the July 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Idea of Politics by Maurice Duverger. Methuen and Co. 16s.

The French political scientist Maurice Duverger examines in this textbook such questions as What is politics? What causes political conflict? What form does political conflict take ? In two hundred or so pages is given a clear and concise account of the various answers given to these questions by the conservative, the liberal and the socialist. Regular readers of the Socialist Standard will straightaway be able to sec the word Marxist is used in a way we find unacceptable, to refer to the distorted version officially sponsored in Russia. ,

Duverger claims to be a socialist. However by Socialism he understands public ownership or control of industry, overall planning and the like, i.e.. the watered down state capitalism our Labourites (now increasingly only in private) call Socialism. He advances the theory that “East and West are developing along convergent lines towards democratic Socialism”. The East through liberalization and the West through the growth of planning and through the owners becoming mere figureheads on the economic field, as kings have become on the political. True there is a trend towards political democracy in the East and towards more state control in the West but the end won’t be Socialism. Socialism will only come when workers throughout the world take conscious, political action to get it.

Duverger recognises that the state itself is based on violence: "ultimately it rests upon police, army, prisons, and hangmen”. The state doesn’t suppress violence; it concentrates it in its own hands. “Physical violence is replaced by legal, constitutional violence, violence perpetrated with clean hands". This centralization of the means of coercion makes certain forms of political conflict which were popular in the past, like the street battle and the coup d'état, outmoded. (Even in countries now at the stage Europe was in the 19th century protracted guerrilla warfare has replaced the coup.) The Socialist Party has long realised that the growth of the power of the state has meant that the only practicable way for the working class to get political power in the developed capitalist countries is through the vote backed of course by understanding.

Adam Buick

The "New" Theory of Insurrection (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The French political scientist Maurice Duverger, whose books have been reviewed from time to time in these columns (see, for instance Socialist Standard of July 1966), wrote an interesting article published in Le Monde on 12 July. Duverger would say he is a socialist but, as we have pointed out, he really only stands for a mild form of state capitalism. Nevertheless his comments on the May events in France are very pertinent.

In his article, entitled “Une Révolution Impossible”, he. says that before May 1968 even those who stood for violent revolution had written off the developed capitalist world. Hence the popularity of Mao, Castro and Che Guevara. But after May they worked out a new theory of revolution. Duverger describes it thus:

   The first impulse will be given by the young who are less integrated into the present order than their elders, even those belonging to the working class. Among these the students will play the vanguard role. Their growing number and concentration at certain points, similar to the nascent proletariat in the nineteenth century, gives them a power of intervention which the barricades of Paris and the battles at Flins fully show. Further, their intellectual environment gives them a high degree of political consciousness.
   In the second phase, the detonator of the student revolt will embrace the mass of the workers. By means of a general strike they will then paralyse all activity of the bourgeois State and so reduce it to impotence. At the same time they will begin to replace it with a socialist State, themselves taking over the managements of the enterprises and services and putting them in motion again: this will be the third stage. Thus the old power will become more and more unreal and artificial, while a new power progressively takes its place. Finally, the former will collapse and the latter will completely control society.

Only the second stage was reached in May, they argue, because the Communist Party and its trade union wing, the CGT, restrained rather than encouraged the movement.

Duverger’s comments on this are the same as those we have made and are those which one would have thought were the obvious lessons of May: the new theory ignores the great repressive power of the modern state and fails to realise that most workers don't want violent insurrection. The more extreme student organisations have been outlawed and the Gaullists have won a sweeping victory in the elections by playing on popular fear of civil war.

Duverger concedes, and so would we, that there is plenty of working class discontent which could explode if the students gave a lead. But, he says, this discontent should not be confused with a desire for violent revolution. The absence of this, except perhaps among the young, “is not the result of the reformism of the CGT and the Communist party. On the contrary, the reformism of the CGT and the communist party is a reflection of this absence". Most workers, for various reasons are opposed to violent insurrection.

It is this that makes the new theory dangerous:

  The student movements cannot by themselves overthrow the present order. But they can sufficiently threaten it—or give the impression of threatening it—to sustain and increase a feeling of insecurity amongst the mass of society, which will push society towards authoritarian regimes when they can see no other way of avoiding anarchy.

Thus the new strategy could serve to undermine established democratic institutions and to strengthen the repressive powers at the service of the state.

Duverger says that some students are beginning to realise this and

   are today trying to work out a long-term strategy for the transformation of society, keeping their revolutionary ends, but using means better adapted to the conditions of the developed countries.

We are pleased to hear that some lessons have been learned from May (we only wish they would get through to some of the arm-chair insurrectionaries in Britain who want to repeat the French débâcle here). Duverger does not say on what lines they are thinking but he himself points out that nothing can be achieved without the support of the mass of the people.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has something to say on this since, following the lead given by Engels towards the end of his life, we have worked out a policy for social revolution suited to modern capitalism based on the revolutionary use of democratic institutions. Given the growth of the repressive power of the state, insurrections with barricades and street fights are useless. However, thanks to past struggles (including France in 1848 and 1871) in which the workers played a prominent role another way to political power has been opened up: universal suffrage. It is customary in some student circles to dismiss this as a trick, to talk about “parliamentary rubbish" and to call for a boycott of elections. People who speak in this way are refusing to face up to the fact that the great majority of workers do not at present want a social revolution. It is not universal suffrage and the other democratic institutions that are at fault, but the use to which they are put. As long as workers are not socialist-minded (as they are not at the moment) they will use their votes to elect supporters of capitalism, including social democrat and “communist" reformists, and so in effect will hand over political power to the capitalist class—a power, we might add, which can be used to crush student uprising. Elections are the best gauge there is of popular opinion and, unfortunately, they clearly show that only a handful now want Socialism. The task of those who are socialists should thus be clear: not to try to provoke violent clashes with the state in the hope of triggering off a more general uprising, but to carry out an intensive programme of socialist agitation and education. This will involve denouncing the “new" revolutionary theory as dangerous as it could undermine the very institutions which will allow a socialist workers' movement to win power.

We are not advocating that parliament be used to pass a series of social reform measures which are supposed gradually to transform society. We are as opposed to reformism as to insurrection. Compromise with capitalism can be avoided by the socialist party only seeking support on the basis of a socialist programme. In other words, in having no programme of reforms or “immediate demands" to be achieved within capitalism. For such a programme would attract the support of non-socialists and so lead the party towards compromise and reformism. 

We suggest that the twin dangers of insurrection and reformism can be avoided by building up a socialist party composed of and supported by convinced socialists only. When a majority of workers are socialist-minded and organised into such a party they can use their votes to elect to parliament and the local authorities delegates pledged to use state power for the one revolutionary act of dispossessing the capitalist class and converting the means of production into the property of the whole community. This is the long-term strategy for the transformation of society suited to the conditions of modern capitalism that Duverger's students would do well to consider.

Adam Buick