An absolute monarchy is built on the will of one person. Sic volo, sic jubeo. Tel est mOn bon plaisir (1*). One rules, the others obey. The will of the autocrat may even diverge from the will of the nation. Today, there is still a vestige of absolute monarchy, such as the right of veto held by the constitutional monarch. The legal explanation of this social order involves motivations from the field of transcendental metaphysics. The logical foundation of any monarchy is based on the appeal to God. God descends from heaven and becomes the support and bulwark of the monarchical stronghold (der monarchischen Zwingburg). The state-legal basis of the monarchy is God's grace, and therefore the monarchical system, supported by an element that rises above the world, looks as unchangeable and eternal, as something that is not subject to either human law or human will. Only God can legally abolish the monarchy, but God's will is incomprehensible.
In theory, the principle of monarchy is opposed to its opposite - the principle of democracy, which rejects innate rights, as well as a compromise option - a combination of innate and acquired rights, equalizes all citizens before the law, and provides everyone with the opportunity to climb to the very top of the social ladder in abstracto. By opening the way for all, this principle discards ancestral privileges and gives crucial importance to the abilities and personal efforts of individuals in the struggle for primacy. If the principle of monarchy makes all people dependent on one individual (the monarch), and if for this reason even the best monarchical government cannot give the people any guarantees that it will ensure successful, reasonable and technically effective governance, 1 then in a democracy all the people share responsibility for the prevailing order of which they are the creator.
Meanwhile, in the life of societies, both of these theoretical principles of building state power are quite elastic and often combine, "car la democratic peut embrasser tout Ie peuple, ou se resserrer jusqu' la moitie; 1'aristocratie a son tour, peut de la moitie du peuple se resserrer jusqu'au plus petit nombre indeterminement " (Rousseau(2). Therefore, these two forms are not in absolute antithesis with respect to each other, but they are connected at a level corresponding to the participation of 50% of the population in government.
Our times have destroyed once and for all the old stagnant forms of aristocracy, at least in terms of the basic components of the structure of political life and their constitutional consolidation. Even conservative parties have taken on a democratic appearance in the modern state. Conservative thought has long since moved away from its former inaccessibility, meeting the onslaught of the democratically-minded masses. Now she likes to change her mask. That is why in history it appears today as an absolutist party, tomorrow as a constitutionalist party, and the day after tomorrow as a parliamentary party. Where the rule of the aristocracy is still strong and undivided, as it was in pre-war Germany (before 1914), it willingly appeals only to the grace of God. Where
Published by: R. Michels. Zur Soziologie des Parteilebens in der modemen Demokratie. Untersuchungen uber die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens. 2nd erg. Aufl. Leipzig 1925 (1-е Aufl. Leipzig, 1911).
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it, on the other hand, feels insecure and unstable, as it did in Italy in 1860, the appeal to God is supplemented by an appeal to the will of the people (per la grazia di Dio e del popolo) (2) . In its external forms, it can also undergo more significant modifications. In monarchical France, the sovereign was transformed from the King of France and Navarre to the King of France (1814), and from the King of France to the king of the French (1830).
Accordingly, party life on a national scale, as well as at the community level, differs significantly in its orientation towards democracy. This orientation is most often based on the majority principle and always requires compliance with the mass principle. Now even the parties of the aristocracy as political groupings have irrevocably lost the aristocratic purity of their principles. If they remain essentially anti-democratic, they are still forced by necessity, at least in certain periods of political life, to show their respect for democracy or even hypocritically present themselves as its adherents. While the democratic principle is aimed, according to its essence, at ensuring that the Heraclitean state of the Russian Federation is fully developed.
jester pel (3*)
It was implemented in the life of the state and society in accordance with the variability in the will of the people and in the formation of the majority, the conservative principle is based on some essentially unchangeable norms. Certain actions are first considered empirically as good or bad; in the future, these assessments are generalized, raised to the absolute with the claim that they are eternal values, which leads to the emergence of such norms. The conservative principle is subject to the law of stability. Most of the great dogmatists of state interests, in fact, in the name of stability, fight against the people's power, which they condemn, because in their opinion it leads to chaos and social unrest.
However, the principle of sustainability should not be interpreted as conservative in the sense of preserving any Status quo. The conservative principle would lead to the destruction of itself if it consisted only in recognizing the existing and preserving it, for example, in recognizing only the existing forms of law (3). In various epochs and among many peoples, where, after a break with stability, the old conservative elements were pushed out of direct power by those who represented the state. Although the new social strata were based on the principles of democracy, the Conservative party proved to be a force hostile to the new state system, which sometimes gave it even revolutionary features. Or maybe counter-revolutionary ones? This question, posed as an antithesis, is of great importance. In the word "revolution" people often put quite a certain historical content, and its progenitor is even considered the Great French Revolution. Thus, the term "revolutionary" often refers only to the struggle of the lower strata of society against the upper strata, and it is also assumed that revolutionism must necessarily manifest itself in acute, conflicting forms. However, in accordance with the general logic, this term has the meaning of a fundamental overthrow, which should not be limited to the actions of a certain class and tied exclusively to certain external forms of violence. And then any class that seeks to radically change the existing order turns out to be revolutionary, regardless of whether this is done from above or from below, by force of arms, by law, or by economic means. If we look at the question from this angle, it turns out that the contents of the concepts "revolutionary" and "reactionary" (as opposed to the concept "conservative") merge, as do the meanings of the concepts "revolution" and "counter-revolution". A sign that distinguishes a revolutionary revolution from a reactionary one might have been found earlier on the basis of the fact that revolutionary revolutionaries strive to achieve by their actions a set of goals that have historically not yet been achieved anywhere in the world, or at least in their own country, while counter-revolutionary "revolutionaries" try to re-implement their goals in a similar way outwardly, already achieved in the past. The first type is the French revolutions of 1789, 1830 and 1848.. The Paris Commune, the German and Austrian revolutions of 1918, and many others; the second type is the putsch of bakers in France in 1889, the current movement in Germany associated with the names of Kapp and Hitler, which succeeded in Italy in 1923.
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the fascist revolution (the fascists themselves call it a revolution). However, as a response to this interpretation, we might note that the first type is not characterized by hopes for a new order alone, that it revives images of freedom from the past (ideas about freedom from antiquity, memories of civil rights in medieval communes, etc.), just as the second type is not characterized by a complete restoration of freedom from the past. Rather, it marks a compromise that draws lessons from the history of the fall of the old regime in one form or another. Et puis alors? (4) . The answer is limited to a warning: in cases where we are talking about such complex social phenomena, it is advisable to avoid too categorical statements. In addition, it would be completely unscientific to include concepts from the field of moral philosophy in judgments about evolution. What Raumer reported from Paris in 1830 is quite typical: "Revolutionaries are those people (liberals) who seek the abolition of old, obsolete institutions and the elimination of old evils; counter-revolution means for them the spread of certain abuses. Their opponents, on the contrary, understand revolution as the totality of the madness and crimes that occur during it, and counter-revolution as the restoration of order, discipline, religion, etc. "(4) It is worth considering that if in politics value judgments can become an effective weapon in the struggle to achieve political and in some cases moral goals If they are used only in the form of auxiliary tools, then they will not help you find out historical development trends and worldview issues.
While maintaining its hostility to modernity, the conservative party movement is partly instinctively and partly consciously transformed from cliques inclined to aristocratic exclusivism into a popular party.
The realization that only the masses can help the old aristocracy to revive and remove the democratic regime that stands in its way makes even conservative adherents democrats; they recognize the people's disasters and try, like the Royalists in Republican France, and today (in 1924) also part of the German national aristocracy, to tie up the old aristocracy in the first place. relations even with the revolutionary proletariat, promising it protection from the oppression of democratic capital, preserving and consolidating it to the powerful trade unions, if only it would do a service:
He abolished the republic and re-established the throne of royalty - the highest expression of the aristocratic principle (5). The king and the "royal thugs" (Le Roi et les camelots du Roi) - the monarch and the masses of the poor must overthrow the oligarchy of the fat bourgeoisie. They must eliminate democracy in a democratic way and by the will of the people. The democratic path has now become the only possible route in the movement towards the new rule of the old overthrown aristocracy. The Valois are surprisingly persistent in courting the French syndicalists, seeing them as representatives of a powerful movement, followed by the masses. This is not hindered by the conservatism of Valois. They are ready to put their king on the throne through revolution, which may happen not by the grace of God, but by the grace of the revolutionary socialists. Such metamorphoses occur thanks to Demos!
However, the conservatives appeal to the workers also because they do not want to wait for the time when they are finally pushed out of power. In countries with democratic regimes, such as England, they spontaneously turn their eyes to the working people wherever they make up the bulk of the masses. From observations of the unusually intense pre-election struggles of January 1910 and January 1924, one might be convinced that both parties, both liberal and conservative, have imbued themselves with socialist ideas and are helping the proletariat to achieve victory, if we base our conclusions only on the methods used by these parties in their struggle against each other. The former proclaims democratic slogans and hopes for broad social reforms in the future; the latter opens the eyes of the workers to the hardships of their existence in capitalist society. Both parties at that moment promised much more than they could have done, and both of them showed by the whole manner of their agitation that they recognized the workers as independent workers.
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a decisive force. The comments of Socialist newspapers on this issue are very characteristic: "The English conservatives do not preach appeasement to the workers, but discontent. While, for example, the Prussian conservatives usually tell their workers that nowhere in the world are workers better off than in Germany, the English Conservatives, on the contrary, assure them that nowhere in the world are workers worse off than in England." The purpose of such assurances was, of course, to convince voters of the usefulness and necessity of putting an end to the hated system of free trade in order to move towards the introduction of protective customs tariffs. This intention has always been present in the policy of the British Conservatives, but they will be able to fully realize it only with the assistance of the working masses.
Similarly, in states where there is no parliamentary government, but universal and equal suffrage has been introduced, aristocratic parties can only prolong their political existence at the mercy of the masses, whose rights and political abilities these parties theoretically deny (6). The instinct of political self-preservation forces the old ruling groups to come down from their seats during the election period and resort to the use of to the same democratic and demagogic means used by the youngest, most numerous and non-aristocratic stratum of our society - the proletariat. In these countries, the aristocracy retains political power not through parliament, but by other means. Traditional dependencies, family ties, intrigues, land ownership, and a dominant position in the army are enough for it to do this. 7 However, for decorative purposes and to influence public opinion and win it over to its side, i.e. as a preventive measure, it always needs a respectable representation in Parliament. It strives to achieve it, but it does not announce its goals and does not openly appeal to "its people". The party of aristocrats and large landowners would not be able to pass in any electoral district, would not be able to hold a single candidate for deputies, if it appealed only to people of its own circle and to those whose interests coincide with its interests. A conservative candidate, if he openly declared to his constituents that he did not consider them capable of taking an active part in deciding the fate of the country and that therefore, in his opinion, they should be restricted in their voting rights, would act as an honest person, but in political terms he would be a madman and a fool. In order to get into Parliament, he has only one means: to enter the electoral arena with democratic gestures, to address the peasants and workers as colleagues, to impress upon them that their economic and social interests coincide with his own. So the aristocrat realizes that he will have to secure his election on the basis of a principle that he has not accepted and must reject in his heart of hearts. Everything in it is aimed at maintaining authority, at preserving limited electoral rights, and at abolishing universal suffrage, if it is introduced, since this restricts its traditional freedoms. However, the realization that he is living in an era of democracy that has burst into his world, and that with such a principle he would be politically isolated and would never be able to form the basis for his party and political activities, makes him make very different speeches and howl like a wolf, that is, passionately appeal to the majority (8).
The impact of national elections on the external form of behavior of a conservative politician is so strong that the intersection of two candidates from different but similar party groups in the general electoral district leads to the fact that each of them tries to indicate their difference and distance from the opponent, which has become so necessary, by making a curtsey to the left, that is, Emphasizing its alleged commitment to democratic principles (9).
Such particular phenomena confirm the fact known from observations: the conservative also seeks to take advantage of the basic law of modern politics, which means replacing the religious axiom that many are invited, but few are chosen, and along with it the psychological stereotype that the ideal is understood only by a few people with a particularly developed intellect. This law was expressed by Curtius in
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in one phrase: "Elitist groups ideally do not need it, but it should take over the masses and dominate through the masses "(10). The conservative spirit of the old ruling stratum, no matter how deeply it is rooted in its consciousness, when it gets into a democratic environment, it needs disguising clothes with democratic draperies.
Similarly, the theory of liberalism does not place its original hopes on the masses in general. It relies on well-defined masses that hold dominant positions in other areas, but have not gained political power, in fact, on layers of well-to-do and well-educated people. It is simply that the masses appear in this theory only as an unavoidable evil that can be used to achieve goals that are alien to liberalism. Fear of parliamentarism was already prevalent in the collection of articles "The Federalist: (1787), 5 in which the creators of the Basic Law of the North American States, Hamilton, Madison and Jay, set out and defended their views: elections should not be held too often, there should not be too many members in the legislative body, so that it should not be considered as an independent state.Over the years, the passions that should be kept within certain limits have not been inflamed by the Senate , which is a reliable and solid element with experience and political wisdom and protects the people from their own elected representatives. The President should also remain independent of them, and State power should never be concentrated in one body (11). The first major German liberal historian, Rottek, bitterly reproached the royal power at the beginning of the French Revolution for forcing the bourgeoisie to turn to the people. He divided democracy into the rule of representatives and the rule of the masses (12). During the June Revolution of 1830, Raumer broke out in Paris with violent complaints that the masses had gained power and that it would now be a very difficult task "to take it away from them without offending them and prompting another uprising against their new leaders "(13). These speeches, which were filled with romantic praises, also included praise of the order in his native Prussia, where the king and people lived "mainly according to the precepts of the highest and holiest Faith of Christ" and where satisfied citizens did not raise questions about their rights (14). From the history of the convocation of the North German Reichstag, we know how another liberal leader and fighter for a liberal worldview, the historian G. von Siebel, spoke out against universal, direct and equal suffrage. Only by taking into account the rather peculiar views of liberals on the "masses" discussed above can one understand why Siebel believes that such a right "will certainly prove to be the beginning of the end for any parliamentarism" and that the right to vote will always appear as a right to rule in the truest sense of the word, and that therefore one should be warned against attacking the German monarchy, The new federal state has already instilled such a strong institution of democratic dictatorship.15 The internal antipathy of liberals to the masses can be seen by the development of their positions in some of the principles and attitudes they inherited from the aristocratic worldview. They demonstrated the aristocratic views that run like a red thread through the entire history of bourgeois liberalism, so clearly that they should probably be evaluated as inherent in liberalism from birth. Even in the" communist manifesto " of the young bourgeoisie, authored by Guizot, it is said of the House of Peers that it meant "un privilege place la ou il peut servir" (16) (6*). After the introduction of expanded suffrage, which opens up quite certain prospects for the communist-minded majority of voters and for a significant part of deputies in the Lower House, many, as Roscher believes, began to look with different eyes at the actual power of the Crown and the Upper House, the preservation of which at least does not allow any decision in the Lower House to be approved as law (17). In his opinion, no expansion of the existing right to vote should be carried out "without a thorough analysis of statistical data", that is, without a preliminary thorough study of the balance of power that develops in the state between different classes of its population (18). In our time [we are talking about 1911, first edition], even in the national social group closest to the Social Democrats (left-liberal parties-
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political unification in Germany) has strengthened the view that the people's will, which is changeable and unpredictable (as evidenced by the activities of the former Reichstag), should not affect state affairs alone, and that along with it there should be control by restraining, veto-wielding, and independent aristocratic elements (19).
For a century, German historians from Rotteck to Naumann have worked hard to bring together, theoretically, the natural antagonists of democracy and military monarchy in a supreme unity. Their earnest pursuit of this lofty goal was combined with an attempt to de-feudalize the monarchy as much as possible, which, on closer inspection, turned out to be an effort to replace the aristocratic pillars of the throne with academic ones. The theoretical justification, if not of the so-called socially oriented, then certainly of the original people's monarchical state, was the task that they set themselves (perhaps without fully realizing it). It is quite clear that such a goal presupposes a political line that has nothing to do with science, but it does not necessarily oppose or contradict science (which must be judged on the basis of the method), since the political line itself lies outside the sphere of science. We should not blame scientists for having and expressing pro-monarchist sentiments - this is the domain of politics. However, historically and logically, it was certainly reprehensible for them to equate the monarchical principle that was actually implemented in West Prussia on the eve of the World War with the idea of a people's monarchical state (or a socially oriented monarchy) that was dear to their hearts. Most German liberal historians have confused dream and reality on this issue. This error, however, is the common source of the political errors of all German liberalism, which after 1866 did nothing but obscure its departure to the opposite side of the front, that is, the struggle against socialism and at the same time its voluntary refusal to complete the political emancipation of the German bourgeoisie, spreading the absurd and false idea that after the unification of Germany After the rise of the Hohenzollern Empire, all or almost all the aspirations of the democratic youth of German liberalism had already come to life. However, the basic principles of a modern military monarchy (hereditary monarchy) are completely incompatible even with such broadly interpreted principles of democracy. Caesarism is still a democracy, or at least it can claim to apply this name to itself, since its emergence is directly related to the expression of the will of the people, whereas legitimate monarchism has no reason to do so.
Summing up what has been said, we can perhaps put forward the thesis that in modern party life the aristocracy is willing to show itself in democratic garb, and in the content of democracy there are clearly aristocratic signs. Here we find an aristocracy that has taken on a democratic form; there we find a democracy with an aristocratic content.
The external democratic form of party-political life may hide from a superficial observer its slide towards aristocracy or, more precisely, towards oligarchy - a process to which any party organization is subject. The most appropriate and effective field of observation for identifying this trend is the processes developing within democratic parties, especially the socialist revolutionary workers ' parties. The tendency towards oligarchy is evident in conservative parties, apart from the electoral period, with a self-evident openness that fully corresponds to the fundamentally oligarchic nature of these parties. However, the same trends can be traced with equal clarity in parties that are engaged in "subversive" work. The observation of these tendencies is particularly valuable here, since revolutionary parties, by the nature of their origin and general political orientation, demonstrate a rejection of them and have emerged in their time because of opposition to them. The manifestation of the tendencies under consideration also in the bosom of revolutionary parties thus provides the most convincing material confirming the presence of immanent oligarchic characteristics in any human organization that pursues practical goals.
Since the social-revolutionary and democratic parties were defined as one of
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their main goals at the moment are the fight against the oligarchy in any form, the question arises, what can explain the fact that they themselves are developing the same tendencies against which they decided to fight. An unbiased analytical answer to this question will be the main component of solving the tasks that the author has set for himself in writing this book.
The dominance of relations of strong economic and social dependence in our society makes it impossible in the current conditions to create an ideal democracy in public life. Let's say. But then we should also ask the second question: do the elements that seek to overthrow the existing social order and plan to build a new one really have in their infancy the forces that would bring society closer to an ideal democracy, and do these forces break through or displace?
AUTHOR'S NOTES
1. This was understood and expressed much more clearly at the end of the eighteenth century than it is now, when the constitutional monarchy essentially rejected its previous principles: "The servile fear that arose at the sight of an impregnable throne, shining in a dazzling splendor, surrounded by myriads of loyal servants and guards with military leaders who could at any moment draw their swords and deliver a punishing blow the blow, in short, the fear caused by the unshakeable strength of the monarch's power, was the only thing that could hold and protect the monarchy, ensure the safety of despots and their satraps. Sometimes, however, fate sends the unfortunate their deliverer, some Cyrus, who breaks the old fetters and begins to rule in a reformed state, showing wisdom and paternal attention to his subjects, but this happens rarely and changes for the better most often come from a certain person and have a transitory character, because the main source of evil is the monarchical one. the system remains, and soon incompetent and vicious heirs destroy what was created by the efforts of one intelligent and noble ruler " (SM Wieland. Eine Lustreise ins Elysium. Samtliche Werke, Bd. 1, Wien, 1803, S. 209). In 1817. Italian nationalist economist Giuseppe Pecchio saw the rise to power of a highly educated liberal king as a happy accident. (РессЫо, Dissertazione sino a qual punto Ie produzioni scientifiche e letterarie seguano Ie leggi economiche delle produzioni in generale. Torino 1852, S. 257).
2. JJ. Rousseau. Le contrat social. 6. Ed. Paris, 1871. p. 91. ["It should be noted that all these forms, or at least the first two of them, can be more or less broad, and the corresponding differences are quite significant, because democracy can embrace the whole people, or cover no more than half of them. The aristocracy, in turn, can cover from half the people to an indefinite number of citizens." Cit. by: J. J. Rousseau. On the social contract / / J. J. Russo. Treatises. M.:
Nauka, 1969. p. 199. - note. perev.]
3. There is an interesting study on the essence of conservatism: O. Stillich. Die politischen Parteien in Deutschland, Bd. 1: Die Konservativen. Leipzig. 1909, S. 18 ff.
4. F. von Raumer. Briefe aus Paris und Frankreich im Jahee 1830. Teil II. Leipzig 1831, S. 26. For more information, see W. Roscher, Politik. Geschichtliche Naturlehre der Monarchic, Aristokratie und Demokratie; 3. Aufl. Stuttgart- Berlin, 1908. S. 14.
5. See the Royalist propaganda pamphlet of Valois: G. Valois. La revolution sociale ou le roi. Paris. 1908, S. 41 ff.
6. The fact that this phenomenon was recognized and used for practical purposes in Germany by the Conservative Party was primarily due to Hammerstein and Steckers. Hammerstein, editor-in-chief of the Kreuzzeitung newspaper from 1881 to 1885, was the first to clearly understand the need for the party to gain "mass confidence" in order to maintain its viability (see: N. Leuss. Wilhelm Freiherr V. Hammerstein. Berlin. 1905, S. 109). In 1892, at a party congress in Tivoli, near Berlin, a delegate from Chemnitz called on the Conservatives to become "more demagogic".
7 Wittich correctly points out the fallacy of underestimating the strength of the Prussian Junker class in the post-war period [after 1918] in his notes to the book: W. Wittich. Der soziale Gehalt von Goethes Roman "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre" in der Erinnerungsgabe fur Max Weber. Munchen. 1922. Bd. 2, S. 296 ff. Indeed, the role of the Junker party in Germany should have been quite different from that which it performed.
8. Prav Naumann: "We understand why conservatives don't really like universal suffrage. It. it is repugnant to the very nature of a conservative, since he can no longer openly put forward his principle at an election meeting: "an authoritarian, but not a majority approach..." Only in class-based representative bodies, such as the Prussian House of Lords (Herrenhaus) or the Saxon First Chamber, can he present himself as he is. Therefore, today's conservative is
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a man who is ready to compromise, a gentleman who puts on democratic mittens... Agitating aristocracy! This alone is evidence of the success of the general democratic movement " F. Naumann. Demokratie und Kaisertum. Ein Handbuch fur innere Politik. Berlin- Schuneberg. 1904, p. 92). See also: L. Gumplowicz, Sozialphilosophie im Umrip. Innsbruck. 1910, p. 113. Gumplovich sees the main support of conservatism in the agrarians.
9. This also applies to France. See: A. Berthod (sous-chef de cabinet au Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres). Speech during the discussion held by the society "Union of Fighters for Truth": La reforme electorale. The text was published by the printed organ of the society: Libres Entretiens, 6e serie, IV: La representation proportionelle et la constitution des partis politiques. Paris. 1910, p. 212.
10. F. Curtius. Uber Gerechtjgkeit und Politik. Deutsche Rundschau, 33, 1897, S. 46.
11. W. Hasbach. Die modeme Demokratie, S. 48.
12. " This unfortunate (conservative) opposition (i.e., the supporters of Louis XVI), which presumptuously and blasphemously opposed the idea of civil and political liberties, which quickly spread not only in France, but also among other advanced peoples of the world, has led to the fact that the revolution, which could have been beneficial and more peaceful, has turned out to be a revolution of great importance. so violent, ferocious, and destructive. This opposition to civil and political liberties at the very beginning forced the people's representatives to appeal to the masses for help in order to avert the impending danger by releasing the brutal, lawless power of the plebs, and then the vessel of Pandora was opened " (S. von Rotteck. Allgemeine Geschichte vom Anfang der historischen Kenntnis bis auf unsere Zeiten. Bd. 9. Freiburg. 1826. S. 83.)
13. F. von Raumer. Briefe aus Paris, Bd. I, S. 176.
14. Ibid, Bd I, S. 264.
15. 0. von Diest-Daber. Geldmacht und Sozialismus. Berlin, 1875, S. 13.
16. F. Guizot. Da gouvemement de la France depuis la restauration, et du ministere actuel. Paris. 1820, S. 14.
17. W. Roscher. Politik, S. 321.
18. Ibid. S. 336.
19. M. Rade, in an editorial in the Hessische Landzeitung 1907, No. 25, entitled "Universal suffrage and the right of the King", supporting the election of Von Gerlach in Marburg and calling for the preservation of universal suffrage, wrote: "Yes, if our Reichstag was authorized to form a government! If only he alone could decide the fate of our people in internal and external relations! But it is only one of the links of our constitutional structure. Along with it, the Bundesrat stands above it, and no phrase will become law unless it is approved by the Reich Chancellor, the Kaiser, and the high dukes. The Bundesrat will not long resist a strong and reasonable expression of the people's will if it is constitutionally announced in the Reichstag; but those decisions of the Reichstag which it perceives as thoughtless, rash and unfounded, it will reject for its part, as it has done many times before. ...And thus, well, that there are these two instances in our legislative process."
Translated from the German by A. A. ZOTOV
TRANSLATOR'S NOTES
1 * So I want, so I order (Lat.). It is my good will.
2* By the grace of God and the people (shpal.)
3 * Everything flows (Greek)
4* And so what? (French)
5 * See: American Federalists: Hamilton, Madison, Jay. Selected articles / Translated by Grigory Freidin. Ed. by V. and L. Chalidze. Vermont (USA), 1990. 6 * Privilege established where one can serve (French).
FROM THE EDITOR
German political sociologist and historian Robert Michels (1876-1936), a younger contemporary of the founders of classical elite theories Gaetano Mosca and Wilfredo Pareto, developed the ideas of elitism in relation to the analysis of the patterns of formation and evolution of mass political and public organizations in the second half of the XIX-early XX centuries. Michels ' contribution to the development of elite theories consists primarily in analyzing the processes of internal transformation of a democratic organization into an oligarchic one. These processes are explained by him as fully complying with the Pareto law of change of elites, which
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it adds the "iron law of the oligarchy". The change of democratic structures of parties and mass political organizations in general to oligarchic ones is, in his opinion, a fatally inevitable process.
Michels was born in Cologne in the family of a large merchant. His father was of German-Italian descent, and his mother was of French-German descent. He received his education as a historian and economist at several universities (the Sorbonne, the universities of Munich, Leipzig, and Halle) and defended two dissertations: on history (Halle, 1900) and on political economy (Turin, 1907). His life and work are characterized by sharp changes in political orientation: first (1900) - a gradual transition to political economy. from the "bourgeois camp" to the "camp of socialists", eight years later-disillusionment with the socialist movement and withdrawal from the SPD, at the end of his life-accepting an invitation to take a professorship at the Highest Fascist Party School in Italy; alternating hobbies of Marxism, anarchosyndicalism and Italian fascism; changing German citizenship to Italian.
The" change of banners " for Michels was not the result of making spontaneous decisions and was determined by certain circumstances of an objective and subjective nature. His rise to socialism was largely influenced by the intellectual environment of the University of Marburg, where he studied. Historians and philosophers of the Marburg school with its neo-Kantian socialism, such as Friedrich Albert Lange, Paul Natorp, Hermann Cohen, and others, "set the tone" there. His sympathies for the socialists were also influenced by the anti - imperial sentiments that were widespread in the nineteenth century in the places where he was born-among the population of the Rhineland, who were dissatisfied with the policy of "brushing" Germany.
From 1903 to 1907, Michels was active in the Marburg section of the SPD, representing its syndicalist wing; in 1903 and 1905, he was elected a delegate to the national congresses of this party. In those years, he turned to studying the history of socialist movements in Europe (especially the Bakunin International and the Lassalle Workers ' unions), the history of socialist organizations in Italy and German social democracy. He published articles and notes on these topics in many scientific journals and socialist publications. For reasons of campaigning in the Socialist press, Michels was soon deprived of the right to teach at Marburg, and then at the University of Jena. The participation of Max Weber and Achille Loria helped him move to Italy and get a position in 1907 as a privatdozent of the Department of National Economics at the University of Turin. At the same time, at the University of Turin, Gaetano Mosca taught a course on the history of political institutions, which had a great influence on the formation of Michels as a sociologist.
Michels accepted as universal the law formulated by Moscow on the impossibility of managing social life without dividing society into a governing minority and a controlled majority. Michels ' own socio-political views, which were established after 1908, can be considered as a continuation of the line going from Mosca and Pareto, but in contrast to them, he directly focused his research interests on the new, most important element of the political landscape of Western European society at the beginning of the XX century-mass political parties.
This orientation of his work was expressed in the book "Sociology" of Political Parties in the Conditions of Modern Democracy, published in 1911. In the Introduction to this major sociological work, Michels defined its overall goal as "an unbiased analytical answer" to the question of why the same oligarchic tendencies that they intend to fight have begun to develop in the bowels of the most revolutionary socialist and democratic parties.
The experience of political participation in the SPD and in the Italian Socialist Party convinced the anarcho-syndicalist Michels of the inability of the ordinary party masses to effectively organize themselves and to ensure self-government on the basis of a democratic principle. The role of the organizer and cementing principle is assumed by the organizing committee, which objectively turns into a party apparatus, since without it the party is unable to conduct an active political struggle and carry out operational actions.
A special place in Michels ' version of elite theory was occupied by the topic of charismatic leadership, initiated through acquaintance with the works of Max Weber. The aforementioned book by Michels includes a detailed analysis of the psychology of the party masses and the relations that develop between the leader, the party elite and ordinary members
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parties. This topic, which was mainly theoretical in the book, later acquired a concrete practical and political meaning, when after 1922 (the date of Mussolini's coming to power) the question arose about Michels ' own attitude to the fascist regime.
His transition to the Nazis was due to a number of reasons. His loss of faith in the impossibility of direct, spontaneous progress of the masses towards socialism almost coincided with the beginning of the "Hurrah-patriotic wave" in Italy during the imperialist conquest of Tripoli and Cyrenaica, and with the collapse of the socialist international on the eve of the First World War. Let us not lose sight of the fact that Italian fascism was a milder form of totalitarian dictatorship than German fascism.
Michels spent the First World War years in peaceful Switzerland as a professor in the Department of National Economics and Statistics at the University of Basel. In his publications, he welcomed the rise of the fascist movement in Italy, and in 1924 joined the National Fascist Party of Italy. Soon after, at Mussolini's insistence, he was invited to become a professor at the University and the fascist Party School of Perugia. Michels died in Rome in 1936.
The first chapter of the Introduction to Soziologie des Parteiwesens, published below, was translated from the second German edition of 1924 and is essentially an independent article. The dialectical analysis of a number of aspects of the problem of the correlation between revolutions and counter-revolutions given in this paper is of interest. Noting the fact that sometimes reactionary movements take on revolutionary forms (prize-winners of the Kapp and Hitler movement in Germany and Mussolini's triumph in Italy, which the fascists called revolution, are cited), the German sociologist refers to these phenomena by the term "reactionary revolutions". Let us recall in passing that in history the revolutionary form has often concealed its reactionary content, and there are instances of revolutionary wars being transformed into imperialist wars. Thus, in France, the revolutionary wars that began shortly after the revolution of 1789 then turned into imperialist wars and led to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte (as Karl Marx noted). The same can be said about the metamorphoses recorded by Michels within the political movements and parties of the left orientation that occurred at the turn of the XX century. due to the entry of uneducated masses into political life and the liberalization of political institutions in a number of Western European countries. The reader can also get acquainted with the sociological analysis of the general political process at the beginning of the century in Germany and Italy, as well as changes in the role of the monarchy in these countries.
A. A. ZOTOV, Researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Department Editor of the journal "SOCIS"
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