But, as a matter of fact, the demand for a dictatorship by the proletariat is not an essential element in the Council movement. Such a demand is not the cause, but the consequence, of class conflict. Essentially and fundamentally the Council movement, so far from being less democratic than our Parliamentary system, is a revolt back to the purest and most primitive democracy from the artificialities and anomalies of modern Parliamentary representation. It is no more undemocratic than the Renaissance was inartistic, the Reformation unchristian, or the French Revolution anarchical. As the German Revolution best shows, the growth of Councils is the result of a revolutionary impulse in a modern community. Such an impulse uses any form of association between men and women for the urgent political purpose of appointing a spokesman and leader. The most widely spread and deeply rooted association nowadays is industrial—in the workshop. Consequently, we find the Councils taking predominantly an industrial character and origin, as in our native embryo the Shop Stewards' Committee. But any association will serve; and so, in the German Revolution, besides the Workmen's Councils there were Soldiers' Councils, Communal Councils, and even Unemployed Councils. If this new system were to develop, so to say, in a vacuum, without opposition, it would theoretically provide a democratic representation for every human relationship. As it is, such representation is reduced, as in Germany, by political pressure, to association that is rooted in the most vital relationship; and we find the Unemployed Councils, Communal Councils, and even Soldiers' Councils being choked off, and only the Workmen's Councils surviving. This is why the practical process in Germany is, as said before, leading to the same conclusions as those come to by the a priori reasoning of our own Guild Socialists when they divide the citizen into consumer and producer, and, in his latter capacity, give him representation through a Council system. I found, in fact, that my most useful function in Germany at one time was putting German Labour leaders in possession of the conclusions of our Guild Socialists.
Nor, when we come to examine constitutional history, is there any real difference between the democracy of the Council system and the democracy of Parliament. They are the same in origin and will probably be the same in development. For Parliament, it must be remembered, grew out of a Council with an industrial suffrage—land tenure—which was later reinforced by a general industrial suffrage through the Boroughs and their Guild organisations. But, for the first two centuries of its existence, say 1100 to 1295, Parliament, the National Council of our Angevin Kings, was a Soviet, a Betriebsrat. It was to this body that we owe our Magna Charta of 1215, the foundation of our democracy. And, in the fourteenth clause of the Great Charter, the clause constituting Parliament, we read that the summons was to be sent direct to the Archbishops and Bishops, Earls and Greater Barons, and, through the Sheriff, to all those "who hold of us in chief." It was this latter body of tenants of the Crown that became the Knights of the Shire in our House of Commons. The Knights of the Shire represented the landed industrial interest as directly as the representatives of the Boroughs represented other forms of industry and commerce. Of course, later, the regional and representative system gradually overlaid and obscured the original industrial basis, much as it has done with the Council system in Russia and is doing in Germany.
The Council system in Germany has, in three months, indeed, covered the course that took our Parliamentary system three centuries. This corresponds roughly to the increased pace of political development to-day. If we were to translate the Council movement of to-day into the terms of the Parliamentary movement of seven centuries ago, we might say that, before our present democracy could begin, industry had to be nominally socialised by the principle that all land was held of the King, and a strong central government established on a popular basis of industrial councils, with equal representation for the two other estates, the feudal or military and the clerical or official. For we can see the progenitors of the Soldiers' Councils of to-day in the feudal courts of yesterday, and of the Civil Service bureaucracy of to-day in the chancellors and justiciars of yesterday. Thus we may, if we like, see in the short history of the Russian Council movement an epitome of our whole constitutional history. Or, we may compare the present Council movement in England with the political situation early in the thirteenth century, when the Greater Barons, progenitors of our Captains of Industry, were about to force clause 14 of Magna Charta and a National Whitley Council on a Civil Service of arrogant ascetics, who were vainly trying to retain power for a silly and selfish ruling class. In applying this analogy to the present day, the Parliament of to-day would be no more than a survival of a previous constitutional epoch, a Witanagemot applying Anglo-Saxon Dooms. And this will, any way, give an idea of the way parliaments are looked upon to-day by German workmen. Possibly, in the end, the representative and regional system will rule the roost again, and will force the industrial suffrage upstairs into a House of Lords that will, in time, exercise mainly the judicial functions peculiar to its original industrial character. But we have first to get our Magna Charta and our Statutes of Westminster.
That the Council system of to-day is a truer democracy than existing Parliamentary systems is also shown practically by its being a much surer and safer machine for the realisation of public opinion. Theoretically, the pyramidal piling up of Councils, each represented in a superior Council, until a Central Council caps the pile, would seem to be indirect election raised to infinity; and indirect election is theoretically undemocratic. But this was not the conclusion forced on one in Germany when one compared the working of the two systems. The inferiority in the position of politicians, owing their power to the Parliamentary system, compared with that of those based on the Council system, was very striking. The Parliamentarians never knew where they were or what was what. Out of touch, necessarily, with their enormous constituencies, they seemed to be always crawling about with their ears to the ground, dependent on agents and reporters of every sort, even on the Press, for an idea of what was going on. As they never knew where the hounds were, they could not use such knowledge of the country as they had to lead the field. The leaders of the Council movement, on the other hand, had an immediate indication of every trend of opinion in the changing composition of the lower strata of Councils; and their difficulty was rather to control the energies that came pouring up to them through the system. The Parliamentary leader seemed like a water finder, wandering about and waiting for the twig to twiddle, while the Council leader was more like a marine engineer with his eye on the pressure gauge and his hand on the lever. Perhaps indirect election is only undemocratic when the function of the lower body is mainly to elect to a higher, but becomes democratic when it has vital functions of its own that are merely controlled by the higher body.
And yet another point and a paradox. Whereas the results of Council representation of opinion in Germany are not revolutionary, the results of the Parliamentary system are becoming more and more so, and not only in Germany but in Great Britain. The failure of the Parliamentary system to express the forces making for change—a failure not confined to Germany—and the fictitious relationship between the elector and the elected has two results. It diverts a large part of these forces of progress into various forms of direct action, all of them revolutionary, whether actively so, such as street fighting, or passively so, such as strikes. It also gives a revolutionary character to the periodical elections. For the vast constituencies vote merely along the line of the least common multiple of their mob minds. This line is generally a vague dissatisfaction; and unless it be diverted by "stunts" or otherwise diddled, will result in violent pendulum swings. Under these impulses Parliament will become still less representative, and will tend to be either revolutionary or reactionary. For an exaggerated majority is the extremists' opportunity.
The Council movement, on the other hand, slowly changing from below upwards, should never drop much behind the drift of opinion, and consequently should be in little danger of being driven ahead of it. The German Parliament, as the results of an election decided by this L.C.M. motive of the mob mind—a motive of assuring power to whichever party seemed to offer the best prospect of peace abroad and at home—is to-day reactionary. Whereas the political condition of Germany to-day is such that it absolutely must have a Government responsive to the requirements of reconstruction, or relapse into civil war. The Weimar Parliament is so dead that only civil war can galvanise it to action. If reinforced by a Council system, the Weimar Party Government and the Preuss Federal Constitution would perhaps have steam enough to work.
The Councils are as essential to Germany to-day as the Commons were to us a century ago. Indeed, our insistence on the supremacy of the Weimar Assembly as a guarantee for the maintenance of peace, can be paralleled by our insistence a century ago on the maintenance of Upper Houses in the constitutions of the States revolutionised from France. The function of the territorially elected Parliament will, in Germany, and probably everywhere, become more and more that of an Upper House; while the industrially elected Congress will be the creative and constructive institution. The whole difficulty lies in finding a working compromise, or rather co-operation. Just as Feudalism imposed its political system which survives in the House of Lords, just as Liberalism imposed its system as represented in the House of Commons, which now obviously requires supplementing, so Socialism must have its political system in the Councils. This is not revolution but evolution. The revolution comes from thwarting and threatening it.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] They have since been replaced by two anti-revolutionary bodies, a sort of gendarmerie and a local middle class militia (Einwohnerwehr). The Frei-corps have become the Reichswehr.