Now then, the most modern forms of party organizations stand in sharp contrast to this idyllic state in which circles of notables and, above all, members of parliament rule. These modern forms are the children of democracy, of mass franchise, of the necessity to woo and organize the masses, and develop the utmost unity of direction and the strictest discipline. The rule of notables and guidance by members of parliament ceases. /'Professional/' politicians outside the parliaments take the organization in hand. They do so either as /'entrepreneurs/'--the American boss and the English election agent are, in fact, such entrepreneurs--or as officials with a fixed salary. Formally, a fargoing democratization takes place. The parliamentary party no longer creates the authoritative programs, and the local notables no longer decide the selection of candidates. Rather assemblies of the organized party members select the candidates and delegate members to the assemblies of a higher order. Possibly there are several such conventions leading up to the national convention of the party. Naturally power actually rests in the hands of those who, within the organization, handle the work continuously. Otherwise, power rests in the hands of those on whom the organization in its processes depends financially or personally--for instance, on the Maecenases or the directors of powerful political clubs of interested persons (Tammany Hall). It is decisive that this whole apparatus of people--characteristically called a /'machine/' in Anglo-Saxon countries--or rather those who direct the machine, keep the members of the parliament in check. They are in a position to impose their will to a rather far-reaching extent, and that is of special significance for the selection of the party leader. The man whom the machine follows now becomes the leader, even over the head of the parliamentary party. In other words, the creation of such machines signifies the advent of plebiscitarian democracy.
The party following, above all the party official and party entrepreneur, naturally expect personal compensation from the victory of their leader--that is, offices or other advantages. It is decisive that they expect such advantages from their leader and not merely from the individual member of parliament. They expect that the demagogic effect of the leader/'s personality during the election fight of the party will increase votes and mandates and thereby power, and, thereby, as far as possible, will extend opportunities to their followers to find the compensation for which they hope. Ideally, one of their mainsprings is the satisfaction of working with loyal personal devotion for a man, and not merely for an abstract program of a party consisting of mediocrities. In this respect, the /'charismatic/' element of all leadership is at work in the party system.
In very different degrees this system made headway, although it was in constant, latent struggle with local notables and the members of parliament who wrangled for influence. This was the case in the bourgeois parties, first, in the United States, and, then, in the Social Democratic party, especially of Germany. Constant setbacks occur as soon as no generally recognized leader exists, and, even when he is found, concessions of all sorts must be made to the vanity and the personal interest of the party notables. The machine may also be brought under the domination of the party officials in whose hands the regular business rests. According to the view of some Social Democratic circles, their party had succumbed to this /'bureaucratization./' But /'officials/' submit relatively easily to a leader/'s personality if it has a strong demagogic appeal. The material and the ideal interests of the officials are intimately connected with the effects of party power which are expected from the leader/'s appeal, and besides, inwardly it is per se more satisfying to work for a leader. The ascent of leaders is far more difficult where the notables, along with the officials, control the party, as is usually the case in the bourgeois parties. For ideally the notables make /'their way of life/' out of the petty chairmanships or committee memberships they hold. Resentment against the demagogue as a homo novus, the conviction of the superiority of political party /'experience/' (which, as a matter of fact, actually is of considerable importance), and the ideological concern for the crumbling of the old party traditions--these factors determine the conduct of the notables. They can count on all the traditionalist elements within the party. Above all, the rural but also the petty bourgeois voter looks for the name of the notable familiar to him. He distrusts the man who is unknown to him. However, once this man has become successful, he clings to him the more unwaveringly. Let us now consider, by some major examples, the struggle of the two structural forms--of the notables and of the party--and especially let us consider the ascendancy of the plebiscitarian form as described by Ostrogorsky.
First England: there until 1868 the party organization was almost purely an organization of notables. The Tories in the country found support, for instance, from the Anglican parson, and from the schoolmaster, and above all from the large landlords of the respective county. The Whigs found support mostly from such people as the nonconformist preacher (when there was one), the postmaster, the blacksmith, the tailor, the ropemaker--that is, from such artisans who could disseminate political influence because they could chat with people most frequently. In the city the parties differed, partly according to economics, partly according to religion, and partly simply according to the party opinions handed down in the families. But always the notables were the pillars of the political organization.
Above all these arrangements stood Parliament, the parties with the cabinet, and the /'leader,/' who was the chairman of the council of ministers or the leader of the opposition. This leader had beside him the /'whip/'--the most important professional politician of the party organization. Patronage of office was vested in the hands of the /'whip/'; thus the job hunter had to turn to him and he arranged an understanding with the deputies of the individual election boroughs. A stratum of professional politicians gradually began to develop in the boroughs. At first the locally recruited agents were not paid; they occupied approximately the same position as our Vertrauensmanner. However, along with them, a capitalist entrepreneurial type developed in the boroughs. This was the /'election agent,/' whose existence was unavoidable under England/'s modern legislation which guaranteed fair elections.
This legislation aimed at controlling the campaign costs of elections and sought to check the power of money by making it obligatory for the candidate to state the costs of his campaign. For in England, the candidate, besides straining his voice--far more so than was formerly the case with us [in Germany]--enjoyed stretching his purse. The election agent made the candidate pay a lump sum, which usually meant a good deal for the agent. In the distribution of power in Parliament and the country between the /'leader/' and the party notables, the leader in England used to hold a very eminent position. This position was based on the compelling fact of making possible a grand, and thereby steady, political strategy. Nevertheless the influence of the parliamentary party and of party notables was still considerable.
That is about what the old party organization looked like. It was half an affair of notables and half an entrepreneurial organization with salaried employees. Since 1868, however, the /'caucus/' system developed, first for local elections in Birmingham, then all over the country. A nonconformist parson and along with him Joseph Chamberlain brought this system to life. The occasion for this development was the democratization of the franchise. In order to win the masses it became necessary to call into being a tremendous apparatus of apparently democratic associations. An electoral association had to be formed in every city district to help keep the organization incessantly in motion and to bureaucratize everything rigidly. Hence, hired and paid officials of the local electoral committees increased numerically; and, on the whole, perhaps IO per cent of the voters were organized in these local committees. The elected party managers had the right to co-opt others and were the formal bearers of party politics. The driving force was the local circle, which was, above all, composed of those interested in municipal politics--from which the fattest material opportunities always spring. These local circles were also first to call upon the world of finance. This newly emerging machine, which was no longer led by members of Parliament, very soon had to struggle with the previous power-holders, above all, with the /'whip./' Being supported by locally interested persons, the machine came out of the fight so victoriously that the whip had to submit and compromise with the machine. The result was a centralization of all power in the hands of the few and, ultimately, of the one person who stood at the top of the party. The whole system had arisen in the Liberal party in connection with Gladstone/'s ascent to power. What brought this machine to such swift triumph over the notables was the fascination of Gladstone/'s /'grand/' demagogy, the firm belief of the masses in the ethical substance of his policy, and, above all, their belief in the ethical character of his personality. It soon became obvious that a Caesarist plebiscitarian element in politics--the dictator of the battlefield of elections--had appeared on the plain. In 1877 the caucus became active for the first time in national elections, and with brilliant success, for the result was Disraeli/'s fall at the height of his great achievements. In 1866, the machine was already so completely oriented to the charismatic personality that when the question of home rule was raised the whole apparatus from top to bottom did not question whether it actually stood on Gladstone/'s ground; it simply, on his word, fell in line with him: they said, Gladstone right or wrong, we follow him. And thus the machine deserted its own creator, Chamberlain.
Such machinery requires a considerable personnel. In England there are about 2,000 persons who live directly off party politics. To be sure, those who are active in politics purely as job seekers or as interested persons are far more numerous, especially in municipal politics. In addition to economic opportunities, for the useful caucus politician, there are the opportunities to satisfy his vanity. To become /'J.P./' or even /'M.P./' is, of course, in line with the greatest (and normal) ambition; and such people, who are of demonstrably good breeding, that is, /'gentlemen,/' attain their goal. The highest goal is, of course, a peerage, especially for the great financial Maecenases. About 50 per cent of the finances of the party depend on contributions of donors who remained anonymous.
Now then, what has been the effect of this whole system? Nowadays the members of Parliament, with the exception of the few cabinet members (and a few insurgents), are normally nothing better than well-disciplined /'yes/' men. With us, in the Reichstag, one used at least to take care of one/'s private correspondence on his desk, thus indicating that one was active in the weal of the country. Such gestures are not demanded in England; the member of Parliament must only vote, not commit party treason. He must appear when the whips call him, and do what the cabinet or the leader of the opposition orders. The caucus machine in the open country is almost completely unprincipled if a strong leader exists who has the machine absolutely in hand. Therewith the plebiscitarian dictator actually stands above Parliament. He brings the masses behind him by means of the machine and the members of Parliament are for him merely political spoilsmen enrolled in his following.
How does the selection of these strong leaders take place? First, in terms of what ability are they selected? Next to the qualities of will--decisive all over the world--naturally the force of demagogic speech is above all decisive. Its character has changed since the time speakers like Cobden addressed themselves to the intellect, and Gladstone who mastered the technique of apparently /'letting sober facts speak for themselves./' At the present time often purely emotional means are used--the means the Salvation Army also exploits in order to set the masses in motion. One may call the existing state of affairs a /'dictatorship resting on the exploitation of mass emotionality./' Yet, the highly developed system of committee work in the English Parliament makes it possible and compelling for every politician who counts on a share in leadership to cooperate in committee work. All important ministers of recent decades have this very real and effective work-training as a background. The practice of committee reports and public criticism of these deliberations is a condition for training, for really selecting leaders and eliminating mere demagogues.
Thus it is in England. The caucus system there, however, has been a weak form, compared with the American party organization, which brought the plebiscitarian principle to an especially early and an especially pure expression.
According to Washington/'s idea, America was to be a commonwealth administered by /'gentlemen./' In his time, in America, a gentleman was also a landlord, or a man with a college education--this was the case at first. In the beginning, when parties began to organize, the members of the House of Representatives claimed to be leaders, just as in England at the time when notables ruled. The party organization was quite loose and continued to be until 1824. In some communities, where modern development first took place, the party machine was in the making even before the eighteen-twenties. But when Andrew Jackson was first elected President--the election of the western farmers/' candidate--the old traditions were overthrown. Formal party leadership by leading members of Congress came to an end soon after 1840 when the great parliamentarians, Calhoun and Webster, retired from political life because Congress had lost almost all of its power to the party machine in the open country. That the plebiscitarian /'machine/' has developed so early in America is due to the fact that there, and there alone, the executive--this is what mattered--the chief of office-patronage, was a President elected by plebiscite. By virtue of the /'separation of powers/' he was almost independent of parliament in his conduct of office. Hence, as the price of victory, the true booty object of the office-prebend was held out precisely at the presidential election. Through Andrew Jackson the /'spoils system/' was quite systematically raised to a principle and the conclusions were drawn.
What does this spoils system, the turning over of federal offices to the following of the victorious candidate, mean for the party formations of today? It means that quite unprincipled parties oppose one another; they are purely organizations of job hunters drafting their changing platforms according to the chances of vote grabbing changing their colors to a degree which, despite all analogies, is not yet to be found elsewhere. The parties are simply and absolutely fashioned for the election campaign that is most important for office patronage: the fight for the presidency and for the governorships of the separate states. Platforms and candidates are selected at the national conventions of the parties without intervention by congressmen. Hence they emerge from party conventions, the delegates of which are formally, very democratically elected. These delegates are determined by meetings of other delegates, who, in turn, owe their mandate to the /'primaries,/' the assembling of the direct voters of the party. In the primaries the delegates are already elected in the name of the candidate for the nation/'s leadership. Within the parties the most embittered fight rages about the question of /'nomination./' After all, 300,000 to 400,000 official appointments lie in the hands of the President, appointments which are executed by him only with the approval of the senators from the separate states. Hence the senators are powerful politicians. By comparison, however, the House of Representatives is, politically, quite impotent, because patronage of office is removed from it and because the cabinet members, simply assistants to the President, can conduct office apart from the confidence or lack of confidence of the people. The President, who is legitimatized by the people, confronts everybody, even Congress; this is a result of /'the separation of powers./'
In America, the spoils system, supported in this fashion, has been technically possible because American culture with its youth could afford purely dilettante management. With 300,000 to 400,000 such party men who have no qualifications to their credit other than the fact of having performed good services for their party, this state of affairs of course could not exist without enormous evils. A corruption and wastefulness second to none could be tolerated only by a country with as yet unlimited economic opportunities.
Now then, the boss is the figure who appears in the picture of this system of the plebiscitarian party machine. Who is the boss? He is a political capitalist entrepreneur who on his own account and at his own risk provides votes. He may have established his first relations as a lawyer or a saloonkeeper or as a proprietor of similar establishments, or perhaps as a creditor. From here he spins his threads out until he is able to /'control/' a certain number of votes. When he has come this far he establishes contact with the neighboring bosses, and through zeal, skill, and above all discretion, he attracts the attention of those who have already further advanced in the career, and then he climbs. The boss is indispensable to the organization of the party and the organization is centralized in his hands. He substantially provides the financial means. How does he get them ? Well, partly by the contributions of the members, and especially by taxing the salaries of those officials who came into office through him and his party. Furthermore, there are bribes and tips. He who wishes to trespass with impunity one of the many laws needs the boss/'s connivance and must pay for it; or else he will get into trouble. But this alone is not enough to accumulate the necessary capital for political enterprises. The boss is indispensable as the direct recipient of the money of great financial magnates, who would not entrust their money for election purposes to a paid party official, or to anyone else giving public account of his affairs. The boss, with his judicious discretion in financial matters, is the natural man for those capitalist circles who finance the election. The typical boss is an absolutely sober man. He does not seek social honor; the /'professional/' is despised in /'respectable society./' He seeks power alone, power as a source of money, but also power for power/'s sake. In contrast to the English leader, the American boss works in the dark. He is not heard speaking in public; he suggests to the speakers what they must say in expedient fashion. He himself, however, keeps silent. As a rule he accepts no office, except that of senator. For, since the senators, by virtue of the Constitution, participate in office patronage, the leading bosses often sit in person in this body. The distribution of offices is carried out, in the first place, according to services done for the party. But, also, auctioning offices on financial bids often occurs and there are certain rates for individual offices; hence, a system of selling offices exists which, after all, has often been known also to the monarchies, the church-state included, of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The boss has no firm political /'principles/'; he is completely unprincipled in attitude and asks merely: What will capture votes? Frequently he is a rather poorly educated man. But as a rule he leads an inoffensive and correct private life. In his political morals, however, he naturally adjusts to the average ethical standards of political conduct, as a great many of us also may have done during the hoarding period in the field of economic ethics. That as a /'professional/' politician the boss is socially despised does not worry him. That he personally does not attain high federal offices, and does not wish to do so, has the frequent advantage that extra-party intellects, thus notables, may come into candidacy when the bosses believe they will have great appeal value at the polls. Hence the same old party notables do not run again and again, as is the case in Germany. Thus the structure of these unprincipled parties with their socially despised power-holders has aided able men to attain the presidency--men who with us never would have come to the top. To be sure, the bosses resist an outsider who might jeopardize their sources of money and power. Yet in the competitive struggle to win the favor of the voters, the bosses frequently have had to condescend and accept candidates known to be opponents of corruption.
Thus there exists a strong capitalist party machine, strictly and thoroughly organized from top to bottom, and supported by clubs of extraordinary stability. These clubs, such as Tammany Hall, are like Knight orders. They seek profits solely through political control, especially of the municipal government, which is the most important object of booty. This structure of party life was made possible by the high degree of democracy in the United States--a /'New Country./' This connection, in turn, is the basis for the fact that the system is gradually dying out. America can no longer be governed only by dilettantes. Scarcely fifteen years ago, when American workers were asked why they allowed themselves to be governed by politicians whom they admitted they despised, the answer was: /'We prefer having people in office whom we can spit upon, rather than a caste of officials who spit upon us, as is the case with you./' This was the old point of view of American /'democracy./' Even then, the socialists had entirely different ideas and now the situation is no longer bearable. The dilettante administration does not suffice and the Civil Service Reform establishes an ever-increasing number of positions for life with pension rights. The reform works out in such a way that university-trained officials, just as incorruptible and quite as capable as our officials, get into office. Even now about 100,000 offices have ceased being objects of booty to be turned over after elections. Rather, the offices qualify their holders for pensions, and are based upon tested qualifications. The spoils system will thus gradually recede into the background and the nature of party leadership is then likely to be transformed also but as yet, we do not know in what way.
In Germany, until now, the decisive conditions of political management have been in essence as follows:
First, the parliaments have been impotent. The result has been that no man with the qualities of a leader would enter Parliament permanently. If one wished to enter Parliament, what could one achieve there? When a chancellery position was open, one could tell the administrative chief: /'I have a very able man in my election district who would be suitable; take him./' And he would have concurred with pleasure; but that was about all that a German member of Parliament could do to satisfy his instincts for power--if he possessed any.
To this must be added the tremendous importance of the trained expert officialdom in Germany. This factor determined the impotence of Parliament. Our officialdom was second to none in the world. This importance of the officialdom was accompanied by the fact that the officials claimed not only official positions but also cabinet positions for themselves. In the Bavarian state legislature, when the introduction of parliamentary government was debated last year, it was said that if members of the legislature were to be placed in cabinet positions talented people would no longer seek official careers. Moreover, the civil-service administration systematically escaped such control as is signified by the English committee discussions. The administration thus made it impossible for parliaments--with a few exceptions--to train really useful administrative chiefs from their own ranks.
A third factor is that in Germany, in contrast to America, we have had parties with principled political views who have maintained that their members, at least subjectively, represented bona-fide Weltanschauungen. Now then, the two most important of these parties, the Catholic Centre Party and the Social Democratic party, have, from their inceptions, been minority parties and have meant to be minority parties. The leading circles of the Centre party in the Reich have never concealed their opposition to parliamentarian democracy, because of fear of remaining in the minority and thus facing great difficulties in placing their job hunters in office as they have done by exerting pressure on the government. The Social Democratic party was a principled minority party and a handicap to the introduction of parliamentary government because the party did not wish to stain itself by participating in the existing bourgeois political order. The fact that both parties dissociated themselves from the parliamentary system made parliamentary government impossible.
Considering all this, what then became of the professional politicians in Germany? They have had no power, no responsibility, and could play only a rather subordinate role as notables. In consequence, they have been animated anew by the guild instincts, which are typical everywhere. It has been impossible for a man who was not of their hue to climb high in the circle of those notables who made their petty positions their lives. I could mention many names from every party, the Social Democratic party, of course, not excepted, that spell tragedies of political careers because the persons had leadership qualities, and precisely because of these qualities were not tolerated by the notables. All our parties have taken this course of development and have become guilds of notables. Bebel, for instance, was still a leader through temperament and purity of character, however modest his intellect. The fact that he was a martyr, that he never betrayed confidence in the eyes of the masses, resulted in his having the masses absolutely behind him. There was no power in the party that could have seriously challenged him. Such leadership came to an end, after his death, and the rule of officials began. Trade-union officials, party secretaries, and journalists came to the top. The instincts of officialdom dominated the party--a highly respectable officialdom, of rare respectability one may say, compared to conditions in other countries, especially the often corruptible trade-union officials in America. But the results of control by officialdom, which we discussed above, also began in the party.
Since the eighteen-eighties the bourgeois parties have completely become guilds of notables. To be sure, occasionally the parties had to draw on extra-party intellects for advertising purposes, so that they could say, /'We have such and such names./' So far as possible, they avoided letting these names run for election; only when it was unavoidable and the person insisted could he run for election. The same spirit prevailed in Parliament. Our parliamentary parties were and are guilds. Every speech delivered from the floor of the Reichstag is thoroughly censored in the party before it is delivered. This is obvious from their unheard-of boredom. Only he who is summoned to speak can have the word. One can hardly conceive of a stronger contrast to the English, and also--for quite opposite reasons--the French usage.
Now, in consequence of the enormous collapse, which is customarily called the Revolution, perhaps a transformation is under way. Perhaps--but not for certain. In the beginning there were new kinds of party apparatuses emerging. First, there were amateur apparatuses. They are especially often represented by students of the various universities, who tell a man to whom they ascribe leadership qualities: we want to do the necessary work for you; carry it out. Secondly, there are apparatuses of businessmen. It happened that men to whom leadership qualities were ascribed were approached by people willing to take over the propaganda, at fixed rates for every vote. If you were to ask me honestly which of these two apparatuses I think the more reliable, from the purely technical-political point of view, I believe I would prefer the latter. But both apparatuses were fast-emerging bubbles, which swiftly vanished again. The existing apparatuses transformed themselves, but they continued to work. The phenomena are only symptoms of the fact that new apparatuses would come about if there were only leaders. But even the technical peculiarity of proportionate representation precluded their ascendancy. Only a few dictators of the street crowds arose and fell again. And only the following of a mob dictatorship is organized in a strictly disciplined fashion: whence the power of these vanishing minorities.
Let us assume that all this were to change; then, after what has been said above, it has to be clearly realized that the plebiscitarian leadership of parties entails the /'soullessness/' of the following, their intellectual proletarianization, one might say. In order to be a useful apparatus, a machine in the American sense--undisturbed either by the vanity of notables or pretensions to independent views--the following of such a leader must obey him blindly. Lincoln/'s election was possible only through this character of party organization, and with Gladstone, as mentioned before, the same happened in the caucus. This is simply the price paid for guidance by leaders. However, there is only the choice between leadership democracy with a /'machine/' and leaderless democracy, namely, the rule of professional politicians without a calling, without the inner charismatic qualities that make a leader, and this means what the party insurgents in the situation usually designate as /'the rule of the clique For the time being we in Germany have only the latter. For the future, the permanence of this situation, at least in the Reich, is primarily facilitated by the fact that the Bundesrat will rise again and will of necessity restrict the power of the Reichstag and therewith its significance as a selective agency of leaders. Moreover, in its present form, proportional representation is a typical phenomenon of leaderless democracy. This is the case not only because it facilitates the horse-trading of the notables for placement on the ticket, but also because in the future it will give organized interest groups the possibility of compelling parties to include their officials in the list of candidates, thus creating an unpolitical Parliament in which genuine leadership finds no place. Only the President of the Reich could become the safety-valve of the demand for leadership if he were elected in a plebiscitarian way and not by Parliament. Leadership on the basis of proved work could emerge and selection could take place, especially if, in great municipalities, the plebiscitarian city-manager were to appear on the scene with the right to organize his bureaus independently. Such is the case in the U.S.A. whenever one wishes to tackle corruption seriously. It requires a party organization fashioned for such elections. But the very petty-bourgeois hostility of all parties to leaders, the Social Democratic party certainly included, leaves the future formation of parties and all these chances still completely in the dark.
Therefore, today, one cannot yet see in any way how the management of politics as a /'vocation/' will shape itself. Even less can one see along what avenue opportunities are opening to which political talents can be put for satisfactory political tasks. He who by his material circumstances is compelled to live /'off/' politics will almost always have to consider the alternative positions of the journalist or the party official as the typical direct avenues. Or, he must consider a position as representative of interest groups--such as a trade union, a chamber of commerce, a farm bureau, a craft association, a labor board, an employer/'s association, et cetera, or else a suitable municipal position. Nothing more than this can be said about this external aspect: in common with the journalist, the party official bears the odium of being declasse. /'Wage writer/' or /'wage speaker/' will unfortunately always resound in his ears, even though the words remain unexpressed. He who is inwardly defenseless and unable to find the proper answer for himself had better stay away from this career. For in any case, besides grave temptations, it is an avenue that may constantly lead to disappointments. Now then, what inner enjoyments can this career offer and what personal conditions are presupposed for one who enters this avenue?
Well, first of all the career of politics grants a feeling of power. The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all, the feeling of holding in one/'s hands a nerve fiber of historically important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions. But now the question for him is: Through what qualities can I hope to do justice to this power (however narrowly circumscribed it may be in the individual case) ? How can he hope to do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon him? With this we enter the field of ethical questions, for that is where the problem belongs: What kind of a man must one be if he is to be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?
One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.
This means passion in the sense of matter-of-factness, of passionate devotion to a /'cause,/' to the god or demon who is its overlord. It is not passion in the sense of that inner bearing which my late friend, Georg Simmel, used to designate as /'sterile excitation,/' and which was peculiar especially to a certain type of Russian intellectual (by no means all of them!). It is an excitation that plays so great a part with our intellectuals in this carnival we decorate with the proud name of /'revolution./' It is a /'romanticism of the intellectually interesting,/' running into emptiness devoid of all feeling of objective responsibility.
To be sure, mere passion, however genuinely felt, is not enough. It does not make a politician, unless passion as devotion to a /'cause/' also makes responsibility to this cause the guiding star of action. And for this, a sense of proportion is needed. This is the decisive psychological quality of the politician: his ability to let realities work upon him with inner concentration and calmness. Hence his distance to things and men. /'Lack of distance/' per se is one of the deadly sins of every politician. It is one of those qualities the breeding of which will condemn the progeny of our intellectuals to political incapacity. For the problem is simply how can warm passion and a cool sense of proportion be forged together in one and the same soul? Politics is made with the head, not with other parts of the body or soul. And yet devotion to politics, if it is not to be frivolous intellectual play but rather genuinely human conduct, can be born and nourished from passion alone. However, that firm taming of the soul, which distinguishes the passionate politician and differentiates him from the /'sterilely excited/' and mere political dilettante, is possible only through habituation to detachment in every sense of the word. The /'strength/' of a political /'personality/' means, in the first place, the possession of these qualities of passion, responsibility, and proportion.
Therefore, daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity, the deadly enemy of all matter-of-fact devotion to a cause, and of all distance, in this case, of distance towards one/'s self.
Vanity is a very widespread quality and perhaps nobody is entirely free from it. In academic arid scholarly circles, vanity is a sort of occupational disease, but precisely with the scholar, vanity--however disagreeably It may express itself--is relatively harmless; in the sense that as a rule it does not disturb scientific enterprise. With the politician the case is quite different. He works with the striving for power as an unavoidable means. Therefore, /'power instinct,/' as is usually said, belongs indeed to his normal qualities. The sin against the lofty spirit of his vocation, however, begins where this striving for power ceases to be objective and becomes purely personal self-intoxication, instead of exclusively entering the service of /'the cause./' For ultimately there are only two kinds of deadly sins in the field of politics: lack of objectivity and--often but not always identical with it--irresponsibility. Vanity, the need personally to stand in the foreground as clearly as possible, strongly tempts the politician to commit one or both of these sins. This is more truly the case as the demagogue is compelled to count upon /'effect./' He therefore is constantly in danger of becoming an actor as well as taking lightly the responsibility for the outcome of his actions and of being concerned merely with the /'impression/' he makes. His lack of objectivity tempts him to strive for the glamorous semblance of power rather than for actual power. His irresponsibility, however, suggests that he enjoy power merely for power/'s sake without a substantive purpose. Although, or rather just because, power is the unavoidable means, and striving for power is one of the driving forces of all politics, there is no more harmful distortion of political force than the parvenu-like braggart with power, and the vain self-reflection in the feeling of power, and in general every worship of power per se. The mere /'power politician/' may get strong effects, but actually his work leads nowhere and is senseless. (Among us, too, an ardently promoted cult seeks to glorify him.) In this, the critics of /'power politics/' are absolutely right. From the sudden inner collapse of typical representatives of this mentality, we can see what inner weakness and impotence hides behind this boastful but entirely empty gesture. It is a product of a shoddy and superficially blase attitude towards the meaning of human conduct; and it has no relation whatsoever to the knowledge of tragedy with which all action, but especially political action, is truly interwoven.
The final result of political action often, no, even regularly, stands in completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original meaning. This is fundamental to all history, a point not to be proved in detail here. But because of this fact, the serving of a cause must not be absent if action is to have inner strength. Exactly what the cause, in the service of which the politician strives for power and uses power; looks like is a matter of faith. The politician may serve national, humanitarian, social, ethical, cultural, worldly, or religious ends. The politician may be sustained by a strong belief in /'progress/'--no matter in which sense--or he may coolly reject this kind of belief. He may claim to stand in the service of an /'idea/' or, rejecting this in principle, he may want to serve external ends of everyday life. However, some kind of faith must always exist. Otherwise, it is absolutely true that the curse of the creature/'s worthlessness overshadows even the externally strongest political successes.
With the statement above we are already engaged in discussing the last problem that concerns us tonight: the ethos of politics as a /'cause./' What calling can politics fulfil quite independently of its goals within the total ethical economy of human conduct--which is, so to speak, the ethical locus where politics is at home? Here, to be sure, ultimate Weltanschauungen clash, world views among which in the end one has to make a choice. Let us resolutely tackle this problem, which recently has been opened again, in my view in a very wrong way.
But first, let us free ourselves from a quite trivial falsification: namely, that ethics may first appear in a morally highly compromised role. Let us consider examples. Rarely will you find that a man whose love turns from one woman to another feels no need to legitimate this before himself by saying: she was not worthy of my love, or, she has disappointed me, or whatever other like /'reasons/' exist. This is an attitude that, with a profound lack of chivalry, adds a fancied /'legitimacy/' to the plain fact that he no longer loves her and that the woman has to bear it. By virtue of this /'legitimation,/' the man claims a right for himself and besides causing the misfortune seeks to put her in the wrong. The successful amatory competitor proceeds exactly in the same way: namely, the opponent must be less worthy, otherwise he would not have lost outs
It is no different, of course, if after a victorious war the victor in undignified self-righteousness claims, /'I have won because I was right./' Or, if somebody under the frightfulness of war collapses psychologically, and instead of simply saying it was just too much, he feels the need of legitimizing his war weariness to himself by substituting the feeling, /'I could not bear it because I had to fight for a morally bad cause./' And likewise with the defeated in war. Instead of searching like old women for the /'guilty one/' after the war--in a situation in which the structure of society produced the war--everyone with a manly and controlled attitude would tell the enemy, /'We lost the war. You have won it. That is now all over. Now let us discuss what conclusions must be drawn according to the objective interests that came into play and what is the main thing in view of the responsibility towards the future which above all burdens the victor./' Anything else is undignified and will become a boomerang. A nation forgives if its interests have been damaged, but no nation forgives if its honor has been offended, especially by a bigoted self-righteousness. Every new document that comes to light after decades revives the undignified lamentations, the hatred and scorn, instead of allowing the war at its end to be buried, at least morally. This is possible only through objectivity and chivalry and above all only through dignity. But never is it possible through an /'ethic,/' which in truth signifies a lack of dignity on both sides. Instead of being concerned about what the politician is interested in, the future and the responsibility towards the future, this ethic is concerned about politically sterile questions of past guilt, which are not to be settled politically. To act in this way is politically guilty, if such guilt exists at all. And it overlooks the unavoidable falsification of the whole problem, through very material interests: namely, the victor/'s interest in the greatest possible moral and material gain; the hopes of the defeated to trade in advantages through confessions of guilt. If anything is /'vulgar,/' then, this is, and it is the result of this fashion of exploiting /'ethics/' as a means of /'being in the right./'
Now then, what relations do ethics and politics actually have? Have the two nothing whatever to do with one another, as has occasionally been said? Or, is the reverse true: that the ethic of political conduct is identical with that of any other conduct? Occasionally an exclusive choice has been believed to exist between the two propositions--either the one or the other proposition must be correct. But is it true that any ethic of the world could establish commandments of identical content for erotic, business, familial, and official relations; for the relations to one/'s wife, to the greengrocer, the son, the competitor, the friend, the defendant? Should it really matter so little for the ethical demands on politics that politics operates with very special means, namely, power backed up by violence? Do we not see that the Bolshevik and the Spartacist ideologists bring about exactly the same results as any militaristic dictator just because they use this political means? In what but the persons of the power-holders and their dilettantism does the rule of the workers/' and soldiers/' councils differ from the rule of any power-holder of the old regime? In what way does the polemic of most representatives of the presumably new ethic differ from that of the opponents which they criticized, or the ethic of any other demagogues? In their noble intention, people will say. Good! But it is the means about which we speak here, and the adversaries, in complete subjective sincerity, claim, in the very same way, that their ultimate intentions are of lofty character. /'All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword/' and fighting is everywhere fighting. Hence, the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount.
By the Sermon on the Mount, we mean the absolute ethic of the gospel, which is a more serious matter than those who are fond of quoting these commandments today believe. This ethic is no joking matter. The same holds for this ethic as has been said of causality in science: it is not a cab, which one can have stopped at one/'s pleasure; it is all or nothing. This is precisely the meaning of the gospel, if trivialities are not to result. Hence, for instance, it was said of the wealthy young man, /'He went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions./' The evangelist commandment, however, is unconditional and unambiguous: give what thou hast--absolutely everything. The politician will say that this is a socially senseless imposition as long as it is not carried out everywhere. Thus the politician upholds taxation, confiscatory taxation, outright confiscation; in a word, compulsion and regulation for all. The ethical commandment, however, is not at all concerned about that, and this unconcern is its essence. Or, take the example, /'turn the other cheek/': This command is unconditional and does not question the source of the other/'s authority to strike. Except for a saint it is an ethic of indignity. This is it: one must be saintly in everything; at least in intention, one must live like Jesus, the apostles, St. Francis, and their like. Then this ethic makes sense and expresses a kind of dignity; otherwise it does not. For if it is said, in line with the acosmic ethic of love, /'Resist not him that is evil with force,/' for the politician the reverse proposition holds, /'thou shalt resist evil by force,/' or else you are responsible for the evil winning out. He who wishes to follow the ethic of the gospel should abstain from strikes, for strikes mean compulsion; he may join the company unions. Above all things, he should not talk of /'revolution./' After all, the ethic of the gospel does not wish to teach that civil war is the only legitimate war. The pacifist who follows the gospel will refuse to bear arms or will throw them down; in Germany this was the recommended ethical duty to end the war and therewith all wars. The politician would say the only sure means to discredit the war for all foreseeable time would have been a status quo peace. Then the nations would have questioned, what was this war for? And then the war would have been argued ad absurdum, which is now impossible. For the victors, at least for part of them, the war will have been politically profitable. And the responsibility for this rests on behavior that made all resistance impossible for us. Now, as a result of the ethics of absolutism, when the period of exhaustion will have passed, the peace will be discredited, not the war.
Finally, let us consider the duty of truthfulness. For the absolute ethic it holds unconditionally. Hence the conclusion was reached to publish all documents, especially those placing blame on one/'s own country. On the basis of these one-sided publications the confessions of guilt followed--and they were one-sided, unconditional, and without regard to consequences. The politician will find that as a result truth will not be furthered but certainly obscured through abuse and unleashing of passion; only an all-round methodical investigation by non-partisans could bear fruit; any other procedure may have consequences for a nation that cannot be remedied for decades. But the absolute ethic just does not ask for /'consequences./' That is the decisive point.
We must be clear about the fact that all ethically oriented conduct may be guided by one of two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably opposed maxims: conduct can be oriented to an /'ethic of ultimate ends/' or to an /'ethic of responsibility./' This is not to say that an ethic of ultimate ends is identical with irresponsibility, or that an ethic of responsibility is identical with unprincipled opportunism. Naturally nobody says that. However, there is an abysmal contrast between conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends--that is, in religious terms, /'The Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord/'--and conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of responsibility, in which case one has to give an account of the foreseeable results of one/'s action. You may demonstrate to a convinced syndicalist, believing in an ethic of ultimate ends, that his action will result in increasing the opportunities of reaction, in increasing the oppression of his class, and obstructing its ascent--and you will not make the slightest impression upon him. If an action of good intent leads to bad results, then, in the actor/'s eyes, not he but the world, or the stupidity of other men, or God/'s will who made them thus, is responsible for the evil. However a man who believes in an ethic of responsibility takes account of precisely the average deficiencies of people; as Fichte has correctly said, he does not even have the right to presuppose their goodness and perfection. He does not feel in a position to burden others with the results of his own actions so far as he was able to foresee them; he will say: these results are ascribed to my action. The believer in an ethic of ultimate ends feels /'responsible/' only for seeing to it that the flame of pure intentions is not quelched: for example, the flame of protesting against the injustice of the social order. To rekindle the flame ever anew is the purpose of his quite irrational deeds, judged in view of their possible success. They are acts that can and shall have only exemplary value.
But even herewith the problem is not yet exhausted. No ethics in the world can dodge the fact that in numerous instances the attainment of /'good/' ends is bound to the fact that one must be willing to pay the price of using morally dubious means or at least dangerous ones--and facing the possibility or even the probability of evil ramifications. From no ethics in the world can it be concluded when and to what extent the ethically good purpose /'justifies/' the ethically dangerous means and ramifications.
The decisive means for politics is violence. You may see the extent of the tension between means and ends, when viewed ethically, from the following: as is generally known, even during the war the revolutionary socialists (Zimmerwald faction) professed a principle that one might strikingly formulate: /'If we face the choice either of some more years of war and then revolution, or peace now and no revolution, we choose--some more years of war!/' Upon the further question: /'What can this revolution bring about?/' every scientifically trained socialist would have had the answer: One cannot speak of a transition to an economy that in our sense could be called socialist; a bourgeois economy will re-emerge, merely stripped of the feudal elements and the dynastic vestiges. For this very modest result, they are willing to face /'some more years of war./' One may well say that even with a very robust socialist conviction one might reject a purpose that demands such means. With Bolshevism and Spartacism, and, in general, with any kind of revolutionary socialism, it is precisely the same thing. It is of course utterly ridiculous if the power politicians of the old regime are morally denounced for their use of the same means, however justified the rejection of their aims may be.
The ethic of ultimate ends apparently must go to pieces on the problem of the justification of means by ends. As a matter of fact, logically it has only the possibility of rejecting all action that employs morally dangerous means--in theory! In the world of realities, as a rule, we encounter the ever-renewed experience that the adherent of an ethic of ultimate ends suddenly turns into a chiliastic prophet. Those, for example, who have just preached /'love against violence/' now call for the use of force for the last violent deed, which would then lead to a state of affairs in which all violence is annihilated. In the same manner, our officers told the soldiers before every offensive: /'This will be the last one; this one will bring victory and therewith peace./' The proponent of an ethic of absolute ends cannot stand up under the ethical irrationality of the world. He is a cosmic-ethical /'rationalist./' Those of you who know Dostoievski will remember the scene of the /'Grand Inquisitor,/' where the problem is poignantly unfolded. If one makes any concessions at all to the principle that the end justifies the means, it is not possible to bring an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility under one roof or to decree ethically which end should justify which means.
My colleague, Mr. F. W. Forster, whom personally I highly esteem for his undoubted sincerity, but whom I reject unreservedly as a politician, believes it is possible to get around this difficulty by the simple thesis: /'from good comes only good; but from evil only evil follows./' In that case this whole complex of questions would not exist. But it is rather astonishing that such a thesis could come to light two thousand five hundred years after the Upanishads. Not only the whole course of world history, but every frank examination of everyday experience points to the very opposite. The development of religions all over the world is determined by the fact that the opposite is true. The age-old problem of theodicy consists of the very question of how it is that a power which is said to be at once omnipotent and kind could have created such an irrational world of undeserved suffering, unpunished injustice, and hopeless stupidity. Either this power is not omnipotent or not kind, or, entirely different principles of compensation and reward govern our life--principles we may interpret metaphysically, or even principles that forever escape our comprehension.
This problem--the experience of the irrationality of the world--has been the driving force of all religious evolution. The Indian doctrine of karma, Persian dualism, the doctrine of original sin, predestination and the deus absconditus, all these have grown out of this experience. Also the early Christians knew full well the world is governed by demons and that he who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical powers and for his action it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant.
We are placed into various life-spheres, each of which is governed by different laws. Religious ethics have settled with this fact in different ways. Hellenic polytheism made sacrifices to Aphrodite and Hera alike, to Dionysus and to Apollo, and knew these gods were frequently in conflict with one another. The Hindu order of life made each of the different occupations an object of a specific ethical code, a Dharma, and forever segregated one from the other as castes, thereby placing them into a fixed hierarchy of rank. For the man born into it, there was no escape from it, lest he be twice-born in another life. The occupations were thus placed at varying distances from the highest religious goods of salvation. In this way, the caste order allowed for the possibility of fashioning the Dharma of each single caste, from those of the ascetics and Brahmins to those of the rogues and harlots, in accordance with the immanent and autonomous laws of their respective occupations. War and politics were also included. You will find war integrated into the totality of life-spheres in the Bhagavad-Gita, in the conversation between Krishna and Arduna. /'Do what must be done,/' i.e. do that work which, according to the Dharma of the warrior caste and its rules, is obligatory and which, according to the purpose of the war, is objectively necessary. Hinduism believes that such conduct does not damage religious salvation but, rather, promotes it. When he faced the hero/'s death, the Indian warrior was always sure of Indra/'s heaven, just as was the Teuton warrior of Valhalla. The Indian hero would have despised Nirvana just as much as the Teuton would have sneered at the Christian paradise with its angels/' choirs. This specialization of ethics allowed for the Indian ethic/'s quite unbroken treatment of politics by following politics/' own laws and even radically enhancing this royal art.
A really radical /'Machiavellianism,/' in the popular sense of this word, is classically represented in Indian literature, in the Kautaliya Arthasastra (long before Christ, allegedly dating from Chandragupta/'s time). In contrast with this document Machiavelli/'s Principe is harmless. As is known in Catholic ethics--to which otherwise Professor Forster stands close--the consilia evangelica are a special ethic for those endowed with the charisma of a holy life. There stands the monk who must not shed blood or strive for gain, and beside him stand the pious knight and the burgher, who are allowed to do so, the one to shed blood, the other to pursue gain. The gradation of ethics and its organic integration into the doctrine of salvation is less consistent than in India. According to the presuppositions of Christian faith, this could and had to be the case. The wickedness of the world stemming from original sin allowed with relative ease the integration of violence into ethics as a disciplinary means against sin and against the heretics who endangered the soul. However, the demands of the Sermon on the Mount, an acosmic ethic of ultimate ends, implied a natural law of absolute imperatives based upon religion. These absolute imperatives retained their revolutionizing force and they came upon the scene with elemental vigor during almost all periods of social upheaval. They produced especially the radical pacifist sects, one of which in Pennsylvania experimented in establishing a polity that renounced violence towards the outside. This experiment took a tragic course, inasmuch as with the outbreak of the War of Independence the Quakers could not stand up arms-in-hand for their ideals, which were those of the war.
Normally, Protestantism, however, absolutely legitimated the state as a divine institution and hence violence as a means. Protestantism, especially, legitimated the authoritarian state. Luther relieved the individual of the ethical responsibility for war and transferred it to the authorities. To obey the authorities in matters other than those of faith could never constitute guilt. Calvinism in turn knew principled violence as a means of defending the faith; thus Calvinism knew the crusade, which was for Islam an element of life from the beginning. One sees that it is by no means a modern disbelief born from the hero worship of the Renaissance which poses the problem of political ethics. All religions have wrestled with it, with highly differing success, and after what has been said it could not be otherwise. It is the specific means of legitimate violence as such in the hand of human associations which determines the peculiarity of all ethical problems of politics.
Whosoever contracts with violent means for whatever ends--and every politician does--is exposed to its specific consequences. This holds especially for the crusader, religious and revolutionary alike. Let us confidently take the present as an example. He who wants to establish absolute justice on earth by force requires a following, a human /'machine./' He must hold out the necessary internal and external premiums, heavenly or worldly reward, to this /'machine/' or else the machine will not function. Under the conditions of the modern class struggle, the internal premiums consist of the satisfying of hatred and the craving for revenge; above all, resentment and the need for pseudo-ethical self-righteousness: the opponents must be slandered and accused of heresy. The external rewards are adventure, victory, booty, power, and spoils. The leader and his success are completely dependent upon the functioning of his machine and hence not on his own motives. Therefore he also depends upon whether or not the premiums can be permanently granted to the following, that is, to the Red Guard, the informers, the agitators, whom he needs. What he actually attains under the conditions of his work is therefore not in his hand, but is prescribed to him by the following/'s motives, which, if viewed ethically, are predominantly base. The following can be harnessed only so long as an honest belief in his person and his cause inspires at least part of the following, probably never on earth even the majority. This belief, even when subjectively sincere, is in a very great number of cases really no more than an ethical /'legitimation/' of cravings for revenge, power, booty, and spoils. We shall not be deceived about this by verbiage; the materialist interpretation of history is no cab to be taken at will; it does not stop short of the promoters of revolutions. Emotional Evolutionism is followed by the traditionalist routine of everyday life; the crusading leader and the faith itself fade away, or, what is even more effective, the faith becomes part of the conventional phraseology of political Philistines and banausic technicians. This development is especially rapid with struggles of faith because they are usually led or inspired by genuine leaders, that is, prophets of revolution. For here, as with every leader/'s machine, one of the conditions for success is the depersonalization and routinization, in short, the psychic proletarianization, in the interests of discipline. After coming to power the following of a crusader usually degenerates very easily into a quite common stratum of spoilsmen.
Whoever wants to engage in politics at all, and especially in politics as a vocation, has to realize these ethical paradoxes. He must know that he is responsible for what may become of himself under the impact of these paradoxes. I repeat, he lets himself in for the diabolic forces lurking in all violence. The great virtuosi of acosmic love of humanity and goodness, whether stemming from Nazareth or Assisi or from Indian royal castles, have not operated with the political means of violence. Their kingdom was /'not of this world/' and yet they worked and still work in this world. The figures of Platon Karatajev and the saints of Dostoievski still remain their most adequate reconstructions. He who seeks the salvation of the soul, of his own and of others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics, for the quite different tasks of politics can only be solved by violence. The genius or demon of politics lives in an inner tension with the god of love, as well as with the Christian God as expressed by the church. This tension can at any time lead to an irreconcilable conflict. Men knew this even in the times of church rule. Time and again the papal interdict was placed upon Florence and at the time it meant a far more robust power for men and their salvation of soul than (to speak with Fichte) the /'cool approbation/' of the Kantian ethical judgment. The burghers, however, fought the church-state. And it is with reference to such situations that Machiavelli in a beautiful passage, if I am not mistaken, of the History of Florence, has one of his heroes praise those citizens who deemed the greatness of their native city higher than the salvation of their souls.
If one says /'the future of socialism/' or /'international peace,/' instead of native city or /'fatherland/' (which at present may be a dubious value to some), then you face the problem as it stands now. Everything that is striven for through political action operating with violent means and following an ethic of responsibility endangers the /'salvation of the soul./' If, however, one chases after the ultimate good in a war of beliefs, following a pure ethic of absolute ends, then the goals may be damaged and discredited for generations, because responsibility for consequences is lacking, and two diabolic forces which enter the play remain unknown to the actor. These are inexorable and produce consequences for his action and even for his inner self, to which he must helplessly submit, unless he perceives them. The sentence: /'The devil is old; grow old to understand him!/' does not refer to age in terms of chronological years. I have never permitted myself to lose out in a discussion through a reference to a date registered on a birth certificate; but the mere fact that someone is twenty years of age and that I am over fifty is no cause for me to think that this alone is an achievement before which I am overawed. Age is not decisive; what is decisive is the trained relentlessness in viewing the realities of life, and the ability to face such realities and to measure up to them inwardly.
Surely, politics is made with the head, but it is certainly not made with the head alone. In this the proponents of an ethic of ultimate ends are right. One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility, or when the one and when the other. One can say only this much: If in these times, which, in your opinion, are not times of /'sterile/' excitation--excitation is not, after all, genuine passion--if now suddenly the Weltanschauungs-politicians crop up en masse and pass the watchword, /'The world is stupid and base, not I,/' /'The responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity or baseness I shall eradicate,/' then I declare frankly that I would first inquire into the degree of inner poise backing this ethic of ultimate ends. I am under the impression that in nine out of ten cases I deal with windbags who do not fully realize what they take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations. From a human point of view this is not very interesting to me, nor does it move me profoundly. However, it is immensely moving when a mature man--no matter whether old or young in years--is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere he reaches the point where he says: /'Here I stand; I can do no other./' That is something genuinely human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possibility of finding himself at some time in that position. In so far as this is true, an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility are not absolute contrasts but rather supplements, which only in unison constitute a genuine man--a man who can have the /'calling for politics./'
Now then, ladies and gentlemen, let us debate this matter once more ten years from now. Unfortunately, for a whole series of reasons, I fear that by then the period of reaction will have long since broken over us. It is very probable that little of what many of you, and (I candidly confess) I too, have wished and hoped for will be fulfilled; little--perhaps not exactly nothing, but what to us at least seems little. This will not crush me, but surely it is an inner burden to realize it. Then, I wish I could see what has become of those of you who now feel yourselves to be genuinely /'principled/' politicians and who share in the intoxication signified by this revolution. It would be nice if matters turned out in such a way that Shakespeare/'s Sonnet 102 should hold true:
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in summer/'s front doth sing,
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days.
But such is not the case. Not summer/'s bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness, no matter which group may triumph externally now. Where there is nothing, not only the Kaiser but also the proletarian has lost his rights. When this night shall have slowly receded, who of those for whom spring apparently has bloomed so luxuriously will be alive? And what will have become of all of you by then? Will you be bitter or banausic? Will you simply and dully accept world and occupation? Or will the third and by no means the least frequent possibility be your lot: mystic flight from reality for those who are gifted for it, or--as is both frequent and unpleasant--for those who belabor themselves to follow this fashion? In every one of such cases, I shall draw the conclusion that they have not measured up to their own doings. They have not measured up to the world as it really is in its everyday routine. Objectively and actually, they have not experienced the vocation for politics in its deepest meaning, which they thought they had. They would have done better in simply cultivating plain brotherliness in personal relations. And for the rest--they should have gone soberly about their daily work.
Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth--that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say /'In spite of all!/' has the calling for politics.
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