Physical map
Institutional History
Political Institutions:
Designed to regulate relations between individuals as between them and the community (public life)
Organized voluntarily and permanently
- an institution wants to represent and
influence society.
Theoretical formulations
Norms, institutions
Economic and social effects relations between the economic and social forces
Methodological approach
1. Functionalist (or structural) approach
- It addresses society as a whole in terms of functions (purposes to be achieved) of its constituent elements:
norms, customs, traditions and
institutions (but society, like a living
organism, is more than the sum of its
parts).
Emile Durkheim (1858- 1917)
a major pioneer of functionalism:
how societies maintain their integrity and
coherence in
modernity, when
traditional social and religious ties are no longer efficient?
Historicist approach
Evolutions of rules and institutions seen as conflicts among different social,
political and economic behavior across time and space (deriving both from the past as from other countries).
Comparative approach: focuses on
changes and continuities.
Barrington Moore (1913- 2005)
Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966): comparative historical analysis of effects of
industrialization on pre-existing
agrarian regimes producing different
political outcomes (democracy, fascism, communism) in:
Britain, France, USA, China, Japan, India.
Legal Positivism
Doctrine established at the end of the XIX century: a norm must be considered as
“valid”, until a subsequent norm is posed by the lawgiver.
Based on a presumption of law being
"scientifically neutral“, free of
"ideological impurities"!
French tradition
(influences the birth of the Italian school):
1. Maurice Hauriou (1856 - 1929) -
"institutional theory"
Hauriou's institutional theory
"Social organization becomes durable when it is established: its legal form - which is the element that makes it enduring - is a system of balance of power and consent.”
“The form is the structural element of the organization, pursues a function determined by values considered as recognized. "
Jacques Godechot
Historian, specialist in the French Revolution (1907-1989):
“Institutions are the framework within which people are struggling;
that is, they are the product of the
balance achieved between the
conflicting forces, translated into laws,
decrees (or just costumes)."
Crisis of liberalism
Difference between Hauriou and Godechot - the awareness that institutions can move away from the values and social consensus.
20th Century Europe has experienced the loss of political unity, thus the institutions are looking for balance between different - even conflicting - value systems (pluralist democracy).
German tradition
Bielefeld school of social history:
combines political and cultural studies on the evolution of mentality and language (history of basic political concepts).
Main topic: division between state and
society caused by the process of
modernization (rationalization).
State vs. society
Seen from below: antipolithics, populism - the state as an entity living above and at the community's expense.
Seen from the top, state-worship: the state as impartial and superior, promoting a “general interest” or “common good”, compared to the special, “private” interests of individuals in conflict with each other (anti-system movements?)
European tradition
2 main patterns developed since 16
th- 20
thcentury:
Pluralistic model
(British parliamentary democracy)
Monistic model
(German authoritarian dictatorship)
British parliamentary system
Requirements:
1. Substitution of the king with the prime minister – an accountable political leader;
2. The structuring of the parties inside and outside Parliament;
3. The relationship between governments and public opinion that allows the alternation of governments;
4. A stable Public administration unrelated to the clashes between the parties.
King in Parliament
Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum, 1565:
confirms the role of parliament as the "accepted part of the constitution,
known and recognized element of the Royal Government,"
"supreme and absolute power of the kingdom because there and not elsewhere, the peaceful meeting between all parts of the kingdom is
achieved."
A permanent institution
Thomas Smith:
confirmed the illegality of any taxation
without the consent of parliament (property rights),
• petitions presented by the chambers become law if approved by the king (participation in government),
• House of Commons has the right of inquiry into the abuse of royal officials, control over public finances and criminal proceedings
against Ministers - impeachment.
Kings’ trial
1649, the Parliament condemns Charles I to death
"because of the fundamental proposition by which the King of England is not a
person, but an office, with the power to
govern by the laws of the country and
in no other way."
Royal prerogatives
Source of ideological conflict:
• the royal prerogatives belong to king only.
• They exclude the consent of parliament because they are the foundation of
society (regarding the basic values:
matters as religion, morality and the unity of the country),
• thus a Dogma: the prerogatives can not
infringe on the liberty of the subjects.
King - Parties
1678-83 Exclusion crisis – division of the
Parliament between two parties, Whig and Tory, on the question of royal prerogative to decide in religious matters. For Whigs,
Catholicism leads to absolutist monarchy (as in France and Spain).
Sir Henry Capel at House of Commons, 1679:
“From popery came the notion of a standing army and arbitrary power…but lay popery flat, and there's an end of arbitrary
government and power.”.
Whigs/Tories (reciprocal derisive names)
Whigs
Scottish bigoted
Presbyterian, greedy and hypocritical exponent of the new bourgeois class;
Whig alliance: City of London - House of Commons -
Protestant nonconformists, supporting supremacy of
parliament over the monarch and religious tolerance
Tories
Irish uneducated Catholic, outlaw, unable to fit in the new world of commerce;
Tory alliance: Privy Council - Justices of the Peace of Counties - high Anglican Church, supporting the
institution of monarchy and of a state Church excluding the Dissenters
Parties - Public opinion
Charles Fox (New Whigs) against George III, 1780: The king must not be influenced only by his "favorites", but also by "public
opinion”.
Fox on freedom of assembly, 1795: "the best security for the due maintenance of the
constitution is in the strict and incessant
vigilance of the people over parliament itself.
Meetings of the people, therefore, for the discussion of public objects are not merely legal, but laudable”.
MPs - voters
1774 - Edmund Burke (old Whig), Speech to the electors of Bristol:
virtual representation – a MP is not bound to the will of the voters in his district, he pursues the common good and is accountable for his opinions only to Providence: “his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you. Your representative owes you his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion”.
Universal rights of men vs.
inherited rights
Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790):
“The very idea of the fabrication of a new
government, is enough to fill us with disgust and horror… In the Petition of Right (1628), the parliament says to the king, "Your
subjects have inherited this freedom", claiming their franchises not on abstract
principles "as the rights of men", but as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their forefathers”.
Formation of governments
During 18th and 19th century, general elections are considered significant, but not directly binding.
Professional politicians get ministerial
assignments if they have parliamentary
support (example - Walpoles’ Grand Party - a Whig federation of MPs under his patronage).
Collective responsibility of government and
leadership of the Prime Minister based on the ability to influence the majority of MPs.
Ministerial solidarity
• The conquest of power is seen as a result of a joint effort made by
politicians with common opinions;
• during the exercise of power, the prime minister has the power to impose a
common policy to ministers;
• the resignation is meant as a joint act of the Council against the king or the
parliament.
Last royal government in United Kingdom
December 1834 - April 1835: last case of a government (Tories, led by Robert Peel) imposed by William IV against the will of the majority. Peel resigns after 100 days frustrated for not being able to pass laws against the Whig majority.
1835 - Queen Victoria offers to Peel to form a minority government, but he refuses.
Reforming political parties
The 1832 Reform Act gives right to vote to the middle class. Number of voters increases about 60%, rising to 650 000. Political parties organize themselves as centralized national structures and promote the voter registration in each district .
Parliamentarism
Since the 1832 electoral reform:
All parties agree on the principle that decisions taken in parliament are binding on everyone, without regard for other social factors.
The local press brings the political debate in the provinces, thus national unity is built around the Parliament, intended as national symbol.
Public opinion
Since 1783 journalists can publish parliamentary debates, thus promoting the formation of Public interest associations:
- Committee for the abolition of the slave trade (1787), - Birmingham Political Union - National Political Union
(1830) promoting electoral reform for a fairer representation,
- Chartism - for universal suffrage and more frequent elections (1838-1848).
Six points of the People's Charter
1. A vote for every man twenty one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for crime.
2. The ballot —To protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
3. No property qualification for members of Parliament—thus enabling the constituencies to return the man of their choice, be he rich or poor.
4. Payment of members, thus enabling an honest tradesman, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency, when taken from his business to
attend to the interests of the country.
5. Equal constituencies securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors,--instead of allowing small constituencies to swamp the votes of larger ones.
6. Annual Parliaments, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituents as now.
Chartism
Private interest associations
- industry associations and lobbies for “friendly”
legislation (from medieval guilds to the Federation of British Industries, 1916),
- first Chamber of commerce established in Jersey in 1768 (Association of the Chambers of Commerce established in 1860),
- workers' trade unions divided by sector, established since 1815
Decriminalizing Trade unions
1799 Act to prevent Unlawful Combinations of Workmen prohibited trade unions and collective bargaining, and drove the labor organizations underground
1825 Combination Act allowed trade unions but made unlawful any pressure for wage increases or change of working hours
1871 Trade Union Act made them legal except for picketing.
Free trade
Edmund Burke, debate on the prohibition on the export of grain, 1770:
"There are no such things as a high, & a low price that is encouraging, &
discouraging; there is nothing but a
natural price, which grain brings at an universal market.“
"The laws of commerce are the laws of
Nature, and therefore the laws of God."
Corn laws 1815-1846
Protectionists
landowners heavily
represented in Parliament maximized their profits by
keeping high import duties for grain. Thomas Malthus: it
would be dangerous for Britain to rely on imported corn
because lower prices would reduce laborers' wages and decrease purchasing power of landlords and farmers.
Free trade
new class of manufacturers and industrialists
underrepresented in Parliament wishing to
maximize profits by reducing the wages of factory workers (men could not work in the factories if a factory wage was not enough to feed them and their families)
Anti-Corn Law League
founded in Manchester in 1838, world’s first and greatest industrial town with high percentage of factory workers
disadvantaged by the Corn Laws.
Its leader Richard Cobden convinced tory prime minister Peel to abolish the law in 1846, causing a split in the party and
his resignation.
Manchesterism
Manchester School made economic
liberalism the basis for government policy, believing that free trade would lead to a
more equitable society, making essential products available to all.
Main idea: freedom of contract (without
government restrictions), freedom of the press and separation of church and state will lead to peaceful relations among
nations.
Manchester
1820
1857 (city status in 1854)Manufacturing metropolis
Population of Manchester Year
1800 90.000
1831 270.000
1850 390.000
1890 700.000
1900 1.240.000
1920 2.300.000
Traditional political capitals
Year London Berlin Moscow
1700 570.000 60.000 130.000
1800 950.000 170.000 300.000
1850 2.230.000 440.000 440.000
1900 6.620.000 2.420.000 1.120.000
Social disintegration
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1844:
Manchester slums - heavily populated, with no city planning and poor
infrastructure due to free trade ideology, causing infectious diseases and higher
death-rates for workers and children than in the countryside
(Manchester completed its sewage system
only at the beginning of 20
thcentury)
Anti-Manchesterism
Engels:
“While the conditions of existence of
Germany's proletariat have not assumed the form that they have in England, we
nevertheless have, at bottom, the same social order, which sooner or later must necessarily reach the same degree of
acuteness, unless the intelligence of the
nation brings about in time the adoption of measures that will provide a new basis for the whole social system”.
Urbanization in 19
thand 20
thcentury
Year Europe England France Germany Russia/
Soviet Union
1800 12 23 12 9 6
1850 19 45 19 15 7
1910 41 75 38 49 14
1959 51 83 48 53 34
percentage of the population living in centers with more than 5,000 inhabitants
Permanent civil service
1855: First parliamentary committee on the efficiency of the civil service, due to the chaotic conduct of the Crimean War (first "technological War" and the first to be followed by the press).
The aim of the reform: to divide the technical officials from the political. Since 1870, recruitment by competitive examinations, no longer by political patronage (family ties, clients, party, local basis).
Universal and secret suffrage
1. 1867 Second Reform Act: doubling the number of voters (from 1.5 to 3 million) and more equitable redistribution between the city (underrepresented) and country.
2. 1872 Ballot Act: Inclusion of employees compels the adoption of the secret ballot.
3. 1884 Third Reform Act: the right to vote, as obtained in 1867 in the cities, is extended to the counties. 60% of males has the right to vote.
Female suffrage
Fourth Reform Act 1918: male universal suffrage and partial female suffrage (women over 30 with minimum property qualifications – employed in factories during WWI);
Fifth Reform Act 1928: women's universal
suffrage.
Mass democracy
Effects on party system:
The results of the election no longer
depend on corruption, but on political
campaigns, causing more and more
bureaucratic centralization within
parties and major electoral expenses.
Class struggle in Parliament
Effects of the universal suffrage:
on one side, the dominance of the richest classes in the House of Commons, because of high costs of electoral campaigns;
on the other side, greater social pressure on the upper classes, due to higher expectations of the lower classes fueled by election promises.
Chancellor Governement
Main factors in German constitutional history
1. The absolutist tradition;
2. Corporate and feudal social organization;
3. The failed revolution of 1848;
4. Centrality of the king in political life;
5. The Chancellery (1867) as a solution for an efficient antiparliamentary (unaccountable) government.
Prussia: monarchical principle
1845 - Friedrich Julius Stahl, Monarchical Principle :
"For the monarchical principle, the king
should remain de facto the core of the
constitution, the positive power in the
state, the leadership of progress."
Primacy of executive power
Stahl:
“The security for the monarchy lies not
only in constitution but also in the way
of government. If this is not strong,
energetic, the power will go in fact to
the Parliament, though this may be in
conflict with the constitution.”
Critics of the english model
Stahl: incompatibility between king and Parliament, as the parliamentary principle involves the inexorable affirmation of republicanism, as in England, where:
"A fiction, a king can do no wrong sounds like a profoundly monarchical principle, but he can not do anything. Not only the monarch should have no power, he should not have any desire, no belief in political matters. "
England seen by German liberals
Carl Rotteck in Constitution, 1836, is critical to the Parliamentary supremacy because:
"the Parliament in London has totally alienated from the true idea of representing the people and became a second government, in which the country's interests are sacrificed to the interests of parliamentarians" .
Parliamentary model seen by Hegel
Hegel, On the Reform Bill, 1831:
The parliamentary system is the cause of
the gap between principles being
proclamed and the reality (the
widespread poverty in British and Irish
society), and the core of this vice can
not be eliminated with the enlargement
of the right to vote.
Hegel on popular vote
On the Reform Bill:
"The main thing in an election reduces to
find voters, bring them to the polls and
induce them to vote for their masters,
especially with the means of corruption."
William Hogarth,
Canvassing for votes, 1754
Possibility to choose
Hegel:
“Clearly the feeling is that the individual vote is - among the many thousands needed to elect someone - without any real weight. And this - so irrelevant - influence is limited only to people, and is even infinitely more irrelevant for the fact that it does not refer to the matter, which is, indeed, expressly excluded.”
(as today’s referendum or citizens’ initiative)
Realpolitik
August Ludwig von Rochau, 1853:
The world of politics is "dominated by the law of the strongest in the same way as the world of physics is dominated by the law of gravity."
"The law is highly dependent and limited by the extent of power that is available."
"In the face of poverty is wealth, as the intelligence is waged by ignorance, prejudice and - in particular - stupidity ."
The “people” for Rochau
«Each party finds the true people there
where it can find means for its
purposes. The militaristic absolutism
calls the army the "elite" of the people,
the patriarchal regime tends to define
the class of backward rural provinces
the traditionalist core of people ...»
Rochau
“… the bureaucracy sees the real people
in the petty bourgeois (middle class) of
the city, the liberals grant the role of the
real people only to the wealthy and
educated and democrats tend to exclude
from the people all those who are not
associated to the proletarians”.
Selfgovernment
Rochau:
"Self-government, wanted by opponents of monarchical rule, requires a constant effort and a persistent spiritual will,
which are alien to the masses".
So: "such a theory can not stand the test of reality in the future, as it has not
passed the test in the past."
German Bonapartism
Constantin Frantz, Our Constitution, 1851:
“The introduction of the constitution must
lead to the fall of the throne, because
this will end up identifying with
corruption and demagogy of the
Parliament, which will produce the
dissolution of the national spirit and
social anarchy.”
Parliamentarism as deceit
Frantz:
“By the time a deputy is elected, he sits in front of voters as a god and those are not entitled to protest.
The whole representative system is
nothing but a big mystification.”
The Chef
Constantin Frantz, Louis Napoleon, 1852:
“According to the parliamentary system, the people elect to be represented, but here (in France under Louis Napoleon) it elects to be governed. There (in England), the so-called executive power is subject to Parliament, here is superior and dominant. There, the state's power rests on the Parliament, here is based on the Chef.”
Leader - people
Frantz:
“The mendacious parliamentary system is declaiming to the people sweet words on self- government and then establishing the rule of Parliament.
Here they say to the people the truth: that it is unable to govern itself and must therefore elect a leader, to which it must obey.”
Lothar Bucher
Freedom of Thought
Lothar Bucher, Parliamentarism as it really is, 1855:
“The concept of parliamentarism should merge two elements: the party government and Selfgovernment.
The German liberals believe that the British parliamentary system is not enclosed in the Palace of Parliament, but rather means an organized, guaranteed and general freedom of opinion and action."
“But are there any institution organizing and guaranteeing the freedom of opinion and action?”
Is there a source of constant conflict between
organized party interests
and unorganized social interests?
Bucher
Public Opinion
Bucher:
“The exchange of opinions among individuals, usually immediate, is now delegated, led by the newspapers.
These changes affect the evolution of
the representative system: thousands
of citizens devote themselves to a
single journal and will, thoughts and
comments disappear..."
Bucher on the Press
Bucher:
"Every morning, the "opinion" is served ready as a muffin. By reading, one gets used only to absorb. The race to gain does not leave a spare minute to reflect on what we have read.
It is clear what power has a newspaper, by virtue of what will decide to publish and what will decide to fail to mention, and generally by virtue of spreading ideas and ways of seeing that it generates among the readers."
Indirect censorship
Bucher:
"The Parliament is an enemy of the kind of press that gives voice to the classes and interests that are not represented in it... The crime of "incitement to hatred and hostility"
was born in England. Against a dangerous political movement, but in particular of a social nature, there is a whole arsenal of indirect means against the press. "
Cult of the leader
Bucher:
“The faith in public opinion springs from the needs of public authorities, as a voluntary submission which the mass of men always tend.
A leader who has gained the confidence of the masses can lead them to acts of obedience and renunciation, of sacrifice, to which the state apparatus with all its worldly and spiritual power, is not capable to impose".
Guiding principles for the imperial constitution
Bucher and Bismarck (1866):
The new constitution should take into account the actual distribution of
organized power in the state (military)
unorganized socio-economic power in and
the society (nobility, industry, finance).
Legislative/executive power
The principles of separation of power for Bucher and Bismarck:
serve for masking implicit claims to
sovereignty (as in the case of the British
Parliament), or are a sign of an
unforgivably impolitic attitude. The
bourgeoisie, in any case, does not
deserve even a segment of political
power.
Plebiscitary trust
Article 17 of the imperial constitution:
“the Chancellor is responsible for all the acts of the Empire”.
- Leading to an overall interpretation of the governmental conduct instead of examining a growingly complex administration.
- Personalization of political trust based
on a pretended direct connection of the
leader with the masses.
Industrialization
Energetic national governments as an emergency solution (“Emergency knows
no law”) to guide social transformations connected to the process of
industrialization:
Urbanization - need of new social infrastructure
Accumulation of capitals - neglect of traditional hierarchies as land
aristocracy (Junker)
Concentration of capital
Deutsche Bank – founded in 1870 in Berlin with Bismarck’s approval, “to serve both
economic and national purposes”; financing:
- Krupp (steel, armaments),
- Bayer (chemical and pharmaceutical), - BASF (chemical industry),
- AEG (electrical equipment), - Siemens (electronics)
Friedrich Krupp AG
Largest company in Europe in 1880s with 75.000 employees. Generalregulativ -
firm’s constitution imposing strict control of workers (loyalty oath) and prohibiting dealing with national politics.
In return, Krupp provided social services - insurances for men and their families in
case of illness or death, settlement houses in Essen – a model for Bismarck’s
paternalist government.
Kanonenstadt Essen
Year Population
1850 10.500
1870 51.000
1900 120.000
1910 295.000
1920 460.000
1930 650.000
Krupp’s workmen colony
Westend 1863
Settlement as community
From: Arbeitersiedlungen Krupp, 1912:
“The industrial village is economically and politically important: it gives a peasant tone to excited proletarian conscience.
The colony is isolated from external
influences, helping those willing to work
during strikes. The house entrances open
to inner courtyard, turning its back wall
into a defensive wall against the main
street”.
Urbanization
Since 1870 to 1900 almost half of German population migrated from rural areas of
the eastern Prussia to industrial centers of the Rhineland.
Junker agricultural associations and nascent völkisch and anti-Semite movements
raised political campaigns against mass exodus from the countryside as against
“degenerated city“, seen as "the tomb of
the race“.
Völkisch movement
populist movement combining a romantic focus on "organic“ unity of nation or race and a "back-to-the-land" revolt against
modernity, declining as:
anti-urban, anti-industrial,
anti-immigration, anti-Semitic, anti-Slavic anti-capitalist and anti-socialist,
anti-Parliamentarian and anti-liberal
End of patriarchal regime
Max Weber’s survey on agrarian workers of eastern Prussia, 1892/3:
Decay of Instverhältnis - centuries obeyed regime of the countryside, a pact between the owner and the peasant family, offering a relative economic tranquility in
exchange for an almost complete
dependence (subjection), establishing a
strong community of interest between
them.
Loss of social control
Weber: assuming that the farmers hadn’t found work in the city," for the Junkers
their laborers were lost anyway, because now they had become "too politically
cunning”.
Once the patriarchal ideology had been broken, the class struggle replaced the
image of a “community of interests” with the owners, both among agricultural
workers as among those of industry.
City and individualism
Werner Sombart, Modern capitalism (1902- 1927):
“The need for individual freedom makes seem the city life full of charm. But individual
freedom as an ideal for the masses took on
the meaning of freedom "from", the liberation from the constraints of the neighborhood, the family, the authority. The city has shaped the capitalist spirit: individualism, intellectualism, rationality, the ability to calculate.”
Society/Community
An attempt to theorize social dysfunctions caused by the rapid industrial revolution
and new social relations and values (individualism, materialism):
Society: an “aggregate and mechanical product” in which we see the overall
picture of the "bourgeois society" or
"society of exchange": “for the poor, the sweet native soil of our homeland is nothing but the paving of the sidewalk”
(Ferdinand Tönnies, 1887)
Community
A place of “real and organic life” based on face-to-face relations and traditional ethics of mutual help; but also an exclusive place prohibited to foreigners:
"as a place of mother tongue, and thus of
deep, instinctive understanding
between members, in which harmony
and common will are governed by rules
of natural law”.
Carl Friedrich von Gerber
(1823-1891)
Popular state
Carl Friedrich von Gerber, General lines of the German public law, 1865:
"popular State" is the way to the realization of the general interest of the people. Only within the State "the nation stands united to the legal consciousness and builds his own will", which then expresses the will to power of the state.
Organic State
Gerber:
The state is committed to permanent planning and organizing of the life of popular community. The community, in turn, recognizes the state's legal competence, as its superior ability to realize the "general interest".
The state is a living organism – its vigor is demonstrated by governmental “will”, that is, by the act of governing.
The will of the people
Gerber:
The will of the state coincides with the will of the people. But, it is intended only as a general will, that is, as "objective basis", opposed to the concrete participation of the individual in decision-making.
The will of the individual is deemed as
"subjective" and relegated to the private law.
The people
Gerber:
"people" does not mean only the actually present and acting citizenship - which willingness would be empirically testable - but
"the whole” - past, present and future generations of germans - spiritually united in the historical community, of which the currently living generation expresses only the present moment."
Individual/state
Gerber:
The single subject participates as a tiny particle of the new body to the "life" of the community, renouncing in return to the right to reclaim his self-will against the state.
"By placing his right to rule, the state requires that the citizen should submit to its legitimate orders in any forms (laws, administrative acts...) and demonstrate obedience ".
Otto von Gierke (1841-
1921)
National community
Otto von Gierke, The nature of human unions, 1902:
The "nature" requires "the ethical sense derived from the idea of a concrete community" and that necessarily involves a "supreme value of the Whole."
The status of the "individual" citizen and his freedom are derived from his status of community member, subject to the will of higher-level "unit, the indivisible Community- person».
Nation state
Gierke:
The nation state is the legal form for the community, a place of "real and organic life"
in which the single parts are united in a whole.
“From the religious point of view, the commandment to love our neighbor is completed in the commandment to love God above all things. [...] To the community on earth that means: love the whole more than yourself!”
The leader
Gierke:
“Wherever we find life, we'll note its representative - or "exponent", or literally
"bearer" or "holder" (Träger), which has its own character. We note some eminent individuals involved in a creative way and, through their more personal action, which comes only from them, transform society. But this result occurs only when the community cooperates at least so receptive, embracing the gift of the individual. "
Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-
1864)
“The sin of the golden
calf”
ADAV
General German Workers' Association (ADAV) formed in 1863 by Ferdinand Lassalle;
the ultimate goal was the establishment of a people's state (Volksstaat), that is a rigidly centralized socialist national state dominated by dictatorship of the conviction
- to be understood as a free submission to dictatorial power of a leader voted for the good of the people.
Article 4 of 1867 ADAV program
“The association considers a sad mistake if someone thinks he can be useful to the interests of the working class acting on his own. The association has recognized that only by submitting to the whole, each can operate successfully from his place.
The association must therefore consider anyone who does not recognize the idea of the organization, as well as anyone who fails to comply with the principles, as an enemy of the working class.”
Dictatorship of the conviction
“Freedom and authority are united in our Association, which offers a miniature model of what will be the future shape of our society!
This discipline is not based on any other ground except on clear understanding that only by the dictatorship of the conviction, not by personal opinion and grumbling, you can put into action the great violent work of transformation of society! We let the proliferation of individual chatter to the bourgeois.”
Summary of political
dogmas before World War I
The national community wants the realization of values of justice;
The national governments' will is the reflection of peoples' will;
The governments' political unity is the reflection of national unity;
The leaders' quality can emerge only if every member of the nation obeys his
commands with blind faith.
German politics after World War I
Legacy of the war years:
- gradual downfall of public institutions
(Parliament, civil government, authority of the Chancellor and the Emperor);
- 1916-1918 unofficial establishment of a
military dictatorship over society (war
economy)
Weimar Republic
November 9, 1918 – end of the German Empire and birth of the first German Republic;
August 11, 1918 – first democratic
costitution, based on a western type
parliamentary pluralistic model, and on compromise between diverging
interests and ideologies, granting individual, political and social-
economical rights.
From State to Community
Deep contrast between institutional
framework (parliamentary negotiation, formal democracy and rights of the
individual) and
the common political discourse
(communitary identity, substantial
democracy, strong leadership)
Urban republicanism
Hugo Preuss (author of the Weimar
constitution) in Development of the German city, 1906:
“urban stands for republicanism as rural
for monarchy. The hegemony of urban
spirit will open the way for political and
social liberty, spreading from the towns
to countryside and urbanizing the whole
state”.
Right to housing
Article 155, Section V: Economic Life, of the Weimar constitution:
“The distribution and use of the soil shall be controlled by the state in such a manner as to prevent abuse and to promote the object of assuring to every German a healthful
habitation and to all German families, especially those with many children,
homesteads for living and working that are
suitable to their needs”.
Rent
strike,
Berlin 1932
“Food first, then the rent”:
Anti-system parties (Nazi
and communist party) as
defenders of the people
against unjust
legal order.
Existenzminimum
Healthy housing built as much cost-
effective as possible, in order to provide all citizens with a minimally-acceptable floor-space, “air, light and sun” and a common space for socializing,
promoted by Social-democrat local
government and trade unions, in order
to fulfill social rights promised by the
constitution.
New urban identity
In place of the 19° century liberal city divided into private spaces, the New building
movement creates settlements for a “new community”.
Martin Wagner, chief city planner for Berlin: “the residents are learning to know their common interest and a communitarian culture. The
march of battalions of identical flats shows that the people is not ashamed of equality”.
Horseshoe settlement,
Berlin 1925-1933
Reichstag fire decree
“Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State” of
February 28 1933 in direct response to the Reichstag fire,
signed by President Hindenburg under
Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution,
allowing him to take any appropriate
measure to remedy dangers to public
safety without the prior consent of the
Reichstag.
State of exception
§ 1. “Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124
and 153 of the Constitution are suspended.
It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom, freedom of expression, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and
assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic
and telephonic communications. Warrants
for House searches, orders for confiscations
as well as restrictions on property, are also
permissible”.
The Enabling Act of March 23, 1933
considered a constitutional amendment and thus adopted by a two-thirds
majority because it allowed the
Chancellor Adolf Hitler to enact laws altering the constitution without the consent of the Reichstag.
All parties - centrist, conservative and liberal - except the SPD (and the
banned KPD), voted in favour of the Act.
One-party state
Law securing the unity of party and state, December 1, 1933:
§1. “National Socialist German Workers’ Party is the bearer of the concept of the German State and is inseparable from the State”.
§ 3. “The members of NSDAP and SA, as leading and driving force of the National Socialist State, will bear greater
responsibility toward Führer, people, and
state”.
Nsdap
command pyramid
Der Führer – party chairman;
18 Reichsleiter - Reich Leaders – comprable to
ministers responsible for specific spheres of interest;
40 Gauleiter - regional Party leaders;
800 Kreisleiter- provincial leaders
