Sobre la abolición de los partidos (Simone Weil)

Va un fragmento de la versión traducida al español del ensayo de Simone Weil, On the Abolition of All Political Parties (1957). La versión en inglés que tengo fue traducida por Simon Leys y le acompaña un ensayo de Czeslaw Milosz: "The importance of Simone Weil" (NYRB, 2013). Las páginas que cito en español corresponden a las páginas 16-23 de la versión de la NYRB.

"Desde el momento en que el crecimiento del partido constituye un criterio del bien, se sigue inevitablemente la existencia de una presión colectiva del partido sobre el pensamiento de los hombres. Esa presión se ejerce de hecho. Se muestra públicamente. Se confiesa, se proclama. Nos horrorizaría, de no ser porque la costumbre nos ha endurecido.

Los partidos son organismos públicos, oficialmente constituidos de manera que matan en las almas el sentido de la verdad y de la justicia.

Se ejerce la presión colectiva sobre el gran público mediante la propaganda. La finalidad confesada de la propaganda es persuadir y no comunicar luz. Hitler vio perfectamente que la propaganda es siempre un intento de someter a los espíritus. Todos los partidos hacen propaganda. El que no la hiciera desaparecería por el hecho de que los demás sí la hacen. Todos confiesan que hacen propaganda. Nadie es tan audaz en la mentira como para afirmar que se propone la educación del público, que forma el juicio del pueblo.

Los partidos hablan, cierto es, de educación de los que se les han acercado, simpatizantes, jóvenes, nuevos adherentes. Esa palabra es una mentira. Se trata de un adiestramiento para preparar la influencia mucho más severa que el partido ejerce sobre el pensamiento de sus miembros.

Supongamos que un miembro de un partido —diputado, candidato a diputado, o simplemente militante— adquiera en público el siguiente compromiso: «Cada vez que examine cualquier problema político o social, me comprometo a olvidar absolutamente el hecho de que soy miembro de tal grupo y a preocuparme exclusivamente de discernir el bien público y la justicia.» Ese lenguaje sería muy mal acogido. Los suyos, e incluso muchos otros, lo acusarían de traición. Los menos hostiles dirían: «Entonces, ¿para qué se ha afiliado a un partido?», confesando de esta manera ingenua que, cuando se entra en un partido, se renuncia a buscar únicamente el bien público y la justicia. Ese hombre sería excluido de su partido, o por lo menos perdería la investidura; seguramente no sería elegido.

...

Es imposible examinar los problemas increíblemente complejos de la vida pública estando atento a la vez, por un lado, a discernir la verdad, la justicia, el bien público, y por otro, a conservar la actitud que conviene a un miembro de tal grupo. La facultad humana de la atención no es capaz simultáneamente de las dos preocupaciones. De hecho todos se quedan con una y abandonan la otra.

...

Si un hombre hace cálculos numéricos muy complejos, sabiendo que se le azotará cada vez que obtenga como resultado un número par, su situación es muy difícil. Algo de dentro de la parte carnal del alma le empujará a dar una ayudita a los cálculos para obtener siempre un número impar. Queriendo reaccionar, se arriesgará a encontrar un número par incluso donde no hace falta. Presa de esta oscilación, su atención ya no está intacta. Si los cálculos son tan complejos que exigen por su parte la plenitud de la atención, es inevitable que se equivoque muy a menudo. De nada servirá que sea muy inteligente, muy valiente, muy celoso de la verdad.

¿Qué debe hacer? Es muy simple. Si puede escapar de las manos de esa gente, que le amenaza con el látigo, debe escapar. Si hubiera podido evitar caer en sus manos, debería haberlo evitado.

Eso mismo sucede con los partidos políticos.

Cuando hay partidos en un país, más tarde o más temprano el resultado es un estado de hecho tal que es imposible intervenir eficazmente en los asuntos públicos sin entrar en un partido y jugar el Juego. Cualquiera que se interese por lo público desea interesarse eficazmente. Por lo que quienes se inclinan por la preocupación hacia el bien público, o renuncian a pensar en ello y se orientan hacia otra cosa, o pasan por el aro de los partidos. En este caso también eso les causa preocupaciones que excluyen la del bien público.

Los partidos son un maravilloso mecanismo en virtud del cual, a lo largo de todo un país, ni un solo espíritu presta su atención al esfuerzo de discernir, en los asuntos públicos, el bien, la justicia, la verdad. El resultado es que —a excepción de un pequeño número de circunstancias fortuitas— solo se deciden y se ejecutan medidas contrarias al bien público, a la justicia, a la verdad. Si se le confiara al diablo la organización de la vida pública, no podría imaginar nada más ingenioso."...

Una propuesta: Estado, democracia y los hippies en Arendt

En el verano de 1970, el escritor alemán Adelbert Reif, entrevistó a Hannah Arendt. La entrevista, traducida al inglés por Denver Lindley, giró en torno a controversias en ese entonces contemporáneas, como los movimientos estudiantiles en Estados Unidos y en Francia, la oposición a la Guerra de Vietnam, el concepto ‘revolución’ y otros temas políticos. La entrevista fue publicada en 1971 en la NYRB.

En otro momento comentaré algunos asuntos interesantes respecto a cómo Arendt veía los movimientos estudiantiles y las universidades en términos políticos y su distinción entre asuntos ‘internos’ y ‘externos’ respecto a las universidades. En esta entrada, sin embargo, me interesa destacar dos cosas que surgen al final de la entrevista: (1) la propuesta de Arendt –de orden institucional-- sobre la democracia y lo que hoy día se conoce como democracia participativa y deliberativa; y (2) un comentario puntual sobre la diferencia de su propuesta (que nace bajo la premisa del espacio de la polis como el espacio de ‘lo político’) con lo que fueron los movimientos hippies en Estados Unidos y sus motivaciones. (Pongo el comentario en negrillas).

Esto último lo comento en tanto hoy día parece interesante analizar una serie de movimientos que yo llamaría de ‘retirada’, que enfocan su resistencia al mercado y la política (en su precariedad actual) en alternativas que tienen su base en cierta idea de ‘autogestión’ (énfasis aquí en el prefijo 'auto'). Estas propuestas, que son ciudadanas y que surgen de sectores medios, son de corte más individual y, por lo tanto, una podría analizar cómo despolitizan ciertos temas (e.g. proyectos de agricultura a escala familiar, como huertos caseros, consumo ecológico o ‘saludable’, por nombrar algunos). Si bien estos proyectos se justifican frente a la homogeneización y masificación imperante, los mismos, como muchos han señalado, dependen de posibilidades e iniciativas individuales y parecen renunciar a un cuestionamiento más estructural o sistémico, renunciar o abandonar ‘lo político’, en el sentido arendtiano. Otra alternativa sería ver estas iniciativas en el largo plazo y pensar cómo una vuelta o regreso a lo micro podría –si de alguna manera- poner en jaque el estado de cosas actual. Esto requeriría otra entrada, pero el comentario de Arendt en esta entrevista sobre los hippies arroja alguna luz para un buen debate sobre esto.

Sólo una precisión más: la propuesta aquí resumida por Arendt -valga enfatizar que es una entrevista- hay que entenderla en relación con sus escritos, en los que desarrolla abordajes muy particulares sobre los conceptos revolución, lo político, la libertad, el pluralismo y la acción. En On Revolution, Arendt explicita mucho más abarcadoramente lo que aquí expone. Llama la atención cómo otros teóricos más contemporáneos han desarrollado parte de lo que aquí ella expone como su propuesta institucional (e.g. Habermas). ¡Salud!

“When I said that none of the revolutions, each of which overthrew one form of government and replaced it with another, had been able to shake the state concept and its sovereignty, I had in mind something that I tried to elaborate a bit in my book On Revolution. Since the revolutions of the eighteenth century, every large upheaval has actually developed the rudiments of an entirely new form of government which emerged independtly of all preceding revolutionary theories directly out of the course of the revolution itself, that is, out of the experiences of action and out of the resulting will of the actors to participate in the further development of public affairs.

This new form of government is the council system which, as we know, has perished every time and everywhere, destroyed either directly by the bureaucracy of the nation states or by the party machines. Whether this system is a pure utopia –in any case it would be a people’s utopia, not the utopia of the theoreticians and ideologies—I cannot say. It seems to me, however, the single alternative that has ever appear in history, and has reappeared time and again. Spontaneous organization of council systems occurred in all revolutions, in the French Revolution, with Jefferson in the American Revolution, in the Parisian commune, in the Russian revolutions, in the wake of the revolutions in Germany and Austria at the end of World War I, finally in the Hungarian Revolution. What is more, they never came into being as a result of a conscious revolutionary tradition or theory but entirely spontaneously, each time as though there had never been anything of the sort before. Hence the council system seems to correspond to and to spring from the very experiences of political action.

In this direction, I think, there must be something to be found, a completely different principle of organization, which begins from below, continues upward, and finally leads to a parliament. But we can’t talk about that now. And it is not necessary since important studies on this subject have been published in recent years in France and Germany, so that anyone seriously interested can inform himself.

To prevent a misunderstanding that might easily occur today: The communes of hippies and dropouts have nothing to do with this. On the contrary, a renunciation of the whole of public life, of politics in general, is at their foundation; they are refuges for people who have suffered political shipwreck –and as such they are completely justified on personal grounds. I find the forms of these communes very often grotesque – in Germany as well as in America –but I understand them very well and have nothing against them. Politically they are meaningless.

The councils desire the exact opposite, even if they begin very small –as neighbourhood councils, professional councils, councils within factories, apartment houses, etc. There are indeed councils of the most various kinds, by no means only workers’ councils; workers’ councils are a special case in this field.

The councils say: We want to participate, we want to debate, we want to make our voices heard in public, and we want to have a possibility to determine the political course of our country. Since the country is too big for all of us to come together and determine our fate, we need a number of public spaces within it. The booth in which we deposit our ballots is unquestionably too small, for this booth has only room for one. The parties are completely unsuitable; there we are, most of us, nothing but the manipulated electorate. But if only ten of us are sitting around a table, then each expresses his opinion, each hears the opinions of others, then a rational formation of opinion can take place through the exchange of opinions. There too it will become clear which one of us is best suited to present our view before the next higher council, where in turn our view will be clarified the influence of other views, revised of proved wrong.

By no means every resident of a country needs to be a member in such councils. Not everyone wants to or has to concern himself with public affairs. In this fashion a self-selective process is possible that would draw together a true political elite in a country. Anyone who is not interested in public affairs will simply have to be satisfied with their being decided without him. But each person must be given the opportunity.

In this direction I see the possibility of forming a new concept of the state. A council of this sort, to which the principle of sovereignty would be wholly alien, would be admirably suited to federations of the most various kinds, especially because in it power would be constituted horizontally and not vertically. But if you ask me now what prospect it has of being realized, then I must say to you: very slight, if any at all. And yet, perhaps, after all –in the wake of the next revolution.”

Bureaucratization of public life, progress and the power to act- (1969) (...) (2013)

“[t]he greater the bureaucratization of public life, the greater will be the attraction of violence. In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one could argue, to whom one could present grievances, on whom the pressures of power could be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant. The crucial feature in the students’ rebellions around the world is that they are directed everywhere against the ruling bureaucracy. This explains, what at first glance seems so disturbing, that the rebellions in the East demand precisely those freedoms of speech and thought that the young rebels in the West say they despise as irrelevant. Huge party machines have succeeded everywhere to overrule the voice of the citizens, even in countries where freedom of speech and association is still intact. 

The dissenters and resisters in the East demand free speech and thought as the preliminary conditions for political action; the rebels in the West live under conditions where these preliminarics no longer open the channels for action, for the meaningful exercise of freedom. The transformation of government into administration, of republics into bureaucracies, and the disastrous shrinkage of the public realm that went with it, have a long and complicated history throughout the modern age; and this process has been considerably accelerated for the last hundred years through the rise of party bureaucracies.

What makes man a political being is his faculty to act. It enables him to get together with his peers, to act in concert, and to reach out for goals and enterprises which would never enter his mind, let alone the desires of his heart, had he not been given this gift—to embark upon something new. All the properties of creativity ascribed to life in manifestations of violence and power actually belong to the faculty of action. And I think it can be shown that no other human ability has suffered to such an extent by the Progress of the modern age.

For progress, as we have come to understand it, means growth, the relentless process of more and more, of bigger and bigger. The bigger a country becomes in population, in objects, and in possessions, the greater will be the need for administration and with it, the anonymous power of the administrators. Pavel Kohout, the Czech author, writing in the heyday of the Czech experiment with freedom, defined a “free citizen” as a “Citizen-Co-ruler.” He meant nothing else but the “participatory democracy” of which we have heard so much in recent years in the West. Kohout added that what the world, as it is today, stands in greatest need of may well be “a new example” if “the next thousand years are not to become an era of supercivilized monkeys.”” 

H. Arendt, A Special Supplement: Reflections on Violence, FEBRUARY 27, 1969 • VOLUME 12, NUMBER 4, pp. 22-23. 

Arendt en la NYRB

Comparto la lista de artículo publicados por Hannah Arendt en la NYRB:

• Hannah Arendt: From an Interview 

  OCTOBER 26, 1978

• Home to Roost: A Bicentennial Address 

  JUNE 26, 1975

• Appeal for Peace in the Middle East

  JUNE 14, 1973

• Ford’s Better Idea

  JANUARY 25, 1973

• Crisis in the NY Public Library

  JUNE 29, 1972

• Lying in Politics: Reflections on The Pentagon Papers 

  NOVEMBER 18, 1971

• Martin Heidegger at Eighty 

  OCTOBER 21, 1971

• Thoughts on Politics and Revolution 

  APRIL 22, 1971

• Distinctions

  JANUARY 1, 1970

• The Technocratic Mind

  JUNE 19, 1969

• Protest

  MARCH 27, 1969

• A Special Supplement: Reflections on Violence

  FEBRUARY 27, 1969

• He’s All Dwight 

  AUGUST 1, 1968

• Regis Debray

  JULY 13, 1967

• Bibliography

  DECEMBER 1, 1966

• A Heroine of Revolution 

  OCTOBER 6, 1966

  Rosa Luxemburg by J.P. Nettl

• The Jewish Establishment

  MARCH 17, 1966

• “The Formidable Dr. Robinson”: A Reply 

  JANUARY 20, 1966

• John XXIII

  SEPTEMBER 16, 1965

• The Christian Pope 

  JUNE 17, 1965

  Journal of a Soul by Pope John XXIII, translated by Dorothy White

• Nathalie Sarraute 

  MARCH 5, 1964

  The Golden Fruits by Nathalie Sarraute, translated by Maria Jolas

• The Fate of the Union: Kennedy and After

  DECEMBER 26, 1963

Autonomy (Wislawa Szymborska)

"It's not just easy to explain to someone else what you don't understand yourself"
W.S.

Autonomy 
Wislawa Szymborska - 1972 

     In memory of Halina Poswiatowska 

     When in danger the sea-cucumber divides itself in two: 
     one self it surrenders for devouring by the world, 
     with the second it makes good its escape. 

     It splits violently into perdition and salvation, 
     into fine and reward, into what was and what will be. 

     In the middle of its body there opens up a chasm 
     with two shores that are immediately alien.

     On one shore death, on the other life. 
     Here despair, there hope. 

     If a scale exists, the balance does not tip. 
     If there is justice, here it is. 

     To die as much as necessary, without going too far. 
     To grow back as much as needed, from the remnant that survives. 

     We know how to divide ourselves, how true, we too. 
     But only into a body and an interrupted whisper. 
     Into body and poetry. 

     On one side the throat, laughter on the other, 
     that's light and quickly dying. 

     Here a heavy heart, there non omnis moriar, 
     just three little words like three feathers in ascent. 

     The chasm does not cut us in two. 
     The chasm surrounds us. 

Read 'On Szymborska' by Czeslaw Milosz- *NYRB

US Supreme Court: What's next?

-Affirmative action

-1965 Voting Rights Act

-Same-Sex Marriage:

"This term, which opens Monday, October 1, promises to be almost as controversial. Whether the results will be as happily surprising for liberals is a much tougher question. Where the Court’s biggest cases last term dealt with the relative powers of the federal and state governments, this term they focus on equality. The Court has already agreed to hear a challenge to the University of Texas’s affirmative action program. It is also very likely to hear a constitutional challenge to a central provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, as well as at least one and possibly two cases concerning same-sex marriage (issues I will discuss in subsequent blog posts).

At stake in all of these cases is the meaning of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection of the law, a right that the nation has struggled over since its inception and that still means radically different things to different people. Does equality allow a university to take racial diversity into account in its admissions process? Does a commitment to equal voting rights justify making certain states and counties seek the Justice Department’s approval of any change in their voting laws, as the Voting Rights Act has required since its enactment in 1965? And perhaps most controversially of all, does equality demand that Congress, or the states, treat same-sex marriages the same as marriages between a man and a woman?"

See "The Roberts Court Takes on Racial Justice", by David Cole (NYRB).