Written in the context of the Second World War, “On the Abolition of All Political Parties” is a biting essay advocating for the disbandment of organized politics in democracies. When taken seriously, Weil’s critical analysis helps those of us living in a polarized America to take a step back and understand that reason has been extracted from politics and replaced with passion.
Weil emphasizes that the superior outcome that politics should search for is what is both good and just. Political parties, however, have one important ulterior motive that infects the ability to achieve this outcome, and that is the never-ending search for power. Understanding these relationships can help us as citizens better understand the intricacies of something that we normally take for granted.
To be realistic, abolishing all political parties will never occur, yet her essay could help us rethink the purpose that we want political parties to play in our society. Because of this fact, the essay is a radical one, and it is not surprising coming from Simone Weil, who was a radical in every sense of the word.
Born into a Jewish family of intellectuals in 1909, she would eventually graduate from the École Normale Supérieure— considered the most prestigious university in France. Despite her family’s status, she would work in a car factory to better understand the dismal working conditions of the early 20th century. She even spent a brief period fighting in the Spanish Civil War as an anarchist.
After fleeing to the United States, Simone Weil wrote “On the Abolition of All Political Parties” in 1943, which would be the last year of her tragically short life, ruled a suicide due to self-starvation and tuberculosis on August 24, 1943. While there is plenty to agree and disagree with in the text, it is important to take the argument seriously for one reason in particular.
In America, it is hard to understand a person’s political beliefs until they identify themselves as either a Democrat or a Republican. Once a person does so, it is automatically assumed what their stance on issues like abortion or gun rights is. Weil argues that this phenomenon is a direct result of the political party. Before diving into why that is, it is useful to dissect her discussion on what is good versus what is bad.
As a starting point, Simone Weil views the criterion for general “goodness” as first and foremost truth, justice and the public interest. Fulfilling these criteria requires reason over passion in the decision-making process, as passion leads to unjust and criminal outcomes. This is where Rousseau’s conception of the general will comes into play.
Rousseau thought that on common issues, everyone thinks alone, with the thoughts eventually being expressed in a community. During such deliberation, the common ground represents the absolute truth and reason of the community, while the divergent opinions represent what is incorrect and unjust.
What is important about Rousseau’s general will is that it requires individuals to utilize reason in the first step of thinking alone. When passion is utilized instead, the result is not a general will of “collective reason” but instead a general will of “collective passion.” Part of what leads to this deficient process is individuals not expressing their will but rather choosing among various individuals and organizations to decide what their will is instead.
That last point is particularly important, as it is the reason Weil contends that there has never been anything that resembles a democracy. Therefore, how do we create a polity where individuals express their judgment without being infected by collective passions? Weil’s first step is abolishing all political parties.
The party is something concrete and obvious. It is perceived without any effort, and it allows people the pleasure of not having to spend an extended amount of time—which has increasingly become a more valuable resource—on matters that the party can think about for them. But the party, as Weil also notes, is also characteristically totalitarian.
A party must secure a vast amount of power to stay alive, and there seems to be no visible goal concerning how much power a party needs to, or wants to, obtain. Because of the electoral element of this perpetual search for power, Weil also notes that all parties make propaganda. This creates a feedback loop where the passions of the party are transformed into the conditioning of voters to pursue a collective passion as a whole.
The totalitarian feature she elaborates on seems extreme, at times, but she states that if the current reality seems less dark, it is because parties have not yet swallowed everything. But to be critical of this point, she was also writing during a time when totalitarianism was at its peak. Hitler, in particular, was the worst-case scenario of the party system in her eyes; however, it is fair to say that the party as a structure could have only been one causal factor among many in his case.
While several important aspects of her argument deserve attention, the argument as it has been laid out resonates quite heavily with those living in a polarized America. Party affiliation today is strongly attached to almost every aspect of our life. We also live in an America where citizens are constantly having to be efficient with their time. Parties allow us the convenience of not having to use that precious time to critically analyze policies and public issues.
This argument also allows us as a community to take a step back and depersonalize, to a certain extent, the political stances we view each other as having. Collective pressure, as Weil has shown, is a real thing, and the reason someone might be supporting an issue is that not doing so could result in being ostracized from a community.
Everyone should read Weil’s essay. It is a relatively short and accessible read, and the fruits of her argument will only become riper in the coming years. It is not a stretch to say America is experiencing a crisis as a result of the party system and how it operates. Being able to understand why parties are not an absolute good allows us to maybe make them better because, in all honesty, parties will never be abolished.
