Solidarism As a Doctrine of Democracy1

chapter 5 Solidarism as a Doctrine of Democracy1

Jerzy Kurnatowski

The war has greatly weakened the principles of democracy while simultane- ously creating a whole range of democratic countries. In addition, democracy throughout nearly the whole of Europe is undergoing a serious crisis. On the one hand, there is a monarchic, clerical, almost medieval reaction; on the other, communism is emerging and under the mask of a far-reaching progres- siveness is drawing European civilization back into a state of some kind of pre- medieval barbarism, so to speak. In undeveloped, unbalanced societies this pendulum swing between the extreme right and the extreme left, which is basically also the very extreme right, is violent and without gradation. In Russia, the white tsardom of the Romanovs was followed almost immediately by the red tsardom of Lenin; Ke- rensky’s democratic government lasted a very brief time; in Germany, namely in Bavaria, after the former monarchy we have the red communist terror of Kurt Eisner, and after him the military-nationalist government of von Kahr; the same occurs in Hungary—after the Habsburgs, Bela Kun, after Bela Kun, Horthy.2 Communism is a kind of heir to absolutism, and at the same time its herald. Communism tries, on a small scale, to play the role of Jacobinism, which arose in consequence of the absolutism of the Bourbons and prepared the way for the absolutism of Napoleon. Even in societies with old estab- lished democracies, communist currents are appearing, as the fumes of war, a

1 Jerzy Kurnatowski, “Solidaryzm jako doktryna demokracji” [“Solidarism as a Doctrine of Democracy”], Warsaw 1922, Nakładem Polskiego Zjednoczenia Mieszczańskiego Narodowo- Postępowego [Published by the Polish National-Progressive Townspeople’s Union]. 2 Kurt Eisner (1867–1919) was a German politician, member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and from 1917 of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. He was the leader of the November 1918 revolution in Bavaria, which resulted in the establishment of the Free State of Bavaria. Gustav Ritter von Kahr (1862–1934) was German conservative. In 1923 he created the triumvirate whose forces smashed the march of the nsdap during the Munich putsch. He was murdered by the ss during the Night of the Long Knives. Bela Kun (1886–1939) was a Hungarian communist, leader of the Hungarian Republic of Councils in 1919. Miklos Horthy de Nagybanya (1868–1957) was a Hungarian admiral and regent of the state in 1920–1944; in 1919 he abolished the Hungarian Republic of Councils, introducing the first rightist dictatorship in Europe after the First World War.

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symptom of the mental and economic balance disturbed by the war. The war destroyed an enormous mass of goods and thus decreased the sum of riches to be divided among the whole of humanity, while at the same time derailing the lives of large multitudes of people, making them unaccustomed to work, weakening them and making them unfit for it, thus lessening production ca- pacity and increasing the desire for more rapid improvement in economic conditions. It seems just that the terrible war effort should be rewarded with somewhat greater prosperity. The expectation of improved living conditions is thus greater and more impatient today than before the war, and the possibility of satisfying it very much less. In this state of mental discord, all crazy ideas for the betterment of mankind easily find an ear, even though they obviously only magnify the chaos and make it impossible to exit the vicious circle of increased desires and reduced chances for their fulfillment. This base exists even in England, where we have communist writings, and even in France, where the parliamentary group of communist deputies com- prises over a dozen persons—not to mention that very many persons and groups, while deliberately rejecting any connection with communism, are nev- ertheless actually campaigning along its line. The principles of democracy are in danger and with them the whole of our civilization, which is linked to democracy by a thousand unbreakable ties. The old classic formula of democracy from 1798 is “liberty, equality, and fraternity”—citizens of the nation and the nations of mankind. Today that formula is insufficient because it encompasses only the political side of the question, its electoral—in a sense philanthropic and international—side, but avoids the whole tangle of socio-economic questions: everything concerning work, production, poverty, and the distribution of goods. The need to adapt the democratic principles from the end of the eighteenth century to contemporary conditions was first sensed long before the war in France, where the republican system, struggling with monarchic reaction on the one side and anarchy on the other, relied on a social doctrine corresponding to the principles of democracy. That doctrine is solidarism, with which the worthy names of Léon Bourgeois, Emile Durkheim, and Karol Bougle3 are associated. At the moment when solidarism arose, the theory of conflict held undi- vided sway in the world of ideas: the Darwinian struggle for survival, which

3 Léon Bourgeois (1851–1925), French lawyer and politician, prime minister in the years 1895– 1896, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, theoretician and one of the initiators of the League of Nations, propagator of the idea of solidarism; Karol Bougle—most likely the author is speaking of Célestin Bouglé (1870–1940), a French philosopher, colleague of Durkheim’s, and author of a work on the caste system in India.