Simone Weil : On the general suppression of political parties

A political party is a machine to manufacture collective passion.

A political party is an organisation designed to exercise a collective pressure on the thought of each human being who is a member. The first aim, and, in the final analysis, the sole aim of every political party is its own growth, and this without limit.

Through this triple character, any party is totalitarian by nature and aspiration. When it it not, it is simply because those which surround it are no different […] It is doubtful that this leprosy, which kills us, can be remedied without beginning with the suppression of political parties.

These quotations are translated from the blurb on the back cover of one of her books. The original French is reproduced further below.

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Simone Weil does not address the problem of why political parties are, or rather, were, needed. That problem is how to aggregate opinion such that representation becomes possible. There are millions of people, each with scores of opinions, some strongly held, some well-informed, but overwhelmingly many which are ill-informed or only lightly held. Political parties enable — enabled — a rough-and-ready aggregation of this morass of opinion. Compare the question of how preferences for consumer goods can be aggregated. This is achieved with a properly regulated market.

Until this century there was no remotely satisfactory method of aggregating political opinion in the absence of parties.

“Fuzzy Democracy” (https://www.fuzzydemocracy.com/) is such a method. It works with a simple and transparent system of vote recycling and with thematic devolution such that votes do not go wasted and you always vote for the best candidate you can find.

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My partial endorsement of Weil’s judgement on political parties does not infer any support for her other positions. In particular, I am opposed to preaching “love” as a cure for all our ills. See: https://character-and-ethics.com/against-universal-love.html

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Weil (here summarised) Simone Adolphine Weil (1909 to 1943) was a French philosopher, mystic, political activist and labourer. ….Weil was very attracted to the ascetic egalitarian elements of Christianity.

She is easily confused with a later political activist, Simone Veil, which in French is pronounced exactly the same.

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Simone Weil : Note sur la suppression générale des partis politiques

Un parti politique est une machine à fabriquer de la passion collective.

Un parti politique est une organisation construite de manière à exercer une pression collective sur la pensée de chacun des êtres humains qui en sont membre. La première fin, et, en dernière analyse, l’unique fin de tout parti politique est sa propre croissance, et cela sans aucune limite.

Par ce triple caractère, tout parti est totalitaire en germe et en aspiration. S'il ne l'est pas en fait, c'est seulement parce que ceux que l’entourent ne le sont moins que lui […] Il est douteux qu’on puisse remédier à cette lèpre, qui nous tue, sans commencer par la suppression des partis politiques.

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