The New Machiavelli — Niccolo Machiavelli — John Shaqi
The New Machiavelli
Niccolo Machiavelli · en
Even more definitely a class party is the Labour Party, whose immediate
interest is to raise wages, shorten hours of labor, increase employment,
and make better terms for the working-man tenant and working-man
purchaser. Its leaders are no doubt constructive minded, but the mass
of the following is naturally suspicious of education and discipline,
hostile to the higher education, and--except for an obvious antagonism
to employers and property owners--almost destitute of ideas. What
else can it be? It stands for the expropriated multitude, whose whole
situation and difficulty arise from its individual lack of initiative
and organising power. It favours the nationalisation of land and capital
with no sense of the difficulties involved in the process; but, on the
other hand, the equally reasonable socialisation of individuals which
is implied by military service is steadily and quite naturally and quite
illogically opposed by it. It is only in recent years that Labour has
emerged as a separate party from the huge hospitable caravanserai of
Liberalism, and there is still a very marked tendency to step back again
into that multitudinous assemblage.
For multitudinousness has always been the Liberal characteristic.
Liberalism never has been nor ever can be anything but a diversified
crowd. Liberalism has to voice everything that is left out by these
other parties. It is the party against the predominating interests. It
is at once the party of the failing and of the untried; it is the party
of decadence and hope. From its nature it must be a vague and planless
association in comparison with its antagonist, neither so constructive
on the one hand, nor on the other so competent to hinder the inevitable
constructions of the civilised state. Essentially it is the party
of criticism, the “Anti” party. It is a system of hostilities and
objections that somehow achieves at times an elusive common soul. It is
a gathering together of all the smaller interests which find themselves
at a disadvantage against the big established classes, the leasehold
tenant as against the landowner, the retail tradesman as against
the merchant and the moneylender, the Nonconformist as against the
Churchman, the small employer as against the demoralising hospitable
publican, the man without introductions and broad connections against
the man who has these things. It is the party of the many small men
against the fewer prevailing men. It has no more essential reason for
loving the Collectivist state than the Conservatives; the small dealer
is doomed to absorption in that just as much as the large owner; but
it resorts to the state against its antagonists as in the middle ages
common men pitted themselves against the barons by siding with the king.
The Liberal Party is the party against “class privilege” because it
represents no class advantages, but it is also the party that is on
the whole most set against Collective control because it represents
no established responsibility.