Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties

These effects of the dwindling of individuality and the growth of formalism in political life, which have come to light in each of the different aspects from which we have successively considered the work of the Caucus, culminate and are summed up in a way in the highest sphere of political relations, that of the leadership. This sphere had all the less chance of escaping them because the leadership was the visible objective of the Caucus, and provided it with its casus belli. Having gone to war with party leadership, held by the representatives of the old ruling classes, the Caucus has not annihilated it—far from it; but it has subdivided it, broken it into fragments, or, if the expression is preferred, decentralized it; the leaders belonging to the upper middle class, the men of means and social position, have had to share their power with the crowd of small local leaders created by the autonomist organization of the Caucus. But, by working out autonomy and decentralization in too formal a way, with a multiplicity of subdivisions, in accordance with the strict logic of the democratic principle, the Caucus has succeeded mainly in bringing forward local mediocrity, and then installing it in the counsels of the party.