[ssf] How Bazzar ...

[kilgore trout]

"In speaking here about the European democracies
  between the two world wars,
  I am deliberately going to exclude Germany.

  But it cannot be my task either
  to portray the testing and failure
  of democracy in detail;

   I am going to confine myself to pointing out
   some typical phenomena and important turning-points.

  For this I must use a schematic approach
  which I realise
  is no more than an aid to study and assessment.


  If we use the internal structure of states as a method of division,
  *three zones* can be distinguished in Europe
  before the First World War.

   In the first *zone* lie the democratic states of Western Europe
   -- the British Isles and on the Continent France
      the Scandinavian Countries, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland.

   In these countries a democratic constitution existed before 1914.

   The formation of governments lay in the hands of the parliaments
   and in the monarchies the heads of states
   no longer functioned as political rulers.

   The upper houses had been defeudalised
   or had lost considerable importance
   compared with the elected representatives of the people.

   Universal equal suffrage had been or shortly was to be introduced.

   The decisive steps towards democratisation had been taken
   in a period of great economic expansion
   and neither economic crisis
   nor military defeats
   had shaken the new system of government.

   Social legislation was as yet barely included
   among the duties of state
   and was making a slow beginning.

   It was not yet the centre of political controversy
   and the state still had no need
   to make material demands on its citizens;

    one has only to remember the rates of income tax in those times
    which to us today seem inconceivably low.

   Up to the outbreak of war
   the French had not been able to make up their minds
   to introduce an income tax at all,

   An essential fact was that in these countries
   the clergy of the Protestant Churches supported
   or at least did not resist the process of democratisation
   and accordingly in the part-Catholic, part-Protestant countries
   -- Belgium, Holland, Switzerland
      and also to a certain degree France --
   the Catholic clergy respected this development
   and were merely concerned to maintain the Church's position
   in the controversy with "Liberalism" and "Laicism".

   These were the states of bourgeois democracy
   to which North America belonged
   as the only country outside Europe.

   With the exception of France
   none of them had experienced any severe internal crisis
   during the course of democratisation
   and France had quickly surmounted hers.

   In these countries democracy had taken root,
   its principles were no longer the subject of controversy,
   while the small states had no dreams of hegemony
   and therefore didn't pursue an active foreign policy
   so that question, too,
   was not the subject of any political dissension.


  The structure of the constitution of Spain,
  Portugal, Italy and Greece,
  which also must be included in the *first zone*,
  was likewise at that time more or less democratic in a formal sense.

  But these countries lacked the social conditions necessary
  for democracy to take root.

  In varying degrees they had preserved their feudal character.

  A high proportion of illiteracy,
  great differences in wealth and the lack of the middle class
  impeded the process of democratisation
  which was interrupted and even imperiled by revolutionary outbursts.

  An exception was Italy
  although social conditions here were similar
  to those in the other three countries.

  But in Italy the instability characteristic of the other states
  was mitigated by the supreme parliamentary skill
  of the Liberal Giolitti
  who was several times Prime Minister between 1895 - 1914.

  In all these states the Catholic clergy,
  supported by and supporting the feudal upper classes,
  attempted to stem even to reverse the democratic process
  as a defence against liberal
  and still more against socialist revolutionary tendencies.

  On the other hand,
  as elsewhere the use of democratic procedures was only possible
  in those countries thanks to the great economic upsurge
  which the world had experienced in more than fifty years of peace.

  This in the first zone the stable confront the unstable democracies.


  The *second zone* includes the so-called "old legitimist states",
  the constitutional monarchies of Germany and Austria-Hungary
  -- in this context I am leaving Turkey and Russia
     as a whole out of account.

   The heritage of absolutism, though restricted by the constitution,
   had survived in these countries.

   The upper chamber still retained a mainly feudal character.

   The monarch was also the ruler,
   besides being the military commander-in-chief
   and master of the administration.

   In the sphere of legislation
   the parliament was only one partner amongst three.

   The Swiss historian Werner Näf
   has called the Bismarckian *Kaiserreich*

     "a monarchy with democratic additions".

   In both states, thanks to a highly qualified judiciary
   and a homogeneous and equal well qualified bureaucracy,
   strict constitutionalism prevailed.

   If the western and northern frontiers of Germany
   and the western frontier of Austria-Hungary
   separated the democratic
   from the constitutionally authoritarian sphere,
   the zone of European constitutionalism,
   with as prerequisite the separation of powers,
   stretched to the eastern frontier of Germany
   and the eastern and southern frontiers of the Hapsburg Empire.

   Thanks to the existence of a ruling sovereign
   and a uniform and well functioning bureaucracy
   the organisation of the states was stable.

   On the other hand there was instability in Austria-Hungary
   owing to the possibility of a crisis
   arising from the centrifugal forces of its diverse nationalities
   and in Germany from the steady growth in parliament
   of Social Democracy which at that time
   was directed both against the monarchy and the middle class.


  The *third zone* is very much harder to determine.

  In his *Weltgeschichte der neuesten Zeit*
  the Swiss historian Salis
  places its frontiers on the Elbe and the Danube.

  This seems to me too far west.

  But it may be difficult to find a geographic demarcation line at all.

  This is the area of East, Central and South-East Europe
  with a marked or mainly agrarian character
  in which class conceptions and feudal social conditions
  still strongly predominate,

  The idea of the constitutional state encounters
  and impinges on them
  without being able to prevail over the feudal social order
  as it has done in Central and Western Europe.

  The economic prosperity of the West
  penetrated this area only very slightly or hardly at all.

  Even where the process of industrialisation has state,
  the feudal order remains
  or the middle-class *entrepreneurs* attempt to adapt it to their ends.

  The Churches are authoritarian or feudal in outlook,
  to say the least antidemocratic;
    the percentage of illiteracy is very high.

  To this zone belong those parts of the Russian state
  with Russian populations
  which have inherited western conceptions from their pasts,
  in other words the Baltic provinces and Poland.

  Finland occupies a special position
  in so far as it exercises a certain degree of autonomy,
  though in the course of time this has been restricted by the Russians,
  and also because
  it has close connections with the Scandinavian countries
  owing to its geographical position and to the fact that,
  despite growing self-awareness on the part of the Finnish population,
  its Swedish upper class still holds the political reins.

  To this zone also belong the Balkan states
  which with their predominantly Greek Orthodox populations
  arose during the nineteenth century in the European part
  of the Turkish Empire.

  These are young states,
  in some cases formerly ruled autocratically by foreign dynasties,
  which owing to their national conflicts and lack of consolidation
  were in a very unstable condition.

  Characteristic of this zone is the mixture of nationalities
  which produce a variety of nationalisms on a small scale.

  Austria projected into this zone as a multi-racial state
  with supranational power.

  One must therefore distinguish between:

   * a democratic zone
   * a zone of constitutional monarchy, and
   * a mainly authoritarian zone.



  The peace of Brest-Litowsk at the end of the First World War
  in 1918 led to the separation of areas
  marked by European conceptions from Russia,
  namely Poland, the Baltic provinces and Finland.

  These countries were thereby preserved from Bolshevisation.

  According to the German conception,
  constitutional monarchies were to be created in this area
  with more or less strong dependency on Vienna and Berlin,
  a conception which was powerfully influenced
  by fear of the social agrarian revolution
  which was threatening from the East.

  Leaving for a moment all national considerations out of account,
  from a purely organisational point of view
  the transition from feudal authoritarianism
  to a constitutional monarchy
  would probably have proceeded more smoothly
  and would have been less subject to crisis,
  because in this way considerably less demands
  would have been made on the population than through democracy.

  But in the ruling circles in Germany
  at that time less interest was shown in constitutional adaptation
  coupled with a high degree of autonomy
  than in military control and economic exploitation.

  In articles in the *Frankfurter Zeitung* which appeared in 1915
  -- in other words before the Bolshevist revolution --
  Max Weber had recommended considerate treatment by Germany
  of the western Slav states
  so as not to drive them on to the side of Russia.


  Germany was forced to abandon this conception
  through the military defeat in the summer and autumn of 1918.

  Its place was taken by Woodrow Wilson's plan,
  President of the victorious United States,
  as expressed in his fourteen points:
   right to self determination and democracy
   for all peoples under foreign rule.

  It was not until 1917 that the First World War
  received its ideological stamp
  and the impulse came from the United States
  which entered the war in that year
  as a struggle between democracy and despotism.

  The victory of the allies was counted therefore
  as a victory of democracy ..."






  -- Theodor Eschenburg

     The Collapse of Democratic Regimes between the First
     and Second World Wars (Part)

     This essay was originally broadcast in the Third Programme
     of the *Norddeutscher Rundfunk* ~ 1961

     Translated by Lawrence Wilson

     From *The Road to Dictatorship : Germany 1918-1933*