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The Team Against the Committee
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
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A certain small group of men (hereafter called “the team”) shares an intention, the implementation of which requires at least a once-for-all decision of some public authority. The most obvious procedure is to plead in favor of that decision with the holders (or holder) of the competent authority. The next most obvious is to win over people who have easy and habitual access to the decision-maker or makers. These first and second procedures can be practiced under any regime.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1963
References
1 It may require as much as the complete taking-over of public authority but we begin with the narrower requirement.
2 For example, in the United States: that all unions be dissolved and henceforth illegal, or that all corporations with a capital exceeding a million dollars be nationalized, or that no citizen with a German grandfather be eligible to public office.
3 For American readers, it may be proper to point out that the present definition is different from Madison's; it is simpler and, I believe, more convenient Madison wrote: “By faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, or who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community” (Federalist X) I quite agree with Dahl, Robert A. in A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago, 1956)Google Scholar that such a definition is equivocal. Say that I am a member of a group “united and actuated by some common impulse.” I shall not grant that our action is directed against “the rights of other citizens” but only against rights abused or usurped, or which, while they may at this moment be positive rights (under present law) have no basis in equity and should “rightly” be cut down by a change in the law. In like manner, I shall not grant that our action is directed against “the permanent and aggregate interests of the community” but only against a caricature of these interests invoked by our opponents. A difference of opinion regarding what rights should be and what are the aggregate interests must then produce a difference in the denomination of our movement, a faction to those who disagree with us, but not to ourselves.
On the contrary the far simpler definition offered above rests upon two ascertainable facts: that some are banded against others, and that their spirit is bellicose; and, of course, it may be more or less so. This banding and bellicosity is what classical writers have had in mind when speaking of factions.
4 With but one exception, Machiavelli.
5 “Hostility” from hostis means “enemy” but originally nothing other than “stranger,” he who is not one of us.
6 Hume, David, Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, Vol. I (London, 1742), Part I, Essay VII, 52Google Scholar.
7 Action groups such as I have in mind differ essentially from American political parties. The former I picture as a bunching of energies, a kinetic phenomenon, while I regard the latter mainly as a bipartition of the political field, a structuring of space helpful for balancing the “sides” of the chorus. The distinction of American political parties is useful in the same way, though to a much higher degree, than the distinction of the “prompt” side in theatrical performance. To my mind the great merit of American political parties is that they are structural facilities for orderly play, containers rather than expressions of political will.
8 See my article, “The Manners of Politics,” in Yale Review, March, 1962.