Book Review - On the Abolition of all Political Parties by Simone Weil

On the Abolition of all Political Parties by Simone Weil

Melbourne: Black Inc., 2013                      ISBN 9781863955881

What a wonderful little volume, containing not only the writing of Weil, but Czeslaw Milosz and Simon Leys (who translated Weil's essay).

Weil had a wonderful ability to get to the heart of the matter with a logic that it is impossible to refute or avoid. In thirty pages she demolishes every reason that may be put forward to defend the creation of any political party. Her central contention is that once a party is formed it's own growth and continued existence become of prime importance. Her other main points are equally as true as the first: that no person can completely agree to all positions held by any political party, that no collective can create doctrine as it is always an individual creation.

With these two facts Weil shows us that the only good representative democracy is one where parties are banned, and where individual representatives follow their own doctrine and ally with others when it suits to achieve their ends.

Reading Weil is a pleasure, as her style scythes through lies and verbiage to get to truth without compromise. That this takes strength of character goes without saying, which is why Milosz found Weil's life and work so personally inspiring. As Leys writes in the final essay in this book, Milosz too was a clear-eyed viewer of cant and hypocrisy in both East and West during the Cold War, and was a seeker for religious truth as well. Milosz's essay, reproduced here, shows a deep understanding of Weil, and the truth she espoused. Milosz was particularly interested in her view of God as absent from the mechanics of the World, and how organised politics was designed to enslave the working class.

At seventy pages, this is not a long work, but one that repays reading more than once.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell