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i
political ideas, and of leading to new victories. The English
Tories, as often as they were deprived of their privileges by a
reform, have still celebrated a political resurrection every time.
The French dynasties have not lost through dethronement all
prospect of regaining the crown. They were able to form mighty
parties that worked for a restoration; and if their efforts did not
lead to success during the Third Republic, this was due to the
intransigence and personal wretchedness of the pretender at the
time and not to any fact that such efforts were quite hopeless.
Rulers of foreign nationality, however, once they have left the
scene, can never get power back unless they have the help of
foreign arms; and, what is much more important, as soon as they
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no longer hold power, they not only are deprived of their privileges
but are completely powerless politically. Not only are they unable
to maintain influence corresponding to their numbers, but, as
members of a foreign nationality, they no longer have any
possibility at all of even being politically active or of having
influence on others. For the political thoughts that now become
dominant belong to a cultural circle that is foreign to them and are
thought, spoken, and written in a language that they do not
understand; they themselves, however, are not in a position to
make their political views felt in this environment. From being
rulers they become not citizens with equal rights but powerless
pariahs who have no say when matters concerning them are being
debated. If without regard to theoretical and antiquarian
misgivings that might be raised against it we want to see a
principle of modern democracy in the old postulate of the estates,
nil de nobis sine nobis [nothing concerning us without us], we also
see that it cannot be implemented for national minorities. They are
governed; they do not have a hand in governing; they are
politically subjugated. Their "treatment" by the national majority
may be quite a good one; they may also remain in possession of
numerous nonpolitical and even a few political privileges; yet they
retain the feeling of being oppressed just because they are "treated"
after all and may not take part.
The large German landowners in those Austrian crown lands
that had a Slavic majority in the legislature felt themselves
despite their electoral privileges, which assured them a special
representation in the provincial chamber and in the provincial
committee nevertheless oppressed, since they were faced by a
majority whose political thinking they could not influence. For the
same reason, German officeholders and house owners who
possessed an electoral privilege that assured them a third of the
seats on the municipal council in a municipality with a Slavic
council majority still felt oppressed.
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No less politically powerless are national minorities that never
have possessed political dominance. This needs to be especially
mentioned just as little of members of historyless nations who have
lived as political inferiors for centuries under foreign rulers as of
immigrants into colonial settlement areas overseas. Accidental
circumstances may temporarily give
them the possibility of political influence; in the long run this is
out of the question. If they do not want to remain politically
without influence, then they must adapt their political thinking to
that of their environment; they must give up their special national
characteristics and their language.
In polyglot territories, therefore, the introduction of a
democratic constitution does not mean the same thing at all as
introduction of democratic autonomy. Majority rule signifies
something quite different here than in nationally uniform
territories; here, for a part of the people, it is not popular rule but
foreign rule.27 If national minorities oppose democratic
arrangements, if, according to circumstances, they prefer princely
absolutism, an authoritarian regime, or an oligarchic constitution,
they do so because they well know that democracy means the same
thing for them as subjugation under the rule of others. That holds
true everywhere and also, so far, for all times. The often cited
example of Switzerland is not relevant here. Swiss democratic
local administration is possible without friction under the
nationality circumstances of Switzerland only because internal
migrations between the individual nationalities have long since had
no significance there. If, say, migrations of French Swiss to the
east should lead to stronger foreign national minorities in the
German cantons, then the national peace of Switzerland would
already have vanished long ago.
27
On the point that the majority principle appears applicable only where it is a question of
settlement of differences within a homogeneous mass, cf. Simmel, Soziologie (Leipzig: 1908), pp.
192 ff.
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For all friends of democracy, for all those who see the political
remedy only in the self-administration and self-government of a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]