The pure institution of democratic control in The Commune (yes and Marx), and the Levelers.

In The Civil War in France, Marx notes that the Commune was committed to the following mechanism of democratic accountability:

The judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham independence which had but served to mask their abject subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken, and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants, magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable.—The Third Address, May, 1871

Marx implies that in practice judges are not so independent (and presumably impartial) as one would wish, but rather (too) subservient to existing government. (We all know examples of deference to the executive by purportedly impartial judges in free nations, so this should not surprise.) Interestingly enough, one might understand the Commune’s proposal as a mechanism to keep judges subservient to the sovereign, but now to the true sovereign: the people.

The Commune’s proposal covers all public servants and magistrates. So, it is unusually broad. For example, “Article II of the California Constitution, approved by California voters in 1911, allows people to recall and remove elected officials and justices of the State Supreme Court from office.” This is a lot more narrow form of recall; elected officials and judges are a small sub-set of all public officials. Let’s call the expansive institution that all public servants are electable and subject to recall, the ‘pure institution of democratic control.’

The pure institution of democratic control really has two components: first, that all public servants should be voted on by the public. This idea we can find in Grouchy’s Letters on Sympathy (in the context of her broader argument on criminal reform): “if all appointments were granted by a general choice and a free election, our conscience would only rarely need to resist the sort of motivation that leads to crime or injustices inspired by ambition.” (Letter VII, translated by Sandrine Bergès.) While expansive, this lacks the second component, that is, that all these officials can be subject to recall.

It’s important to distinguish the pure institution of democratic control from imperative mandates for representatives. Representatives with such a mandate are required to follow the orders or instructions from their voters. And if they do not do so they can be dismissed. These imperatives mandates were very common in representative systems where monitoring of the representative was very costly. This was, for example, the practice in the United Provinces (Hume comments on this somewhere), and (as Stasavage notes) in the Cortes. In such a system the representative really was more of a delegate. But the imperative mandate is quite compatible with aristocracy and oligarchy; it’s not designed to express popular sovereignty. Imperative mandates were popular among some of the more radical elements during the French revolution (see Clara Egger & Raul Magni-Berton. "The Recall in France: A long standing and unresolved debate." p. 52.) But imperative mandates were never used to control all public officials.

Marx does not comment on it, but it’s pretty clear that the possibility of recall is a remedy to possible betrayal of trust by public servants, and, if it were effective, then it is also a useful mechanism to prevent such betrayal. The downside risks are also non-trivial: it’s pretty clear that minor officials, who lack resources and media pull, can be easily scapegoated to voters by this mechanism by higher ups and the media. It may also make it more difficult for office-holders to pursue long-term policy that will not be second-guessed or misconstrued; and it may make government much more erratic and less predictable (and costly). The pure institution of democratic control also reduces the possibility of appointing administrators according to merit; and it seems incompatible with a professional bureaucracy. Finally, it only works if the people are vigilant; and the whole point of delegating government in trust is to make such permanent vigilance unnecessary. So, while it is fundamentally republican in character, it is quite illiberal in practice. About that some other time more.

As is presumably well known among my readers this passage in Marx attracted the attention of Lenin and Luxemburg. But in reflecting on it, I was curious to learn more about the origins of the pure institution of democratic control. In a 1968 essay (here), Robert Wolfe had noted that it was one of the five items of the program of Club de la Revolution in 1870 (see p. 98).* So, this helps explain it being in the air before the Commune. Wolfe notes that the Club de la Revolution had an eclectic mixture of commitments, including Blanquist and Proudhonist.

On social media various experts on Marx and radical politics, assured me that it is mentioned in the Jacobin (1793) constitution and a common-place among radical and anarchist theorizing of the nineteenth century. Much to my surprise I could not find it in the Jacobin constitution (here). I also couldn’t find it in Victor Considerant’s (1847) Principles of Socialism. Manifesto of 19th century democracy, which is surprisingly epistemocratic in character. (Feel free to correct me!) Given the significance of Blanqui to the Commune, I assumed it would be easy to locate in his writings. I didn’t find any, but my search was not exhaustive.

The first breakthrough was provided by my former NewAPPS buddy, Mark Norris Lance, who directed me to Proudhon. After a bit of lucky, directed searching, I found it:

Most of all in a democracy, which is the last phase of governmental evolution, it is necessary to study this inevitable desertion by Power of the cause of the people.

What do the people do when they proclaim their own sovereignty, that is, the authority of their own votes, after they are tired of their aristocrats, and indignant at the corruption of the princes?

They say to themselves:

Before everything else, order is necessary to society.

The guardian of this order, which should mean liberty and equality for us, is the Government.

Therefore let us take the Government into our own hands. Let the Constitution and the laws become the expression of our own will; let the office holders and magistrates, who are our servants elected by us, and always subject to recall, never be permitted to do anything but what the good pleasure of the people has determined upon. Then we shall be sure, if our watchfulness never relaxes, that the Government will be devoted to our interests, that it will no longer be the tool of the rich, nor the prey of the ambitious politicians; that affairs will be conducted as we wish and to our advantage.

Thus reasons the multitude, at each epoch of oppression. Simple reasoning, logic that cannot be more straightforward, and which never fails in its effect. Even if the multitude went so far as to say, with Messrs. Considerant and Rittinghausen: Our deputies are our enemies; let us govern ourselves and we shall be free;—there would be no change in the argument. The principle, that is to say, Government, remaining the same, there would still be the same conclusion. General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851) Study 4 : The Principle of Authority [emphasis added]

I was pleased to see that Proudhon directs the pure institution of democratic control against Considerant (which confirmed me in my suspicion that it’s not to be found there).

However much to my amazement, on re-reading, Proudhon himself insists that while the pure institution of democratic control is sound reasoning, it fails in practice (“never fails in its effect”). So, this suggests to me that its status was contested in the generation before the Commune.

I decided it was time to look at some secondary literature. Luckily, there is a fine edited volume, The Politics of Recall Elections (edited by Yanina Welp and Laurence Whitehead) that just appeared (in 2020). It has a number of papers that engage with the varied history of recalls. For example, I learned it seems Proudhon did advocate a kind of imperative mandate in his understanding of the relationship between local communes and the central government in his (1863) The Federative Principle and the Need to Reconstitute the Party of Revolution. (Clara Egger & Raul Magni-Berton (2020) "The Recall in France: A long standing and unresolved debate." p. 53) This is worth exploring more because it seems plausible (as Egger & Magni-Berton suggest) it influenced the Commune.

In his very fine essay, "The Political Theory of the Recall. A Study in the history of the Ideas," Matt Qvortrup traces ideas about recalls back to the Romans. But, in passing, he notes that “the Levelers mentioned the power of removing and calling to account magistrates” (p. 32).

This is the hint we needed. Because if we go to the full passage we see it articulates a lovely, detailed version of the pure institution of democratic control:

That the power of this, and all future Representatives of this Nation, is inferior only to theirs who choose them, and doth extend, without the consent or concurrence of any other person or persons, to the enacting, altering, and repealing of laws, to the erecting and abolishing of offices and courts, to the appointing, removing, and calling to account magistrates and officers of all degrees, to the making war and peace, to the treating with foreign States, and, generally, to whatsoever is not expressly or impliedly reserved by the represented to themselves.— “The Agreement of the People, as presented to the Council of the Army” (1647; the fourth declaration)

So, until I find evidence to the contrary I treat the Levelers as originating the pure instition of democratic control. I don’t mean to say there can’t be earlier origins. Qvortrup mentions that the Bay Colony allowed councilors to be removed by the voters from 1631 onward (see pp. 32-3). And he traces variants of this more narrow position through the Articles of Confederation, Madison’s first draft of the constitution, and the anti-Federalist writings. (p. 33) So, it’s quite possible that these, too, involve commitment to the more expansive pure institution of democratic control.

Qvortrup also notes that one may well read Rousseau’s Social Contract (and also the Considerations on the Government of Poland) as advocating recall of at least some officials (see Book 3, chapter 18: “qu'il peut les établir et les destituer quand il lui plait.”) But the details are rather vague.

To sum up: the pure institution of democratic control was articulated most clearly by Levelers and later the Commune. This suggests that egalitarian revolutionary moments that occur in the midst of (civil) war with an armed citizenry are natural breeding grounds for it (arguably Lenin and Luxemburg also fit this generalization). It is no surprise because the pure institution is one of the few devices that allows for true bottom up direct accountability. The long passage quoted from Proudhon suggests the existence of a wider debate, and it would be worth recovering it.

*The accompanying footnote reads, “The programme appears in Le Combat, 29 Nov. 1870, where it is identified only as the programme of the district Clignancourt, the club founded by Dupas and Schneider. It would appear that this programme was also adopted by the Club de la Revolution as a whole, perhaps at the general meeting of 6 December.” I couldn’t find much on this Robert Wolfe, but he may be the same person who was fired for his involvement in a Vietnam-era protest that involved blocking access to the Courant institute’s computer.