Parliamentary Assemblies
Parliamentary assemblies are categorized as a heterogeneous crowd that is not anonymous, though it is imperfect in both of these qualities.
Heterogeneity is possible, but not always evident, in that the manner of the election of the members may cause they to have very similar characteristics. The electorate, whether of their own accord or through manipulation of the voting process, may well elect a largely homogeneous group.
While the members of the crowd are known, and in that manner the crowd is not anonymous, they often have anonymity in that a decision is always attributed to the group and the members who supported it are seldom identified.
The latter is a concern, as committees in general are "the most impersonal and, in consequence, the most oppressive form of tyranny." Individuals in a committee are able to escape personal responsibility by speaking in acting in the name of a group and will not be held personally accountable. For example, the committees of the French Revolution were more savage and merciless than any tyrant ever dreamed of being.
The parliamentary system has been idealized in western culture - it is believed, quite erroneously, that a large gathering of men is more capable than a small number of coming to a wise decision. But, being a crowd, the wisdom, education, and intelligence are not compounded, but reduced to a level well beneath that of its least wise, learned, and intelligent member.
The difficulty of communicating among a large group of people means that they are not capable of complex thinking, but must distill their remarks to the simplest expression. Coupled with the conflicts among political parties, this causes parliaments to result in heated debates between extreme opinions rather than patient deliberation of a more moderate nature.
Every member of an assembly has fixed and unalterable opinions which no amount of argument can shake, but are otherwise very open to suggestion and subservient to prestige. An elderly English statesman is quoted: "During the fifty years that I have sat at Westminster, I have listened to thousands of speeches ... but few of them have changed my opinion. Not one of them has changed my vote."
It is also an erroneous belief that the members of a parliament think and vote as individuals. Most belong to political parties, which think and vote as a group, having reviewed the proposals an decided which among them support their common agenda, which is defined by a simplistic platform composed of rather extreme principles. The leaders of these parties are the real rulers of an assembly, and the real rules of the nation that the assembly governs. As a result, an assembly does not behave according to the notion that members represent their electors, but they represent their parties - and the proposals and votes represent, as a rule, the opinions of very few men who are more devoted to abstract principle than the interests of real citizens.
The intelligence of a man, even one of considerable genius, is "less felt in political assemblies than anywhere else." A skilled orator may be applauded for his performance, but his ideas are clearly ignored in the voting that follows. A simple statement, however crudely delivered, is of greater influence - though only if it agrees with the existing ideas and opinions of a crowd - and in this manner parliaments are no different than street mobs.
And so it can be seen that the "great" statesmen were not individuals who have ushered parliaments to a better path, but those who reinforced the notion that the decision that was already settled in their minds was justified. A leader does not lead public opinion, but merely agrees with it however erroneous it may be.
The effective methods of leadership in a parliament are those that have already been discussed in general, but Le Bon summarizes them again:
- Personal prestige is highly influential, as people mindlessly imitate prestigious people. In fact, the success of a speech depends almost solely on the prestige of the speaker - as a sound argument is ignored if it comes from a person who is not respected.
- The use of emotional appeal is more influential than the use of logical proof. Proof is unnecessary, and reason ignored.
- Likewise, the use of formulas - simple phrases and words that trigger an automatic response - is more effective than lengthy speeches
- No affirmation can be too violent, nor any declamation too threatening, if the audience already agrees with it in principle
- The intelligence, education, and cultivation of an individual often do him more harm than good. Crowds are stupid and brutish, and prefer their leaders to be little better than themselves.
- The leader must speak to the crowd, not to men as individuals, as an individual is no longer himself when he becomes part of a crowd, and will approve of measures that are "most adverse" to his stated principles and personal interests.
A particular difficulty in dealing with assemblies is that participants are members of multiple crowds. A representative may thin kas an individual when he reads a proposal in the quiet of his study. He is quite a different man when he discusses it with his electors. He is quite different still when he discusses it with fellows of his political party. He is different still when he discusses it with the members of a committee. And he is different still when he discusses it on the floor of parliament.
It can be conceded that parliamentary government is effective at escaping tyrants, but it is not an escape from tyranny: it is merely an exchange of the yoke of personal tyranny with that of group tyranny, which can in many instances be far worse.
He also identifies two tendencies that seem common to all parliamentary governments:
- Fiscal wastefulness derives from the short-sightedness of crowds: they want what they want right now, and give no consideration to the broader impact. So representatives may vote for a bill because it delivers some benefit that seems alluring, but neglect to consider the cost of delivering it.
- The progressive erosion of individual liberties may stem from the same cause (the desire to achieve something while ignoring the cost), but also has to do with the nature of law itself. Any law is a restriction on liberty, and each law passed restricts it further. The incessant legislation does not stop at critical issues, but eventually encumbers "the pettiest actions of existence with the most complicated formalities."
It is for these reasons that many governments topple: they exhaust their resources and crumble for the inability to deliver basic services because they have spent their resources wastefully, or they exhaust the patience of the people who, having been pushed too far little by little, will revolt.
A revolution does not necessarily replace bad government with good, but merely creates a new government with a clean slate - which will overtime degraded itself by the same two causes.
The slow progression of both tends to hide their insidiousness. Considering personal liberties, they are not violated all at once. A government may respect the right of the citizens to speak freely, but successive legislation restricts when they may speak, where they may speak, and what they may say by increments until citizens have no freedom to speak at all. And all the while the citizens believe they still have this right, and are amenable to and even defensive of each petty restriction that, in aggregate, eliminate it.
That said, Le Bon turns to discussing the evolution of civilizations. (EN: This was part of the chapter above, but is such a departure I will separate it as the conclusion to this work.)