FROM THE ARCHIVES:With communism and fascism the rising political stars in the 1930s, both derisive of parliamentary democracy and free-market capitalism, the leader of the new Fine Gael (United Ireland) party, General Eoin O'Duffy had this to say in his speech to the party's first ardfheis where many delegates wore blue shirt "uniforms" and gave stiff-armed salutes -
JOE JOYCE
GOING ON to ask: “Can the parliamentary system be an effective instrument for the control of the economic life of a country?” General O’Duffy said: “It certainly was never intended for that purpose, and its constitution renders it wholly unfitted for the positive, continuous and enormously complicated task of regulating economic processes in a large community.
Already parliamentary democracy, even in countries where capitalism is not yet very noticeably on the decline, has shown itself unable to cope with the economic problems which are being thrust upon it by the very inability of capitalism to solve them in the old way. For example, in England there is a general consensus of opinion, even among Conservatives, that Parliament needs to be thoroughly overhauled.
“There is no reason why we should make an idol of Parliament. It is a human institution, and, like everything human, has its limitations. A man may believe absolutely in political democracy, and yet find many faults in the present parliamentary system; for the parliamentary system does not exhaust the content of political democracy. As a matter of fact, it does not follow from any principle of political democracy that a general legislature elected by general suffrage is the fittest or only organ whereby the community can exercise its functions.
“I am a firm believer in Parliament. I believe with equal firmness in the necessity for supplementing Parliament for economic purposes, and supplementing it – and this is the important point – in such a way as to prevent the State from growing into that monster which people call the totalitarian State, because it will not allow anything else beside itself swallowing up the entire life of a man, economics, politics, religion, the family, and, finally, the individual, so that even the human soul is reduced to the level of State property.
“It is evident that any Christian social programme must take into account the limitations of the present Parliamentary system, and find means for supplementing it for economic and social purposes. Such means are vocational councils to deal with the specialised problems of agriculture, education, industry, transport, etc., and composed of men actually engaged in these activities. Only by this road can we advance to the new and better order, which we may call the corporative order.
“Here we have a new type of democracy – economic democracy. It does not replace political democracy – it completes it.”