— Dune: Part Two

Reverend Mother😔💚

To assess political parties according to the criteria of truth, justice and the public interest, let us first identify their essential characteristics.
There are three of these:

1. A political party is a machine to generate collective passions.
2. A political party is an organisation designed to exert collective pressure upon the minds of all its individual members.
3. The first objective and also the ultimate goal of any political party is its own growth, without limit.

When someone joins a party, it is usually because he has perceived, in the activities and propaganda of this party, a number of things that appeared to him just and good. Still, he has probably never studied the position of the party on all the problems of public life. When joining the party, he therefore also endorses a number of positions which he does not know. In fact, he submits his thinking to the authority of the party. As, later on, little by little, he begins to learn these positions, he will accept them without further examination.

In fact – and with very few exceptions – when a man joins a party, he submissively adopts a mental attitude which he will express later on with words such as, ‘As a monarchist, as a Socialist, I think that . . .’ It is so comfortable! It amounts to having no thoughts at all. Nothing is more comfortable than not having to think.

Weil proposes that the very concept of a political party is exactly what makes it anti-democratic:
First, a political party generates collective passion. This passion clouds the clear, reasonable judgement that's essential for the democratic process. It makes voters biased.
Second, it insidiously establishes conformity and steers the public opinion in accordance to its agenda, not in accordance to truth, justice, and public interest.
Third, it's a totalitarian system since it seeks its own infinite growth.

«وإنّي امرؤٌ لا تَستَقِرُّ دراهِمي
على الكَفّ إلّا عابِراتُ سَبيلِ.»
‏
-ابن الرومي.

يجعل الشّاعر من الدراهم كأنّها كيانات حيّة، تمرّ عبر كفّه مستعجلة، لا تعرف القرار فيها، وهذا تصوير لسخاء لا يخالطه التردد، وزهدًا يرتقي فوق ماديّة الحياة، حيث المال عنده وسيلة عابرة لا غاية مستقرة.

يَرى البَخيلُ سبيلَ المالِ واحدةً
إنّ الجَوادَ يَرى في مالِه سُبُلا

— حاتم الطائي

Nearly everywhere – often even when dealing with purely technical problems – instead of thinking, one merely takes sides: for or against. Such a choice replaces the activity of the mind. This is an intellectual leprosy; it originated in the political world and then spread through the land, contaminating all forms of thinking. This leprosy is killing us.

In the same fashion, there was no great difference between being devoted to a party or being devoted to a church – or being devoted to anti-religion. One was in favour of, or against, belief in God, for or against Christianity, and so on.

— On The Abolition of All Political Parties, by Simone Weil