131214840-Carl-Schmitt

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prehensive system. For the sense of justice of an entire historical epoch, they seemed to be
essential and indispensable. What was to be secured through the balance guaranteed by
openness and discussion was nothing less than truth and justice itself. One believed that
naked power and force—for liberal, Rechtsstaat thinking, an evil in itself, "the way of
beasts," as Locke said 48 —could be overcome through openness and discussion alone, and
the victory of right over might achieved. There is an utterly typical expression for this way of
thinking: "discussion in place of force." In this formulation, it comes from a man who was
certainly not brilliant, not even important, but a typical adherent, perhaps, of the bourgeois
monarchy. He summarized the warp and woof of the whole complex fabric of constitutional
and parliamentary thought: All progress, including social progress, is realized "through
representative institutions, that is, regulated liberty—through public discussion, that is,
reason.'' 49
The reality of parliamentary and party political life and public convictions are today far
removed from such beliefs. Great political and economic decisions on which the fate of
mankind rests no longer result today (if they ever did) from balancing opinions in public
debate and counterdebate. Such decisions are no longer the outcome of parliamentary debate.
The participation of popular representatives in government—parliamentary government—has
proven the most effective means of abolishing the division of powers, and with it the old
concept of parliamentarism. As things stand today, it is of course practically impossible not
to work with committees, and increasingly smaller committees; in this way the parliamentary
plenum gradually drifts away from its purpose (that is, from its public), and as a result it
necessarily becomes a mere façade. It may be that there is no other practical alternative. But
one must then at least have enough awareness of the historical situation to see that
parliamentarism thus abandons its intellectual foundation and that the whole system of
freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, of public meetings, parliamentary immunities
and privileges, is losing its rationale. Small and exclusive
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