131214840-Carl-Schmitt

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paigns. Irrational factors had become more important than debate on issues, and this could
also be observed in Reichstag speeches. These were no longer addressed, as liberal theory
assumed, to the floor, but rather to a mass audience outside. Moreover, although parties
organized the masses to vote, it was entirely unclear what exactly they were being organized
for. Extending the franchise had not resulted in more democratic government, Schumpeter
maintained; universal suffrage only transformed representation into a party system with new
methods to capture voters, a new electoral machine, new party organizations and hierarchies.
That alone, his argument continues,
disposes of rational argument because the size of the groups will burst those bounds within which it is
effective; that creates the professional agitator, the party functionary, the Boss. That makes political
success a question of organization and produces the various leadership circles and lobbies who make
the MPs their puppets. That makes parliament itself a puppet, because agitation and victories outside it
will be more important than a good speech in the house. Because now everyone is legally entitled to
speak, no one will be able to speak except as the master of a machine. That has destroyed the original
sense of parliament, broken its original technique, made its activity look like a farce. 52
Parties dominated by elites increasingly represented particular social classes and corporative
interests. Although these could work with each other and reach compromises, they had
"basically nothing to deliberate or discuss with each other." 53 In contrast to parliamentary
principles, the modern political machine was evolving into an executive that would act, not
talk. This was Carl Schmitt's view too, and by 1923 he was certain that these structural
changes had made discussion and openness, the principles of parliamentarism, a meaningless
façade: "Small and exclusive committees of parties or of party coalitions make their
decisions behind closed doors, and what representatives of the big capitalist interest groups
agree to in the smallest committees is more important for the fate of millions of people,
perhaps, than any political decision." 54
Schmitt's view that parliament had become an "antechamber" for concealed interests and that
its members were no longer, as the Reichs-
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