On Totalitarianism Of Political Parties

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:

• A political party is a machine to generate collective passions.

• A political party is an organisation designed to exert collective pressure upon the minds of all its individual members.

• The first objective and also the ultimate goal of any political party is its own growth, without limit.

Because of these three characteristics, every party is totalitarian – potentially, and by aspiration. If one party is not actually totalitarian, it is simply because those parties that surround it are no less so. These three characteristics are factual truths – evident to anyone who has ever had anything to do with the every-day activities of political parties.

— Simone Weil, On the Abolition of All Political Parties