The strange fact was that two parties, which between themselves completely dominated the area of political struggle, nevertheless did not fight each other radically—because they had a silent mutual pact against something which was not a political party at all. Historians have connected the parliamentary corruptibility of that period with this strange limitation of the fight. Nobody thought too badly of a party's selling its conviction in favor of the opposing party because the conviction of that opposing party had a rather broad, even though hidden common basis, and the fight lay elsewhere. The ease of corruption showed that here the restriction of the antagonism through a common feature did not make the conflict more fundamental and objective. On the contrary, it blurred it and contaminated its meaning as necessarily determined by objective circumstances.

XREF: Connects to Arendt's and general political-theory discussions of how nominal oppositions with shared premises corrupt genuine struggle.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 309