Political rationality – what else are we fighting for?
by Henrik Zinkernagel
We live in a world where problems such as wars, pollution, poverty and violations of
human rights are embarrassingly prominent. And even though most of us feel it ought to be
different, we seem incapable of changing the situation. Not just because good intentions
often get buried in economical interests that appear to be far stronger than ourselves. But
also because it has turned out to be remarkably difficult, e.g. for the anti-globalisation
movements, to formulate an overall rational political vision for what the world ought to be
like.
The question of how it ought to be is a classic philosophical question of
fundamental political interest. Unfortunately, the general accepted philosophical answer is
that one cannot get from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ – that is, one cannot deduce logically from how the
world actually is, to how it ought to be. We can observe that millions of people are starving,
that pollution destroys our living conditions, and that violations of human rights take place
daily in all parts of the world. But according to standard philosophy, we cannot deduce
from this that it is rationally and logically wrong. Of course, to a certain extent we can
choose values – like the desire for a cleaner environment or increased solidarity – and then
conclude that what is going on today cannot be right. But it helps too little as long as one
might as well choose other values – such as the desire for increased wealth or power –
higher. The West condemned China after the violent acts against humanity on the
Tiananmen Square in 1989. But today the critique has practically disappeared while the
West has re-established it's economic relationship with China, one of the world largest
markets. This is done in spite of the fact that although China has made minor
improvements, there are no doubts whatsoever that the country continues with large-scale
violations of human rights. This is but one example among many which illustrates that
politicians in the West do care about human rights – as long as they are not in conflict with
economical interests.
However, the philosopher Peter Zinkernagel has discovered that standard
philosophy, and thereby the very foundation of our thinking, is wrong (see e.g. his book
The Power of Customary Views, Copenhagen: Gerd Preisler Publishing 2001). The
discovery consists in the realization that logic is not identical to formal logic (which
essentially says that we should not contradict ourselves). Rather formal logic is only one
among other examples of necessary logical relations between different concepts – and there
are thus no a priori reasons to assume that we cannot get logically from how the world is,
to how it ought to be. The main characteristic of such logical relations is that they cannot be
denied without rendering meaningless the concepts appearing in them. For politics the
discovery means that person’s rights are not a value we can choose if we like but rather a
basic undeniable political norm. The argument is that we cannot deny that politics ought to
respect person’s rights without doing away with politics as a rational activity (that politics
also contain irrational elements is irrelevant in this connection). The point can be
summarized through the following four premises:
*Politics deals with persons and person’s forms of organization, and politics is
about what political decisions ought to be made.
*By ‘person’ we understand something which, in normal circumstances, can
participate in social relationships (politics deals with some of these social relationships).
*That persons can participate in social relationships means that persons can assume
obligations and have rights.
*That persons can assume obligations and have rights means that these persons
know an objective condition for using the word ‘ought’ – namely that persons ought to be
treated as persons having rights.
None of these premises can be denied without rendering meaningless what we talk
about, e.g. we cannot say ‘here we have a person who, in normal circumstances, can
participate in social relationships but who cannot assume obligations and does not have
rights’. We therefore cannot deny that politics ought to respect persons rights without
rendering meaningless the word ‘ought’, thereby ‘rights’, thereby ‘persons’, and thereby
‘politics’. That politics ought to respect person’s rights thus constitutes a necessary logical
relation between the words ‘politics’, ‘ought’, and ‘person’s rights’ in the sense that we
would no longer know what a rational discussion in politics is, if we deny the relation. Try
yourself, while pretending to discuss politics rationally, to pronounce the sentence “politics
need not to respect person’s rights”.
It may of course be discussed, for instance, what the precise definition of person’s
rights is, but in fact the necessary logical relation between ‘politics’, ‘ought’, and ‘person’s
rights’ holds independently of the precise definitions of these concepts. Unless we want to
say that we do not at all know what the concepts mean. That we, for instance, might equally
well say ‘Wolfgang does not have the right to expect that I will not hit him without
provocation’ as opposed to ‘Wolfgang does have the right to expect that I will not hit him
without provocation’. Thus, the logical relation between these concepts holds for any
definition of the concepts one might come up with, provided that the suggested definition is
not arbitrary, and that it can be justified relative to how these words are actually employed
in logical or practical use of language (we are therefore not talking of other uses of
language such as poetry or humour). This last clause is not a weakness, for if somebody
claims that we know nothing about how words are used logically or practically, he is not
only at odds with the actual state of affairs – but we (and him/herself) would not understand
what he/she is saying. The clause of non-arbitrariness of definitions follows since rational
discussions are incompatible with arbitrary use of words. This means, for instance, that
persons cannot be defined exclusively as, say, ‘Christians’, because one might then equally
well define persons as ‘Buddists’, ‘Eskimos’ or ‘red-hairs’ – illustrating that any such
limiting definition would be arbitrary and therefore irrational.
The discovery of the basic political norm makes it embarrassingly clear that the
current political situation is not only deplorable but also grotesque: Political discussions
have, at least in principle, the purpose of convincing the opponents that some actions are
more correct than others. At the same time, since basic political norms are (so far)
unknown, we assume that no political action can be rationally better than any other – at
most there can be discussions between subjective values and interests. The current political
situation is hardly made less grotesque by the fact that the closest we have to a basic norm
in politics today is not the respect for person’s rights but rather the respect for money and
power.
From theory to practice
How should such a political rationality be carried out practically? At first, it demands a
revolt from inside ourselves. If it becomes clear to everybody, or at least to sufficiently
many, that power – whether economical, political or religious – cannot logically and
rationally be put above persons (something most of us already feel), the ground is prepared
for substantial changes. In practice, we will have to evaluate all political proposals by
attempting to judge if they are likely to contribute to the political goal that is a direct
consequence of the basic norm – namely the respect for person’s rights and the, as far as
possible, equal rights of all persons (equal rights to everybody being the only reasonable
way to share rights). By the same standard, we must – as voters – attempt to judge who
among our politicians are acting rationally. Of course, few politicians would disagree that
politics ought to respect person’s rights. But since the norm constitutes the rational
foundation for politics, the question is if the politicians also agree that nothing can have
higher priority than person’s rights.
Political situations are extremely hard to survey, and it will therefore often be
complicated to evaluate whether a political proposal is rational or not. First, the norm will
be insufficient in many cases, as different rights can be in conflict with one another. But
while it may be difficult to compare rights, there can be no doubt that, for instance, the right
to property is less important than the right not to die of starvation. Otherwise we would
indeed be using the concept of rights arbitrarily. Second, we will often make wrong
judgements, as things may turn out differently than expected. But although the political
norm is not a crystal ball to predict the future, it is nevertheless our only available objective
standard to evaluate political proposals.
We know that power concentrations imply that certain persons get more power and
more rights than others. Furthermore, we know that wars and ecological catastrophes are
consequences of the growth and collision of power concentrations. The growth of power
concentrations thus works against the political norm of equal rights to everybody, and, in
general, we should therefore try to diminish power concentrations. This holds in spite of the
fact that some power concentrations are most likely needed to secure our rights, and in spite
of our uncertainty of what form and size such necessary power concentrations ought to
have. Since we have no rational reasons to identify persons with citizens of a particular
country, conviction, or colour, the overall political goal must be the global respect of
person’s rights. Naturally, the goal requires collaboration between nations but such
collaboration should, as far as possible, be made without building up new power
concentrations. We do not know how this difficult task should be accomplished.
Nevertheless, if all parties are conscious of the basic political norm, there are reasons to be
optimistic.
Economically, the task is first and foremost to realize that the political norm must
rationally have priority over any other issue. There is a widespread tendency in the West to
think that we by necessity must first have a strong (growing) economy and then attend the
social needs of the people. The political norm tells us that the order of factors ought to be
reversed, i.e. that we must first work for assuring person’s rights. To this end it might be
wise to employ the already existing market economy – but in a modified form in which
growth is not primary.
One way to achieve this would be to promote a harmonization between the
objective of companies and the objective for political actions (which is, first of all, the
respect for person’s right). For instance we could aim for an ethical and rational policy for
companies in which large parts of the profit is used for charity and to assure healthier
production methods to the benefit of the environment, the employees and the customers.
Since this model still assumes that growth is unconditionally beneficial, such a rational
policy for companies needs to contain factors restricting growth – in accordance with the
objective of not building new power concentrations. One could for instance implement the
criterion that companies should be small enough for the distance between top and bottom to
be sufficiently short to assure employee participation in company decisions. Of course, this
is not an unambiguous constraint, and it is probably impossible to specify the maximum
size of a company. But the mere focus on such strategies would most likely emphasize that
growth and increased profit are not primary goals for rational companies – and,
additionally, this focus would make it very hard to justify new company fusions. That such
a rational policy for companies might also make employees’ work more meaningful can
hardly count as negative.
Of course, there will be those who think that humans naturally think in accordance
with the contemporary company policy, that – in the spirit of self-interestedness – it is all
about earning as much as possible to achieve the maximum number of material advantages.
But in spite of the fact that the ideology behind current market economy is based on the
idea of the “rational” egoistic consumer, there are no good scientific reasons to assume that
it would be against our nature to put person’s rights above personal benefits.
Being conscious of the political norm will also be crucial in the struggle against
poverty. In accordance with the goal of equal rights to everybody, it will for instance be
obvious to cancel the enormous debts of developing countries – something which in the
present political situation seems impossible due to the preoccupation with our own
economical interests. Of course, the debt is not the only problem for developing countries,
and obviously such a debt cancellation cannot be unconditional (for instance, one cannot
allow that the cancellation is used to buy weapons). But in so far as the difference in
person’s rights increases with the distance between rich and poor, it is clear that we must
attempt to make the distance between rich and poor as small as possible. And in so far as
the planet cannot sustain 6 billion people with the same quantitative living standard as ours,
it is clear that we ought, rationally, to accept a decrease in our quantitative living standards.
It may appear utopical and unrealistic to fight for political rationality. But it is hard
to be realistic about the present political situation without admitting the need for substantial
changes. Indeed, the biggest utopia is the belief that we can continue to live as we do now.
Furthermore, it is hard to disagree with Peter Zinkernagel that if we can change what
people believe in – if we can convince ourselves that person’s rights are rationally and
logically more important than power and money – then we can change everything.