What is Philosophy Chapter 9
by Richard Thompson
Politics
(last corrected 21st May 2009)
Politics and Morality
Politics is closely linked to morality, so it’s useful to start by distinguishing the two. In
Schools of Thought Mary Warnock wrote:
“the distinction between value judgements and political decisions is that the latter are
concerned with public policy and have the power to affect the freedom of persons other than those
who are making the evaluation” (op cit p8)
Thus politics is intrinsically public in a way in which morality is not. It is possible,
though unusual, for someone to have a purely personal morality which they alone use to
judge their conduct. 1 [I’m not thinking of someone deciding to be a hermit, that is only one of several
ways of living by a private morality, and it would be possible to be a hermit without having any morality at all.
On the other hand a hermit would almost certain be a former member of some human society and might well
still have a residual morality that would apply to any encounters he might have with other people should he
ever come across any. ] By ‘personal morality’ I’m thinking of the morality of someone who,
although he may interact with others, and possibly interact harmoniously, yet in his own
mind assesses things as good or evil according to standards rather different from those
employed by his fellows. Part of such a private morality might indeed be a rule that
enjoined prudent dissimulation when dealing with people of other convictions. But if that
rule were merely prudential, it would involve only paying lip service to public morality, not
embracing it as one’s own. By contrast a purely personal politics is impossible because
politics concerns the administration and control of an organisation, usually a state.
However it is possible for an individual to have no politics at all. While it is extremely
difficult to manage without either having some sort of morality, or at least encountering
some sort of moral problem, some people do think they can opt out of politics. That seems
to be a live option, even if not a particularly easy one. Anarchists suggest dispensing with
states, and people have from time to time tried to set up communities with no government.
Since it is easier to opt out of politics than to opt out of morality, deciding to opt into
politics is a rather stronger commitment than deciding to opt into morality, and one might
hope to deduce more from a commitment to politics than one can from a commitment to
morality. True statements of the form ‘Any state composed of human beings must satisfy
conditions A, B, C...’ may be expected to be more numerous and less vacuous than similar
statements of the form ‘Any human morality must.....’ Of course, when deducing such
statements we must not let ourselves forget that what we are proving are not unconditional
statements of moral obligation or political necessity that are part of some absolute morality
or transcendental politics binding on all, but are simply consequences of a commitment to
having a morality, or to belonging to a state.
Even for people who both share a morality and live together in the same state, there
are still important differences between their morality and their politics. Politics involves
making formal rules governing citizens behaviour. These differ in several ways from moral
rules.
1
I’m not thinking of someone deciding to be a hermit, that is only one of several ways of living by a
private morality, and it would be possible to be a hermit without having any morality at all. On the other hand
a hermit would almost certain be a former member of some human society and might well still have a
residual morality that would apply to any encounters he might have with other people should he ever come
across any.
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Moral rules need to be comprehensive because we need to know what to do in any
situation. On the other hand political rules need not be comprehensive since they are only
needed to regulate situations where shared personal morality, peer pressure and custom
are inadequate to maintain harmonious relations.
Another difference is that political rules must be enforceable, while moral rules need
not be. So it is very important that political rules should be precise and easily understood.
Politics is not independent of morality and many of the laws of the land are designed to
support and enforce aspects of whatever morality is generally accepted by the citizens of
the state. Such laws require that people follow some moral rule, or usually a simplified
form of a moral rule. On the other hand some laws are neither moral rules nor
simplifications of moral rules, but are necessary to ensure that life is predictable, or to
maintain the machinery of government. Few people think there is anything intrinsically
virtuous about driving on the left side of the road, but almost everyone agrees that all
vehicles should keep to either one side of the road or the other, and that a state therefore
needs either a right hand rule or a left hand rule. Once such a rule is in place there are
strong moral arguments for following it, but the moral obligation is to keep to the correct
side of the road, whichever that happens to be, and the obligation arises from the rule, not
vice versa.
Additional rules are needed to ensure that state institutions are adequately
supported. All states, except perhaps the very smallest, need some institutions of
government, such as judges, policemen, and legislators, and governments usually need
records, staff to keep them, and premises where those staff may work, consequently they
also need ways of obtaining the wherewithal to pay for the requisite staff and premises,
through taxes, fines, public subscription, or other official money raising activity.
The State
Since politics concerns the managing of states, the next step is to consider what
states are.
Some argue that a state is a sort of super person, with beliefs, hopes, fears, rights,
duties, property, and possibly even a personality, all of its own. In the opposing camp are
Nominalists who retort that a state is nothing more that the collection of people who
compose it.
In favour of nominalism is the logical point that the existence of a state depends on
the existence of its citizens while the existence of the citizens does not depend on that of
the state. Furthermore any action of a state consists of concerted action by some or all of
its citizens, and there would be no state without the citizens, so a state has no existence
independently of its citizens. The citizens on the other hand could well exist without the
state - they might emigrate to another state, or even live, at least for a short while, without
belonging to any state at all.
However that is not the whole story, since statements about a state are usually not
logically equivalent to statements about its citizens.
Consider W: ‘The states of the US led coalition went to war with Iraq in 1991’
The human actions that constituted the waging of that war included the following:
ministers authorised expenditure, legislatures approved supporting taxation, civil servants
collected taxes, officers gave orders, troops and equipment were assembled, missiles
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were fired, armoured columns advanced, press conferences were given, and so on. All
those events consisted of individual people acting in various ways. However those people
did not have to act in precisely those ways for there to have been a war. Different taxes
could have been levied, different troops could have been sent to Arabia on different days,
and they could have fired different missiles at different times, yet it would still have been
war between the states in question. Any one of very many different sets of propositions
about individual people, probably an infinity of such sets, would have described an Arab
war, so W is equivalent to no particular set of propositions about the actions of individual
people, nor to any disjunction of any finite collection of such sets of propositions. So we
can’t translate propositions about states into propositions about their citizens or into truth
functions of sets of such propositions.
However, while that is an interesting and important logical point, it does not imply that
a state is something over and above its citizens, or that a state can do anything without its
citizens taking some appropriate action. In technical jargon, ontological reduction is valid
because if we take away the citizens nothing is left of the state, even though
epistemological reduction is not, because not all talk about the state can be replaced by
precisely equivalent talk about the citizens. Even if it is conceded that states are entities
distinct from, though not independent of, their citizens it does not follow that states are
people. J. M. Keynes wrote:
“only individuals are good, and all nations are dishonourable, cruel and designing” (A revision of the
Treaty 1922)
Socrates and Plato
Plato developed Socrates’ proposal that morality is a matter of knowing the Good, by
adding that the good life is one in which people fulfil their proper roles in a well ordered
society. He argued that such a society is one in which everyone’s place is that to which he
is fitted.
In The Republic he proposed that to ensure that the state accords with the Good it
should be ruled by Philosophers, a subset of the Guardians, a class of people who were
to be specially bred and educated to form the ruling class. Those Guardians who showed
particular promise in their basic education were to be given special additional education to
enable them to apprehend the Forms, and in particular to apprehend the supreme Form,
that of the Good.
In the Republic Plato proposed that there should be no families. Women should be
held in common and mating should be planned by the rulers to breed people suitable to
fulfil the various roles the state requires. The common people would be told that mates
were chosen by lottery, but the rulers would rig the lottery to achieve the desired pairings.
All children would be taught to regard the whole of the older generation as their
parents, and all born at roughly the same time as themselves as their brothers and sisters.
A mythology should be created to reconcile the common people to their lowly state. They
would be told the ‘noble lie’ that people of different classes are distinguished by having
different metals in their souls; the souls of the rulers contain gold, those of the soldiers
contain silver while those of the common people contain iron.
No action, teaching or organisation would be permitted that might undermine the
social structure. Plato thought music very important as an embodiment of tradition, so that
any change in musical practice would be subversive since it would undermine tradition. He
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therefore proposed that it should be illegal to invent any new musical instrument, or even
to compose new music, in case that might encourage social change; for once the good
society was established any change could only be change for the worse. Plato thought
there is an inherent tendency for any state to deteriorate, and that in even the just state
deterioration would set in if the guardians ever failed to have an adequate understanding
of the principles governing the breeding of the next generation of guardians. If the
members of the present generation of guardians are injudiciously mated with each other
their misbegotten offspring might be unfit to discharge their duties properly. That danger
would be even greater should there be intermarriage between guardians and members of
the subservient classes, for that would contaminate the purity of the Guardian class.
Plato’s most detailed proposals for the management of a state appear in The Laws, a
later work than the Republic, the principal speaker in the conversation there is not
Socrates but an anonymous Athenian, and the other characters are just an admiring
audience for him, deploying no counter arguments of note. As the Athenian is clearly
Plato’s mouthpiece I shall henceforth attribute his comments directly to Plato.
In The Laws Plato concentrates on the practical details of politics. There is no more
than an occasional hint of the doctrine of the Forms. The family, banished in The Republic,
was reinstated, and Plato did not propose a special training in Philosophy for a tightly knit
cadre of Guardians, but he still described a totalitarian state in terms that many later rulers
must have found inspirational. In contrast to the Republic, in which the key to the good
society is the choice and training of the rulers, the Laws, as its title suggests, emphasises
the law. Once a good set of laws is established it should require little revision, so that for
the most part rulers should be the upholders and enforcers of the established law. Even to
discuss the revision of the laws is dangerous, and such proposals should never be
discussed in the hearing of young men. So far as there is a pretence at dialogue in The
Laws it involved conversations with a Cretan and a Spartan, giving Plato an opportunity to
comment on the political systems of Crete and Sparta, of which he said:
“However, granted that your codes of law have been composed with reasonable success...one
of the best regulations you have is the one which forbids any young man to inquire into the relative
merits of the laws; everyone has to agree, with one heart and voice, that they are all excellent and
exist by divine fiat; if anyone says differently, the citizens must absolutely refuse to listen to him. If
an old man has some point to make about your institutions, he must make such remarks to an
official, or someone of his own age when no young man is present “ (The Laws, Penguin edition p
59)
Although it was made in the course of a discussion of education, the following
passage expresses one of the central themes of Plato’s political thought:
“Change, we shall find, except in something evil, is extremely dangerous. This is true of seasons
and winds, the regimen of the body and the character of the soul - in short of everything without
exception” (Op cit p 284)
Plato criticized Crete and Sparta for emphasizing the virtue of courage at the
expense of self control, so that, although the citizens of those states were able to bear
pain and discomfort, they had difficulty resisting the temptations of pleasure. For that
reason they tried to avoid pleasure altogether, but that is an admission of defeat. It is far
better to cultivate sufficient self control to be able to restrict oneself to just a moderate
indulgence. Even occasional drunkenness may be socially useful in helping to assess
people’s characters by showing us how they behave when freed from their customary
inhibitions, and it may also help to break the ice between people who are reserved, making
it easier for them to get to know one another. That applies especially to older men.
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Turning to the institution of the state Plato speculated on how it may have arisen. In
the past many civilisations have developed, only to be destroyed by floods, a form of
catastrophe to which the civilised are specially vulnerable, since cities are usually built on
coastal plains or river banks. Those who survived the floods, people such as mountain
shepherds, were ‘simpler and manlier and at the same time more restrained and upright in
every way’ (op cit p 123) than their more sophisticated urban cousins had been before
they were drowned.
Such primitive people lived under traditional ‘ancestral laws’ and needed no
legislators since each family was led by its oldest member. That state of affairs would have
persisted until groups of families came together to construct walled settlements for their
mutual security. It would then no longer have been possible for every family to be a law
unto itself so that there would have arisen either a king, or an aristocracy of law givers.
After a while some of the inhabitants of the hill settlements descended to the plains to
build cities. The next stage in political development was the combination of several cities
into a larger nation. Increasing size brings with it greater dangers of corruption. A state will
not prosper for long if it has ignorant rulers, who like what is bad or unjust, and dislike what
is good.
There are seven criteria for determining who should rule and who should be a
subject.
(1) Children should be subject to their parents
(2) Those of low birth should be subject to those of high birth
(3) The younger should be subject to the older
(4) Slaves should be subject to their masters
(5) The weak should be subject to the strong, ‘which prevails throughout the animal
kingdom’ says Plato
(6) The ignorant should be subject to the wise; ‘this spontaneous and willing
acceptance of the rule of law’ is ‘a decree of nature’ and is the most important title
(7) The unfortunate should be subject to the fortunate.
Of Criterion (7) Plato says “we persuade a man to cast lots, by explaining that this,
the seventh title to authority, enjoys the favour of the gods and is blessed by fortune. We
tell him that the fairest arrangement is for him to exercise authority if he wins, but to be
subject to it is he loses” (op cit p 138) I assume that is a reference to the selection of he
officers of state by casting lots.
The various titles to authority often conflict, so that resolving those conflicts is an
important political problem.
The principal threat to a state is the possibility that the rulers may be ‘infected with an
acquisitive spirit in defiance of the laws of the land’. The safeguard against that is to avoid
concentrating too much power in the hands of one man. Rather than have a single king it
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is far better to follow the example of Sparta which divided power between two kings. A
state should maintain a balance between monarchy and democracy.
Legislation concerns three importantly different sorts of issue. The most important
matters are human spiritual needs, our physical needs come second, and matters of
wealth and property are the least important.
“if a state is going to survive to enjoy all the happiness that mankind can achieve, it is vitally
necessary for it to distribute honours and marks of disgrace on a proper basis. And the proper basis
is to put spiritual goods at the top of the list and hold them - provided the soul exercises self control
- in the highest esteem; bodily goods and advantages should come second, and third those said to
be provided by property and wealth. If a legislator or a state ever ignores these guide-lines by
valuing riches above all or by promoting one of the other inferior goods to more exalted position, it
will be an act of political and religious folly” (op cit pp 148-9)
Plato cited Persia and Athens as states that had suffered for failing to keep a proper
balance between authoritarian and democratic principles. Persia had become so
authoritarian that it was eventually run exclusively for the personal benefit of the rulers,
who were concerned primarily to maximise their own wealth. Hence subjects no longer
perceived themselves as members of a state with whose interests they could identify, and
although Persia had vast armies they were unreliable because the soldiers did not feel
they were fighting to defend their own interests, and were unwilling to risk their lives to
increase the riches of remote rulers. In Athens innovation in music was the first step in a
general breakdown of respect for tradition. As traditional musical rules were broken
audiences that would in earlier days have listened to performances in reverent silence
began to show their feeling with applause or cat calls.
“music proved to be the starting point of everyone’s conviction that he was an authority on
everything, and of a general disregard for the law. Complete license was not far behind.” (op cit p
154)
Having laid down general principles, the discussion in The Laws turned to the
construction of a constitution for a hypothetical state of Magnesia, imagined to be
established as a colony of the Cretan city of Cnossos.
Plato began by expressing relief that the proposed site was neither on the coast, nor
easily accessible by land from any other city. Foreign trade would therefore be difficult,
reducing the corrupting influence of commerce and of the sailors who carry sea trade.
Sailors incurred disapproval because in warfare they are liable to make quick raids and
then retreat to their ships before those who have been attacked have a chance to retaliate.
The nobler soldierly behaviour is to stand one’s ground and fight.
Turning to the function of rulers, Plato began by observing that states are usually at
the mercy of forces beyond their rulers’ control, such as wars, plagues and natural
disasters. Only if it is spared catastrophe does a state have a chance to survive and
prosper. To describe the ideal state we should imagine the circumstances to be as
favourable as possible. That would require both the absence of catastrophe, and that
public affairs should be run by a partnership of two exceptional people. The state should
be ruled by a dictator who should be guided by a talented law giver.
“Give me a state under the absolute control of a dictator, and let the dictator be young, with a
good memory, quick to learn, courageous, and with the character of natural elevation. And if his
other abilities are going to be of any use, his dictatorial soul should also possess the quality which
was earlier agreed to be an essential adjunct to all parts of virtue” (op cit 165-6,)
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“ he [the dictator] should be the contemporary of a distinguished lawgiver and be fortunate
enough to come into contact with him” (op cit p 166 )
The ‘other quality’ referred to in the first of those passages was natural self control,
the sort of self control that comes easily without a special teeth gritting effort
There are four possible starting points for a state. In order of decreasing preference
they are:
(1) dictatorship
(2) constitutional monarchy
(3) democracy
(4) oligarchy
The order of merit is determined by the number of people likely to share effective
power; the fewer they are the better. Note that for Plato a democracy is a state in which
every citizen formally takes a part in decision making; he ranked democracy above
oligarchy because he thought that assemblies of the entire body of citizens are likely to be
swayed by a few persuasive individuals so that the number of people who actually make a
difference in a democracy is likely to be smaller than it would be in an oligarchy. Plato
seemed to have forgotten his commendation of Sparta for dividing power between two
kings, rather than having a single ruler.
Plato cited the myth of Chronos, who was said to have established an era of peaceful
prosperity by setting superhuman spirits to rule over men. Plato argued that to have men
rule over other men is like having sheep or goats rule their own kind. We prefer to set
shepherds or goatherds to ‘control them ourselves, because we are a superior species’
(op cit p 171) Plato’s analogy is weak. we control sheep and goats in our own interest, not
in theirs; our concern is not primarily for their well being, but for the wool, milk and meat
we hope to obtain from them.
Plato continues that, in the absence of spirits we have to accept human rulers, and
should choose the men most likely to act ‘in obedience to what little spark of immortality
lies in us’ (op cit p 171).
It is the laws, not the rulers, who should be supreme, and the laws should be
presented to the people as the will of the gods handed down from remote antiquity. Yet we
should not depend on the blind obedience of the people. Each laws should have a
preamble explaining its purpose, in the hope that the people will generally obey the law
because they are persuaded of its justice.
There is only one just way of ordering society, so that it is unjust for laws to be made
by one party to serve its own sectional interest.
“where the law is subject to some other authority, and has none of its own, the collapse of the
state...is not far off; but if law is the master of the government and government is its slave, then the
situation is full of promise and men enjoy all the blessings that the gods shower on a state “ (op cit p
174)
A long preamble to Plato’s presentation of his proposed legal system stressed the
primary importance of cultivating nobility of soul. Physical fitness was also advocated as a
lesser good, provided people don’t make a fetish of it or boast about it. So far as material
goods are concerned, we should try to obtain sufficient to avoid slavery, while avoiding the
sort of excess likely to ‘produce feuds and enmity in public life’. Nor should we try to leave
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a great fortune to our children, lest they become spoilt and idle.
Although detailed, the proposals in The Laws were put forward as just a first draft of
the constitution and legal system of an ideal state. Plato observed that considerable
amplification and revision would be needed after they were first put into practice. The
system was to be under review for the first ten years of the state’s existence. After that the
system was to be maintained with hardly any modification, except that changes might be
made with the unanimous approval of the citizens. I shall therefore not try to summarise
the voluminous details in The Laws, contenting myself with a number of snippets to
illustrate the general flavour of the proposals.
Laws were to specify in minute detail how people were to live.
(1)Truthfulness ‘heads the list of all things good’.
(2) The noblest life ‘excels in providing what we all seek, a predominance of pleasure
over pain throughout our lives ...’ (op cit p 198)
(3)We should be benevolent and respectful towards family and friends, showing
especial respect to visiting foreigners, because they are alone among strangers.
(4) No one really wants to do wrong. ‘Every unjust man is unjust against his will’ (op
cit pp 195-6) Crime is caused by an excess of self-love.
(5) As well as avoiding wrong doing ourselves, we should try to prevent others doing
so.
(6) We should avoid extremes of emotion.
(7) When establishing the new state, we must first select the citizens. Just as
someone who keeps animals needs ‘to weed out the unhealthy and inferior stock, so must
troublesome people be removed from the state... by death, exile, or dispatch to a new
colony’ (op cit p 203, also from line 5)
(8) Land and houses should be equally divided - The equal division was between
heads of household, not individuals. Although an equal division of all property would be
ideal, it would not be practical since some of the colonists would at the start be richer than
others. To accommodate that, four classes would be defined corresponding to four
permitted degrees of wealth. Although every household would have an equal holding of
land, the limits of additional property would vary from 100 drachma in the case of the
lowest class, to 400 drachma for the highest. All would be required to register all their
property so that the authorities could check that the limits had not been exceeded.
(9) Population must suffice for defence. Plato considered that 5040 households
would suffice. That number was chosen because it has 29 divisors, including all numbers
from 2 to 10, and also 12, permitting equal division of the population into a variety of
classes and tribes.
(10) The initial equal division of land must always be maintained, and the number of
households must remain constant. The buying and selling of land would be illegal. Each
head of household should choose an heir. Surplus females should be married off, and
surplus males should be adopted by households with no heir, or sometimes exported to
other colonies.
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(11) In dealing with children, their elders should concentrate on setting a good
example, rebuking children only when that policy fails.
Money should not consist of precious metals with a high intrinsic value of their own,
but of base metals, so that coins would have little value beyond that conferred on them by
their use as currency, and would therefore have little value in other states so that they
could not be used for foreign trade. Gold and silver coinage would be available to citizens
only when they were on the point of setting out on officially approved journeys to other
states, and any surplus hard currency would have to be surrendered on their return. There
would be no lending of money for interest.
The numerous officials would be chosen by a combination of voting and the casting
of lots. One or more stages of voting would identify the most popular candidates for each
post, but the final decision would be made by lot. Those selected would be scrutinised to
verify their suitability before taking office. The lottery would be used to make it appear that
all have an equal chance of being selected. There would be a general council of 360, 90
from each of the four property classes. Each month 30 of those would form an executive
committee, so that in the course of a year each councillor would serve for one month on
the executive committee. There should be numerous other officials, including various
species of Guardian, of whom the Guardians of the Laws are the most frequently
mentioned when Plato describes the day to day running of the state, and a number of
Scrutineers charged with checking that other officials discharge their duties properly.
Three of the latter would be elected every year. Scrutineers should be at least fifty years
old and should serve until the age of seventy five. Anyone who considered a scrutineer
had abused his office might initiate court proceedings to remove that scrutineer from office.
Officials would supervise education, interpreted in a broad sense to include both
cultural and physical development. Music, dancing, and theatrical performances are the
educational activities stressed as embodying the nations culture. I give more attention to
the educational proposals of The Laws in the chapter on education, where I also comment
on his proposals for more academic studies.
Young people should be given ample opportunity to choose compatible partners, to
which end boys and girls should from time to time dance together naked, under the
supervision of older men, of course. Men were to be encouraged to marry between the
ages of 25 and 30, and must be married by 35. Any man over the age of 35 and still
unmarried would have to pay an annual fine, and to forfeit the respect usually shown to the
older by the younger. There was no indication what penalty, if any, might be incurred by a
man’s marrying while under 25. Women were to marry from 16 to 20. It was best for a man
to marry a little beneath himself, and husband and wife should be of complementary
temperaments Extravagant marriage celebrations were to be subject to taxation, and the
number of wedding guests from outside the couple’s families should be restricted to five
friends of each partner. Dowries were to be discouraged and should certainly not be
substantial. The married couple should avoid becoming drunk, as a child conceived of
drunken parents would be of inferior quality. A newly married couple would be supervised
by older women to ensure that they made conscientious attempts to produce healthy
offspring. The supervision would continue for at least 10 years, but would then be
discontinued if sufficient healthy children had appeared by that time. Otherwise the
marriage would be officially reviewed to decide if it would be better to dissolve it and find
the couple new partners. A man widowed while childless should be obliged to remarry in
order to provide the state with children.
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There should be communal meals, which people should attend even after marriage. It
was most important for women to attend, as they, if left to their own devices, are more
likely than men to want to congregate in small cliques and to gossip.
Hunting should develop the manly qualities of the hunter and should be restricted to
the pursuit of four footed animals. Dogs might be employed, but there should be no setting
of traps. No form of fishing is a fit sport for the gentleman, though fisherman may ply their
trade, provided they avoid fishing in harbours, or in sacred rivers or lakes, and do not use
poisons.
Military exercises should take place on at least one day every month, and should
involve the whole population. The exercises should be realistic, even though it is likely
that, occasionally, someone will be killed as a result; a few such deaths are a price worth
paying to have a state that can defend itself and ‘others, who are just as good, will be
produced to replace them.’ (p 325) Songs sung and speeches made in the course of the
accompanying ceremonies must be composed only by virtuous men or women at least fifty
years old who have a record of performing noble deeds.
Athletic contests are pointless unless they encourage skills useful in war, so athletes
should compete fully armed. Women as well as men should compete, but girls over the
age of 13 should be ‘suitably clothed’; younger girls should compete naked, like the men.
Most states devote too little effort to military preparedness. That is partly the
consequence of individual selfishness, making many citizens more concerned with getting
rich than with the public good, and partly because the rulers do not rule with the consent of
the governed, so that citizens do not identify with the state. In democracies, oligarchies
and tyrannies the government imposes its will on the citizens by force.
Once gentlemen (citizens) have organised their slaves to do all the work (equality
was not, of course, to extend to slaves or women) they should devote their leisure to the
cultivation of every physical perfection and every moral virtue. (The Laws pp 296-7). ‘Every
gentleman must have a timetable prescribing what he is to do every minute of his life,
which he should follow at all times’. Time spent asleep should be minimised, as any more
than the minimum is a waste of time.
Distinguished citizens should be honoured in song, but only after death.
Sex is discussed from the point of view of a man wrestling with his desires. Plato
distinguished three sorts of friendship:
(1)The ‘calm and mutual affection that lasts a lifetime’ that often develops ‘between
those who are equals’
(2) The ‘violent and strong friendship...when a man is attracted to someone widely
different to himself’; Plato seems to have been thinking of relationships between people of
different station or status.
(3) ‘a third category, compounded of the other two’ where ‘the lover will be content to
gaze upon his beloved without lusting for him - a genuine desire of soul for soul’
Homosexual acts are unnatural both in the sense that they never occur in any
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animals but humans, and also because they frustrate natural processes by wasting seed in
a way that offers no hope of procreation.
I gather that Plato’s claim about animals is now known to be false. I wonder what
evidence he may have had for it. Wild animals, except when observed with the painstaking
discretion of the modern naturalist, are unlikely to be their normal selves in the presence of
humans, and among domestic animals males are usually segregated from other males to
prevent their fighting over the females. It is also odd that Plato, usually eager to assert
human superiority to the general run of animals, should in this instance put forward the
behaviour of the brutes as an example for us to follow. Plato remarked in another context
that man should set himself a standard at least as high as, and preferably higher than, that
maintained by the lower animals, but that begs the question as to what sort of difference
from animal behaviour constitutes ‘higher’ In many respects the uniquely human activities
we admire consist in being more versatile than the other animals and modifying instinctive
patterns of behaviour. That suggests that if, as Plato wrongly believed, homosexuality
actually were uniquely human that might have qualified it for the epithet ‘higher’.
Plato doubted the practicability of immediately outlawing homosexual acts, as they
were often tolerated in the Greece of his day. Before the practice could be made illegal, it
must be discredited. He thought that might be done by incorporating a prohibition into
religion ‘if the rule is given sufficient religious backing, it will get a grip on the soul and
intimidate it into obeying the established laws’. Note that Plato considered moral and legal
considerations primary, and religious belief only secondary. For him religion was not the
source of either moral or political principles, but was a useful tool for helping maintain
public support for principles established on other grounds.
Physical training can reduce lust, and therefore provides a way of helping young men
to achieve the noblest victory of all ‘the conquest of pleasure’.
It would be best for there to be no sexual intercourse outside marriage; failing that, a
man’s extra-marital activities should be restricted to affairs with women, and those affairs
should be conducted in complete secrecy. If such affairs are discovered the man should
be excluded from all honours.
No citizen was to work at any trade, since he should devote himself to the cultivation
of virtue. Craftsmen should practise only one trade and not get involved in any other. For
instance, no metalworker should do carpentry, and no carpenter should work metal.
Plato denied that anyone ever does wrong willingly, rejecting the traditional
distinction between voluntary and involuntary wrong doing. He thought that distinction is
based on the misperception of two other distinctions. A particular act is often voluntary in
that we decide to do it, but it is from another point of view involuntary because it arises
from a sick soul. There are also cases where we do damage by accident without realising
what consequences our actions might have. The penal system should have two objects.
Most important, it should try to cure the disordered soul of the wicked man to make him
good. Second it should compensate the injured for the damage done to them. Where
someone does harm accidentally, only the second applies.
Curing the soul often involves punishment to deter the offender from repeating the
offence. Where there is no hope of cure, the criminal should be killed, not only to protect
the general public, but also for his own good, since it is better to be dead than to be alive
and wicked, a state in which one can commit yet more misdeeds thus harming one’s
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prospects in future lives by angering the gods even further.
Despite his rejection of the distinction between voluntary and involuntary actions,
when Plato came to discuss murder he attached great importance to the distinction
between premeditated killing, and killing in the heat of the moment under the influence of
anger, proposing to treat the latter case more leniently than the former,
The penalty for premeditated killing was usually to be death, but those who killed
under the influence of extreme anger were usually to be treated more leniently by being
sentenced to a few years exile. However the killing of a father by his son merited death
except when the father pronounced forgiveness before dying. There were also cases of
justified homicide; householders might kill anyone entering the house at night to commit
robbery, and people were entitled to kill in self defence, especially when attacked by
robbers.
Even animals and inanimate objects were to be liable for punishment if they killed
humans. An animal found guilty after trial should be killed and its corpse thrown outside
the boundaries of the state. A guilty inanimate object should just be thrown across the
border. In that case there was no need to convene a court to try the object; judgement
should be pronounced by the nearest neighbour.
Thieves should repay twice what they steal and be held in prison until either they
have paid that compensation, or the victim agrees to their release - possibly, though Plato
does not say so, as a result of some bargain being struck. A slave gathering grapes
without permission should be whipped at the rate of one stroke per grape.
The young should show respect to the old, so that for a young man to strike an old
man in public ‘is a disgusting sight and the gods hate to see it even if no wounding results.’
On the other hand if the roles are reversed ‘No young man who is struck by an old man
should ever make a fuss’ For the purposes of law ‘older’ and ‘younger’ should apply when
the age difference is at least twenty years.
The market place is the preferred place for the sale or exchange of goods, and only
deals transacted there, and paid for in full may be the subject of any appeal to the courts if
anything goes wrong. Credit transactions, and deals transacted away from the market,
would not be illegal, but the conditions of such deals, and the repayment of any credit
allowed, would not be enforced by the courts.
A seller may not state more than one price for his goods. If he can’t sell at the original
asking price he should allow the goods to remain unsold. That was to prevent someone
asking an unrealistically high price, with the intention of cutting the price if he doesn’t make
a sale. It would have quite ruled out the bargains often to be found in Leicester market as
the stalls begin to pack up at tea time. The rate of profit should be set by the authorities.
Plato regarded trade with distaste, and retail trade with especial taste. Retailers should
either be resident aliens or temporary visitors; under no circumstances might a citizen be a
retailer.
There were to be severe penalties for lateness in paying a craftsman. Those who are
more than a month late should pay double, and if more than a year late would be charged
16 2/3% per month compensation, despite Plato’s proposal to forbid the charging of
interest.
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There should be no import or export duties, but no goods essential to the state
should be exported.
There was to be detailed regulation of the provisions made in wills. Plato argued that
men near to death rarely think clearly and can easily fall under the influence of casual
acquaintances who pretend to be friends in order to obtain the old man’s property. Men
should therefore not be allowed to dispose of their property just as they please. A man with
at least one son would be required to choose one as the heir to his estate, and to divide
most of his other property among those of his sons who are not already well provided for.
There were complicated regulations about who should inherit if there were no sons, or no
children at all. Plato held that the good of the family and the clan should take precedence
over the wishes of the property owner.
Any children born to a slave woman should belong to her master, except when he
himself is the father; in that case woman and child should both be sent away to another
country. If a free woman has a child by her slave, he and the child should be sent way.
Anyone who harms another by theft or violence should fully compensate the victim,
and pay a further fine to ‘encourage them to reform’.
Public displays of anger involving personal abuse should be forbidden, and so should
the performance of any comedy that shows animosity towards its targets, or which
ridicules individual citizens.
Begging should be forbidden, since no virtuous person is likely to be reduced to
abject poverty, so that anyone attempting to beg should be ejected from the state ‘so that
the land may rid itself completely of such a creature’
A woman over the age of forty may give evidence in court, but may only bring a
prosecution if she has no husband to do so on her behalf. Slaves and children may give
evidence only in cases of murder. Anyone convicted three times of perjury may never give
evidence again, and if he attempts to do so he should be executed.
A citizen guilty of stealing from the state should be executed as being ‘virtually
beyond cure’ since, having been the beneficiary of a citizens education, he would already
have learnt better ways were he capable of doing so. On the other hand when a slave
steals from the state we should try to cure him.
Even refusal to join in a ceremony or procession might incur a fine if the refuser
proved impervious to persuasion.
Plato was profoundly suspicious of foreign influences, considering that contact with
foreign customs would be liable to undermine the state. No one under the age of forty
should in any circumstances be allowed to travel abroad, and even people over that age
should only do so in special circumstances. Some would have to travel on official business
or to represent the state in games. There would also be a special category of incorruptible
citizens referred to as ‘observers’. They would be men over the age of fifty, who had the
inclination to travel abroad and were judged capable of being trusted not to be corrupted
by the experience. They would travel about, observing foreign ways, and seeking those
‘men of genius’ unfortunate enough not to live in Magnesia. Their roaming would be for a
maximum of ten years, after which they would return to relate their experiences and
discoveries to the authorities. Should it appear that an observer had been corrupted by
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foreign ways, he would be prohibited, on pain of death, from ever discussing his
conclusions with anyone else of any age. Visitors from abroad should be supervised to
ensure that they have no opportunity to spread foreign ideas among the citizenry at large.
Public officers convicted of taking bribes should be executed.
The first stage in any civil action should be arbitration conducted by people chosen
by the parties to the dispute.
Someone more than a month in arrears in paying damages awarded by a court
should, if the sum outstanding exceeds one drachma, be disqualified from prosecuting any
other citizen until the debt is settled. During that time the tardy debtor would still himself be
liable to prosecution by others.
Once the just state is established, we should need to ensure that its rulers never lose
sight of the fundamental principles on which is it based. There should be a special body
charged with maintaining and elaborating those principles; it would be known as ‘The
Nocturnal Council’ since it would meet at night. I assume, though Plato did not say so in as
many words, that the evening meetings were to leave its members free in the daytime,
when they would have their ordinary work to do. It would be the duty of the council to seek
to determine the common element in all the virtues. The four virtues were courage,
wisdom, restraint and justice, though all could be subsumed under the title ‘reason’. The
nocturnal council would be to the state as the human soul is to the human body. It would
contain a core of old and experienced citizens, the Guardians of the Laws, but each of
those would introduce to the council one younger man. The council would also interview
those citizens who go abroad as ‘observers’ to study foreign ideas and customs.
A consequence of Plato’s belief that virtue is a type of knowledge, was a conviction
that good government can be secured by selecting virtuous rulers, a conviction apparent in
the following comment about the Director of Children selecting his assistants:
“He will know whom to choose, and a sober respect for his office and a realisation of its
importance will make him anxious not to choose wrongly, because he’ll be well aware that only if
the younger generation has received and goes on receiving a correct education shall we find
everything is ‘plain sailing’...(op cit p 305)
There is little explicit metaphysical theorising in The Laws, but such passages as that
reveal the underlying assumptions.
Crucial to Plato’s political thought as expounded in The Republic was his assumption
that morality and politics are based on insights into an underlying and partly hidden reality
that is accessible only to a specially trained mind. Just as the successful practice of
medicine is generally held to require a medical training, so does the practice of politics
require the specialist skills of a philosopher king. While The Laws makes little mention of
the metaphysical basis of morality, its argument still takes it for granted that the proper
concern of politics is the promotion of right and wrong which are matters of fact concerning
which most people should defer to the expert few. How far can there be experts on
morality and politics?
On this point I observe that in politics as in ethics we must distinguish ends from
means. There is only very limited scope for expertise in the choice of ends. Expert
knowledge may show that a proposed end cannot be achieved at all, or can be achieved
only at the cost of unwelcome side effects. Where many ends are proposed, expert
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analysis may reveal them to be mutually inconsistent. Apart from detecting inconsistencies
and impracticabilities in ends, expert opinion is confined to the choice of the means likely
to secure a particular end, and to finding what consequences are likely to follow any
action or policy. So the expert, if there is one, can possibly tell us what is possible, but
beyond that the decision which of several possible ends to pursue is not solely a matter of
expertise because it is not just a matter of discovering something, but also involves
deciding what to aim at.
On the other hand the choice of the means to realise an end is likely to require
considerable expertise and careful planning. Because political projects are often very
complicated, involving the co-ordinated activities of a great many people acting in different
places at different times, there is a lot that an expert might be expected to do, and it can
be hard to define the limits to his role and easy to make Plato’s mistake of overlooking the
fact that there are any limits at all., because, although we can separate conceptually the
choice of ends from the choice of means, it is often hard to separate them in practice.
One might hope for a system of government in which all participate in the choice of
ends, but only those with special skills and relevant knowledge choose the means. But
what skills and knowledge does a politician require and who shall decide which individuals
satisfy the criteria? A small group of people entrusted to choose the means and put them
into operation would have immense power, but subjecting their decisions to the scrutiny of
the whole body of the citizenry might involve technical decisions being made by those not
competent to do so. One might hope that the citizenry should somehow develop a ‘feel’ for
telling which experts they can trust and which they can’t, but such hopes are unfortunately
not self fulfilling. Choosing a political system is no easy matter, which is why Sir Karl
Popper so rightly emphasized that a very important factor in any political system is that it
should be possible to remove a government that appears unsatisfactory.
Two points
authoritarianism.
may
be
urged
in
extenuation
of
Plato’s
conservatism
and
First his conservatism. Children learn easily and learn fast, while adults learn slowly
and with difficulty. As children we learn, among other things, how to behave as adults. A
society is therefore unlikely to run smoothly if, by the time people have grown up, they find
that as adults they are expected to behave in a radically different way from what they were
taught when they were children. That is an argument for keeping social change fairly slow,
lest adults be unsure how they should behave, or how they should teach children to
behave, but that argument does not support Plato’s opposition to any social change at all.
However Plato’s conservatism was in a sense a sham. He did not want to conserve
the political system he found in his native Athens. He wanted to replace it with a very
different system, and it was only in that transformed society that he proposed that men
should resist all further change. In the expectation that they would do so, Plato was
entirely unrealistic. Plato was a revolutionary who planned to become a conservative once
the revolution had succeeded, though both establishing his ideal state and subsequently
maintaining it, would have been much harder than he supposed. To carry through a
revolution requires the formation of a party dedicated to change, and such a party will
contain many who are temperamentally impatient with the status quo and disposed to
regard even minor inconveniences in the present state of affairs as justifying radical
reform. Were a Platonic Utopia every to be set up with the support of such people, they
would not then become conservatives overnight, but would soon think of further changes
to make the system even better.
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Of Plato’s authoritarianism I observe that, in the context of a Greek city state the
draconian measures Plato proposed would not have been as oppressive as similar
measures enacted today, because armed resistance by the people could never be
completely ruled out. Weapons were swords, spears and bows. Many men would have
access to such weapons, and those who didn’t could still put up some sort of a fight with
sickles, knives and staves. A dozen trained soldiers would probably have been a match 40
or 50 ill armed fighters, but not for many more than that, so there must have been at least
an involuntary element of democracy in any city state. I don’t recall that Plato ever said
that, probably he never even consciously thought it, but I think it must have been part of
the background state of affairs he took for granted as he developed his political thought. If
he had consciously thought of the point and put the thought into words he might have
realised that the argument wouldn’t apply to behemoths such as the Persian empire,
though even that was somewhat constrained by difficulties of transport and
communication. Today such reasoning wouldn’t apply even in a city state. In our time
weapons the more powerful weapons are both extremely effective and very expensive.
Governments usually make sure that no one has access to them except for their own
security forces and the more enterprising criminals, and modern methods of
communication and surveillance enable governments to concentrate their forces much
more effectively. The size of the armed minority sufficient to maintain control over the
majority must be much smaller now than in Plato’s Greece, so a modern society based on
Plato’s principles would be far more oppressive than Plato himself envisaged.
Aristotle
Aristotle’s comments on politics overlap with what he says on Ethics. The work called
Politics was quite short, but he regarded Ethics as basically political.
He considered that it is part of the nature of humans to find partners to produce
families, and for groups of families to develop into states. The organisation and mode of
operation of those states is determined by human nature.
Every type of living thing has its natural form of subsistence. Some animals eat
plants, others eat other animals. Men cultivate and eat a wide variety of other animals,
suggesting that those animal exist for man’s benefit, and that it is the nature of man to hunt
or tame what is wild. One form of hunting in which both hunters and prey are human, is
war, and people subdued in war may sometimes legitimately be tamed to become slaves.
However not any defeated foe may be enslaved, but only certain people who are suited to
slavery by a natural inferiority. One expects to find some such people in each family.
Greeks should never be enslaved, presumably even if they are of the inferior type. If
inferior peoples refuse to submit to superior, the latter are justified in making war to
enslave them. Quite why Greeks should be exempt from slavery, if every family contains
people deserving of that fate, is not made clear.
Aristotle despised trade, which he considered degrading since it involves using things
for other than their proper purpose. The purpose of shoes is to be worn not to be sold.
Trade is also pernicious for another reason, because it provides the opportunity for the
accumulation of great riches. People who eschew trade and confine themselves to
managing their land can attain only moderate wealth, but there are no limits to the wealth
that might be obtained by trade. Lending money for interest is even worse than trade.
Citizenship should be confined to the gentry, namely those who own the land.
Craftsmen and tradesmen are too degraded by their occupation to be worthy of
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citizenship, and agricultural labourers should be slaves.
Aristotle distinguished six types of Government, in descending order of his
preference they were: (1) Monarchy - by which he meant not hereditary monarchy but the
rule of a single man who was in some way chosen from amongst the citizens, or possibly
from the members of certain noble families, (2) Aristocracy, the rule of the superior
gentlemen, men of ability ruling for the good of all (3) Polity, sometimes called a
‘commonwealth’ or just a ‘state’, roughly the rule of all in the interest of all (4) Democracy not representative democracy of our sort, but the taking of decisions by the whole body of
citizens, dominated by and usually primarily in the interest of, the poor. (5) oligarchy, the
rule of the rich primarily in their own interests, and (6) Tyranny, the rule of one man who
maintains his position by force and rules in his own interests.
‘Polity’ is an idea that needs further explanation. Aristotle said:
“The distribution of offices according to merit is a special characteristic of aristocracy, for the
principle of an aristocracy is virtue, as wealth is of an oligarchy, and freedom of a democracy. In all of
them there of course exists the right of the majority, and whatever seems good to the majority of
those who share in the government has authority. Now in most states the form called polity exists, for
the fusion goes no further than the attempt to unite the freedom of the poor and the wealth of the
rich, who commonly take the place of the noble. But as there are three grounds on which men claim
an equal share in the government, freedom, wealth, and virtue (for the fourth or good birth is the
result of the two last, being only ancient wealth and virtue), it is clear that the admixture of the two
elements, that is to say, of the rich and poor, is to be called a polity or constitutional government; and
the union of the three is to be called aristocracy or the government of the best, and more than any
other form of government, except the true and ideal, has a right to this name.”
Summarising the various forms of government he said:
“Now the corruptions attending each of these governments are these; a kingdom may degenerate
into a tyranny, an aristocracy into an oligarchy, and a state into a democracy. Now a tyranny is a
monarchy where the good of one man only is the object of government, an oligarchy considers only
the rich, and a democracy only the poor; but neither of them have a common good in view.”
I think that by ‘state’ Aristotle here meant ‘polity’.
Criticising Plato, Aristotle remarked that Plato’s republic would really have been two
communities co-existing inside one state. The guardians would have been more like a
garrison set over the other inhabitants than like fellow members of the same community.
Themselves unproductive, they would have been dependent for their subsistence on the
productive member of the republic, who would therefore have resented them. Those who
were not citizens (guardians?) would still have needed education to fit them to play their
part in society, yet Socrates entirely neglected the question of what form their education
should take. Finally, the Republic would have undermined morality since the holding of
property in common would have left no room for the exercise of generosity, since that
virtue involves giving to others some of what belongs to oneself.
Stoics and Epicureans
For both Stoics and Epicureans morality was primarily a matter of developing a
harmonious personal life, and neither group developed any detailed political theory,
although of the two the Stoics took the greatest interest in public affairs. The early Stoics
held that because the logos, or divine spark, is present in all men, all are by nature equal
and free. Humans are by nature social and the ideal community would be a single
cosmopolis, a world city embracing the entire human race. While waiting for that we
should participate in the affairs of whatever state we find ourselves in. Stoics tended to
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favour cautious conservative policies likely to slow down the inevitable decline in the
human condition. (How does one alter what is inevitable? It’s surprising how often people
want to try!) In the second century AD Stoicism was introduced to Rome by Panaetus of
Rhodes, who modified it in deference to the hierarchical views prevalent in the Imperial
capital.
Christians
Christianity is an other worldly religion, primarily concerned with the heavenly, or
hellish, life to come. Much of its ethical teachings - giving ones goods to the poor and
abstaining from reproduction, were intended to apply just to a short interlude before the
supposedly imminent end of the world, and for several centuries Christians lived as an
often persecuted and at best grudgingly tolerated minority in a pagan society, where it was
prudent for them to heed the injunction to render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s. There is
therefore a powerful strand in Christian political thought that asks no more of the civil
authorities than that they should permit Christians to attend to their devotions and preach
the Gospel. To a Christian in those days, no government can have been more than a
provisional government.
However, once Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire,
Christians controlled the civil power and needed to consider how to proceed.
From the time when St. Paul launched Christianity as a gentile religion, Christian
Theology was heavily influenced by Greek thought, and until the time of St. Thomas
(1225-1274) that was largely Platonic thought, often mediated by the mystical
Neo-Platonists, although the logos of St. John’s gospel ‘In the beginning was the word’
suggests the Stoic world-god.
For many centuries Catholic thought was dominated by the teaching of Augustine,
who taught that the elect who were to be saved had already been selected by God in the
beginning. If those who were to be damned sinned more grievously than the elect, they
sinned because they were damned, they were not damned on account of their sins.
States were thought necessary only to control the evil impulses of men consequent
on the Fall. There was little point in organising defence of the state against outside
enemies, as to be killed by the enemy did not endanger salvation, and to be raped did not
violate chastity, provided the victim did not enjoy the experience.
Bishops were happy for Christian rulers to suppress non Christian religious practice,
and indeed to suppress even the practices of other Christians if they considered them
heretical. St. Ambrose once intervened to dissuade a Roman Emperor from punishing
Christians accused of burning down a synagogue. But apart from asserting that the
Church should be supreme in matters of religion, taking as model the Jewish state in the
days of the Judges, Christians evolved no general political theory until the thirteenth
century.
Russell commented:
“It is strange that the last men of intellectual eminence before the dark ages were concerned, not
with saving civilisation or expelling the barbarians or reforming the abuses of the administration, but
with preaching the merit of virginity and the damnation of unbaptized infants. Seeing that these were
the preoccupations that the Church handed on to the converted barbarians, it is no wonder the
succeeding age surpassed almost all other fully historical periods in cruelty and superstition” (History
of Western Philosophy, p. 385)
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Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274 AD)
Aquinas presented Christianity in an Aristotelian instead of a Platonic framework.
Under Aristotle’s influence he thought it part of the nature of human beings to live in
societies rather than in a solitary state or in single families. For humans, unlike many
animals, are incapable of satisfying their needs unaided, they rely on reason rather than
solely on brute strength and instinct, and they have the ability to learn language, an
essentially social skill. Humans would therefore have lived a social life even had there
been no Fall.
Morality is, as Aristotle said, the pursuit of man’s final end, which for a Christian is
salvation. However this salvation is not to be gained by a precipitate suicidal leap into the
afterlife, but only by dying at a time of God’s choosing, usually after due preparation by
living a life in which our true natures are gradually realised. Part of human nature, which
we share with the animals, is to survive and propagate, but it is also our nature to
associate in groups, and to seek the truth as rational beings.
The law is not identical with morality but should not conflict with it. Law and morality
do not coincide because it is not always practical to enforce moral obligations, or to
prohibit immoral behaviour, and maintenance of the state may require some rules, such as
obligations to pay taxes, that are not direct moral obligations. However the law should not
compel people to do what is immoral, or forbid them to fulfil their moral obligations.
The function of a state is not restricted to maintaining internal order and providing
protection from invaders; it should also promote the good life for its citizens, attempting to
ensure that ‘there should be a sufficient supply of the necessities for a good life’. There is
a moral obligation to obey the rules of a just state, but obedience to the law is not an
unconditional obligation. We need not obey an unjust law, and may reasonably remove an
unjust ruler, provided that the act of removing him does not do more harm than good.
Aquinas was declared a saint in 1323, and his teaching was thereafter very influential
among Catholics, especially in his own Dominican Order, though under the influence of the
Franciscan Duns Scotus (1266-1308)
a modified Platonism, which made some
concessions to Aristotle, survived, especially in Scotus’ Franciscan Order.
William of Ockham (1285-1349) As a Nominalist, Ockham denied the existence of
Forms or essences, except as ideas in the mind. He also rejected the Aristotelian doctrine
of the four types of cause, holding that ‘final cause’ is simply a façon de parlé; what really
operate are only efficient causes. Morality cannot therefore be the fulfilment of man’s final
cause, since there is no such thing. What is good is what God ordains - so that it makes no
sense to say that God is himself good. Goodness cannot be determined by the use of
reason independently of divine revelation.
Ockham rejected natural theology, denying that we can obtain knowledge of God
independently of divine revelation. Because God’s existence in not provable he acts freely,
unconstrained by necessity. Humans too can act freely.
The power of the church should be limited to teaching the Gospel, maintaining
worship and equipping Christians for their quest for eternal life, so its powers should not be
unlimited and should not extend to temporal matters. Christ entrusted even St. Peter with
only limited authority, and no pope is as great a man as Peter.
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Neither the Church itself, nor the temporal rulers, may be the ultimate judges of the
legitimacy of the Church’s actions. The answer to such questions must be found in the
gospels, interpreted not just by the clergy alone but also by “the discretion and counsel of
the wisest men sincerely zealous for justice without respect to persons, if such can be
found - whether they be poor or rich, subjects or rulers” (De Imperatorum)
The power of the Emperor derives from God through the people, not directly, and not,
as some popes maintained, through the Church.
Ockham’s political writings date from a time when he was under excommunication by
the Avignon Pope, and sheltering with the Emperor Louis of Bavaria, who had renounced
that Pope and welcomed a friendly pen.
Within his own Franciscan Order, Ockham’s influence continued long after his death,
and he also influenced some of the Protestant theologians of the reformation.
The Reformation
The reformers rejected Aristotelianism and rational theology, returning to Augustine
and basing belief on faith and the Gospels. The Lutherans were prepared to accept the
exercise of otherwise unlimited power by any ruler who allowed the practice of
Lutheranism and suppressed other religious practices. Luther once said “God would prefer
to suffer the government to exist no matter how evil, rather than to allow the rabble to riot,
no matter how justified they are in doing so” (Quoted by Eric Hoffer The True Believer p.
133).The attitude of Lutherans to the secular power is beautifully illustrated by the story of
their condoning, and even encouraging, Philip of Hesse’s bigamy. See G. R. Elton
Reformation Europe chapter 8
The Calvinists supported the rule of saints, and saw the role of the state as being a
theocracy enforcing religious observance and sexual abstinence, and maintaining public
order and defence.
Both groups of Protestants rejected the Catholic doctrine of salvation by works. They
thought all men so wicked as to deserve eternal punishment, from which they could not
hope to be saved by their own efforts or those of their fellow men, but only by divine grace.
Any torments one might suffer in this life are therefore as nothing compared to what one
actually deserves, and the immensity of one’s spiritual corruption dwarfs into insignificance
any crimes one might commit against one’s fellow men. I recall a discussion in
cyber-space in which a sceptic asked how a good God could have allowed Pol Pot to
slaughter millions of innocents. An evangelical Christian replied that Pol Pot, while indeed
profoundly wicked, was no more wicked than every other human being. None of his victims
was innocent because there are no innocents. We are all born guilty. Thus many
Protestants were not greatly concerned with the political situation, provided it did not
interfere with their religious practice.
Niccolò Machiavelli (1468-1527)
In The Prince Machiavelli gave shrewd advice to rulers on how to govern effectively
and stay in power. I say ‘rulers’ although formally the book was dedicated to just one ruler,
Lorenzo De’ Medici, Duke of Florence (Lorenzo il Magnifico).
Machiavelli, alone of those I discuss in this chapter, was not a political philosopher so
much as an aspiring political scientist, if there is such a thing. I’ve included him because
although he didn’t discuss philosophical questions, his work does raise such questions.
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I don’t propose to try to summarise all his excellent advice, but strongly recommend
anyone who hasn’t read The Prince to do so. A few examples will suffice to illustrate the
drift of his thought.
If you have good news, Machiavelli said, announce it in small instalments, giving
people the impression that lots of good things are happening one after another. On the
other hand follow the opposite policy when breaking bad news - get it all over as quickly as
possible.
Of a prince who has recently acquired new territory he said:
“If the ruler wants to keep hold of his new possessions, he must bear two things in mind: first, that
the family of the old prince must be destroyed; next, that he must change neither their laws nor their
taxes. In this way in a very short space of time the new principality will be rolled into one with the
old.” (The Prince Penguin Edition P. 36)
Machiavelli’s detached realism has often shocked people used to ruthless actions
being decorated with pious words. He was sometimes denounced as a spokesman for the
Devil.
“men must be either pampered or crushed, because they can get revenge for small injuries but not
for fatal ones. So any injury a prince does a man should be of such a kind that there is no fear of
revenge.” (op cit pp 37-38)
“Many have dreamed up republics and principalities which have never in truth been known to exist;
the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects
what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than
self-preservation. The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes
to grief among so many who are not virtuous. Therefore if a prince wants to maintain his rule he must
learn how not to be ‘virtuous’, and to make use of this or not according to need.“ (op cit pp 90-91))
I think Machiavelli oversimplified by overlooking the possibility that policies effective
in the short term may be counter productive in the long term. The prince who ruthlessly
kills his opponents and their families may well increase his safety for a while, but that is
likely to make him feared and resented. People who later come to oppose him are likely to
conceal the fact and bide their time. Some may even pretend to be loyal and obtain senior
posts in his service, where they would be well placed to assist in his overthrow should
some crisis ever weaken his position. Still, Machiavelli injected a useful realism into
political discussion by stating openly the strategies that others disguised in moralising
rhetoric that was half hypocrisy and half self deception.
Machiavelli’s work raises not only political questions but also logical questions,
questions that he himself never discussed. How far can we predict the effects of political
actions? What evidence is available to test political theories, and how are the theories
related to the evidence? Machiavelli’s advice sounds shrewd, but how do we know that?
How did Machiavelli know it? He illustrates his advice with anecdotes from history, but a
few anecdotes are no proof.
The immediate reaction to his advice is that is self evident, and asks oneself ‘Why
didn’t I think of that?’ We feel confident that Machiavelli was giving good advice about the
advantage releasing good news a little at a time, because we imagine how we should feel
if we were at the receiving end of the good news. We may even remember cases when
we’ve been given the news in the wrong way, either receiving the bad news in a series of
dreary instalments, or having the good news delivered all together. Our imaginations do
seem quite good at answering questions of the form ‘how would you feel if...?’ and
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provided we are cautious they may give a reasonable indication how others are likely to
feel too. Likely, but by no means certain. A quite different story could be made to sound
just as plausible. Revealing the entirety of a particularly monstrous piece of
misadministration might provoke such outrage that the government would be unable to
survive. Imposing a very high tax might have a similar effect, when the government might
be able to get away with first imposing a tax at low level, and then gradually increasing it
by small steps.
A weakness of arguments from introspection, like Machiavelli’s, is that they usually
provide only what I call tendency statements, to the effect that people are likely to prefer
one thing to another. For instance it seems obvious to us that increasing the tax on
cigarettes should reduce consumption but what is really obvious is that people would
rather not pay the higher price and that some are likely respond by considering buying
fewer cigarettes. However it is quite another matter to decide how many people will
actually buy fewer cigarettes, how many fewer they will buy, and how long that change in
behaviour will last. Introspection may not even be a reliable guide to our own behaviour in
hypothetical circumstances, and is even less reliable as a guide to other people’s
behaviour.
Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)
A friend of Erasmus, More was responsible for giving us the word ‘Utopia’ by
publishing a fictional description of an ideal state of that name (1516). More was a lawyer
and eventually became Lord Chancellor of England. In 1935 the Pope made him a Saint.
There is no philosophical subtlety in his work, which appears to have borrowed a great
deal from the arrangements proposed in Plato’s Laws. The Utopia is interesting mainly as
an indication of the sort of ideas that were circulating in the sixteenth century, and the
extent to which even practical men, I am tempted to say, especially practical men, can be
brought to entertain the most absurdly impractical proposals once they allow themselves to
be influenced by the abstract speculations of others.
In a long preamble More has one of his characters condemn the process of turning
arable land into grazing for sheep, and thus creating a class of landless people who could
no longer find work and therefore often turned to crime. That led to a criticism of the rich
and their employing large numbers of retainers, who learn no useful skills but only how to
fight so that when, as frequently happened, their employers tired of their services, they
could find nothing to do but become soldiers or thieves.
Government exists for the sake of the people, not for the sake of kings and courtiers.
Rulers should concentrate on ruling justly, and not squander wealth on foreign wars in an
attempt to gain additional territory.
In Utopia there was to be no private property. Houses were to be distributed among
families by lot and redistributed every 10 years [so it would be no use planting an orchard].
All officials were to be elected. The lowest tier of government would be a town
assembly elected by a secret ballot of households [I assume that meant heads of
household]. Households would be organised into groups of 30, each group called a Sty,
and each sty would elect a Styward to represent it on the assembly, and to act as general
supervisor of the sty that elected him. The Assembly members for each town would elect a
Mayor and a Council. ‘questions affecting the general public’ would have to be debated for
at least three days before the Assembly made a decision and, to discourage the formation
of factions, any assembly men or councillors who discussed such a matter outside the
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council or assembly would be punished by death.
Each town would contain 6000 households each of them containing from ten to
sixteen adults. When necessary, numbers would be maintained at the desired levels by
moving people between households or between towns, or even by sending people to
colonies if the total population became too large, or recalling colonists if the population
became too small.
The oldest mentally competent man in each household would be its head. Women
would be subordinate to their husbands, and children to their parents, and in general the
younger would be subordinate to the older.
Within Utopia there would be no need for trade. All goods produced would be taken
to a central warehouse, whence any head of household would be allowed to collect
anything he required without any need for payment.
Communal meals would be provided in each sty, though individuals who preferred to
eat alone might take their food home, but very few would choose to do so.
To visit another town would require a passport from the mayor, which specified the
time by which the traveller must return. Absence without permission would incur ‘severe’
punishment, and the punishment for a second offence would be slavery.
War should be undertaken only as a last resort, in self defence or to defend a friendly
state, and so far as possible Utopia would rely on very highly paid foreign mercenaries. To
make sure it could pay those when they were needed it should produce large surpluses to
be sold abroad. Conscription would never be used. Native Utopian troops were always to
be volunteers, whose wives would be allowed to accompany them into battle. When they
did so they and their children would be stationed immediately behind their husbands on
the battlefield. Other strategies devised to avoid injury to Utopias citizens in war time
would be to offer rewards for the killing of the enemy king and his principal officials.
All children would receive primary education but only the very few who showed
outstanding academic ability would be allowed additional full time education
All the population would be required to do some agricultural work, and also to learn
some other craft, though few other crafts would be needed as life was to be simple. For
instance there were to be no tailors as everyone would wear simple clothes in the same
general style, so that they could be made at home. There would be no ‘idlers’ such as
priests or landlords (there would be priests but they would not be allowed to avoid work)
and women would work alongside men so it would suffice for everyone to work for six
hours per day. People would be required to go to bed at 8 p.m. for 8 hours sleep. Time not
spent working or sleeping would be free insofar as people would be able to choose
whatever profitable activity suited them. Part time education would be a most desirable
choice, but in any case free time should not be wasted ‘in idleness or self-indulgence’.
People would have to live sober lives of hard work and improving recreation, for there
would be little privacy and there would be no provision for dissipation.
“You see how it is - wherever you are, you always have to work. there’s never any excuse for
idleness. There are also no wine-taverns, no ale-houses, no brothels, no opportunities for
seduction, no secret meeting places. Everyone has his eye on you, so you’re practically forced to
get on with your job, and make some proper use of your spare time” (op cit P 84)
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Utopians would despise jewellery, fine clothes and gambling, regarding hunting as
‘below the dignity of free men’
“Real pleasures they divide into two categories, mental and physical. Mental pleasures include
the satisfaction that one gets from understanding something, or from contemplating truth. They
also include the memory of a well-spent life, and the confident expectation of good things to come.
Physical pleasures are subdivided into two types. First there are those which fill the whole
organism with a conscious sense of enjoyment. This may be the result of replacing physical
substances which have been burnt up by the natural heat of the body, as when we eat or drink. Or
else it may be caused by the discharge of some excess, as in excretion, sexual intercourse, or any
relief of irritation by rubbing or scratching. However, there are also pleasures which satisfy no
organic need, and relieve no previous discomfort. They merely act, in a mysterious but quite
unmistakable way, directly on our senses, and monopolize their reactions. Such is the pleasure of
music.
Their second type of physical pleasure arises from the calm and regular functioning of the
body - that is, from a state of health undisturbed by any minor ailments. In the absence of mental
discomfort, this gives one a good feeling, even without the help of external pleasures. Of course,
it's less ostentatious, and forces itself less violently on one's attention than the cruder delights of
eating and drinking, but even so it's often considered the greatest pleasure in life. Practically
everyone in Utopia would agree that it's a very important one, because it's the basis of all the
others. It's enough by itself to make you enjoy life, and unless you have it, no other pleasure is
possible. However, mere freedom from pain, without positive health, they would call not pleasure
but anaesthesia.”(Op cit P96)
Voluntary Euthanasia would be encouraged in the terminally ill, but suicide in other
circumstances would forfeit the right to an honourable burial or cremation.
Pre-marital intercourse would be forbidden, and those guilty would be prohibited from
marrying. Adultery would be punished by penal servitude for the first offence, and death for
a second. Girls might not marry until they are 18, men not until an (unspecified) later age.
Before marriage the bride and groom should each see the other naked - while chaperoned
by someone of the same sex as the naked partner.; there were to be two viewings, one of
the naked groom chaperoned by a man, and one of the naked bride chaperoned by a
woman.
Minor offences should usually be punished within the family, children by the father,
wives by their husbands. The usual punishment for major offences would be slavery but ‘if
convicts prove recalcitrant....they’re just slaughtered like wild beasts.’ Attempting to
commit a crime would be considered every bit as serious as actually committing it.
Utopia’s slaves would be either Utopian criminals, or criminals bought from foreign
countries, or in some cases even foreigners who volunteered for slavery in Utopia because
they thought that preferable to freedom in their native states. It would be forbidden for
slaves to breed.
Thieves should not be executed since human life is worth more than any amount of
money. In any case, if theft attracted the same penalty as murder, a thief would be better
off killing his victims and thereby reducing his chances of conviction. A better arrangement
would be for thieves to be required to compensate their victims. Those unable to do so
should be imprisoned but only at night. In the day time they should be compelled to work
until they have earned enough to meet their obligations. They could either work in the
public service, or be hired out to private individuals. If they refused to work or worked too
slowly they should be whipped.
The total corpus of law should be short enough for all to understand it, so that no
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lawyers would be needed.
“For, according to the Utopians, it’s quite unjust for anyone to be bound by a legal code which is
too long for an ordinary person to read right through, or too difficult for him to understand. What’s
more, they have no barristers to be over-ingenious about individual cases and points of law” (op cit
P 106 )
All religions would be tolerated, but none might employ violence or personal abuse
against any other. However it would be forbidden publicly to deny the immortality of the
soul, because that would undermine respect for morality. Any who did not believe in that
doctrine would be excluded from all public honours and appointments. Priests would be
elected by the general population and would conduct public services designed to be
acceptable to everyone whatever their religion, so they would contain no reference to the
peculiar doctrines of any particular religion. Priests would take charge of primary
education. Both men and women would be eligible to be priests, though most priests
would be men. A priest who committed a crime would not be punished by the state
because his punishment should be left to God.
Sir Robert Filmer and the Divine Right of Kings
In Patriacha, a work circulated privately in his lifetime, but not published until after his
death, Sir Robert Filmer (1588-1653) argued that Monarchs have unlimited power given to
them by God. In the beginning God made Adam lord of his wife and children and their
descendants, and subsequent rulers have inherited that authority. In general males are
superior to females, and the older to the younger. All humans are descended from Adam,
making them all part of one family and all are subject to the authority of Adam’s heirs.
Nothing can ever justify any attempt to overthrow a king. No one may justly claim any
rights against a king, unless those rights have been bestowed by the king. Property also is
distributed patriarchally, belonging absolutely to those who were given it or who inherit it.
Filmer pointed out the absurdity of supposing that mankind was ever in a state of
nature without rulers, and remarked that even if there ever had been a general assembly
of all primitive mankind to agree to a social contract, it would have been impossible for all
to participate. Some would have been absent for one good reason or another, and many of
the children would have been too young to enter into a binding commitment.
Filmer’s writing is of interest chiefly because it provoked a counter attack from John
Locke in his Two Treatises on Government. I discuss Locke’s reply in later in this chapter.
Thomas Hobbes
As I’ve already remarked, Hobbes political theory was contractual. In the Leviathan
he explained how he believed that people, originally free and equal, were unable to
co-operate through instinct, as do social animals like bees, yet unable either to survive
comfortably without co-operation. Morality was therefore possible only within a political
system.
“The dispositions of men are naturally such, that except they be restrained through fear of some
coercive power, every man will distrust and dread each other; and as by natural right he may, so by
necessity he will be forced to make use of the strength he hath, toward the preservation of himself”
(English translation of De Cive, preface P. 99)
“...politics and ethics (that is, the sciences of just and unjust, of equity and inequity) can be
demonstrated a priori; because we ourselves make the principles - that is, the causes of justice
(namely laws and covenants) - whereby it is known what justice and equity, and their opposites
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injustice and inequity, are. For before covenants and laws were drawn up, neither justice nor
injustice, neither public good nor public evil, was natural among men any more than it was among
beasts.” (On Man pp. 42-43)
Men therefore made a contract to construct a supreme authority to maintain order.
That authority is the state, and it must be governed by a single sovereign power. While
Hobbes thought it best that the sovereign be a monarch, he conceded that it might be an
assembly. Whatever form it takes, the sovereign power must be unified. The division of
power between several bodies, as between King and Parliament, is likely to lead to strife
and so to vitiate the purpose of the state. The social contract was a contract between
potential subjects to create a sovereign; it was not a contract between people and
sovereign, so the sovereign is not bound by it; while any particular authority within a state
can be limited, any effective state must contain one sovereign authority whose power is
unlimited.
Sometimes Hobbes seems to say that it is logically impossible to limit the power of
the sovereign, arguing thus: Suppose there are two centres of power. There is then a
possibility of conflict between them. Suppose there is some way of resolving such a
conflict. Perhaps one of the two must give way; then the one that prevails is the true
sovereign.
Suppose, on the other hand, that some third body mediates in disputes. Then under
those circumstances that body becomes the sovereign. That argument seems to be an
oversimplification, because, if the two other centres of power avoided conflict, the third
power that mediates between them when they are in dispute would not be called on to do
so, and thus might have no influence on the course of events, in which case it could hardly
be regarded as the sovereign power. By agreeing to avoid conflict, the other two centres of
power could completely nullify the third.
Our obligation to obey the sovereign is conditional only on its ability to protect us. If it
fails in that we need not obey it, and may even attempt to replace it. That is the only
circumstance in which subjects are justified in asserting against their sovereign any rights
other that those which the sovereign himself may have granted them. Property is held only
subject to the sovereign’s pleasure, for there is no property in a state of nature, so
governments create property and may regulate it as they please. In De Cive Hobbes said
that the sovereign may not be punished for anything he does, and is not obliged to obey
any law, since the law is made by the sovereign to govern his subjects.
“And what bloodshed hath not this erroneous doctrine caused, that kings are not superiors to, but
administrators for the multitude! Lastly, how many rebellions hath this opinion been the cause of,
which teacheth that the knowledge whether the commands of kings be just or unjust, belongs to
private men; and that before they yield obedience, they not only may, but ought to dispute them! ..... I
suppose those ancients foresaw this, who rather chose to have the science of justice wrapped up in
fables, than openly exposed to disputations. For before such questions began to be moved, princes
did not sue for, but already exercised the supreme power. They kept their empire entire, not by
arguments, but by punishing the wicked and protecting the good. Likewise subjects did not measure
what was just by the sayings and judgements of private men, but by the laws of the realm; nor were
they kept in peace by disputations, but by power and authority. Yea, they reverenced the supreme
power, whether residing in one man or in a council, as a certain visible divinity..... For they could not
entertain so strange a fancy, as not to desire the preservation of that by which they were preserved.
In truth, the simplicity of those times was not yet capable of so learned a piece of folly. Wherefore it
was peace and a golden age, which ended not before that, Saturn being expelled, it was taught
lawful to take up arms against kings. (English translation of De Cive, preface pp. 96-97)
Hobbes was a Royalist who went into exile in France at the beginning of the civil war
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and did not return to England until the restoration. He was for a while tutor to the Prince
Charles, who later became King Charles II. He was doubtless thinking of the execution of
Charles I when he wrote the passage just quoted.
Only one body of religious belief should be permitted in any state, and that should be
specified by the sovereign.
“Again, with regard to guaranties, the guarantor assumes the person of him for whom he stands
guaranty. For he is the author of the faith that one has who believes the promisor and, at his own
peril, he commands belief in himself as guarantor. Whence he is called a surety (fidejussor).
Not only can a single man bear the person of a single man, but one man can also bear many, and
many, one. For if many men agree that, whatsoever be done by some one man or group out of the
many, they themselves will hold it as an action of each and everyone of them, each and every One
will be the author of the actions that the man or group may take; and therefore he cannot complain of
any of their actions without complaining of himself. In the same way, all kings and supreme
governors of any kind of states whatsoever bear the person of God, if they acknowledge God as
ruler. In particular, first it was Moses and then Christ that bore the person of God reigning, and now,
after the Holy Ghost descended visibly on the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, it is the Church, that
is, the supreme governor of the Church in every state. Therefore, according to the custom of men,
God among an peoples hath as His possessions the lands, rights, and other goods especially
consecrated to Him. But He doth not have these things unless it be so constituted by the state. For,
since the will of God is not known save through the state, and since, moreover, it is required that the
will of Him that is represented be the author of the actions performed by those who represent Him, it
needs be that God's person be created by the will of the state. (On Man pp 84-85)
Note that for a ruler to ‘bear the person of God’ it suffices that the ruler, presumably
in this respect representing the citizens, ‘acknowledge God as ruler’. Hobbes does not
require that God gives personal consent to the arrangement; apparently it suffices that his
self appointed representatives consent on his behalf. He comes near to saying that God is
created by the state.
Spinoza
Up to a point Spinoza followed Hobbes in suggesting that human society is based on
a contract made by men in order to escape from the uncertainties of a turbulent state of
nature. However he differed from Hobbes both in his attitude to the state and in his views
about its organisation. He thought that there would be no need for any state if people were
completely rational and understood that they were all parts of the one Deus sive Natura,
for then there would be no conflict between them. As people are not completely rational a
state is needed to enforce law and order so that they can live together in harmony and
strive for a rational understanding of the world free from interference from others.
However, Spinoza believed that at least some people can come close to rationality and
that seems to leave open the possibility that there could conceivably be a situation in
which no state would be needed.
“It follows, plainly, from the explanation given above, of the foundations of a state, that the ultimate
aim of government is not to rule, or restrain, by fear, nor to exact obedience, but contrariwise, to free
every man from fear, that he may live in all possible security; in other words, to strengthen his natural
right to exist and work - without injury to himself or others.
No, the object of government is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or puppets,
but to enable them to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason
unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and
injustice. In fact, the true aim of government is liberty.” (Theologico-Political Treatise ch. 20 )
Spinoza attached particular importance to the tolerance of a wide variety of opinions,
believing that people should ideally enjoy complete freedom of thought. He thought it
important that religious leaders should not wield political power.
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In opposition to Hobbes, Spinoza favoured a separation of powers, referring with
approval to the system operating among the ancient Hebrews where the laws were
interpreted by the Levites, who did not themselves play any part in government, so that the
rulers did not control the laws. He thought the best form of government was a democracy
“where the whole or a great part of the people wield authority collectively.” (Theologico
Political treatise Ch 20 )
Morality is subsidiary to politics in so far as the state gives meaning to moral
terminology, which would not make sense outside an institutional framework.
“If, therefore, ... justice and charity can only acquire the force of right and law through the rights
of rulers, [then, since] the rights of rulers are in the possession of the sovereign ... religion can only
acquire the force of right by means of those who have the right to command, and that God only rules
among men through the instrumentality of earthly potentates. It follows ... that the practice of justice
and charity only acquires the force of law through the rights of the sovereign authority; for .... in the
state of nature reason has no more rights than desire, but that men living either by the laws of the
former or the laws of the latter, possess rights co-extensive with their powers.
For this reason we could not conceive sin to exist in the state of nature, nor imagine God as a
judge punishing man's transgressions; but we supposed all things to happen according to the
general laws of universal nature, there being no difference between pious and impious, between him
that was pure ... and him that was impure, because there was no possibility either of justice or
charity.
In order that the true doctrines of reason .... might obtain absolutely the force of law and right, it
was necessary that each individual should cede his natural right, and transfer it either to society as a
whole, or to a certain body of men, or to one man. Then, and not till then, does it first dawn upon us
what is justice and what is injustice, what is equity and what is iniquity.” (Theologico Political treatise
Ch 20 )
Poverty is a source of conflict and disorder, and as it is beyond the capacity of any
individual to relieve poverty, the state should undertake that task.
Locke
For most of his adult life, Locke was an academic, teaching medicine at Christ
Church where he was a Student until 1884, when the College, under pressure from the
government of Charles II, deprived him of his studentship. His philosophical work appears
not to have begun until 1666, when he met Lord Ashley in his capacity as a doctor. Ashley
was a leading Whig who later became Lord Shaftesbury and was for a while Lord
Chancellor. Locke soon became a member of Ashley’s circle, with rooms in Exeter House,
Ashley’s London house. Locke discussed matters of state with Ashley and held several
minor official posts.
Almost all Locke’s publications appeared after the revolution of 1688. From that time
to the end of his life Locke exercised considerable political influence, not only by holding
several government posts, but also through his personal influence on Lord Somers and on
an informal group of Lockean members of Parliament. Thus Locke’s political philosophy
reflects politics as it was seen by an insider.
Locke’s political theory has been even more influential after his death than in his
lifetime, not least because it was the basis for the Constitution of the United States of
America. His principal publication on the subject was the Two Treatises on Government.
All my quotations are taken from the critical edition prepared by Peter Laslett and
published by Mentor Books in 1963. The first Treatise was a refutation of Sir Robert
Filmer, and the second set out Locke’s own opinions, though he presented those with an
eye to reinforcing his earlier rebuttal of Filmer.
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Filmer’s arguments for the Divine Rights of Kings proved an easy target. Locke
began with Filmer’s parallel between the authority of a ruler and that of a father, pointing
out that parental responsibility belongs to the mother as well as the father, so that Filmer’s
argument could at best justify rule by a couple, not by a monarch acting alone. In any case
parental responsibility, unlike that of the government, is usually temporary. It is limited to
taking care of children while they are unable to make rational decisions for themselves.
Only idiots and lunatics are subject to their parents’ authority for their whole lives.
The Bible suggests that a father’s estate was not inherited by a single heir, but
divided among all his sons. Even if that were not so and Adam did have a single heir, we
cannot identify that heir because that would require a complete genealogical record of the
entire human race. Even if we could identify the heir there would be only one so that not
more than one of the present rulers can be legitimate, and there is no way of telling which
that is.
Locke had less to say about Filmer’s arguments against the supposition that human
society was created by a contract between men initially in a state of nature. Those
arguments were embarrassing for Locke because he himself held such a theory. Perhaps
one reason he argued at such length against Filmer’s theory of the rights of Kings was so
to discredit Filmer that his powerful arguments against the state of nature would also be
disregarded.
The Two Treatises were first published anonymously in 1690, and Locke never
publicly acknowledged his authorship in his lifetime, though he acknowledged it in his will.
It had long been supposed that, while the first Treatise was probably written around
1680, the second was written not long before it was published and was intended to provide
a retrospective justification for the ‘Bloodless Revolution’ of 1688 - Locke had been in exile
in the Netherlands for several years prior to that event, and returned to England as a
passenger in William of Orange’s invading fleet. However research in the mid twentieth
century, especially by Peter Laslett, suggested that almost all the material of the Two
Treatises was written considerably earlier, much of it possibly as early as 1682. Laslett
suggested that Locke was writing to support a forthcoming revolution, not to sanction one
that had already taken place. Indeed there are some comments that appear to apply to
Charles II, who died in 1685, rather than James II who was the king deposed in 1688.
Certainly there is a great deal in the second treatise about the conditions under which a
government is legitimate, and those in which a king may be deposed. There is far more
about the propriety of resistance to government and the replacing of illegitimate
governments, than there is about the way to conduct a legitimate government should we
ever be fortunate enough to have one. It is therefore not surprising that Locke’s writing
should have appealed to the American colonists who first resisted, and then overthrew,
English colonial rule, nor that the post colonial American political system which was based
on Lockean principles should have been exceptionally litigious.
When Locke came to present his own theory he did not, as I had expected before I
read it, provide a careful analysis of political issues based on the theory of the human mind
and human knowledge developed in his Essay concerning Human Understanding. Instead
he addressed politics with scarcely a reference to other philosophical issues. Although
Locke commented on many political questions, I formed the impression that his treatment
of all other issues was subsidiary to his desire to challenge the traditional authority of
rulers. Thus his comments on the family, of which there are many in the Two Treatises,
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seem to be motivated primarily by the wish to deny claims that absolute monarchy can be
legitimised by an analogy between a king and a father. His discussions of the functions of
government seem primarily concerned to describe the circumstances under which we may
legitimately remove a government that is not satisfactorily fulfilling those functions, and to
show that those circumstances applied to the governments of Charles II and James II. All
Locke’s comments on politics should be interpreted in the light of the axes he was grinding
when he wrote. With that qualification at the back of my mind I shall survey his theory.
Locke’s theory of the state had some features in common with Hobbes’. Both thought
that the state had been created by a contract between people initially in a state of nature.
But Locke differed from Hobbes in three important respects. First Locke’s state of nature
was not one of unrelieved distress. Second Locke’s contract bound governments as well
as their subjects, and third, instead of Hobbes sovereign with undivided and unlimited
power, Locke proposed a government of divided and strictly limited power, with executive
and legislative powers in different hands.
Locke’s state of nature was one of freedom and equality, governed by a ‘natural law’
that was ‘the law of reason’ He thought that ‘natural law’ originated from God and is
somehow embedded in the nature of things. By virtue of the natural law all enjoy the same
‘natural rights’ including the right to hold property, and the right to defend themselves
against any threats to life, limb or property. Equality was of rights, not of property. Natural
rights and natural law do not apply only to men when they are in a state of nature, but are
still relevant after a society has been established, since society exists primarily to
safeguard natural rights and restrains the exercise of some natural rights only in the
interests of making our enjoyment of the totality more secure.
There can be no doubt concerning the reality of the state of nature, since many men
are still in that state.
“Tis often asked as a mighty Objection, Where are, or ever were, there any Men in such a State
of Nature? To which it may suffice as an Answer at present; That since all Princes and Rulers of
Independent Governments all through the World, are in a State of Nature, ‘tis plain the World never
was, nor ever will be, without Numbers of Men in that State. I have named all Governors of
Independent Communities, whether they are, or are not, in League with others: For ‘tis not every
Compact that puts an end to the State of Nature between Men, but only this one of agreeing together
mutually to enter into one Community, and make one Body Politick; other Promises and Compacts,
Men may make with one another, and yet still be in a State of Nature.” (p. 317)
“...all men are naturally in that State, and remain so, till by their own Consents they make
themselves Members of some Politick Society.” (p. 318)
Some of Locke’s comments about human society are reminiscent of Aquinas; he
remarked that we naturally seek the company of others, primarily for procreation but also
for company, which is the reason we have the ability to learn language. The reason for
progressing from families and informal associations to states is the need for security of our
persons and of our property. A state also provides an impartial authority to settle disputes
so that no man has to be a judge in his own cause.
Had Locke integrated his political philosophy into the theory of the Essay, his doctrine
of equality might have derived some support from his rejection of innate ideas, with its
picture of the mind as a tabula rasa. That might have been developed by Locke, as it was
later developed by others, into the doctrine that there is no innate mental difference
between one man and another, so that any difference there is must either be physical, or
be the product of experience - including, of course, though more extensive than,
experience obtained in the course of education and training. That would have provided
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Locke with an easy way to deal with the Platonist theory that some are fitted to rule by
ability to perceive the Form of Goodness. However Locke did not argue in that way and
since he was a congnitivist in ethics, he was not free to use the other argument against the
Platonists: that there can be no experts in morality, because there are no moral facts of
which anyone can have expert knowledge.
If, in one way, his theory of knowledge might have supported Locke’s political
theories, it might in another way have created a difficulty, for he stressed our propensity to
seek company and to learn language, both of which he appeared to assume are innate,
and both of which are to some degree mental. Of course, being born with the propensity to
learn a language, is not the same as being born with a particular language ready installed
in our minds, but it might still be hard to make a sharp distinction between one inheritance
and the other, and it would have been interesting to see Locke try to do it.
Now to consider the details of Locke’s theory. He thought the primary function of
society was to secure property, so I start with his account of property.
Locke considered our property to be first our own persons, second our own labour,
and third what we make with our labour. Agricultural land can be property because the
greater part of its value comes from the labour devoted to clearing it and preparing it for
cultivation. The farmer has ‘mixed his labour’ with his land. Possession of property
includes the rights to exchange it for other property or to give it away, so that property may
legitimately be obtained by trade or inheritance. Hence, although someone’s labour is the
legitimising basis of property, it is not necessary that every person’s property be derived
solely from that person’s labour. A complicating factor is that Locke sometimes seemed
also to treat natural rights and liberties as property.
It is sometimes possible even for people to become property by becoming slaves.
That happens when an aggressor falls into our hands and we could legitimately put him to
death, but instead we spare his life and put him to work. Probably most people would
prefer slavery to death, but anyone who doesn’t can simply refuse to co-operate and thus
induce us to kill him anyway. So if someone becomes a slave it is by really by his own
choice (not to court death), and in what he considers to be his own interest. However
Locke thought we have no right to kill ourselves, since we are the property, not of
ourselves, but of ‘one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker’ Indeed, he thought we have
no right to sell ourselves into slavery, even though there are circumstances in which we
might legitimately be enslaved. He was thus in the odd position of denying that anyone
may justly kill himself, or agree to become a slave, while allowing that someone who has
involuntarily become a slave may deliberately provoke his master to kill him. If all humans
are the property of their Omnipotent maker, they can hardly also belong to one another,
and if we may not kill ourselves because we belong to our maker, one would expect that it
would for the same reason also be forbidden either to kill others, or to provoke others into
killing us.
The protection of property requires the formation of a state.
“The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into commonwealths, and putting
themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.” (P 395)
Locke thought that that commonwealth should take the form of what he called a ‘civil
society’, one in which there is a legislature, or ‘legislative’ as Locke called it, to make laws.
There would also be judges and magistrates to deal with breaches of laws and with
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disputes between different members of society, or between members and others who are
not members, so that no one can be a judge in his own cause. The legislative must act to
preserve the institutions of society and the individuals composing it. It must rule by laws
that are interpreted by judges, not by arbitrary decrees. The government may not deprive
subjects of their property without their consent, so that when taxes are needed they may
be levied only with the consent of the majority. The legislature may not delegate the power
to legislate, because only the people are entitled to delegate power. The people, who are
the source of its power, retain the right to ‘remove or alter’ the legislature.
“These are the Bounds which the trust that is put in them by the Society, and the Law of God
and Nature, have set to the Legislative Power of every Commonwealth, in all Forms of
Government.
First, They are to govern by promulgated establish'd Laws, not to be varied in particular
Cases, but to have one Rule for Rich and Poor, for the Favourite at Court, and the Country Man at
Plough.
Secondly, These Laws also ought to be designed for no other end ultimately but the good of
the People.
Thirdly, they must not raise Taxes on the Property of the People, without the Consent of the
People, given by themselves, or their Deputies. And this properly concerns, only such
Governments where the Legislative is always in being, or at least where the People have not
reserv'd any part of the Legislative to Deputies, to be from time to time chosen by themselves.
Fourthly, The Legislative neither must nor can transfer the Power of making Laws to any
Body else, or place it any where but where the People have.” (P409 #142)
“there remains still in the People a Supream Power to remove or alter the Legislative, when
they find the Legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them. For all Power given with trust for
the attaining of an end being limited by that end, whenever that end is manifestly neglected or
opposed, the trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the Power devolve into the hands of those
that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think best for their safety and security.” (P413
#149)
There must also be an executive, which Locke was presumably thinking of when he
referred to the legislative as having at its disposal the ‘combined force’ of all the members
of society. Sometimes he seemed to assume that the executive power would be wielded
by a King or Prince, as it was in the England of his day. He also distinguished what he
called a ‘federative power’ that dealt with relations with other societies. The other centres
of power could be part of the legislature, but must in any case be subject to the authority of
the legislature. If, as he thought likely, the legislature was only part-time, at least some
power would have to be in other hands to make it possible for government to act quickly in
emergencies.
A government is not legitimate unless it has the consent of the people, and citizens
are justified in removing a government that lacks that legitimacy. Absolute monarchy is
therefore not a civil society, and is quite unacceptable as a form of government, since the
king would then be judge in his own cause, while the subjects, having surrendered their
natural right to self defence, would be helpless against his power. An absolute monarch is
in a state of nature with respect to his subjects.
“he that thinks absolute power purifies mans Blood, and corrects the baseness of Human
Nature, need read but the History of this, or any other Age to be convinced of the contrary. He that
would have been insolent and injurious in the Woods of America, would not probably be much
better on a throne; where perhaps Learning and Religion shall be found out to justifie all, that he
shall do to his Subjects, and the Sword presently silence all those that dare question it.” (op cit P
371)
The purpose of law is not primarily to control the subjects but to secure their freedom:
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“the end of Law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge Freedom: For in all the
states of created beings capable of Laws, where there is no Law, there is no Freedom. For Liberty
is to be free from restraint and violence from others which cannot be, where there is no Law: But
Freedom is not, as we are told, A Liberty to every Man to do what he lists: (For who could be free,
when every other Man's Humour might domineer over him?) But a Liberty to dispose, and order, as
he lists, his Person, Actions, Possessions, and his whole Property, within the Allowance of those
Laws under which he is; and therein not to be subject to the arbitrary Will of another, but freely
follow his own.” (P348).
Locke had a good deal to say about the family, though his discussion seems to have
been directed primarily at reinforcing his earlier rebuttal of Filmer by showing that civil
society is not a family, so he may not have been expressing carefully considered opinions
on the rights and duties of married couples.
In any civil society the union of male and female should last ‘as long as is necessary
to the nourishment and support of the young Ones, who are to be sustained by those that
care for them, till they are able to shift and provide for themselves’. He observed that that
did not require a lifelong union. (op cit p 362) The authority of parents over their children is
thus temporary, so no analogy with parenthood can justify absolute monarchy where the
authority of the monarch is permanent. Also the parental authority is limited; for instance
parents may not kill their children.
Locke conceded that the first rulers may have been heads of families, since many
early societies may have consisted either of single families, or of groupings of just a few
families In that case it may have seemed natural that the functions of father and ruler
should be discharged by the same person, but the fact that sometimes one person may
have filled two roles does not imply that the roles are the same.
A civil society is not legitimate unless its members consent to join it. The consent
should be on an individual basis. Locke stressed that the submission of a parent to a
government does not bind the children, who do not become subjects until they give their
own consent. Just living in a society does not constitute tacit consent, but children may be
judged to have tacitly consented as soon as they assert rights of inheritance, since those
rights are secured by society. However tacit consent, unlike explicit consent, is not
permanent
“Possession or Enjoyment of any part of the Dominion of any Government” involves
an obligation to obey the laws of that government. But give up the land and go to another
civil society, and the former obligation ends. Such tacit consent does not make one a
member of the society (op cit p 394) Locke seemed to consider ownership of land
particularly significant, possibly because land is not moveable, and is therefore almost
always subject to a particular government.
There should be no taxation without consent, no delegation of legislative powers by
the legislative authority to anyone else, and no arbitrary actions. Government should act
only in accordance with fixed, clear laws. The following passage sheds interesting light on
membership of a state:
“But submitting to the laws of any country, living quietly, and enjoying Privileges and Protection
under them, makes not any Man a member of that Society: This is only a local Protection and
Homage due to, and from all those who, not being in a state of War, come within the Territories
belonging to any Government, to all parts whereof the force of its Law extends. But this no more
makes a Man a member of that Society, a perpetual Subject of that Commonwealth, than it would
make a Man a Subject to another in whose family he found it convenient to abide for some
time........thus...Foreigners, by living all their lives under another Government........do not thereby
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come to be Subjects or members of that Commonwealth. Nothing can make any man so, but his
actually entering into it by positive Engagement., and express promise and Compact.” (P 394)
The last sentence raises a doubt whether most of us belong to a commonwealth at
all. Certainly I don’t recall ever making any ‘positive Engagement’ or any ‘express promise
and Compact’ to become a subject of the United Kingdom!
Locke had a good deal to say about the circumstances in which the people might
justifiably remove an oppressive government by force. He defined ‘tyranny’ as ‘the
exercise of Power beyond right’ by which he meant any use of power ‘not for the good of
those who are under it, but for his [the tyrant’s] private separate advantage’. We are
entitled to resist any officer who uses force in a way that exceeds his authority. The people
may remove a prince who has become a tyrant, which he could have done either by acting
oppressively beyond his authority, or by destroying or altering the legislature. By ‘altering’
Locke meant either a change in the method by which electors are chosen, as by changing
constituencies, or by bribing or intimidating legislators. Both were practises of the
governments of Charles II and James II, and we may assume that Locke was thinking of
one or the other or both when he wrote. Should there ever be a dispute as to whether or
not a prince deserves to be deposed, the people themselves should form the court of final
appeal, since the prince is the people’s agent, and has therefore failed if he does not
discharge his duties to their satisfaction.
“Tyrannies are often set up by foreign conquest and may justly be overthrown when there is an
opportunity to do so. Every Man is born with a double Right: First, A Right of Freedom to his Person,
which no other Man has a Power over, but the free Disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, A Right,
before any other Man, to inherit, with his Brethren, his Fathers Goods.
By the first of these, a Man is naturally free from subjection to any Government, though he be
born in a place under its Jurisdiction. But if he disclaim the lawful Government of the Country he was
born in, he must also quit the Right that belonged to him by the Laws of it, and the Possessions there
descending to him from his Ancestors, if it were a Government made by their consent.
By the second, the Inhabitants of any Countrey, who are descended, and derive a Title to their
Estates from those, who are subdued, and had a Government forced upon them against their free
consents, retain a Right to the Possession of their Ancestors, though they consent not freely to the
Government, whose hard Conditions were by force imposed on the Possessors of that Country. For
the first Conqueror never having had a Title to the Land of that Country, the People who are the
Descendants of, or claim under those, who were forced to submit to the Yoke of a Government by
constraint, have always a Right to shake it off, and free themselves from the Usurpation, or Tyranny,
which the Sword hath brought in upon them, till their Rulers put them under such a Frame of
Government, as they willingly, and of choice consent to. Who doubts but the Grecian Christians
descendants of the ancient possessors of that Country may justly cast off the Turkish yoke which
they have so long groaned under when ever they have a power to do it?” (P441 #191 - #192)
After overthrowing such a tyranny, the victims are justified in seeking restitution from
the conquerors. However restitution may be justly sought only from the conqueror and his
willing collaborators, not at the expense of their wives and children, or those of his
countrymen not involved in the conquest.
In general, force is justified only where there is no peaceful means of obtaining
redress.
“where the injured Party may be relieved and his damages repaired by Appeal to the Law, there
can be no pretence for Force, which is only to be used where a man is intercepted from appealing to
the law .... tis such force alone that puts him that uses it into a state of War, and makes it lawful to
resist him” (P451 #207)
We may legitimately kill anyone who tries to rob us with violence, but may not use
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violence against someone to secure the return of property they hold without our
permission, for in the first place, but not the second, we do no have time to appeal to the
courts, which could not restore my life if the robber killed me. Force is legitimate only
where there is no alternative.
The founders of the United States of America were strongly influenced by Locke, and
by a doctrine of the separation of powers that is often attributed to Locke, but is nowhere
explicit in his writings. The American doctrine states that the Executive and Legislative
powers should be separate, although the United states went further by establishing an
independent Supreme Court too. Although Locke distinguished different functions of
government, he does not say that they should be completely separate in the sense of
being in different hands, indeed he clearly thought it likely that they would overlap.
Hume considered that the function of the state and was utilitarian - it enabled men to
live and work together in comparative safety and harmony.
He tried to show that political ideas can be fitted into his theory of knowledge,
according to which all our ideas are derived from our perceptions. He had brought morality
into that scheme by attributing moral ideas to a moral sense, the good being what
‘produces pleasure and approbation’ and the evil what has the opposite effect, pointing out
that a natural sympathy makes pleasing not only our own pleasures but also those of
others. When he tried to extend that treatment to political ideas, there was a problem.
Political goods include duties that are often onerous rather than immediately appealing.
Hume selected for detailed examination the idea of Justice. (Treatise III, II, 1)
To justify performing an inconvenient duty, such as repaying a debt when the creditor
has no means to force us to do so, we must appeal to the social consequences of leaving
debts unpaid. That makes sense among civilised men but would be unintelligible to men in
their natural state, so although it is easy to see why people want to maintain society once it
is a going concern, it is not at all clear how they could have wanted to establish a society
in the first place. An instinctive regard for the public interest is not a plausible starting point
since ‘that is a motive too remote and too sublime to affect the generality of mankind.’
(Treatise P187)‘In general there is no such passion in human minds as the love of
mankind’ The rules of justice are artificial ‘established by the artifice of men’ so we have to
explain how such rules could ever have been established.
Man is intrinsically social, because he cannot easily support himself by his unaided
individual efforts. Yet that fact alone could hardly provide a motive for forming a society in
the first place, because the advantages social life are apparent only to those who have
experienced them. The motive for taking the first step towards social life is sexual
attraction, under the influence of which men mate and beget children, thus producing a
family in which the advantages of social life are first experienced. Experience of social life
shows that there are frequent disputes about property, so that people realise the
advantages of entering into a convention for securing property rights. That convention is
not a formal promise, and still less a contract, but just a ‘general sense of common
interest’ Once such a convention is recognised the ideas of ‘property’, ‘right’ and
‘obligation’ arise naturally. Without the convention they would have been unintelligible.
Justice requires that we check our love of personal gain. There is no other passion
strong enough to do control our acquisitiveness, and society contrives to check that
passion by ‘changing its direction’ so that it checks itself. We check our acquisitiveness,
accepting less than we should like in order to hold those lesser gains more securely. For
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we realise that ‘in preserving society we make much greater advances in the acquiring of
possession than in the solitary.....’(Treatise III, II, II P 197) That mechanism would be
easily discovered since ‘every parent’ must establish a ‘rudimentary’ system of justice to
keep the peace within the family.2 [recent research suggests hat humans have an innate sense of fairness, so
that they resist what appears to be excessive selfishness in others even at some cost to themselves, so that people can’t
get away with unbridled acquisitiveness.]
Once society is established people are expected to behave justly, hence to do so
earns the admiration of others, while to do otherwise brings their displeasure. It is the
desire to earn the admiration and to avoid the displeasure that is in practice the principal
motive for just behaviour, but that motive is not the primary source of the notion of justice,
for justice could not without circularity be founded on a wish to be thought just.
Hume rejected contract theories. He conceded that an element of consent must have
been involved in the submission of the most primitive societies to the commands of a ruler,
for no single man has the physical strength to force a substantial number of others to
submit to him. However there is no reason to believe there ever was an original contract,
or indeed that men ever lived for a substantial time under pre-social conditions. (op cit P
198).
He pointed out that there are no records or even traditions about social contracts,
and in many countries people submit to the dictates of absolute rulers, with no suggestion
that the ruler might have any contractual obligations to his subjects. It will not do for
contract theorists to reply that the original contract was made too long ago for any record
to have survived. For almost all existing governments were established within recorded
history, and it is a matter of record that they were not established by social contract. So if
there ever were such contracts they applied to societies that perished long ago, and no
existing government can be bound by them.
The first governments were probably formed by people promising to obey a leader or
a group of leaders, but that does not apply to later societies, for the duty of allegiance soon
becomes one of the customary duties that apply to all citizens. In particular no promise
could be the basis of a modern state, as one of the principal functions of government is to
enforce the honouring of promises. (Treatise III, II, VIII )
Turning to the institution of property Hume observed that it is most important that
possession should be stable, which implies that rights to possession should be easy to
establish. In the unlikely event of an entirely new society being formally established by a
number of previously independent individuals, the best rule would be that each should
remain in possession of whatever he held at the outset. However, while possession is
always an important consideration, it cannot in less exceptional cases be the sole
consideration. Usually we must take into account four factors.
(1) Occupation, which is first possession. To posses something is to have it in our
power, so that we can use, move, or destroy it as we choose. Unfortunately it is not always
clear what is in our power. Suppose we trap an animal in circumstances in which it has a
very small chance of escaping, until we’ve actually got our hands on it we can’t be
completely sure that we are in a position to do with it as we please, but the case would
generally be treated as possession. When it is land that is occupied the extent of the
2
recent research suggests hat humans have an innate sense of fairness, so that they resist what appears to be
excessive selfishness in others even at some cost to themselves, so that people can’t get away with unbridled
acquisitiveness.
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possession may not be completely clear. A single person who discovered an otherwise
uninhabited island the size of Britain would not be regarded as occupying the whole island,
but only that part he made use of.
(2) Prescription is possession for a long period of time up to and including the
present. Prescription is a particularly useful criterion when there is doubt about occupation.
(3) Accession “We acquire the property of objects by accession when they are
connected in an intimate manner with objects that are already our property, and at the
same time inferior to them” examples are the fruit from our trees and the young of our
animals.
(4) Succession by which Hume meant inheritance. He argued that it is in “the
general interest of mankind....that men’s possessions should pass to those who are dear
to them, in order to render them more industrious and frugal” Ownership of property may
be transferred from one person to another by gift or purchase, with the consent of the
original owner.
Crucial to the functioning of any society is the artificial virtue of promise keeping. It is
artificial because there is no mental act that accompanies all promises. A promise could
not consist just of a resolution to act, for a promise carries an obligation, while a resolution
does not. Nor is a promise a desire, for it is quite common for people to promise what they
do not desire. It is not willing, for that applies only to the present, while promises apply to
the future. The only type of mental act not so far eliminated is the willing of the obligation
created by the promise, but that does not make sense since it implies a change of
sentiment and we cannot at will “render any action agreeable or disagreeable, moral or
immoral which, without that act, would have produced contrary impressions” To clinch the
matter, “we have no motive leading us to the performance of promises, distinct from a
sense of duty”
Promises are important because we often help others in anticipation of their later
helping us in return, and the custom of keeping promises provides a way for them to
guarantee that they will help us. Promise also allows us to buy and sell property without
the property being present when the sale takes place, since the seller can promise to
produce it, and the buyer can promise to pay for it. The institution of money also depends
on the keeping of promises to honour the currency.
Hume considered that any human society depends upon what he called ‘three
fundamental laws of nature’, the stability of possession, transmission of property by
consent, and the performance of promises. All three must have been established before
any state came into existence or any historical record began. Some philosophers have
concluded that the three fundamental laws are somehow independent of human concerns
and provide a basis for the more obviously artificial duties and conventions of civilised life.
Hume thought not, arguing that the three laws are basic only in the sense of having come
first. They are still ‘artificial and voluntary conventions’. Both the fundamental laws and the
laws and conventions of the state ‘are built on the very same foundations’ that they are
necessary to satisfy human needs, so none can provide a ‘basis’ for any other.
“To obey the civil magistrate is requisite to preserve order and concord in society. To perform
promises is requisite to beget mutual trust and confidence in the common offices of life. The ends,
as well as the means, are perfectly distinct; nor is the one subordinate to the other.” (Treatise III, II
VIII, p244)
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Hume also examined and rejected some other reasons for supposing that society is
based on a promise. Sometimes a long established ruling family is deposed, and when
that happens it is common for some people to remain loyal to it, even though it wields no
power and has no prospect of doing so. Those who show such loyalty have clearly not
promised allegiance to the new rulers, yet those rulers still demand their obedience.
Sometimes it is admitted that most people do not formally declare their consent to the
authority of the state, but urged that they still do so implicitly by residing in the territory of
the state. Hume observed that that argument, if it ever applied, would do so only in the
case of people who are able to choose whether or not to live under the jurisdiction of their
state; most people have no such choice.
Hume then imagined what would happen were someone to make a point of
renouncing the state as soon as he reached the age of majority.
“It never was pleaded as an excuse for a rebel, that the first act he performed, after he came to
years of discretion, was to levy war against the sovereign of that state; and that, while he was a
child he could not bind himself by his own consent, and having become a man, showed plainly, by
the first act he performed, that he had no design to impose on himself any obligation to obedience.
We find, on the contrary, that civil laws punish this crime at the same age as any other which is
criminal of itself, without our consent; that is, when the person is come to the full use of reason;
whereas to this crime it ought in justice to allow some intermediate time, in which a tacit consent at
least might be supposed.” (Treatise III, II, IX p 248)
Government is necessary, since without it, even if the principles of justice were
generally recognised, people would frequently not act on them, because we are easily
tempted to prefer small present goods to greater goods in the future, and to act selfishly
even though the future evil consequences greatly outweigh the present advantages. In
rulers and magistrates we create a class of people particularly concerned with the justice
of other people’s actions. The short term advantage that tempts an individual citizen does
not tempt the magistrate, for it is that citizens advantage not his. By the institution of
courts, government avoids anyone being judge in his own cause thus correcting our
natural bias in our own favour. Government also makes possible some collective action,
such as drainage projects and road building. Where such projects are on a large scale
involving the property of many people, it would be very hard to obtain the agreement of all
concerned.
However government may not always have been necessary. Primitive people, whose
needs are few, and among whom there is little property that needs defending, may be able
to survive with no formal government. Government may have arisen from conflicts
between different societies rather than from disputes between the members of the same
society. Hume seemed to think that in war a leader was required, not so much to organise
the war effort as to control the accompanying disorder at home. He argued that, once
undisciplined warriors become excited by fighting foreigners and taking spoils, they are
likely to want to behave in a similar way at home. Hume cited American Indian tribes which
obey leaders only in war time. The connection with war would explain all governments
being at first monarchies, since in war there is usually a single supreme leader. The choice
of magistrates may at first have been made by a process in which people promised
allegiance to a particular individual, but it has long been regulated by custom.
Even though it might be possible to have a primitive society without a government, it
would not be possible to have a society without justice.
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Hume considered how the rules for property rights might be adapted to so that they
apply to the authority of rulers. He thought that was possible provided we change their
ranking of the rules.
(1) Long possession continuing to the present time is the strongest basis, and ‘long’
is a century or more. Where there is no one so qualified, the second best title is:
(2) Present possession, and failing that,
(3) Conquest, and failing that,
(4) Succession, note that even in an elective monarchy the choice often falls upon a
relative of some former monarch. (Today we could cite the nominal republics of USA, Haiti,
India, Syria and North Korea where descendants of former presidents or prime ministers
have later taken office themselves )
(5) Qualification according to laws of succession. That assumes that whatever body
has made those laws, itself has some title to the authority by which it makes them.
It is reasonable to overthrow a government when it has ceased to promote ‘mutual
advantage and security’, but there can be no formal rules for deposing a government,
since actions that would be beneficial under some circumstances might be intolerable
under others.
Justice and morality apply to the relations between states as well as to those
between different members of the same state, but international morality is less compelling.
For while harmonious relations between states are desirable, their breakdown is less
catastrophic than disorder within a state, so that, ‘though the morality of princes has the
same extent, yet it has not the same force as that of private citizens and may lawfully be
transgressed from a more trivial motive’
Hume considered it dangerous to try to put into practice any utopian scheme, but with
that reservation sketched his ideal government. If only it could be painlessly achieved, it
would be a republic in which representatives would be elected, some directly by the votes
of all who satisfied a property qualification, and the others indirectly. Local councillors
should be directly elected. The councillors should then elect from their number
representatives to be members of a regional assembly, and the regional assemblies
should each elect representatives to form a national senate that should exercise the
executive powers of the state. Legislation should be passed, not by the senate, but by the
regional assemblies, each voting separately.
Reflecting on the British political system, Hume favoured abolishing the hereditary
peers, the Scottish peers and the bishops. New peers should be appointed by a vote of the
existing peers, and no-one they decided to elect might refuse, making it possible to
remove troublesome people from the Commons by electing them to the peerage.
(presumably all peers would be life peers)
Hume defended suicide, observing that in some circumstances it may be in the
interests of the suicide himself, and sometimes in the public interest too - as it might be if
someone expecting to be tortured to force him to reveal a state secret committed suicide
to avoid that fate. Addressing himself to the various arguments against suicide, Hume
started with the religious argument that it is ‘a transgression of our duty to God’ to commit
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suicide. Hume countered that God governs the world not by a set of particular edicts, one
ordaining the course of each event, but by establishing general laws governing the course
of all events. The life and death of every living thing, including every human being, is
subject to those laws. God has not ‘reserved to himself...the disposal of the lives of men’
Nor could suicide be condemned for impiously interfering with the operation of the laws of
nature, for such interference is an integral part of everyday life. With characteristic
ingenuity Hume went on to point out that the religious argument against suicide has other
consequences likely to be most unwelcome to those who employ the argument.
“Were the disposal of human life so much reserved as the peculiar province of the almighty, that
it were an encroachment on his right for men to dispose of their own lives, it would be equally
criminal to act for the preservation of life as for its destruction. If I turn aside a stone which is falling
upon my head, I disturb the course of nature; and I invade the peculiar province of the almighty, by
lengthening out my life beyond the period, which, by the general laws of matter and motion, he has
assigned it” (Essay On Suicide)
Furthermore, if our lives are not our own, it would be forbidden not just to take them
ourselves, but even to put them in danger.
Other objections to suicide condemn it as an abandonment of our obligations to
society. Hume thought that such objections would also, if valid, apply to retirement. When
someone retires from society he does no harm, but just stops doing good. If culpable at all,
that only does society an injury ‘of the lowest kind’
“But allowing that our obligations to do good were perpetual, they have certainly some bounds; I
am not obliged to do a small good to society at the expense of a great harm to myself; why then
should I prolong a miserable existence because of some frivolous advantage which the public may
perhaps receive from me ?” (op cit)
The only remaining argument against suicide is that it is a breach of our duty to
ourselves, yet there are clearly many cases where that its the opposite of the truth.
Summing up Hume concluded:
“If suicide be supposed a crime, it is only cowardice can impel us to it. If it be no crime, both
prudence and courage should engage us to rid ourselves at once of existence when it becomes a
burden. It is the only way we can then be useful to society, by setting an example, which, if imitated,
would preserve to everyone his chance for happiness in life and would effectively free him from all
danger or misery.” (op cit)
Rousseau (1712-1778)
Rousseau was another theorist who believed that mankind originally lived in a state
of nature, though his story was very different from either Hobbe’s or Locke’s. Rousseau,
unlike his predecessors Hobbes and Locke, did not attempt to use his myth justify the
legitimacy of the state, but instead to demonstrate its illegitimacy.
For Rousseau the state of nature was a golden age in which men lived simple,
solitary, self sufficient lives, rarely meeting their fellow men - there were not even families
in those days, and what chance meetings there were very rarely led to conflict.
Men fell from that happy state by misusing reason to serve their vanity and greed.
Society developed as the embodiment of those vices, making it possible to indulge them
by developing technology, the arts, and, worst of all, abstract speculation. Rousseau had
been brought up as a Calvinist, and it shows!
First there developed families, then groups of families settled down in the same
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vicinity to take up agriculture. Communal pleasures such as singing and dancing
introduced the evil of inequality when some were thought to be better dancers and singers
than others, and people competed for public esteem.
Settled agricultural communities also developed property, another potent source of
inequality and discord. At this point mankind had arrived at the state Hobbes had
mistakenly taken to be the state of nature.
The rich then proposed the setting up of a government, ostensibly for the benefit of
all, but actually to serve their own selfish purposes by protecting their property. At first
there may have been legitimate rulers selected by the people, but rulers are soon
corrupted by power. Selection by the people is easily replaced by inheritance, weak rulers
are often overthrown by tyrants, and small communities often annexed by more powerful
neighbours. Thus there developed a system of relatively large states with oppressive and
unrepresentative governments.
What then is to be done? To return to the original ‘golden age’ of the ‘noble savage’
is impracticable since the morality of men is too much corrupted by society for them to be
capable of existing in such a state, nor would the return be completely desirable even if it
were possible, for primitive man was only an animal in which higher functions like
conscience were still undeveloped.
Some individuals may be able to preserve their primal virtue even within corrupting
society, especially if they are carefully educated with that end in mind. Education should
enable people to see that it is important to avoid relying on other people’s opinions, and
especially to avoid relying on books. Instruction of children should be kept to a minimum,
as should any overt display of authority. When it is necessary to punish a child the
punishment should so far as possible be made to appear the consequence of the child’s
act, rather than as something imposed by authority, so that the child learns to submit to
necessity rather than to man. From the age of 12 learning should be encouraged by
stimulating the child’s curiosity so that it seeks knowledge. By the age of fifteen it will be
time to awaken the child’s moral sensibilities by exposing it to the spectacle of human
suffering. Finally education should be rounded off with religion; the child should realise that
we speak to God directly, mind to mind (in which case, one wonders how Rousseau
proposed to prevent God from disrupting the curriculum by speaking to some children
before they reached the age of fifteen).
Rousseau did not attempt to educate any of his own children like that. When, from
time to time, his mistress of the moment gave birth to a child, he would deposit it at the
door of the local convent, where, if it survived long enough to achieve any degree of
awareness, it would doubtless have been exposed to the spectacle of human misery well
before its fifteenth birthday.
Accepting that an education according to his principles could at best be provided only
for a few, Rousseau proposed a new social contract to set up a society free from
corruption.
The new contract was to be between each individual, and the community as a whole.
The new community would itself be an organic being governed by the General Will, an
obscure abstraction supposed to be distinct from the separate wills of the individual
citizens. Submission to the community should be complete. There could be no
reservations; individuals could have no rights against the community, since in obeying the
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General Will they would by obeying themselves. Rights could arise only by the community
conferring on citizens rights against each other. However the state was to be less secure
than one might expect, since even the slightest deviation by the community from the terms
of the contract to administer the community for the benefit of all, would dissolve it,
returning all to a state of nature.
The central concept in Rousseau’s theory is that of the General Will, but quite what
that might be and how it might be identified is not clear. Rousseau seemed to think it was
most likely to be found in the decisions of the majority of the citizens when they act without
being influenced by any private or selfish interest. (Note that that would rule out most
cases of the ‘redistribution’ of wealth by the government, since the majority of the
supporters of such proposals are usually influenced by the wish to obtain for themselves
parts of someone else’s property) A narrow majority may suffice for urgent day to day
matters, but a greater consensus is desirable to change fundamental laws.
Interest groups within the state prevent decisions being made in accordance with the
general will. Public assemblies are particularly vulnerable to such distractions. As far as
possible the organisation of interest groups should therefore be prevented. Presumably
there would have been no political parties, pressure groups or trade unions in Rousseau’s
state.
We need to feel the ties of community, so the state should be small enough for its
members to share common beliefs and culture. Legislative power should always embody
the general will and therefore belong to the community, but the executive functions of
government may be delegated to magistrates. In a very small state it might be possible to
have democracy in the Greek sense of rule by gatherings of the whole citizenry, but that
will rarely be practical so elective aristocracy (what today we call ‘democracy’) is generally
to be preferred.
It is desirable to have a Lawgiver, a sort of religious prophet, with no formal powers,
who proposes laws, subject to ratification by the legislature.
All citizens must accept a certain minimum of religious belief, though any additional
belief consistent with that minimum should be tolerated. Catholicism should not be
tolerated.
“The dogmas of civil religion ought to be simple, few in number, enunciated with passion, without
explanation or commentaries. The existence of the divine power, intelligent, benevolent, foreseeing,
providential, the life to come, the happiness of the just, the chastisement of the wicked, the sanctity
of the Social Contract and the laws: these are the positive dogmas. As to the negative, I limit them to
one: intolerance. It enters into the cults we have excluded” [i.e. Roman Catholicism] (Social Contract)
Rousseau was of a quarrelsome disposition, and prone to worry about what people
might be saying about him behind his back, so that he quarrelled with David Hume at a
time when he was staying with Hume in England and Hume was in the process of getting
Rousseau a pension from the King. Rousseau died insane.
States of Nature
Written records supported by archaeological evidence give us a good idea how man
lived for the last three millennia or so. Beyond that there is only the archaeological
evidence of the remains of houses, tools and rubbish tips. There is very little direct
evidence of any sort about the social arrangements of pre-agricultural man, though there
are tools and cave paintings, and we have some information about primitive tribes that
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were isolated from the rest of humanity until quite recently. However, so far as I know
there is no unequivocal evidence about any pre-social men, and there may never have
been any such creatures although there must have been some individuals who lived in
involuntary isolation after becoming separated from their family group. All mammals are to
some degree social, at the very least they spend their early days in social groups of a
mother and her children. The mammals most closely related to humans usually spend their
entire lives either in family groups or in packs. Hence the latter stages of human evolution
probably took place in some sort of society. Human beings must have evolved to fit into
human society, at the same time as human society must have developed to accommodate
the changing human beings who made it up.
Our remote Palaeolithic ancestors were from our point of view very primitive, leading
simple lives, and probably not needing to do much work to survive. I once read that
observation of hunter-gatherer tribes in parts of Africa had suggested that one hour’s work
per day might have sufficed to obtain what they needed.
It would certainly be interesting to know how those ancestors lived, and it might also
be useful in helping us understand our own capacities, incapacity’s and instincts.
Whatever we might discover it would not follow that we should try to live like those remote
ancestors, indeed only a tiny fraction (one person in ten thousand I’ve seen estimated) of
the present world population could support themselves as hunter gatherers. Yet it would
be interesting to compare anything we could discover about the ways of our wild
ancestors, with our own way of life. If it turned out that some the rules and customs of
civilised life require us to override instincts appropriate to a more leisurely and casual
existence, although it would not follow that we should change civilised life to accommodate
our instincts, the conflict between instinct and custom would provide a counter argument to
the proposal by some educationists that there is no need to teach children how to behave,
because if they are left to work things out for themselves they will instinctively hit on the
correct rules.
Some consider the state of nature to have been a state of innocence. In one sense
that is probably true. Trace our ancestry sufficiently far into pre-history and we must come
to animals without the intellectual equipment to be moral agents, who would therefore
have been innocent in the sense that a pet dog may be called innocent, but that is quite
different from the innocence we commend today in one who is capable of wrong doing but
makes a point of abstaining. Whatever we think of the propriety of anachronistically
judging the behaviour of pre-historic man, it must have included practices we’d call
inhumanly cruel if any post-innocent did the same today.
Hobbes may have piled on the agony but his gloomy view of primitive life sounds
much more plausible to me than Rousseau’s sentimental drooling. I heard once that a
study of primitive tribes in the Amazonian jungle found that 30% of the males died in the
course of warfare between neighbouring villages. Of course at a time when there were
very few people, contact between different groups may have been rare, in which case
there would have been little opportunity for conflict except within the family group, and
conflicts there may have been limited to occasional challenges to the ‘alpha male’. But it
seems likely that any opportunities for conflict that did arise would have been exploited to
the full.
Today the romantic picture of the noble savage is being revived by ‘greens’. Expect
trouble. People who believe we are all ‘naturally’ good, kind and noble will look for
someone to blame whenever they find that lots of people aren’t like that at all. Since, for
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the disciples of the noble savage, being good, kind and noble, involves agreeing with the
whole of whatever version of romanticism the disciple in question is preaching at the time,
a great many people will fall short of the ideal.
Setting aside doubts whether there ever was any social contract, even if a contract
had been made, the original parties would be long dead, so it is hard to see how those
alive today would be bound by it.
Locke may have been thinking of that, when he suggested that everyone needs to
give his personal assent before becoming a member of the commonwealth. So, far from
providing a basis for state institutions, Locke’s contract theory threatened to make all
institutions illegitimate, for we do not in fact ask the young whether they agree to belong to
the nation.
Rousseau avoided the forgoing objections by proposing a future contract, so he
didn’t need to appeal to a dubious and undocumented event in the past, but he still did not
evade the problem of explaining how his contract could bind those not themselves parties
to it. The children of the people who made the contract would not be parties to it unless
initiated by some impractical ‘contracting in’ mechanism such as Locke’s.
The contract theorists wanted to establish society on a secure moral basis and
sought it in some action that either created a society out of anarchy or, in Rousseau’s
case, creates a just society out of an unjust one. That strategy of searching for a basis is
reminiscent of Descartes search for some foundation that might create knowledge from an
imagined starting point of total ignorance. Just as one who starts in total ignorance is likely
to remain in that state, so it is likely that any who start as isolated non-social individuals
are likely to remain in that state. Humans are almost always born into a society and it is by
growing up in a society that we learn how to behave as social creatures. Humans not
brought up in a society would be unlikely to have the social skills necessary to co-operate
in setting one up. The question is not how to build a society where there is none, but how
to review the society we find ourselves in order to improve it. The mistake of supposing
that a society can be constructed out of chaos in accordance with some blueprint,
unfortunately tempts some to try to recreate the chaos in order to clear the way for a
hoped for reconstruction. Although the chaos may be quite easy to create, the hoped for
reconstruction may be much harder to bring about.
Adam Smith (1723 - 1790)
Smith is usually thought of as primarily an Economist, the founder of what is now
called Classical Economics. That he was, but his writings have also influenced political
thought.
An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations (1776), often referred
to as The Wealth of Nations presented Smith’s account of Economics in the context of his
picture of human society.
According to Smith, the stages of Human development took our ancestors from the
‘rude’ state of hunter, through first a nomadic agriculture, and then through feudal or
manorial farming to the state of complicated economic interdependence of Smith’s own
time. Changes in the material basis of society were matched by changes in the laws and
institutions.
Smith was concerned to attack the mercantilist theories popular in his day, that
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considered it important that countries should be self sufficient, and therefore supported the
restriction of imports from abroad. Such policies are likely to impoverish everyone, as
many countries posses natural advantages making them particularly suitable for the
production of certain commodities, so that all are better off if those countries concentrate
on those manufactures, and import other commodities.
The commercial society, as Smith called the society of his time, needs the ‘perfect
freedom’ of the market. Trade facilitates the division of labour, thus increasing production.
It also stimulates the production of the commodities people need. Competition holds down
prices and encourages stock (by which Smith meant what we’d call ‘capital’) to go where it
is most productive.
Even if we assume that each individual acts exclusively in his own interest to
maximise his own gain, provided a free market prevails the market system is ‘an invisible
hand’ adjusting economic activity to people’s needs, and harnessing for the general good
the self interest of individuals; the price mechanism co-ordinates their efforts so they each
produce what others are willing to buy. For the system to work, it is essential that business
men should compete in a free market, not collude with each other to rig the market or,
even worse, collude with the government to restrict economic freedom.
Smith was suspicious of governments because they are staffed by unproductive
people whose consumption of the product other people’s labour may be disproportionate
to the services they render. He also doubted the desirability of charities, because those
who run then are not accountable to those supposed to benefit from the charity, whose
interests are therefore likely to be subordinated to the interests of those in charge.
Educational charities, for instance, tended to be run in the interests of the teachers not of
the pupils.
Smith considered the relation between the value of a commodity and the labour
needed to produce it, thus preparing the way for what later came to be called The Labour
Theory of Value. I imagine he was influenced by Locke’s thesis that something becomes
our property when we either make it or mix our labour with it, and thought it ought to be
possible to extend Locke’s theory so that instead of just explaining the legitimacy of
property, labour might also be the source of its value.
However the simple equation of the value of a commodity to the work actually
involved in producing it is untenable both because different workers work at different
speeds and display differing degrees of competence, and because some commodities we
value greatly, like fresh air and water, often require very little work. Smith toyed with the
idea that the value of a commodity to a person might be the work it saves that person from
doing The matter was further complicated because Smith wanted his theory of value to
account for prices, and yet prices often have a lot to do with scarcity as well as with value.
Fresh air and water, mentioned above, are often very cheap despite their great value. He
therefore distinguished two sorts of value, value in use and value in exchange, without so
far as I can tell indicating any clear connection between them. The Labour Theory
persisted in Economics until the mid-nineteenth century and remained influential for even
longer because it was adopted by Karl Marx and subsequently defended by his followers.
Smith was impressed by the way that a market system guides capital resources and
labour towards the enterprises in which they will earn the most. Hence he considered that
any restriction on the freedom of markets would be likely to make the nation as a whole
poorer by producing goods people value less instead of goods they value more. In
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particular he thought that taxes on imports, especially when imposed to ‘protect’ domestic
industries from foreign competition, are likely to divert into the protected industries
productive resources that would be more profitably employed elsewhere, so that the
protection of one industry is at the expense of the population as a whole. Later the
Utilitarians, following the lead of David Ricardo were to sharpen that into a general
argument for free trade under all circumstances.
Smith’s economic theories make no use of the concept of sympathy developed in
The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Possibly he thought that sympathy applied mainly to our
dealings with people we actually meet, whereas commercial relations are often
impersonal, alternatively he could justly have assumed that commercial activity requires an
orderly society in which people generally accept principles such as truthfulness and
honesty, and he may have thought that, having as he believed established the importance
of those virtues on the basis of moral sentiments, he could take morality for granted when
discussing economics.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Burke was a Whig who defended the American colonies in their disputes with the
English crown, and he was for some years London representative of the State of New
York. He also played a leading part in the impeachment of Warren Hastings on charges of
misconduct in India.
However he is best known for his Reflections On The Revolution In France. He
appears to have been provoked to write that by the reactions of some people in England to
the French Revolution. He frequently quoted a sermon preached in London in November
1789 by one Dr. Richard Price, a dissenting minister. Conor Cruise O’Brien in his
introduction to the Penguin Edition of the Reflections thought that Burke was particularly
provoked by that because it involved a Protestant Minister’s praising a revolution that had
already taken a decidedly anti-Catholic line. Burke was an Irishman, his mother was a
Catholic and although his father conformed to the Church of England that may have been
only outward conformity adopted to enable him to practise as a barrister. Burke may have
seen a parallel between the oppression of Ireland by England, especially by the Protestant
soldiers of the Commonwealth, and the persecution of the Catholic Church by the French
revolutionaries.
Burke thought that social thinking should be closely linked to the human capacity for
affection, so he was suspicious of what he called ‘cold blooded calculation’ namely
abstract reasoning that ignores our feelings, especially when it favours sacrifices now for
the sake of supposed benefits in the (often very distant) future.
He set great store by tradition, and although he rejected the doctrine of the divine
right of kings, he thought a hereditary constitutional monarchy the best way to secure the
liberties of the subject. He conceded that a monarch might, in extreme and exceptional
circumstances, legitimately be overthrown, as James II had been in 1688, but he thought
that should occur only extremely rarely, so there was no need for a constitutional
procedure for removing the monarch, because defining such a procedure would tend to
turn what should be a quite exceptional measure into a matter of routine.
Dr. Price had claimed that the English revolution of 1688 had secured for the people
three rights.
(1) to choose their own governors
(2) to ‘cashier’ those governors for misconduct
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(3) to frame a government for themselves
Burke had no difficulty in showing that those claims were false when applied to the
Glorious Bloodless Revolution, and he argued that the recognition of such rights would
undermine the stability of any constitution containing them.
He suggested treating our nation and traditions and rights as parts of an inheritance
rather than the result of a chain of deduction from some primaeval natural rights.
“an estate specially belonging to the people of this kingdom without any reference whatever to
any other more general or prior right. By this means our constitution preserves an unity in so great a
diversity of its parts” (Reflections on the Revolution in France Penguin edition, p 119)
by contrast a policy of rewriting our constitution in the light of those supposed ‘prior
rights’ is likely to produce disunity:
“A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will
not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors. Beside the people of
England well know, that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation, and a
sure principle of transmission; without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves
acquisition free; but it secures what it acquires” (op cit pp 119-120)
“Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the
world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts;
wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious
incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but
in a condition of unchangeable constancy....Thus...in what we improve we are never wholly new; in
what we retain we are never wholly obsolete” (op cit p 1202)
The members of a parliament or similar assembly need to be able to judge their
leaders, so such assemblies should be ‘respectably composed, in point of condition of life’.
A great weakness of the French Estates General called in 1789 lay in the composition of
the Third Estate. A very high proportion of its members were provincial lawyers ‘the
fomenters and conductors of the petty war of village vexation’ (op cit p. 130). It was in their
interest to establish a litigious constitution, and that was what they did. Other weaknesses
were the poor representation of the landed interest among the representatives of the third
estate, and the presence among the representatives of the church of a large number of
junior clergy from obscure country parishes.
Government should not be the exclusive preserve of a hereditary aristocracy, but we
should welcome all with sufficient virtue. However only certain people are fitted to lead,
and it is disastrous for those to be subjugated to people whose station it is to be ruled.
Burke thought that the necessary qualities are developed by leisure, quoting
Ecclesiasticus chapter xxxviii
“The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business
shall become wise. How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that Glorieth in the goad:
that driveth oxen; and is occupied in their labours; and whose talk is of bullocks”
Good representation of the landed interest is important since the inheritance of
property is an important factor in preserving society, but property is ‘sluggish and inert’ and
unless the landed interest is predominant it cannot survive against ability, which is
vigorous and active.
“The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and
interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of
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society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon
avarice” (op cit p 140)
Even our constitution may, Burke thought, be regarded as an inheritance, giving us
the assurance that at least it has worked in the past ‘a constitution whose merits are
confirmed by the solid test of long experience’ (P 148)
Today, when it has become fashionable to attempt to base political principles on
rights, it may sound odd to appeal to inheritance instead. However inheritance has the
considerable advantage that it actually takes place, whereas there is no reason to believe
that there are any rights antecedent to their creation by a system of custom or law.
Although the inheritance of property is usually governed by the law and is therefore
dependent upon a political system capable of making and enforcing laws, some
inheritance, of language, skills, customs, household tools and domestic animals must
predate any legal system, and probably any deliberately adopted customs, since it is by
transmission of patterns of behaviour from parents to children that early customs must
have been established. Although the inheritance of chattels, standards, customs and
values does not on its own justify the retention of all the material inherited, it does, from a
pragmatic point of view, justify taking it as a starting point. For we can start only from what
we are given, and in social matters what we are given is what we inherit from our elders.
Furthermore, developing one of Burke’s observations, an inherited set of standards that
has long been in use is at least one that it is possible for men to live by. Thus in two
respects inherited standards are superior to what may be deduced from abstract ‘first
principles’; the inherited standards are real, and they constitute our only possible starting
point.
Burke did not reject rights, he merely denied that they are a basis for political theory.
He admitted rights as part of a civil society.
“Far am I from denying in theory; full as far is my heart from withholding in practice (if I were of
power to give or to withhold) the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not
mean to injure those which are real and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If
civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his
right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have
a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows
are in politic function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and
to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents;
to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and to consolation in
death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do
for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill
and force, can do in his favour. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things.
He that has but five shillings in the partnership, has as good a right to it, as he that has five hundred
pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the
joint stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to
have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of
man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other.” ( op cit pp
149-150)
The penultimate sentence contains the interesting suggestion that citizens could be
considered as shareholders in civil society each having a voice in proportion to his share.
Burke did not develop that idea so he may not have seriously considered the
consequences of his remark; I think it worth exploring, and shall attempt to do so later in
this essay.
Since rights depend on a civil society, it does not make sense to admit any rights that
would undermine that society
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“One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules is, that
no man should be judge in his own cause. By this each person has at once divested himself of the
first fundamental right of uncovennanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to assert his own
cause....He...in a great measure, abandons the right of self defence, the first law of nature. Men
cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together.” (op cit p 150)
My understanding of Burke is that, despite the contrary suggestion of that passage,
he is not committed to any belief in ‘natural rights’ predating any society, but is arguing
that, even if there were any such antecedent rights, they would no longer apply once a civil
society is established. What liberties people actually have in a particular society, and what
restrictions they must submit to as a condition of belonging to a society ‘vary with times
and circumstances and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any
abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them on that principle.’ (p 151)
Utopian programmes of planning an ideal state, or even of reforming an existing one,
should be undertaken only with great caution ‘because the real effects of moral causes are
not always immediate’ What seems undesirable at first sight may have beneficial long term
consequences, and apparently benign plans may have undesirable effects, while some
things of apparently little importance may have very important effects, either for good or for
ill. (P 152) Burke gives no examples, but I suspect he might have been thinking of religious
belief. He went on to say ‘men have no right to what is not reasonable, and to what is not
for their benefit’ (P 154)
Such caution would be entirely foreign to the revolutionary, whose character Burke
sketches in the following passage:
“Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go
beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent. But even in cases where rather levity
than fraud was to be suspected in these ranting speculations, the issue has been much the same.
These professors, finding their extreme principles not applicable to cases which call only for a
qualified, or, as I may say, civil and legal resistance, in such cases employ no resistance at all. It is
with them a war or a revolution, or it is nothing. Finding their schemes of politics not adapted to the
state of the world in which they live, they often come to think lightly of all public principle; and are
ready, on their part, to abandon for a very trivial interest what they find of very trivial value. Some
indeed are of more steady and persevering natures; but these are eager politicians out of
parliament, who have little to tempt them to abandon their favourite projects. They have some
change in the church or state, or both, constantly in their view. When that is the case, they are
always bad citizens, and perfectly unsure connexions. For, considering their speculative designs as
of infinite value, and the actual arrangement of the state as of no estimation, they are at best
indifferent about it. They see no merit in the good, and no fault in the vicious management of public
affairs; they rather rejoice in the latter, as more propitious to revolution. They see no merit or
demerit in any man, or any action, or any political principle, any further than as they may forward or
retard their design of change: they therefore take up, one day, the most violent and stretched
prerogative, and another time the wildest democratic ideas of freedom, and pass from the one to
the other without any sort of regard to cause, to person, or to party.” (op cit p 155)
The case for replacing old customs and institutions by new is easily overstated, since
the defects of an established system are evident, but a novel system may have many
defects that will not come to light until it is put into practice.
“Criticism is almost baffled in discovering the defects of what has not existed; and eager
enthusiasm, and cheating hope, have all the wide field of imagination in which they may expatiate
with little or no opposition.” (op cit p 280)
Even when a change is justified, it may not be without short term disadvantages,
since a sudden alteration in people’s condition of life may produce great misery, so while
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we should reform our institutions, we should do so slowly and carefully. A further reason
for caution is that the people who are best at spotting the defects in a system are often the
worst at correcting them, because they are too impatient ‘By hating vice too much, they
come to love men too little’ so those who urge reform most urgently may be poor
reformers.
As I remarked earlier, Burke’s preferred form of government was a constitutional
monarchy such as that of the Britain he knew. Although he thought the power of the
monarch should be limited, he also thought it important to preserve the mystique of the
monarchy with its reverence for the person of the monarch. If we treat the monarch as just
one man like any other, the traditional reverence for his person will be lost and is likely to
be replaced by fear, leaving us in the same position as the French, as a consequence of
whose revolution:
“All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, and which by a bland
assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are
to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason” (op cit p 171)
People would then follow the law only in those cases where it was in their personal
interest to do so, “Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the
commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our institutions can never
be embodied...in persons; so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or
attachment’’ Rulers not protected by the reverence of their subjects would be likely to
safeguard themselves by repression, having those they considered potential opponents
murdered in anticipation of their likely future disloyalty. “Kings will be tyrants from policy
when subjects are rebels from policy”. (P172) Addressing the French revolutionaries Burke
said:
“Everything depends upon the army in such a government as yours; for you have industriously
destroyed all the opinions, and prejudices, and as far as in you lay, all the instincts which support
government. Therefore the moment any difference arises between your national assembly and any
party of the nations, you must have recourse to force.” (op cit p 344)
The mystique of monarchy is especially important to secure the loyalty of the army,
which needs to be able to identify with some individual. It is therefore hard for an assembly
to control an army. (Burke was thinking if the French Assembly in particular) Writing in
1790, when Louis XV still sat precariously on the French throne, Burke predicted that
revolutionary France would eventually fall under the control of a military leader, a
th
prediction that was fulfilled nine years later by Napoleon’s coup of the 18 Brumaire.
“In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will
remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the
art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes
of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account...the moment in which that
event shall happen, the person who really commands the army is your master;” (op cit p 342)
Without the traditional framework of custom and authority, people will no longer
know instinctively3 how to behave. [’unreflectively’ would be better than ‘instinctively here,
but the misuse of ‘instinctively’ to include what we do unreflectively from habit has become so
common that I feared I might be misunderstood if I used the correct term.] If each of them has
to rely on his own reason, all will lose the benefit of the accumulated wisdom of
’unreflectively’ would be better than ‘instinctively here, but the misuse of
‘instinctively’ to include what we do unreflectively from habit has become so common that I
feared I might be misunderstood if I used the correct term.
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past generations. What appears to be irrational prejudice is often an intuitively
appealing disguise for what are really cogent reasons. This is another
pronouncement Burke failed to illustrate with any examples, my guess is he may
once again have been thinking of religious reasons.
“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may
be dissolved at pleasure - but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a
partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico or tobacco, or some other such low
concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the
parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things
subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a
partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.
As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a
partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are
dead, and those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the
great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the
visible and invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which
holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the
will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will
to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their
pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear
asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil,
unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity
that is not chosen but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion,
and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no
exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition
of things to which man must be obedient by consent or force; but if that which is only submission to
necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the
rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and
virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and
unavailing sorrow.” (op cit pp 194-195)
Burke seems to have been carried away by his own rhetoric. One cannot have a
partnership with people who are dead, or with people who have yet to be born. Arguably
we can have obligations to those not yet born. Certainly people are generally considered
to have obligations to their own children, and those might be held to include the obligations
to prepare oneself for the duties of parenthood and, if one becomes a parent, to prepare
one’s children to become parents in their turn. Thus we can conjure up a set of obligations
to the unborn, or at least to some of the unborn, but any such obligations become
increasingly tenuous as we progress from children to grandchildren and then to great
grandchildren, to children we shall never meet, and then to children whose parents we
shall never meet. Even if we did persuade ourselves that we had some responsibility for
the people of the remote future, it would be extremely hard to tell how our present actions,
or inaction, might affect them. Note also that at most we may have some obligations to
the people of the future, we can scarcely enter into a partnership with them, unless they
invent a time machine so they can communicate with us, and without a time machine we
can have no obligation at all to the past.
Burke attached great importance to the Church and thought that it contributed to the
mystique of the monarch and the official institutions, a mystique that would be felt, not just
by the ordinary citizens, but also by their rulers so that all who wield any measure of power
think that they act in trust when they use it, and of course even the ordinary citizen should
have some power. The state is consecrated so that none shall lightly consider changing it,
and its stability is most important, since without it we cannot make any plans for ourselves
or decide how to educate our children.
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Burke’s did not confine the function of the Church to supplying a mystique for the
various institutions of the state. He thought it could also offer independent support to
education and morality. Learning had long been kept alive by the labours of clergy,
protected by the arms, and encouraged by the patronage, of the gentry, so that clergy and
gentry were the twin supports of European civilisation.
It is natural for men to ‘fear God, ... look up with awe to Kings, with affection to
parliaments, with reverence to priests and with respect to nobility’ (P 182). It is important to
have an established church, and giving that up would leave the way open for some
superstition or other to replace it. Much of the persuasive power of religion stems from the
doctrine of eternal life that encourages people to look beyond their immediate interests to
the hope of ‘a permanent fame and glory in the example they leave as a rich inheritance to
the world’ (P 189)
Religion must appeal to all, and that involves making concessions to the superstitions
of the foolish.
“Superstition is the religion of feeble minds; and they must be tolerated in an intermixture of it, in
some trifling or enthusiastic shape or other, else you will deprive weak minds of a resource found
necessary to the strongest. The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will
of the sovereign of the world; in a confidence in his declarations; and an imitation of his perfections.
The rest is our own.” (op cit p 269 )
Thus the consolations of religious belief can be available even when the belief is not
true, and it is permissible to invent peripheral beliefs to suits our convenience, provided
that the central beliefs are true. Burke considered religion vital even to economic activity.
“Whether it be more advantageous to the people to pay considerably, and to gain in proportion;
or to gain little or nothing, and to be disburthened of all contribution ? My mind is made up to decide
in favour of the first proposition. Experience is with me, and, I believe, the best opinions also. To
keep a balance between the power of acquisition on the part of the subject, and the demands he is
to answer on the part of the state, is a fundamental part of the skill of a true politician. The means of
acquisition are prior in time and in arrangement. Good order is the foundation of all good things. To
be enabled to acquire, the people, without being servile, must be tractable and obedient. The
magistrate must have his reverence, the laws their authority. The body of the people must not find
the principles of natural subordination by art rooted out of their minds. They must respect that
property of which they cannot partake. They must labour to obtain what by labour can be obtained;
and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportion to the endeavour, they must
be taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice. Of this consolation, whoever
deprives them, deadens their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition as of all conservation.
He that does this is the cruel oppressor, the merciless enemy of the poor and wretched; at the same
time that by his wicked speculations he exposes the fruits of successful industry, and the
accumulations of fortune, to the plunder of the negligent, the disappointed, and the unprosperous.”
(op cit p 372)
Burke was very suspicious of unqualified democracy. He thought it important that
there should be a democratic element in the constitution, to balance the aristocratic and
hereditary elements, for absolute monarchy contains no safeguard against the
accumulation of abuses, and there can be no constitutional remedy for abuses by a
government of unlimited authority. On the other he thought that a full democracy with no
traditional elements was dangerous, though he conceded that there might be exceptional
circumstances in which it was the best constitution available. He thought that in a perfect
democracy none would feel accountable for their actions, for the majority appears to be
accountable only to itself, so Burke feared the tyranny of the majority.
“[those oppressed by the majority] are in a much more deplorable condition than in any other.
Under a cruel prince they have the balmy compassion of mankind to assuage the smart of their
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wounds; they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their
sufferings: but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes, are deprived of all external
consolation. They seem deserted by mankind; overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.”
(op cit p 229)
Society should be to some extent hierarchical because people are not all equal and a
state that treats them as if they are must fail. Different people grow up and live in different
circumstances, follow different professions and thus become very different from one
another. We must take those differences into account.
The relief of the poor should be left to individual initiative, because that gives people
a chance to be charitable of their own free will, instead of making them into machines by
compelling them to behave charitably. Virtue cannot exist without liberty.
Hegel
In chapter 3 I suspended my discussion of Hegel at the point where he said that
self-consciousness needed to be developed through an encounter with another
self-conscious being. Hegel argued that self-consciousness brings a need to be
recognised as self conscious, and only another self conscious being can give that
recognition. At that point his ethics shades off into politics.
Hegel maintained that once two self conscious beings become aware of one another
their natural reaction is for each to try to demonstrate his independence of the physical
world by engaging in a life and death struggle with the other. One demonstrates one’s
independence of another’s body by trying to kill that body, and one shows one’s
independence of one’s own body by risking that it be killed. Sometimes such a struggle
may stop short of death if the vanquished submits to the victor and the victor spares him.
The two are then master and slave. In that relation each is partially, but not entirely, free.
The master is freed from the need to perform the chores he assignes to the slave,
and receives from the slave recognition as a free being, but that recognition is imperfect,
since the creature that concedes it is not itself entirely free4. [That argument appears to me to be
a grotesque fallacy, on a par with saying that if a doctor diagnoses a patient as suffering from scarlet fever,
the diagnosis is imperfect unless the doctor is himself suffering from the same disease.] The slave, on the
other hand, is not acknowledged as a free being, but in his physical work he adapts nature
to his requirements. The artefacts he constructs and the crops he grows ‘objectify’ his
labour so that he can see in them a testimony to his supremacy over things.
Hegel thought that the first human societies must have been based on the
master/slave relation and that history could be understood as the growth of the human
mind towards freedom.
Among the societies known to historians, India and China were both really outside
History, as Hegel regarded it, since both were static. In each there was only one free man,
the ruler. The subjects were not simply without power, they were in a sense without wills of
their own. The individual subjects could have had no internal consciences, since morality
came to them from without as the never questioned commands of customary law.
In China the family was central to social organisation, and the Emperor was seen as
4
That argument appears to me to be a grotesque fallacy, on a par with saying that if a doctor
diagnoses a patient as suffering from scarlet fever, the diagnosis is imperfect unless the doctor is himself
suffering from the same disease.
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a father figure. India was organised according to the caste system which was seen as part
of the natural order, so the ruling power was perceived as nature.
History therefore began with Persia, where there was the potential for change,
because although only the ruler was free, the state was based upon a principle, the
worship of light in the person of Zoroaster (Neitzsche’s Zarathustra).
The Persian emperors tried to extend their empire into Greece but were defeated at
the battle of Salamis. That battle marked the passing of the ‘tide of history’ to Greece.
The Greek city states knew individual freedom, but only in an imperfect form. It was
imperfect first because the Greeks had slaves, and second because they had no individual
consciences. Morality was customary and based on the city state. No Greek could
separate himself from his state even in imagination. (That is a particularly odd statement
since it was quite common for discontented Greeks belonging to factions opposed to the
governments of their states to leave those states to seek refuge either in other Greek
states or even at the Persian court. Those who took the latter course sometimes
encouraged the Persian king to send armies to establish their factions in power in their
native states). Worst of all Hegel thought, the Greeks consulted oracles so that their
‘actions were governed by forces external to their will’
Socrates challenged the traditional Greek morality, which was why he was rightly
executed, but once his questions had been asked they could not be ignored, and the
Greek world gave way to the Roman.
The Romans recognised individual freedom but only in a formal sense. Roman law
was treated as a given that simply had to be followed and the decisions of the imperial
government might not be questioned. The democracy that had existed in some of the
Greek states was no more.
Unable to influence public affairs, many Roman citizens sought inner freedom with
the Stoics or the Epicureans, detaching themselves from the worldly ambitions they could
not hope to fulfil. The freedom so obtained was still inadequate because Stoics and
Epicureans did not recognise that men are spiritual beings. (In the case of the Stoics aat
least that seems clearly false)
People need to recognise that although, like animals, they live in the natural world,
they are also spiritual beings. Christianity brought this idea home to people through the
person of Jesus who was both human and divine. Inspired by his example we may free
ourselves from earthly desires and recognise the spiritual world as our natural home. To
achieve that we must transform the natural world into a place suitable for spiritual beings
by abolishing slavery, abolishing oracles, and replacing customary morality with one based
on the idea of spiritual love.
Although the Christian Byzantine empire stood while the Western Roman Empire was
overrun by a variety of invading tribes, Byzantine Christianity was just a veneer disguising
a corrupt society. The future lay with the West, and in particular with the Germanic
peoples. Hegel divided the history of Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman
Empire into three stages. The period before Charlemagne he called ‘The Kingdom of the
Father’, from Charlemagne to the reformation ’The Kingdom of The Son’, and the period
following the reformation ‘The Kingdom of The Holy Ghost’. I have not yet discovered the
significance of those terms.
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In the middle ages, so rightly called the ‘dark ages’, Roman Catholics did not offer
true freedom because they did not treat God as purely spiritual, notoriously selling
indulgences.
The reformation was a German phenomenon, recognising the primacy of the
individual conscience and preparing the way for the attempt to reform all institutions so
that they conformed to the principles of reason.
The French revolution tried to establish a completely rational society. It failed
because it ignored the actual state of the people and tried to implement abstract principles
without taking account of the circumstances. Hegel may have thought that the
revolutionaries’ mistake was to try to sweep away every existing institution, instead of
scrutinising those institutions critically, reforming those capable of reform and abolishing
only those incapable of redemption. Although it failed in France, (Bourbons were still in
power there when Hegel died in 1831) the revolution did bring the ideal of freedom to
Germany.
From 1818 till his death in 1831 Hegel was professor of Philosophy in Berlin, and was
effectively the official state philosopher of Prussia. There is controversy about how far his
position in public life influenced his stated opinions, but at the very least it seems to have
resulted in his playing down beliefs that might have been unwelcome in official circles. He
regularly attended Lutheran church services, although even the work published in his
lifetime suggests he cannot have been an orthodox Christian, and some work published
posthumously is strongly critical of Christianity.
Hegel distinguished his ideal of freedom from the ‘negative’ freedom advocated by
the laissez faire economists and by some of the Utilitarians. True freedom he considered
to be not just freedom from such constraints and acts of coercion as may arise in day to
day affairs, but more importantly freedom from constraint by social or historical causes.
Taken literally that implies freedom from being brought up by parents or educated by
teachers, though as will soon be apparent what Hegel had in mind was ‘freedom’ in a
specially defined sense rather than freedom as most people think of it.
He also considered inadequate Kant’s ideal of freedom as action guided only by
reason, because he thought that vacuous. Reason may help us to see how to achieve
whatever we want to achieve, but can’t supply the aims.
Hegel thought that freedom could only be achieved by belonging to a rational organic
community, and acting in accordance with its social rules. That is not the same as
conforming to the customary morality of a Greek city state, because in a rational
community the rules are always under review, so that we can understand why they exist
and why we are obeying them.
Creating and maintaining such a community should be the aim of politics. The
community should be a constitutional monarchy. The executive should be composed of
civil servants. Those best qualified would be appointed as civil servants (Hegel seemed to
take it for granted that the best qualified would just get appointed, without feeling the need
to specify any system for recruiting civil servants) but where two or more people are
equally well qualified a subjective decision has to be made, and a monarch is the best
person to make it. There should also be a legislature with an upper house representing the
landed interest, and the lower house representing business - not individual businessmen
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but business organisations.
Morality applies only within a state. States are above the moral law and disputes
between them should be settled by war. Hegel deplored Kant’s suggestion that there
should be an international organisation to settle such disputes.
I expect Hegel thought he’d made a big advance on his recent predecessors by
avoiding the myth of the social contract and founding his theory on the facts of history, yet
his history was not far removed from myth. China and India were not static monoliths.
There were rebellions and invasions, dynasties fell to be replaced by others. How can
those disturbances and upheavals be consistent with Hegel’s claim that no one but the
emperor had a will of his own? India was usually divided into a number of states, and even
when it was nominally united under a single emperor the nominally subordinate princes
had effective control over much of the subcontinent. Whatever was the ‘tide of history’ and
in what sense was it ever with Persia, from which it was supposed to have moved to the
Greek city states? In fact not all Roman political ideas were of Greek origin. Rome had a
democracy of a sort long before it incorporated Greece in its empire. Doubtless many of
the ideas current in the Roman World were of Greek origin, but democracy was not one of
them.
Yet even if these errors in matters of detail could be corrected, that would not
compensate for the fundamental absurdity of Hegel’s system. Reality, he says, is one and
is spiritual and the material world is an artefact constructed by the mind to order its
sensations. In the context of that belief he presented history as a story of mind’s attempt to
gain freedom from this world of its own construction. Yet that story is couched almost
exclusively in terms of the physical world, of cities and battles and power struggles. Why
doesn’t mind sort itself out at the mental level, instead of fighting proxy battles with itself in
the mythical material world that is supposed to be its own creation?
Although few have found Hegel’s complete system palatable, various components of
his thought have been very influential, especially after their adoption by Marx, but before I
discuss that I’ll say a little more about Hegel’s ideal of freedom.
Peter Singer in Hegel (OUP Past masters series) wrote:
“We may well reject Hegel’s description of a rationally organised community. Our rejection will
not affect the validity of his conception of freedom. Hegel was seeking to describe a community in
which individual interests and the interests of the whole are in harmony. If he failed, others can
continue the search. If none succeeds, if we finally accept that no one ever will succeed, we will have
to acknowledge that freedom, in Hegel’s sense cannot exist. Even that would not invalidate Hegel’s
claim to have described the only genuine form of freedom, and this form of freedom could still serve
as the ideal” (p.39)
Beginning with the last sentence, I find it odd to consider applying to a fantasy that
could never be realised the title ‘the only genuine form of freedom’, and to suggest taking
the impossible as an ideal, unless that is part of a programme to suppress any sort of
freedom, by saying that as it falls short of the ideal it isn’t worth having.
Singer wanted to denigrate the ‘negative freedom’ advocated by laissez faire liberals.
Suppose, he says, that at one time people took it for granted that people sweat and barely
noticed the smell of sweaty people, taking it in their stride when they did. Suppose that
people then invented deodorants and sweat inhibitors, which, once promoted by
advertising, proved very popular. Liberal economists would accept that as the working of
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market forces but ‘radical economists’ would point out that the wish to have deodorants
does not reflect a ‘genuine human need’ or ‘contribute to genuine human welfare’ because
it has been generated by advertising. The people who want deodorants are free in form,
but not in substance, because their choice is determined by factors outside their control.
However, what is outside people’s control, in that story, is not their choice, but their
being presented with the opportunity to make it. They were not constrained by external
factors to choose to use deodorants. Nor is a preference for reducing body odour
something recently created by advertisers; it is of great antiquity. Soaps and perfumes
have long been used. I’d guess that body odour may be quite reassuring in a small hunter
gatherer community, but becomes oppressive once many families huddle together in
towns or villages. Smell might help a hunter gatherer separated from the family group to
find them again, but the multiplicity of scents in a large community of the unwashed would
just be confusing.
Those who promoted deodorants appealed to a preference people were known to
have, and if the advertising did more than that, it was not to create a new preference, but
to reveal a preference not hitherto widely acknowledged. It is not true that advertising can
generate a desire for something that would otherwise not appeal to us at all. At most it
may persuade us to try something to see if we like it.
There are many things unknown to our remote ancestors which hardly anyone would
today propose we gave up. Who would willingly abandon clothes, houses, cooked food,
painkillers or soap? (I gather a few environmentalists try to avoid washing, to preserve
their natural bodily oils. Singer’s interest in the preservation of bodily odours suggests that
he might at least sympathize, though, never having sniffed him, I can’t say whether his
sympathy goes as far as emulation). There are probably many more things we’ve never
experienced that we’d like very much if we did experience them. Imagination followed by
experiment is the way to discover them. People don’t indiscriminately take up everything
any salesman offers, which may be one of the reasons about a third of new companies
only last two years (or is it three years? Where did I read that? How shall I check it?) Lamb
and mint sauce flavoured crisps never got further than a testing of the market, hoola
hoops, canasta and crinolines each lasted for just a year or two, while fire, houses, writing,
clothes, wheels and soap seem to have become fixtures.
The supposed comments of ‘radical economists’ remind me of Plato’s proposal to
ban musical composition and the invention of new musical instruments because they might
undermine the old ways, and there’s also something reminiscent of Rousseau’s hankering
for the simple life.
Supposing Hegel’s rational state to have been set up, the objections to ‘negative
freedom’, even if valid as things are now, would fail in the new order. For in the rational
state people would understand how things were ordered and why, so that they would
understand the tricks a salesmen can play. That understanding would make them immune
to deception by the salesmen, so it would be unnecessary to censor his patter. Therefore
their ‘positive freedom’ could be extended to embrace the freedom of the market. People’s
understanding would also show them something which does not seem to have occurred to
Hegel or to Singer: the unique function of a free market is to act as an information system,
a system that can take into account all the likes and dislikes of different people, and the
weights each person attaches to each of his preferences. The rational state would contain
neither Hegelians nor what Singer calls ‘radical economists’; their rationality would have
turned them into free marketers.
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I suspect that Hegel, and the ‘radical economists’ would reply that it is unrealistic to
suppose that all citizens should have a full understanding of the workings of society no
matter how closely we approach the ideal of the rational state. If they did say that their
reply would both raise a doubt and pose a question.
The doubt is whether the combination of the rational state and Hegelian freedom are
possible for any community of human beings. If it is not possible it cannot be our duty to
seek it, so that it cannot be an ideal.
The question is, ‘who is it who has to understand the rational state for it to be
rational?’ Must every adult inhabitant understand? If not all need to understand, who does
need to, and what is the status of those who don’t? As the state is supposed to be run on
rational principles, people who don’t understand those principles could hardly be involved
in organising it, so there would have to be some category of citizenship restricted to those
who do understand. Once given official status that elect could gradually become a self
perpetuating oligarchy of those with a vested interest in the status quo, and their power to
decide what contributes to ‘genuine human welfare’ could be abused to enforce what
conforms to their own tastes. Their privileged position might come to be inherited by their
children, whether or not those children shared their parents’ insight into the principles of
the rational state. Setting aside the problem of selecting the Elite, supposing them to have
been somehow selected, how might they proceed? Arguably their best strategy would be
to allow a free market. The unenlightened would believe that they were being given a
measure of genuine freedom, while the enlightened would see a free market as fulfilling
two useful functions: acting as a flexible information system, and making the
unenlightened believe themselves free. The freedom of the elite would be unimpaired,
because they would know what was going on, while the unenlightened, whose capacity to
enjoy freedom would be limited by their intellectual poverty, would be as free as they were
ever capable of being.
David Ricardo (1772-1823)
In his On The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation Ricardo combined
Adam Smith’s insights with the utilitarian theory of utility.
Observing that commodities are usually exchangeable at rates proportional to the
costs of producing them, and that those costs are largely labour, he was led to equate
value with utility and utility with labour. He considered labour to be the ‘foundation of all
value’.
“The value of a commodity, or the quantity of any other commodity for which it will exchange,
depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production, and not on the
greater or less compensation which is paid for that labour.” (op cit Ch 1)
As he believed that prices should generally reflect the values of commodities, he
thought that any cases in which prices do not reflect labour must be in some way
exceptional.
“Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their
scarcity, and from the quantity of labour required to obtain them.
There are some commodities, the value of which is determined by their scarcity alone. No
labour can increase the quantity of such goods, and therefore their value cannot be lowered by an
increased supply. Some rare statues and pictures, scarce books and coins, wines of a peculiar
quality, which can be made only from grapes grown on a particular soil, of which there is a very
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limited quantity, are all of this description. Their value is wholly independent of the quantity of labour
originally necessary to produce them, and varies with the varying wealth and inclinations of those
who are desirous to possess them.
These commodities, however, form a very small part of the mass of commodities daily
exchanged in the market. By far the greatest part of those goods which are the objects of desire, are
procured by labour,. and they may be multiplied, not in one country alone, but in many, almost
without any assignable limit, if we are disposed to bestow the labour necessary to obtain them.” (op
cit Ch 1)
There is at least one counter instance to Ricardo’s theory that cannot be dismissed
as a special case. Some workmen can achieve in a relatively short time what would take
others much longer. Ricardo did recognise the problem up to a point, observing that the
different value of different sorts of work ‘comes to be adjusted in the market’ In the sequel
he seems to use the labour theory of value only to explain changes in the prices of a
particular commodity over time as changing production methods may alter the labour
required.
“In speaking, however, of labour, as being the foundation of all value, and the relative quantity
of labour as almost exclusively determining the relative value of commodities, I must not be
supposed to be inattentive to the different qualities of labour, and the difficulty of comparing an
hour's or a day's labour, in one employment, with the same duration of labour in another. The
estimation in which different qualities of labour are held, comes soon to be adjusted in the market
with sufficient precision for all practical purposes, and depends much on the comparative skill of the
labourer, and intensity of the labour performed. The scale, when once formed, is liable to little
variation. If a day's labour of a working jeweller be more valuable than a day's labour of a common
labourer, it has long ago been adjusted, and placed in its proper position in the scale of value.(3*)
In comparing therefore the value of the same commodity, at different periods of time, the
consideration of the comparative skill and intensity of labour, required for that particular commodity,
needs scarcely to be attended to, as it operates equally at both periods. One description of labour at
one time is compared with the same description of labour at another; if a tenth, a fifth, or a fourth,
has been added or taken away, an effect proportioned to the cause will be produced on the relative
value of the commodity.” (op cit Ch 1 section II)
However it seems to me doubtful if he could have explained even the price of a
single commodity, for even in one employment, different people would work at different
speeds and with different competence. It is only because market forces establish a
standard level of performance to which all workers actually employed approximately
conform, that price often seems to correspond to labour required, and even then the direct
correspondence is between cost of production and wages paid to workers.
Ricardo’s confidence in the correspondence between labour expended and value
created was supported by another theory, that there is a natural price for labour,
determined by the subsistence level for the labouring classes.
“Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or
diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labour is that price
which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race,
without either increase or diminution.
The power of the labourer to support himself, and the family which may be necessary to
keep up the number of labourers, does not depend on the quantity of money which he may receive
for wages, but on the quantity of food, necessaries, and conveniences become essential to him from
habit, which that money will purchase. The natural price of labour, therefore, depends on the price of
the food, necessaries, and conveniences required for the support of the labourer and his family. With
a rise in the price of food and necessaries, the natural price of labour will rise; with the fall in their
price, the natural price of labour will fall.” (op cit Ch 5)
“It is when the market price of labour exceeds its natural price, that the condition of the labourer
is flourishing and happy, that he has it in his power to command a greater proportion of the
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necessaries and enjoyments of life, and therefore to rear a healthy and numerous family. When,
however, by the encouragement which high wages give to the increase of population, the number of
labourers is increased, wages again fall to their natural price, and indeed from a re-action sometimes
fall below it.
When the market price of labour is below its natural price, the condition of the labourers is
most wretched: then poverty deprives them of those comforts which custom renders absolute
necessaries. It is only after their privations have reduced their number, or the demand for labour has
increased, that the market price of labour will rise to its natural price, and that the labourer will have
the moderate comforts which the natural rate of wages will afford.” (op cit Ch 5)
“Suppose the weapon necessary to kill the beaver, was constructed with much more labour
than that necessary to kill the deer, on account of the greater difficulty of approaching near to the
former animal, and the consequent necessity of its being more true to its mark; one beaver would
naturally be of more value than two deer, and precisely for this reason, that more labour would, on
the whole, be necessary to its destruction.” [My comment: not necessarily; people might decide that
beavers were not worth hunting) (op cit Ch 1 section III)
“But although commodities produced under similar circumstances, would not vary with respect
to each other, from any cause but an addition or diminution of the quantity of labour necessary to
produce one or other of them, yet compared with others not produced with the same proportionate
quantity of fixed capital, they would vary from the other cause also which I have before mentioned,
namely, a rise in the value of labour, although neither more nor less labour were employed in the
production of either of them. Barley and oats would continue to bear the same relation to each other
under any variation of wages. Cotton goods and cloth would do the same, if they also were produced
under circumstances precisely similar to each other, but yet with a rise or fall of wages, barley might
be more or less valuable compared with cotton goods, and oats compared with cloth.” (op cit Ch 1
section IIII)
“In making labour the foundation of the value of commodities, and the comparative quantity of
labour which is necessary to their production, the rule which determines the respective quantities of
goods which shall be given in exchange for each other, we must not be supposed to deny the
accidental and temporary deviations of the actual or market price of commodities from this, their
primary and natural price.
In the ordinary course of events, there is no commodity which continues for any length of
time to be supplied precisely in that degree of abundance, which the wants and wishes of mankind
require, and therefore there is none which is not subject to accidental and temporary variations of
price.” (op cit Ch 4)
“It is a truth which admits not a doubt, that the comforts and well- being of the poor cannot be
permanently secured without some regard on their part, or some effort on the part of the legislature,
to regulate the increase of their numbers, and to render less frequent among them early and
improvident marriages. The operation of the system of poor laws has been directly contrary to this.
They have rendered restraint superfluous, and have invited imprudence, by offering it a portion of the
wages of prudence and industry.
The nature of the evil points out the remedy. By gradually contracting the sphere of the
poor laws; by impressing on the poor the value of independence, by teaching them that they must
look not to systematic or casual charity, but to their own exertions for support, that prudence and
forethought are neither unnecessary nor unprofitable virtues, we shall by degrees approach a
sounder and more healthful state.” (op cit Ch 5)
However value in exchange will correspond to cost of production only in a free
market in a state of equilibrium, and the correspondence does not entail that relative
costs of production determine the rates of exchange.
Ricardo does not seem fully to have appreciated that what is relevant to prices is not
the total cost of production, but the cost of producing an additional unit of the commodity. It
could just as well be the other way round, with higher prices leading to increased costs of
production when production is expanded to take advantage of the high prices.
If rates of exchange set a high value on one commodity, people may make a great
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effort to produce more of it by pressing into service more expensive methods of
production. For instance if a pound of beef were to exchange for three pounds of lamb,
some farmers may rear beef on land better suited to rearing sheep, probably having to buy
animal feed grown elsewhere to supplement the poverty of their pasture, so that the ratio
of the cost of producing each additional pound of beef will rise and the savings effected by
producing one pound less of lamb will fall, so that the ratio of the costs of producing an
extra pound of beef and an extra pound of lamb will change until a point is reached at
which the ratio of the cost of production does equal to ratio of the prices.
Ricardo argued strongly for free trade, propounding what was long regarded as a
knock down argument against taxes on imports and subsidies (or ‘bounties’ as he called
them) for exports.
“The sole effect of high duties on the importation either of manufactures or of corn, or of a bounty on
their exportation, is to divert a portion of capital to an employment, which it would not naturally seek. It
causes a pernicious distribution of the general funds of the society - it bribes a manufacturer to
commence or continue in a comparatively less profitable employment. It is the worst species of taxation,
for it does not give to the foreign country all that it takes away from the home country, the balance of loss
being made up by the less advantageous distribution of the general capital. Thus, if the price of corn is in
England £4 and in France £3 15s. a bounty of 10s. will ultimately reduce it to £3 10s. in France, and
maintain it at the same price of £4 in England. For every quarter exported, England pays a tax of 10s. For
every quarter imported into France, France gains only 5s., so that the value of 5s. per quarter is
absolutely lost to the world, by such a distribution of its funds as to cause diminished production, probably
not of corn, but of some other object of necessity or enjoyment.” (op cit ch 22)
Ricardo went further, arguing that, except possibly temporarily in a few very special
circumstances, no one could ever gain from restrictions of trade, and many were sure to
lose by it.
Suppose some country, let us call it ‘the home country’ uses import restrictions and
tariffs to ‘protect’ some industry from foreign competition It is of course obvious that this,
will harm some people abroad who will find it harder to export to the home country, and
that it will also harm some consumers in the home county who will have to pay higher
prices for the goods subject to tariffs. However those supporting tariffs argue that those
harmful effects of tariffs are sometimes more than compensated for by the advantages to
the industry protected, or at least that the harm done to consumers in the home country
are so compensated for.
Ricardo held that, even if we consider only the home country, the harm done by
protection must always outweigh the benefits. For, the argument runs, the protection of
one industry is likely to divert to that industry productive resources (investment and labour)
that would otherwise be employed elsewhere, and would have been more profitable if
employed elsewhere. It will also make the produce of the protected industry more
expensive than it would otherwise have been.
To cite a twenty-first century example, the EU Agriculture Policy, by raising the price
of grain far above world prices, encouraged some hill farmers in Britain to use some of
their land to grow grain as animal feed, instead of using the land as grazing, which would
have been the more economical use of it under a free market. At the same time EU
agricultural surpluses were sold abroad at prices considerably lower than their production
costs in Europe.
Ricardo’s arguments formed the classical case for free trade, and were generally
accepted as conclusive by classical economists and Utilitarians. While there is
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considerable force in those arguments, they do not provide quite the watertight case that
Ricardo and others supposed. For sometimes the resources used by a threatened industry
cannot be used elsewhere, or cannot be so used quickly, so that protection prevents those
resources from falling idle. That could be the case in a specialised established industry,
such as aero engineering is threatened by foreign competition. The machinery it uses,
might not be useful for any other purpose, and the skills of its workers might not equip for
them for any other employment.
In arguing that it is impossible that any nation could ever benefit from protection,
classical economists were oversimplifying. It is quite common for people to try to avoid
having to grapple with the complexities of a problem by trying to produce a simple knock
down arguments that seems to make the details irrelevant. Such arguments appeal to our
intellectual laziness, but are rarely valid.
The failure of the knock down argument does not imply that there are no arguments
in favour of free trade, but just that the issue cannot be put beyond the reach of further
argument.
Any case there may be for protection is likely to be for short term protection, since
the initial advantages are likely to be lost if other countries retaliate by protecting their
industries from ours, and in the long run it will be possible to redirect resources from the
threatened industry to others. To return to my example of the aircraft industry, even if
existing machinery cannot be used for other purposes, when that machinery becomes
obsolete, the money that might have been used to pay for replacements could instead be
invested in other industries, and even if existing skilled workers cannot apply their skills to
other tasks, there is no need to train others in the same skills to replace them when they
retire
Utilitarians and Liberty
The leading Utilitarians, Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill were greatly
interested in public affairs and developed Utilitarianism primarily as the basis for a political
theory, and only secondarily as a contribution to moral philosophy. In their case it was
combined with a belief in the ‘Classical Economics’ of Adam Smith, and David Ricardo,
which appeared to imply that a government policy of laissez faire would best promote
general happiness.
Their commitment to laissez faire must have made it easier to maintain heir
Utilitarianism, because one of the objections to utilitarianism is that it is impossible to
determine te precise consequences of any action, and hence impossible to determine its
utility precisely. That problem would seem less pressing than it might otherwise have done
to people who believed it possible to arrange for an impersonal market system so to guide
people’s choices that the most felicitous state of affairs would be reached automatically.
I’ve discussed Utilitarianism at length under Ethics, and have already discussed
Smith and Ricardo, and some matters relevant to Utilitarianism I deal with later under
‘Consequentialism so there isn’t a lot to say in this section, but there are still a few
additional points worth making.
In one respect Utilitarianism is more plausible as a political theory than as a moral
theory. I’ve already discussed the possibility that John Stuart Mill mistakenly identified
what people actually desire with what is desirable. Although he probably didn’t make the
logical blunder of which he is usually accused, he did believe that the task of morality is
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just to reconcile the different desires of different people. That claim is widely disputed on
the ground that ‘desirable’ means not ‘what is desired’ nor even ‘what people are capable
of desiring’ but ‘what people ought to desire’, so morality cannot be a study just of people’s
desires. But even if that is a valid objection to Utilitarianism as an ethical theory, it does not
detract from the plausibility of viewing politics as the task of reconciling people’s desires,
irrespective of whether or not we think them right to have those desires. If we think
people’s desires wrong we are likely to wish to persuade them to change their
preferences, but it helps if we and they can co-exist peacefully while we are doing that and while they are trying, as they are quite likely to try, to persuade us to change our
preferences in the opposite direction.
As I’ve already remarked, Utilitarianism at most succeeds in setting an agenda for
discussion, it cannot provide detailed solutions of individual problems. Much subsequent
political thought was an elaboration of Utilitarianism, attempting to modify it to avoid
distasteful consequences (John Rawls). Most of the remainder of this chapter could
therefore be regarded as a commentary on the Utilitarians and various reactions against
them, so in rest of this section I’ll confine myself to discussing Mill’s Essay On Liberty.
John Stuart Mill thought that the promotion of happiness required a considerable
measure of individual freedom. In particular he thought that human happiness depended
on the advancement of knowledge, which in turn required freedom of thought. Only when
all are free to speak their minds are new ideas likely to be able to emerge. Attempts to
suppress free discussion are likely to end by preventing people from discovering the truth.
Even censorship directed exclusively at preventing people from saying what is false is
likely to end by suppressing truth. For censors who try to suppress falsehood can hardly
do better than suppress what they consider to be false, so that when they are mistaken
they may suppress truth. Fear of the censors may even deter people from proclaiming
what they believe to be true, because they fear the censors will wrongly consider it false.
Furthermore censors employed by the state are particularly likely to consider to be false
anything unorthodox. Established ideas that are false will thus be shielded from criticism,
and new ideas that contradict them will be suppressed even if they are true. Mill’s Essay
on Liberty is easily obtainable and easy reading so there is no need to try to summarise it
all here. I want to discuss just one aspect of his argument.
Mill’s central theme is that we should be free to do absolutely anything that has no
effect on anyone else.
“The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which
concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute.
Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” (On Liberty Introductory p
135 in my edition)
There is a problem there because almost anything someone does will affect other
people in some respect. Indeed there is one sense in which anything at all we do could be
said to affect everyone else. Suppose I were to change the font in this sentence to Comic
Sans MS. Then of everyone else in the universe it would be true to say ‘X lives in a
universe in which Richard Thompson has just changed his font to Comic Sans MS’ and so,
in a way, my action would have affected everyone else.
Such a tenuous notion of ‘effect’ could of course be ruled out on the ground that it
does not really constitute an effect, but there are other cases troublesome for a libertarian
that cannot be ruled out on that ground. What we do often affects others only through their
reaction to finding out what we have done. They may be annoyed, or jealous, or laugh so
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much that they swallow their dentures or even succumb to a fatal heart attack. Such
effects are so common that allowing them to create exceptions to personal freedom would
leave very few cases to which Mill’s doctrine would apply. I remember that in an sixth form
discussion group in Lincolnshire, Headmaster said that Mill’s doctrine applied only to
masturbation. I suspect he said it just to shock, but if we count coming to know of
something as an effect, not even masturbation qualifies as without any effect on others.
Mill tried to rule out trivial effects thus:
“When I say only himself, I mean directly and in the first instance; for whatever affects himself
may affect others though himself...” (On Liberty Introductory p 137)
I think that rules out too much. Suppose an experimental biologist infected himself
with a virus that caused sterility in all who caught it, but which did not harm them in any
other way, and was symptomless apart from the sterility. If others caught the virus from the
biologist it would have affected those others through himself, but I doubt if we should think
that excused him from censure if it turned out that he knew of the infection and took no
steps to warn or protect others.
There may not be any simple rule to distinguish effects that should be discounted
from ones that should not but I still think that much can be salvaged from Mill’s thesis. First
we could agree to discount bogus effects like ‘X lives in a universe in which Richard
Thompson has just changed his font to Comic Sans MS’. On way of doing that would be to
specify that event E cannot be an effect of action A unless E is an event distinct from A
that would not have happened had not A occurred. We could also discount effects that
follow, not from A alone, but only from someone’s knowing about A, reacting to A, or
having feelings about A.
That still leave in play many effects that we’d want to discount because they don’t
seem particularly important. However such effects need not be ruled out as entirely
irrelevant, but could just be weighed lightly in the Utilitarian scales. That suggests a rule on
the lines of:
R1: When someone’s actions do significantly and adversely affect someone else,
those actions should still not be prohibited unless the harm averted is commensurate with
the inconvenience caused by the proposed prohibition.
However R1 does not take into account the full implications of imposing a legal
prohibition on some activity, for those extend beyond the inconvenience of our not being
allowed to do what we wish in the particular case in question. To prevent actions of a
particular type requires us to have a system for detecting such actions and for enforcing
the prohibition, and it also sets a precedent for prohibiting other events that are seen to be
similar to that prohibited.
I should therefore favour strengthening R1 so that, even where someone’s actions
AA do affect someone else, we should only take those effects into account if they are more
harmful, not just than preventing the responsible actions AA, but also more harmful than
setting up a coercive agency to enforce a general policy of always preventing not only
AA’s but also any actions found to have effects harmful to a similar degree. Amending R1
accordingly we have:
R2: When someone’s actions do significantly and adversely affect someone else,
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they should not be prohibited unless the harm averted is commensurate with the
inconvenience of setting up machinery to restrict people’s behaviour not only in that
particular case but also in all other cases perceived to be of the same sort.
An example is drunkenness. To see someone drunk, or even to know that a friend or
relative is frequently drunk, may cause people distress. However that distress is not
usually considered sufficient reason to forbid people to get drunk. Mill definitely did not
think so. On the other hand, he did think that if someone became violent when drunk, it
would be reasonable to respond to the violence by forbidding that person to get drunk
again.
Marx (1818-1883)
Marx was in his youth much influenced by a group of thinkers who were called
sometimes the ‘Young Hegelians’ and sometimes the ‘Left Hegelians’, philosophers
influenced by, and in some cases former pupils of, Hegel, who criticised Hegel for being
too subservient to the Prussian state and the Lutheran Faith, and who tried to develop
from his thought a programme for bringing about a closer approximation to the ideal
rational society than the Prussia of the 1830’s.
First they developed further some doubts Hegel himself had voiced about religion. If
religion separates man from God by putting God beyond the human world, it produces a
state of ‘unhappy consciousness’, Hegel had said, in which the God worshipped is just a
projection of human qualities. In that way people divide themselves by projecting some
part of their nature into an imagined place forever out of their reach. That inspired Strauss
to write a Life of Jesus and Feuerbach to claim that all religion is the projection of human
attributes into an imagined other world.
When Feuerbach suggested that mind comes from man, not man from mind, Marx
developed that into materialism, but his materialism was of a special sort. Marx thought
materialists had in the past drawn too mechanical a picture of the world and called his
version ‘dialectical materialism’ because, adapting Hegel’s dialectic, he thought that history
was driven by a dialectic of economic forces. He suggested that personal identity is built
up through personal relationships. As individuals we are the children of the society which
formed us, our mindset coloured by its customs and assumptions.
Marx suggested that the members of a society should be treated as belonging to one
or another of several classes. A class was a set of people with some common factor
which they perceived to give them a common interest in acting together. Their perception
of themselves as a class was thus part of their being a class. Medieval journeymen did not
form a class because their loyalties were not towards each other but towards the master
craftsmen whose ranks they hoped eventually to join. Sometimes individuals mistake their
position in the class system. An example (mine not Marx’s) would be a manual worker
employed by the water company who owned a few shares in the company and therefore
thought of himself as a shareholder rather than as a worker, thus mistakenly identifying his
interests with those of another class. In such a case the person who misperceives his
position in the class system is said to show ‘false consciousness’.
“The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word,
oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted,
now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of
society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society
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into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights,
plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices,
serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done
away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new
forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses,
however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more
and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other:
Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these
burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds,
now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its
place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of
labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single
workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer
sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of
manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by
industrial millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into
existence the men who are to wield those weapons -- the modern working class -- the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat,
the modern working class, developed - a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work,
and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell
themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently
exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has
lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an
appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily
acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted,
almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the
propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost
of production.” (Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto part I)
Note the assumption that price indicates value. Economic factors underlie the
development of social systems which in turn give rise to appropriate world views and
systems of morality. Economic systems develop by an inexorable dialectical logic, and
once the economic system has developed so far that the social system is inappropriate to
it there will be a revolution to introduce a new social system with a new set of values. Marx
thought that mankind began in a state of primitive communism, which developed though
slavery and feudalism into capitalism which would in turn finally collapse into communism.
He thought it anachronistic to judge the actions of men in one state of development
according to the moral standards of another. Someone who kept slaves or defended
slavery in a slave owning society was not doing wrong at that time, though it would be
wrong to do either today.
The early Marx attached great importance to the alienation of the worker under a
capitalist system He developed Hegel’s idea that the product of someone’s work is the
‘objectification’ of his labour. Large scale manufacture and the adoption of processes using
expensive equipment led to fewer workers owning the tools of their trade, and to more
workers being employed by others instead of being self employed. Those who owned the
means of production by which others worked he called capitalists. Workers employed by
a capitalist were alienated because the product of their labour, which was in a sense part
of themselves, actually belonged to someone else. There is a hint of Locke’s account of
property here.
Building on David Ricardo’s labour theory of value Marx advanced a theory of
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surplus value by applying that theory to the value of the worker himself. Marx argued that,
from the point of view of a capitalist, a worker is a commodity. To produce a worker needs
a certain quantity of food, clothing, housing, education or training... which are the costs of
the worker. The value of the worker to the capitalist is the work he is capable of doing, and
that exceeds the value needed to produce the worker. The difference is the capitalist’s
profit. Under such a system workers wages will be held at subsistence level. This was
inevitable under a capitalist system, for an employer who paid higher wages would be
uncompetitive and forced out of business, so the plight of the worker could not be
alleviated by a change of heart on the part of a few benevolent employers; only a change
in the system could help the worker.
It is odd that many Marxists, despite their historical determinism, speak of the plight
of the poor in tones of moral indignation. Were the economic system, as Marx claimed, the
product of forces beyond our control, it would be no-one’s responsibility.
Marx thought that the eventual and inevitable collapse of capitalism would come
about as follows. Because of the economic advantages of economies of scale there would
come to be progressively fewer and larger companies. Small businesses and the self
employed would be marginalised and society would reach a state where a very small
minority were very rich capitalists, and a huge majority were propertyless workers, the
proletariat. The rate of profit would tend to zero, precipitating a crisis which would only be
resolved when the proletariat eventually seized power, taking the surplus value for
themselves instead of leaving it in the hands of the capitalists.
An odd point about that argument is that if profit sank to zero there would be no
surplus value, and so nothing for the revolting workers to seize. I think that, without
realising it, Marx had hit on a contradiction in the labour theory of value. His argument
about surplus value could equally be applied to a machine, or a house; the value that can
be got out of things generally exceeds that needed to make them - that after all is why we
bother to make them. We thus seem to have two different values for every commodity, so
the labour theory of value is inconsistent. Since anything at all follows from a contradiction,
it is not surprising that Marx managed to draw remarkable conclusions from his
inconsistent theory. It is also strange that Marx should have encouraged his followers to
work to bring about a revolution. Were it inevitable there would be no point in making such
an attempt.
Marx seems never to have noticed the explanation of prices in terms of marginal
utility, developed in Jevons The Theory Of Political Economy, though Jevons published in
1871, twelve years before Marx’s death. The marginalist analysis makes it unnecessary to
assign any definite value to each commodity.
Marx’s predictions have been falsified by subsequent events. The rate of profit has
not tended to zero. The combination of many businesses into large conglomerates has
been partly offset by the breaking up of large companies that proved unwieldy. Much of the
equity in capitalist enterprises is owned by workers, only to a small extent through
individual shareholdings, but much more substantially through pension funds. The only
countries where communists have come to power without outside intervention have not
been highly developed capitalist states past their prime, but countries scarcely out of
feudalism, notably Russia and China.
Although Marx had studied no science and his doctoral thesis was about Democritus,
he claimed to be a scientist not a philosopher, and he paid little attention to such matters
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as logic, the nature of knowledge or the status of mind. Marx famously remarked ‘The
philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it’ I
imagine his point was that we should not be content to be just philosophers, not, as
sometimes seems to be assumed, that philosophers should undertake the re-organising of
the world. His perception of himself as a scientist made him present his later work in the
form of an analysis of the contemporary state of affairs accompanied by a prediction of its
future development.
Marx was a determinist and thought that human society inevitably passed through a
series of stages. First there was natural man, with only primitive self awareness, then
capitalism with self alienation of the worker and finally communism, a state of self
realisation in free creative activity.
Communism, was envisaged as a golden age. William Morris’s News from Nowhere,
written after Marx’s death gives an interesting picture of that unrealisable fantasy.
Much of Marx’s later work was written in close collaboration with Engels, who after
Marx’s death completed the second and third volumes of Das Kapital from Marx’s notes.
Engels also tried to construct a Marxist philosophy.
Later Lenin defined a doctrine that came to be called ‘Marxist-Leninism’ which, after
the Communist revolution in Russia, became the official doctrine of the Soviet Union. That
doctrine was eventually elaborated by Stalin in 1938 to produce a strange speculative
system regarded as extremely naive by most of the philosophers who’ve bothered to
acquaint themselves with the details (I haven’t, so I’m relying on hearsay). The official
history of the Communist Party said:
“The power of Marxist-Leninist theory lies in the fact that it enables the Party to find the right
orientation in any situation, to understand the inner connection of current events, to foresee their
course, and to perceive not only how and in what direction they are developing but how and in what
direction they are bound to develop in the future” (History of the Communist Party (Moscow 1945)
Quoted by Eric Hoffer The True Believer p. 81)
I wonder if the predictive power of Marxist Leninism gave any warning of the 1991
collapse of the Soviet Union!
If we allow Economics to count as a science, we could say that Marxism is a defunct
theory. Not allowed to grow under critical scrutiny, Marxist-Leninism fossilised it into
orthodoxy, like the dogmas of a national Church, an example of Philosophy as intellectual
pathology.
Modern Economics and Marginal Utility The labour theory of value had odd
consequences, especially when accompanied by the assumption that the value of a
commodity ought to be reflected in its price. Commodities that are essential for our
survival, like air and water, can often be produced with very little labour, and under
favourable circumstances with no labour at all. For those commodities, although the work
required to produce them is indeed reflected in the price, neither price nor quantity of work
reflects their great value.
On the other hand a painter might labour for many hours to produce a painting that
nobody wants because nobody likes it, a case in which the price may well reflect the low
value of the painting, but neither corresponds to the work done. Philosophers such as Sir
Thomas More have complained that luxuries such as jewellery and fashionable clothes are
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of little value and yet are expensive. At least in the perception of such critics, although the
price at least roughly reflects the work need to produce them, neither corresponds to the
low value of what is produced.
As I’ve already remarked the labour theory seems to assign two different values to
capital goods such as machines - the cost of making the machine, and the, usually
greater, value that machine supplies when used to convert raw materials into finished
goods. Classical economists were aware of such difficulties, and tried to deal with them by
allowing exceptions to the labour theory, such as the natural resources (minerals), and by
trying to refine the definition of labour by introducing notions such as necessary labour,
productive labour (judged by Marx to include manufactures and transport, but not
services).
It was easy to underestimate the force of the objections to the labour theory. The
variation in the productivity of the work of different individuals can easily be
underestimated if we concentrate on the work of people in employment because people
remployed to perform a particular task will usually be required to do work of a certain
standard at a certain speed, and if work is organised in a production line, people capable
of working faster may have no opportunity to do s, while people incapable of working at the
required speed will not be employed in that job. Reflection on their efforts of people like
builders, electricians and plumbers who often work on their own, would reveal great
differences in what they can achieve in a given time, but Marxists, who became were the
principal upholders of the labour theory, considered the self employed an anachronism
and concentrated on workers employed by large concerns. They conceded that
differences in the quality of work in different callings justified some difference in rates of
pay but only on the ground that different types of work require different training and
possibly different allowances of food and rest.
The difficulty of explaining prices in terms of the labour theory of value is easily seen
as constituting only a limited problem confined to certain special cases such as natural
resources, because in a great many cases prices do correspond to the costs of production,
and most of the costs of production can be attributed either directly or indirectly to labour.
However, that correspondence is seen only because we concentrate on good that are
actually made and sold under approximately free market condition, so that manufacture is
profitable because people are prepared to buy the goods produced at the asking price.
Simply setting people to work to make something or other, regardless of whether people
want it, will very likely not result in sufficient sales to cover the costs of manufacture. That
sometimes happens when people put a new commodity on the market hoping that it will
sell better than it does - as in the case of Sir Clive Sinclair’s electric car. Such production is
short lived and so easily overlooked, but it still points to a crucial error in the labour theory
of value.
Jevons and his successors thought that a more realistic view is that the prices people
are willing to pay determine the maximum production costs that may be incurred by a
successful producer, and that in turn determines the resources he can afford to employ,
and hence the level of production he can maintain. Only of there is some level of
production at which it is possible to sell goods at a price that covers the costs of production
of that volume of goods, can be production be sustained as anything more than a short
term trial to test the market.
Many economists decided that it is wrong to think of things as having a definite value
at all. Something can’t be simply valuable, it can only be valuable to someone if that
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person likes, needs or wants it. For someone else it might have a different value or no
value at all. A kidney transplant is of no value at all to someone with two healthy kidneys.
Even for a particular person, the value of a commodity to that person depends on how
much he already has. A farmer whose crop is threatened by drought would set a high
value on a water supply, one whose fields are flooded might be willing to pay to get rid of
water. Since there is no concept of value capable of objective determination, Economics
needed to be refashioned to be independent of such a concept, and it came to be seen,
not as the study of value, but as the study of the allocation of scarce resources, for only if
something is scarce in the sense that someone does not have as much of it as they would
like to have, is it likely to be bought, sold or exchanged. In that context what is important is
not value, but price and it was prices that Economists set themselves to explain, without
assuming that price must be an indicator of value, except in the very loose sense that
people will not pay for something unless they want it.
Modern Economics is considered to start with Jevons The Theory of Political
Economy (1871) and similar work undertaken by his contemporaries Karl Menger in
Vienna (1871) and Léon Walras in Switzerland (1874). Sometimes the early work in that
tradition is called ‘neo-classical’ to distinguish it for the modified theory later introduced by
J. M. Keynes and his followers.
Jevons regarded Economics, his preferred name for what had formerly been called
Political Economy, as a mathematical science that deals with quantities capable of being
related as greater or smaller and he made considerable use of graphs and the notation of
calculus.
“I hesitate to say that men will ever have the means of measuring directly the feelings of the human
heart. A unit of pleasure or of pain is difficult even to conceive; but it is the amount of these feelings which
is continually prompting us to buying and selling, borrowing and lending, labouring and resting, producing
and consuming; and it is from the quantitative effects of the feelings that we must estimate their
comparative amounts! We can no more know nor measure gravity in its own nature than we can measure
a feeling; but, just as we measure gravity by its effects in the motion of a pendulum, so we-may estimate
the equality or inequality of feelings by the. decisions of the human mind. The will is our pendulum, and
its oscillations are minutely registered in the price lists of the markets. I know not when we shall have a
perfect system of statistics, but the want of it is the only insuperable obstacle in the way of making
economics an exact science. In the absence of complete statistics, the science will not be less
mathematical, though it will be immensely less useful than if it were, comparatively speaking, exact. A
correct theory is the first step towards improvement, by showing what we need and what we might
accomplish.” (The Theory of Political Economy Penguin Edition edited by R. D. Collison Black 1970
Chapter I pp. 83-84)
“The theory turns upon those critical points where pleasures are nearly, if not quite, equal. I never
attempt to estimate the whole pleasure gained by purchasing a commodity; the theory merely expresses
that, when a man has purchased enough, he would derive equal pleasure from the possession of a small
quantity more as he would from the money price of it. Similarly, the whole amount of pleasure that a man
gains by a day’s labour hardly enters into the question; it is when a man is doubtful whether to increase
his hours of labour or not, that we discover an equality between the pain of that extension, and the
pleasure of the increase of possessions derived from it.” (Op cit Chapter I p 85)
Brought up in the Utilitarian tradition, Jevons thought that value depends primarily on
utility and only secondarily on labour explaining that
“utility, though a quality of things, is no inherent quality. It is better described as a circumstance of
things arising from their relation to man’s requirements.” (op cit Chapter III p 105 )
Jevons held that Economics is deductive, deducing rules governing the operation of
economic systems from intuitively obvious principles of human psychology. He remarked
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that it was unfortunately hard to compares the rules we deduce with what actually happens
because statistics were so scanty.
Jevons decided that the factor determining prices and trade is not the total utility of a
commodity, but what he called the final degree of utility (op cit p 111), which would now
usually be called marginal utility, the value to an individual of a small increase in his
stock of some commodity A, a value which is measured by the quantity of other
commodities the individual is prepared to exchange for an additional unit of A. X will be
prepared to give b units of B to Y in exchange for a units of A if, for him, situated as he is,
a units of A are preferable to b units of B. If the exchange continues X will gradually value
additional units B more and additional units of A less, while Y’s valuations will change in
the opposite direction until eventually one or the other will no longer be prepared to
exchange at that rate. The different marginal utilities that various goods have for different
people determine their transactions in the markets, and those transactions set prices and
wage levels.
Note that if watches of a certain make are sold for £18 each (the example is mine,
not Jevons’s), that does not imply that most people, or even any person, considers those
watches are worth precisely £18. Anyone valuing such a watch at £18 or more is likely, if
they need a watch, to buy one at that price, unless they expect soon to be able to buy one
elsewhere at a lower price, and anyone with a surplus watch which they value at less than
£18 is likely to sell at that price, unless they expect soon to be able to sell it for more. That
the price is £18 indicates no more than that the number of people willing to pay at least
£18 approximately equals the number of watches in the possession of traders who are
prepared to sell them for £18 or less.
Exchange and trade depend on goods having different marginal utilities for different
people. Each of the parties to a trade obtains something that, for him, is more valuable
than what he gives in exchange. The economy is not zero sum. This is often
misunderstood when people refer to transactions as ‘exploitation’ using the words as a
term of disapproval. Whenever two people make some transaction that benefits them both,
each is exploiting the needs and assets of, and the services provided by, the other. It is by
mutual exploitation that we survive.
In modern societies what people exchange for commodities or services is usually
money, in which case we can discuss exchange in terms of prices.
In a free market the price of a commodity should have an equilibrium value at which
demand (how much people are prepared to buy at the prevailing price) equals supply,
(what suppliers are prepared to supply at that price). 5 [Note that in economic theory the words
‘supply’ and ‘demand’ are not used in quite their everyday sense. Demand is not what people want or
clamour for, but the quantity they actually buy. Similarly
supply is
not what is available in farmers fields or
factory warehouses, but what is actually sold. That supply
and demand are equal is therefore a necessary truth.] It
is commonly assumed that prices will in the long
run settle down at their equilibrium values, or at
Note that in economic theory the words ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ are not used in quite
their everyday sense. Demand is not what people want or clamour for, but the quantity
they actually buy. Similarly supply is not what is available in farmers fields or factory
warehouses, but what is actually sold. That supply and demand are equal is therefore a
necessary truth.
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least fluctuate quite close to those values. So increase in potential demand, (the quantity
people require), or decrease in potential supply, (the quantity available), both tend to raise
prices, while decrease in potential demand or increase in potential supply tend to lower
prices, though it is possible to think of exceptions. Economists illustrate the matter
graphically as shown in the diagram.
The Supply curve shows how the supply of a commodity depends on the price, and
the demand curve shows the variation of demand with price. Almost always, supply rises
as the price rises while demand falls with increasing price. Since demand and supply must
be equal, the quantity sold, Q and the price, P are given by the co-ordinates of the point E
where the curves intersect.
Underlying the demand curve are the relative preferences of the various consumers
for the various goods available. For most goods, the more we have, the less pressing is
our wish to have more. Jevons assumed that consumers will tend to distribute their income
between the various goods they buy in such a way that the additional increment of any one
commodity that they can buy for, say, one pound, will give them the same satisfaction as
the additional increment of any other commodity they could buy with the same sum of
money. At that point, the marginal utility to any consumer of an additional pounds worth of
any one commodity will equal to marginal utility of a pounds worth of any other commodity
to that consumer. For if someone decides to spend his money on some commodity, that
suggests that he would rather have more of that commodity, than have anything else he
could have bought at the same cost. Were someone in a position where the satisfaction to
him of one pounds worth of commodity A was less to him than the satisfaction provided by
a pounds worth of B, he would be better off buying more of A and less of B. As individuals’
preferences differ, different people will distribute their income between the various
available goods in different ways, and the price system reflects the total of all their diverse
preferences since it is the integration of all those preferences in a market system that
determines the prices.
A producer may also have a choice between making one commodity, or making
another, and is likely so to allocate productive resources between different outputs that the
marginal reward (almost certainly money) for applying an additional unit of productive
capacity to any one output equals the marginal reward for applying that capacity to the
production of any other output. Just as different consumers differ in their preferences, so
will different producers differ in their capacity to produce different goods, so producers will
not all produce the same baskets of goods, but the supply curves for the various
commodities will reflect the collective capacity of producers as a whole to respond to the
consumer preferences that are signalled by the demand curves. The whole market system
is a sort of gigantic communication machine that harmonises the activities of producers
and the preferences of consumers. No other system could take so much information into
account, for no individual and no government statistical department could know every
preference of every person in the realm. Hence interference in the free market, typically
but not exclusively by governments attempting to restrict trade or plan economies, will
divert resources from the goods people most want into goods that are of less value to
them.
Theory suggests that if one supplier has a monopoly, that supplier will seek to
maximise total profit. The corresponding price will usually be high enough to make it
possible for other suppliers, should any materialise, to make a profit by supplying at a
slightly lower price. For with several competing suppliers the price will tend towards an
equilibrium level at which marginal profit is zero - the cost of producing one extra unit
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equals the price at which it can be sold, and that price will usually be lower than the the
monopolists price, at which total profit is maximized.
Jevons observed that the laws of Economics are statistical, applying not to the
behaviour of each individual considered in isolation, but to the mass of people as a whole.
“We cannot usually observe any precise and continuous variation in the wants and deed of an
individual, because the action of extraneous motives, or what would seem to be caprice, overwhelm
minute tendencies. As I have already remarked (P86), a single individual does not vary his consumption
of sugar, butter or eggs from week to week by infinitesimal amounts, according to each small change in
the price. He probably continues his ordinary consumption until accident directs his attention to a rise in
price, and he then, perhaps, discontinues the use of the articles altogether for a time. But the
aggregate, or what is the same, the average consumption, of a large community will be found to vary
continuously or nearly so.” (op cit chapter IV p 135)
Although marginal utility theory dispenses with the assumption that every commodity
has some intrinsic value, in its early formulations it seemed still to assume another form of
aggregate value, namely the total value (or utility as it was often called) to each consumer
of the goods that consumers enjoys. However, even that assumption can be dispensed
with. At no point is the consumer represented as basing any choice on total utility. The
consumers’ decisions are ones of indifference, that there is nothing to choose between
gaining a certain additional quantity of one commodity, rather than a certain additional
quantity of another.
While the neo-classical economists’ picture is a first sight compelling, it makes some
questionable assumptions. Whether demand and supply curves actually exist is to some
extent a matter of conjecture. At most economists may have determined a few points on
the curves for a few commodities. The assumption that there are clearly defined supply
and demand curves for some commodity is not trivial. It involves the implicit assumption
that there is only one level of supply and one level of demand compatible with any
particular price. That implies that the curve that would be obtained if a commodity were
introduced to the market at a high price which was then slowly lowered, would be the
same as the curve obtained by introducing the commodity at a low price and then
gradually raising it. Yet it is easy to imagine how the demand might differ between those
cases. A low introductory price might encourage many people to try a new commodity. If
they liked it, they might be prepared to buy a little even at a higher price. On the other
hand introduction at a higher price might discourage many potential customers from ever
trying the commodity at all.
The existence of a clearly defined curve also assumes that people’s preferences are
fairly stable, and either do not change at all or at most change only slowly. It is also
assumed that people’s preferences for various goods can be fitted into a consistent theory
of value. Implicit in the theory of marginal utility is the assumption that, if for some person
P a units of commodity A are of the same value as b units of B, and if b units of B are for P
of the same value as c units of C, then a units of A are of the same value as c units of C. It
is not logically necessary that that should be so, but the economic theory assumes that it is
so. Two other difficulties were noted by Jevons, both involving a change in the price of one
commodity affecting the consumption of another. First there is the possibility of
substitution. A rise in the price of one commodity may stimulate increased consumption of
another similar commodity, so that a rise in beef prices may increase the consumption of
lamb even if the price of lamb does not change at all. There is also the possibility that
heavy expenditure on one commodity following a rise in its price may change the utility of
money itself. For instance, if a family that spends a high proportion of its income on food, a
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general rise in food prices may leave them so short of money that they have change their
consumption in favour of cheaper goods in all areas of expenditure, so that the
consumption of cheaper foodstuffs might rise even if their prices increase.
I understand that demand curves have been obtained for certain commodities, but it
still does not follow that those curves would describe the behaviour of the market if
conditions changed.
The theory seems particularly attractive because it suggests the market is an
automatic system for adjusting the economy to suit our preferences, and that we can draw
that conclusion from the mere existence of the various supply and demand curves without
needing actually to plot any of them. That conclusion would not follow if the curves are not
clearly defined, or of they are not stable over time.
Time is little considered in the neoclassical analysis, and that is a considerable
weakness in the theory. The theory at best concerns equilibrium states of an economy. It
gives no indication how quickly equilibrium may be reached.
If the equilibrium position changes before the economy has time to reach it, the
market may be following a vain pursuit of a moving target.
Even if the equilibrium position does not change significantly, if the economy
changes too rapidly it may not stop at the equilibrium position but might shoot through it.
Dynamical Physical systems, even when they have a well defined equilibrium position,
sometimes spend most of their time a long way away from the equilibrium. Consider an
oscillating pendulum. The equilibrium position is with the bob at its lowest point and the
string vertical, but when it is momentarily in that position it is moving at maximum speed,
and for most of the time the displacement is near to the maximum value. In economies we
often see the so called 'boom and bust' cycle, which suggests the analogy may be
appropriate.
What is the logical status of economic theory? It starts with quite plausible
assumptions about people’s behaviour; that we exchange A for B if we’d rather have B
than A, that the more of something we have the less we want any more of it. There are
also plausible assumptions about production, especially the economies of scale production on a large scale can usually be carried out at a lower cost per unit than small
scale production.
The main predictions of Economic theory are also at least qualitatively correct. Price
and demand seem to be related roughly as predicted. However classical and early modern
economic theory, even if it was at least roughly correct about some things was certainly
incomplete. For, although it predicted the existence of equilibrium states it did not indicate
how quickly an economy might approach equilibrium, or how it might behave after
reaching it. How fast the economy moves towards equilibrium is particularly important, for
two reasons. The equilibrium state of an economy is likely to change with time, so that an
economy that approaches equilibrium too slowly may never reach equilibrium and may
never even come near to equilibrium. On the other hand an economy that approaches
equilibrium too fast might shoot through that position and, like an object oscillating with
SHM, spend most of its time quite a long way from the equilibrium position.
Another weakness in the neo-classical theory is the assumption that there can be
arbitrarily small changes in output in response to changes in demand. Often it takes a
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considerable time to increase output, and sometimes increases can take place only in
quite large increments. An example of both possibilities is the production of integrated
circuits, where production can often be increased only by building a new factory which
takes several years and a billion or so dollars to build, and which, when built, is capable of
producing an appreciable proportion of the total world demand.
Keynes challenged one of the assumptions of neo-classical economists by arguing
that there may be equilibrium positions in which the productive capacity of an economy is
not fully utilised. Classical economists had claimed that a recession was just a temporary
state of disequilibrium, invoking ‘Say’s Law’ 6 [named after Jean Baptiste Say (1767-1832) who
observed that ‘products are always exchanged for products’. Say expounded the free market doctrines of
Adam Smith, and was one of the first to challenge the labour theory of value,] that supply produces its
own demand.
According to Says Law, the manufacturer’s costs of production take the form of
payments to workers and to suppliers of raw materials, and possibly rent for premises and
investment in new equipment. Profits are paid to shareholders, or used to finance
investment, so that all the manufacturer’s expenses are precisely balanced by money
payments which the population at large will use either to buy goods, or to save, in which
case the money saved is used for investment. Thus, while it is possible for a particular
industry to be in recession, if it’s productive capacity is greater than necessary to supply
the market, it is impossible for the economy as a whole to be in long term recession.
Any temporary recession can only be the result of misallocation of resources so that
industry is geared to producing too much of some commodities and too little of others. If
there is in an economy any unused capacity for production, it should be more profitable to
use it to produce something or other than to leave it idle.
Keynes directed attention to the equation of savings to investment, and suggested
that, in the ordinary sense of the words, they may not be equal. Because in the standard
jargon of economists they are defined as being equal, he introduced the alternative terms
‘propensity to save’ and ‘propensity to invest’. In an equilibrium position, those should
indeed be equal, but that equilibrium will not necessarily be attained when all
manufacturing capacity is fully utilised.
Suppose that in a state of maximum production, propensity to save exceeds
propensity to invest, then not all goods produced would be bought, and not all of the
money people saved would be invested in new equipment; some savings would be used
as loans to finance stocks of unsold goods. Such a situation could not be maintained for
long, and manufacturers would respond by reducing production until the economy reached
a point where propensity to save and propensity to invest were equal. That equilibrium
position would be what we should call a recession, with high long term unemployment.
Classical economists had assumed that savings and investment would be kept in line
by variations in the interest rate, so that if, at a certain interest rate, savings were greater
than the producers were inclined to invest, then interest rate would fall until the two
quantities were equal. Keynesians replied by casting doubt on the effectiveness of interest
rates, observing that much investment is financed by retained profits, not by borrowing.
6
named after Jean Baptiste Say (1767-1832) who observed that ‘products are always exchanged for
products’. Say expounded the free market doctrines of Adam Smith, and was one of the first to challenge the
labour theory of value,
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Keynes work called into question the assumption, previously made by most
economists, that the economy can mostly be left to run itself. Keynes argued for
government intervention to remedy an mismatch between propensity to save and
propensity to invest. If there is long term unemployment because propensity to save is
higher than propensity to invest, the government should finance investment by borrowing,
creating a budget deficit. In the opposite case, when savings are insufficient to finance
investment, the government should counter with a budget surplus. The operation of those
corrective measures was supposed to be governed by a mechanism called the multiplier.
Consider an economy with high unemployment and unused or under-used productive
capacity. Suppose the government stimulates the economy using a budget deficit to
finance investment expenditure E. Much of that investment will eventually find its way into
wages (some will be used for exports). Wage earners will pay some of the extra wages to
the government as taxes and will save some, but a fair proportion will be spent, some of it
on imported gods, but much of it on home produced goods.
Let the additional expenditure on home produced goods stimulated by the investment
be k*E.
Then that expenditure k*E will stimulate further expenditure k*(k*E) = k 2*E, and that
in turn yet more expenditure, so the total expansion produced by the initial investment will
be the sum to infinity of a geometric series of first term E and common ratio k.
That sum is
The quantity is called ‘the multiplier’.
Keynes argument assumes that there is such a constant k, which is the same for
successive increments of national income. That is unlikely to be true, since taxes are
frequently ‘progressive’, taking successive increments of income at a higher rate, and the
proportion of income saved may also depend on the total income.
Keynes further developed his criticism of the supposed self regulating power of a free
market economy by suggesting that there is an inherent instability caused by the
interaction between prices and wage rates.
Classicists had thought that wage rates were usually determined by the marginal
productivity of labour, and that market forces would correct any substantial deviation from
that level. In particular wages rates substantially higher than the supposed equilibrium
level would produce employment. The belief that that was so may have tempered the
demands of employees for wage increases.
In the light of Keynesian theory an alternative view, which had long had a few
advocates, came to seem more plausible. That view was that wage increases put more
money into the hands of consumers, who were therefore able to buy more goods, thus
supporting more manufacture and so increasing employment. In the 1930’s the French
government tried to increase employment by increasing the general level of wages. The
two effect seemed to cancel out so far as the level of employment was concerned. The
level of employment was unchanged, though prices rose.
The price rise caused by a general rise in wages will usually not be sufficient
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completely to outweigh the increased spending power of workers, for there will be some
whose spending power is not increased. People on fixed incomes, derived from fixed
interest bonds or pensions that are not index linked, will lose, so a general rise in wages
will benefit wage earners at the expense of those other people
Thus wage earners need not be deterred from seeking wage increases either by the
fear of unemployment, or by the fear that the benefits of any increase will be cancelled out
by higher prices. That leaves only one possible check on wages - the employers wish to
protect profits from erosion by a higher wage bill. However, when prices are rising, it is
often easy for manufacturers to pass on increased costs by increasing prices, and inflation
brings them windfall profits, as the value of inventories increase, and the burden of debt is
diminished by inflation.
In other words, the economy may have no built in check on ‘cost push inflation’
This analysis applies only to general wage increases affecting all or most of the
economy. Wage increases in just one firm could produce unemployment in its workforce
by reducing that firms sales. Nor does the analysis apply to export industries, for they sell
goods to foreign markets which will not be stimulated by the extra spending power of their
employees, so in the medium and long term cost push inflation is likely to damage exports
and stimulate imports.
Arguably the instability is not intrinsic to a free market economy per se, but just to an
economic order in which trade unions enforce industry wide wage rates, which they are
able to do only because they are given privileges permitting them to use methods of
coercion not permitted to organisations in general.
Neo-classical economists sometimes spoiled their case by overstating it, as in the
dubious claim that no-one can benefit from restrictions on free trade. They would have
been on more secure ground had they been content to argue that it is only in certain
special circumstances that anyone will benefit, and that any benefit accruing to some is
likely to be outweighed by losses experiences by others.
F. A. Hayek considered that the principal advantage of the market system is as a
system of communication. The price of a commodity is sensitive to the diverse preferences
of many people in a way that would be impossible for any deliberately contrived system of
planning.
Hayek observed that
‘An economy, in the strict sense of the word in which a household, a farm, or an enterprise can
be called economies, consists of a complex of activities by which a given set of means is allocated in
accordance with a unitary plan among the competing ends according to their relative importance.
The market order serves no such single order or ends’ (Law, Legislation and Liberty, voln 2 p107)
The market order is therefore not strictly speaking an economy but is created by the
interaction of many economies, he therefore coiled the term cataplexy to refer to ’the
special kind of order produced by the market through people acting within the rules of
property, tort and contract.’ (op it p 109)
During the twentieth century Economics became much more mathematical, using
statistical analysis to extract patterns from real data, and producing econometric models
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to predict the behaviour of an economy in various circumstances, such as changes in tax
rates.
I recently read a large Economics text book (Richard G. Lipsey, An introduction To
Positive Economics 7th edition 1989 - I bought it second hand hence its relative antiquity)
and think I now have a fair idea of what economists think, or at least what they thought in
1989. The wilder excesses of Keynesianism, that saving is a bad thing, interest rates have
no effect on investment, and that the government can just spend whatever it likes without
bothering where the money come from, seem now to be generally discredited. Of course
Keynes didn't quite say any of those things, but his rhetoric pointed many dim and
suggestible folk in that direction. It also appears that many of the graphs envisaged by
Economists can actually be drawn.
James Fitzjames Stephen
Brother to Sir Leslie Stephen and uncle to Virginia Woolf, Stephen was a lawyer who
for several years served on the British Viceroy’s Council in India, and eventually became a
High Court judge. His Liberty, Equality, Fraternity was an attack on liberal and democratic
ideas, from what would nowadays be called a generally right wing point of view, so
although his writings are today generally disregarded, his comments make an interesting
change from the more familiar, and usually far less cogently argued, illiberal arguments
from the so called political ‘left‘.
Addressing first the question of liberty, Stephen examined the arguments of John
Stuart Mill’s eponymous essay. He thought that Mill’s doctrine was based on a completely
unrealistic view of human nature, according to which people, left to their own devices, will
examine the relevant arguments and decide contentious issues on the merits of the case.
The reality, Stephen thought, is quite different. Political and social issues are almost
always decided by some sort of force, which may often be wielded by a quite small
minority of the citizenry. In particular great reforms are almost always forced through by a
minority. It is only a small minority whose opinions are based on careful reasoned
reflection; most people derive their opinions from custom or wishful thinking. To allow all to
voice their opinions on any matter at all would be to invite the worthless opinions of the
multitude to drown the considered reflections of the enlightened few. Furthermore it is
most important to protect religion and morality, even if that requires us to prevent free
discussion of those subjects.
When he indicated a preference for the forceful rule of a well informed and
determined élite over democracy, Stephen overlooked a crucial point. A policy of following
the choice of the majority does at least determine a unique policy, for there can be only
one majority, but there could be more than one determined minority. The doctrine of the
enlightened élite makes sense only if there is reason to believe that there is only one, and
that there is a reliable way of identifying its members. Presumably that would have to be
because the élite belonged to some clearly defined ruling class. It might happen that a
society contains two groups, each of which considers itself to be the élite, for instance an
aristocratic élite might be opposed by a self styled intellectual élite. Even if the preferences
of the majority are confused and subject to frequent change, indecisive rule in accordance
with those preferences might frequently be preferable to civil war between rival élites.
Stephen considered that when its details are carefully examined, Mill’s thesis about
liberty is revealed to be incoherent. He saw particular difficulties in Mill’s concepts of
coercion and of the responsible adult; in each case, he argued, Mill was trying to draw
sharp distinctions where there are at most differences of degree.
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Mill’s thesis was that the only justification for coercion is defence against illegitimate
coercion, so it depends on having a clear definition of ‘coercion’. Mill seems to have
considered coercion to mean physical violence or legal restraint, but that ignores one of
the most potent forces of coercion, that of public opinion. Furthermore, as Mill himself
realised, his thesis can only sensibly be applied to responsible adults in possession of
most of their faculties. We cannot bring up children, or care for the insane, without
resorting to coercion and it is in practice very difficult to provide a satisfactory criterion for
responsible adulthood. The law defines as responsible adults all above a certain age who
are not manifestly not responsible, but although convenient, that classifies as minors many
who are perfectly capable of shouldering adult responsibilities, and classifies as adults
many who lack that capacity.
Even if we overlook those difficulties, Mill’s thesis would condemn a great deal of
current political practice, for we accept many laws and regulations that cannot plausibly be
represented as defending someone from coercion. Stephen gave as an example the
payment of taxes to support the British Museum, which does not seem to defend anyone
against any sort of coercion.
Liberty cannot profitably be discussed in isolation. The area of Liberty is not to be
defined directly by saying ‘we have the following liberties’; it may only be defined indirectly
by first specifying the duties rules and restrictions necessary to maintain civilised life. Once
those are specified, the area of liberty is the area not subject to any of those constraints.
Examining Mill’s discussion of freedom of thought, Stephen argued that Mill had been
mislead by an overly skeptical theory of knowledge. Mill had claimed that to ban the
expression of any opinion on the grounds that it is wrong, is implicitly to claim infallibility.
Stephen countered that, even though we are not infallible in the sense of being right about
everything, there are many matters about which we are morally certain. Apart from the
obscurity of the phrase ‘morally certain’, a phrase often used bu rarely explained, that
missed the full force of Mill’s argument, for if we forbid the expression of any contrary
opinion we are claiming more than to have established it beyond any reasonable doubt,
we are claiming that it is inconceivable that any reasonable doubt ever will be or could be
raised, and that is close to claiming infallibility.
Offence occasioned simply by the knowledge that someone is doing something may
sometimes, Stephen thought, be sufficient reason for preventing their doing whatever it is.
Stephen was not quite as authoritarian as many of his comments might suggest if
taken out of context. He did not advocate a Platonic totalitarianism, he accepted that there
should be a good deal of individual liberty, and that on many issues it would be
undesirable to restrict discussion, but he thought that every case should be decided on its
merits, and that Mill’s attempt to invoke a great overriding principle of liberty was a
pernicious oversimplification, likely to be subversive were any attempt made to put it into
practice.
“To me the question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing appears as irrational as the question
whether fire is a good or a bad thing? It is both good and bad according to time, place and
circumstance, and a complete answer to the question, In what cases is liberty good and in what
cases is it bad ? would involve not merely a universal history of mankind, but a complete solution of
the problems which such a history would offer. I do not believe that the state of our knowledge is
such as to enable us to enunciate any 'very simple principle as entitled to govern absolutely the
dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control.' We must proceed in a
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far more cautious way, and confine ourselves to such remarks as experience suggests about the
advantages and disadvantages of compulsion and liberty respectively in particular cases.
The following way of stating the matter is not and does not pretend to be a solution of the
question, In what cases is liberty good ? but it will serve to show how the question ought to be
discussed when it arises. I do not see how Mr Mill could deny its correctness consistently with the
general principles of the ethical theory which is to a certain extent common to us both. Compulsion
is bad: (1) When the object aimed at is bad. (2) When the object aimed at is good, but the
compulsion employed is not calculated to obtain it. (3) When the object aimed at is good, and the
compulsion employed is calculated to obtain it, but at too great an expense. Thus to compel a man
to commit murder is bad, because the object is bad. To inflict a punishment sufficient to irritate but
not sufficient to deter or to destroy for holding particular religious opinions is bad, because such
compulsion is not calculated to effect its purpose, assuming it to be good. To compel people not to
trespass by shooting them with spring-guns is bad, because the harm done is out of all proportion to
the harm avoided. (Liberty Equality, Fraternity, with introduction by Richard A. Posner, University of
Chicago 1991 p 85)
Stephen did not consider a fourth case, where coercion might be advantageous in a
particular case when that is considered in isolation, but that advantage is still outweighed
by the dangers of creating the apparatus of oppression needed to choose targets for
coercion, and to perform the coercion.
Appealing to the experience of the British in India, Stephen observed that, as part of
a policy of promoting civilisation, they had outlawed a number of religious practices such
as those of intolerance towards other religions and ‘set up a system of education all over
the country which assumes the falsehood of the creed of the Hindoos and - less pointedly,
but not less effectually - of the Mahommedans.’ Of Indian government generally he wrote:
“They found, as everyone who has to do with legislation must find, that laws must be based upon
principles, and that it is impossible to lay down any principles at all unless you are prepared to say, I
am right, and you are wrong, and your view shall give way to mine, quietly, gradually, and
peacefully; but one of us two must rule and the other must obey, and I mean to rule.” (op cit p 90)
While Stephen argued that there are a great many activities of government that do
not satisfy Mill’s test that we may coerce only to protect ourselves from coercion, there are
still a great many activities of government which are consistent with Mill’s criterion, in
particular the maintenance of law and order and the defence of the realm.
In the course of a sympathetic examination of Pontius Pilate’s order for the crucifixion
of Christ, Stephen argued that Pilate probably acted in the only manner consistent with
preserving law and order, presenting the case as a counter-instance to Mill’s principle of
religious toleration. Yet if, as is likely, Pilate acted against a group he believed to be
seditious, that would not be a breach of religious toleration, and if Pilate did not act to
forestall sedition but to suppress heresy, then he may not have been acting to preserve
law and order either so that we, judging him anachronistically with the wisdom of hindsight,
are not constrained to endorse his decision.
Of religious toleration Stephen said that it is an expression of skepticism. No sincere
believer in Christianity or Islam can do other than condemn other beliefs, or any unbelief.
Religion and morality are often bound together. European morality is bound up with
Christianity, and whether Christian doctrines are true or false, challenging them would
weaken respect for morality. Although he did not favour criminal prosecution of those who
criticise the established beliefs, Stephen saw not reason to join Mill in deploring their
discouragement by a hostile public opinion. It is hard to be quite sure what Stephen did
think on this point, as he does not draw a sharp distinction between tolerating something in
the sense of not forbidding it, and tolerating in the sense of abstaining from any criticism.
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Religious people who argue for toleration, Stephen singles out for mention liberal
Catholics, often rely on an untenable antithesis between the temporal and the spiritual;,
assigning religious belief and observance to the spiritual sphere, and the matters that
concern government to the temporal.
“I think it would not be unfair to state the common view upon the subject somewhat as follows:
Life may be divided into two provinces, the temporal and the spiritual. In the temporal province are
included all common affairs - war, commerce, inheritance; all that relates to a man’s body and
goods. Thought, feeling, opinion, religion, and the like form the spiritual province. These two
provinces have usually been placed under separate governments. Kings, parliaments, lawyers,
soldiers bear rule in the one; some sort of priests bear rule in the other.” (op cit p 123 )
Stephen observed that the distinction is untenable because every human action is
both spiritual and temporal. He suggested that a more plausible analysis is that of the
Ultramontane Catholics who distinguish, not two distinct aspects of life, but two sorts of
sanction, the spiritual and the secular, both of which apply to the whole of life. It is useless
to counter that the spirit uses persuasion and the temporal uses force, since both use a
mixture of persuasion and force, and at the extreme persuasion merges into force.
Stephen on Equality Stephen argued that discussions of equality confuse several
very different ideas. First there is the uniform application of the law; justice requires that a
law is applied in the same way in every case, and that is often summed up by saying that
all should be equal before the law. However it is wrong to try to extend that idea of equality
to the actual content of the law, because justice in the law itself is just a matter of the
law’s being expedient, which does not imply any sort of equality. A just law will specify
equality when, but only when, equality is expedient. No one can seriously maintain that
there are no differences between people that justify giving them different rights and duties,
for all acknowledge that difference in age justifies different treatment.
Also undeniable are the physical and emotional differences between the sexes. “all
the talk in the world will never shake the proposition that men are stronger than women in
every shape. They have greater muscular and nervous force, greater intellectual force,
greater vigour of character.” (op cit p 194) Stephen thought he had two conclusive
arguments against according men and women the same treatment under the law. Equality
of the sexes would involve making women liable for military service whenever men are,
and would involve schoolgirls being taught according to the same curriculum as boys, both
propositions he considered manifestly absurd. He admitted to having no argument against
either of those proposals, considering that anyone who assented to either would be
beyond argument. ‘I cannot argue with a person who says Yes’.
Were marriage a contract between equals that would be greatly to the disadvantage
of women, for if there were a breach of such a contract it would not be practicable for the
law to enforce the contract, so the only remedy for a breach would be dissolution of the
contract, so that in effect such a contract could be dissolved by either party. Hence
women, who lose their physical attractiveness earlier than men, would usually be the
rejected partners, and yet it would also be women who for the same reason would have
the greatest difficulty finding another partner, even though they would be in the greatest
need of one, since when a woman marries she usually gives up any chance of earning. As
the strongest partner it is the man who should be ‘captain of the ship’. When husband and
wife differ over such matters as ‘Shall we associate with such and such persons...for what
profession shall we train our sons’ it is the wife who should play the part of ‘loyal
lieutenant’ and give way. (Op cit p 197)
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Turning to the idea of ‘Progress’, Stephen said that those who glorify the ‘forces of
progress’ should realise that the supposed beneficial results of those forces are actually
the result not only of the forces usually given the credit for progress, but also of the various
opposing forces, for whatever happens in society is the resultant al all the many forces
operating (pp 170-174)
Mill had argued that progress brings greater equality. Stephen doubted the intrinsic
desirability of progress, and thought that Mill had misinterpreted as progress to equality a
tendency for the law to develop by discarding pointless distinctions.
“...the word murder, which for centuries has been the name of a crime, was, it seems, originally
the name of a fine laid upon a township in which a person unknown was found to be slain, unless
the legal presupposition that the unknown was a Dane could be disproved by positive testimony that
he was an Englishman, by a proceeding called a ‘presentment of Englishry’. The strange distinction
introduced in favour of the Danes, and maintained in favour of the French, was not finally removed
till the fourteenth year of Edward III. By that time the presentment of Englishry had become
unmeaning and was abolished, and the name of the fine had passed into the name of the crime in
respect of which the fine was imposed.” (op cit p 201)
Stephen attributed Mill’s unrealistic expectations for social reform to an over
optimistic misunderstanding of human nature. Mill took it for granted that most people are
greatly concerned with the welfare of others. Stephen retorted that many people have little
or no regard for others, and that even those who do think of others, still put themselves
first.
“..both legislators and moralists, as well as all other human creatures, care for their own
happiness and the happiness of their friends and connections very much more than for the
happiness of others. Mr. Mill asserts as if it was an obvious first truth that ‘as between his own
happiness and that of others justice requires' (every one) 'to be as strictly impartial as a
disinterested and benevolent spectator.' If this be so, I can only say that nearly the whole life of
nearly every human creature is one continued course of injustice, for nearly everyone passes his
life in providing the means of happiness for himself and those who are closely connected with him,
leaving others all but entirely out of account. Nay, men are so constituted that personal and social
motives cannot be distinguished and do not exist apart. When and in so far as we seek to please
others, it is because it pleases us to give them pleasure. A man who takes pleasure in pleasing
others is benevolent; a man who takes no pleasure in pleasing others is unkind or devoid of
benevolence. A man who takes pleasure in hurting others is malignant; but whenever it is
necessary to determine a person's character in regard to benevolence, it is necessary to determine
the manner in which the pleasures or the sufferings of others affect him. So completely is every
man his own centre that the nature of his relations to those who stand closest to him have to be
expressed in terms of his own personal pleasure or pain. ‘She was the very joy of his heart' ‘He did
not care a straw for her', would be natural ways of describing a most affectionate and a most
indifferent husband's feelings towards their respective wives.... The point at which Mr Mill and I
should part company is his belief that this natural feeling for oneself and one's friends, gradually
changing its character, is sublimated into a general love for the human race; and in that shape is
capable of forming a new religion, of which we need only fear that it may be too strong for human
liberty and individuality.’
It is an over simplification to say that we take everyone’s happiness into account,
even as a subsidiary consideration. Insofar as we do take account of the happiness of
others, it is usually the happiness we want them to have, which is not necessarily the
same as the happiness they want for themselves.
Fraternity cannot be part of the basis of morality because there is no natural
propensity to regard all our fellow men as brothers. Religious doctrine gives a reason for
doing so, but if religion is rejected there is no other reason.
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There are other aspects of our behaviour that do not make sense except in the
context of religious belief. Stephen thought that utilitarian considerations alone do not
explain all our moral scruples, or at least do not explain the rigour with which we often
insist upon them. It is particularly difficult to find a utilitarian explanation for our concern for
future generations. Stephen concluded that religious belief is therefore advantageous.
However that would not show that religious belief is still advantageous even if it is false,
since in that case it would not make sense to applaud the support religion provides for our
moral scruples, unless those scruples were still desirable even though religion be false.
Were that so it would be because those moral scruples had other advantages than their
conformity to religion, and those advantages, being genuine and independent of religious
belief, would provide morality with firmer support than would a false religion.
A non-religious explanation of concern for future generations it that it may arise
because we find it pleasant to contemplate the prospect of their prospering, and
unpleasant to think of their suffering, so that our concern might have a utilitarian basis. If it
seems strange that we should be concerned about the lives of people we shall never
meet, that may be explained in evolutionary terms, since those concerned about their
posterity are more likely to take steps to safeguard it, and are therefore likely to have a
larger than average number of descendants.
Karl Popper
Popper’s interest in political theory was stimulated by concern at the spread of
totalitarianism in Europe in the years leading up to the second world war. The prominent
totalitarian regimes were either fascist or Communist. Both were what he called
‘historicist’ and he traced them both to the influence of Hegel. By historicist he meant
that they were derived from theories about the course of history which purported not only
to explain the course of history but also to be capable of predicting the future. An early
example of historicism was the Jewish belief that they were the chosen people and that
history is manipulated by God to teach the chosen people their destined place in the world
and make sure they eventually attain it. In Fascism the chosen people is replaced by the
Master Race, and in Communism it is replaced by the chosen class - the working class.
As Hegel acknowledged a dept to the Greeks, Popper thought that he could trace
totalitarianism through Hegel all the way back to Plato and even earlier to Heraclitus. Both
Heraclitus and Plato lived in times of social turmoil when traditional values and authorities
were challenged by democratic ideas, and each was associated with the losing aristocratic
party in his city. Contrary to the general opinion of scholars, Popper thought that Socrates
had supported the democratic party in Athens, but was posthumously misrepresented by
Plato who put quite different ideas into his mouth.
Popper devoted the first of the two volumes of The Open Society and its Enemies to
ancient Greek political thought, beginning with a short chapter about Heraclitus but
devoting most of the volume to Plato. The second volume analysed the political thought of
Hegel and Marx.
Popper suggested that societies can usefully be divided into the Open and the
Closed. The closed society is governed by rules and customs that are never challenged.
Primitive societies are closed; they are governed by tribal customs, and rules are treated
as magical, by which he meant that the rules are regarded embodying the way we just
have to do things to make sure everything works out well. The open society is one in which
it is acceptable to subject the rules to rational scrutiny. In an open society there is a good
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deal of room for personal decisions, in a closed society there is very little room for
individual initiative.
Against historicism Popper argued that important factors in the development of a
society are developments in its knowledge and technology. Techniques in agriculture,
transport, communications and medicine can transform a society and make possible ways
of living that would otherwise be impossible. Therefore any system of historical laws
capable of predicting the development of society must be capable of predicting the growth
of knowledge. However it is hard to separate the prediction of new knowledge from the
discovery of that knowledge, for to predict the discovery of a hitherto unknown law of
nature, is to discover it, and to predict a new invention is to invent it. Of course we may
predict with modest confidence that some new discovery or other will be made in the
future, without knowing what that discovery will be, and we can predict that technology
capable of doing certain things will eventually emerge without knowing how it might work,
as E. M. Forster predicted television in his short story The Machine Stops, but Forster’s
prediction was just a lucky guess; he had no strong reason for supposing it would be
fulfilled. To make reliable predictions about the development of society we should need to
know precisely what new discoveries and inventions there will be, and to do that would
require that we had reasons for expecting our predictions to be fulfilled, and such detailed
and reliable predictions would have to say how the new inventions would work and thus
anticipate their intervention.
Popper further argued that much political theory had missed the point. Theorists had
tried to devise infallible political systems that could be guaranteed to deliver justice,
peace, harmony, and prosperity. However no system is infallible. Among other difficulties,
however carefully a system is constructed it is always at risk from incompetence,
corruption, or dishonesty on the part of its rulers, and there is no way of guaranteeing that
rulers will not fail in one way or another. Popper argued that, as a safeguard against such
a failure, any political system should include some way of removing unsatisfactory
governments, a sort of political analogue of the falsifiability he required of scientific
theories. He also applied the criterion of falsifiability to politics more straightforwardly,
holding that much political theory, even though it pretends to be scientific is without factual
content because it is not falsifiable.
Isaiah Berlin
Discussed a widespread tendency to confuse different senses of ‘freedom’. In a
lecture entitled Two Concepts of Liberty Berlin wrote:
“To coerce a man is to deprive him of freedom - freedom from what? Almost every moralist in
human history has praised freedom. Like happiness and goodness, like nature and reality, the
meaning of this term is so porous that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist. I do not
propose to discuss either the history or the more than two hundred senses of this protean word
recorded by historians of ideas. I propose to examine no more than two of these senses but those
central ones, with a great deal of human history behind them, and, I dare say, still to come. The first
of these political senses of freedom or liberty (I shall use both words to mean the same), which
(following much precedent) I shall call the 'negative' sense, is involved in the answer to the question
'What is the area within which the subject - a person or group of persons - is or should be left to do or
be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons ?' The second, which I shall call
the positive sense, is involved in the answer to the question 'What, or who, is the source of control or
interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that?' The two questions are
clearly different, even though the answers to them may overlap. (Four Essays On Liberty pp
121-122)
In the negative sense, the only circumstances in which one is not free to do
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something are those in which one is prevented by the action of other people. So in that
sense of the word someone held in a prison cell without windows is not free to look at the
stars. On the other hand someone who cannot see the stars because he was born blind, is
not unfree to see them, but just incapable of seeing them.
Some argue that if negative freedom is only a state of affairs where we are not
prevented from doing what we want, such freedom may amount to very little, for it could
be achieved by conquering our desires as the Buddhists teach us to do. If we schooled
ourselves not to want what we cannot have or are not allowed to have, we would in a
minimal sense be free even if subject to a most oppressive government. Indeed, such a
government might itself educate people not to want what was forbidden to them. Of course
we mustn’t exaggerate the scope for eliminating desires. While a few ascetics may be
capable of training themselves to want very little, most people are unlikely to make much
progress in that direction. On the other hand a totalitarian state might try to prevent people
ever getting desires that cannot be fulfilled, by trying to prevent their finding out what is
available in other more fortunate communities, as the ‘radical economists’ referred to by
Peter Singer might prefer that people should not discover deodorants - a strategy much
harder to carry out after the advent of satellite television, and the Internet.
Positive freedom is the wish to be one’s own master, and to be free to do certain
things in the strong sense, not just of not being prevented, but of being both allowed and
able to do them. It is often held that men are enslaved by ideas and become free by
understanding their circumstances. Hegel proposed to set people free from slavery to the
supposed illusion of the material world. Marx wanted to free us from ‘false consciousness’
and what he considered to be the illusions of capitalism. Freud thought he could free
people from their neuroses by a course of analysis that enabled them to understand their
condition. Self knowledge was supposed to be the cure. Freudian treatment did not just
start with diagnosis; it ended there.
People often talk of ‘freedom’ when they want autonomy, rather than freedom of
choice. They want to get rid of the paternalism of an aristocracy or of colonial rulers in
order to achieve recognition as autonomous agents. They may be willing to sacrifice a
measure of individual freedom in order to exchange the relatively benevolent rule of
people they see as outsiders for the more repressive rule of people they consider
members of their own group. That seems to have been the case in many of the former
British colonies in Africa.
“What oppressed classes and nationalities....want, as often as not, is simply recognition (of their
class or nation or colour or race) as an independent source of human activity, as an entity with a will
of its own, intending to act in accordance with it (whether it is good or legitimate, or not), and not to
be ruled, educated, guided, with however light a hand, as being not quite fully human, and therefore
not quite fully free.” (Two Concepts Of Liberty pp 156-157)
“For if I am not so recognized, then I may fail to recognize, I may doubt, my own claim to be a fully
independent human being”. (op cit p 157)
Berlin remarked that when people do sacrifice an element of personal freedom for
some other good, they are liable to deny that that is what they are doing and to say that
they have actually exchanged illusory freedom for ‘true’ freedom Accepting that almost
everyone will be willing to sacrifice some measure of freedom from constraint in some
circumstances - for instance for the personal security offered by a system of law, Berlin
thinks we should still say that that is what we are doing, rather than make the word
‘freedom’ vacuous by applying it to every public good.
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A disposition to disparage individualism and ‘negative’ liberty is often consequent on
a belief that there is a ‘final solution’ in which all apparent contradictions between different
goods are resolved. We noticed that in Hegel. Rationalists have denied that the task of
politics is to work out a compromise between the conflicting values of different people,
because they thought that that apparent conflict between the ‘real’ desires of rational
people must be illusory, because such conflict as impossible. Where conflict does arise the
rationalists attributed it people’s failure to recognise their true interests (Marx’s false
consciousness). People in that unhappy position should, rationalists hold, be forced to be
free, compelled to behave as they would decide to behave if only they were completely
rational.
John Rawls
In one form or another Utilitarianism was the dominant ethical theory throughout the
latter half of the nineteenth century and at least the first half of the twentieth, and much
political theory took for granted a Utilitarian point of view. Yet many people, while broadly
in sympathy with Utilitarianism, were concerned about two difficulties in that position.
Utilitarianism requires a measure of happiness, or utility, or whatever it is we are trying to
maximise. It also seems to neglect justice by leaving open the possibility of sacrificing a
few unfortunates to the general good. For instance it is conceivable that extremely painful
and ultimately fatal medical experiments performed on a few people might save much
larger numbers of other people from considerable suffering, but most of us would be
repelled the very idea. There are, of course, utilitarian arguments against sacrificing a few
to the general good. It can justly be urged that even if only a very few are sacrificed, the
knowledge that such sacrifices are part of public policy would alarm a far greater number
of people who would fear that they themselves might one day be among the sacrificial
victims. It is also likely that each victim would have friends and relatives who might find his
fate upsetting. However, while those arguments are cogent, they do not give the
necessary reassurance that no such policy would ever be followed in a utilitarian society.
The many people who require such an assurance would be left with the feeling that
endorsing utilitarianism might turn out to be a very risky business.
Rawls thought of a device that seemed to avoid both those difficulties. In his Theory
of Justice (1971) he said that a just society is one that we should choose if we made a
selection from all possible societies under a ‘veil of ignorance’ not knowing what our place
would be in the society chosen.
He thought that under those conditions the only rational choice would be guided by a
maximin strategy embodied in two principles (1) first to choose the maximum personal
liberty consistent with everyone else having the same liberty and (2) consistent with the
first choice to choose the society in which the position of the worst off is better than in any
other society. Rawls thought that (2) implied that people would regard raising the minimum
as more important than maximising the mean, so that the just society might have a mean
wealth lower than it would be in some other, less just society. It would therefore be
possible that most people would be worse off in the just society than in some alternative
society, though that does not actually follow from the mean being lower. By arguing for a
maximin strategy, Rawls ruled out the possibility of sacrificing a few for the good of the
many and also eliminated the Utilitarians’ other difficulty, of finding a measure for
happiness; according to Rawls’ theory we need only rank different states, there is no need
for a measure that can enter into calculations, for we are not concerned to maximise
mean happiness and therefore do not need to calculate a total.
Critics of Rawls objected that even if Rawls’ maximin position could be reached in
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any society, it would require a great effort to maintain it. Nozick famously pointed out that a
distribution of wealth that accorded with some abstract notion of social justice would be
unstable, unless supplemented by continuous state intervention on a scale likely greatly to
reduce people’s enjoyment of whatever goods they had. To take a simple example,
suppose we re-arranged society so that everyone’s wealth were equal. Suppose that an
author then published a best seller and in a few weeks became very rich. The mechanism
of his enrichment would be that a great number of people voluntarily exchanged some of
their property for a copy of the book. From their points of view they would be no poorer,
quite the opposite, for getting the book must be worth more to them than whatever they
paid for it, else they would not have bought it. The author, on the other hand is definitely
much richer, so the initial equality is no more, without anyone acting in any way we’d
normally consider wicked or unjust.
Inequalities could arise in less spectacular but more common ways. Someone who
wants a bigger house might arrange to do a second part-time job, while someone else who
prefers a peaceful life of quiet meditation might prefer to live frugally on the proceeds of
one job or even of just one part-time job. That argument oversimplifies the matter because
Rawls did not actually propose complete equality, recognising that a substantial degree of
inequality might actually occur in the society that maximised the minimum. But Nozick’s
argument applies to any view that there is some preferred distribution of wealth that the
authorities should maintain. Such a distribution would be unstable so that only continual
interference could maintain it, and such interference would seriously impair our enjoyment
of life since it would prevent our making many decisions that most of us like to be able to
make. Any form of enforced ‘social justice’ is likely to be very expensive, not only in
money, but in people’s quality of life.
Even if no previously defined distribution of wealth is maintained, the maintenance of
any restrictions on the distribution of perceived wealth, such as would be involved in
realising any state of affairs likely to be regarded as ‘fair’ would have a cost. If a
government taxes us to provide some sort of service or to make the poor less poor we are
for several reasons likely to get less collectively than we have paid for.
(1) Part of the tax revenue is spent collecting the taxes. I think I once read that British
Income Tax collection is regarded as very efficient because only about 2% of the tax is
spent on collection, so 2% may be a lower limit for the proportion of the tax yield lost in
that way. It is likely to be an underestimate even in the case of Income Tax, since it takes
into account only the work done by tax gatherers in collecting taxes. Tax systems usually
also involve a good deal of work for tax payers. The time they spend keeping records and
filling in forms is time which they cannot use for productive work and involves a loss of
wealth not included in government accounts.
(2) Total wealth is likely to fall as people re-arrange their affairs to reduce their tax
liabilities rather than to increase their productivity.
(3) Government expenditure has to be checked and supervised. I once read a claim
that some English Education Authorities spent more than 30% of the educational budget in
the town hall, not in the schools. I suppose some of that 30% was spent on ‘advisors’ who
might sometimes impart helpful information to teachers, it might also have included the
cost of advertising vacancies and making appointment, and probably some was spent on
in service training for teachers, but 30% still sounds a lot.
(4) Government services may not be as closely tailored to our needs as the services
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we might buy for ourselves, so they may be worth less to us than the government spends
providing them. I once saw an estimate that the value of presents to the recipients
averages at about 90% of what the giver spends, and givers of presents are usually buying
a present for a particular person whose needs and tastes are known to them, so they
might be expected to do better than a government agency that provides a ‘one size fits all’
service to people few of whom are known personally to the service providers.
Serious as they are, these matters of detail are not Rawls’ main problem. The whole
project of making a choice under the veil of ignorance seems incoherent. Different people
may have different preferences. Person A may think the ideal life is one of war and
adventure, preparing us for a future eternity in Valhalla. Person B may prefer a life a quiet
contemplation. A and B would assess possible blueprints for society in quite a different
way. Let’s call people with A’s preferences A-types, and people with B’s preferences
B-types. I think that Rawls would have said that A and B must each make his choice
without knowing whether in the chosen world he would actually by an A-type or a B-type. I
find it hard to imagine by what mental gymnastics that might be achieved. Is each
supposed to choose some compromise world leaving room for both types? Yet how things
should be arranged in such a world would depend on what proportion of each type there
would be among the people of the hypothetical world. Perhaps for an A-type a
compromise world would be intolerable, while a B-type would have the inner resources to
come to terms with any world. Does B, when making his choice, allow for the possibility he
might be an A-type in the chosen world? If so he might have to choose A’s world, since to
be an A-type in a B-world would be much more unpleasant than to be a B-type in an
A-world. Perhaps Rawls two principles are vague enough to cover some sort of
arrangement for negotiating an accommodation between A-types and B-types, but even if
A and B were persuaded to accept Rawls principles they’d mean very different things by
‘liberty’ and ‘worse off’ and ‘better’.
Any society that gave A-types any chance of self realisation would probably
eventually fall under their sway. Rawls ‘blind choice’ might lead to some very abstract
principle about how the diverse tastes of different people are to be accommodated,
possibly something like the Golden Rule or the Categorical imperative, but such principles
are insufficient to determine how a society should be organised, and might be intolerable
to someone who found the prospect of compromise unacceptable.
Another difficulty in the notion of choice under the veil of ignorance is that people
differ in their attitudes to risk taking. Rawls maximin strategy assumes that people would
not be prepared to take any risk at all, but that is not so. Most people will take a small risk
in the hope of obtaining a large advantage, and some people would be prepared to take
large risks. There might be some people who are so attracted by the thought of being
despots that they would choose an absolute monarchy in which the monarch was
worshipped as a god, making that choice even though they knew that they would be far
more likely to be powerless subjects than to occupy the God-King’s throne. The difficulty
here is not just that different people have different attitudes to risk, but that when we
choose under the veil of ignorance, we are supposed to choose a way of ordering society
without knowing what place we might occupy in it, and that implies that we don’t know
what attitude to risk we might have in that society. To apply choice under the veil of
ignorance to risk takers would need some compromise attitude to risk that might be
assumed to guide everyone’s choice, but it is hard to see what that compromise attitude
might be. Is some person, A, supposed to be choosing at the level of risk A actually
prefers? or is A supposed to consider the fact he might occupy the place of someone A*,
where A* might be either more, or less, risk averse than A? Quite what sort of average
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might be appropriate for the risk taking propensities of a collection of people I can’t
imagine. Even if an average level of risk could be determined, it’s application would require
a measure for the happiness of any life, since expectation is value times probability. That
would sacrifice what Rawls considers to be one of the principal merits of his system: that
no such measure is required.
Rawls problems are still not over. Quite apart from the diversity of people’s visions of
the good life and their different tolerances of risk, there could be significant differences in
attitude to life itself. Some people might prefer a society that raised the minimum by killing
all severely handicapped children, believing that that is what they’d prefer if they were to
be born with a severe handicap. Sterilisation of the poor would reduce the number born in
poverty, and I expect many would contemplate the prospect of being sterilised themselves
with equanimity. Neither prospect would worry me. I would be happy to think that I should
not be allowed to live if severely handicapped, and I’d be perfectly willing to be sterilised if
I were in not a position to support a family. On the other hand some people surprise me by
the importance they attach to their reproductive powers and to what they call the ‘sanctty
of life‘, so many people would strongly object to either of those measures.
Reintroduce an element of risk taking and it might be rational for a risk taker to
support raising the minimum level, not just by sterilising, but by killing all the very poor,
whether infants or adults. While we wouldn’t want to be killed ourselves, we might be
willing to take a moderate risk of being deprived of a not particularly satisfactory life in
exchange for a larger chance of a fairly enjoyable life, especially as in a society that did kill
the poor, resources that would otherwise be consumed by them would be available to
those who survived the cull. Notice that this is not the same as the prospect which
undermined utilitarianism, where it was envisaged that some people might be caused
great suffering in order to benefit others, for I am considering painless killing. The
possibility of killing the poor may not have occurred to Rawls because until quite recently
the poor were mainly poorly paid workers, on whose work others depended. Trade union
action and to some extend legislation have raised real wages at least in the developed
world, while technology has increased proportion of skilled workers in the work force, so
there are relatively few unskilled workers, and the very poor usually don’t work at all.
‘Workers of the World unite and kill the poor’ might therefore be a plausible replacement
for the old Communist slogan, ‘Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but
your chains’ but I don’t believe Rawls expected his theory to lead to anything so drastic.
Of course Rawls was not proposing that people actually make a choice; he
proposed that we consider what anyone must choose if they choose rationally, taking it for
granted that such a choice must be made according to the standards of his own academic
circle, where very few hope for Valhalla, and none admits to doing so. However it is still
legitimate to consider what choice people might make if invited to do so, and if it appears
that there is no unique choice that all must make, that invalidates Rawls criterion.
So it appears that Rawls program may not establish anything definite, and might be
used to support policies that he himself would have found abhorrent. However I think we
may still extract something useful from it. Whenever we sit down to set the world to rights,
it’s worth asking ourselves ‘Is that the sort of world I could contemplate living in, whatever
the station I might occupy?’ That is not the same as Rawls question which he supposes to
be asked in ignorance not just of our place in society, but of our very identity, and I do not
think it can be the sole basis for a political system, but it may still be a useful check on
unrealistic speculation.
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Rawls myth of choice under the veil of ignorance gives the impression of trying to
stand back and evaluate our entire political system. That is always dangerous because it
leads easily to the fantasy that there is no society and we are to construct one from
scratch, and if we become over-enthusiastic about our utopian plans we may be tempted
to act as if we really were in that position. There is (at least) one political system already in
place, so we are never building a new one from scratch. Utopian dreams are an interesting
exercise, provided we remember that they are only dreams. I shall outline some of my own
dreams later in this chapter, but whether much can be done fully to realise them is
doubtful; I certainly don’t propose trying to stage a revolution to do so. And if a dream can
be fulfilled only in part, the attempt to realise it may be worse than doing nothing at all.
Rawls himself was not a utopian, and used his maximin principle to support piecemeal
reform from a broadly social democrat point of view, but his starting point sounds much
more ambitious than that, and it is surprising that it has not been used as the basis for
more extreme proposals.
Rights Theories: Nozick and Dworkin
An alternative solution to at least one of the problems of utilitarianism is to postulate
basic rights, that, in Dworkin’s words, ‘trump’ other considerations.
Robert Nozick (1939-2002) in Anarchy State and Utopia argued that the rights to life,
to liberty, and to legitimately obtained property, are fundamental to ethics and politics. On
that basis he developed a libertarian theory. I’ll discuss libertarianism later, but for the
moment I’ll concentrate on the concept of fundamental rights.
Dworkin thought the fundamental right is to equal concern and respect, leading him
to support state intervention to redistribute property, something Nozick rejected. This very
brief discussion of the matter has already sufficed to illustrate one of the problems of
pursuing a rights based theory: opinions differ as to which rights are fundamental; how do
we decide which rights to choose?
There is often an ambiguity in the assertion of a right. ‘X has a right to A’ might mean:
R1: X should be allowed to make his best efforts to obtain A and, if he has A, should
be allowed to retain it
R2: X should be provided with A
R2 is a much stronger claim than R1 since R1 requires only that other people refrain
from preventing X from obtaining A, while R2 imposes on some, unspecified, other people
a duty to provide X with A. Until those other people are specified R2 is incomplete, and in
some cases it doesn’t make sense, as in ‘everyone has a right to be happy’ or ‘everyone
has a right to have children’
No R2 right can apply except in a society well enough organised either to force
someone to provide X with A, or to force a number of people to contribute to the cost of
providing X with A. In such a situation rights presuppose duties. For if X has a right2 to A,
it must be someone’s duty to provide A, or the duty of several people jointly to provide A.
Hence the common saying that ‘rights involve duties’ which is certainly true for rights2.
Rights usually involve duties in another sense too, for if X has rights by virtue of belonging
to some society he is likely, as a member of that society, to be called upon to make his
own contribution to the meeting of other people’s rights. However it is possible that not all
citizens would have such responsibilities. The responsibilities of children are usually
limited, though they are usually expected to obey the law so far as they are capable of
understanding it, and children who inherit wealth or earn money as film stars are usually
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expected to contribute through the tax system although it is the adults who manage the
child’s affairs who are required to make sure that the taxes are paid. That point is
sometimes not understood. I recently encountered discussion in which a number of
people, mostly educated to graduate level, and at least one a journalist, speculated as to
how anyone can ever have entertained the notion that rights might be linked to duties.
Such an absurd idea, they said congratulating themselves on their acumen, must have
been put into circulation by ‘right-wingers’.
So R2 has peculiar problems, but both R1 and R2 are problematic when presented
as intrinsic rights somehow given as part of the fabric of the cosmos and thus suitable
bases for morality or politics. Such a notion is odd because a right is typically something
conferred on a person by law or custom. Jeremy Bentham called the suggestion that there
could be any other sort of right ‘nonsense on stilts’. Without going as far as Bentham, I
have difficulty with the concept of an ‘intrinsic right’ enjoyed antecedently to and
independently of any society. The only sense I can make of it is that it is a right that must
be allowed by any community as an essential condition of its being a community. It follows
that if there are any such basic or intrinsic rights, they must already be available in all
existing communities, so that to demand ‘basic human rights’ or ‘natural rights’ within a
society invites the answer ‘If they really are basic rights you must already have them; if you
don’t they can’t be basic’. It’s possible that some rights are essential in this sense. With
suitable qualifications, type 1 rights to life and property may qualify, but even if they are
essential they no longer seem basic, for if we can justify them by pointing out that they
are essential to any human society, they, having thus been justified, cannot themselves be
the source of justification, as the word basic suggests. It would be better to call them
‘indispensable rights’
There are two circumstances in which it would be pertinent to invoke indispensable
rights. For although they must, if indispensable, be present in all existing societies, they
might not be consistently enforced in every society and they might, by some oversight, be
omitted from the description of some hypothetical society, so (1) if we are planning a
completely new society, on Mars, perhaps, we’d want to make sure that nothing essential
to its smooth running was left out, and (2) if we are confronting a radical would be reformer
of our own society whose proposed ‘reforms’ threaten to remove indispensable rights we’d
want to point out that his proposals were unworkable. But, as Burke pointed out, reformers
are in any case dangerous people, whom we are wise to watch closely, whether or not
they seem to be endangering rights.
Even if we don’t think rights a useful starting point for the justification of a moral or
political system, there may still be a place for the ascription of rights within such a system,
though they are likely to be qualified rights. The introduction of rights helps to set all of our
minds at ease by reassuring us they we shall not be among some unfortunate few who’ll
be sacrificed to the good of the many, but inalienable rights could be an intolerable
impediment to the happy life. In war time defence forces may have to move onto
someone’s land to repel attacking forces, even if that violates the landowner’s property
rights.
Libertarianism
Libertarianism is the proposal that we should all be free to live our lives and use our
property as we choose, provided we keep our promises and don’t interfere with anyone
else’s living their lives and enjoying their property. The Libertarian Alliance has the slogan
‘For Life Liberty and Property’.
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"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to
initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act
consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act
consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim." -L Neil Smith in The
Libertarian Enterprise September 2002
In that passage much rests on the interpretation of ‘initiation’. There could be much
argument about who initiated force in cases where the person who strikes the first blow
claims to be responding to a threat of violence from the person whom they strike.
There is a certain amount of quasi-theological quibbling among people who call
themselves ‘Libertarian’ about who actually qualifies for the title; in fact a great many
people whose political outlook is predominantly individualistic apply the term to
themselves.
Among Libertarians Anarcho-Capitalists think that there is no need for any state
because all its functions could be provided by a market system, and Minimal State
Libertarians think that some government is indispensable, but wish to restrict it to being
what is sometimes called a ‘night-watchman state’, just keeping order, enforcing contracts
and protecting the community from external aggression.
A lively exposition of Anarcho-Capitalism is David Friedman’s The Machinery Of
Freedom, but, persuasive though that is, I doubt the practicality of Anarcho-Capitalism
because I think some sort of central power would be needed to adjudicate between rival
systems of, for instance, free market policing, so that if a system of Anarcho Capitalism
ever came into operation it would be unstable, soon developing some sort of state with a
government, even if the institutions were not actually ‘called ‘state’ or ‘government’. I
shan’t therefore discuss Anarcho capitalism any further.
F. A. Hayek advocated Minimal State Libertarianism (sometimes called the theory of
the Night Watchman State). That point of view is quite often encountered, but although I
find its sentiments congenial, I wonder whether there is anything definite there apart from
the valuable insight that governments are not to be trusted.
Someone who very much wants the state to do something or other, is likely to think
that whatever that is, is something that any state should do, and it is an easy step from
that to assuming that the function in question is part of the function of the minimal state.
For instance the minimal state is supposed to maintain order. That requires in some way
dealing with discontented people likely to disturb order. It might sometimes seem that the
cheapest way of dealing with a discontented group is to pay them to be quiet, and
gradually that could develop to the point where the state feeds clothes houses and
educates all who can’t afford to look after themselves at the expense of the rest of the
community, and not long after that the state will be feeding clothing housing and educating
almost everyone, because it will have taken so much in taxes from those who might
otherwise have looked after themselves, that they are no longer able to do so. We then
have a welfare state established by following apparently libertarian principles, which is not
at all what self styled ‘Libertarians’ usually think they are proposing. Indeed the attenuation
of political principles when people try to apply them in government is a familiar
phenomenon. Governments in office usually find that realising their particular ideas for
achieving the good life must in many cases come second to the need to maintain law and
order, without which the state and its citizens can achieve nothing. It is however interesting
that a form of the same problem may apply even to the libertarian ideal of restricting state
activity to the bare minimum.
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The bare statement of minimal state libertarianism is more an agenda for
constructing a political theory than a fully fledged programme, but the adoption of an
agenda it is not an entirely empty gesture; something definite can be extracted from it. I
think that the agenda of minimal state libertarianism has the following to offer.
(1) Any new proposal to restrict people’s behaviour should be closely scrutinised to
make sure it is necessary. Is it a carefully thought out way of dealing with some
fundamental problem, or an ill considered response to a temporary difficulty? Will the
restriction be enforceable? Will enforcing it have unwelcome side effects? Will it be
expensive. Those who enjoy making up rules are unlikely to notice non-coercive ways of
dealing with problems even where they are available, but if we make it a rule always to
look hard for a non-coercive solution we may at least sometimes find what we are looking
for.
(2) A Libertarian accepts only one sort of justification for coercion, that it prevents the
person coerced from harming others. As it stands that may not seem to say very much, but
libertarians usually intend to exclude certain sorts of bogus ‘harm’, of the sort we ruled out
when discussing Mill on Liberty. Libertarians don’t include harm to willing participants in
the harmful behaviour (drinking or smoking), and the harm can’t just consist in the
displeasure some people feel when they discover that others are doing something they
disapprove of. Ruling out such cases of supposed harm is not a semantic manoeuvre of
arguing that ‘that isn’t what harm means’, it is a decision not to accept injury to willing
participants, or displeasure produced by the contemplation of the actions of others, as
reasons for coercive intervention.
Further, a Libertarian could specify that the harm avoided by state action must be
commensurate with the inconvenience caused by the coercive measures taken to prevent
it.
(3) A Libertarian will try to find ways of arranging things to make it easy for people to
make quite a lot of choices without adversely affecting other people.
How far our actions effect others depends partly on the prevailing social system. In a
state where personal liberty is little valued, others are likely to be indirectly affected by our
actions much more than they would be under a more individualistic regime. A health
service financed from taxation requires others to pay our health bills, so that others suffer if
our eating, drinking or smoking habits produce conditions that need expensive medical
treatment. On the other hand if we take self indulgence to extremes and die round about
retirement age, others may benefit by not having to contribute to our pensions. In either
case state institutions can increase the number of ways one person’s behaviour can affect
another person. In recent decades there has been a tendency for governments in a
number of developed countries to interest themselves in their citizens smoking, drinking,
and more recently eating, habits so that individual freedom of choice is gradually
restricted. A Libertarian will closely scrutinise all such arrangements in the hope of either
eliminating, or at least minimising, such state engineered interdependence, so that what
we do in what we like to consider our private lives, will have as little effect as possible on
other people.
A libertarian approach encourages people to look beyond the intended
consequences of regulations to their likely actual consequences. Some people seem to
regard laws as magic spells, guaranteeing that whatever they command will therefore
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come to pass, and whatever they forbid will cease to be, with no side effects or drawbacks
in either case. The truth is quite different. Any law forbidding anything will have both side
effects and drawbacks, for if it is to have any chance of being effective, it must somehow
be enforced. To be enforceable it must be simple, creating the danger that it will apply to
more cases than those it was originally intended to deal with. Furthermore a mechanism of
enforcement will involve some expense, and is likely to create a power that is capable of
being misused, when for instance, the houses of innocent people are searched on the
basis of suspicions that turn out not to be justified. Restrictive legislation also sets a
precedent, making it easier to introduce yet more restrictions.
Consequentialism
It is widely, though not universally, held that actions should be evaluated solely with
regard to their consequences. That view is what I refer to as Consequentialism. People
find it attractive because it seems to provide a place for rational argument in discussions of
political matters, ruling out dogmatic assertions that one practice is obligatory because it is
part of our tradition and another is wrong because it offends against someone’s intuition of
justice.
The best known form of consequentialism is Utilitarianism, and some, though not all
of the difficulties in Utilitarianism arise because it is consequentialist. In this section I
consider difficulties that seem to arise from any consequentialist theory, whether utilitarian
or not.
I shall examine cases where consequentialism seems to lead to unwelcome
conclusions, and suggest that those conclusions follow not from consequentialism per se
but from concentrating on some consequences of an action and ignoring others.
A consequentialist theory could take either of two forms. It could assess each
individual action according to its consequences, or it could assess rules governing human
behaviour by the likely the consequences of enforcing them. It would be impractically
complicated to try to apply the former policy in all but a very few cases, so only the latter is
practical as a general policy.
Nevertheless people do sometimes try to assess a single action in isolation, with
reference solely to its supposed consequences, especially in cases that arouse strong
emotions. Many of the objections to consequentialism arise from the consequences of
such analyses. For instance, people sometimes argue that ‘taking the law into their own
hands’ is justified because its prevents a criminal escaping. Lynching a dangerous criminal
ensures that no-one else suffers at his hands, whereas if we rely on the due processes of
the law, he may eventually be released to offend again. What is left out in that picture, is
the consequences of a general increase in lawlessness if we undermine the due
processes. That is apparent only when we look beyond the particular case to the
implications of adopting a general rule of those who appear to present a threat to us.
Sometimes people argue that what matters is not what someone is trying to do, but
what their actions actually achieve, and argument that would lead to the ignoring of
peoples motives, Arguably this should have been discussed in the chapter on Ethics, and
this discussion may eventually be moved there, but the question most often arises during
discussions of political matters so it can sit here for the time being.
For instance, if bombs aimed at an ammunition store go astray and hit a school,
killing numerous children, that would sometimes be said to be ‘just the same’ as aiming the
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bombs at the school with the intention of killing the children
The supposed irrelevance of motive does not follow from consequentialism, but only
from a particularly short sighted form of that doctrine. For the consequences of an action
do depend partly on the motive. Actions usually set precedents, especially if those actions
are significant enough for us to debate their merits and demerits. Humans are instinctively
precedent noting animals. Psychological research suggests we have a sort of ‘fairness
instinct’ assessing other people’s behaviour towards us to check that we aren’t
unfavourably treated. This is doubtless dependent on our ability to detect patterns in our
experience, but seems to be more than that; there seems to be a special faculty for
detecting patterns of human behaviour in social relations. That instinct has been embodied
in laws and customs that in their turn re-enforce it.
That serves to emphasize the danger, even from a consequentialist point of view, of
concentrating on one act and its consequences in isolation. Even an act that appears to be
a ‘one off’ will in fact be seen as endorsing some sort of rule whether it is intended to or
not. Motives are important because they provide a strong clue as to what that rule is likely
to be. The motive indicates what rule the agent is following, and although that rule is not
necessarily the rule others will read into the action, it is quite likely to be, especially if the
agent makes his motive obvious.
Given then that we need to take people’s motives into account when judging their
actions, no ethical theory can be tenable unless it does justice to motive. However that
does not rule out consequentialism since concentrating solely on the consequences of
actions does not preclude taking some notice of the motives for those actions, because a
policy of taking into account people’s motives when we judge their past behaviour may
have an important effect on their future behaviour. The way we judge people’s actions is
something that itself has consequences, and a well thought out consequentialism must
take those consequences into account. To a consequentialist someone’s motive could be
important in two ways. It could be a good, though not infallible, pointer to the precedent an
action is setting, and it could also tells us how to deal with the agent should we wish to
change or to reinforce his behaviour. It remains to be seen whether those considerations
together account for all the importance we attach to motive.
However people often do adopt a form of consequentialism that does ignore such
matters as guilt, responsibility and motive. A common corollary of such a narrow
consequentialism, is the thesis that not preventing something from happening is morally
equivalent to making it happen. If we don’t contribute to feeding the starving in Africa we
are, some say, as guilty of murder as if we’d gone to Africa and strangled children.
However the two rules :
(1) Don’t feed children you don’t know unless you have a contractual obligation, and
(2) Strangle children you don’t know if you feel like it.
are not equivalent. A society that accepted (1) but rejected (2) would be very different
from a society that accepted (2), supposing that it were possible for a society with such a
rule to operate at all.
An important example of the weakness of such a narrow consequentialism is its
handling of the possibility of officially sanctioned torture. Consider the case for using
torture in the following cases. (1) Suppose terrorists explode a hydrogen bomb over the
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centre of a large city on a busy Saturday morning and threaten to explode more hydrogen
bombs over other cities. We catch some members of the group and suspect they know the
whereabouts of the nuclear arsenal. (2) Alternatively suppose a gang of kidnappers has
seized a bus load of children and is holding them in a secret place. They’ve just released a
video of one of the children being killed very slowly and painfully. We hold some members
of the gang who were caught leaving the remains of the dead child in the spot where they
hoped we’d pick it up after they had escaped from the scene
In each case we hold criminals who have information about their crime, and if they
told us what they knew that might help us to prevent their associates committing further
crimes. Many people would support torture in such cases, and many governments would
authorise its use, but even in those cases there are good reasons for hesitating.
First let’s dispose of two bad consequentialist arguments, one against torture and
one in favour it.
It is often argued that torture is useless, because people under torture will say
anything to get the torturers to stop, so that what they say is useless as evidence. While
that is true of a bare confession of guilt, it would not apply to information that can be
corroborated. If someone under torture reveals a password that, when used, gives
access to encrypted files on a computer their testimony is corroborated by the fact that the
password works. If a criminal reveals the whereabouts of stolen goods, and we find them
where he said they would be, that shows he knew or at least suspected where they were,
and in any case we have benefited by the recovery of the goods.
It is sometimes argued in favour of torture that the suffering of one person who may
be tortured is sometimes outweighed by the greater suffering of a greater number of
people that may be avoided. That is a bad argument because it ignores the guilt of the
person we propose to torture. In our examples the suffering we are trying to avoid will, if it
occurs, be the result of the criminal activities of our prisoner and his associates. He has
the power to help us avert that suffering by giving us information. Any pain he suffers by
refusing to give us that information could be regarded as self inflicted and so doesn’t need
to be weighed against anything else. It would be quite different if suffering were inflicted on
some innocent sacrificial victim. Just imagine that one day some innocent person is
wrongly tortured. The suffering in that case would not be self inflicted and would be
especially horrible since there would be nothing the victim could do to end his pain.
Even if no innocent ever is tortured, many well behaved people of a nervous
disposition may enjoy life less because they worry about the possibility that it might
happen, with themselves as the innocent victim. Furthermore, if members of kidnap gangs
are tortured to reveal the whereabouts of their prisoners, what happens to kidnappers who
kill their victims? torturing them could not help to release their victims, but if we do not do
so they would avoid torture not because of any mitigating circumstances, but because they
have added murder to their list of crimes. If the confederates of our captured kidnapper kill
all the other children and send us proof, do we reward the carnage by stopping the torture
of the gangster we hold prisoner? If so more kidnap victims might be murdered than would
be the case if we didn’t use torture in an attempt to find them Perhaps the supporters of
torture would then say that kidnappers who kill their victims should suffer indefinite torture
lasting as long as they can be kept alive to suffer the pain. Both the grounds for inflicting
torture and the degree of suffering to be inflicted have now been much increased, and the
horror of some innocent being caught up in the process correspondingly magnified.
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There are also legal considerations. So long as the argument for torture concentrates
on a particular criminal, that argument can be made to appear strong, but the only way any
case could be dealt with in isolation, without setting any sort of precedent, would be if the
torture were applied illegally. In that case some officials charged with maintaining the law
would either have acted illegally, or condoned others acting illegally. In either case the
legal system would be undermined.
Suppose, on the other hand, that torture were legalised in some circumstances. In
that event no case could be considered in isolation, and every case would have the
potential to set a precedent. There would be procedures for selecting people to be
tortured, and officials charged with operating those procedures. Torture might well be
applied to people not yet convicted of any crime, just as the suspected proceeds of crime
can be confiscated from people who have no conviction. In any case, the officials
concerned would have some discretion whom to have tortured, and the threat of torture
could be used to serve the ends of those officials and their political masters. Prominent
critics of government policy might be quietly warned that their continued criticism could
lead to their being suspected of terrorism and tortured to make them tell what they knew.
I have seen the suggestion that we legalise torture by pushing a sterilised needle
under a suspects finger nails. It was argued that such treatment would cause no serious
permanent damage to the victim, so that no innocent person could rationally object to such
treatment as part of anti-terrorism operations. However, the threat of such treatment might
well be used to terrify many innocent people who have done nothing to arouse suspicion.
Nor should one treat any painful injury as trivial. If such a torture brought on a heart attack
or stroke it could be fatal
Note that the argument against torture is itself a consequentialist one, using a
broader and more sophisticated consequentialism to refute the consequences of a more
simplistic theory. While it may thus be possible to maintain some version of
consequentialism, I do not think it possible to rescue Utilitarianism. For the fears that
utilitarianism might justify sacrificing a few people to the general good are derived not just
from its being consequentialist, but from the utilitarian aim of maximising the total good.
Suppose Utilitarians looked beyond the consequences of one particular sacrifice, to
consider the broader consequences of a general policy of making such sacrifices when
they appeared advantageous. They would doubtless then realise that the policy had
disadvantages, but they might still be unable to show that those disadvantages were great
enough to decrease the total happiness of the community as a whole, and more
importantly, people fearful of utilitarianism might fear that the rulers’ calculations would not
rule out the occasional sacrifice of a minority, given that governments have in the past
done such things on distinctly flimsy grounds. Could we even trust the ministers and civil
servants to carry out the calculations correctly, especially in a crisis when they might very
much want those calculations to legitimise torture or terror?
States and Territory
States are usually associated with tracts of land and sea, and have dominion over all
who live in a certain region, with a few exceptions such as the inhabitants of foreign
embassies. They number among their citizens most who live within the state’s borders and
relatively few who live elsewhere. People who live within one state and are citizens of
another are usually accountable for their actions primarily to the state within whose
borders they live.
Might there be a different arrangement, in which a state was made up of a collection
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of people with a range of common interests clubbing together to provide each other with
certain services, such as protection of life and property and an accepted arbitration system
for solving disputes among themselves? Some Libertarians have suggested that
arrangements on those lines might replace a state.
I do not think we can rule out the possibility of people making such arrangements in
special circumstances such as the occupation of new territory, or after the breakdown of a
law and order following the collapse of one of the traditional territorial states. However
such a system would be likely to prove unstable in the long run.
Let us call a non-territorial association of the sort mentioned a club state. The citizens
of a club state would be distributed over territory which was partly occupied by
non-members. Sometimes some of them would be in dispute with non-members. The club
state would need rules for dealing with such disputes. If it gave the non-members a
hearing before acting it would be allowing non-members to participate in club business. If it
always took the part of a club member in any dispute with a non-member, non-members
could be expropriated by unscrupulous members claiming their land or property, so
non-members would be likely either to join the club, or to move out of reach of the it, or to
form a rival club. In the last case rival clubs would need some way of settling mutual
differences and whatever coalition, treaty or arbitration authority they set up to do that
would approximate to a territorial state. If non-members both moved away from the centre
of the club’s operations and formed a rival club of their own, the rivals clubs would develop
into adjoining territorial states. So I think that any non-territorial state would be likely to
prove a transitional stage towards the formation of a territorial state, or a set of territorial
states, but I suppose that does not rule out such a transitional organisation of club states
persisting for a while, always supposing that circumstances allowed it to come into being in
the first case.
Ancient Wrongs
Much of the historical record tells of civilisations arising by a process of well
organised and aggressive peoples dispossessing less well organised and (possibly) less
aggressive peoples, who were either killed, enslaved or driven into exile in less hospitable
places.
Nowadays some people claim redress on the grounds that they are descendants of
the dispossessed victims. Yet almost all of us are descended both from aggressors and
from victims, though I guess that most people have mainly aggressor blood in their veins.
Culturally we are almost exclusively the heirs of aggressors for it must have been the
successful aggressors who prospered, and had large numbers of offspring which they
would have brought up in their own aggressive ways. On the other hand I imagine most of
us also have many of the oppressed among our ancestors. It was common for invaders to
kill the men and breed with the women. So any one of us could made a plausible claim to
be descended from victims, while people wanting to press a claim against us could equally
well se us as descended from aggressors..
If we still want to right the wrongs of history we must decide how far back to go. The
process of conquest must have started before the beginning of historical records, with the
subjugation of some wild tribes by larger or otherwise more effective wild tribes. Then
larger tribes will have made themselves even more effective by developing or acquiring
simple technology, and for a long time increasingly sophisticated civilisations must have
spread largely by subjugating and absorbing small pockets of wild people. As primitive
people became fewer and civilisations held sway over larger territories, it must have
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become more common for one civilised group to subdue another.
That must have been long regarded as just the way things were done. During most of
the nineteenth century citizens of the USA thought themselves justified, possibly even
obliged, to impose civilised7 [ I use ‘civilised’ to refer to societies based on city life and the values
associated with that way of life. I do not use it as some do to mean ‘humane’ or ‘enlightened’] values on
the Red Indians. The planned subjugation of the Australian Aborigines seems to have
continued for much of the twentieth century too. People must have hoped they’d find
themselves on the winning side in any conflict between tribes or nations, but I doubt if they
usually thought about the matter in terms of morality, especially not when the conflict was
between civilised people and primitive people, or ‘savages’ as they would very likely have
been called. Until recently morality was about relations between members of the same
community. In the seventeenth century Locke said that states are in a state of nature with
respect to one another, and as recently as the early nineteenth century Hegel explicitly
excluded morality from the relations between states.
Eventually, however, morality crept into the received opinion about international
relations, might was no longer accepted as right and those who’d made the most recent
territorial gains were widely considered to be uniquely guilty.
I think one factor behind the change in sentiment was the development of
representative government. In very small tribal communities, even if they were completely
autocratic, everyone would know the leader, who must have been at least aware of various
people’s sentiments, even if he chose to disregard them. Some slightly larger ancient
communities, notably the Greek city states, had an element of direct democracy. But
thereafter, until quite recently there was little scope for the rulers of a large state to keep in
touch with the ruled. At most they could keep in touch with the members of a relatively
small ruling class. Hence, once states had become fairly large, conquests usually involved
little more than the replacement of one ruling class by another, as in the Norman conquest
of England and the successive Muslim and British conquests of India. In the latter case
even much of the ruling class stayed in place, acknowledging an English instead of a
Mogul Emperor.
In Europe the Hapsburgs conquered mainly through a series of carefully contrived
marriages; monarchical titles accumulated in one family, while people and aristocracy
remained in place. Thus in many cases the subjugation of a nation already civilised made
little difference to most of the citizens, while the subjugation of savages was seen by those
doing it as in the best interests even of the savages themselves. Many of the descendants
of the savages agree. Europeans, for example, consider themselves lucky that their
ancestors were civilised by the Romans. Furthermore, those dispossessed by such
conquests were often the descendants of the victors in some earlier adventure of the same
kind, putting them in a weak position to claim redress.
It is easy to be carried away by the fascinating puzzle of trying to trace the present
consequences of events in the distant past and to overlook a fundamental oddity in the
whole discussion. It is central to moral discourse that we are held responsible only for what
we have done. Those guilty of wrong doings several generations ago are no longer alive,
so there is no-one who can be held responsible for what they did. That seems to rule out
any demand for redress, for there is no-one against whom it could justly be made.
I use ‘civilised’ to refer to societies based on city life and the values associated with
that way of life. I do not use it as some do to mean ‘humane’ or ‘enlightened’
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The only way I can see of getting round that objection is by appealing to rights of
inheritance. People now alive might have inherited property from their parents, had not
their remote ancestors been dispossessed. But there are great difficulties in that line of
argument. Even if we can identify someone who has lost property, we cannot effect
redress unless we can either find and enforce restitution against whoever took the
property, which is impossible if the culprits are dead, or else identify someone who now
holds the property. That might sometimes be done in the case of durable and identifiable
items such as land, jewellery, or pictures, but it would not apply to consumables or money.
Suppose A’s ancestor was a wine merchant who was driven into exile, leaving behind a
large stock of wine. If not dispossessed he’d have sold the wine, bought more, carried on
his business and probably left a valuable business to his heirs, so that A might eventually
have inherited something or other from his parents. But the wine is gone, probably down
assorted gullets; we cannot identify anyone now living who is better off because his
ancestors drank it - if someone’s ancestors drank too much and consequently neglected
their affairs, the descendants might as a result be worse off!
Even where property can be identified as that long ago stolen from A’s ancestors, it
does not follow that it should now belong to A. It is nowhere an accepted general principle
that descendants should always own whatever their remote ancestors owned. Large
estates are often attenuated by taxation. Tangible assets are often bought and sold, and
those who sell them may spend the proceeds instead of bequeathing them to their
descendants. In any case, even if goods were once stolen, it does not follow that those
who hold them now inherited them from the thief. They or their ancestors may have bought
them in good faith.
Think of the matter in terms of the fundamental reciprocity of morality. It makes sense
to accept a moral code that requires us to make concessions to others because that code
also requires them to make concessions to us. Suppose we grant someone redress for
supposed ancient wrongs, what reciprocal benefit may we look forward to? There would
be an obvious advantage in granting redress for recent wrongs since it would certainly be
re-assuring to think that if we were ever driven from our homes, we might eventually be
allowed to return with compensation for our distress. A more modest reassurance might be
offered by the thought that even if we were never compensated, our children, whose
formative years would have been blighted by sharing our dispossessed state, would be
compensated in our stead. There might also be a deterrent effect. The sight of oppressors,
or even their children, having to pay compensation might discourage future atrocities,
although deterring criminals by punishing their children is no longer a generally accepted
principle of penal policy. But these are all arguments for righting recent wrongs where
many of the victims are still alive. The arguments become progressively weaker as we
pass from children to grandchildren and then to even more remote generations of
descendants. The possible fate of their descendants in several hundred years time is
unlikely either to deter today’s aggressors, or to reassure their victims.
A long interval between wrong and redress not only turns the redress into an empty
gesture, it makes it impossible to target it. We can neither make sure that those wronged
are compensated in accordance with the wrongs they suffered, or that those who benefited
from the wrong doing contribute to compensation in proportion to their benefit.
Ancient wrongs usually took the form of dispossession or subjugation. People may
have been driven out of one territory into another, they may have remained in place as a
subordinate serf or peasant class, or they may have been removed from the land of their
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birth to become slaves elsewhere. Many of them will have died without leaving any
descendants.
If people are driven from their homeland, or reduced to the status of serfs, each will
suffer a different loss. There will be losses of property, career, opportunity. Where a
people is subjugated by invaders, some of the original inhabitants may actually gain, by
proving useful to the invaders by learning their language quickly, and acting as agents of
the conquerors, and it is those collaborators who are likely to prosper and leave the most
descendants, so many of those who consider themselves descendants of victims, may
actually be descended from collaborators.
As time passes the precise losses suffered and gains enjoyed by particular
individuals will gradually be forgotten, but, very important for any consideration of justice,
some gains and losses will be forgotten faster than others.
Descendants of Slaves
Slavery was almost everywhere abolished by the end of the nineteenth century, so
there are now hardly any surviving former slaves or slave owners. However the issue is
still a live one in the USA where there are many people who can be identified as certainly,
or almost certainly, the descendants of slaves, many of whom can even trace their descent
to particular named slaves. The issue is sharpened because it is possible to distinguish
those groups by superficial appearance since all the slaves were taken from Africa, and
the slave owners were nearly all of European descent. Had slaves and owners come from
populations that could not so easily be distinguished, the issue would be less pressing.
Apart from the general difficulties of holding people responsible for the actions of their
ancestors, the case of American slavery illustrates other complicating factors. Many,
perhaps most, of the Americans who now refer to themselves as ‘Black’ have some
European ancestors, and may be descended from slave owners as well as from slaves.
There were even a few black slave owners. If we require descendants of oppressors to
compensate descendants of victims we must decide how to deal with the many people
part of whose ancestry seems to qualify them for membership of one class while part
would put them in the other. Perceived ‘blackness’ is not a reliable criterion of inherited
grievance, nor is perceived whiteness a proof of inherited guilt.
Many immigrants came to the USA in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries after slavery had come to an end. They were not involved on either side of the
slave owner/slave divide, so their descendants cannot be deemed to have inherited either
hurt or obligation from it. Many states of the Union did not allow slavery, and even in the
slave owning states there were many ‘poor whites’ who did not own slaves. Black
Americans whose ancestors emigrated there from Africa during the twentieth century may
even be descendants of tribal leaders who sold some of their subjects to the slave traders.
The balance of benefit/deprivation between the descendants of slave owners and
slaves is also questionable. During the American civil war Northern armies rampaged
through the South burning buildings, destroying livestock, and raping and murdering
civilians. General Sherman, a hero of the Union and a proud practitioner of that policy,
later proceeded in the same style against the American Indians, expressing regret that he
was not allowed totally to exterminate them. During the post war ‘reconstruction’ of the
South, Southern states were misruled by corrupt politicians from the North. Wealth
accumulated by Southern slave owners was largely tied up in their plantations and so must
have been largely destroyed, leaving little or no ‘benefit’ to be inherited by their
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descendants. The Southern states were for many years after the civil war much poorer
than the Northern states. On the other hand the descendants of former slaves, even if they
have only low paid jobs, or possibly no jobs at all, enjoy a much higher standard of living in
the USA than the ordinary people in the African countries now in charge of the territory
from which the slaves’ ancestors came. There is therefore no evidence that the
descendants of slave owners are generally better off, or that the descendants of slaves are
generally worse off, as a result of slavery.
Two groups of people benefit from slavery, those who make people slaves and sell
them, and those who own slaves and use them. Those whose ancestors used slaves
usually have the descendants of slaves on their doorsteps as evidence of ancestral guilt.
The exception will be people whose ancestors castrated their slaves and thus saved their
descendants from having to deal with embarrassing evidence about the past. Those
whose ancestors created slaves and sold them are usually inconspicuous and
undetectable, living in other countries, often the countries from which the slaves originally
came.
Slaves usually became slaves in Africa, either born into that status or enslaved there
often by their own rulers or even their own relatives, or by rulers of other tribes who
captured them in war or in slave stealing raids. If the descendants of oppressors are
required to compensate the descendants of those they oppressed, the descendants of
those who enslaved and sold their countrymen might be expected to compensate the
descendants of their victims. That would be in one respect be very odd, since Americans
descended from slaves usually enjoy a much higher standard of living than most native
Africans. So poorer people would be paying so called ‘compensation’ to others richer than
themselves to compensate the latter for the circumstances that made them richer
Even where there are people still alive who are victims of oppression or
displacement, it is difficult to decide what to do about them. The case of Israel is a
particularly interesting example of this, as well as being extremely complicated. There the
attempt to right an ancient wrong done to Jews has produced a new wronged class of
people dispossessed in living memory, together with their descendants born in exile.
Jews Balts and Celts. The Jews claim to be doubly victims. Their remote ancestors
were driven from Palestine by the Romans and many generations of their more recent
ancestors lived as often persecuted minorities in various European and Middle eastern
countries. The Jews own traditions record that their even more remote ancestors seized
land in Palestine, and committed what would now be called genocide at the expense of the
previous inhabitants, an action they justified by claiming that the land had been ‘promised’
to them by God on whose command they claimed to have committed the genocide. The
latter argument is still sometimes used today and, instead of being dismissed as
preposterous special pleading, is actually given some weight because both Christians and
Muslims have adopted the Jews ‘holy’ books.
Once the Jewish state was set up in 1948 there appeared a new group of
dispossessed, the ‘Palestinian refugees’. Often overlooked is yet another group, the
Jewish refugees who fled to Israel from Muslim countries. The two groups fared very
differently.
The Palestinian refugees who had fled from real, or perhaps in some cases
imaginary, danger in Israeli territory, into the Arab states bordering Israel were mainly
confined by their host states to camps near the Israeli border, on the grounds that they
might soon be returned to their former home. The many Jewish refugees from Arab
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countries were treated quite differently. The houses land and property they left behind
were lost to Arabs, but the refugees themselves were integrated into Israeli society as
citizens of Israel. Thus there is today a great number of aggrieved people who call
themselves ‘Palestinian refugees’ (). On the other hand there are no groups of plaintive
Syrian Jewish refugees, or Moroccan Jewish refugees, suppurating on the borders of Syria
of Morocco, because Jewish refugees from those countries were not segregated into
refugee camps but allowed to become Israeli citizens. 8 [though most are not themselves
refugees, but only the children or grandchildren of refugees. Any member of the ‘Palestinian refugee’
community younger than 56 is too young actually to be a refugee, but is at most descended from refugees
who, though they considered their living conditions poor, were still prepared to breed children who had to
grow up under those conditions]
Although the movement of people in the Middle East occurred within living memory, it
is still not easy to put things right. Feelings of mutual hostility are so high that integration of
Palestinians and Jews into one state does not seem practicable. ‘Return’ of people to their
supposed country of origin would involve moving great numbers of people not to, but
from, their actual place of origin to their parents place of origin. Moving Jews to their place
of parental origin would involve moving many into Arab states where they would be
unwelcome, so that it would only be possible if those states ceded enclaves to be
occupied by Jews. In just one case some moving could be done; the West bank
settlements set up by religious fanatics in Palestinian territory could be closed by force and
the inhabitants moved into Israeli territory. The population of those settlements are
criminals who set them up in defiance even of Israeli law, so there it might not even be
necessary to compensate them. But, while welcome, that measure would at best solve a
small part of the problem.
Apart from the overwhelming practical difficulties in trying to move people in and out
of Palestine, there would be a problem under International Law. Israel was set up in
accordance with a vote of the United Nations General Assembly, acting as successor body
to the League of Nations that had made Palestine a British Protectorate. So the Jews can
claim to hold their territory, or at least most of it, under international law. To dispossess
them would create another set discontented people, aggrieved at being penalised because
they, or their recent ancestors, acted in good faith in accordance with what they had been
led to believe was international law. There would also be anxiety in many other states
whose peoples might fear that their status too could be challenged once a precedent was
set for dismantling established states.
When it is so hard to solve a case whose origins are so recent and so well
documented, with many of the wronged still alive, it is not to be expected that much
progress could be made to redress the wrongs of past centuries.
I suspect that redress for ancient wrongs is often asserted disingenuously as a way
to produce strife and to undermine the institution of property. Those who make such claims
are often socialists who also challenge the very institution of property and especially the
granting of property rights over land. Perhaps they see ancestral rights as a reductio ad
absurdum of property. Perhaps they welcome a chance to cause trouble in the hope that if
existing political systems collapse, they will be able to build a utopia out of the resulting
chaos.
8
though most are not themselves refugees, but only the children or grandchildren of refugees. Any member
of the ‘Palestinian refugee’ community younger than 56 is too young actually to be a refugee, but is at most
descended from refugees who, though they considered their living conditions poor, were still prepared to
breed children who had to grow up under those conditions
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The problem of the Russian minorities in the Baltic States could have proved as
intractable as the Israeli problem, had both sides insisted on full recognition of supposed
rights and full restitution for past wrongs, In fact there has been no insistence on restitution
and things seem to have worked out fairly harmoniously. The Soviet Union occupied and
annexed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1943, subsequently moving considerable
numbers of Russians into those states.
Such a movement of population by an occupying power into an occupied country is
contrary to the Geneva Conventions. When the Baltic states regained independence they
had large Russian minorities. Most of the Russians had either themselves or been moved
into the Baltic states without the permission of the legally constituted authorities there, so it
could have been argued that they were either illegal immigrants, or the children of illegal
immigrants. Many of the older Balts were born at a time when almost all property, and
especially land, within their borders was owned by Balts, and they have lived to see a
large proportion being owned by Russians. They could therefore have argued that the
Baltic community had been to some extent dispossessed, without needing to apportion the
deprivation to named individuals. On the other hand the great majority of those involved,
on both sides, were either small children or not yet born at the time of the movement of
people. Russians moving into the Baltic states will mostly have had no choice, moving
under the direction of an authoritarian government.
In fact the Balts did not demand repatriation of Russians. The most they did demand
was that Russians wanting to be citizens of the revived states should learn the national
language of the state of which they proposed to be citizens. Oddly enough even that
demand was widely criticised. In a day when many people are eager to take much more
drastic action to redress supposed grievances rooted in the remote past, it is strange that
the Balts should have received so little sympathy for such modest demands.
Language
The choice of a national language can be very controversial. That is because it
unusual for a language to be chosen at all. Most communities just have a language. The
need to choose one arises only where several languages are in competition.
The efficient transaction of public affairs would be impossible were everyone allowed
to use any language they chose, so a government must restrict official communication to
one of a small set of languages; if possible to just one language.
It is an advantage to use a language widely understood, rather than one familiar only
to the population of a small region, and it has often happened that the formation of large
states was accompanied by the adoption throughout the state of one language formerly
spoken only in one region.
Where the languages of other regions have not completely died out, there have
sometimes been attempts to revive them, and in some cases to promote them to the
status of official language in their region. When that happens the balance of advantage
and disadvantage depends on how widely the local tongue is understood, and how for
many people it is their first language.
In a world where labour is mobile it is an advantage to understand a language used
over a large area rather than one confined to a small locality and, if one is to learn a
second language, it is an advantage to choose another widely used language. On the
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other hand we are all more at ease using the language we were brought up to speak.
In the Baltic states the mother tongue of all but recent immigrants from Russia was
the local Baltic language, though almost all the population had been taught Russian. It is
therefore understandable that Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian shall have been chosen as
the national languages, though there would have been a case for adopting Russian.
In Wales the position was quite different. For most of the population the mother
tongue was English, the minority whose first language was Welsh were also fluent in
English, and many of locally born the population did not speak Welsh at all. The imposition
of Welsh on the entire population thus gave them the worst of both worlds. Welsh was
neither the native tongue, nor widely spoken outside Wales, although many people who
grow up in Wales eventually find work outside the Principality,
How odd then that the Balts should have attracted a good deal of criticism for wanting
all citizens to learn the local language, and the Welsh hardly any.
Primitive Man
A different set of problems arises from claims for restitution by members of aboriginal
peoples who were absorbed into the civilised world in the recent past. The word ‘recent’
must be emphasised, for we must all be descended from peoples at least as primitive as
the aboriginals. More sophisticated ways of life were developed in a few places by tribes
which them spread their ways by a combination of trade and conquest, so most of our
primitive ancestors have been overwhelmed by people from more sophisticated cultures.
In most of the world aboriginal and conqueror have become mixed to the point that we
cannot distinguish descendants of the conquered from those of the conquerors. The
conspicuous exceptions are the aboriginals Australasia and the Eskimo of North America.
In what respect are descendants of former aboriginals worse off than they would
have been had they grown up in an aboriginal culture? Faced with a choice between the
traditional way of life, and the way of more sophisticated people, young aboriginals usually
choose the latter. The Eskimo population of Canada has largely forsaken the
hunter-gatherer life for one of idleness supported by state benefits. The traditional life
cannot have produced more than bare subsistence, so they must now have more material
goods than before, with the bonus of access to education and modern medicine if they
want them. True many have become alcoholics, but that was by their choice; they could
have chosen to spend their government handouts differently just as they could have
chosen to refuse state welfare payments altogether and live precariously in the traditional
style on the brink of starvation. They chose government financed idleness.
If there is a justified grievance it is by Canadian taxpayers against the Canadian
Government’s handing out money to people for doing nothing, but that is not a complaint
that could validly be made by recipients of the money, who could have refused it had they
considered it corrupting. Had the interaction between primitive and aboriginal cultures
proceeded on free market principles, aboriginals could have gradually done more trade
with civilised peoples, in the course of which some of them would have acquired an
education and taken jobs in the developed economy, and there need have been no
sudden collapse of the traditional society, though I suspect it would have faded away over
a generation or two as few who had been exposed to a modern technological society
would have preferred the primitive life. After all, were the primitive life generally the most
agreeable to people, civilisation would not have become established in the first place.
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Members of the dominant culture who lament the extinction of primitive cultures
over-intellectualize them. Life in a primitive society is one of precarious subsistence, the
outlook of those who live it overwhelmingly materialistic. Food and shelter are the
dominant concerns. Even the spirits are regarded as primarily providers of material goods.
Spare time is occupied telling traditional tales around the camp fire at night only because
television is still unknown to them. The intellectual observer considers that the Eskimo who
sells his hunting spear to a collector of curiosities and forsakes his igloo to watch television
in a council house on the dole has lost a rich culture for the mindless indulgence of base
pleasures. Such observers either do not realise that theirs is a minority view, or else think
they belong to an élite whose standards should prevail even if they are they are in a
minority. Those among the Eskimos who are of an intellectual disposition are free to
explore their traditional culture9 [ Except for health and safety regulations and for some restrictions
imposed to protect wildlife. Such restrictions are often most enthusiastically supported by those who in other
contexts argue that the Eskimo should be preserved as primitives.] and the intellectuals who want to
preserve primitive cultures are free to explore it with him. On the other hand, once he has
access to the wider culture of the civilised world, the Eskimo is not longer restricted to his
ancestral culture but is instead free to explore any other culture that arouses his interest.
Environmentalists
Some suggest that the greatest of the supposed ancient wrongs was that committed
by the human race by existing at all, and thus disrupting the balance of a self regulating
eco-system.
The opposition of natural and artificial seems always to have been a theme in
discussions of man and society, with a preference for the ‘natural’ way usually associated
with what was perceived to be a primitive, pre-scientific mode of thought.
In the early nineteenth century a new strand of thought appeared, offering scientific
reasons for concern about ‘interference with nature’. Civilisation involves the suppression
of some human instincts, those that incline us to seize whatever we want without regard
for the interests of others, or the long term interests even of ourselves. If we suppress the
obviously unacceptable instincts while allowing the others free reign, that may create a
dangerous imbalance. In a complicated modern society aggressive and competitive
instincts have to be, if not entirely suppressed, then at least severely checked. But if there
is no accompanying check on the impulse to reproduce there is likely to be a population
explosion. People have therefore toyed with the idea that help for the starving could be
somehow linked to fertility control, though that is less commonly discussed now than it was
sixty years ago, even though it could now be done much more easily. For instance it would
probably be possible to create drugs to produce sterility, which could be mixed with food
aid. Where expensive medical treatment is provided at public expense to prolong the lives
of people with genetically determined diseases, it would be possible to combine that
treatment with sterilisation. Yet that would almost certainly be too unpopular to be
practicable. I winder how far that unpopularity is just a matter of convention, that might
gradually be overcome, and how far it arises from a primitive instinct to reproduce.
Fears that mankind will eventually outgrow the planet date back at least to Thomas
9
Except for health and safety regulations and for some restrictions imposed to protect wildlife. Such
restrictions are often most enthusiastically supported by those who in other contexts argue that the Eskimo
should be preserved as primitives.
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Malthus (1776-1834). Malthus argued that population tends to increase geometrically,
while food supply increases at best arithmetically, so that unless we find an alternative way
of controlling population, it will be controlled by the food supply, held down by starvation to
the level the planet’s food supply can feed, with the great majority of the population
existing at the level of bare subsistence. Malthus opposed contraception on religious
grounds, recommending only sexual abstinence, but many influenced by his writings have
worked to develop and popularise efficient methods of contraception. John Stuart Mill was
an early campaigner for contraception.
Opposed to the gloomy prognostications of the Malthusians is the facile optimism of
those who say we shouldn’t worry about hypothetical future problems since there is ample
room on the planet for as many people as are likely to be born in the near future. I
remember when opponents of contraception used to say there was standing room for the
entire population of the world in the Isle Of Wight, with one square foot each. The prospect
always struck me as decidedly unattractive, but then I am mildly claustrophobic.
Optimists are encouraged by the fact that food production has so far kept up with
population growth, but the latter has indeed been exponential, and could not continue for
long at the rate maintained in the last two centuries. Humans could not survive if they
became so numerous that they filled so much of the land surface that there was too little
room for the plants and animals they depend on as food, and that stage would come long
before we were reduced to one square foot each. Furthermore increased food production
has depended on increasingly sophisticated agricultural technology, in which specially
bred strains of plants are grown with irrigation, insecticides, artificial fertilisers, and in some
cases agriculture also depends on the production of fresh water by desalination of sea
water, a process requiring much energy. Processes such as those will be available only so
long as people can maintain a technically sophisticated civilisation.
Possibly even more serious is the dependence of agriculture on the large scale
production of a few specially bred varieties of plants and animals, which are grown in
populations with little or no genetic variety. Such populations are liable to be wiped out by
predators or disease, since once a pest mutates to overcome the resistance of one
member of such a population it will have overcome the resistance of all. Our life support is
thus becoming ever more fragile, liable to collapse under the impact of a sudden
catastrophe such as a pest that gets a jump ahead of the pesticides, freak weather
producing a bad harvest, or a war or accident disabling our technology. Although it might
in principle be possible to rebuild our civilisation after such a catastrophe, it might be
impossible to do so in time to save the lives of most of the human population.
The optimists do have other arguments. The strongest is the tendency of populations
in advanced countries to stabilize. As living standards rise, and fewer people are engaged
in labour intensive subsistence farming, fertility falls, often to the point that populations
stabilise or even fall. I gather that projections of world population now predict that it will
eventually stabilise at around nine billion, compared with the present six billion. I imagine
that such a population could be sustained indefinitely so long as major catastrophes are
avoided, but the requisite agricultural system would still be fragile, in the sense outlined
above, so I expect there would eventually be a catastrophe from which the system would
be unable to recover.
The issue is complicated still further by arguments about genetic engineering.
Agriculture has always depended on specially bred plants and animals, and such varieties
are all genetically modified, though until very recently only in a rather haphazard way,
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without the guidance of an accurate theory of genetics, so that breeding programs were
often very time consuming. The recent analysis of the genetic codes of many living things,
combined with the, slower, accumulation of knowledge of how various genes are
expressed in the properties of the organism carrying them, and the development of
techniques for introducing selected base sequences into strands of DNA, have make it
possible, up to a point, to build DNA according to our specifications and so to engineer
creatures that meet our requirements. Thus foodstuffs can be designed to have longer
shelf lives and to resist predators. The worry about that is that genetic engineering often
involves inserting into the genetic code of one species, material obtained from the DNA of
another. If the two species cannot interbreed, that is a transfer that could not take place in
a traditional breeding programme. However I gather that such transfers of genetic material
can take place in nature through the action of bacteria so the difference between genetic
engineering and traditional selective breeding is not as stark as is sometimes suggested.
Normally animal populations grow when food supplies increase and predator
numbers diminish, and fall when the opposite happens. In the long run species live in
harmony with their planet. There seem to be stabilising mechanisms. An example is the
‘greenhouse effect’ of the atmosphere, trapping solar radiation near the earth’s surface.
Without a greenhouse effect the earth would be mush to cold for almost all the life
forms familiar to us. The greenhouse effect is mostly produced by atmospheric oxygen, but
atmospheric carbon dioxide also has a pronounced greenhouse effect, rapping some
radiation that the oxygen would allow to escape. An increase in the concentration of
carbon dioxide increases the temperature of the earth’s surface, stimulating plant growth
so that plants absorb more carbon dioxide to convert it to carbohydrates in photosynthesis.
As the concentration of carbon dioxide falls so does the temperature, but as the
temperature falls plant growth is slowed so that the carbon dioxide concentration will
increase again, raising the temperature, so the changing carbon dioxide evels form a sort
of control system that stabilises surface temperature.
Since terrestrial life began the sun has become appreciably hotter, yet terrestrial
temperatures do not seem to have increased to a corresponding degree, but the
compensating fall in the carbon dioxide level has reduced it to a very low level, around
0.03%, so there is little room for further reductions to compensate for future increases in
solar radiation. Against that background, campaigns to reduce man made carbon dioxide
emissions seem relatively trivial. They might slow down global worming for a while, but can
hardly have a great long term effect, because maintenance of the surface temperatures to
which we are accustomed may eventually require carbon dioxide levels to fall below the
minimum level capable of sustaining plant life. As a matter of fact some of the measures
taken to reduce the greenhouse effect may be helping to increase the temperature. The
intensity of the sunlight reaching the earth’s surface has increased by 10% in recent
decades, and that has been attributed to a fall in the concentration of particulate matter in
the air. That in turn is a probably a consequence of smoke control measures.
Some have suggested that the various living creatures on the earth’s surface,
together with their surroundings are a sort of gigantic organism which they call Gaia. The
Penguin Dictionary of Biology (ninth Edition) says of ‘Life’
“Life Complex physico-chemical systems whose two main peculiarities are (I) storage and
replication of molecular information in the form of nucleic acid, and (2) the presence of (or in viruses
perhaps merely the potential for) enzyme catalysis. Without enzyme catalysis a system is inert, not
alive; however, such systems may still count as biological (e.g. all viruses away from their hosts).
Other familiar properties of living systems such as nutrition, respiration, reproduction, excretion,
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irritability, locomotion, etc., are all dependent in some way upon their exhibiting the two
above-mentioned properties.“
That definition rules out any life not based on the same chemical mechanisms as
terrestrial life, and so begs the question against the possibility of artificial life or inorganic
life or of the sort of organic/inorganic hybrid envisaged by the Gaia hypothesis. To assess
such cases it seems best to consider the ‘other familiar properties’. I think that when I was
at school we were taught that the essential properties of a living being were ability to
reproduce (replication of molecular information), to grow by feeding off material in its
environment (nutrition, respiration, excretion), and to respond to stimuli (irritability).
Although Gaia could plausibly be represented as responding to stimuli, it does not
reproduce or eat, so I suggest we don’t say it is alive. To me the self regulating
mechanism of the earth suggests a machine rather than a living creature.
Some of her devotees believe that Gaia is afflicted by a parasite. On the planet Sol III
one species has developed an understanding of nature and has found how to manipulate it
for its own purposes. Making clothes, building houses and lighting fires enables that
species to live in habitats where it would not otherwise be able to survive. It has taken
control of large areas of countryside from which it has eliminated plants and animals that it
finds useless or hostile to replace them with others specially chosen, and usually specially
bred, to suits its purposes. In that way it has immensely increased both the volume and the
reliability of its food supply. By inventing medicine it has greatly increased its own life
expectancy. As a result of such activities and the technology needed to support them,
many other species have either become extinct or are on the brink of extinction. Now the
stability of Gaia herself is threatened.
Clearly things have gone wrong on SOL III. That one species has become a plague,
a sort of cancer or parasite in the body of Gaia. The cancer must be cut out, the parasites
exterminated, so that Gaia may be whole again.
Such, I suspect, is the thinking of some theoreticians of the Environmentalists and
Greens. If we could succeed in putting aside the thought that we are members of the
human race, and try to take a detached and impartial view of our planet, it is easy to see
some plausibility in that train of thought. However, ‘the world would be beautiful without the
human vermin’ is not a possible point of view on our world, because there is no point from
which that view could be taken. On Sol III the only creatures capable of having anything so
sophisticated as a point of view are humans, and if there were no humans there would be
no-one around to admire the resulting harmony.
It would be a very different matter if there were other intelligent species capable of
exterminating us and they were wondering whether to do so. If they did, they might stand
back after the slaughter and admire their handiwork, and perhaps erect some discrete
environmentally friendly memorial to the courageous and self sacrificing Greens who
helped in the destruction of their own species. Perhaps some such thought is at the back
of the minds of people who speculate about extra-terrestrial visitors in strange flying
machines. Some even suggest that ancestors of those they suppose visit us surreptitiously
today have visited before to build the pyramids, and even earlier to build a city on Atlantis
and perhaps even to genetically engineer the human race by changing the DNA of apes,
possibly blending it with their own DNA. Such phantasies must be attractive to people who
realise they cannot re-organise the world to their liking, and like to dream that someone
else might do it for them.
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I sometimes enjoy dreams too, but it’s important not to confuse dreams with reality. It
would be catastrophic to start a process of cleaning up the planet on the assumption that
friendly powers in flying saucers will arrive in the nick of time to tidy up after us and make
sure nothing goes badly wrong, because almost certainly no such saviours ever will come;
there is no one but ourselves to save us from the high minded callousness of the ‘Greens’.
Equality
Talk of ‘Equality’ is very common in political debate. Two ideas are involved, rather
different though not entirely unrelated. Equality of treatment, the proposal that everyone
should be treated in the same way or in accordance with the same set of rules, and
equality of outcome, that everyone should have the same quantity of the good things of
life. Neither view is at all clear so we must attempt some clarification. I shall consider
equality of treatment first.
By equality of treatment I mean the policy of treating everyone alike, but that is not as
straightforward as it sounds. Advocates of equality of treatment do not usually mean to
demand that we should perform precisely the same actions in dealing with every
individual. A keen beer drinker, however ardent an egalitarian, is unlikely to advocate
giving everyone beer for breakfast, even if they are recovering alcoholics or would prefer
coffee, and a thoughtful chocolate lover would be unlikely to propose giving everyone a
chocolate even if they are diabetic. Equality of treatment is only an attractive policy if it
involves not just treating everyone according to the same set of rules, but also ensuring
that those rules take account of the differing needs and preferences of different people.
But when ‘equality’ is interpreted in that sense it is hard to think of any political system
except arbitrary despotism that could not be said to respect equality, so the requirement
does not amount to very much.
The problem is that, as we noticed when discussing Kant’s account of morality,
almost any behaviour can be brought within the scope of some general rule. Equality
raises much the same questions as universalisability. Equality is set in opposition to what
is called ‘discrimination’, as in ‘no blacks need apply’, or ‘men only’. However cases of
discrimination rarely if ever involve failure to apply the same rule to everyone. ‘only men
may vote’ is a universal rule (x)([x may vote]  [x is a man]).
When people complain of ‘discrimination’ they are not objecting to every form of
discrimination, but to the inclusion in rules of certain properties, often gender or race. that
they judge to be irrelevant to the purpose of the discrimination. Few people object to there
being a legal age of majority, before which people are not eligible to vote in elections or to
make contracts, since extreme youth is considered inconsistent with someone
understanding the issues and making an informed and responsible choice and the
restriction applies to all in their youth, and to none when they reach the age of majority. On
the other hand most people agree that a test of gender or race should not be used to
select electors. So the issue is not simply one of equality of treatment, according to which
everyone should be treated according to the same rules, nor is it proposed that the rules
should not take into account any differences between different people, but it is rather a
question of what differences between two people the rules should take into account.
When people come near to saying that all differences should be ignored, it is, I suspect,
because they are seduced by the prospect of settling the question by appeal to a rule that
is as easy to apply, as the words ‘all should be treated equally’ are easy to say. The
hoped for simplicity is an illusion.
Principles of equality seem to be little more than a confused formulation of the
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conclusions that people wish to draw by invoking them. The only way to deal with cases of
unfair discrimination is on a case by case basis, asking of each proposed criterion for
treating one person differently from another, what bearing that criterion has on the choice
being made. Where some form of discrimination is widely found repugnant, it is usually
because the discrimination is believed to rest on some factual error.
For instance racial discrimination in employment is usually based on the assumptions
that (1) the human race can be divided into different races with distinct characteristics, and
(2) that no members of certain races are capable of doing certain jobs. Both assumptions
appear to be false., and even if (1) turned out to be true, it would not imply (2). What is
wrong with the discrimination is not its form, but its substance. For even if we could find
some physical characteristic by which to divide mankind into clearly defined groups A and
B in such a way that the members of group A tended to have a greater aptitude for certain
occupations than the members of group B, it would not follow that every member of A had
a greater aptitude for those occupations than any member of B.
Two confusions arise from the careless use of the word ‘discrimination’. First people
speak as if any decision that involves any sort of ‘discrimination’ may be condemned on
that ground alone. Second people sometimes assume that a characteristic that is an
insufficient ground for discrimination in one case, must be a insufficient ground for
discrimination in any case at all.
Equality of Outcome People are thinking of this when they call for ‘fair shares’,
usually meaning ‘equal’ when they say ‘fair’. The question arises ‘equal shares of what?’
The answer ‘everything’ is inconsistent. Suppose that people demand equality both of
income and of assets. Suppose A spends all his income on consumption, buys new
clothes every time the fashion changes, and rents a house, while B wears his clothes till
they fall to pieces, saves part of his income and also buys a house. After a few years B will
be considerably richer than A. In the case of A and B equality of income will produce
inequality of wealth, and equality of wealth could be maintained only if those with the more
expensive tastes received the higher incomes, or if those with less expensive tastes were
prevented from saving.
Setting aside the special problem of savings, even equality of material possessions
makes little sense without further explanation. Should the equal distribution apply to
money, to happiness, to housing, or to sexual gratification. Since many things can be
bought, money is the favourite with most egalitarians, but although money can buy much,
it cannot buy everything. It certainly can’t directly buy happiness, and in many societies it
can’t even legally buy sexual gratification. Whatever object of desire an egalitarian
proposes to distribute equally, the equalisation of its distribution will ensure the unequal
distribution of other desirables. While that does not constitute a disproof of egalitarianism,
it does show that there are many different mutually inconsistent forms of egalitarianism
and thus weakens ‘equality’ as a prospective simple criterion by which possible social
policies may be judged.
It seems most natural to demand an equal distribution when several people are
sharing something held in common, as people may share a cake on a picnic. When food
was rationed in Britain during the second world war each was allowed the same quantity of
food. Even in that case the pursuit of equality was practicable only because most humans
have broadly similar food requirements. If humans varied in size as much as dogs do, it
would have been absurd to propose an equal distribution of food. Instead there would
probably have been something like an allocation of food in proportion to body mass. The
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word ‘same’ in that context might have been taken to indicate what might be referred to
loosely as ‘some sort of equality’ but it would have been less misleading to say just that
everyone would have been treated according to the same rule, a description that would
also apply to much that egalitarians find objectionable.
Moreover the picnic and the war are not typical cases. Most of life does not consist of
the division of common property amongst the common owners, and wartime rationing was
not primarily concerned to ensure equality, but to make sure that everyone had sufficient
food to survive; some food stuffs that were either plentiful, or judged not essential to
survival, were not rationed. For instance offal, fish and fresh fruit and vegetables were
never rationed, and bread was rationed only briefly and then only after the war had ended.
Race and Equality
The question of racial equality is particularly complicated because the central idea,
that of race, is obscure. It is doubtful if there are any such things as human races in any
sense of the word sufficiently definite to support any research programme into the
characteristics of a race. However, even though the central idea is obscure there is a
history of theorising about ‘race’ which has left a residue of pseudo-scientific
generalisations.
I start by reviewing the various notions brought together under the word ‘race’. The
relevant parts of the very long entry in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary are:
A group or set, esp. of people, having a common feature or features. e16.
A group of living things connected by common descent or origin.
A tribe, nation, or people, regarded as of common stock. l16.
Breeding; the production of offspring. e–m17.
The stock, class, family, etc. to which a living thing belongs; descent; kindred. m16.
Natural or inherited disposition. rare (Shakes.). Only in e17.
The fact or condition of belonging to a particular people, ethnic group, etc.; the
qualities or characteristics associated with this. l18.
Any of the major divisions of humankind, having in common distinct physical
features or ethnic background. l18.
race consciousness (emotional) awareness of racial differences between people or social groups;
the supposed intuitive awareness of the common heritage of a race or culture;
The issue of race becomes contentious when people try to combine these various
ideas into one, and claim that the superficial characteristics by which racial groups are
commonly distinguished are only the outer signs of fundamental differences in ability and
temperament. Those who have made that claim often go on to propose racial criteria for
admission to some social groups, possibly restricting the right to vote to members of what
are perceived to be ‘superior races. Even if there is no criterion sufficiently precise to
establish the race of every particular individual, it is still possible discriminate on the basis
of the various characteristics of superficial physical appearance, especially skin colour and
facial physiognomy which many people use to define supposed racial groups.
Human nature seems to contain an element of xenophobia, so that we are disposed
to divide humanity into ‘our lot’ and ‘the rest’, and such a distinction is all the easier if ‘our
lot’ have similar physical appearance and ‘some other lot’ all look markedly different from
us while closely resembling each other. Having determined what they consider to be
someone’s race in that way, people who use the concept are likely to apply to the
individuals characterised as belonging to a particular race numerous other attributes they
consider to be characteristics of that race. Some of those other characteristics may be
derived from folklore, like the supposed characteristics of Jews, and other supposed racial
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characteristics may be based on the observation of a just few individuals. Some may even
have some statistical basis, but whatever their origin they are likely to be applied
wholesale to anyone perceived to belong to the racial group in question. So people may
infer from someone’s skin colour and facial characteristics, that that person is stupid, lazy,
or untrustworthy. Note that even if there were statistical evidence that some characteristics
were more likely to apply to members of one group than to members of another, that would
not justify the inference that those characteristics actually did apply to any particular
member of the group. To act on the conclusion of such an inference is the paradigm case
of racial discrimination, and if acting in that way on the basis of an invalid inference were
all that was involved in racial discrimination it would be a simple error in logic so that the
matter would not present a serious intellectual problem, though persuading people not to
make such fallacious inferences might constitute a serious practical problem. The
complications arise because it has been proposed to extend the concept of racial
discrimination, or ‘racism’ as it is sometimes called, to apply to less blatant acts, some of
which may be quite unintentional. From the wish to outlaw racism even in such an
extended form, have developed proposals that amount to the pursuit of equality of
outcome.
People often discuss these matters in question begging terminology that assumes
the existence of different human races. As we have already observed, there are no such
things as human races, but only physical characteristics that have led some people to
believe in the existence of races. I therefore introduce the term ‘R-characteristic’ to refer to
such characteristics
Often accusations of racism are made on statistical grounds, by analysing some
social group - defined perhaps by occupation or income, and determining the proportions
of its members exhibiting the various R-characteristics. If it turns out those proportions are
not the same as in the population at large, the discrepancy is attributed to concealed or
‘institutional’ racism, even when is no evidence that R-characteristics were used to select
members of the social group. The assumption seems to be:
(1) R-characteristics are superficial and are indicative neither of suitability nor of
unsuitability for any occupation or status,
(2) nor are R-characteristics pointers to other characteristics that are indicative of
anything more substantial
from which it is inferred that
(3) A difference in achievement between different racial groups indicates that people
have in some way been selected on the basis of R-characteristics that have no bearing on
their suitability for any role in society.
In many cases the truth of a proposition of the form (3) can be demonstrated
independently of the statistics it is invoked to explain. However when there is no direct
evidence for (3) even when we look for it, some people postulate a concealed or
‘institutional’ racism. That throws great weight on assumption (2).
(2) appears to be a factual statement, and one might expect to test it by looking for
cases where R-characteristics are correlated with other more significant characteristics.
Possible evidence that might refute (2) would be the discovery that there are such
correlations, but people who make assumption (3) are committed to taking any apparent
correlation between R characteristics and ability or achievement as evidence of racial
discrimination. So to argue is to refuse to countenance any putative evidence that might
challenge (2) thus ruling out any investigation of the truth of that proposition. So although
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(2) appears to be factual, it is often so used that it is immune from refutation and therefore
without factual content.
For example suppose that we find that the proportion of musicians who belong to
some group A is significantly greater than the proportion of musicians in the population at
large. That might indeed be because:
(E1) those who select students for colleges of music chose A’s in preference to
other candidates just because they are A’s. But it might instead be because:
(E2) many A’s share a culture that sets great store by music with a higher than
average proportion of A households owning a musical instrument.
Suppose that investigation finds no evidence for either E1 or E2, we might then
consider that the statistics provided prima facie evidence for (E3): musical talent is more
common among A’s than in the population at large. So the factual content of (2) is that if A
is a group defined by R-characteristics, no hypothesis such as E3 will ever be required,
because there always will be an explanation like E1 or E2.
However if in every case where we cannot find an explanation of the form E1 or E2
we assert that there must be ‘institutional racism’ we reject any evidence that might refute
(2) and so make that proposition untestable.
(2) is often confused with:
(2A) there are no socially significant genetically determined differences between
different racial groups.
(2A) is a much weaker claim than (2), for even if (2A) were true (2) could be false. If
members of different perceived racial groups have grown up in different societies they may
have different types of education, and different cultural traditions. That might produce a
significant correlation between superficial R-characteristics and success in various
callings, even if there is no genetic basis for the correlation.
The R-characteristics often do denote common ancestry, or at least a common place
of origin. Thus within a society many of the people who share many R-characteristics may
have a common origin, and that may correlate with religion or other cultural traits.
Furthermore if the belief in race has caused a group of people to be treated differently on
account of their supposed race, that fact alone may have produced differences between
them and the rest of the community. People may tend to live near to, and spend their
leisure in the company of, people perceived to be of the same race. That may produce or
perpetuate differences in education and economic status between groups perceived as
belonging to different races. Differences that have arisen or been perpetuated because
people were perceived to be of different race may then be cited as evidence that they
actually are of different race. The differences in education that correlate with
R-characteristics may often be due to racism operating at some time in the past, but it
does not follow that the university that prefers the better educated student to the worse
educated is being racist now.
An example is the low educational attainment of many American Negroes, and
especially of Negro males. The phenomenon is particularly odd as many of the children in
question seem perform very well in the first few years at school, but do very badly in their
teens. It has been plausibly argued that is the result of a ‘yob’ culture among black
teenagers, who model themselves on prominent black sportsmen, or even gangsters, and
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despise and bully black boys who work hard at school. Many black parents, especially in
the USA, have tackled the problem with apparent success by removing their children from
state schools, sometimes setting up special independent schools for them and sometimes
teaching them at home. In Britain where most of the Negro population moved from the
Caribbean recently enough still to be in touch with relatives there, many Negro families
send their children to school in the Caribbean.
It is important to note that differences in attainment between what are perceived to be
different racial groups does not imply that those differences are genetically determined,
even though the physical characteristics by which racial groups are identified are
genetically determined. It follows that the absence of any genetically determined
differences does not imply that there are no significant differences in attainment. Factors
such as knowledge and the possession of skills are relevant to suitability for various kinds
of employment however they were obtained, and if two groups differ in such respects it is
not racial discrimination to appoint the better qualified in preference to the worse qualified,
whatever the origins of the difference between the two groups and whatever effect that
policy may have on the perceived racial composition of the work force.
Gender and Equality
In the case of gender there is no doubt about the distinction between the two sexes;
there are clear biological differences. The differences in the sex organs are tangible and
visible and only women can be pregnant, lactate, and have the hormonal changes that
impel mothers to prattle nonsense to their infants in the high pitched voices to which the
infant ear is most sensitive. Thus it is not even arguable, as it is in the case of race, that
the supposed differences are based on an untenable theory, or are cultural, or are just
statistical artefacts. Nor is it plausible to maintain that the differences are merely superficial
and have no bearing on a person’s place in society, for the differences in the sexes have a
clear bearing on the rearing of children and the selection of partners. I have never heard it
suggested that people should take no account of the other person’s gender when choosing
a partner.
There are many clear differences in the ways men and women are treated. Although
some are clearly related to the difference in sexual function, it is doubtful if all are. Most
clearly related to reproductive function is the fact that women wanting families choose men
as their mates, and men wanting families choose women, and that it is usually the mother
who takes the leading role in caring for a young child. Less clearly related to sexual
function is the fact that in most societies men preponderate in some professions and
women in others. In many societies the law treats men and women rather differently.
Although to some extent some of those differences in the lifestyles of the two sexes seem
to be connected with differences in biological function, some do seem to be primarily
socially determined by a tradition of assigning superior roles to men.
Both my parents were school teachers and I recall that until the mid 1950’s there
were separate salary scales for men and for women. A woman teacher was paid only 5/6
of the salary paid to a man of the same status and seniority. That difference was in no way
related to any difference in the teaching capacity of men and women, for different salaries
were paid to people judged competent to perform the same job.
The question arises how many other differences in the position of men and women
are like the difference in pay scales, and how many are like the choice of a mate.
Human mood and behaviour are greatly affected by hormone levels, and there are
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marked hormonal differences between men and women. There is some evidence that,
compared with men, women are better at interpreting non verbal evidence of another
person’s feelings, and better at attending to several things at once, while men may be
better at the deep analysis of a single intricate problem. Men may be generally more
competitive than women. Where two individuals differ in the same way that the generality
of women differ from the generality of men, that could well justify preferring one individual
to the other, leading to a preponderance of men in some jobs, and of women in others.
Such differences between the sexes may also explain why more women than men should
be attracted to some occupations, and more men than women to others.
Such differences in temperament would also explain why men appear more likely
than women to reach the most senior positions. That is often cited as evidence that gender
is a criterion for promotion but while that may often be true, it is not entailed by the
statistical differences between the achievements of the sexes. However, observed
statistical differences between men and women, whatever their origin, do not justify the
assumption that a particular man or a particular woman will each conform to the
stereotypes of their gender and differ in the expected way. I expect that such assumptions
are often made and are sometimes wrongly made. However the matter is much more
complicated than many people realise. Ambitious people passed over for promotion are
likely to seek some explanation complimentary to themselves rather than face the
possibility that someone else may be better qualified than themselves.
As well as differing in competitiveness, the sexes seem also to differ in attitudes to
partnership and to marriage. While there is doubtless a considerable variation among both
men and women the two genders seem to cluster about different means. Women’s interest
in partnership seems to be concentrated on reproduction, so they are anxious to secure a
mate and have a family. Men seem more interested in women as playmates, and much of
their social life is spent among groups of other men, possibly a relic of an instinct to hunt in
packs. I think that it may not be just a coincidence that abstract ideals such as nationality
and universal moral principles are almost entirely the product of male thought.
When I see young unmarried men and women together, both men and women show
a playful light hearted irresponsibility; they are children at play. When a couple marry each
marries a playmate, yet once a child arrives the woman changes, so that the man is
disconcerted to finds that his female playmate is a playmate no longer, but has changed
into an earnest mother, while the woman is disappointed that her partner is still the playful
young man she married.
It is a concession to the female interest that the traditional marriage is, at least
nominally, a lifetime commitment. In Europe, until recently dissolution of a marriage has
been either impossible or very hard, hard and extra-marital affairs have been forbidden to
those who are married. That is understandable when marriage is centred on rearing
children, and the traditional legal privileges accorded to the male might be held to balance
the bias of marriage towards the female. Yet recent insistence on equality of legal status
for men and women has not been linked to any compensating change in the status of
marriage, if anything marriage in Britain has changed even further in favour of the
woman’s point of view, making it easier for a woman to dispense with her man as anything
more than a source of money, so she can bring up their children with the father’s financial
support but without his participation.
Another respect in which public policy is influenced by a wish to pursue equality of
the sexes is the trend for replacing single sex schools by mixed schools. I recently (July
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2005) visited a secondary school to help at an event for the benefit of the primary school
children who are to join the school in the Autumn - I was helping to introduce them to Go. I
was struck be the advanced sexual development of many of the girls. Large busted eleven
year olds were not in evidence in my primary school days, and I reflected on the fact that
girls mature earlier than boys. The move towards mixed schools has been followed by
reports of a decline in the academic performance of boys relative to girls, and I can see a
way in which the two might be connected.
If girls adopt a more adult attitude than boys they may be more in tune with the
attitudes of teachers, especially but not necessarily exclusively with the attitudes of women
teachers. Boys may find the school atmosphere one of dreary respectability, in which they
and their boyish pranks are derided as childish, and may thus be discouraged from making
an effort.
When I was teaching in Further Education my college had a set of hand operated
calculating machines. They had been purchased just before my arrival by the head of the
Business Studies department who had the vague idea that they somehow represented the
future, and little use was made of them in everyday teaching, but it was customary to
demonstrate them to a variety of Business Studies and Mathematics classes within the
college, and sometimes to groups of visiting schoolchildren, usually from the fourth forms
of secondary schools, and therefore aged 14 or 15. It was I who usually conducted such
classes.
My usually approach was to start with five minutes of experimental play. I gave two
instructions, if you start turning the handle, complete the turn, don’t change direction half
way, and if the machine jams, don’t force it. Having given those warnings I asked them to
find out what they could about the machines.
The first few classes I introduced to the machines consisted mostly or entirely of
boys, who carried out their preliminary investigations with great enthusiasm. After a few
minutes they’d all have discovered how to use the machines to add, and most would also
have discovered how to subtract and do simple multiplication. At that point we paused for
a couple of minutes for me to review what they had discovered and explain how to
multiply efficiently, then after a few minutes there would be another pause for me to
explain division. By the end of the hour some even managed to represent negative
numbers.
But then I had a class of girls. When I invited them to experiment, they politely turned
the handle a few time and then fell silent, looking at me for further instructions, so I had to
teach them in quite a different way.
I’ve noticed a similar difference in attitudes to computers. There are those, usually
boys or young men, whose attitude is ‘how exciting, here’s a toy let’s see what I can make
it do’, and others, including most women and girls, but also some men, whose attitude is
‘here is a piece of equipment, will someone tell me how to do something useful with it’. It is
the those in the latter group who find it very hard to get their computers to do anything
useful, and the members of the former group who have to help them out..
Parents sometimes remark that even if they try to avoid giving boys exclusively ‘boys
toys’ and girls exclusively ‘girls toys’ it’s nearly always the girls who choose to play sedate
games with dolls, and boys who prefer rough games with toy guns.
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I’m not sure how far the difference is biological, and how far it is a the result of boys
and girls being brought up to behave in different way, but I guess there is a biological
factor, even if it is not the only factor.
It is especially hard to give a precise sense to a demand for ‘equality’ when it is
accompanied with a demand that the way someone is treated shall be appropriate to their
gender. If the equality demanded is that each shall be treated in accordance with his or her
gender, that does not obviously rule out the assignment of radically different social roles
to men and to women.
Although many people demand what they call ‘equality for people of different gender,
it is also common to hear people ask for special recognition that they are of one gender
rather than another. Such a demand attracts most attention when it is made by people
who consider that what they call their ‘real’ gender is not their biological gender, meaning
that their emotional patterns are those judged appropriate to the opposite gender. What
strikes me odd about such cases is the undertaking of surgery to produce the superficial
characteristics of the desired gender. The characteristic emotional patterns of men and
women are connected to their part in the reproductive process. Possibly it may one day be
possible to construct functioning ovaries and uterus for a man, and functioning gonads for
a woman, and that would really change gender, but until that can be done, there seems
little point in mimicking the secondary characteristics of the desired gender. Why can’t men
with womanly feelings, and women with masculine feelings, defy the stereotypes by
expressing those feelings in the body they have ? One does not need a penis to mix
cement, or a pair of tits to knit.
Although the desire for surgical gender change seems to me very odd, I do not think
that any reason for preventing people so inclined from undertaking it. However, in the
context of a health service financed by taxation, I think it should be classed as cosmetic
surgery and not paid for out of public funds.
The Dangerous Attractiveness of Egalitarianism
Much of the attraction of ‘equality’ is that it seems to promise a simple rule for
deciding how to order public affairs, a rule, moreover that should be immune to bias so
that rulers cannot twist it to their own advantage. ‘Equal shares’ seems attractive, not only
because it looks simple but because the same form of words is used to describe informal
rules that are used successfully in day to day affairs. However the appeal of ‘equality’
diminishes as we move away from simple cases of the division of common property
among its several owners to the complicated mesh of interactions between the members
of a modern state. If we try to apply equality to public affairs we have to choose what to
equalise, given that equality in some respects entails inequality in others. Politics inevitably
involves difficult choices between rival goods, and it only increases the difficulty if we try to
twist the discussion of ‘what ought we to do?’ into the restricting form ‘what shall we
equalize?’ Slogans such as ‘We are all born free and equal’ are attractive to people who
want to avoid having to think carefully about the complexity of human interactions. In trying
to take such a short cut by using a sort of axiomatic political theory, they are ignoring the
true basis of human society, which is that we are social animals with a natural propensity
to see things from another person’s point of view, and to feel sympathy for the difficulties
and sufferings of others. Without those human traits there would be no human society, no
matter how many slogans were recited about freedom and equality, and no matter how
many proofs were derived from supposed first principles. To try to tidy all the complexities
of life away into a sterile slogan is to deny our humanity, and it is not surprising that
‘Freedom and Equality’ is a slogan popular with revolutionaries and totalitarians, who often
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treat others with great cruelty.
The Platitudes of Politics
As I remarked earlier, living together in an organised political unit is a more
substantial undertaking than coexisting with others in a moral community, so one might
hope to deduce more rules of the form ‘any state must....’ than one can deduce rules of the
form ‘any morality must....’ MacIntyre said that any such attempt to produce a
‘transcendental deduction’ of aspects of politics or morality is pointless, because any rules
that any state must satisfy will in fact be satisfied by any state there is. But, although true
that does not make the exercise pointless, because people often propose to change the
social order in ways that have never been tried before, and if such a proposal threatened
to remove some feature essential to any state, it would be useful to know that before
making the attempt.
Since any state must make it possible for people to live harmoniously together, and
since that involves their living according to some moral code, we can infer something
about the requirements of a political system from the platitudes of morality. I outlined those
in chapter 8. At the very least any viable political system must make it possible for people
to live according to some moral code incorporating all the features we listed there. I think
we may actually go further than that and conclude that at least some moral rules, though
by no means all, must be not just tolerated but actually enforced. In particular I think any
state must enforce some rules protecting people from injury and from being killed. That
involves not only restraining people from injuring their fellow citizens, but also protecting
them from citizens of other states, so there must be some arrangements for defence, and
also for diplomacy if we wish to avoid the expense of frequent military conflict.
Promise keeping is an essential part of any morality. While the state need not enforce
every promise, it needs to define a subset that constitute enforceable contracts and to
have some method of enforcing those. It would also need some way of dealing with
disputes between citizens, almost certainly a court system of some kind.
It is very hard to envisage a society without an institution of property. Although many
states do not allow people to own land or capital assets, all seem to use money, and to
allow people to own whatever money they have earned, as well as their clothes, and items
of food they have bought to prepare the next meal and the means of cooking and eating
that food. People’s possession of such property as they have, would have to be defended
by any state.
On the other hand, moral rules requiring people to be polite and generous might well
not be enforced; the attempt to enforce them could be counterproductive in engendering
disputes about whether or not a particular person has been polite or generous, which is a
matter about which individual perceptions vary widely.
A state needs also some rule for deciding who is a citizen, and rules about the
treatment of those incapable of discharging the duties of citizenship: both children who are
too young to do so, and those of any age who are mentally unfit. Those incapable of being
citizens will usually require supervision, and there must be rules specifying who the
supervisors are and precisely what duties they have.
A technologically developed state will need some sort of rules governing transport. At
least it would need specified rights of way that people may use to travel about the territory
over which the state has jurisdiction..
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It would be hard for a state to do all those things without some resources, so it would
need some ways of obtaining them, by selling some services, by levying taxes, or by
conscripting people to work in the public service.
The Family
Any political system has to recognise that people belong to families, but how much it
actually needs to say about them is another matter. I shall therefore consider how much of
family law is platitude, and how much an optional extra.
The human family is based partly on the human instinct to care for children - on the
mother’s instinct to suckle her infant and caress it, and on the father’s instinct to protect his
mate and her child and to forage for food for them. From those instincts must have
developed the various social customs by which men and women are paired off, either for
life, or at least for a considerable part of their adult lives following their first mating. It has
become customary for such unions to be made even where there are no children and to
continue even after the children, if any, have grown up and no longer need care.
Unlike other animals, humans have developed a language in which they can describe
their customs and record their own history. That makes it possible to review customs and
institutions that may have grown up without the help of conscious intention on anyone’s
part. We may also review our instincts, and while we cannot erase them, we may
sometimes decide to try to exercise a measure of control, so that when they lead to
destructive actions we can discipline ourselves to mitigate the rigour of our instinctive
actions, and try to avoid situations that will trigger unwelcome instinctive responses.
In the case of marriage that process of review has in the English speaking world
recently become rather lopsided. Marriage is treated mainly as if it were a partnership
between two people. However it is only childless marriages that involve only two people
and they could perfectly well be treated as contracts between the two partners, subject to
whatever rules those partners might agree to. So far as those unions are concerned there
is no need for any specific matrimonial law over and above the general law of contract. It
might simplify the matter for many people if a standard contract, or small selection of
standard contracts were available, but even that would not require government
intervention, since lawyers, and religious bodies could draw up specimen contracts to help
their clients or guide their flocks.
It is quite another matter if there are children. The institution of marriage developed
out of unions that produced children, and it is the presence of children that constitutes the
case for having a system of matrimonial law. Under the guidance of instinct, the parents of
primitive man cared for the children they produced, and the simplest way of dealing with
children seems to be to require that their parents care for them, or, if their parents can’t or
won’t, then to establish a mechanism for finding substitute parents as soon as possible - in
other words arrange for unwanted or neglected children to be adopted by people who want
children.
It is best that both parents co-operate in bringing up their children. Sometimes the
death of one parent makes that impossible, but very often parents separate while a child is
young; I do not think we should underestimate how unfortunate that is for the child.
Children learn how to behave and how to live mainly by observing how adults behave
and live, and especially by observing their parents. Two aspects of life they need to
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understand, are the parental roles in caring for children, and the need for us to earn a
living. In a family with two parents, those parents between them can usually discharge
both functions, but in a single parent family that is extremely difficult. A working single
parent needs to delegate the care of children, especially of small children, to friends,
relatives or professional ‘carers’, and a single parent who decides not to work to have time
to bring up the children and depends on state benefit payments, is likely to bring up
children who do not experience the link between work and survival and believe that one
survives by getting money from someone else - the impersonal ‘they’ or ‘society’.
Taking a pragmatic attitude to marriage and starting from where we are in Britain in
the early twenty-first century, we have an institution of marriage centred on the union of a
man and a woman. Other societies have managed with substantially different
arrangements, so our model of marriage cannot be one of the platitudes of politics. That
implies that it is indefensible to reject out of hand any changes that might be proposed to
the institution, but does not imply that wholesale changes should be introduced at
headlong speed, for the need for stability in society and moderation in change is one of
the platitudes of politics.
Returning to the original question, as to what is essential to any political system, I
think there must be some sort of rule concerning the responsibilities of partners who have
children. Because simple rules are easier to apply than complicated ones, and because
most unions of man and woman do produce children, it is usual to have rules governing all
unions, but while the extension of regulation to childless couples may be simple and
convenient, it does not seem to me to be an essential part of any political system.
Beyond The Platitudes
On their own the platitudes do not describe a complete political system, even a
minimal system. Most of the platitudes are only items on the agenda, indicating that any
political system must say something or other on the topic in question - must have some
restrictions on the killing or injuring of other people, must recognise some sort of property,
and must under some circumstances enforce the keeping of some promises. Only when
the details are filled in will there be any political theory at all. So any political theory must at
least amplify the platitudes.
Most political systems go well beyond even amplified platitudes. In doing so they go
beyond what can be established by any valid general argument, but that does not imply
that there will never be scope for any argument at all. Often there will be in a society a
strong consensus in favour of some rules of behaviour. Very often those will be rules
enjoined by a religion, or they may be widely admired customs. While there is such a
consensus, its component beliefs and principles may be the starting point of arguments
that will be compelling to all who accept the consensus.
Even if there is no consensus embracing the great majority of the population,
determined rulers could conceivably try to enforce any rules of behaviour they found
congenial provided they had the support of sufficient of the citizens to make enforcement
practicable. While there is sufficient support for the established rules they can be
maintained, and if challenged by individuals they can be defended by the argument that
‘that is the way we do things here and if you want to belong to this society you’ll have to
conform’ On the other hand, if no stronger argument is available, such a system would be
fragile in the sense that if the rulers’ power base should ever start to disintegrate, no
intellectual argument such as an appeal to the self interest of the population at large,
would be available to persuade people to continue to follow the established rules, and yet
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there might be no consensus for an alternative political system either. The risk of disorder
in such circumstances is a cogent reason for autocratic rulers to be cautious, and for
others to be cautious of provoking disorder, but while the autocrats have the power to do
as they choose, no argument, and no appeal to ‘fundamental rights’ or ‘natural justice’ can
stop them.
In so far as a political system and its rules go beyond the platitudes, it is
fundamentally a matter of power, the power one group or another may have to enforce
the preferences of its members on the other citizens. The size of a group will have a
bearing on its power, but majority support is in practice neither necessary nor sufficient for
a set of preferences to be dominant. If there is a group of people united in support for a
particular way of doing things, with the power and resolution to enforce their preferences
they are likely to have their way, and there will be no intellectual way of proving them
wrong. If members of a dominant group try to deduce the rules they favour from the nature
of the cosmos, or otherwise present their position as substantially different from a group of
powerful people ordering other people about because they can, there will indeed be valid
counter arguments, but it cannot be guaranteed that the deploying of such arguments will
affect the political position. Such arguments can be effective only if they either undermine
the resolution of the rulers, or else unite the ruled in opposition; otherwise argument is no
match for power in the hands of resolute rulers.
The exposition of any political principles that go beyond the platitudes is a matter of
preference, not of knowledge and has strictly speaking no place in this document, though I
have allowed myself the indulgence of a number of obiter dicta, notably that about
marriage and partnership, and am collecting a higgledy piggledy collection of ill
co-ordinated observations in another document.
Karl Mannheim(1893-1947) argued that people’s opinions on social and political
matters are best seen against the background of their social circumstances.
In Ideology and Utopia he argued that political controversy consists of a series of
engagements between the supporters of change and the defenders of the status quo.
Corresponding to the two sides in such disputes are two sorts of social theory. Those who
demand change, who are represented by their opponents as utopian, and those who
defend the status quo, represented by their opponents as ideological. My comments are
based exclusively on my reading of Ideology and Utopia.
Mannheim seems to assume that change of some sort will always be required, and
so considers that ideology always falsifies. Utopianism, on the other hands, falsifies only
when it advocates the wrong change. He assumes that we shall always be able to identify
the right change eventually, if only with the wisdom of hindsight after the event.
I think he oversimplifies, by failing to distinguish piecemeal change to correct
perceived weaknesses in the existing system, from wholesale change designed to replace
one order of society by another. It is only the latter that would commonly be called
‘utopian’.
Much of Mannheim’s writing is extremely obscure, abounding in obscurely worded
generalisations, with very few examples. Particularly confusing is his proposal to replace
traditional epistemology with a ‘sociology of knowledge’ according to which questions of
truth and falsehood cannot be settled independently of the social circumstances in which
they arise. I do not think much is to be learnt from Mannheim about politics and society,
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and discuss his writing mainly illustrate the strange thought processes sometimes found
among sociologists and to show that it is possible for writing that has little definite to say
still to attract considerable admiration from people who like the tone in which it is said.
The following quotations shows his style at its worst.
“Furthermore, the remoteness from space and time of what is merely rationally correct and
valid, is, in a certain sense, more likely to lead to the outside realm beyond experience than could
be hoped for through these utopian dreams which are laden with the corporeal content of the world
as it is. (Ideology and Utopia p. 197)
“”Whenever the utopia disappears, history ceases to be a process leading to an ultimate end.
The frame of reference according to which we evaluate facts vanishes and we are left with a series
of events all equal as far as their inner significance is concerned. The concept of historical time
which has led to qualitatively different epochs disappears, and history becomes more and more like
undifferentiated space.” (op. cit. pp 227-228)
Mannheim was clearly well thought of in the 1930’s, first holding a chair at Frankfurt,
and then obtaining a teaching post at the London School of Economics. Routledge made
him editor of their ‘International Library of Sociology’, and the note on the inside cover of
the 1960 paperback edition of Ideology and Utopia says
“A great sociologist here analyses brilliantly the shifting social and ideological currents of our
time in a book essential to clear understanding and judgement of the contemporary world”
Mannheim believed that a person’s view of social matters and political issues is
determined by his place in society. To asses a political theory we need to look beyond the
reasons propounded by its supporters to its roots in their social position. Unlike some other
exponents of that thesis, notably the Marxists, he thought it applied to all points of view,
not just those he disagreed with. He observed that, although Marxists may have pioneered
such a method of criticism, their opponents eventually turned it against them too, and the
various political theories have been discredited as the proponents of each have
represented them as merely reflecting the position and interest of their supports. However
he thought it possible to avoid complete relativism, in which nothing is unconditionally true.
He proposed instead what he called ‘relationism’, according to which one takes into
account all the social factors influencing ones own opinions, as well as the factors
influencing other people. He seemed to think that intellectuals at least might be able in this
way to transcend the constrains of their social background. That would be easiest for
intellectuals because they have in a sense two backgrounds, the background of family and
neighbours in which they grew up, and the adopted background of teachers colleagues
and students which they later join. Among intellectuals it is possible for people from
different backgrounds to compare their diverse political outlooks. (P 138)
Manheim attached great importance to education, by which he meant formal
education in some sort of educational institution and which he seems to have regarded as
a process in which the pupil is the passive recipient of knowledge.
Mannheim offered little justification for his analysis, except for a few anecdotes,
indicated no method of testing his hypotheses and seemed to regard it as self evident that
political opinions will be determined by social circumstances. That does not seem self
evident to me.
There is indeed likely to be a strong correlation between a person’s beliefs and those
generally accepted in his society, and especially among his family, friends and associates.
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We tend to accept what we are brought up to believe until presented with a strong reason
to question that. However that correlation falls far short of determinism, and society is as
likely to be shaped by ideas, as ideas are to be shaped by society.
Mannheim conceded that there may be some people whose ideas are not
appropriate to their society, but dismisses such folk as victims of ‘false consciousness’
(quotation) thus adopting a policy of rejecting in advance any exception that might be
produced as falsifying his theory.
His example of false consciousness was the condemnation of usury on religious
grounds. Mannheim seemed to confuse usury with any practice of charging interest on a
loan. I understand that usury is strictly speaking the charging of interest on interest, while
Mannheim was discussing the objection to the charging of interest under any
circumstances.
Mannheim thought that the objection to interest involved applying to a complicated
commercial society standards appropriate only to a simple tribal society. He thought there
would be no need for interest in the tribal society as every member of the tribe would know
every other member. Interest, he argued, is needed only in a society where there are
frequent transactions between people who do no know each other very well. Hence to
reject the charging of interest in a developed commercial society is a sign of a failure to
understand the nature of the society one lives in.
Even in a primitive society, the paying of interest would not be pointless, as someone
who lends something loses the use of that commodity until the debt is repaid, and might
hope for some sort of compensations. I do not know whether there is any evidence of any
primitive society in which such compensation was paid.
I think that Mannheim is correct in thinking that in a modern commercial society many
people who reject interest are oversimplifying, but I do not think that need be true in all
cases. Someone might recognise the convenience of interest, and the part interest bearing
loans play in our society, and yet still be prepared to forgo those advantages in order to
achieve something they consider more important, such as avoiding people contracting
heavy debts they can’t pay, or following a divine commandment.
Mannheim does not consider that, or any other counter-argument, so we can do no
more than speculate how he might have replied. Possibly he’d have argued that religion
itself is inappropriate to a developed society. However that would be question begging,
since the doctrines of transcendental theology purport to apply to any state of any society,
so that they apply to every society if true, and to none if false.. They cannot apply just now
and again The only way a religious belief can become out of date is if, while never true, it
was once in some respect convenient that people should believe it, but that has ceased to
be the case. However such an analysis begs the question against the believer.
There are two ways in which an individual’s beliefs might be influenced by his social
circumstances. (1) he might tend to adopt the beliefs prevalent in his social circle (2) the
beliefs prevalent in society might themselves be directly influenced by the structure and
organisation of society. So far as I can tell from the few examples Manheim provides, his
evidence at best supports just (1), and although he writes of beliefs being ‘determined’ his
evidence supports nothing stronger than ‘influenced’.
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Left Wing and Right Wing
I conclude this chapter with a comment on popular terminology.
The terms ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ are frequently used, but rarely given precise
definitions.
The terminology dates from the seating arrangements in the French Estates General
convened in 1789. The nobility sat to the King’s right, and the representatives of the Third
Estate sat to his left. Hence ‘left’ came to be associated with change and reform, and ‘right’
with maintenance of the status quo.
However ‘right wing’ has often been used of movements that are not at all
conservative, notably of Fascists and Nazis who, even though they may have expressed
nostalgia for past glories, were utopians wanting to reconstruct society, not to maintain the
status quo.
It seems to have taken a long time for the terms to come into general use. The
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary suggests that ‘right’ was first used to mean ‘the party or
parties of conservative principles’ only in 1887 and ‘left wing’ was first used in a political
sense only in 1922.
There is also a tendency to apply ‘right wing’ to opinions commonly held by, or
favouring the interests of, people of high status, and ‘left’ for opinions similarly congenial to
those of low social status.
I think that today it is ‘left wing’ that ‘wears the trousers’ as J. L. Austin might have
said. Of the two terms it is ‘left’ that is the least vague, and ‘right’ has come to be used of
any opposition to what is currently regarded as ‘left’.
The self styled ‘left’ is usually concerned with property, poverty and inequality, and a
preference for communal undertakings rather than individual enterprise. Those who call
themselves ‘left wing’ typically prefer that there should be a collective decision how we
would like things to be, put into effect by a plan for society and the economy, that involves
a good many enterprises, especially service industries, being either run by, or closely
controlled by, government. The state of society that the left winger hopes to bring about is
usually one in which few people are poor and inequalities of wealth are diminished and in
which almost everyone is an employee of some organisation. Quite often there is also a
mistrust of the family expressed in a wish to involve agents of the state in education, child
care and health.
H. J. Eysenck, in Sense and Nonsense in Psychology (Penguin 1957) suggested that
political attitudes cannot be represented on a linear scale because they arise from a
combination of two quite different factors. On the one hand there is an acquired attitude to
public affairs, which Eysenck referred to as the opposition between radical and
conservative, on the other hand a matter of temperament, the opposition between the
tough minded and the tender minded, terms he borrowed from William James, who
introduced them in the course of a discussion of attitudes to religious belief in Pragmatism:
A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking [1907],
“I will write these traits down in two columns. I think you will practically recognize the two types of
mental make-up that I mean if I head the columns by the titles 'tender-minded' and 'tough-minded'
respectively.
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TENDER-MINDED
rationalistic (going by principles)
intellectualistic
idealistic
optimistic
religious
free-willist
monistic
dogmatical
TOUGH-MINDED
empiricist (going by facts)
sensationalistic
materialistic
pessimistic
irreligious
fatalistic,
pluralistic
skeptical”
Eysenck thought that the tender minded are the easily conditioned introverted people
who are disposed to conform to social conventions and customs, while the tough minded
are those more extroverted and individualistic people who resist conditioning and tend to
be non-conformist. He suggested that the political dispositions of individuals should be
compared by representing them by points in a two dimensional space, with one axis
representing radicalism or conservatism, and the other, at right angles to the first,
representing the opposition between tough mindedness and tender mindedness.
Although more sophisticated than the distinctions drawn in everyday conversation,
Eysenck’s analysis still oversimplifies. In determining an individual’s score on the
radical/conservative axis Eysenck relied heavily on attitudes to property, treating a
preference for economic individualism as a conservative trait, and a preference for state
enterprises as radical, yet economic individualism was pioneered by radicals who
objected, amongst other things, to state regulation of industry. Perhaps that is just a
reflection of an ambiguity in the concept of ‘radical’. Radicals were originally identified by
their opposition to the power and privileges of the monarchs and aristocrats of eighteenth
century Europe., but after the lapse of several hundred years we are sometimes unsure
whether to attach the word ‘liberal’ and ‘radical’ to the policies advocated by those original
radicals, or whether to apply the terms to today’ rebels, who are often opposing the
principles of yesterdays rebels.
Part of the problem of the ‘left-right’ distinction is that it confounds two different kinds
of distinction. On the one hand there is a distinction of style, when left wing as the faction
supporting change, is opposed to right wing as the faction supporting the status quo. On
the other hand there is a distinction of content, what sort of society people want to see,
where an egalitarian, planned society with a powerful high spending government is
opposed to the so called right wing alternatives of anything else.
If a political group that seeks to bring about change is successful, many of its
members may thereafter want to preserve that change, so they will become right wing in
style, even if not in the nature of the society they wish to conserve. I understand that in the
Balkan states in the early decades of the twentieth century there were powerful peasant
parties formed to enable tenant farmers to become owners of the land they farmed. While
they were demanding land reform those parties tended to behave according to a left wing
stereotype, but once the reform was achieved they became conservative.
Of course some of those who bring about change will, if successful, be dissatisfied
with what they have done and seek yet further change. The legions of the left contain a
good many wreckers who enjoy destruction for its own sake and whose professed concern
for the poor and for the public good is either hypocrisy or self deception, perhaps because
they want power yet lack the talents necessary to obtain economic power by producing
and selling goods or services that people actually want. Those are the ones who will
never be content with any changes their efforts may actually bring about but will always
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continue to clamour for more.
Terms such as ‘left-wing’ or ‘right-wing’ will never do justice to the complexity of any
individual’s opinions, , and even a more sophisticated analysis such as Eysenck’s will be a
gross oversimplification, but the latter might be useful in a statistical survey of a large
population
However there are some people who enthusiastically embrace the titles ‘left’ or ‘right’,
and nowadays those who like to declare themselves as ‘left wing’ are the most numerous.
There does seem to be a fundamental difference of outlook between people who call
themselves ‘left’ and those who prefer the label ‘right’. I shall briefly examine some traits of
those who embrace the labels ‘left’ or ‘right’ and conform closely to the stereotypes
associated with those terms. Bear in mind that such people constitute only a minority of
the humankind.
Those who think of themselves as of the right tend to be generally content with the
present state of affairs and the established ways of doing things. Their ambitions are non
political; they want to do things within the system. They see no need to spend a great deal
of time and effort subjecting our traditions to a minute critical scrutiny, as a preliminary to
inventing new ways of doing things. The most committed right wingers seem too inflexible
to cope with any new ideas, often mistrusting scientific theories that seem to conflict with
the sort of Aristotelian ‘common sense that informs a pre-scientific world view. Thus any,
or even all of relativity, the quantum theory and the theory of evolution are likely to be
suspect, and any change in moral standards or social conditions resisted with a
determination quite disproportionate to any possible disadvantage. A resistance to
anything unfamiliar easily develops into xenophobia.
On the other hand the self styled partisans of partisans of the left tend to be restless
people, usually discontented and ever anxious for change, using the supposed injustices
of the social system as an excuse for not settling down to do anything useful, so they are
the ones most likely to spend a lot of time examining and discussing social issues and thus
to become ‘intellectuals’. They are more likely to study subjects of dubious intellectual
status, such as the ‘social sciences’, or train as professional fomenters of discontent by
studying law, than to study natural sciences, medicine or engineering. Although the right
includes many intelligent people, they are less likely than those of the left to become
political theorists, or to indulge in abstract arguments about basic principles.
I am describing extreme cases here, but those on the extremes are often more vocal
than those occupying intermediate positions, and extremists are prone to identify those
who disagree with them as partisans of the opposite extreme. Many people take up a
public position that they think will be popular with their peers, and may in speech be much
more extreme in one direction or the other than dispassionate thought would dictate.
Viewed from either extreme mankind appears to be divided into the enlightened few
and the deluded many; the latter liable to be mislead by the ideologues of the opposite
extreme. Most of us have a little of each in our intellectual make up. I can certainly
recognise some of the left winger and some of the right winger in myself.
It is common to hear vocal self-styled ‘left wingers’ speak of themselves as an
intellectual elite, presupposing that those who think otherwise must be either ignorant or
stupid, or else obstinately deny the truth to serve ulterior motives. Left wingers also
consider themselves to be generous folk, concerned to help the poor, and suspect their
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opponents of being mean people who want to hold on to their property. Where right wing
hostility to the unfamiliar takes the form of xenophobia, that is seen as a gambit to deflect
the rage of the poor from their real oppressors.
From the extreme right, left wingers appear to restless people, misfits who always
want change because they are temperamentally incapability of fitting in with any social
system. Their claim to be generous is self deception. To be generous is to help others out
of one’s own resources, whereas left wingers usually propose to finance their philanthropy
with other people’s money. A high proportion of left wing intellectuals are academics. Many
of them teach subjects of low economic value, so that their posts depend on government
grants. They therefore have a personal interest in a style of government that devotes a
good deal of public revenue to financing educational institutions. Such is the power of self
deception that most easily persuade themselves to embrace an ideology that favours
government support for their favoured lifestyle. Humans are inclined to be selfish, jealous
of the possessions and achievements of others, disinclined to make provision for the
future, and given to self righteous denunciation of the supposed misdeeds of others. I
guess that the first three are at least partly genetically determined, but that the
self-righteousness is a learnt behaviour pattern derived from a selfish transformation of the
moral standards that are supposed to check the first three vices. However, whatever the
explanation, that is what we are like. The success of socialism is that it allows its followers
simultaneously to indulge all four vices, while telling themselves and each other that they
are acting with selfless devotion to justice; a masterstroke of wishful thinking.
There is quite a lot to be said for both the Left wing and the right wing view of their
opponents, insofar as it applies to extreme cases, but both groups of zealots treat all their
opponents as belonging to the opposite extreme, including those, like myself, who reject
both extremes.
Although I do not conform either to the stereotype of the left’ or to that of the ‘right’, I
find self consciously left wing talk peculiarly irritating in a way that right wing talk is not. I
suspect that is because today left wingers talk a lot more and assert their supposed
intellectual superiority more aggressively, treating thoughtful critics of their position as if
they were partisans of the extreme right and ignoring their arguments. Partisans of the
extreme right either talk less, or talk in places where I don’t hear them. I find in left wing
talk a peculiarly irritating combination of pomposity, arrogance, pretension and intellectual
ineptitude. The mechanism of their self deception is probably this: left wing intellectuals
are usually interested in ideas, while most people of whatever political orientation are
usually not, and from the point of view of one interested in ideas one who is not will appear
ignorant, at least of any ideas beyond what applies to their everyday lives. Although most
of those whose sympathies are with the left are no more intellectuals than the rank and file
of the right, they are likely to quote the words of left wing intellectuals, who may be too
flattered by that to notice that their followers are no more at home with ideas than the often
derided partisans of ‘the right.’
Yet given the self righteous pomposity, self satisfied arrogance, and complacent
ignorance of other points of view, that is often noticeable in self styled left wing thinkers it
is surprising how little there is in their ideas to justify their complacency. Left wing
ideologies usually start with assumptions that are obviously false, such as the existence of
‘natural rights’, of a ‘social contract’, or of a ‘natural’ state of primitive innocence, and it is
only by constructing a complicated apparatus of bogus theory that they can conceal the
absurdity of those assumptions; left wingers need their intellectuals to conceal their
intellectual poverty. On the other hand conservative thinkers who follow Burke in seeing
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our nation and its customs as an inheritance at least start from propositions that are true.
While the champions of the left fall before the race begins, their moderate opponents at
least manage to start on their feet.
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