what ought to be a person's relationship to society? The subject seeks
the application of ethical concepts to the social sphere and thus
deals with the variety of forms of government and social existence
that people could live in – and in so doing, it also provides a
standard by which to analyze and judge existing institutions and
relationships.
Although the two are intimately linked by a range of philosophical
issues and methods, political philosophy can be distinguished from
political science. Political science predominantly deals with existing
states of affairs, and insofar as it is possible to be amoral in its
descriptions, it seeks a positive analysis of social affairs – for
example, constitutional issues, voting behavior, the balance of power,
the effect of judicial review, and so forth Political philosophy
generates visions of the good social life: of what ought to be the
ruling set of values and institutions that combine men and women
together. The subject matter is broad and connects readily with
various branches and sub-disciplines of philosophy including the
philosophies of law and of economics. This introduction skims the most
relevant theories that the student of political philosophy is likely
to encounter. The article covers Liberalism, Conservativism,
Socialism, Anarchism, and Environmentalism.
1. Ethical Foundations
Political philosophy has its beginnings in ethics: in questions such
as what kind of life is the good life for human beings. Since people
are by nature sociable – there being few proper anchorites who turn
from society to live alone – the question follows as to what kind of
life is proper for a person amongst people. The philosophical
discourses concerning politics thus develop, broaden and flow from
their ethical underpinnings.
To take a few examples: the ethical utilitarian claims that the good
is characterized by seeking (that is, attempting to bring about) the
greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.
Accordingly, in the political realm, the utilitarian will support the
erection of those institutions whose purpose is to secure the greatest
happiness for the greatest number. In contrast, an ethical
deontologist, who claims that the highest good is served by our
application of duties (to the right or to others), will acknowledge
the justification of those institutions that best serve the employment
of duties. This is a recognizable stance that merges with human rights
theorists' emphasis on the role of rights (to or from actions and/or
things). In turn an ethical relativist will advocate a plurality of
institutions (within a nation or around the world), whereas an ethical
objectivist will condemn those that are seen to be lacking a
universally morally proper purpose (for example, those that support
certain inalienable rights).
As ethics is also underpinned by metaphysical and epistemological
theories, so too can political philosophy be related to such
underlying theories: theorizing on the nature of reality and of how we
know things logically relates to how we do things and how we interact
with others. The greatest and most persistent ethical-political issue
that divides philosophers into a host of schools of thought is that
concerning the status of the individual: the ethical 'person'.
Although the variety and subtleties of this area of thought cannot be
examined here, suffice it to say that philosophers divide between
those who deem the individual person as sacrosanct (that is, ethically
and thus politically so) and those who consider the individual to be a
member of a group (and accordingly for whom the group takes on a
sacred status). Others consider political institutions to be sacred in
their own right but this is hardly a tenable position: if humanity did
not exist such institutions would be meaningless and hence can only
gain their meaning from our existence. The key question that divides
political philosophers returns to whether it is the group or the
individual that should be the political unit of analysis.
The language used by the opposing thinkers to describe the political
primacy of their entity (that is, individual or group) alters
throughout history depending on other competing or complementing
concepts; but today the division is best characterized by the "rights
of the individual" versus the "rights of the group." Other appropriate
terms include: the dignity of the individual; the duties and
obligations owing to the group; the autonomy or self-determination of
the group or individual – and these in turn resolve into particular
and applied issues concerning the role of cultural, racial, religious,
and sexual orientations. In political theory courses, the debate
proceeds today between communitarians and liberals who debate the
middle ground of rights and obligations as they stretch between groups
and individuals.
This caricature of extremes enables us to consider the differences and
the points of agreement between the several schools of political
philosophy in a better light. But as with generalizations made of
historical events, the details are much more complicated and subtle.
This is because the application of philosophy in the political realm
necessarily deals with social institutions, and since people are
sociable – indeed could hardly be said to be human if we possessed no
society or culture – both extremes must examine and evaluate the
social-ethical realms of selfhood, friendship, family, property,
exchange, money (that is, indirect exchange), community, tribe, race,
association, and the state (and its various branches) – and
accordingly the individual's relationship with each.
2. Methodological Issues
In pursuing a philosophical examination of political activity,
philosophers also divide between those who are methodological
individualists and those who are methodological holists.
Methodological individualists seek to explain social actions and
behavior in terms of individual action – and politically are known as
individualists, whereas holists seek to explain behavior by
considering the nature of the group. The bifurcation results from a
metaphysical division on the appropriate unit of study. In contrast to
methodological individualists, who claim that a society (or culture,
people, nation) is no more than the sum of its living members, holists
argue that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, which in
the political realm is translated into the state being greater than
the citizenry, or the race, folk, or people being greater than the
individual; politically, holism translates into the general theory
known as "collectivism," and all collectivist theories deny or lessen
the value and authority of the individual in relation to the higher
status accorded a collective entity. Methodological individualism
translates into political individualism, in which the individual's
cultural or group membership is either rejected completely as not
worthy of study or its causal or scientific relationship is deemed too
amorphous or pluralistic and changing to provide anything by
qualitative assessments of social affairs.
Simmering in the background, it must also be noted, are
theological-political philosophies that deny any primacy to the
individual or to the group in favor of the supreme status of the
divine realm. Yet these too must also split between individualist and
holist conceptions of the individual (or of the soul) and for our
purposes here can be said to follow the same dialogue as secular
oriented political philosophers. Once theologians admit to having to
have some kind of government or rule for the living on earth, the
general debate of political philosophy can be admitted and expounded
upon to define the good life for people amongst people.
A second important methodological issue that relates both to
epistemology as well as to ethics is the role that reason plays in
social affairs. The extreme positions may be characterized as
rationalism and irrationalism, but the descriptions are not
necessarily logical opposites. A rationalist may declare his belief in
rationalism to be ultimately irrational (for example, Karl Popper),
and an irrationalist may act rationally.
Political rationalism emphasizes the employment of reason in social
affairs: that is, individuals ought to submit to the logic and
universality of reason rather than their own subjective or cultural
preconceptions. Rationalists argue that reason unifies humanity
politically and hence is a conducive vehicle to peace. Irrationalists,
on the other hand, downplay the efficacy of reason in our human
affairs or more particularly in our social affairs. In turn, a broad
range of alternatives are put forward in reason's stead: emotions;
cultural, religious, or class expectations; atavistic symbols; or
mystical forms of intuition or knowledge. Irrationalists of all hues
can also criticize rationalists for ignoring the subtle wisdom of
intellectual and social heritage that often lies beneath contemporary
society or which is deemed necessary for the reasoning mind;
politically, they consider the demands of reason to be
rationalizations of a particular culture (usually the criticism is
leveled against the West) rather than demands that are universal or
universalizable claiming that political solutions that appear rational
to one group cannot necessarily be translated as solutions for another
group.
Some irrationalists uphold polylogism – the theory that there are (or
ought to be) more than one form of logic, which ultimately collapses
into an epistemological subjectivism. That is, tribal logic is
predicated on the separateness or distinctiveness of particular
groups' logic or methods of discourse and thinking. However, other
irrationalists deny that the human mind develops alternative logics
around the world, but that human action does develop alternative
methods of living in different places and from different historical
circumstances. Politically this stance translates into conservativism,
a philosophical stance that is skeptical of rationalist designs (say
to overthrow all political institutions so as to begin 'afresh'
according to some utopian blueprint) and which emphasizes the
continuity of wisdom – as contained in institutions and the language
of politics – over the generations and in specific localities.
To return to the epistemological problems facing holism, the existence
of overlapping loyalties that often characterize groups presents a
strong criticism against collectivist doctrines: which group ought to
be the subject of analysis when an individual belongs to more than one
sociological entity? (Marx, for instance, based his philosophy on
class analysis but did not give any precision to the term 'class'.) If
an epistemological relativism is permitted, say in the field of logic
("European logic is different from American"), further analysis must
permit more particular gradations ("German logic is different from
French logic" and "Bavarian logic is different from Schleswig-Holstein
logic") until one reaches the final thinking agent – the individual
("Franz's logic is different from Katja's"). The rationalist aspires
to avoid such fractional implications of polylogism by maintaining the
unity of human logic. Yet, if the rationalist is also an
individualist, the paradox arises that individuals are united into the
collective whole of rational beings (all individuals share reason),
whereas irrationalism collapses into a plurality of individualistic
epistemologies (all groups are ultimately composed of subjectivists).
Nonetheless, between individualists (who emphasize the sacred status
of the individual) and collectivists (who emphasize the sacred status
of the group) exist a panoply of schools of thought that derive their
impetus from the philosophical shades – the gray overlapping areas,
which are today found in the perpetual disputes between individualists
and communitarians.
3. Political Schools of Thought
Having illuminated some of the extremes that characterize political
philosophy with regards to method and terminology, the major schools
of thought can be introduced. What will be noted is not just to which
end of the methodological spectrum the school leans, but also its
implied connections to ethics. Similarly, other aspects need to be
elucidated: does the school emphasize the primacy of reason in social
affairs, or does it underplay the role of reason in political affairs
in favor of the forces of history, heritage, emotional or tribal
predispositions?
a. Liberalism
The term "liberalism" conveys two distinct positions in political
philosophy, the one a pro-individualist theory of people and
government, the second a pro-statist or what is better termed a
"social democratic" conception. Students of political philosophy ought
to be aware of the two schools of thought that reside under the same
banner to avoid philosophical confusions that can be resolved by a
clarification of terms. The "Great Switch," as cultural historian
Jacques Barzun notes, took place in the late Nineteenth Century, a
switch which was the product of shifting the political ground towards
socialist or social democratic policies under the banner of liberal
parties and politics.
Etymologically, the former is the sounder description since liberalism
is derived from the word "liberty," that is, freedom and toleration
rather than notions of justice and intervention that took on board in
the Twentieth Century. Yet, the pro-statist connotation pervades
modern thinking so much so that it is difficult to separate its
notions from the previous meanings without re-classifying one or the
other. The former is often referred to as 'classical liberalism'
leaving the latter unchanged or adapted to "social democratic
liberalism," which is a rather confusing mouthful; "modern liberalism"
is an easier term to wield and shall be used unless the emphasis is
laid upon the socialist leanings of such modern liberals.
In the broadest, presently popularly accepted term the modern liberal
accepts rights against the person and rights to entitlements such as
health care and education. The two positions do not sit well
philosophically however, for they produce a host of potential and
recurrent inconsistencies and contradictions that can only be resolved
by stretching the definition of freedom to include the freedom to
succeed (or freedom to resources) rather than the freedom to try. This
sometimes generates difficult and perhaps insurmountable problems for
those who seek to merge the classical and modern doctrines;
nonetheless, the (modern) liberal project is actively pursued by
modern thinkers such as J.S. Mill, John Rawls, Will Kymlicka, Ronald
Dworkin and others. For these writers, the historical emphasis on
toleration, plurality and justice underscore their work; they differ
on their interpretation of toleration, public and private roles, and
the perceived need for opportunities to be created or not. Some modern
liberals, however, do try to remove themselves from classical
liberalism (for example, Kymlicka) and therefore become more like
'social democrats', that is, humanitarians of a socialist bent who
assert the primacy of minorities and even individuals to partake
freely in the democratic processes and political dialogues, or whose
emphasis on equality demands an active and interventionist state that
classical liberals would reject.
Dworkin, for example, claims justice is the essential motif of
liberalism and that the state's duty is to ensure a just and fair
opportunity for all to compete and flourish in a civil society. That
may require active state intervention in some areas – areas that
classical liberals would reject as being inadmissible in a free
economy. Dworkin's position emanates from Aristotle's ethical argument
that for a person to pursue the good life he requires a certain
standard of living. Poverty is not conducive to pursuing the
contemplative life, hence many modern liberals are attracted to
redistributive or welfare policies. Such fairness in opportunity to
create equal opportunities underpins John Stuart Mill's liberalism for
example. However, the modern liberal's emphasis on equality is
criticized by classical liberals who argue that people are neither
born equal nor can be made equal: talents (and motivation) are
distributed unequally across a population, which means that attempts
to reduce men and women to the same status will imply a reduction in
the ability (or freedom) of the more talented to act and to strive for
their own progression. Similarly, the modern liberal's criticism of
inherited wealth is chastised as being misplaced: although the policy
connects well to the desire to ensure an equal start for all, not all
parents' gifts to their children are monetary in nature. Indeed, some,
following Andrew Carnegie's self-help philosophy, may contend that
monetary inheritances can be counter-productive, fostering habits of
dependency.
Both modern and classical liberals may refer to the theory of a social
contract to justify either their emphasis on the free realm of the
individual or the fostering of those conditions liberals in general
deem necessary for human flourishing. Classical liberals derive their
theory of the social contract initially from Thomas Hobbes's model (in
Leviathan) in which individuals in a state of nature would come
together to form a society. Liberals of both variations have never
believed such a contract ever took place, but use the model to assess
the present status of society according to criteria they believe the
contract should include. Hobbes leaned towards a more authoritarian
version of the contract in which individuals give up all political
rights (except that of self-preservation which he sees as a natural,
inalienable right) to the sovereign political body whose primary duty
is to ensure the peace; Locke leaned towards a more limited government
(but one that could justly take the alienable life of an aggressor);
Rousseau sought a thoroughly democratic vision of the social contract;
and more recently Rawls has entertained what rights and entitlements a
social contract committee would allot themselves if they had no
knowledge and hence prejudices of each other.
Both classical and modern liberals agree that the government has a
strict duty towards impartiality and hence to treating people equally,
and that it should also be neutral in its evaluation of what the good
life is. This neutrality is criticized by non-liberals who claim that
the assumed neutrality is in fact a reflection of a specific vision of
human nature or progress, and although critics disagree what that
vision may entail, their claim prompts liberals to justify the
underlying assumption that promotes them to accept such issues as:
equal treatment by the law and by the state; liberty to pursue one's
life as one sees fit; the right to private property, and so on.
Nonetheless, broad liberalism accepts and emphasizes that people ought
to be tolerant towards their fellow men and women. The modern
importance of toleration stems from the Renaissance and
post-Reformation reactions to the division in the Church and the
ensuing persecutions against heterodoxy. Freedom in religious belief
extends to other realms of human activity that do not negatively
affect neighbors, for example in sexual or romantic activities, the
consumption of narcotics, and the perusal of pornography. But what is
philosophically more important is that the liberal doctrine of
toleration permits the acceptance of errors – that in pursuing the
ethical good life and hence the appropriate political life, people may
make mistakes and should be permitted to learn and adapt as they see
fit; or, alternatively, that people have a right to live in ignorance
or to pursue knowledge as they think best. This is held in common with
political conservatives who are somewhat more pessimistic and
skeptical of our abilities than most liberals. Classical and modern
liberals do unite in expressing a skepticism towards experts knowing
what is in the best interest of others, and thus liberals tend to
reject any interference in people's lives as unjustifiable and, from
utilitarian point of view, counter-productive. Life, for the liberal,
should be led from the inside (self-oriented) rather than outside
(other- imposed); but modern liberals add that individuals ought to be
provided with the resources to ensure that they can live the good life
as they see fit. The classical liberal retort is who will provide
those resources and to what age should people be deemed incapable of
learning or striving by themselves?
Despite such differences over policy, liberals – of both the social
democratic and classical strain – predominantly hold an optimistic
view of human nature. In modern philosophy the position is derived
from John Locke's psychological theory from An Essay on Human
Understanding that people are born without innate ideas and hence his
environment, upbringing, and experiences fashion him: for classical
liberals this implies a thorough rejection of inherited elitism and
hence of supposed natural political hierarchies in which power resided
with dynasties; for modern liberals this implies the potential for
forging appropriate conditions for any individual to gain a proper
education and opportunities.
Liberals applaud those institutions that reason sustains as being
conducive to human freedoms: classical liberals emphasizing those
institutions that protect the negative freedoms (rights against
aggression and theft) and social democratic liberals the positive
freedoms (rights to a certain standard of living). If an institution
is lacking according to a critical and rational analysis – failing in
its duty to uphold a certain liberal value – then it is to be
reorganized for the empowerment of humanity. At this juncture,
liberals also divide between deontological (Rawls) and utilitarian
theorists (Mill). Most classical liberals ascribe to a general form of
utilitarianism in which social institutions are to be reorganized
along lines of benefiting the greatest number. This attracts criticism
from conservatives and deontologists – according to what ends? –
according to whose analysis? – comprising which people? and so on.
Deontologists are not precluded from supporting liberalism (Immanuel
Kant is the most influential thinker in that regard), for they hold
that the proper society and hence political institutions should
generate those rules and institutions that are right in themselves,
regardless of the particular presumed ends we are seeking (for
example, happiness).
Modern liberals lean towards a more interventionist government, and as
such they place more emphasis on the ability of the state to produce
the right political sphere for humanity and thusly emphasize reform
projects more than classical liberals or conservatives. Peace, to
choose one example, could be brought to warring peoples or natives if
only they admit to the clearly defined and rational proposals of the
liberal creed – that is, they should release themselves from parochial
prejudices and superstitions and submit to the cosmopolitanism of
liberal toleration and peace. The variants here – as in the host of
applied subjects – are broad ranging: some liberals espouse the need
to secure peace through the provision of a healthy standard of living
(effected by appropriate redistribution policies from rich countries
to poor); others promote the free market as a necessary condition for
the growth of the so-called "soft morals" of commerce; while others
emphasize the need for dialogue and mutual understanding through
multi-cultural educational programs. These kind of programs, the
modern liberals argue, ideally should be implemented by the world
community through international bodies such as the UN rather than
unilaterally which could arouse complaints against imperialist
motives; however, once the beneficial classical or modern liberal
framework is created, the state and political institutions ought to
remain ethically neutral and impartial: the state is to be separated
from imposing itself on or subsidizing any belief system, cultural
rites, forms of behavior or consumption (so long as they do not
interfere in the lives of others).
The liberal seeks the best form of government which will permit the
individual to pursue life as he or she sees fit within a neutral
framework, and it is the possibility of a neutral framework that
critics challenge the liberal ideal.
b. Conservatism
This approach plays down the unifying or omniscient implications of
liberalism and its unifying rationalism and thus accords institutions
or modes of behavior that have weathered the centuries a greater
respect than liberals. Politically, philosophical conservatives are
cautious in tampering with forms of political behavior and
institutions and they are especially skeptical of whole scale reforms;
they err on the side of tradition, but not for tradition's sake, but
from a skeptical view of our human ability to redesign whole ranges of
social values that have evolved over and adapted to many generations;
detrimental values will, conservatives reason, fall into disuses of
their own accord.
The first issue facing the conservative is: what ought to be secured
(against, say, a popular but misguided temporary rebellion)? How long
does an institution have to exist before it gains the respect of the
philosophical conservative? Here, the philosopher must refer to a
deeper level of analysis and proceed to question the nature and
purpose of the institution in light of some standard. Liberalism turns
to reason, which is broadly accepted as the unifying element to human
societies, but conservatives believe that reason can be highly
overestimated for it belongs to single individuals and hence to their
own political motives, errors, prejudices and so on.
for example, of an anarchist or socialist strain – claim that such
fears are a product of the presiding social environment and its
concomitant values and are not the product of human nature or social
intercourse per se. Such opponents emphasize the need to reform
society to release people from a life of fear, which conservatives in
turn consider a utopian pipe dream unbefitting a realistic political
philosophy.
For conservatives, the value of institutions cannot always be examined
according to the rational analysis of the present generation. This
imposes a demand on conservatism to explain or justify the rationale
of supporting historical institutions. Previously, conservatives
implicitly or explicitly reverted to the myths of our human or of a
particular culture's origins to give present institutions a sacred
status – or at least a status worthy of respect; however, evolutionary
thinkers from the Scottish Enlightenment (for example, Adam Ferguson),
whose insights noted the trial and error nature of cultural (and hence
moral and institutional) developments generated a more precise and
historically ratifiable examination of institutions and morals – see
the work of Friedrich Hayek especially.
Accordingly, in contrast to many liberals, conservatives decry the
notion of a social contract – or even its possibility in a modern
context. Since societies evolve and develop through time, present
generations possess duties and responsibilities whose origins and
original reasons may now be lost to us, but which, for some thinkers,
still require our acceptance. Justifying this is problematic for the
conservative: present cultural xenophobia may emanate from past
aggressions against the nation's territory and may not serve any
present purpose in a more commercial atmosphere; or present racism may
emerge from centuries of fearful mythologies or again violent
incursions that no longer are appropriate. But conservatives reply
that since institutions and morals evolve, their weaknesses and
defects will become apparent and thereby will gradually be reformed
(or merely dropped) as public pressure against them changes. What the
conservative opposes is the potential absolutist position of either
the liberal or the socialist who considers a form of behavior or an
institution to be valid and hence politically binding for all time.
Conservatives thus do not reject reform but are thoroughly skeptical
of any present generation's or present person's ability to understand
and hence to reshape the vast edifices of behavior and institutions
that have evolved with the wisdom of thousands of generations. They
are thus skeptical of large scale planning, whether it be
constitutional or economical or cultural. Against socialists who
become impatient with present defects, the conservatives counsel
patience: not for its own sake, but because the vast panoply of
institutions that are rallied against – including human nature –
cannot be reformed without the most detrimental effects. Conservatives
– following Edmund Burke – thus typically condemn revolutions and
coups as leading to more bloodshed and violence than that which the
old regime produced.
Some conservatives argue that a modicum of redistribution is required
to ensure a peaceful non-revolutionary society. Whereas modern
liberals justify redistribution on the grounds of providing an initial
basis for human development, conservatives possess a pragmatic fear of
impoverished masses rising up to overthrow the status quo and its
hierarchy stems from the conservative reaction to the French
Revolution. The conservative critique by Edmund Burke was particularly
accurate and prescient, yet the Revolution also served to remind the
political hierarchy of its obligations (noblesse oblige) to the
potentially violent masses that the revolt had stirred up. The lesson
has not been lost on modern conservative thinkers who claim that the
state has certain obligations to the poor – including perhaps the
provision of education and health facilities, or at least the means to
secure them. In contrast to socialists though (with whom some
conservatives may agree with a socialized system of poor relief),
conservatives generally prefer to emphasize local and delegated
redistribution schemes (perhaps even of a wholly voluntary nature)
rather than central, state directed schemes.
In affinity with classical liberals, conservatives often emphasize the
vital importance of property rights in social relations. Liberals tend
to lean towards the utilitarian benefits that accrue from property
rights (for example, a better distribution of resources than common
ownership or a method of providing incentives for further innovation
and production), whereas conservatives stress the role private
property in terms of its ability to check the power of the state or
any other individual who seeks power. Conservatives see private
property as a sacred, intrinsically valuable cornerstone to a free and
prosperous society.
The broad distribution of private property rights complements the
conservative principle that individuals and local communities are
better assessors of their own needs and problems than distant
bureaucrats. Since conservatives are inherently skeptical of the
state, they prefer alternative social associations to support, direct,
and assist the maturation of civilized human beings, for example, the
family, private property, religion, as well as the individual's
freedom to make his own mistakes.
Conservatives of the English Whig tradition (Locke, Shaftesbury) have
much in common with classical liberals, whereas conservatives of the
English Tory tradition have more in common with modern liberals,
agreeing to some extent with the need for state intervention but on
pragmatic rather than necessary grounds. Those of the Whig tradition
accordingly ally themselves more with individualism and rationalism
than Tory conservatives, who emphasize community and 'one-nation'
politics and its corresponding duties and responsibilities for the
individual. The two, initially opposing doctrines, merged politically
in the late Nineteenth Century as liberalism shifted its ground to
incorporate socialist policies: the two sides of conservativism
enjoyed a particularly visible and vocal clash in the late Twentieth
Century in the political reign of Margaret Thatcher in the United
Kingdom.
c. Socialism
The term "socialist" describes a broad range of ideas and proposals
that are held together by a central overarching tenet: the central
ownership and control of the means of production – either because
central ownership is deemed more efficient and/or more moral.
Secondly, socialists agree that capitalism (free-market conservativism
or liberalism) is morally and hence politically flawed. Thirdly, some
socialists of the Marxist persuasion argue that socialism is the final
historical era that supplants capitalism before proper communism
emerges (that is, a "historicist" conception). This section will focus
on the first two claims.
i. Central Ownership
Politically, socialists claim that the free market system (capitalism)
should be replaced or reformed, with most arguing for a radical
redistribution of resources (usually to "workers" – that is, those
socialists deem who do not presently own anything) and for the state
or some form of democratic institution to take over the running of the
economy. In the aftermath of Communism's collapse – which is a point
of conjecture amongst the historicist Marxist wing as to whether the
Soviet system was truly communist or socialist – many socialists
abandoned state ownership and control of economic resources in favor
of alternative projects that proposed to be more flexible, democratic
and decentralized. Economists of the Austrian school (notably Ludwig
Mises and Friedrich Hayek) had long predicted the inexorable collapse
of socialism because of its inability in the absence of market
generated price mechanisms to plan resource distribution and
consumption efficiently or effectively. Socialist economists such as
Oskar Lange accepted the important critique and challenge but pushed
on with state controlled policies in the belief that theoretically the
markets' prioritization of values through prices could by replaced by
complex economic modeling: for example, Leontieff input-output models
in which priorities are given values by either the central
authorities, or in more modern turns with the socialist movement, by
more decentralized institutions such as worker co-operatives.
Despite the empirical challenge of the collapse of the Soviet system –
and more importantly the failure of centrally controlled economies
throughout the West and the Third World, socialists have rallied to
parade alternative conceptions of the communal ownership and control
of resources. Market socialism, for instance, tolerates a
predominantly market system but demands that certain 'essential'
resources be controlled by the state. These may then act to direct the
general economy along politically desirable roads: for example,
expanding technology companies, educational and health services, or
the economic and physical infrastructure of the nation. Others argue
that while markets should predominate, the state should control only
the investment industry. However, the economists' critique that state
intervention produces not only an inefficient outcome but also an
outcome that the planners themselves do not desire is extendable to
all instances of intervention – and especially any interventions in
investment, where the complexity of the price mechanism deals not just
with consumers' and producers' present preferences but also their more
subtle intertemporal preferences for present and future consumption.
In the face of a growing indictment (and unpopularity) of central
planning, many socialists have preferred instead to concentrate on
altering the presiding property relationships demanding that companies
be given over to the workers rather the assumed exploitative
capitalist classes. Resources, most socialists claim, need to be
radically redistributed.
Worker control socialism (worker control capitalism) sees the way
forward through worker owned and operated businesses, usually
small-scale and run on a democratic basis. Legislative proposals that
demand more discussion and agreement between management and staff are
a reflection of such beliefs. However, the policy to give control to
the workers presumes (a) the workers are a definable class deserving
of a greater moral and hence political status than presently they are
assumed to enjoy (which ethically would have to be established) and
(b) that the workers are permanently in a condition of being either
employed or exploited (perhaps by the same commercial concerns) and
that they themselves do not wish to or actually do set up their own
businesses or move between employees. An individual can at the same
time be an employer, an employee, a worker and a capitalist and since
individuals can move between the economic classes scientific precision
is reduced and even abandoned.
The strongest critique of socialist plans for the redistribution of
income – coming from within and without the camp's discussions – is on
what moral or political criteria resources ought to be distributed.
The pervading clarion call of Marx that resources ought to be
distributed from each according to his ability to each according to
his need does not offer any guide as to what should constitute a need.
Social democrats may point to the disabled as deserving resources they
are not in a position – through no fault of their own – to attain; but
psychological disorders can be just as debilitating. Others generate
more complex arguments. For example, the deserving are those who have
historically been persecuted. But this raises the problem of how far
back in history one ought to proceed as well as a host of ethical
ramifications of being born either guilty (and somehow deserving moral
and economic reprobation) or needy (and somehow deserving unearned
resources – which certainly presents a paradox for most socialists,
who in Nineteenth Century Europe castigated the aristocratic classes
for their unearned incomes).
The gravest criticism leveled against all arguments for a
redistribution of resources, even assuming that the criteria could be
agreed upon, is that, in the absence of perpetual and strict controls
resources will eventually become unevenly distributed; Robert Nozick
presents a strong challenge to socialists in his Anarchy, State, and
Utopia, asking what would be wrong with a voluntary redistribution in
favor of say, supporting an excellent basketball player, which would
result in an uneven distribution. Socialists may thus either have to
accept the persistence of continual redistribution of incomes and
resources within a given band of tolerance, or to accept a permanent
inequality of income and resource ownership once voluntary exchanges
are allowed. Faced with such criticisms, socialists can resort to
arguments against the morality of capitalism or the free market.
ii. The Moral Critique of Capitalism
The initial unequal distribution of talent, energy, skills, and
resources is not something that socialists usually focus their moral
critique upon. Rather they comment on the historical developments that
led to an unequal distribution of wealth in favor of some individuals
or nations. War and exploitation by the powerful, they argue, unfurled
an immoral distribution, which reformers would prefer to correct so as
to build society on a more moral basis: not all would claim that
socialism then becomes necessary (or that socialism provides the only
evaluation of historical injustices); but socialists often refer to
the historical injustices that have kept the down trodden and meek
poor and oppressed as a justification for present reforms or critique
of the status quo. Proposals are wide-ranging on how a society should
redistribute resources as are the proposals to ensure present and
future generations are permitted at least equal access to a specified
standard of living or opportunities – here moderates overlap with left
wing or social democratic liberals and pragmatic conservatives, who
believe in the primacy of freedom but with a modicum of redistribution
to ensure that all children get a fair start in life.
Defining fairness, however, is problematic for all socialists: it
brings to the fore the issues outlined above – of what standards and
policies and justifications are appropriate. If socialists depart from
such intricacies they can assert that capitalism is morally flawed at
its core – say, from its motivational or ethical underpinnings. The
most popular criticism leveled against capitalism (or classical
liberalism) is the unethical or selfish material pursuit of wealth and
riches. Socialists often decry the ethical paucity of material values
or those values that are assumed to characterize the capitalist world:
competition and profit seeking and excessive individualism. Socialists
prefer collective action over individual action, or at least
individual action that is supportive of group rather than personal or
selfish values. Nonetheless, most socialists shy away from espousing
an anti-materialist philosophy; unlike environmentalists (see below):
most support the pursuit of wealth but only when created by and for
the working class (or in less Marxist terminology, the
underrepresented, the underdog, the oppressed, or the general "poor").
They are often driven by a vision of a new golden age of riches that
pure socialism will generate (how that will be so without the price
mechanism is the subject of socialist economics). Some, however, do
desire a lower standard of living for all – for the return to a
simpler, collective life of earlier days; these socialists perceive a
better life to be held in a medieval socialism of local trade patterns
and guilds. Such ascetically leaning socialists have much in common
with environmentalism.
Regardless of the moral problem of perpetual unequal distributions,
socialists have an optimistic vision of what we can be – perhaps not
what he now is (exploitative or oppressed), but of what he is capable
of once society is reformed along socialist lines. Marxists, for
example, assume that inconsistent or hypocritical bourgeois values
will disappear; in their stead, any class-based morality will
disappear (for class distinctions will disappear) but the
particularities of what will guide ethical behavior is not readily
explored – Marx avoided the topic, except to say that men will
consider each other as men and not as working class or bourgeois. Most
assume that socialism will end the need for family, religion, private
property and selfishness – all opiates of the unawakened masses that
keep them in a state of false consciousness: accordingly, free love,
resources, food for all, unhindered talent and personal development,
and enlightened collectivism will rule. The rejection of all authority
that some in the socialist camp foresee is something they have in
common with anarchists.
d. Anarchism
Anarchy stems from the Greek word, anarkos, meaning "without a chief."
Its political meaning is a social and political system without a state
or more broadly a society that is characterized by a lack of any
hierarchical or authoritarian structures. The general approach of the
anarchist is to emphasize that the good life can only be lived without
constraining or limiting structures. Any institution or morality that
is inconsistent with the life freely chosen is to be attacked,
criticized, and rejected. What is therefore the crucial issue for
anarchists is defining what constitutes genuinely artificial
impediments and structures from those that are the product of nature
or of voluntary activities.
Major anarchist thinkers include William Godwin, Max Stirner, Leo
Tolstoy, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and recent libertarian and
conservative thinkers who lean to anarchism such as Hans Hermann Hoppe
and Murray Rothbard.
Various branches of anarchism emphasize different aspects of the
protracted leaderless society: utopian versions look forward to a
universal egalitarianism in which each is to count for one and no more
than one, and accordingly each person's values are of equal moral and
political weighting. (Utopian anarchists in the Nineteenth Century
experimented with a variety of small communities that on the whole had
short lives.) But the notion of egalitarianism is rejected by those
anarchists who are more sympathetic to the rugged individualism of the
American frontier and of the individual who seeks the quiet, private
life of seclusion living close to nature.
Max Stirner, for example, rejects any kind of limitation on the action
of the individual, including social structures that may evolve
spontaneously – for example, parental authority, money, legal
institutions (for example, common law), and property rights; Proudhon,
on the other hand, argues for a society of small enterprising
co-operatives. The co-operative movement often attracts those with
collectivist leanings but who seek to move away from the potentially
authoritarian model of typical socialism. In contrast, libertarian
thinkers who support the free market have proposed anarchic solutions
to economic and political problems: they stress the voluntaristic
nature of the market system as a moral as well as an efficient means
of distributing resources and accordingly condemn state failure to
provide adequate resources (health care and education but also police
and defense services); the so-called public goods and services, they
assert, ought to be provided privately through the free market.
Regardless of the political direction that the anarchist leans towards
(collectivism or individualism), how the anarchic community is to be
secured presents philosophical problems that demand a close regard to
possible inconsistencies. Historicist anarchists believe that anarchy
is the ultimate state that humanity is (inevitably) ascending towards
– they agree with Marx's general theory of history that history (and
the future) divides into convenient eras which are characterized by a
movement towards less authority in life (that is, the gradual
displacement of authoritarian or socially divisive structures), and
that this movement is inexorable. Radical anarchists claim that the
future can only be fought for, and any imposition of authority on an
individual's actions is to be defended against – their calls extend to
anarchists actively undermining, disrupting and dismantling the
apparatus of the coercive state; those on the libertarian wing stress
that only government coerces whereas those more sympathetic to
socialism's moral critique of capitalism emphasize the oppressive
nature of multinational companies and of global capitalism. While some
anarchists are pacifistic in their rejection of authority (drawing on
Gandhi's conduct against British rule in India), others condone the
use of violence to secure their freedom from external coercion. In
common with modern liberal and with some socialists and conservatives,
some branches of anarchism reject the material world and economic
progress as being innately valuable. Anarchists who rail against
economic progress (or "global capitalism") as somehow limiting their
choices seek alternative ends to their political utopia, one which has
much in common with the final political theory examined:
environmentalism.
e. Environmentalism
Beyond the traditional ethical disputes concerning the good life for
human beings and what political situation would best suit our
development, others take up an alternative conception of humanity and
its relationship with the living world. Broadly termed
"environmentalist," this political philosophy does not concern itself
with the rights of people or of society, but of the rights of the
planet and other species.
The political philosophies of liberalism, socialism, conservativism
and anarchism – and all of their variants – agree that the good life
sought by political philosophy ought to be the good life for human
beings. Their respective criticism of political practice and mores
stem from a competing standard of what ought to constitute the good
life for us. Feminists, for example, within the four man pro-human
political theories argue for more (or different) rights and duties
towards women; resident interventionists in the liberal and
conservative clubs claim that political control over some means of
production may enhance the opportunities for some hitherto
underrepresented or disempowered folk; similarly, welfarists propose
universal standards of living for all, to be secured by the their
respective beliefs in collective or voluntaristic associations.
However, environmentalism starts on a different premise: human beings
are not the center of our politics – nature is.
At the beginning, it was noted that for argument's sake that
theologically based political philosophies must come to terms or
propose standards by which to judge a person's life on earth. Hence
they enter the traditional debates of how people (Christian, Muslim,
Jew, Sikh, Hindu, and so forth) ought to relate to his fellow human
being and through what kind of institutions. Environmentalism,
however, considers our place on earth to be of secondary importance to
that of the natural world. In its weaker forms, environmentalism
claims that human beings are custodians of nature, to whom we must
show respect and perhaps even certain ethical and political
obligations (obligations akin to those some theological positions hold
of people to their God) to the natural world. This implies that people
are accorded an equal ethical status as that of other living species –
he is seen as a primus inter pares. In its stronger form, however,
environmentalism condemns the very existence of humanity as a blot on
the landscape – as the perennial destroyer of all that is good, for
all that is good cannot, according to this position, be a product of
human beings; people are the source of unending evils committed
against the world. In terms of the grand vista of intellectual
history, environmentalism stems from several anti-human or
anti-secular traditions that reach back three millennia. Eastern
religions developed theories of innate human wickedness (or nature's
innate goodness) that filtered through to the West via Pythagorean
mysticism and later Christian asceticism and Franciscan variations on
a pro-nature theme. Applied issues that provoke its ire include
pollution, vivisection, hunting, the domestication of animals, the
eating of meat, and the desecration of the landscape.
Generally, environmentalists distinguish themselves from
conservationists who, from various positions along the spectrum of
political theory, argue that landscapes or animals ought to be
protected from extinction only if they are beneficial or pleasing to
humanity in some form or other. Environmentalists reject such
human-centered utilitarianism in favor of a broad ethical intrinsicism
– the theory that all species possess an innate value independent of
any other entity's relationship to them. Criticisms leveled against
this argument begin with asking what the moral relationship between a
predator and its victim is or ought to be – does the mouse have a
right not to be caught by the cat and is the cat a murderer for
killing the mouse? And if this cannot be justified or even ethically
explained does it not follow that when people stand in an analogous
relationship to the animals we hunt and domesticate then we too should
not be judged as a murderer for eating meat and wearing fur? The
central issue for environmentalists and their animal rights supporting
brethren is to explain the moral relationship between human and beast
and the resulting asymmetrical justifications and judgments leveled
against humanity: that is, according to the environmentalists' general
ethical position, it is morally appropriate, so to speak, for the lion
to hunt the gazelle or the ant to milk the caterpillar, but not for
people to hunt the fox or milk the cow – and likewise, it can be asked
whether it is morally appropriate for the wild-cat or bear to attack
people but not for people to defend themselves?
The political philosophy of environmentalism then turns on creating
the proper structures for human social life in this context. The
weaker form demands, for example, that he stops pillaging the earth's
resources by either prohibiting further exploitation or at least
slowing the rate at which he is presently doing so: sustainable
resource management is at the center of such environmentalism,
although it is a political-economic theory that is also picked up by
the other pro-human philosophies. Environmentalists theoretically can
differ on what political-economic system can best fit their demands,
but one advocate (Stewart Brand writing in The Whole Earth Catalogue)
argues that people should return to a "Stone Age, where we might live
like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate
technology, our gardens, our homemade religion." However, the
demographic and economic implications are apparently missed by such
advocates: to return to a Neolithic state, humanity would have to
divest itself of the complex division of labor it has produced with
the expansion of its population and education. Effectively, this would
imply a reduction in the human population to Neolithic numbers of a
million or so for the entire planet. The fact that this would require
the demise of five billion people should be addressed: what would
justify the return to the supposed Eden and what methods would be
appropriate? Brand begins his argument thus: "We have wished…for a
disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone
Age…" Genocidal campaigns are justifiable according to those who
assert that their population (culture, nation, race, religion) ought
to be the sole residing group on the planet – an assertion hotly
contended by other groups of course and those who expound the rights
of individuals to pursue a life free of coercion, which leaves
environmentalism to explain why people must suffer and even die for
its ends. The proffered justifications often stem from a rejection of
any rights for human beings.
Environmentalism extends rights to – or duties towards – other species
which range extended beyond those animals closest to natural and
cultural human sympathies. Rats, insects, and snails have been
championed by various lobbies seeking to protect animals from human
incursions. Utilitarians of the traditional political schools may
agree with such proposals as being useful for humanity (say for future
generations), but environmentalists prefer to remove 'human beings'
from the equation and deposit inalienable rights on such non-human
entities regardless of their relationship to humanity. Since animals
are not ethical beings, environmentalists have a difficult task
explaining why a snail darter possesses a greater right to live on the
planet over a human. A solution is that our ethical and political
capacities in fact negate our moral status: the fact that we can
reason and hence comprehend the import of our actions implies that we
are not to be trusted for we can willingly commit evil. An animal is
a-moral in that regard: it kills, eats other entities, adapts to and
changes its environment, breeds and pollutes, but it possesses no
conception of what it does. For the environmentalist this accords
non-human species a higher moral status. Animals act and react and
there is no evil in this, but people think and therein lies the source
of our immorality. From this premise, all human creations can be
universally condemned as unethical.
4. Conclusion
The main political theories assume the ethical and hence political
primacy of humanity – at least on this planet – and accordingly
proceed to define what they consider the most appropriate institutions
for human survival, development, morality and happiness.
Environmentalism differs from this approach but all the political
theories sketched out in this article are governed by and are
dependent on ethical theories of human nature as it relates to the
world and to others. Because political theory predominantly deals with
human social nature, it must also deal with human individuality as
well as our relationships to groups – with one's sense of self as a
political and ethical entity as well as one's need and sense to belong
to overarching identities. The major theories provoke in turn a vast
range of discussion and debate on the subtleties of such issues as the
law, economy, freedom, gender, nationality, violence, war, rebellion
and sacrifice, as well as on the grander visions of our proper
political realm (utopianism) and the criticism of present institutions
from the local to the international level. The present mainstream
debate between communitarianism and liberalism certainly offers the
student a fertile ground for examining the nuances generated in the
clash between collectivism and individualism, but alternative as well
as historical political theories ought not to be ignored: they too
still provoke and attract debate.
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