Continuing Notes on Sabine's "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 31

For episode 30, see here

The Theory of the Nation-State: The Moderns

XXXI. Marx and Dialectical Materialism
 A. Marx transformed Hegel's struggle of nature into a struggle of
     classes thereby taking away nationalism, conservatism and
     its counter-revolutionary character and becoming a powerful
     form of revolutionary radicalism. 
       1. Marx accepted dialectic as a logical method.
       2. For both the driving force of social change is the struggle
           for power.
 B. Marx perceived the importance of the rise to political self-
     consciousness of the industrial working class. 
 C. Saw the French Revolution and the resulting rise of natural
     rights in politics and economics as a prelude to social 
     revolution. 
 D. Marx and Hegel provided cause greater than oneself as the
     only reward to individual.  
 E. History (with a big "H") takes the place of God for Marxist
     revolutionist because Historical necessity provides cause and
     effect, desirability and moral obligation.
 F. Marx studies Hegel at the University of Berlin under materialist
     Hegelian, Ludwig Feuerbach.
 G. Economic materialism sees that social development depends
     upon the evolution of the forces of economic production.
 H. Marx tended to equate "materialism" with "scientific." 
       1. Also implied radical rejection of religion.
       2. Materialism and dialectics suggested a new and far-reaching
           revolution by giving materialism an ethical dimension:
           economics as the root of social inequality.
 I. Marx's belief that socialist society would extend political liberty
    never depended on analysis of socialism but only on a priori
    belief that in a developing society, nothing of worth would be lost.
 J. Understood through the dialectic, economic determinism did not
    mean cause and effect but through economic factors operating
    as semi-personalized agents of creative energies.
 K. The individual counts mainly through his membership in his
     class because his ideas reflect the ideas generated by class.
 L. Marx's theory of cultural development:
       1. A succession of stages each of which is dominated by a
           typical system of production and exchange of goods.
           i. The system of production forces generates its own
              characteristic and appropriate ideology including;
           ii. law, politics, morals, religion, art and philosophy
       2. Whole process is dialectical with its motive force supplied
           by internal tensions created by the disparities between a
           newly evolving system of production and the persisting
           ideology of the old.
       3. The forces of production are always primary as compared
           to the secondary, ideological consequences.
       4. Dialectical development is an internal process of unfolding
           or of vitalistic realization.
 M. Marx and Friedrich Engels rejected the idealist interpretation of
      dialectic as self-development of thought, saw instead the self-
      development of nature itself reflected in thought.

"The notion that ideology may in some cases affect what figures in a
society as a standard of truth has, however, produced the rather large
body of theory now known as sociology of knowledge."

 N. "Ideology," "economic determinism," and "class struggle" are
     core theoretical concepts of Marx's social philosophy from
     which two divergent political strategies emerged:
       1. Evolutionary party socialism.
       2. Revolutionary communism.  

Next week: Communism
     
 

Notes on "A History of Political Theory" -- Episode 25

For episode 24, see here

The Theory of the Nation State

XXV. France: The Decadence of Natural Law
 A. English consolidated their revolution and political theory
      shifted to France.
 B. French concern for political and social theory resulted from
      decadence of royal absolute rule.
 C. Discussion typically popularized rather than created.
 D. Tendencies
       1. Mixture of logically incompatible ethical and political
           utilitarianism with natural right theories.
       2. Growth of philosophical romanticism hostile to
           empiricism and rationalism.
 E. Rousseau untypical of 18th Century French thought.
 F. Through Voltaire and Montesquieu philosophy of Locke
      became foundation of French Enlightenment. 
       1. Reason, tied to tradition in English thought, was placed
           in opposition to custom and fact in France.
       2. No fundamental law or gradual transition of ideas or
           institutions in absolutist France. 
       3. French political thought thus radical and often little
           more than propaganda.
 G. Urban middle class was conscious of itself and saw clergy
       nobility as social parasites.
 H. Characteristic of social thought of 18th Century was belief
      in possibility of happiness and progress guided by reason.
 I. Montesquieu (Spirit of the Laws, 1748) 
       1. Undertook sociological theory of government and law
           by showing they depended upon circumstances in
           which a people lives.
       2. Also analyzed constitutional conditions of freedom.
       3. Saw "reason" as manifesting itself through different
           institutions in different environments.
       4. Saw separation of powers (in England) as prime 
           guarantee of liberty.
       5. Made separation one of the legal checks and balances
           between parts of the constitution.
           i. Didn't specify the parts
           ii. But did assume some form of legislative supremacy
 J. Voltaire
       1. Sought to popularize Newton's physics and Locke's
           philosophy.
       2. Especially admired England's freedom of discussion 
           and publication.
       3. Pressed struggle for civil liberties but did not connect 
           that to a basis in political liberty.
 K. Helvetius
       1. Presented an elaboration of Locke's psychological of
           association (Pain and pleasure as basic motives).
       2. Made it basis for the reforming legislator and conveyed
           greatest happiness principle to Beccaria and Bentham.
       3. Legislator must make general interest consonant with
           individual interest and spread knowledge of how public
           welfare includes that of the indivudual.
       4. Notion that everyone's happiness could be maximized
           at once was nothing but old belief in harmony of nature. 
       5. Belief that one man's happiness ought to be counted as
           the same as that of another based on natural equality.
       6. Using pleasure and pain could in fact lead to harmonizing 
           interests through focus on utility.
 L. Physiocrats (economists)
       1. Regarded pleasure and pain as two springs of human action
           and enlightened self-interest as rule for a well-ordered
           society.  
       2. Assumed harmony would result if man was let alone.
       3. No legislator should regulate, must instead not interfere 
           with natural operation of economic laws. 
 M. Holbach
       1. Made atheist, or materialist, attack on religion.
       2. Also attacked government as representative of parasitic
           classes excluding the middle class whose special interest
           defined the general interest as well.
       3. Man was not born bad but made bad by bad government.
       4. Remedy was to give free scope to the "general will" arising
           from the harmony between self-interest and natural good.
       5. Education would reform man because men are rational and 
           need only to see their own true interest.
 N. Enlightenment thought did not necessarily lead to democratic 
      doctrine; power still based on property. 
 O. Turgot and Condorcet turned idea of progress into a
       philosophy of history.
       1. Saw history as series of progressive stages.
       2. Condorcet saw progress following three lines:
           i. growing equality between nations
           ii. elimination of class differences
           iii. a resultant general moral and mental improvement

Next week:  Rousseau and the rediscovery of community
          
           
      
           
 
 

  
         

Design Without A Designer?

My previous riff on the possibility of a designed universe considered what that might say about the designer. Would that be a First Cause that created the physical laws that seem to have governed the Big Bang and subsequent evolution of the universe, or perhaps a “programmer” using a preexisting set of tools to design a very elaborate simulation? Thomas Nagel offered instead the concept of a design without a designer, one arising through a somehow ordered process of mutation and natural selection. He opposed this to a teleologic explanation (such as divine intervention or creationism) or a merely material and chance elaboration of physical law. His alternative include “the constitutive possibility, in the character of the elements of which the world is composed, of their combination into living organisms with the properties of consciousness, action, and cognition which we know they have.” (pg 93) This “constitutive possibility” is in the same category as mathematical truths. They are just are, embedded in reality. The same can be said for moral truths – such as the imperative not to harm other sentient creatures – that are facts, he says, that we call values. These are accessible to consciousness. “We exist in a world of values and respond to them through normative judgements that guide our action…. The response to value seems only to make sense as a function of the unified subject of consciousness…. Practical reasoning and its influence on action involve the unified conscious subject who sees what he should do.” (pg 114-15 ) This gives consciousness a hook by which to express free will. We chose right or wrong. Nagel calls the whole process – the evolution of life, rise of consciousness and emergent perception of right and wrong – as one “of the universe gradually waking up.” (pg 117)

The emergent ability to perceive good and evil doesn’t mean an automatic tendency toward the good. “No teleologic principle tending towards the production of a single outcome seems suitable. Rather, it would have to be a tendency toward the proliferation of complex forms and the generation of multiple variations in the range of possible complex systems.” (pg 122) According to Nagel, teleology can be restated as “a cosmic predisposition to the formation of life, consciousness, and the value [of what is good for each creature] that is inseparable from them.” (pg 123)

I like all this, it echoes Plato and his notion of the Forms as the basis of reality, perceivable through reason. But it begs the question of how and why there should be any “constitutive possibilities” pre-baked into the creation of the universe. Nagel, a self-declared atheist, wants to avoid the notion of any Devine Designer. But it seems to beg the question of how to posit a design without a designer. It violates Occam’s Razor. So I return to the question of what sort of designer would set this universe spinning. Perhaps Nagel here can point in the right direction. There does seem to be a moral order to the universe as well as a governing set of physical and mathematical laws (which we are still discovering). We can, in fact, know good from evil. (Mere good and bad may vary according to the individual, group or civilization.) We also have the free will to ignore this distinction and clearly human history is full of examples of those who did and do.

A while back, near the start of my ruminations, I suggested that perhaps the designer was a kind of cosmic Shakespeare, setting up the grandest possible stage on which a myriad of actors could perform. Or perhaps, out of loneliness, it formulated an elaborate simulation it could inhabit in the form of individual conscious agents, bound by time and space. I don’t know but it’s been fun, at least for me, ruminating on it. In the end, my own, I may, or may not, find out.

Gods, Monsters and Americans

Was reading a book putting forward the theory of monistic idealism. The author notes an observation attributed to Mother Theresa that Americans are the most materialistically blessed but impoverished in spirit people on earth. This could actually be said about most of the people in the Western world but maybe of Americans the most.

The author (Amit Goswami, The Self-Aware Universe) attributes this to America’s unquestioned materialism. We have lost connection with the world of enchantment in which we felt connected to something greater and more mysterious. I won’t gainsay this. But it may not be the whole picture. To judge from American popular culture – especially in the movies and TV that we export to the whole world – we seem to yearn for what we are missing. Living far from the US for the past few years, I see the reflections of this American preoccupation with particular clarity. We flood the ether with vampires, superheroes, ghosts, wizards and witches, psychics, aliens, magic, lost dimensions, time travelers, alternate realities, undead, formerly dead, demons, angels, devils, gods, mythical beasts and monsters. And I have no doubt left some out. We seem to have an utter fascination with things and beings which we in our day-today life know do not – cannot – really exist. What are these if not expressions of something deep inside of us that we feel the loss of, something beyond what science and modernity have left us? (There are other manifestations of this as well that lay at the root of the various forms of fundamentalism, including the political ones.) Some seek this missing dimension in religion, many look for it on the Sci-Fi network and Beyond.

Freud called this sort of thing the return of the repressed. For Nietzsche, it was the eternal return. It almost certainly is a return, a deep echo, of the pagan gods buried in our walls so long ago. And those gods themselves a kind of short-hand for that sense of horror and magic human beings first experienced when, a few hundred thousand years ago, we woke into conscious awareness of who and where we were. Americans are not materialistic as much as just a long way from home and very unsure of how to get back. And from the appeal of what we broadcast to the rest of the world, we are not the only ones.