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
For episode 26, see here
The Theory of the Nation State: The Moderns
XXVII. Convention and Tradition -- Hume and Burke
A. Natural Law hung on in France as revolutionary solvent of an antiquated
system.
B.
In defense of revolution in England, natural law had no immediate
practical utility.
1. Idea of deductive ethics and philosophy slowly rejected.
2. Empirical philosophy stressing natural history of ideas and their
derivation from the senses developed (as Locke suggested).
C. David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, 1739-40)
1. Presented analysis that exposed pretensions of natural law to
scientific validity.
2. Use of reason had uncritically combined and confused three factors.
i. Had effect of describing as necessary truths propositions that can
make no such claim.
ii. Can be things rightly called reasonable in the sense of being
necessary and inevitable, e.g., formal implications where a
conclusion follows if a premise is taken for granted--> deduction. (1)
iii. No "comparison of ideas" can prove a matter of fact, and
relationships between matters of fact are never necessary in a strict
sense but simply empirically correlated.(2)
iv. Reason cannot dictate ways of acting, good or bad but can only
guide us to know how to achieve desired ends and how to avoid
undesired ones.(3)
Hume: "reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and can
never pretend to any other office than to save and obey them."
3. The attacked the three branches of natural law system.
i. Natural or rational religion -- a rational metaphysics showing the
necessary existence of anything -- is impossible.
ii. Rational ethics also since values depend on human propensity
to action and reason cannot itself create any obligation.
Virtue is just a quality of mind that is generally approved.
iii. Contractual, consensual theories of politics also as government
doesn't really ask subjects to consent. Loyalty towards
government is as common as feeling that agreements should
be kept; purposes of political allegiance is to keep order and
preserve peace and security while contract creates mutual trust
between private persons. Both are binding because stable
society is not possible without them.
4. Hume didn't find man to be as calculating of his self interest as
did Bentham and the French utilitarians.
5. Common interest exists as body of conventions shown by experience
to serve human needs in a general way. Rules provide stability as
men need to know what they can rely on:
i. Conventions regulating property --> justice
ii. Those that legitimate political authority
iii. Utility includes self interest and social stability
D. Hume's conclusions largely accepted but branded as merely negative.
1. Logical result was empirical positivism.
2. Metaphysics, religion and ethics went on, however, in more or less
traditional forms.
i. Kant and Hegel attempted to reunite reason, fact and value
ii. tendency to either depreciate logic as compared to sentiment or
to hope to combine the two (Carlyle)
iii. respect for sentiment led to new estimate of custom and tradition,
as unfolding of reason rather than its antithesis (Burke)
iv. view of history as gradual unfolding of the absolute
E. Edmund Burke accepted Hume and saw a society's standards as
conventions based on propensities.
1. Saw conventions as repository of achievements of the species.
2. Saw society and propensities as human nature.
3. Consequently, traditions of a nation's life have utility above their
contribution to individual utility.
4. Therefore, tradition of constitution, and of society at large, ought to be
object of almost religious reverence.
5. The species is wiser that the individual or any movement.
6. Supported Whigs because the particular outcome of the English
revolution they represented was by that time tradition.
i. Consequently, his theory of representation looked back to the
17th Century
ii. Denied representation being of individuals or territories
iii. Parliament was meeting place of dominant interests where they
could be held accountable
iv. did, however, see positive benefits of parties as groups of men
pursuing their natural interests upon some shared principle.
7. A people was a "true politic personality" -- a community held together
by sense of membership and duty and not calculated self interest.
8. Man could not live on private stock of reason.
9. Statesman consulted spirit of the constitution to gain clues for its
development; statesmanship is an art.
10. Rejected French Revolution as destruction of society through
destruction of government.
i. For Sabine, Burke confused state, government and society by
interchanging them.
ii. Resulted in transferring reverence toward society to reverence
to the state.
iii. Practically made politics religion and saw unfolding immanence
of God.
11. Rousseau and Burke shared reverence for community.
12. Hegel systematized Burke, though no direct link.
Next week: Hegel -- Dialectic and Nationalism
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
For episode 23, see here
The Theory of the Nation State
XXIV. Halifax and Locke
A. The Glorious Revolution indicated monarchy was to stay,
albeit limited by Parliament.
B. Halifax was an empiric skeptic.
1. Saw so-called "fundamentals" and "general principles"
as pretense cloaking pursuit of partisan advantage.
2. Laws based on such are attempts to bind the future.
3. Government depends on (unspecifiable) inherent power
of self-development of the people which may or may not
be expressed through representatives and may be expressed
through leadership in crucial cases.
4. Argued for constitutional monarchy.
C. Locke was an empiricist, rationalist philosopher.
1. Tapped medieval tradition (of moral restraints on power,
responsibility of rulers to community and government
under law) through Hooker (Episode 20) and passed it
on to the 18th Century.
2. Relying on common sense, fails to get to first principles.
3. His community based theory conflicts with Hobbes analysis
of community as a result of individual cooperation.
4. However, Locke used both conceptions:
i. Accepted first as result of seeing England as a community
existing through time despite change in government.
ii. Had to describe society in terms of individual interests.
iii. Made over natural law into claim of innate, indefeasible
rights with government existing to preserve these.
5. Saw state of nature as one of peaceful mutual assistance
lacking only organization to give effect to these rights.
6. Saw positive law adding no moral force to pre-exisiting
moral laws which are broader.
7. Private property results from mixing labor with land,
extending ones personality to it.
8. Right to private property is anterior to society.
9. Life and liberty are also natural rights.
D. Both Locke and Hobbes helped fasten on social theory the
presumption that individual self-interest is clear and
compelling while social interest is thin and unsubstantial.
1. Locke assumed that common good equaled protection of
individual rights.
2. For Hobbes' calculation of security, Locke substituted
the calculation of pleasure.
E. Contract
1. Civil power rests on the individual right to protect
himself and his property.
2. Legislative and executive power of government is only
what is resigned to it by individuals.
3. By an original compact do men incorporate into society.
4. Implicit are two separate compacts, one for society and
one for government.
5. Individuals must unanimously consent to form body
politic and are therefore obligated to submit to it.
6. As decision rule of that body is by majority, government
depends on what that majority does with the power
deriving from the original compact.
F. Grant of power to government divests people of power
as long as government is faithful to its duties.
G. Revolution is justified when the government seriously
jeopardizes social interests because the moral order is
permanent and not dependent on force.
H. Four levels of Locke's theory (often confused)
1. Basis in the individual and his rights
2. Men are also members of a community acting as trustee
of these individual rights.
3. Government is the trustee for the community.
4. Executive less authoritative than the legislature.
Next week: France and The Decadence of Natural Law
For episode 22, see here
The Theory of the Nation State
XXIII. The Republicans: Harrington, Milton and Sidney
A. Republican issues played no major part in the Puritan Revolution.
B. James Harrington - Utopian The Commonwealth of Oceana 1656
1. Saw government determined in both structure and practice by
underlying social and economic forces.
2. That class that controls property commands government.
3. Saw Hobbesian power as resting on social force that presumes
control of means of subsistence.
4. Revolution result of control of land shifting to middle class.
5. Classified governments on basis of typical forms of
land tenure.
6. Not economic materialist because it remains possible to
radically change the distribution pf property through law.
7. Politics rests on two principles:
i. force, depending on distribution of property and;
ii. "authority," depending on the good of the mind.
iii. government of "authority could alter property relations
and relied on statecraft and a commonwealth of law
8. Commonwealth
i. agrarian law (political rights based on land)
ii. rotation in office
iii. separation of powers
9. Was republican but not a democrat
C. John Milton - Areopagitica (1644) defended freedom of speech
1. Like J.S. Mill after him, stated liberal creed that truth will prevail
over error when both are freely tested by investigation and
discussion.
2. Argued that resistance to a tyrant is natural right.
3. Called for separation of church and state as they are distinct
communities.
D. Algernon Sidney and Robert Filmer
1. Filmer's Patriarcha was dusted off 30 years after his death to defend
royalists.
i. argument for hereditary king's authority based on natural
authority of the father
ii. pointed out problems of terms such as "the people" and the
concept of contract
E. Sidney was a republican
i. Refuted Filmer
ii. But backward looking toward aristocratic republicanism
Next week: Halifax and Locke
For episode 21, see here
The Theory of the Nation State
XXII. Radicals and Communists
A. Radical individualism also arose in left wing popular democracy during
civil wars.
1. Dissolution of traditional institutions and resulting economic
pressures were facts not theories.
2. Individualism grounded in these facts.
B. English civil wars mark first appearance of public opinion as important
political factor.
C. Levellers: radical middle-class democrats.
D. Diggers: beginning of utopian communism, considered political reform
superficial unless it included redress of economic inequalities.
E. Levellers
1. Movement started by radical soldiers of Cromwell's army concerned
that the reforms of the revolution would be lost.
2. Sought political equality and the end of priviledge.
3. Connected to religious Independents.
4. Argued that unnust law was no law at all, even if traditional or
common.
5. Saw innate and unalienable rights for which legal and political
institutions exist only to protect.
6. Was party of men of small property facing officers who sought
only moderate reform leaving power in the hands of landed
gentry.
7. Saw Parliament as stand in for the sovereign people.
8. Every man had right to consent to law through his representative.
9. Argued for representation of individuals not interests, paralleled view
of community as a permanent reality vs. conception of nation as
simply a mass.
10. Levellers made natural law into a doctrine of individual rights
(with property right as primary) .
F. Diggers
1. Saw natural law as a communal right to means of subsistence.
2. Individual had only the right to share in the product of common
land and common effort.
3. Private property the root of evil and social abuse.
4. Gerrard Winstanley's Law of Freedom saw in human nature two
opposed tendencies toward:
i. Common preservation -- the basis of commwealth
ii. Individual preservation -- the basis of kingly government or
government by buying and selling.
Next week: The Republicans: Harrington, Milton and Sidney
For episode 20, see here
The Theory of the Nation State
XXI. Thomas Hobbes
A. Hobbes' political writings occasioned by civil war and were intended to
support the King.
B. Sought to account on scientific grounds for all facts of nature including
society and individuals (an approach now defined as materialism).
1. Derived complex appearances from underlying simple motions.
2. Used a geometry and physics to account for individual physiology
and psychology and those to build a philosophy of the most complex
"artificial" bodies, society and the state.
C. That which was natural for Hobbes was not an end (e.g. natural law) but a
cause (the psychological mechanism of the human animal).
1. Resulting in societies made up of mutual actions and reactions of
individuals upon each other.
2. Not moral ideals but causes that will evoke generally cooperative
behavior are conditions of a stable union.
D. All emotions and desires derive from primitive attractions or retractions
from stimulus.
E. Rule behind all behavior is that a living body is set instinctively to preserve
or heighten its vitality.
1. Leads to restless pursuit of means to continue existence.
2. Means that security is always precarious with result that there is no
limit on the desire for security and power ("the present means of
obtaining apparent future goods").
3. This plus a rough equality in capabilities leads to a war of all against
all -- with no "right" or "wrong" -- and thus making civilization
impossible.
F. Reason is second principle of human nature.
1. Makes pursuit of security more effective.
2. Ruthless pursuit of individual advantage cannot be basis of society.
3. Calculating selfishness brings man into society.
G. Laws of nature state what ideally rational beings would do to achieve
security.
1. This forms postulates upon which rational construction of society
takes place.
2. Laws amount to this:
i. peace and economy have greater utility for self-preservation than
violence and general competition
ii. peace requires mutual confidence in the surrender of the "right to
everything"
H. Society is simply the means to an end.
1. Based on utilitarianism and individualism.
2. Such a notion of individualism was a clean break with customary
ideas about economic and social institutions.
3. The defense of monarchy superficial next to this.
I. To safeguard covenant by which all surrendered rights, a coercive
power, i.e. government, was required.
1. Men do what they dislike on pain of suffering what they dislike even
more.
2. Cooperation is formed by union of individuals -- not consent from
"citizens" -- which acts as, and through, one sovereign individual.
J. Law and morals are the same, simply the will of the sovereign.
K. All necessary powers belong to the sovereign and are individual and
unalienable.
1. There is no justification for resistance.
2. Yet if resistance is successful and the sovereign unable to govern
(provide security), he is sovereign no longer.
3. Monarchy not essential to the theory.
4. Church is the only other corporation existing as an act of sovereign will.
L. Advantages of government are tangible and must accrue to individuals.
M. Rests on no general or public good or will, only self-interested individuals.
Next week: Radicals and Communists
