Does the government "invent" and "give us" our rights (legal positivism), or as the declaration of independance implies, our rights are self-evident and pre-existing and at best all a government can do is recognize that pre-existing right and abstain from violating it (legal naturalism)? Either rights are special privilidges granted by the government that can be revoked at whim (at which point it ceases to be any right at all), or they are something that we inherently possess by virtue of being human beings with self-ownership and property.
Those are the two basic opposing views on rights. Either freedom is a naturally arising thing, or freedom is something that government invented synthetically. These are the two diametrically opposed views on the nature of government: does society create government, or does government create society? I hold that society and government are two separate entities, and society precedes a government. The classical liberals, including the founding fathers, leaned heavily towards the position I am taking. They largely rejected the positivist and synthetic view of freedom.
Since I am an individual human being that controls myself, and therefore presumably my liberty is my own, then my liberty derives from my own faculties as an individual. This implies, first and foremost, self-ownership. And if I am a self-owner, only I can therefore enforce this in practise, by applying my faculties to the best of my ability. The positivists and statists deny all of this, for the implication of their view is that I cannot exersize such faculties without having them being given to me by a government, as if government literally invented human rationality and capability itself. But the entire notion is contradictary. Someone's liberty cannot be both their own and synthetically created by someone else at the same time.
The synthetic view of freedom and society blurs the distinction between society and government. It acts as if a society is molded in the absolute by the government, rather then taking the view that the government is something created by society. To the legal positivist, society is therefore seen as a synthetic thing to socially engineer, to mold like clay. It is simply assumed that society does not contain any capacity within itself for order or cooperation, and therefore it must be controlled dictatorially as if it were a canvas for the central planner to paint on as they please. To the positivist, society can be "planned" in the absolute.
But this is a highly mistaken view of the nature of society and government. Society is simply a statistical aggregate, a concept, meant to describe a group of individuals. It is government that is the artifice. Society is a natural order that is the necessary result of the need for individuals to band together as to cooperate in order to ensure survival and overall well-being. As such, society arose out of a self-organizing principle. Government came into the picture long after society formed itself. Society created governments. Governments were not always there, as if they were grand inventors that magically created society. The positivists therefore have the nature of social evolution entirely backwards. First, there is the individual, then there is the family, then there is the tribe, then there is the city, and so on. It is not the reverse, where first there is government, and we work our way down to the individual.
Not only is society a self-organizing entity, but as it evolves it becomes harder and harder to centrally plan. This is precisely because of the spontaneous nature of societal order. It is impossible to manage society from the top-down. Positivists are fooling themselves if they think that they are actually capable of centrally managing a modern economy. It has become so complex that it is impossible for a single central entity to be able to keep track of all of the variables involved. An economy is something that naturally arises to begin with out of (1) homesteading of previously unused and unowned property and (2) consequential exchange between property titles that were brought into existance by homesteading and production from the fruits of the homesteading. It is absolutely fallicious to believe that an economy is the artificial creation of an institution such as a government.
It is not because of the existance of a government that people decide to cooperate with eachother. People cooperate with eachother because if they did not, if everyone were completely isolated from eachother, with no interaction at all, everyone would simply die. The human race would have simply never come into existance. Social cooperation is a necessary result of existance itself. If men and women did not band together to form families, then procreation would not have occured. If people did not engage in production and trade with eachother, then there would be no way for them to efficiently obtain food, clothing and shelter. In short, there is a natural incentive towards cooperation. The alternative is non-existance.
It should be clear on this basis that it is impossible to synthetically create social cooperation. It is impossible to synthetically create a family, an economy, a society. Someone cannot be artificially made into a free person, they already are a free person by virtue of their nature as a social animal. Someone cannot be given a right to property, they already have a right to property. Someone cannot be given a right to self-ownership, they already are a self-owner. This is what is meant by the terms "natural rights" and "natural law". It is expressly not synthetic. It is natural. It arises as a consequence of human nature itself.
The synthetic, positivist view of freedom is commonly manifested in the notion that someone wouldn't have the right to critisize the military if it weren't for the military fighting for their right to say it in the past. It is a blatantly statist premise that I'm not allowed to critize my government "because people fought and died so that you can say that"; this is a reoccuring disingenuous tagline that people use to shoot anyone down critical of their government, especially military policy. But it is wrong. No, my ability to freely speak derives entirely from my faculties as an individual, not from any external force or group.
The sentiment in question is a false conclusion driven from a false premise. The false premise is the idea that "the troops" are currently defending our rights, or have done so in past offensive wars. This is, of course, not the case at all. The false premise is the notion that one's ability to express freedom would not exist without some deliberate action of people in the past to grant me this ability, such as in some anchient battle. But obviously, my actual abilities of expression derive only from me. In many ways, this is a crude from of ancestor worshop at best. But the people being refered to are most likely not my ancestors at all, so it is even further removed from the nature of reality than this.
This conservative idea that liberty comes from the military is one of the grand obfuscations of government. My liberty derives from my nature as an individual human being. My liberty does not derive from the altruistic sacrifices of other people towards the goverment's wars, to causes that I myself may disagree with to boot. The military power is not synonomous with liberty. The military power, more than any other institution, has been than grand violator of liberty, for it possesses the ultimate means of force by which state power is obtained, retained and expanded.
Consider those who argue that America's current foreign policy is "defending our freedom". It takes quite a perversion of the meaning of freedom in order to buy into such a notion. To begin with, if it protects my freedom, then why can't I not pay for it? And here we get to the paradox of the militaristic arguement for freedom: they have to violate my freedom, in the name of protecting their own flawed conception of freedom. That is, I am not free to abstain from being forced to be allegedly "free". But if I am forced, then obviously I am not free. This continues endlessly in logical contradiction.
The idea of forcing people to be free is orwellian indeed. Many defenders of the Iraq war do not only assert that it defends my freedom (by allegedly keeping me safe from "the terrorists", a claim that is factually absurd when one looks at the empirical facts) but that it is in defense of the freedom of the victims themselves, of the Iraqi people. It shouldn't take much thinking to see what's wrong with this idea. The military invaded their territory, regaurdless of their consent or rather lack thereof. The very definition of being free, of having rights, is based on consent. Rights had to be violated in order for the invasion to take place. Empire and freedom are two diametrically opposed principles. The idea that through government we can make foreign people free is nothing but a large-scale consequence of the flawed belief that governments are where our own freedom comes from domestically.
The entire idea that we can use military occupation and nation building to "spread freedom" is an oxymoron. Freedom cannot be forced onto people, they have to choose it. They have to express it themselves. They have to assert their rights themselves, free of compulsion in either direction. People cannot be bombed into freedom. You cannot give someone else rights. They already have them, and only need to assert them. If you enact force on someone in the name of "helping them", one is in reality harming them by violating those rights that they already have. It's like punching someone in the face and then claiming that you're defending them.
The military complex is a violator of freedom by its very nature as an institution. It is founded in force. Coercion is its means. Everything that it does is at the barrel of a gun. It is the great big gun in the room, so to speak. It is the government's ultimate means of enforcement of coercion. Its aim is to destroy, not to create. It results in the mass destruction of human life and property, and human life and property are the very things that freedom derives from. If the individual, if human life, is our unit of value, then militarism and empire is the ultimate destructor of value. If the fundamental right is the right to life and property, then war is the ultimate violation of rights.
One of the biggest problems of politics is the perversion of language. The meaning of words is warped and even reversed into their polar opposite. Forcing systems of government on foreign people is asserted by politicians as being freedom. The meaning of rights is twisted as to imply coercive positive obligations with respect to other people. A right is improperly defined as something that is given to you, and therefore you owe allegiance to others, some power structure, for bestowing something upon you that you allegedly did not already possess the capacity for in yourself. Freedom, therefore, is defined in a manner identical to slavery.
This is the moral crises of the modern world. A lack of understanding as to the nature of freedom. Only when people properly understand what freedom is will they be able to gain it back from those who have taken it away from them. The choice between slavery and death is no choice at all. Freedom at the point of a gun is no freedom at all. But freedom is not just a pipe dream. It is something that can be brought into fruition in all of our lives, if only we properly identify it.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
A Debate on "The West" vs. "Islam" and War
This is exerpted from a debate on a message board, in which the person being debated with is trying to justify the following premises (1) that all Muslims inherently present a threat to "the west", and this alleged threat on "the west" is meant to mean a threat on me as an individual and (2) that not only are "the west's" current wars in the middle east justified, but war against the entire Muslim world is justified. Their statements will be in quotes and italics, mine will be without quotes.
It is amazing that people who are supposed to be the greatest enemies of collectivism buy into forms of hobbesian collectivism by putting forth a conflict model of society ("the west", whatever that's supposed to mean, vs. the muslim heathen). This is all about breeding social conflict where it didn't exist before or need not exist. I'm interested in avoiding social conflict, not increasing it.
"You have hit on a fascinating subject when you said “the west” and expressed doubt as to whether such a thing really exists."
The point is that the invocation of "the west" is an obfuscation. Taking the word to describe a geographical territory, I am part of "the west" in that I am within that territory. I am not directly or overtly effected by Muslim people thousands of miles away, and I never will be. To say that there is a "war against the west" is to imply that there is a war against me; it implies uniformity.
But I walk around all day without any Muslim attacking me; indeed, without coming into contact with any at all. To imply that "the west" and me are the same thing is to engage in collective obfuscation. I am an individual. I am not "the west". And if I am considered to be a component part of "the west" this does not mean that an attack on another component part is an attack on me; as an individual I am still independant from those other component parts.
"The conflict does exist whether you choose to acknowledge it, or avoid it."
What conflict? An inherent conflict between "the west" and the "middle east"? That's just collectivist nonsense, because again it presumes uniformity on the part of both sides, which is not the case. Everyone who is a Muslim or everyone who is in the middle east is not waging war against everyone who is not a Muslim or everyone who is not in the middle east. If you take a look at objective reality, it would become obvious that it is particular "western" governments that have engaged in war against particular middle eastern territories by invading, occupying and bombing them.
On the other hand, empirical reality tells me that the chances of me being a victim of muslim terrorism are less than my chance of winning the lottery or spontaneously combusting; and the chances of "America" being taken over by middle easterners and transformed into a muslim theocracy is zero. The chances for a Muslim in the middle east to be "collateral damage" in "western" occupations and internal strife is much much higher than the chances for me to ever have to worry about anything close to what they deal with on a daily basis.
"As I have already stated before, there are people who mean us ill."
Intent in itself is not a crime. To enact an aggression against someone simply because you think that they might aggress against you in the future makes you the aggressor. It is not legitimate to enact force on people simply because they have ill desires towards others. You can only enact force in defense once they have actually overtly presented the threat. If I punch you in the nose because you, while on your own property to boot, insulted my character verbally or advocated verbally that the institutions I personally like should be done away with, then I am guilty of assault. Justifying initations of aggression by alluding to intent or "psychic damage" is the oldest trick in the book.
"There is a war."
Indeed, there is. It is was initiated by the U.S. government against multiple countries that did not attack "us".
"It was declared by them against us."
I'm sorry, but this is pure horsedung. No Muslims have literally militarily invaded any "western" territory. Many "western" governments, on the other hand, have been occupying their territory for decades on end. In either case, "Us vs. Them" is a collectivist obfuscation that assumes uniformity on the part of both sides, which simply is not the case, and creates what I refered to as a conflict model above. There is no "us"; we do not all agree. There is no "them"; neither are they uniform. The conflict model pits groups against eachother, as if there is inherent conflict between them that is impossible to resolve without warfare.
I object, because I myself as an individual am variant with the other members of the group that I'm allegedly part of, and I see the capacity in man to "live and let live" with people of different asthetic preferances. Man contains the capacity for cooperation despite inequality and disagreement. Conflict models are hobbesian and obfuscate the individual and variance. They invent social conflict where they need not exist or did not previously exist.
"We are not bad people for defending ourselves."
Once again, who is "we" to begin with? "We" presumues a uniformity that does not exist; I have not been aggressed against by any Muslim, therefore I have no legitimate defense claim. It would not be legitimate for me to go shoot some Muslim fellow; that would be murder. Furthermore, if "we" means the people of the united states, or any western "nation", you are simply making a false defense claim. There has been no offense to defend yourself against. What you are doing is engaing in the classic tactic of trying to justify iniations of aggression with false (and collective) defense claims.
Muslims can shout "down with the west! down with the west!" all they like. That would not present anyone with a justification for enacting aggression on them simply because they insulted your character. Furthermore, if we would stop identifying with collectives (such as "the west"), we would understand that we are decieving ourselves to interpret insults of "the west" as an insult of our personal characters as individuals. "The west" is just a concept to describe a territory. No particulular individual and their character can be described with the phrase. Otherwise, one is engaging in an absurd kind of anthropromorphicism.
This "us" and "the west" stuff is simply the old trick of getting people to identify with the state, which leads to the idea that the state is defending "us" in engaging in offensive warfare. I refuse to identify with something that I am not part of myself, and I further refuse to act as if any group I may be part of requires uniformity (I.E. absolute conformity to the other component parts) on my part. I refuse to be insulted personally by attacks on an abstract concept that does not actually describe me as an individual. And I refuse to allow the illusion of national territorialism to force me sacrifice myself to such an abstraction. I will only sacrifice myself for what I value as an individual (I.E. self-interest), not to collectives.
"There are dangers to you posed by Islam in the form of an establishment of a muslim theocracy."
In America? Absolute lunacy. There is virtually zero chance of me being subject to Muslim theocracy as imposed externally. On the other hand, there is indeed a huge chance of me being subject to totalitarianism as imposed internally. Furthermore the logical result of the aggressive state warfare that you suggest would lead to increases in government power at home, and that in itself is what constitutes the true, direct threat to me right in my backyard.
"Intent IS the crime!"
Intent in itself can be nothing more than a thought. Intent is not a crime. Intent in itself does not effect me as an individual. A criminal is a criminal because they act out their ugly intentions. On the other hand, someone who simply has ugly intentions, but lacks the courage or willpower to actually carry them out in physical action against others, does not constitute a criminal. A low-life perhaps, but not an aggressor.
"Intent is at the center of what it means to commit a crime."
Not quite. I can simply wish death upon you, and not act this out. Intent does not necessarily lead to physical action. I can intend things all day and not actually do anything about them. Most muslims, and religionists in general, I think can be viewed this way. They are cowardly in this sense. Sure, they may shout incoherancies and advocate ugly things against "the west", but the bulk of them do not carry it out in action against those whom they preach hate against (out of cowardice, at best they can externalize the costs onto others to act it out for them, through the mechanism of an institution such as a government). Are you seriously trying to get me to believe that an entire collective deserves aggression to be enacted on them because of either (1) their hateful opinions in themselves or (2) the aggressive actions of a small group of people within their ranks? This cultural collectivism of yours has to be addressed. It is illogical.
"Someone who advocates killing you because you are a kafur invites a just retaliation as long as you confine your killing to just him."
Really now? So if someone simply makes the statement that "all Americans should die", I am justified in aggressing against that person merely because of their verbal advocation that I should be dead (which, again, hinges on me identifying with the nation and state, which I regaurd as a pile of collectivist bulldung)? Verbal advocation is not a crime. You can write all the pamphlets and advocate stuff verbally all you like. It becomes a crime when you start to act on it. Most people do not act on their verbal advocations. Now, if the person makes the verbal advocation on my property, then we can start to have a legitimate defense claim of some sort, insofar as I can have that person leave my property if I desire, forcably if necessary.
"As I will show, we did not start this war."
As can be seen from objective reality, the united states government invaded a territory, which contains some people who never did anything to any American (actually practically none of them have; zilch, zero). That is an initation of aggression. To argue otherwise is to make a grand obfuscation of what an initation of aggression is. The country that actually militarily invades another territory is the starter of a war, the initator of the war.
This should be quite obvious. A war is started by the initial act of invasion. No Iraqi (or Iranian) has invaded America, there has been no military invasion of America, and nor would it be legitimate to enact aggression against an entire group because of what one person in that group did (that would constitute an initiation of aggression against innocent bystanders). You go after the actual individual aggressors, not entire "nations", not everyone within an entire territory irrespective of their own responsibility as individuals.
"I will leave it at that and continue assembling my sources and references so that you can read and judge for yourself whether there is a threat, who constitutes that threat, if we may consider all of Islam as a rotten egg as regards their intentions towards us etc etc."
Here's a clue: it's the governments that set up the initial crises. All of them to one degree or another. On the other hand, governments are to be distinguished from "society" or "the people". Governments are a particular small band of individuals who control a monopoly over a given territory. The "society" that they rule over is constituted by a separate group; those who are subjects to the given territorial monopolist (I.E. state). None of the people in that group have aggressed against me, and therefore as an individual I cannot have a defense claim against that which has not actually aggressed against me. I am not justified in aggressing against people who never aggressed against me. It's that simple. It's really that simple.
I think your position hinges on collective territorialism and group-identity-think. What you are asking me to do, in essence, is sacrifice myself to a collective ("the west") in the name of fighting a collective ("the muslims") that has done nothing to me as an individual. When I think about it, the demand you're making of people is incredibly altruistic. To spell things out even more clearly: what you are advocating is genocide in the name of "preserving the west".
It is amazing that people who are supposed to be the greatest enemies of collectivism buy into forms of hobbesian collectivism by putting forth a conflict model of society ("the west", whatever that's supposed to mean, vs. the muslim heathen). This is all about breeding social conflict where it didn't exist before or need not exist. I'm interested in avoiding social conflict, not increasing it.
"You have hit on a fascinating subject when you said “the west” and expressed doubt as to whether such a thing really exists."
The point is that the invocation of "the west" is an obfuscation. Taking the word to describe a geographical territory, I am part of "the west" in that I am within that territory. I am not directly or overtly effected by Muslim people thousands of miles away, and I never will be. To say that there is a "war against the west" is to imply that there is a war against me; it implies uniformity.
But I walk around all day without any Muslim attacking me; indeed, without coming into contact with any at all. To imply that "the west" and me are the same thing is to engage in collective obfuscation. I am an individual. I am not "the west". And if I am considered to be a component part of "the west" this does not mean that an attack on another component part is an attack on me; as an individual I am still independant from those other component parts.
"The conflict does exist whether you choose to acknowledge it, or avoid it."
What conflict? An inherent conflict between "the west" and the "middle east"? That's just collectivist nonsense, because again it presumes uniformity on the part of both sides, which is not the case. Everyone who is a Muslim or everyone who is in the middle east is not waging war against everyone who is not a Muslim or everyone who is not in the middle east. If you take a look at objective reality, it would become obvious that it is particular "western" governments that have engaged in war against particular middle eastern territories by invading, occupying and bombing them.
On the other hand, empirical reality tells me that the chances of me being a victim of muslim terrorism are less than my chance of winning the lottery or spontaneously combusting; and the chances of "America" being taken over by middle easterners and transformed into a muslim theocracy is zero. The chances for a Muslim in the middle east to be "collateral damage" in "western" occupations and internal strife is much much higher than the chances for me to ever have to worry about anything close to what they deal with on a daily basis.
"As I have already stated before, there are people who mean us ill."
Intent in itself is not a crime. To enact an aggression against someone simply because you think that they might aggress against you in the future makes you the aggressor. It is not legitimate to enact force on people simply because they have ill desires towards others. You can only enact force in defense once they have actually overtly presented the threat. If I punch you in the nose because you, while on your own property to boot, insulted my character verbally or advocated verbally that the institutions I personally like should be done away with, then I am guilty of assault. Justifying initations of aggression by alluding to intent or "psychic damage" is the oldest trick in the book.
"There is a war."
Indeed, there is. It is was initiated by the U.S. government against multiple countries that did not attack "us".
"It was declared by them against us."
I'm sorry, but this is pure horsedung. No Muslims have literally militarily invaded any "western" territory. Many "western" governments, on the other hand, have been occupying their territory for decades on end. In either case, "Us vs. Them" is a collectivist obfuscation that assumes uniformity on the part of both sides, which simply is not the case, and creates what I refered to as a conflict model above. There is no "us"; we do not all agree. There is no "them"; neither are they uniform. The conflict model pits groups against eachother, as if there is inherent conflict between them that is impossible to resolve without warfare.
I object, because I myself as an individual am variant with the other members of the group that I'm allegedly part of, and I see the capacity in man to "live and let live" with people of different asthetic preferances. Man contains the capacity for cooperation despite inequality and disagreement. Conflict models are hobbesian and obfuscate the individual and variance. They invent social conflict where they need not exist or did not previously exist.
"We are not bad people for defending ourselves."
Once again, who is "we" to begin with? "We" presumues a uniformity that does not exist; I have not been aggressed against by any Muslim, therefore I have no legitimate defense claim. It would not be legitimate for me to go shoot some Muslim fellow; that would be murder. Furthermore, if "we" means the people of the united states, or any western "nation", you are simply making a false defense claim. There has been no offense to defend yourself against. What you are doing is engaing in the classic tactic of trying to justify iniations of aggression with false (and collective) defense claims.
Muslims can shout "down with the west! down with the west!" all they like. That would not present anyone with a justification for enacting aggression on them simply because they insulted your character. Furthermore, if we would stop identifying with collectives (such as "the west"), we would understand that we are decieving ourselves to interpret insults of "the west" as an insult of our personal characters as individuals. "The west" is just a concept to describe a territory. No particulular individual and their character can be described with the phrase. Otherwise, one is engaging in an absurd kind of anthropromorphicism.
This "us" and "the west" stuff is simply the old trick of getting people to identify with the state, which leads to the idea that the state is defending "us" in engaging in offensive warfare. I refuse to identify with something that I am not part of myself, and I further refuse to act as if any group I may be part of requires uniformity (I.E. absolute conformity to the other component parts) on my part. I refuse to be insulted personally by attacks on an abstract concept that does not actually describe me as an individual. And I refuse to allow the illusion of national territorialism to force me sacrifice myself to such an abstraction. I will only sacrifice myself for what I value as an individual (I.E. self-interest), not to collectives.
"There are dangers to you posed by Islam in the form of an establishment of a muslim theocracy."
In America? Absolute lunacy. There is virtually zero chance of me being subject to Muslim theocracy as imposed externally. On the other hand, there is indeed a huge chance of me being subject to totalitarianism as imposed internally. Furthermore the logical result of the aggressive state warfare that you suggest would lead to increases in government power at home, and that in itself is what constitutes the true, direct threat to me right in my backyard.
"Intent IS the crime!"
Intent in itself can be nothing more than a thought. Intent is not a crime. Intent in itself does not effect me as an individual. A criminal is a criminal because they act out their ugly intentions. On the other hand, someone who simply has ugly intentions, but lacks the courage or willpower to actually carry them out in physical action against others, does not constitute a criminal. A low-life perhaps, but not an aggressor.
"Intent is at the center of what it means to commit a crime."
Not quite. I can simply wish death upon you, and not act this out. Intent does not necessarily lead to physical action. I can intend things all day and not actually do anything about them. Most muslims, and religionists in general, I think can be viewed this way. They are cowardly in this sense. Sure, they may shout incoherancies and advocate ugly things against "the west", but the bulk of them do not carry it out in action against those whom they preach hate against (out of cowardice, at best they can externalize the costs onto others to act it out for them, through the mechanism of an institution such as a government). Are you seriously trying to get me to believe that an entire collective deserves aggression to be enacted on them because of either (1) their hateful opinions in themselves or (2) the aggressive actions of a small group of people within their ranks? This cultural collectivism of yours has to be addressed. It is illogical.
"Someone who advocates killing you because you are a kafur invites a just retaliation as long as you confine your killing to just him."
Really now? So if someone simply makes the statement that "all Americans should die", I am justified in aggressing against that person merely because of their verbal advocation that I should be dead (which, again, hinges on me identifying with the nation and state, which I regaurd as a pile of collectivist bulldung)? Verbal advocation is not a crime. You can write all the pamphlets and advocate stuff verbally all you like. It becomes a crime when you start to act on it. Most people do not act on their verbal advocations. Now, if the person makes the verbal advocation on my property, then we can start to have a legitimate defense claim of some sort, insofar as I can have that person leave my property if I desire, forcably if necessary.
"As I will show, we did not start this war."
As can be seen from objective reality, the united states government invaded a territory, which contains some people who never did anything to any American (actually practically none of them have; zilch, zero). That is an initation of aggression. To argue otherwise is to make a grand obfuscation of what an initation of aggression is. The country that actually militarily invades another territory is the starter of a war, the initator of the war.
This should be quite obvious. A war is started by the initial act of invasion. No Iraqi (or Iranian) has invaded America, there has been no military invasion of America, and nor would it be legitimate to enact aggression against an entire group because of what one person in that group did (that would constitute an initiation of aggression against innocent bystanders). You go after the actual individual aggressors, not entire "nations", not everyone within an entire territory irrespective of their own responsibility as individuals.
"I will leave it at that and continue assembling my sources and references so that you can read and judge for yourself whether there is a threat, who constitutes that threat, if we may consider all of Islam as a rotten egg as regards their intentions towards us etc etc."
Here's a clue: it's the governments that set up the initial crises. All of them to one degree or another. On the other hand, governments are to be distinguished from "society" or "the people". Governments are a particular small band of individuals who control a monopoly over a given territory. The "society" that they rule over is constituted by a separate group; those who are subjects to the given territorial monopolist (I.E. state). None of the people in that group have aggressed against me, and therefore as an individual I cannot have a defense claim against that which has not actually aggressed against me. I am not justified in aggressing against people who never aggressed against me. It's that simple. It's really that simple.
I think your position hinges on collective territorialism and group-identity-think. What you are asking me to do, in essence, is sacrifice myself to a collective ("the west") in the name of fighting a collective ("the muslims") that has done nothing to me as an individual. When I think about it, the demand you're making of people is incredibly altruistic. To spell things out even more clearly: what you are advocating is genocide in the name of "preserving the west".
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Anarcho-capitalism vs. Anarcho-collectivism
Videos in response to a video titled titled: Why anarcho-capitalism is not traditional anarchism.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
The Determinism Problem
Hardcore determinism (which is to be distinguished in degree from "compatabalism", since compatablism holds that free will is compatible with determinism) denies that there is such thing as a genuine free choice. It proposes that the choices of human beings are pre-determined; that they are entirely causal. Determinists believe that biology and physics is the sole determiner of all human actions. They take the narrow view that, to use an example, the action of someone typing on a computer is pre-determined because it's governed by biological chemicals and signals within one's body, from one's brain and through one's nerves. To the determinist, there is only one possible future at all times, rather then multiple probabilities that can be effected by people's deliberate choices. In effect, they believe that we are all the sock puppets of biological forces.
Determinism simply turns biology into a god, replacing a religious deity as the determiner with "gaea" itself. Instead of the theory that "god predtermines all of my actions", it's the theory that "biology determines all of my actions". But to me, this is silly; it fails to distinguish between actions that are purely biological (like taking a piss, breathing, heart beating; things that one cannot avoid doing) and ones that are not (like what kind of music to like, what brand of shoes to buy, what job one takes up). People's preferances cannot be adequately explained by biology or psychology for that matter. Indeed, contemporary psychology has done little to nothing to advance understanding of what determines people's preferances. It is often marxist in that it is "culturally determinist", holding that people's preferances and ideologies are entirely pre-determined by whatever culture, economic status or nation that they just so happen to have been born into.
Determinists fail to make a proper distinction between the faculties and the application of the faculties. It presumes that the faculties predetermines one's choices. But within the context of any given faculty, there is variance as to how the individual applies their faculties. Yes, one's faculties are pre-determined biologically, but how one exercises them is not. A genuis can choose to not exercise their intelligence, and a dope can try to push the limits of their abilities. A strong man can choose not to exercise their strength, and a weak man can choose to push their physical abilties to their limits. Faculty does not automatically translate into action or use. People can choose or not choose to use their faculties, and that has a profoud effect on both biological and social evolution.
The constraints of the physical world does not negate the existance of choice. There is "headroom" within the natural forces. Yes, obviously someone can't just "wish" their own reality into existance, they can't abolish the laws of nature. The point is that, within the confines of reality, they actually have choices. Determinism makes the error of assuming that constraints of natural forces makes choice not exist within that framework. The laws of nature in themselves allow for me to have choice. They give me a degree of physical control over my environment. The individual can use nature to their advantage (simple example: by cutting down some trees and building a home). Free will is a consequence of those very laws that determinists think negates it.
Gravity is a natural law, as is inertia. Obviously, I can't "will" gravity away. Where choice comes in is how I use gravity. From experience, I know that if I jump, I will fall back to the earth. That doesn't mean that I have no choice. It means that my choices must be confined to physical laws. I can use those physical laws in ways that I desire, without breaking them. I can use gravity and inertia to achieve ends that I desire, including the design of technology. I can learn to control gravity and inertia as to, say, dribble a basketball. That wouldn't negate gravity, but I'd still be exercising purposeful action. Simply, the existance of physical laws does not negate choice. When people learn the consequences caused by various courses of action determined by physical laws, they purposefully change their behavior to adapt to it, and they come up with ways to use those physical laws to achieve consequences that they desire.
The simple observation of the many instances where people change their course of actions in the face of negative consequences indicates a capacity to choose among different courses of action; and it indicates, as praxeology does, that individuals purposefully seek to attain ends in order to remove a source of disatisfaction. To use an example, suppose someone pricks their finger on a sharp object. They gain the experience of pain from this. Over time, with this new experience of pain having been felt, they will change their behavior as to avoid the pain, and therefore either not mess around with sharp objects anymore, or find ways to minimize or avoid the pain involved with them. To say that such a change in behavior is pre-determined is to ignore the consequences of experience.
The existance of stupidity does not negate choice. Someone who is stupid lacks experience, the very factor that determinists gloss over. The person who pricks their finger on the sharp object for the first time, who has never ever seen a sharp object before then, lacks the experience. On the other hand, someone who does have such experience, but chooses to harm themselves anyways, is ignorant, not stupid. The ignorant person does possess the capacity to change their behavior, but chooses not to use it. As the saying goes, to choose to do nothing is still to make a choice. Ignorance is a choice, not something that is unavoidable. Ignorance is a lack of adequate application of one's faculties.
Humans are capable of supressing their own instincts; this is precisely what free will involves. They can commit suicide and thus resist the instinct towards staying alive, they can become celibate and thus resist the instinct towards procreation, and so on. People can develope tolerance thresholds for pain, as to overcome their instincts to coil from it; some people even find pleasure from pain. To suppose that humans are completely bound by instinct is to ignore precisely what distinguishes human beings from other species. Furthermore, it inevitably must deny that there is such thing as personal responsibility, for every act a person made must be considered inevitable and instinctual. Determinism, in effect, denies human reason, while similtaneously contradicting itself in using human reason to try to explain things in deterministic psysiological terms.
Viewed from a historical perspective, determinism implies that whatever the current situation is in the world we must accept as inevitable, as if nothing could have been done in the past to change it. This ignores any possibility for alternative courses of action. Furthermore, this inevitably also implies that there is nothing we can deliberately do with respect to the future; that the future cannot be effected by our choices in the present, because our choice in the present are considered to be only one-way, without any variance in possibilities. A deterministic view of history can be neither progressive (future-oriented outlook towards change) or romantic (past-oriented outlook toward moving things back to the way they were before). It must remain present-oriented, and consider the status quo as inevitable. It therefore can have no spirit towards any kind of change at all if taken entirely seriously. It aknowledges that changes occur, but refuses to aknowledge that we have any real control over them at all.
A determinist engaging in arguementation has refuted themselves already by engaging in a performative contradiction. The determinist cannot claim to have chosen to believe in determinism in the first place, and in trying to convince others of determinism they are conceding that people can freely choose, and they are themselves engaging in a free choice. Argueing against free will is like argueing against self-ownership by using your self-ownership; it's self-contradictary on impact. Argueing with a determinist is like argueing with a brick wall. Arguementation between two people, in pure determinism, would be no different than expecting two rocks to agree with eachother. An arguement between person A and person B would be no different than two answering machine recordings being played to eachother. It's an absurdity.
Hardcore determinism is mistaken in its understanding of human nature. While it is true that humans cannot choose to do things that are physically impossible, that some options are simply impossible within the context of human capability, that there are definite limits on human capability and that everyone's perception is fallable, it does not follow that biology, physics and geology dictates everyone's choices in the absolute. They are merely factors in the overall equation, not to be ruled out entirely, but neither to be considered the be all and end all. While someone cannot choose where they are born, they are able to make choices among various ends within whatever environment they are born into. There is a diversity of possibilities within any given environment. Environments do not uniformly dictate everything to the individual. The individual can take advantage of their environment in a variety of ways.
Someone's economic status does not uniformly determine what their opinions and behavior will be. Someone's ethnic origin does not uniformly determine what their opinions and behavior will be. Someone's national origin or citezenship status does not uniformly determine what their opinions and behavior will be. These environmental conditions not only are dynamic in themselves, and therefore change over time, but the individual within such environments can be responsible for creating and changing them, or even leaving them entirely. Cultural and economic determinism is nonsensical in that it supposes that people's behavior can be entirely pre-determined by something that is in reality determined by those people's behavior. It has it all reversed. Furthermore, it relies on something that is unstable in itself (national boundaries and economic statuses are dynamic things) as the basis for what everyone is supposed to be pre-determined by. How can people be determined by something that is in itself never the same at any given moment, I.E. cannot be determined in any static sense?
People have argued against free will for ages. Their arguements have failed time and time again, because they implicitly accept it and experience it all the time. It is often a cheap way for someone to avoid assigning responsibility either to themselves or to others. Determinism is ultimately incompatible with freedom. An action cannot be both voluntary and pre-determined at the same time. If it is pre-determined, then it is not voluntary, it is unavoidable, like death. If it is voluntary, then it is not pre-determined.
Determinism simply turns biology into a god, replacing a religious deity as the determiner with "gaea" itself. Instead of the theory that "god predtermines all of my actions", it's the theory that "biology determines all of my actions". But to me, this is silly; it fails to distinguish between actions that are purely biological (like taking a piss, breathing, heart beating; things that one cannot avoid doing) and ones that are not (like what kind of music to like, what brand of shoes to buy, what job one takes up). People's preferances cannot be adequately explained by biology or psychology for that matter. Indeed, contemporary psychology has done little to nothing to advance understanding of what determines people's preferances. It is often marxist in that it is "culturally determinist", holding that people's preferances and ideologies are entirely pre-determined by whatever culture, economic status or nation that they just so happen to have been born into.
Determinists fail to make a proper distinction between the faculties and the application of the faculties. It presumes that the faculties predetermines one's choices. But within the context of any given faculty, there is variance as to how the individual applies their faculties. Yes, one's faculties are pre-determined biologically, but how one exercises them is not. A genuis can choose to not exercise their intelligence, and a dope can try to push the limits of their abilities. A strong man can choose not to exercise their strength, and a weak man can choose to push their physical abilties to their limits. Faculty does not automatically translate into action or use. People can choose or not choose to use their faculties, and that has a profoud effect on both biological and social evolution.
The constraints of the physical world does not negate the existance of choice. There is "headroom" within the natural forces. Yes, obviously someone can't just "wish" their own reality into existance, they can't abolish the laws of nature. The point is that, within the confines of reality, they actually have choices. Determinism makes the error of assuming that constraints of natural forces makes choice not exist within that framework. The laws of nature in themselves allow for me to have choice. They give me a degree of physical control over my environment. The individual can use nature to their advantage (simple example: by cutting down some trees and building a home). Free will is a consequence of those very laws that determinists think negates it.
Gravity is a natural law, as is inertia. Obviously, I can't "will" gravity away. Where choice comes in is how I use gravity. From experience, I know that if I jump, I will fall back to the earth. That doesn't mean that I have no choice. It means that my choices must be confined to physical laws. I can use those physical laws in ways that I desire, without breaking them. I can use gravity and inertia to achieve ends that I desire, including the design of technology. I can learn to control gravity and inertia as to, say, dribble a basketball. That wouldn't negate gravity, but I'd still be exercising purposeful action. Simply, the existance of physical laws does not negate choice. When people learn the consequences caused by various courses of action determined by physical laws, they purposefully change their behavior to adapt to it, and they come up with ways to use those physical laws to achieve consequences that they desire.
The simple observation of the many instances where people change their course of actions in the face of negative consequences indicates a capacity to choose among different courses of action; and it indicates, as praxeology does, that individuals purposefully seek to attain ends in order to remove a source of disatisfaction. To use an example, suppose someone pricks their finger on a sharp object. They gain the experience of pain from this. Over time, with this new experience of pain having been felt, they will change their behavior as to avoid the pain, and therefore either not mess around with sharp objects anymore, or find ways to minimize or avoid the pain involved with them. To say that such a change in behavior is pre-determined is to ignore the consequences of experience.
The existance of stupidity does not negate choice. Someone who is stupid lacks experience, the very factor that determinists gloss over. The person who pricks their finger on the sharp object for the first time, who has never ever seen a sharp object before then, lacks the experience. On the other hand, someone who does have such experience, but chooses to harm themselves anyways, is ignorant, not stupid. The ignorant person does possess the capacity to change their behavior, but chooses not to use it. As the saying goes, to choose to do nothing is still to make a choice. Ignorance is a choice, not something that is unavoidable. Ignorance is a lack of adequate application of one's faculties.
Humans are capable of supressing their own instincts; this is precisely what free will involves. They can commit suicide and thus resist the instinct towards staying alive, they can become celibate and thus resist the instinct towards procreation, and so on. People can develope tolerance thresholds for pain, as to overcome their instincts to coil from it; some people even find pleasure from pain. To suppose that humans are completely bound by instinct is to ignore precisely what distinguishes human beings from other species. Furthermore, it inevitably must deny that there is such thing as personal responsibility, for every act a person made must be considered inevitable and instinctual. Determinism, in effect, denies human reason, while similtaneously contradicting itself in using human reason to try to explain things in deterministic psysiological terms.
Viewed from a historical perspective, determinism implies that whatever the current situation is in the world we must accept as inevitable, as if nothing could have been done in the past to change it. This ignores any possibility for alternative courses of action. Furthermore, this inevitably also implies that there is nothing we can deliberately do with respect to the future; that the future cannot be effected by our choices in the present, because our choice in the present are considered to be only one-way, without any variance in possibilities. A deterministic view of history can be neither progressive (future-oriented outlook towards change) or romantic (past-oriented outlook toward moving things back to the way they were before). It must remain present-oriented, and consider the status quo as inevitable. It therefore can have no spirit towards any kind of change at all if taken entirely seriously. It aknowledges that changes occur, but refuses to aknowledge that we have any real control over them at all.
A determinist engaging in arguementation has refuted themselves already by engaging in a performative contradiction. The determinist cannot claim to have chosen to believe in determinism in the first place, and in trying to convince others of determinism they are conceding that people can freely choose, and they are themselves engaging in a free choice. Argueing against free will is like argueing against self-ownership by using your self-ownership; it's self-contradictary on impact. Argueing with a determinist is like argueing with a brick wall. Arguementation between two people, in pure determinism, would be no different than expecting two rocks to agree with eachother. An arguement between person A and person B would be no different than two answering machine recordings being played to eachother. It's an absurdity.
Hardcore determinism is mistaken in its understanding of human nature. While it is true that humans cannot choose to do things that are physically impossible, that some options are simply impossible within the context of human capability, that there are definite limits on human capability and that everyone's perception is fallable, it does not follow that biology, physics and geology dictates everyone's choices in the absolute. They are merely factors in the overall equation, not to be ruled out entirely, but neither to be considered the be all and end all. While someone cannot choose where they are born, they are able to make choices among various ends within whatever environment they are born into. There is a diversity of possibilities within any given environment. Environments do not uniformly dictate everything to the individual. The individual can take advantage of their environment in a variety of ways.
Someone's economic status does not uniformly determine what their opinions and behavior will be. Someone's ethnic origin does not uniformly determine what their opinions and behavior will be. Someone's national origin or citezenship status does not uniformly determine what their opinions and behavior will be. These environmental conditions not only are dynamic in themselves, and therefore change over time, but the individual within such environments can be responsible for creating and changing them, or even leaving them entirely. Cultural and economic determinism is nonsensical in that it supposes that people's behavior can be entirely pre-determined by something that is in reality determined by those people's behavior. It has it all reversed. Furthermore, it relies on something that is unstable in itself (national boundaries and economic statuses are dynamic things) as the basis for what everyone is supposed to be pre-determined by. How can people be determined by something that is in itself never the same at any given moment, I.E. cannot be determined in any static sense?
People have argued against free will for ages. Their arguements have failed time and time again, because they implicitly accept it and experience it all the time. It is often a cheap way for someone to avoid assigning responsibility either to themselves or to others. Determinism is ultimately incompatible with freedom. An action cannot be both voluntary and pre-determined at the same time. If it is pre-determined, then it is not voluntary, it is unavoidable, like death. If it is voluntary, then it is not pre-determined.
Friday, July 06, 2007
The Libertarian Alliance With Paleo-Conservatism
Libertarians have traditionally had an assumed alliance with the "old right" or "paleo-conservatives". This makes sense in that many modern libertarian figures came out of the "right" of the 20's and 30's. However, I think there is some mythology going on here. While the old right certainly had its virtues, it is a stretch to claim that they were the bastion of libertarianism.
The old right contained definite libertarian elements within it to be sure, but it also contained some rather ugly elements as well: racists, nationalists and protectionists. Libertarians were never, ever, in the majority, even in the "old right". The old right, like all major political movements, was a mixed bag. It had a libertarian faction, but it also had some rather statist factions.
When I think of the old right, I am knee-jerkedly led to think of its virtues: resistance to the new deal, resistance to communism, resistance to WWI and the warfare state in general, laizzes-faire sentiment. But libertarians would be foolish to gloss over its vices: cultural separatism, bad forms of isolationism and protectionist elements. While libertarians tend to be non-interventionists on foreign policy, non-interventionism is not isolationism in my view.
Isolationism is an interventionist policy, revolving around (1) economic protectionism (2) extreme hostility to immigration; heavy immigration restriction and police enforcement of "borders" and (3) support for, or by the very least indifferance to, institutional (I.E. governmentally backed) segregation and racism; racist governmental policies. "Isolationism" does not just apply to relations between large territories like nations, but also down to the micro level, between towns and the various identity-groups within them.
While libertarians support free association (and by defacto, free disassociation), some paleo-conservatives tend to cross the line of free association in supporting some degree of forced segregation, I.E. governmentally created forced disassociation. The distinction between free disassociation and institutional segregation is an important one to make, for it separates a neutral policy from a separatist one. The two are entirely different.
There are other elements of the old right that are simply ultra-conservative, not libertarian, such as support for religious-based legislation, affinity with white power and neo-nazi movements, and even monarchists. Even in conjunction with libertarian causes such as opposition to central banking, you will find fringe nutbags with their own personal agendas (like world government and marxist conspiracy theories).
Indeed, neo-nazis tend tend to jump on the anti-central-banking bangwagon because they connect it to their views on Jews as banker-robber-barons. While libertarians oppose the federal reserve because of the disastrous economic effects of inflation, the need for competition and the Austrian buisiness cycle theory, paleos and neo-nazis oppose it because of tin-foil-hat conspiracy theories about the illuminati, free masons and Jews.
When libertarians ally themselves with paleoconservatives, they should be weary that they are allowing these elements into the libertarian movement itself. It should be quite clear that libertarianism is NOT a right-wing movement (and neither is it a left-wing one). Figures such as Pat Buchannan, while they may help the cause in some respects, hinder the cause in many respects (such as his extreme support for protectionism and his "culture war" nonsense).
It should be stated loud and clear: paleo-conservatives are not libertarians. Libertarians differ with paleo-conservatives as much as they share things with them, if not moreso. Furthermore, when properly estimated, the agenda of modern paleo-conservatives is not much less interventionist then that of the neo-conservatives. Nazism and paleo-conservatism have at least this one thing in common: staunch opposition to international capitalism.
Classical liberalism, which libertarianism is descended from, was cosmopolitan in that it viewed liberty as something to be applied universally, and it supported freedom of exchange (in economic goods and services, ideas, and people) between territories. Paleo-conservatism is just the opposite: it is anti-cosmopolitan, and therefore nationalist. It is fundamentally opposed to international trade, including the movement of people between territories. Paleo-conservatism wishes for an impossible world in which "nations" (I.E. territories) are kept hermetically sealed from eachother, with no genuine inter-territorial relations.
To the modern day paleo-conservative, it is the government's legitimate job to "protect our culture" (which in reality means the personal culture of a particular group, rather than the actual culture) and create "national unity". But from a purist classical liberal perspective, this destroys the natural polycentric nature of the society; "national unity" becomes nothing but a canard for coerced uniformity. "Protecting our culture" becomes nothing but the governmental enforcement of a particular cultural world-view onto everyone.
While the paleos are correct in their opposition to global government, their rationale for it is nonsensical and they unfortunately extend it to opposition to a global economy. Indeed, they tend to equate the two, claiming that a global economy is the pre-text to global government. They base their attack on global government not from the perspective of anti-government so much as pro-national-government. In other words, they oppose global government only because they see it as a threat to national government.
In practise, paleo-conservative opposition to global government is based on nationalism. They are national territorialists; which is, at root, a collectivistic conception of land/territorial property. In short, paleoconservatives correctly reject the collectivism of global territorialism, but then incorrectly support the collectivism of national territorialism. Indeed, hardcore paleo-conservatism appears to have much in common with national socialism than anything else on such questions. The national socialists strongly opposed the idea of both global communism and global capitalism, and then strongly supported a nationalist and right-wing variant of socialism.
If libertarians allow themselves to turn a blind eye to the obvious vices of their paleo-conservative bretheren, then the movement will be hijacked by them, gauranteed. Nationalist and protectionist notions are not conductive to liberty. They are historical enemies of it. The spirit of nationalism destroys the spirit of liberty by instilling the desire for territorial monopoly and uniformity into people's minds. It destroys all consideration for natural polycentrism and inequality (I.E. "diversity"). Paleo-conservatism is simply too monocentric and monolithic to be conductive to liberty.
The old right contained definite libertarian elements within it to be sure, but it also contained some rather ugly elements as well: racists, nationalists and protectionists. Libertarians were never, ever, in the majority, even in the "old right". The old right, like all major political movements, was a mixed bag. It had a libertarian faction, but it also had some rather statist factions.
When I think of the old right, I am knee-jerkedly led to think of its virtues: resistance to the new deal, resistance to communism, resistance to WWI and the warfare state in general, laizzes-faire sentiment. But libertarians would be foolish to gloss over its vices: cultural separatism, bad forms of isolationism and protectionist elements. While libertarians tend to be non-interventionists on foreign policy, non-interventionism is not isolationism in my view.
Isolationism is an interventionist policy, revolving around (1) economic protectionism (2) extreme hostility to immigration; heavy immigration restriction and police enforcement of "borders" and (3) support for, or by the very least indifferance to, institutional (I.E. governmentally backed) segregation and racism; racist governmental policies. "Isolationism" does not just apply to relations between large territories like nations, but also down to the micro level, between towns and the various identity-groups within them.
While libertarians support free association (and by defacto, free disassociation), some paleo-conservatives tend to cross the line of free association in supporting some degree of forced segregation, I.E. governmentally created forced disassociation. The distinction between free disassociation and institutional segregation is an important one to make, for it separates a neutral policy from a separatist one. The two are entirely different.
There are other elements of the old right that are simply ultra-conservative, not libertarian, such as support for religious-based legislation, affinity with white power and neo-nazi movements, and even monarchists. Even in conjunction with libertarian causes such as opposition to central banking, you will find fringe nutbags with their own personal agendas (like world government and marxist conspiracy theories).
Indeed, neo-nazis tend tend to jump on the anti-central-banking bangwagon because they connect it to their views on Jews as banker-robber-barons. While libertarians oppose the federal reserve because of the disastrous economic effects of inflation, the need for competition and the Austrian buisiness cycle theory, paleos and neo-nazis oppose it because of tin-foil-hat conspiracy theories about the illuminati, free masons and Jews.
When libertarians ally themselves with paleoconservatives, they should be weary that they are allowing these elements into the libertarian movement itself. It should be quite clear that libertarianism is NOT a right-wing movement (and neither is it a left-wing one). Figures such as Pat Buchannan, while they may help the cause in some respects, hinder the cause in many respects (such as his extreme support for protectionism and his "culture war" nonsense).
It should be stated loud and clear: paleo-conservatives are not libertarians. Libertarians differ with paleo-conservatives as much as they share things with them, if not moreso. Furthermore, when properly estimated, the agenda of modern paleo-conservatives is not much less interventionist then that of the neo-conservatives. Nazism and paleo-conservatism have at least this one thing in common: staunch opposition to international capitalism.
Classical liberalism, which libertarianism is descended from, was cosmopolitan in that it viewed liberty as something to be applied universally, and it supported freedom of exchange (in economic goods and services, ideas, and people) between territories. Paleo-conservatism is just the opposite: it is anti-cosmopolitan, and therefore nationalist. It is fundamentally opposed to international trade, including the movement of people between territories. Paleo-conservatism wishes for an impossible world in which "nations" (I.E. territories) are kept hermetically sealed from eachother, with no genuine inter-territorial relations.
To the modern day paleo-conservative, it is the government's legitimate job to "protect our culture" (which in reality means the personal culture of a particular group, rather than the actual culture) and create "national unity". But from a purist classical liberal perspective, this destroys the natural polycentric nature of the society; "national unity" becomes nothing but a canard for coerced uniformity. "Protecting our culture" becomes nothing but the governmental enforcement of a particular cultural world-view onto everyone.
While the paleos are correct in their opposition to global government, their rationale for it is nonsensical and they unfortunately extend it to opposition to a global economy. Indeed, they tend to equate the two, claiming that a global economy is the pre-text to global government. They base their attack on global government not from the perspective of anti-government so much as pro-national-government. In other words, they oppose global government only because they see it as a threat to national government.
In practise, paleo-conservative opposition to global government is based on nationalism. They are national territorialists; which is, at root, a collectivistic conception of land/territorial property. In short, paleoconservatives correctly reject the collectivism of global territorialism, but then incorrectly support the collectivism of national territorialism. Indeed, hardcore paleo-conservatism appears to have much in common with national socialism than anything else on such questions. The national socialists strongly opposed the idea of both global communism and global capitalism, and then strongly supported a nationalist and right-wing variant of socialism.
If libertarians allow themselves to turn a blind eye to the obvious vices of their paleo-conservative bretheren, then the movement will be hijacked by them, gauranteed. Nationalist and protectionist notions are not conductive to liberty. They are historical enemies of it. The spirit of nationalism destroys the spirit of liberty by instilling the desire for territorial monopoly and uniformity into people's minds. It destroys all consideration for natural polycentrism and inequality (I.E. "diversity"). Paleo-conservatism is simply too monocentric and monolithic to be conductive to liberty.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Liberty versus Democracy
Liberty versus Democracy
By Rose Wilder Lane
Introduction by Jörg Guido Hülsmann
The war years had brought economic hardship to Mises, and if he ever had any illusions about the state of the American mind before he came to the United States in 1940, he had certainly lost them by the end of the war. American public opinion was already entirely under the sway of statism. And as a consequence the old American liberties were at an all-time low.
But the forces of resistance were slowly emerging. There was a seedbed of libertarian opposition, a network of leaders — thinkers and organizers, sometimes in personal union — who were preparing the counterattack. One historian has called these years "the nadir of individualistic, Jeffersonian thought in the United States." Yet the nadir was only in political practice. The thinking was no longer in disarray, but in the initial phase of a long-term resurgence. It is true that these thinkers and organizers were still scattered. They had only to find one another.
With the NYU seminar, FEE, and individual organizers and publishers such as Frederick Nymeyer, Mises enjoyed for the very first time in his life a truly congenial network of students and supporters. He had always been a respected scholar, but few of his readers and associates really appreciated the radical anti-statist gist of his theories. This held true in particular in the case of the neo-liberals, who prided themselves on their pragmatic positions and on their good sense for wanting the government in charge of creating competition.
Things were completely different in the circle of his new friends. Many of the new people that came to Mises through his NYU seminar and FEE were even more libertarian than he was. Suddenly it was Mises who on several occasions turned out to represent the more statist position in his seminar. American libertarians such as Leonard Read and R.C. Hoiles placed great emphasis on the definition of political liberty in terms of non-initiation of force.
This perspective was entirely outside Mises's utilitarian approach to political problems. He believed that the question of who initiated force was politically irrelevant because one could hardly ever reach agreement on it. The only relevant question was whether the initiation of force was suitable to attain the end of the acting person, even if his action was somehow wrong from an ethical point of view.
Another, even more substantial point of disagreement between Mises and many American libertarians was the question of democracy. Mises would come to taste the particular American flavor of hostility to democracy in a 1947 exchange of letters with Rose Wilder Lane. Apparently they had met for lunch, and Lane had the impression that Mises believed they shared the same outlook on fundamentals. At the meeting she did not feel it was the right moment to start a discussion on the subject, but later wrote him to set the record straight:
[ …] as an American I am of course fundamentally opposed to democracy and to anyone advocating or defending democracy, which in theory and practice is the basis of socialism.
It is precisely democracy which is destroying the American political structure, American law, and the American economy, as Madison said it would, and as Macauley prophesied that it would do in fact in the 20th century.
Mises did not even bother to address the issue, but observed that he never addressed people who called his writings "stuff" and "nonsense" — as Lane had done in a book review. And that was that for more than two years, after which the debate resumed on more civilized terms, probably because of Lane's friendship with Howard Pew. Mises's basic objection to Lane was that she had misunderstood him. He had never advocated any concrete regime of parliamentary democracy. He merely stressed the fact that all political systems ultimately hinge on mass opinion.
Mises's American friends disagreed and the discussions and correspondence between them remained without conclusion. But the confrontation between the Austrian scholar and his American readers and disciples would be a driving force in the development of libertarian theory.
Mises's take on the importance of liberal democracy can be found in his book Liberalism.
Rose Wilder Lane summarizes her objections to democracy in her book The Discovery of Freedom:
"Democracy" by Rose Wilder Lane
Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, John Adams, Madison, and Monroe feared democracy.
They were educated men. Excepting Franklin (self-educated), each one had the education of an English gentleman. That is, the philosophy and the history of the whole European past had been pounded into his head before he was twelve years old. Therefore, when he was old enough to think for himself, he had thousands of years of human experience with every form of Government, to think about.
This knowledge was then regarded as necessary to every man whose birth entitled him to take any part in the government of his country.
They also knew the meaning of every word they used; they knew its Greek, Latin, or Anglo-Saxon root. Until forty years ago, this knowledge was still considered of first importance in American schools. Every pupil, at thirteen and fourteen, learned etymology as he had learned spelling since the age of six, by dogged repetition until the facts were fixed in his mind.
Today the confusion of the meaning of words in these United States is a danger to the whole world. Few American schools any longer require a pupil to dissect his words to their roots, and to know what he means when he speaks. And for twenty years the disciplined members of the Communist Party in these States have been deliberately following Lenin's instruction, "First confuse the vocabulary."
Thinking can be done only in words. Accurate thinking requires words of precise meaning. Communication between human beings is impossible without words whose precise meaning is generally understood.
Confuse the vocabulary, and people do not know what is happening; they can not communicate an alarm; they can not achieve any common purpose. Confuse the vocabulary, and millions are helpless against a small, disciplined number who know what they mean when they speak. Lenin had brains.
Today, when you hear the word "democracy," what does it mean?
These United States, of course; and England, the British Commonwealth, the British Empire, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Belgium, part of France, Finland when Russians attack the Finns but not when Finns attack Russia; Russia when Russians fight Germans but not when Stalin signs a pact with Hitler; the kingdoms and dictatorships of the Balkans; and economic security and compulsory insurance and the check-off system of collecting labor union dues; and friendliness and neighborliness and the unique American sense of human equality, and a vote for everybody, and socialism and communism and the Spanish cause for which republicans, democrats, socialists, syndicalists, anarchists and Russian and American communists fought, and freedom and human rights and human dignity and common decency.
That is, the word has no meaning. Its meaning has been destroyed.
It was once a sound word. It is a necessary word, because no other has its real meaning. Demo-cracy means, rule by The People; as precisely as monarchy means, rule by one (person).
Demos, The People, was a fantasy imagined by the ancient Greeks, in their search for The Authority that (they imagined) controlled men. To this fantasy they attached the meaning of God, which always attaches to every form of Authority, and there are still persons who believe that "the voice of The People is the voice of God."
The People does not exist. Individual persons compose any group of persons.
So in practice, any attempt to establish democracy is an attempt to make a majority of persons in a group act as the ruler of that group.
Consider this for one moment, not in fantasy, but as applied to your own experience in groups of living persons whom you know, and you will understand why every attempt to establish democracy has failed.
Of course there is no reason to suppose that majority-rule would be desirable, even if it were possible. There is no morality or efficiency in mere numbers. Ninety-nine persons are no more likely to be right than one person is.
In the Federalist Papers, Madison stated the reason why every attempt to establish a democracy quickly creates a tyrant:
"A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
The gentlemen who took responsibility for saving the American Revolution were fearful that democracy would end it. The unknown Americans, the Ebenezer Foxes, for years had been fighting Authority; each was determined "to do what was right in my own eyes." But they had no Latin or Greek, they knew nothing about all the previous efforts to make democracy work, and they were shouting for democracy.
On the other hand, the large landholders, bankers, rich merchants, and a thick-springing crop of rapacious grafters and land-speculators, led by Alexander Hamilton, the illegitimate adventurer from the West Indies who was also a genius, were demanding an American monarchy.
The real revolutionists, when they signed the Declaration of Independence and of individual freedom, were undertaking not only to win a war against impossible odds, but to create an entirely new kind of Government.
They faced the armed power of the British Empire, with thirteen disorganized, quarreling colonies at their backs, and two dangers threatening them: monarchy, and democracy. They said nothing about The People. They repeated no nonsense about Science and Natural Law and the Age of Reason. They did not gush about the noble nature of Natural Man. They knew men. They were realists. They had no illusions about men, but they did know that all men are free.
They stood against both monarchy and democracy, because they knew that when men set up an imaginary Authority armed with force, they destroy all opportunity to exercise their natural freedom.
Educated men, they had studied the many attempts to establish democracy. The results were known twenty-five hundred years ago in Greece. Democracy does not work. It can not work, because every man is free. He cannot transfer his inalienable life and liberty to anyone or anything outside himself. When he tries to do this, he tries to obey an Authority that does not exist.
It makes no difference what he imagines this Authority to be — Ra or Baal or Zeus or Jupiter; Cleopatra or the Mikado; or Economic Necessity or the Will of the Masses or the Voice of The People; the stubborn fact is that there is no Authority, of any kind, that controls individuals. They control themselves.
Anyone in a free group can decide to give up his own idea and go along with the majority. If he does not want to do this, he can get out of the group. This is a use of freedom, an exercise of self-controlling responsibility.
But when a large number of individuals falsely believe that the majority is an Authority that has a right to control individuals, they must let a majority choose one man (or a few men) to act as Government. They will believe that the majority has transferred to those men the Majority-Right to control all individuals living under that Government. But Government is not a controlling Authority; Government is a use of force, it is the police, the army; it cannot control anyone, it can only hinder, restrict, or stop anyone's use of his energy.
As Madison says, some common passion or interest will sway a majority. And because a majority supports the ruler whom a majority chooses, nothing checks his use of force against the minority. So the ruler of a democracy quickly becomes a tyrant. And that is the swift and violent death of the democracy.
This always occurs, invariably. It is as certain as death and taxes. It occurred in Athens twenty-five centuries ago. It occurred in France in 1804, when an overwhelming majority elected the Emperor Napoleon. It occurred in Germany in 1932, when a majority of Germans — swayed by a common passion for food and social order — elected Hitler.
Madison stated the historic fact: in democracy there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. There is no protection for liberty. Hence it is, that democracies always destroy personal security (the Gestapo, the concentration camps) and the rights of property (what rights of property ownership are there in Europe, now?) and are as short in their lives as they are violent in their deaths.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Identifying With the State
by Buttler Shaffer
One of the deadliest practices we engage in is that of identifying ourselves with a collective entity. Whether it be the state, a nationality, our race or gender, or any other abstraction, we introduce division – hence, conflict – into our lives as we separate ourselves from those who identify with other groupings. If one observes the state of our world today, this is the pattern that underlies our deadly and destructive social behavior. This mindset was no better articulated than when George W. Bush declared “you’re either with us, or against us.”
Through years of careful conditioning, we learn to think of ourselves in terms of agencies and/or abstractions external to our independent being. Or, to express the point more clearly, we have learned to internalize these external forces; to conform our thinking and behavior to the purposes and interests of such entities. We adorn ourselves with flags, mouth shibboleths, and decorate our cars with bumper-stickers, in order to communicate to others our sense of “who we are.” In such ways does our being become indistinguishable from our chosen collective.
In this way are institutions born. We discover a particular form of organization through which we are able to cooperate with others for our mutual benefit. Over time, the advantages derived from this system have a sufficient consistency to lead us to the conclusion that our well-being is dependent upon it. Those who manage the organization find it in their self-interests to propagate this belief so that we will become dependent upon its permanency. Like a sculptor working with clay, institutions take over the direction of our minds, twisting, squeezing, and pounding upon them until we have embraced a mindset conducive to their interests. Once this has been accomplished, we find it easy to subvert our will and sense of purpose to the collective. The organization ceases being a mere tool of mutual convenience, and becomes an end in itself. Our lives become “institutionalized,” and we regard it as fanciful to imagine ourselves living in any other way than as constituent parts of a machine that transcends our individual sense.
Once we identify ourselves with the state, that collective entity does more than represent who we are; it is who we are. To the politicized mind, the idea that “we are the government” has real meaning, not in the sense of being able to control such an agency, but in the psychological sense. The successes and failures of the state become the subject’s successes and failures; insults or other attacks upon their abstract sense of being – such as the burning of “their” flag – become assaults upon their very personhood. Shortcomings on the part of the state become our failures of character. This is why so many Americans who have belatedly come to criticize the war against Iraq are inclined to treat it as only a “mistake” or the product of “mismanagement,” not as a moral wrong. Our egos can more easily admit to the making of a mistake than to moral transgressions. Such an attitude also helps to explain why, as Milton Mayer wrote in his revealing post-World War II book, They Thought They Were Free, most Germans were unable to admit that the Nazi regime had been tyrannical.
It is this dynamic that makes it easy for political officials to generate wars, a process that reinforces the sense of identity and attachment people have for “their” state. It also helps to explain why most Americans – though tiring of the war against Iraq – refuse to condemn government leaders for the lies, forgeries, and deceit employed to get the war started: to acknowledge the dishonesty of the system through which they identify themselves is to admit to the dishonest base of their being.
The truthfulness of the state’s rationale for war is irrelevant to most of its subjects. It is sufficient that they believe the abstraction with which their lives are intertwined will be benefited in some way by war. Against whom and upon what claim does not matter – except as a factor in assessing the likelihood of success. That most Americans have pipped nary a squeak of protest over Bush administration plans to attack Iran – with nuclear weapons if deemed useful to its ends – reflects the point I am making. Bush could undertake a full-fledged war against Lapland, and most Americans would trot out their flags and bumper-stickers of approval.
The “rightness” or “wrongness” of any form of collective behavior becomes interpreted by the standard of whose actions are being considered. During World War II, for example, Japanese kamikaze pilots were regarded as crazed fanatics for crashing their planes into American battleships. At the same time, American war movies (see, e.g., Flying Tigers) extolled the heroism of American pilots who did the same thing. One sees this same double-standard in responding to “conspiracy theories.” “Do you think a conspiracy was behind the 9/11 attacks?” It certainly seems so to me, unless one is prepared to treat the disappearance of the World Trade Center buildings as the consequence of a couple pilots having bad navigational experiences! The question that should be asked is: whose conspiracy was it? To those whose identities coincide with the state, such a question is easily answered: others conspire, we do not.
It is not the symbiotic relationship between war and the expansion of state power, nor the realization of corporate benefits that could not be obtained in a free market, that mobilize the machinery of war. Without most of us standing behind “our” system, and cheering on “our” troops, and defending “our” leaders, none of this would be possible. What would be your likely response if your neighbor prevailed upon you to join him in a violent attack upon a local convenience store, on the grounds that it hired “illegal aliens?” Your sense of identity would not be implicated in his efforts, and you would likely dismiss him as a lunatic.
Only when our ego-identities become wrapped up with some institutional abstraction – such as the state – can we be persuaded to invest our lives and the lives of our children in the collective madness of state action. We do not have such attitudes toward organizations with which we have more transitory relationships. If we find an accounting error in our bank statement, we would not find satisfaction in the proposition “the First National Bank, right or wrong.” Neither would we be inclined to wear a T-shirt that read “Disneyland: love it or leave it.”
One of the many adverse consequences of identifying with and attaching ourselves to collective abstractions is our loss of control over not only the meaning and direction in our lives, but of the manner in which we can be efficacious in our efforts to pursue the purposes that have become central to us. We become dependent upon the performance of “our” group; “our” reputation rises or falls on the basis of what institutional leaders do or fail to do. If “our” nation-state loses respect in the world – such as by the use of torture or killing innocent people - we consider ourselves no longer respectable, and scurry to find plausible excuses to redeem our egos. When these expectations are not met, we go in search of new leaders or organizational reforms we believe will restore our sense of purpose and pride that we have allowed abstract entities to personify for us.
As the costs and failures of the state become increasingly evident, there is a growing tendency to blame this system. But to do so is to continue playing the same game into which we have allowed ourselves to become conditioned. One of the practices employed by the state to get us to mobilize our “dark side” energies in opposition to the endless recycling of enemies it has chosen for us, is that of psychological projection. Whether we care to acknowledge it or not – and most of us do not – each of us has an unconscious capacity for attitudes or conduct that our conscious minds reject. We fear that, sufficiently provoked, we might engage in violence – even deadly – against others; or that inducements might cause us to become dishonest. We might harbor racist or other bigoted sentiments, or consider ourselves lazy or irresponsible. Though we are unlikely to act upon such inner fears, their presence within us can generate discomforting self-directed feelings of guilt, anger, or unworthiness that we would like to eliminate. The most common way in which humanity has tried to bring about such an exorcism is by subconsciously projecting these traits onto others (i.e., “scapegoats”) and punishing them for what are really our own shortcomings.
The state has trained us to behave this way, in order that we may be counted upon to invest our lives, resources, and other energies in pursuit of the enemy du jour. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that most of us resort to the same practice in our criticism of political systems. After years of mouthing the high-school civics class mantra about the necessity for government – and the bigger the government the better – we begin to experience the unexpected consequences of politicization. Tax burdens continue to escalate; or the state takes our home to make way for a proposed shopping center; or ever-more details of our lives are micromanaged by ever-burgeoning state bureaucracies.
Having grown weary of the costs – including the loss of control over our lives – we blame the state for what has befallen us. We condemn the Bush administration for the parade of lies that precipitated the war against Iraq, rather than indicting ourselves for ever believing anything the state tells us. We fault the politicians for the skyrocketing costs of governmental programs, conveniently ignoring our insistence upon this or that benefit whose costs we would prefer having others pay. The statists have helped us accept a world view that conflates our incompetence to manage our own lives with their omniscience to manage the lives of billions of people – along with the planet upon which we live! – and we are now experiencing the costs generated by our own gullibility.
We have acted like country bumpkins at the state fair with the egg money who, having been fleeced by a bunch of carnival sharpies, look everywhere for someone to blame other than ourselves. We have been euchred out of our very lives because of our eagerness to believe that benefits can be enjoyed without incurring costs; that the freedom to control one’s life can be separated from the responsibilities for one’s actions; and that two plus two does not have to add up to four if a sizeable public opinion can be amassed against the proposition.
By identifying ourselves with any abstraction (such as the state) we give up the integrated life, the sense of wholeness that can be found only within each of us. While the state has manipulated, cajoled, and threatened us to identify ourselves with it, the responsibility for our acceding to its pressures lies within each of us. The statists have – as was their vicious purpose – simply taken over the territory we have abandoned.
Our politico-centric pain and suffering has been brought about by our having allowed external forces to move in and occupy the vacuum we created at the center of our being. The only way out of our dilemma involves a retracing of the route that brought us to where we are. We require nothing so much right now as the development of a sense of “who we are” that transcends our institutionalized identities, and returns us – without division and conflict – to a centered, self-directed integrity in our lives.
One of the deadliest practices we engage in is that of identifying ourselves with a collective entity. Whether it be the state, a nationality, our race or gender, or any other abstraction, we introduce division – hence, conflict – into our lives as we separate ourselves from those who identify with other groupings. If one observes the state of our world today, this is the pattern that underlies our deadly and destructive social behavior. This mindset was no better articulated than when George W. Bush declared “you’re either with us, or against us.”
Through years of careful conditioning, we learn to think of ourselves in terms of agencies and/or abstractions external to our independent being. Or, to express the point more clearly, we have learned to internalize these external forces; to conform our thinking and behavior to the purposes and interests of such entities. We adorn ourselves with flags, mouth shibboleths, and decorate our cars with bumper-stickers, in order to communicate to others our sense of “who we are.” In such ways does our being become indistinguishable from our chosen collective.
In this way are institutions born. We discover a particular form of organization through which we are able to cooperate with others for our mutual benefit. Over time, the advantages derived from this system have a sufficient consistency to lead us to the conclusion that our well-being is dependent upon it. Those who manage the organization find it in their self-interests to propagate this belief so that we will become dependent upon its permanency. Like a sculptor working with clay, institutions take over the direction of our minds, twisting, squeezing, and pounding upon them until we have embraced a mindset conducive to their interests. Once this has been accomplished, we find it easy to subvert our will and sense of purpose to the collective. The organization ceases being a mere tool of mutual convenience, and becomes an end in itself. Our lives become “institutionalized,” and we regard it as fanciful to imagine ourselves living in any other way than as constituent parts of a machine that transcends our individual sense.
Once we identify ourselves with the state, that collective entity does more than represent who we are; it is who we are. To the politicized mind, the idea that “we are the government” has real meaning, not in the sense of being able to control such an agency, but in the psychological sense. The successes and failures of the state become the subject’s successes and failures; insults or other attacks upon their abstract sense of being – such as the burning of “their” flag – become assaults upon their very personhood. Shortcomings on the part of the state become our failures of character. This is why so many Americans who have belatedly come to criticize the war against Iraq are inclined to treat it as only a “mistake” or the product of “mismanagement,” not as a moral wrong. Our egos can more easily admit to the making of a mistake than to moral transgressions. Such an attitude also helps to explain why, as Milton Mayer wrote in his revealing post-World War II book, They Thought They Were Free, most Germans were unable to admit that the Nazi regime had been tyrannical.
It is this dynamic that makes it easy for political officials to generate wars, a process that reinforces the sense of identity and attachment people have for “their” state. It also helps to explain why most Americans – though tiring of the war against Iraq – refuse to condemn government leaders for the lies, forgeries, and deceit employed to get the war started: to acknowledge the dishonesty of the system through which they identify themselves is to admit to the dishonest base of their being.
The truthfulness of the state’s rationale for war is irrelevant to most of its subjects. It is sufficient that they believe the abstraction with which their lives are intertwined will be benefited in some way by war. Against whom and upon what claim does not matter – except as a factor in assessing the likelihood of success. That most Americans have pipped nary a squeak of protest over Bush administration plans to attack Iran – with nuclear weapons if deemed useful to its ends – reflects the point I am making. Bush could undertake a full-fledged war against Lapland, and most Americans would trot out their flags and bumper-stickers of approval.
The “rightness” or “wrongness” of any form of collective behavior becomes interpreted by the standard of whose actions are being considered. During World War II, for example, Japanese kamikaze pilots were regarded as crazed fanatics for crashing their planes into American battleships. At the same time, American war movies (see, e.g., Flying Tigers) extolled the heroism of American pilots who did the same thing. One sees this same double-standard in responding to “conspiracy theories.” “Do you think a conspiracy was behind the 9/11 attacks?” It certainly seems so to me, unless one is prepared to treat the disappearance of the World Trade Center buildings as the consequence of a couple pilots having bad navigational experiences! The question that should be asked is: whose conspiracy was it? To those whose identities coincide with the state, such a question is easily answered: others conspire, we do not.
It is not the symbiotic relationship between war and the expansion of state power, nor the realization of corporate benefits that could not be obtained in a free market, that mobilize the machinery of war. Without most of us standing behind “our” system, and cheering on “our” troops, and defending “our” leaders, none of this would be possible. What would be your likely response if your neighbor prevailed upon you to join him in a violent attack upon a local convenience store, on the grounds that it hired “illegal aliens?” Your sense of identity would not be implicated in his efforts, and you would likely dismiss him as a lunatic.
Only when our ego-identities become wrapped up with some institutional abstraction – such as the state – can we be persuaded to invest our lives and the lives of our children in the collective madness of state action. We do not have such attitudes toward organizations with which we have more transitory relationships. If we find an accounting error in our bank statement, we would not find satisfaction in the proposition “the First National Bank, right or wrong.” Neither would we be inclined to wear a T-shirt that read “Disneyland: love it or leave it.”
One of the many adverse consequences of identifying with and attaching ourselves to collective abstractions is our loss of control over not only the meaning and direction in our lives, but of the manner in which we can be efficacious in our efforts to pursue the purposes that have become central to us. We become dependent upon the performance of “our” group; “our” reputation rises or falls on the basis of what institutional leaders do or fail to do. If “our” nation-state loses respect in the world – such as by the use of torture or killing innocent people - we consider ourselves no longer respectable, and scurry to find plausible excuses to redeem our egos. When these expectations are not met, we go in search of new leaders or organizational reforms we believe will restore our sense of purpose and pride that we have allowed abstract entities to personify for us.
As the costs and failures of the state become increasingly evident, there is a growing tendency to blame this system. But to do so is to continue playing the same game into which we have allowed ourselves to become conditioned. One of the practices employed by the state to get us to mobilize our “dark side” energies in opposition to the endless recycling of enemies it has chosen for us, is that of psychological projection. Whether we care to acknowledge it or not – and most of us do not – each of us has an unconscious capacity for attitudes or conduct that our conscious minds reject. We fear that, sufficiently provoked, we might engage in violence – even deadly – against others; or that inducements might cause us to become dishonest. We might harbor racist or other bigoted sentiments, or consider ourselves lazy or irresponsible. Though we are unlikely to act upon such inner fears, their presence within us can generate discomforting self-directed feelings of guilt, anger, or unworthiness that we would like to eliminate. The most common way in which humanity has tried to bring about such an exorcism is by subconsciously projecting these traits onto others (i.e., “scapegoats”) and punishing them for what are really our own shortcomings.
The state has trained us to behave this way, in order that we may be counted upon to invest our lives, resources, and other energies in pursuit of the enemy du jour. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that most of us resort to the same practice in our criticism of political systems. After years of mouthing the high-school civics class mantra about the necessity for government – and the bigger the government the better – we begin to experience the unexpected consequences of politicization. Tax burdens continue to escalate; or the state takes our home to make way for a proposed shopping center; or ever-more details of our lives are micromanaged by ever-burgeoning state bureaucracies.
Having grown weary of the costs – including the loss of control over our lives – we blame the state for what has befallen us. We condemn the Bush administration for the parade of lies that precipitated the war against Iraq, rather than indicting ourselves for ever believing anything the state tells us. We fault the politicians for the skyrocketing costs of governmental programs, conveniently ignoring our insistence upon this or that benefit whose costs we would prefer having others pay. The statists have helped us accept a world view that conflates our incompetence to manage our own lives with their omniscience to manage the lives of billions of people – along with the planet upon which we live! – and we are now experiencing the costs generated by our own gullibility.
We have acted like country bumpkins at the state fair with the egg money who, having been fleeced by a bunch of carnival sharpies, look everywhere for someone to blame other than ourselves. We have been euchred out of our very lives because of our eagerness to believe that benefits can be enjoyed without incurring costs; that the freedom to control one’s life can be separated from the responsibilities for one’s actions; and that two plus two does not have to add up to four if a sizeable public opinion can be amassed against the proposition.
By identifying ourselves with any abstraction (such as the state) we give up the integrated life, the sense of wholeness that can be found only within each of us. While the state has manipulated, cajoled, and threatened us to identify ourselves with it, the responsibility for our acceding to its pressures lies within each of us. The statists have – as was their vicious purpose – simply taken over the territory we have abandoned.
Our politico-centric pain and suffering has been brought about by our having allowed external forces to move in and occupy the vacuum we created at the center of our being. The only way out of our dilemma involves a retracing of the route that brought us to where we are. We require nothing so much right now as the development of a sense of “who we are” that transcends our institutionalized identities, and returns us – without division and conflict – to a centered, self-directed integrity in our lives.
Monday, June 25, 2007
The Derivation of Law and Rights
There are numerous conceptions of where law, rights and property come from. They all hinge on various assumptions dealing with the question of human nature.
"Natural law" and "polycentric law" is like a naturalization process whereby rules form spontaneously over time, not necessarily from deliberate human design, but as a consequence of human action that did not even necessarily intend to create such a law. It is law that is not necessarily tracable to a single origin. It arises out of society's need for social cooperation. It is the law of social cooperation. Polycentric law arises out of voluntary agreement by all individuals and parties involved. Understood in an evoluntionary sense, it arises out of man's need to adapt to their environment and fullfil what's necessary for the general well-being of the species. Natural laws can also be seen as archetypes, as universalities that make their way into all cultures in one form or another.
Some people deny that there is such thing as any natural law, or that there are no natural laws of human action. This claim requires one to reject the natural sciences entirely if it is to be taken seriously. Is the natural sciences not the source of the discovery of the laws of nature, of the physical universe? The universe is not completely subjective and arbitrary. The universe functions on the basis of specific natural laws. Humans are part of the universe. Humans, too, function on the basis of specific natural laws, in accordance with those of the physical world. Humans, like all other physical objects, have a specific nature.
In the physical sense, the field of biology sheds some light on human nature. The field of economics, or more specifically praxeology, has also uncovered laws of economics that are essentially laws of human action. Psychology, while it has been boggled down in absurdity by some, has also yielded a certain level of insight into human nature. And our general experience as human beings gives us some insight into our nature, and has lead to what could be called a certain "moral sense" as to our individuality as well as to our relationship to other individuals. As Herbert Spencer once observed, people support the rights of others in proportion to their sense of their own rights.
One view of human nature that manifests itself historically in all sorts of ways is the Hobbesian state of nature concept. The Hobbesian claim that in the abscence of a central authority everyone is at war with eachother is an unfounded dogma that leads to radical pessemism, and of course, a reliance on central authority. Locke, on the other hand, while he was certainly flawed, had a much better conception of human nature than Hobbes did, because Locke actually recognized the existance of the sovereignty of the individual.
The Hobbesian concept of human nature has served power well historically. It inherently must lead to an assumed necessitity for central state authority, lest there be chaos. It manifests itself in modern politics in all sorts of ways. To many modern leftists, for example, if social programs were cut or if welfare were privatized there would be a drastic increase in poverty. To many modern rightists, for example, if we pulled out of Iraq or if we ended the drug war, people would be dieing left and right from overdoses and our country would be turned into a theocracy imposed by Muslims by invasion. The hobbesian concept uses fear to obtain obedience to central authority.
Herbert Spencer put forth a naturalist view where the Hobbesian "war of all against all" was the conditions necessitated in man's earlier state, and that man's state has advanced to a degree since then through social evolution. The degree of tyranny that exists today is the inertia left over from the earlier conditions of man's living where brute force was "necessary" for survival. On the other hand, on an individual basis more and more people have decided to live largely voluntarily as time has passed; social conventions changed as to outlaw barbarisms of the past such as burning people at the stake in public and the popular use of torture.
Man has not yet fully adapted to the voluntary state. That does not mean that he is incapable of adaptation, and has not made some progress towards adapting towards the voluntary state already. In the west, we have suceeded in rolling back the church-state and chattel slavery. In the 18th and 19th century, fuedalism and monarchy were rolled back meaningfully for the first time in the west. This does not mean that vestiges of them do not still exist in our society, of course. But the social progress also has its own inertia. It has manifested itself in modern times in technological and economic progress, as well as some minor improvements in social interrelations.
On the other hand, social retrogressions are possible. We have been going through one ever since the 2nd half of the 19th century, with the rise of the warfare and welfare state around the world. While social progress has gone on somewhat in social interrelations, technology and capital formation, the rise of the modern democratic state stands as a bulwark of coercion pushing back in the other direction.
The degree of slavery and war, and tyranny in general, in history has been directly in proportion to the degree to which coercive government exists. In short, coercive government was "necessary" to a more primitive state of man than the current one. As history progresses, as technology improves, as cooperation and voluntary methods prove to be obviously more efficient, as capital forms, government becomes less and less "necessary". It is nonsensical to presume that government is a necessarily permanent institution.
Unfortunately, there is a disease. It's called legal positivism. The legal positivist defines rights as whatever the government recognizes to be rights in the positive law at the given moment, which can only fall back on the status quo. The legal positivist believes that all law, all rights and property itself derives from government. This is a false definition of law and rights. It simply assumes that all rights are just privileges given to us by a government, that rights come from governments. This is a profoundly anti-liberty notion in its implications.
The adherants of natural law cannot disagree more strongly with the positivist. To use a classic phrase, "liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of order". Rights precede governments. Laws precede governments. Civilization precedes government. Property precedes government. Government did not invent property. Government did not invent liberty. Governments do not legislate rights into existance. At best, all a government can do is recognize a pre-existing right. To presume that it's all the literal creation of government yields to the notion of omnipotence, it merely regaurds the government as a god.
The positivist is wrong in assuming that there is no such thing as non-governmental law. Not only is there a long history of privately produced law, but we live in a world in which there already are plenty of forms of non-governmental law all around us. The positivist assumes, without any logical explaination as to why, that the only type of law is monocentric law. They ignore the existance of polycentric law at their own peril. At best, all they can do is fall back on some kind of hobbesianism to try to justify the status quo. On the other hand, only a natural law and natural rights position can genuinely hold the status quo up to an independant yardstick.
It is precisely the positivist conception of law and rights that has allowed tyranny to be excused in this world. It is precisely the positive line of reasoning that tyrants use to justify their actions. And it is precisely the positivist conception of rights that allows those same alleged "grantors" of rights to remove their protection. Positivism can only provide blind sanction to whatever the state does when taken to its consistant conclusion. The positivist must rationalize the irrational with the saying, "its the law, so it must be followed". This rules out any notion of civil disobedience and justice vs. injustice.
It should be quite obvious as to why rights, liberty, property and law precedes government. People freely acting is something that happens anyways, regaurdless of wether or not there is a government. Even the most totalitarian government is not capable of enforcing the total illegalization of liberty. Even the strongest prohibition cannot eliminate a good or services use entirely. Property is something that naturally arose out of homesteading and voluntary exchange; and the formation of a government requires pre-existing property, particularly the property of those funding it, those providing the property necessary to its creation and maintenance. And law is simply the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules. Law could be something as simple as a household rule, or a complex network of private contracting.
If law and rights are defined as whatever those in the government arbitrarily decide they are, which is essentially what legal positivism does, then one cannot claim to have any rational basis for asserting any rights at all and therefore may as well be entirely complacent to the existing regime. Since everything is allegedly entirely subjective and arbitrary, then this whole political science and economics thing is a gigantic waste of time, and everyone should just stop trying to learn about and solve social and economic problems. On the other hand, if there is an actual basis for law and rights that can be derived through reason from objective facts about human nature, then we should continue the process of learning exactly what that is and what it entails.
One finds endless examples of how the presumption that there is no law other than positive state law is false. Private law and customary law existed in various forms in pre-state societies. Even in the most primitive of societies, there were rules that were derived so that the people could conduct their affairs in a more conductive or productive manner. One finds that much of what is considered the "common law" in the west originally derived from pre-existing private law, such as the law merchant of the middle ages. There is no reason to believe that it is impossible for a private contract or voluntarily agreed upon rule to constitute a law.
The critics of natural law tend to denigrate human reason, while mysteriously not applying this denigration to those who make up the government. Afterall, if the idea is that man is so evil and flawed that he cannot be trusted, then why shouldn't this apply to the government? Some assert that natural law is just a cover for religion, that it is inherently a religious concept meant to impose social conventions onto others. But this is an ignorant interpretation of natural law. It has been understood in an entirely secular context for a long time. Some critics essentially espouse the doctrine of moral relativism. But if everything is as relative as they make it out to be, then there can be no such thing as law or rights at all.
What is so crazy about the idea that ethics, rights and law can be formed objectively on the basis of human reason? What is so crazy about the idea that law can and does exist and form in a non-governmental context? What is so crazy about the idea that there can be a scientific ethics? What is so crazy about the idea that law and rights should be judged on the basis of logic just like anything else? The alternative is nothing but ad hoc authoritarianism.
"Natural law" and "polycentric law" is like a naturalization process whereby rules form spontaneously over time, not necessarily from deliberate human design, but as a consequence of human action that did not even necessarily intend to create such a law. It is law that is not necessarily tracable to a single origin. It arises out of society's need for social cooperation. It is the law of social cooperation. Polycentric law arises out of voluntary agreement by all individuals and parties involved. Understood in an evoluntionary sense, it arises out of man's need to adapt to their environment and fullfil what's necessary for the general well-being of the species. Natural laws can also be seen as archetypes, as universalities that make their way into all cultures in one form or another.
Some people deny that there is such thing as any natural law, or that there are no natural laws of human action. This claim requires one to reject the natural sciences entirely if it is to be taken seriously. Is the natural sciences not the source of the discovery of the laws of nature, of the physical universe? The universe is not completely subjective and arbitrary. The universe functions on the basis of specific natural laws. Humans are part of the universe. Humans, too, function on the basis of specific natural laws, in accordance with those of the physical world. Humans, like all other physical objects, have a specific nature.
In the physical sense, the field of biology sheds some light on human nature. The field of economics, or more specifically praxeology, has also uncovered laws of economics that are essentially laws of human action. Psychology, while it has been boggled down in absurdity by some, has also yielded a certain level of insight into human nature. And our general experience as human beings gives us some insight into our nature, and has lead to what could be called a certain "moral sense" as to our individuality as well as to our relationship to other individuals. As Herbert Spencer once observed, people support the rights of others in proportion to their sense of their own rights.
One view of human nature that manifests itself historically in all sorts of ways is the Hobbesian state of nature concept. The Hobbesian claim that in the abscence of a central authority everyone is at war with eachother is an unfounded dogma that leads to radical pessemism, and of course, a reliance on central authority. Locke, on the other hand, while he was certainly flawed, had a much better conception of human nature than Hobbes did, because Locke actually recognized the existance of the sovereignty of the individual.
The Hobbesian concept of human nature has served power well historically. It inherently must lead to an assumed necessitity for central state authority, lest there be chaos. It manifests itself in modern politics in all sorts of ways. To many modern leftists, for example, if social programs were cut or if welfare were privatized there would be a drastic increase in poverty. To many modern rightists, for example, if we pulled out of Iraq or if we ended the drug war, people would be dieing left and right from overdoses and our country would be turned into a theocracy imposed by Muslims by invasion. The hobbesian concept uses fear to obtain obedience to central authority.
Herbert Spencer put forth a naturalist view where the Hobbesian "war of all against all" was the conditions necessitated in man's earlier state, and that man's state has advanced to a degree since then through social evolution. The degree of tyranny that exists today is the inertia left over from the earlier conditions of man's living where brute force was "necessary" for survival. On the other hand, on an individual basis more and more people have decided to live largely voluntarily as time has passed; social conventions changed as to outlaw barbarisms of the past such as burning people at the stake in public and the popular use of torture.
Man has not yet fully adapted to the voluntary state. That does not mean that he is incapable of adaptation, and has not made some progress towards adapting towards the voluntary state already. In the west, we have suceeded in rolling back the church-state and chattel slavery. In the 18th and 19th century, fuedalism and monarchy were rolled back meaningfully for the first time in the west. This does not mean that vestiges of them do not still exist in our society, of course. But the social progress also has its own inertia. It has manifested itself in modern times in technological and economic progress, as well as some minor improvements in social interrelations.
On the other hand, social retrogressions are possible. We have been going through one ever since the 2nd half of the 19th century, with the rise of the warfare and welfare state around the world. While social progress has gone on somewhat in social interrelations, technology and capital formation, the rise of the modern democratic state stands as a bulwark of coercion pushing back in the other direction.
The degree of slavery and war, and tyranny in general, in history has been directly in proportion to the degree to which coercive government exists. In short, coercive government was "necessary" to a more primitive state of man than the current one. As history progresses, as technology improves, as cooperation and voluntary methods prove to be obviously more efficient, as capital forms, government becomes less and less "necessary". It is nonsensical to presume that government is a necessarily permanent institution.
Unfortunately, there is a disease. It's called legal positivism. The legal positivist defines rights as whatever the government recognizes to be rights in the positive law at the given moment, which can only fall back on the status quo. The legal positivist believes that all law, all rights and property itself derives from government. This is a false definition of law and rights. It simply assumes that all rights are just privileges given to us by a government, that rights come from governments. This is a profoundly anti-liberty notion in its implications.
The adherants of natural law cannot disagree more strongly with the positivist. To use a classic phrase, "liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of order". Rights precede governments. Laws precede governments. Civilization precedes government. Property precedes government. Government did not invent property. Government did not invent liberty. Governments do not legislate rights into existance. At best, all a government can do is recognize a pre-existing right. To presume that it's all the literal creation of government yields to the notion of omnipotence, it merely regaurds the government as a god.
The positivist is wrong in assuming that there is no such thing as non-governmental law. Not only is there a long history of privately produced law, but we live in a world in which there already are plenty of forms of non-governmental law all around us. The positivist assumes, without any logical explaination as to why, that the only type of law is monocentric law. They ignore the existance of polycentric law at their own peril. At best, all they can do is fall back on some kind of hobbesianism to try to justify the status quo. On the other hand, only a natural law and natural rights position can genuinely hold the status quo up to an independant yardstick.
It is precisely the positivist conception of law and rights that has allowed tyranny to be excused in this world. It is precisely the positive line of reasoning that tyrants use to justify their actions. And it is precisely the positivist conception of rights that allows those same alleged "grantors" of rights to remove their protection. Positivism can only provide blind sanction to whatever the state does when taken to its consistant conclusion. The positivist must rationalize the irrational with the saying, "its the law, so it must be followed". This rules out any notion of civil disobedience and justice vs. injustice.
It should be quite obvious as to why rights, liberty, property and law precedes government. People freely acting is something that happens anyways, regaurdless of wether or not there is a government. Even the most totalitarian government is not capable of enforcing the total illegalization of liberty. Even the strongest prohibition cannot eliminate a good or services use entirely. Property is something that naturally arose out of homesteading and voluntary exchange; and the formation of a government requires pre-existing property, particularly the property of those funding it, those providing the property necessary to its creation and maintenance. And law is simply the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules. Law could be something as simple as a household rule, or a complex network of private contracting.
If law and rights are defined as whatever those in the government arbitrarily decide they are, which is essentially what legal positivism does, then one cannot claim to have any rational basis for asserting any rights at all and therefore may as well be entirely complacent to the existing regime. Since everything is allegedly entirely subjective and arbitrary, then this whole political science and economics thing is a gigantic waste of time, and everyone should just stop trying to learn about and solve social and economic problems. On the other hand, if there is an actual basis for law and rights that can be derived through reason from objective facts about human nature, then we should continue the process of learning exactly what that is and what it entails.
One finds endless examples of how the presumption that there is no law other than positive state law is false. Private law and customary law existed in various forms in pre-state societies. Even in the most primitive of societies, there were rules that were derived so that the people could conduct their affairs in a more conductive or productive manner. One finds that much of what is considered the "common law" in the west originally derived from pre-existing private law, such as the law merchant of the middle ages. There is no reason to believe that it is impossible for a private contract or voluntarily agreed upon rule to constitute a law.
The critics of natural law tend to denigrate human reason, while mysteriously not applying this denigration to those who make up the government. Afterall, if the idea is that man is so evil and flawed that he cannot be trusted, then why shouldn't this apply to the government? Some assert that natural law is just a cover for religion, that it is inherently a religious concept meant to impose social conventions onto others. But this is an ignorant interpretation of natural law. It has been understood in an entirely secular context for a long time. Some critics essentially espouse the doctrine of moral relativism. But if everything is as relative as they make it out to be, then there can be no such thing as law or rights at all.
What is so crazy about the idea that ethics, rights and law can be formed objectively on the basis of human reason? What is so crazy about the idea that law can and does exist and form in a non-governmental context? What is so crazy about the idea that there can be a scientific ethics? What is so crazy about the idea that law and rights should be judged on the basis of logic just like anything else? The alternative is nothing but ad hoc authoritarianism.
Determinism, New Age and Free Will (Elaboration)
In philosophy, there has been endless debate about the topic of free will and choice. I'd say that there are three general schools of thought on the question.
Hardcore determinists deny that free will and choice exists, as they effectively think that history is entirely pre-determined as if there is only one possible future (and therefore only one possible choice for a human being to make) at all times. In effect, a determinist believes that we are all sock puppets. If they're religious, we're all just sock puppets for a diety. If they're secular, we're all just sock puppets for the laws of nature. In either case, it implies that there is no such thing as personal responsibility. That's determinism in a nutshell (although there are "compatibalist" determinists who claim that free will is compatible with determinism; but this is an illogical position, because determinism inherently implies that every action someone engages in could not have been done/chosen in any other way).
Hardcore new age people believe not in free will so much as the idea that the entire world is nothing but a tabula rasa. Unlike the determinist, who believes that the physical world around us pre-determines all human choice, the radical new ager believes that our minds and thoughts dictates and pre-determines the physical world. In effect, a new ager believes either that everyone is eachother's sock puppet, or that the world or universe is completely determined by our conciousnesses (which often leads to the notion that "life is just an illusion"). This makes them get caught up in irrationalism and primitivism.
Free will is a self-evident observation that comes from our experience of making choices, experiencing their consequences, and modifying our behavior in reaction to those consequences. Free will involves internal deliberation, the consideration of alternative goals and alternative means of achieving goals. It implies that is more than one possible end, and more than one possible means to that end, and that humans are capable, through the admitedly imperfect use of their rationality, to choose among these means and place their desires in an order of preferances. It arises from our nature as human beings. And it is a fallacy to assume that free will is necessary a religious notion; it is a philosophical notion that has been used in a secular context for a long time. The free will proponent does not believe in sock puppets.
Hardcore determinists deny that free will and choice exists, as they effectively think that history is entirely pre-determined as if there is only one possible future (and therefore only one possible choice for a human being to make) at all times. In effect, a determinist believes that we are all sock puppets. If they're religious, we're all just sock puppets for a diety. If they're secular, we're all just sock puppets for the laws of nature. In either case, it implies that there is no such thing as personal responsibility. That's determinism in a nutshell (although there are "compatibalist" determinists who claim that free will is compatible with determinism; but this is an illogical position, because determinism inherently implies that every action someone engages in could not have been done/chosen in any other way).
Hardcore new age people believe not in free will so much as the idea that the entire world is nothing but a tabula rasa. Unlike the determinist, who believes that the physical world around us pre-determines all human choice, the radical new ager believes that our minds and thoughts dictates and pre-determines the physical world. In effect, a new ager believes either that everyone is eachother's sock puppet, or that the world or universe is completely determined by our conciousnesses (which often leads to the notion that "life is just an illusion"). This makes them get caught up in irrationalism and primitivism.
Free will is a self-evident observation that comes from our experience of making choices, experiencing their consequences, and modifying our behavior in reaction to those consequences. Free will involves internal deliberation, the consideration of alternative goals and alternative means of achieving goals. It implies that is more than one possible end, and more than one possible means to that end, and that humans are capable, through the admitedly imperfect use of their rationality, to choose among these means and place their desires in an order of preferances. It arises from our nature as human beings. And it is a fallacy to assume that free will is necessary a religious notion; it is a philosophical notion that has been used in a secular context for a long time. The free will proponent does not believe in sock puppets.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
The Doctrine of Expediency
The Doctrine of Expediency
by Herbert Spencer
[Exerpted from the Introduction to "Social Statics" by Herbert Spencer, originally written in 1851.]
"GIVE us a guide," cry men to the philosopher. "We would escape from these miseries in which we are entangled. A better state is ever present to our imaginations, and we yearn after it; but all our efforts to realize it are fruitless. We are weary of perpetual failures; tell us by what rule we may attain our desire."
"Whatever is expedient is right;" is one of the last of the many replies to this appeal.
"True," rejoin some of the applicants. "With the Deity right and expedient are doubtless convertible terms. For us, however, there remains the question—which is the antecedent, and which is the consequent? Granting your assumption that right is the unknown quantity and expediency the known one, your formula may be serviceable. But we deny your premises; a painful experience has proved the two to be equally indeterminate. Nay, we begin to suspect that the right is the more easily ascertained of the two; and that your maxim would be better if transposed into—whatever is right is expedient."
"Let your rule be, the greatest happiness to the greatest number," interposes another authority."
"That, like the other, is no rule at all," it is replied; "but rather an enunciation of the problem to be solved. It is your 'greatest happiness' of which we have been so long and so fruitlessly in search; albeit we never gave it a name. You tell us nothing new; you merely give words to our want. What you call an answer, is simply our own question turned the right side up. If this is your philosophy it is surely empty, for it merely echoes the interrogation."
"Have a little patience," returns the moralist, "and I will give you my opinion as to the mode of securing this greatest happiness to the greatest number."
"There again," exclaim the objectors, "you mistake our requirement. We want something else than opinions. We have had enough of them. Every futile scheme for the general good has been based on opinion; and we have no guarantee that your plan will not add one to the list of failures. Have you discovered a means of forming an infallible judgment? If not, you are, for aught we can perceive, as much in the dark as ourselves. True, you have obtained a clearer view of the end to be arrived at; but concerning the route leading to it, your offer of an opinion proves that you know nothing more certain than we do. We demur to your maxim because it is not what we wanted—a guide; because it dictates no sure mode of securing the desideratum; because it puts no veto upon a mistaken policy; because it permits all actions—bad, as readily as good—provided only the actors believe them conducive to the prescribed end. Your doctrines of 'expediency' or 'utility' or 'general good' or 'greatest happiness to the greatest number' afford not a solitary command of a practical character. Let but rulers think, or profess to think, that their measures will benefit the community, and your philosophy stands mute in the presence of the most egregious folly, or the blackest misconduct. This will not do for us. We seek a system that can return a definite answer when we ask—'Is this act good?' and not like yours, reply—'Yes, if it will benefit you.' If you can show us such an one—if you can give us an axiom from which we may develope successive propositions until we have with mathematical certainty solved all our difficulties—we will thank you. If not, we must go elsewhere."
In his defence, our philosopher submits that such expectations are unreasonable. He doubts the possibility of a strictly scientific morality. Moreover he maintains that his system is sufficient for all practical purposes. He has definitely pointed out the goal to be attained. He has surveyed the tract lying between us and it. He believes he has discovered the best route. And finally he has volunteered as pioneer. Having done this, he claims to have performed all that can be expected of him, and deprecates the opposition of these critics as factious, and their objections as frivolous. Let us examine this position somewhat more closely.
§ 2.
Assuming it to be in other respects satisfactory, a rule, principle, or axiom, is valuable only in so far as the words in which it is expressed have a definite meaning. The terms used must be universally accepted in the same sense, otherwise the proposition will be liable to such various constructions, as to lose all claim to the title—a rule. We must therefore take it for granted that when he announced "the greatest happiness to the greatest number" as the canon of social morality, its originator supposed mankind to be unanimous in their definition of "greatest happiness."
This was a most unfortunate assumption, for no fact is more palpable than that the standard of happiness is infinitely variable. In all ages—amongst every people—by each class—do we find different notions of it entertained. To the wandering gipsy a home is tiresome; whilst a Swiss is miserable without one. Progress is necessary to the well-being of the Anglo-Saxons; on the other hand the Esquimaux are content in their squalid poverty, have no latent wants, and are still what they were in the days of Tacitus. An Irishman delights in a row; a Chinese in pageantry and ceremonies; and the usually apathetic Javan gets vociferously enthusiastic over a cock-fight. The heaven of the Hebrew is "a city of gold and precious stones, with a supernatural abundance of corn and wine;" that of the Turk—a harem peopled by houris; that of the American Indian—a "happy hunting ground;" in the Norse paradise there were to be daily battles with magical healing of wounds; whilst the Australian hopes that after death he shall "jump up a white fellow, and have plenty of sixpences." Descending to individual instances, we find Louis XVI. interpreting "greatest happiness" to mean—making locks; instead of which his successor read—making empires. It was seemingly the opinion of Lycurgus that perfect physical development was the chief essential to human felicity; Plotinus, on the contrary, was so purely ideal in his aspirations as to be ashamed of his body. Indeed the many contradictory answers given by Grecian thinkers to the question—What constitutes happiness? have given occasion to comparisons that have now become trite. Nor has greater unanimity been shown amongst ourselves. To a miserly Elwes the hoarding of money was the only enjoyment of life; but Day, the philanthropic author of "Sandford and Merton," could find no pleasurable employment save in its distribution. Rural quietude, books, and a friend, are the wants of the poet; a tuft-hunter longs rather for a large circle of titled acquaintance, a box at the Opera, and the freedom of Almack's. The ambitions of the tradesman and the artist are anything but alike; and could we compare the air castles of the ploughman and the philosopher, we should find them of widely-different orders of architecture.
Generalizing such facts, we see that the standard of "greatest happiness" possesses as little fixity as the other exponents of human nature. Between nations the differences of opinion are conspicuous enough. On contrasting the Hebrew patriarchs with their existing descendants, we observe that even in the same race the beau ideal of existence changes. The members of each community disagree upon the question. Neither, if we compare the wishes of the gluttonous school-boy with those of the earth-scorning transcendentalist into whom he may afterwards grow, do we find any constancy in the individual. So we may say, not only that every epoch and every people has its peculiar conceptions of happiness, but that no two men have like conceptions; and further, that in each man the conception is not the same at any two periods of life.
The rationale of this is simple enough. Happiness signifies a gratified state of all the faculties. The gratification of a faculty is produced by its exercise. To be agreeable that exercise must be proportionate to the power of the faculty; if it is insufficient discontent arises, and its excess produces weariness. Hence, to have complete felicity is to have all the faculties exerted in the ratio of their several developments; and an ideal arrangement of circumstances calculated to secure this constitutes the standard of "greatest happiness;" but the minds of no two individuals contain the same combination of elements. Duplicate men are not to be found. There is in each a different balance of desires. Therefore the conditions adapted for the highest enjoyment of one, would not perfectly compass the same end for any other. And consequently the notion of happiness must vary with the disposition and character; that is, must vary indefinitely.
Whereby we are also led to the inevitable conclusion that a true conception of what human life should be, is possible only to the ideal man. We may make approximate estimates, but he only in whom the component feelings exist in their normal proportions is capable of a perfect aspiration. And as the world yet contains none such, it follows that a specific idea of "greatest happiness" is for the present unattainable. It is not then to be wondered at, if Paleys and Benthams make vain attempts at a definition. The question involves one of those mysteries which men are ever trying to penetrate and ever failing. It is the insoluble riddle which Care, Sphinx-like, puts to each new comer, and in default of answer devours him. And as yet there is no Œdipus, nor any sign of one.
The allegation that these are hypercritical objections, and that for all practical purposes we agree sufficiently well as to what "greatest happiness" means, will possibly be made by some. It were easy to disprove this, but it is unnecessary, for there are plenty of questions practical enough to satisfy such cavillers, and about which men exhibit none of this pretended unanimity. For example:
— What is the ratio between the mental and bodily enjoyments constituting this "greatest happiness"? There is a point up to which increase of mental activity produces increase of happiness; but beyond which, it produces in the end more pain than pleasure. Where is that point? Some appear to think that intellectual culture and the gratifications deriveable from it can hardly be carried too far. Others again maintain that already amongst the educated classes mental excitements are taken in excess; and that were more time given to a proper fulfilment of the animal functions, a larger amount of enjoyment would be obtained. If "greatest happiness" is to be the rule, it becomes needful to decide which of these opinions is correct; and further to determine the exact boundary between the use and abuse of every faculty.
— Which is most truly an element in the desired felicity, content or aspiration? The generality assume, as a matter of course, that content is. They think it the chief essential to well-being. There are others, however, who hold that but for discontent we should have been still savages. It is in their eyes the greatest incentive to progress. Nay, they maintain that were content the order of the day, society would even now begin to decay. It is required to reconcile these contradictory theories.
— And this synonyme for "greatest happiness"—this "utility"—what shall be comprised under it? The million would confine it to the things which directly or indirectly minister to the bodily wants, and in the words of the adage "help to get something to put in the pot." Others there are who think mental improvement useful in itself, irrespective of so-called practical results, and would therefore teach astronomy, comparative anatomy, ethnology, and the like, together with logic and metaphysics. Unlike some of the Roman writers who held the practice of the fine arts to be absolutely vicious, there are now many who suppose utility to comprehend poetry, painting, sculpture, the decorative arts, and whatever aids the refinement of the taste. Whilst an extreme party maintains that music, dancing, the drama, and what are commonly called amusements, are equally worthy to be included. In place of all which discordance we ought to have agreement.
— Whether shall we adopt the theory of some that felicity means the greatest possible enjoyment of this life's pleasures, or that of others, that it consists in anticipating the pleasures of a life to come? And if we compromise the matter, and say it should combine both, how much of each shall go to its composition?
— Or what must we think of this wealth-seeking age of ours? Shall we consider the total absorption of time and energy in business—the servitude of the mind to the needs of the body—the spending of life in the accumulation of the means to live, as constituting "greatest happiness," and act accordingly? Or shall we legislate upon the assumption that this is to be regarded as the voracity of a larva assimilating material for the development of the future psyche?Similar unsettled questions might be indefinitely multiplied. Not only therefore is an agreement as to the meaning of "greatest happiness" theoretically impossible, but it is also manifest, that men are at issue upon all topics, which for their determination require defined notions of it.So that in directing us to this "greatest happiness to the greatest number," as the object towards which we should steer, our pilot "keeps the word of promise to our ear and breaks it to our hope." What he shows us through his telescope is a fata morgana, and not the promised land. The real haven of our hopes dips far down below the horizon and has yet been seen by none. It is beyond the ken of seer be he never so farsighted. Faith not sight must be our guide. We cannot do without a compass.
§ 3.Even were the fundamental proposition of the expediency system not thus vitiated by the indefiniteness of its terms, it would still be vulnerable. Granting for the sake of argument, that the desideratum, "greatest happiness," is duly comprehended, its identity and nature agreed upon by all, and the direction in which it lies satisfactorily settled, there yet remains the unwarranted assumption that it is possible for the self-guided human judgment to determine, with something like precision, by what methods it may be achieved. Experience daily proves that just the same uncertainty which exists respecting the specific ends to be obtained, exists likewise respecting the right mode of attaining them when supposed to be known. In their attempts to compass one after another the several items which go to make up the grand total, "greatest happiness," men have been anything but successful; their most promising measures having commonly turned out the greatest failures. Let us look at a few cases.
When it was enacted in Bavaria that no marriage should be allowed between parties without capital, unless certain authorities could "see a reasonable prospect of the parties being able to provide for their children," it was doubtless intended to advance the public weal by checking improvident unions, and redundant population; a purpose most politicians will consider praiseworthy, and a provision which many will think well adapted to secure it. Nevertheless this apparently sagacious measure has by no means answered its end; the fact being that in Munich, the capital of the kingdom, half the births are illegitimate!
Those too were admirable motives, and very cogent reasons, which led our government to establish an armed force on the coast of Africa for the suppression of the slave trade. What could be more essential to the "greatest happiness" than the annihilation of the abominable traffic? And how could forty ships of war, supported by an expenditure of £700,000 a year, fail to wholly or partially accomplish this? The results have, however, been anything but satisfactory. When the abolitionists of England advocated it, they little thought that such a measure instead of preventing would only "aggravate the horrors, without sensibly mitigating the extent of the traffic;" that it would generate fast-sailing slavers with decks one foot six inches apart, suffocation from close packing, miserable diseases, and a mortality of thirty-five per cent. They dreamed not that when hard pressed a slaver might throw a whole cargo of 500 negroes into the sea; nor that on a blockaded coast the disappointed chiefs would, as at Gallinas, put to death 200 men and women, and stick their heads on poles, along shore, in sight of the squadron1. In short, they never anticipated having to plead as they now do for the abandonment of coercion.
Again, how great and how self-evident to the artisan mind, were the promised advantages of that trades-union project, whereby master manufacturers were to be dispensed with! If a body of workmen formed themselves into a joint-stock manufacturing company, with elective directors, secretary, treasurer, superintendents, foremen, &c., for managing the concern, and an organization adapted to ensure an equitable division of profits amongst the members, it was clear that the enormous sums previously pocketed by the employers, would be shared amongst the employed to the great increase of their prosperity. Yet all past attempts to act out this very plausible theory have, somehow or other, ended in miserable failures.
Another illustration is afforded by the fate which befel that kindred plan recommended by Mr. Babbage in his "Economy of Manufactures," as likely to be to the benefit of the workmen and to the interest of the master; that namely, in which factory hands were to "unite together, and have an agent to purchase by wholesale those articles which are most in demand; as tea, sugar, bacon, &c., and to retail them at prices which will just repay the wholesale cost, together with the expenses of the agent who conducts their sale." After fourteen years' trial a concern, established in pursuance of this idea, was "abandoned with the joint consent of all parties;" Mr. Babbage confessing that the opinion he had expressed "on the advantage of such societies was very much modified," and illustrating by a series of curves "the quick rise and gradual decline" of the experimental association.
The Spitalfields weavers afford us another case in point. No doubt the temptation which led them to obtain the Act of 1773, fixing a minimum of wages, was a strong one; and the anticipations of greater comfort to be secured by its enforcement must have seemed reasonable enough to all. Unfortunately, however, the weavers did not consider the consequences of being interdicted from working at reduced rates; and little expected that before 1793, some 4000 looms would be brought to a stand in consequence of the trade going elsewhere.
To mitigate distress appearing needful for the production of the "greatest happiness," the English people have sanctioned upwards of one hundred acts in Parliament having this end in view, each of them arising out of the failure or incompleteness of previous legislation. Men are nevertheless still discontented with the Poor Laws, and we are seemingly as far as ever from their satisfactory settlement.
But why cite individual cases? Does not the experience of all nations testify to the futility of these empirical attempts at the acquisition of happiness? What is the statute-book but a record of such unhappy guesses? or history but a narrative of their unsuccessful issues? And what forwarder are we now? Is not our government as busy still as though the work of law-making commenced but yesterday? Has it made any apparent progress toward a final settlement of social arrangements? Does it not rather each year entangle itself still further in the web of legislation, confounding the already heterogeneous mass of enactments into still greater confusion? Nearly every parliamentary proceeding is a tacit confession of incompetency. There is scarcely a bill introduced but is entitled "An Act to amend an Act." The "Whereas" of almost every preamble heralds an account of the miscarriage of previous legislation. Alteration, explanation, and repeal, form the staple employment of every session. All our great agitations are for the abolition of institutions purporting to be for the public good. Witness those for the removal of the Test and Corporation Acts, for Catholic Emancipation, for the repeal of the Corn Laws; to which may now be added, that for the separation of Church and State. The history of one scheme is the history of all. First comes enactment, then probation, then failure; next an amendment and another failure; and, after many alternate tinkerings and abortive trials, arrives at length repeal, followed by the substitution of some fresh plan, doomed to run the same course, and share a like fate.
The expediency-philosophy, however, ignores this world full of facts. Though men have so constantly been balked in their attempts to secure, by legislation, any desired constituent of that complex whole, "greatest happiness," it nevertheless continues to place confidence in the unaided judgment of the statesman. It asks no guide; it possesses no eclectic principle; it seeks no clue whereby the tangled web of social existence may be unravelled and its laws discovered. But, holding up to view the great desideratum, it assumes that after an inspection of the aggregate phenomena of national life, governments are qualified to concoct such measures as shall be "expedient." It considers the philosophy of humanity so easy, the constitution of the social organism so simple, the causes of a people's conduct so obvious, that a general examination can give to "collective wisdom," the insight requisite for law-making. It thinks that man's intellect is competent, first, to observe accurately the facts exhibited by associated human nature; to form just estimates of general and individual character, of the effects of religions, customs, superstitions, prejudices, of the mental tendencies of the age, of the probabilities of future events, &c., &c.; and then, grasping at once the multiplied phenomena of this ever-agitated, ever-changing sea of life, to derive from them that knowledge of their governing principles which shall enable him to say whether such and such measures will conduce to "the greatest happiness of the greatest number."
If without any previous investigation of the properties of terrestrial matter, Newton had proceeded at once to study the dynamics of the universe, and after years spent with the telescope in ascertaining the distances, sizes, times of revolution, inclinations of axes, forms of orbits, perturbations, &c., of the celestial bodies, had set himself to tabulate this accumulated mass of observations, and to educe from them the fundamental laws of planetary and stellar equilibrium, he might have cogitated to all eternity without arriving at a result.
But absurd as such a method of research would have been, it would have been far less absurd, than is the attempt to find out the principles of public polity, by a direct examination of that wonderfully intricate combination—society. It needs excite no surprise when legislation, based upon the theories thus elaborated, fails. Rather would its success afford matter for extreme astonishment. Considering that men as yet so imperfectly understand man—the instrument by which, and the material on which, laws are to act—and that a complete knowledge of the unit—man, is but a first step to the comprehension of the mass—society, it seems obvious enough that to educe from the infinitely-ramified complications of universal humanity, a true philosophy of national life, and to found thereon a code of rules for the obtainment of "greatest happiness" is a task far beyond the ability of any finite mind.
§ 4.
Yet another fatal objection to the expediency-philosophy, is to be found in the fact, that it implies the eternity of government. It is a mistake to assume that government must necessarily last for ever. The institution marks a certain stage of civilization—is natural to a particular phase of human development. It is not essential but incidental. As amongst the Bushmen we find a state antecedent to government; so may there be one in which it shall have become extinct. Already has it lost something of its importance. The time was when the history of a people was but the history of its government. It is otherwise now. The once universal despotism was but a manifestation of the extreme necessity of restraint. Feudalism, serfdom, slavery—all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kinds of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is in all cases the same—less government. Constitutional forms mean this. Political freedom means this. Democracy means this. In societies, associations, joint-stock companies, we have new agencies occupying fields filled in less advanced times and countries by the State. With us the legislature is dwarfed by newer and greater powers—is no longer master but slave. "Pressure from without" has come to be acknowledged as ultimate ruler. The triumph of the Anti-Corn-Law League is simply the most marked instance yet, of the new style of government—that of opinion, overcoming the old style—that of force. It bids fair to become a trite remark that the lawmaker is but the servant of the thinker. Daily is statecraft held in less repute. Even the Times can see that "the social changes thickening around us establish a truth sufficiently humiliating to legislative bodies," and that "the great stages of our progress are determined rather by the spontaneous workings of society, connected as they are with the progress of art and science, the operations of nature, and other such unpolitical causes, than by the proposition of a bill, the passing of an act, or any other event of politics or of state."2 Thus, as civilization advances, does government decay. To the bad it is essential; to the good, not. It is the check which national wickedness makes to itself and exists only to the same degree. Its continuance is proof of still-existing barbarism. What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man. Restraint is for the savage, the rapacious, the violent; not for the just, the gentle, the benevolent. All necessity for external force implies a morbid state. Dungeons for the felon; a strait-jacket for the maniac; crutches for the lame; stays for the weak-backed; for the infirm of purpose a master; for the foolish a guide; but for the sound mind, in a sound body, none of these. Were there no thieves and murderers, prisons would be unnecessary. It is only because tyranny is yet rife in the world that we have armies. Barristers, judges, juries—all the instruments of law—exist, simply because knavery exists. Magisterial force is the sequence of social vice; and the policeman is but the complement of the criminal. Therefore it is that we call government "a necessary evil."
What then must be thought of a morality which chooses this probationary institution for its basis, builds a vast fabric of conclusions upon its assumed permanence, selects acts of parliament for its materials, and employs the statesman for its architect? The expediency-philosophy does this. It takes government into partnership—assigns to it entire control of its affairs—enjoins all to defer to its judgment—makes it in short the vital principle, the very soul of its system. When Paley teaches that "the interest of the whole society is binding upon every part of it," he implies the existence of some supreme power by which that "interest of the whole society" is to be determined. And elsewhere he more explicitly tells us, that for the attainment of a national advantage the private will of the subject is to give way; and that "the proof of this advantage lies with the legislature." Still more decisive is Bentham, when he says that "the happiness of the individuals of whom a community is composed, that is, their pleasures and their security, is the sole end which the legislator ought to have in view; the sole standard in conformity with which each individual ought, as far as depends upon the legislature, to be made to fashion his behaviour." These positions, be it remembered, are not voluntarily assumed; they are necessitated by the premises. If, as its propounder tells us, "expediency" means the benefit of the mass, not of the individual—of the future as much as of the present, it presupposes some one to judge of what will most conduce to that benefit. Upon the "utility" of this or that measure, the views are so various as to render an umpire essential. Whether protective duties, or established religions, or capital punishments, or poor laws, do or do not minister to the "general good," are questions concerning which there is such difference of opinion, that were nothing to be done till all agreed upon them, we might stand still to the end of time. If each man carried out, independently of a state power, his own notions of what would best secure "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," society would quickly lapse into confusion. Clearly, therefore, a morality established upon a maxim of which the practical interpretation is questionable, involves the existence of some authority whose decision respecting it shall be final—that is, a legislature. And without that authority, such a morality must ever remain inoperative.
See here then the predicament. A system of moral philosophy professes to be a code of correct rules for the control of human beings—fitted for the regulation of the best, as well as the worst members of the race—applicable, if true, to the guidance of humanity in its highest conceivable perfection. Government, however, is an institution originating in man's imperfection; an institution confessedly begotten by necessity out of evil; one which might be dispensed with were the world peopled with the unselfish, the conscientious, the philanthropic; one, in short, inconsistent with this same "highest conceivable perfection." How, then, can that be a true system of morality which adopts government as one of its premises?
§ 5.
Of the expediency-philosophy it must therefore be said, in the first place, that it can make no claim to a scientific character, seeing that its fundamental proposition is not an axiom, but simply an enunciation of the problem to be solved.
Further, that even supposing its fundamental proposition were an axiom, it would still be inadmissible, because expressed in terms possessing no fixed acceptation.
Moreover, were the expediency theory otherwise satisfactory, it would be still useless; since it requires nothing less than omniscience to carry it into practice.
And, waiving all other objections, we are yet compelled to reject a system, which, at the same time that it tacitly lays claim to perfection, takes imperfection for its basis.
by Herbert Spencer
[Exerpted from the Introduction to "Social Statics" by Herbert Spencer, originally written in 1851.]
"GIVE us a guide," cry men to the philosopher. "We would escape from these miseries in which we are entangled. A better state is ever present to our imaginations, and we yearn after it; but all our efforts to realize it are fruitless. We are weary of perpetual failures; tell us by what rule we may attain our desire."
"Whatever is expedient is right;" is one of the last of the many replies to this appeal.
"True," rejoin some of the applicants. "With the Deity right and expedient are doubtless convertible terms. For us, however, there remains the question—which is the antecedent, and which is the consequent? Granting your assumption that right is the unknown quantity and expediency the known one, your formula may be serviceable. But we deny your premises; a painful experience has proved the two to be equally indeterminate. Nay, we begin to suspect that the right is the more easily ascertained of the two; and that your maxim would be better if transposed into—whatever is right is expedient."
"Let your rule be, the greatest happiness to the greatest number," interposes another authority."
"That, like the other, is no rule at all," it is replied; "but rather an enunciation of the problem to be solved. It is your 'greatest happiness' of which we have been so long and so fruitlessly in search; albeit we never gave it a name. You tell us nothing new; you merely give words to our want. What you call an answer, is simply our own question turned the right side up. If this is your philosophy it is surely empty, for it merely echoes the interrogation."
"Have a little patience," returns the moralist, "and I will give you my opinion as to the mode of securing this greatest happiness to the greatest number."
"There again," exclaim the objectors, "you mistake our requirement. We want something else than opinions. We have had enough of them. Every futile scheme for the general good has been based on opinion; and we have no guarantee that your plan will not add one to the list of failures. Have you discovered a means of forming an infallible judgment? If not, you are, for aught we can perceive, as much in the dark as ourselves. True, you have obtained a clearer view of the end to be arrived at; but concerning the route leading to it, your offer of an opinion proves that you know nothing more certain than we do. We demur to your maxim because it is not what we wanted—a guide; because it dictates no sure mode of securing the desideratum; because it puts no veto upon a mistaken policy; because it permits all actions—bad, as readily as good—provided only the actors believe them conducive to the prescribed end. Your doctrines of 'expediency' or 'utility' or 'general good' or 'greatest happiness to the greatest number' afford not a solitary command of a practical character. Let but rulers think, or profess to think, that their measures will benefit the community, and your philosophy stands mute in the presence of the most egregious folly, or the blackest misconduct. This will not do for us. We seek a system that can return a definite answer when we ask—'Is this act good?' and not like yours, reply—'Yes, if it will benefit you.' If you can show us such an one—if you can give us an axiom from which we may develope successive propositions until we have with mathematical certainty solved all our difficulties—we will thank you. If not, we must go elsewhere."
In his defence, our philosopher submits that such expectations are unreasonable. He doubts the possibility of a strictly scientific morality. Moreover he maintains that his system is sufficient for all practical purposes. He has definitely pointed out the goal to be attained. He has surveyed the tract lying between us and it. He believes he has discovered the best route. And finally he has volunteered as pioneer. Having done this, he claims to have performed all that can be expected of him, and deprecates the opposition of these critics as factious, and their objections as frivolous. Let us examine this position somewhat more closely.
§ 2.
Assuming it to be in other respects satisfactory, a rule, principle, or axiom, is valuable only in so far as the words in which it is expressed have a definite meaning. The terms used must be universally accepted in the same sense, otherwise the proposition will be liable to such various constructions, as to lose all claim to the title—a rule. We must therefore take it for granted that when he announced "the greatest happiness to the greatest number" as the canon of social morality, its originator supposed mankind to be unanimous in their definition of "greatest happiness."
This was a most unfortunate assumption, for no fact is more palpable than that the standard of happiness is infinitely variable. In all ages—amongst every people—by each class—do we find different notions of it entertained. To the wandering gipsy a home is tiresome; whilst a Swiss is miserable without one. Progress is necessary to the well-being of the Anglo-Saxons; on the other hand the Esquimaux are content in their squalid poverty, have no latent wants, and are still what they were in the days of Tacitus. An Irishman delights in a row; a Chinese in pageantry and ceremonies; and the usually apathetic Javan gets vociferously enthusiastic over a cock-fight. The heaven of the Hebrew is "a city of gold and precious stones, with a supernatural abundance of corn and wine;" that of the Turk—a harem peopled by houris; that of the American Indian—a "happy hunting ground;" in the Norse paradise there were to be daily battles with magical healing of wounds; whilst the Australian hopes that after death he shall "jump up a white fellow, and have plenty of sixpences." Descending to individual instances, we find Louis XVI. interpreting "greatest happiness" to mean—making locks; instead of which his successor read—making empires. It was seemingly the opinion of Lycurgus that perfect physical development was the chief essential to human felicity; Plotinus, on the contrary, was so purely ideal in his aspirations as to be ashamed of his body. Indeed the many contradictory answers given by Grecian thinkers to the question—What constitutes happiness? have given occasion to comparisons that have now become trite. Nor has greater unanimity been shown amongst ourselves. To a miserly Elwes the hoarding of money was the only enjoyment of life; but Day, the philanthropic author of "Sandford and Merton," could find no pleasurable employment save in its distribution. Rural quietude, books, and a friend, are the wants of the poet; a tuft-hunter longs rather for a large circle of titled acquaintance, a box at the Opera, and the freedom of Almack's. The ambitions of the tradesman and the artist are anything but alike; and could we compare the air castles of the ploughman and the philosopher, we should find them of widely-different orders of architecture.
Generalizing such facts, we see that the standard of "greatest happiness" possesses as little fixity as the other exponents of human nature. Between nations the differences of opinion are conspicuous enough. On contrasting the Hebrew patriarchs with their existing descendants, we observe that even in the same race the beau ideal of existence changes. The members of each community disagree upon the question. Neither, if we compare the wishes of the gluttonous school-boy with those of the earth-scorning transcendentalist into whom he may afterwards grow, do we find any constancy in the individual. So we may say, not only that every epoch and every people has its peculiar conceptions of happiness, but that no two men have like conceptions; and further, that in each man the conception is not the same at any two periods of life.
The rationale of this is simple enough. Happiness signifies a gratified state of all the faculties. The gratification of a faculty is produced by its exercise. To be agreeable that exercise must be proportionate to the power of the faculty; if it is insufficient discontent arises, and its excess produces weariness. Hence, to have complete felicity is to have all the faculties exerted in the ratio of their several developments; and an ideal arrangement of circumstances calculated to secure this constitutes the standard of "greatest happiness;" but the minds of no two individuals contain the same combination of elements. Duplicate men are not to be found. There is in each a different balance of desires. Therefore the conditions adapted for the highest enjoyment of one, would not perfectly compass the same end for any other. And consequently the notion of happiness must vary with the disposition and character; that is, must vary indefinitely.
Whereby we are also led to the inevitable conclusion that a true conception of what human life should be, is possible only to the ideal man. We may make approximate estimates, but he only in whom the component feelings exist in their normal proportions is capable of a perfect aspiration. And as the world yet contains none such, it follows that a specific idea of "greatest happiness" is for the present unattainable. It is not then to be wondered at, if Paleys and Benthams make vain attempts at a definition. The question involves one of those mysteries which men are ever trying to penetrate and ever failing. It is the insoluble riddle which Care, Sphinx-like, puts to each new comer, and in default of answer devours him. And as yet there is no Œdipus, nor any sign of one.
The allegation that these are hypercritical objections, and that for all practical purposes we agree sufficiently well as to what "greatest happiness" means, will possibly be made by some. It were easy to disprove this, but it is unnecessary, for there are plenty of questions practical enough to satisfy such cavillers, and about which men exhibit none of this pretended unanimity. For example:
— What is the ratio between the mental and bodily enjoyments constituting this "greatest happiness"? There is a point up to which increase of mental activity produces increase of happiness; but beyond which, it produces in the end more pain than pleasure. Where is that point? Some appear to think that intellectual culture and the gratifications deriveable from it can hardly be carried too far. Others again maintain that already amongst the educated classes mental excitements are taken in excess; and that were more time given to a proper fulfilment of the animal functions, a larger amount of enjoyment would be obtained. If "greatest happiness" is to be the rule, it becomes needful to decide which of these opinions is correct; and further to determine the exact boundary between the use and abuse of every faculty.
— Which is most truly an element in the desired felicity, content or aspiration? The generality assume, as a matter of course, that content is. They think it the chief essential to well-being. There are others, however, who hold that but for discontent we should have been still savages. It is in their eyes the greatest incentive to progress. Nay, they maintain that were content the order of the day, society would even now begin to decay. It is required to reconcile these contradictory theories.
— And this synonyme for "greatest happiness"—this "utility"—what shall be comprised under it? The million would confine it to the things which directly or indirectly minister to the bodily wants, and in the words of the adage "help to get something to put in the pot." Others there are who think mental improvement useful in itself, irrespective of so-called practical results, and would therefore teach astronomy, comparative anatomy, ethnology, and the like, together with logic and metaphysics. Unlike some of the Roman writers who held the practice of the fine arts to be absolutely vicious, there are now many who suppose utility to comprehend poetry, painting, sculpture, the decorative arts, and whatever aids the refinement of the taste. Whilst an extreme party maintains that music, dancing, the drama, and what are commonly called amusements, are equally worthy to be included. In place of all which discordance we ought to have agreement.
— Whether shall we adopt the theory of some that felicity means the greatest possible enjoyment of this life's pleasures, or that of others, that it consists in anticipating the pleasures of a life to come? And if we compromise the matter, and say it should combine both, how much of each shall go to its composition?
— Or what must we think of this wealth-seeking age of ours? Shall we consider the total absorption of time and energy in business—the servitude of the mind to the needs of the body—the spending of life in the accumulation of the means to live, as constituting "greatest happiness," and act accordingly? Or shall we legislate upon the assumption that this is to be regarded as the voracity of a larva assimilating material for the development of the future psyche?Similar unsettled questions might be indefinitely multiplied. Not only therefore is an agreement as to the meaning of "greatest happiness" theoretically impossible, but it is also manifest, that men are at issue upon all topics, which for their determination require defined notions of it.So that in directing us to this "greatest happiness to the greatest number," as the object towards which we should steer, our pilot "keeps the word of promise to our ear and breaks it to our hope." What he shows us through his telescope is a fata morgana, and not the promised land. The real haven of our hopes dips far down below the horizon and has yet been seen by none. It is beyond the ken of seer be he never so farsighted. Faith not sight must be our guide. We cannot do without a compass.
§ 3.Even were the fundamental proposition of the expediency system not thus vitiated by the indefiniteness of its terms, it would still be vulnerable. Granting for the sake of argument, that the desideratum, "greatest happiness," is duly comprehended, its identity and nature agreed upon by all, and the direction in which it lies satisfactorily settled, there yet remains the unwarranted assumption that it is possible for the self-guided human judgment to determine, with something like precision, by what methods it may be achieved. Experience daily proves that just the same uncertainty which exists respecting the specific ends to be obtained, exists likewise respecting the right mode of attaining them when supposed to be known. In their attempts to compass one after another the several items which go to make up the grand total, "greatest happiness," men have been anything but successful; their most promising measures having commonly turned out the greatest failures. Let us look at a few cases.
When it was enacted in Bavaria that no marriage should be allowed between parties without capital, unless certain authorities could "see a reasonable prospect of the parties being able to provide for their children," it was doubtless intended to advance the public weal by checking improvident unions, and redundant population; a purpose most politicians will consider praiseworthy, and a provision which many will think well adapted to secure it. Nevertheless this apparently sagacious measure has by no means answered its end; the fact being that in Munich, the capital of the kingdom, half the births are illegitimate!
Those too were admirable motives, and very cogent reasons, which led our government to establish an armed force on the coast of Africa for the suppression of the slave trade. What could be more essential to the "greatest happiness" than the annihilation of the abominable traffic? And how could forty ships of war, supported by an expenditure of £700,000 a year, fail to wholly or partially accomplish this? The results have, however, been anything but satisfactory. When the abolitionists of England advocated it, they little thought that such a measure instead of preventing would only "aggravate the horrors, without sensibly mitigating the extent of the traffic;" that it would generate fast-sailing slavers with decks one foot six inches apart, suffocation from close packing, miserable diseases, and a mortality of thirty-five per cent. They dreamed not that when hard pressed a slaver might throw a whole cargo of 500 negroes into the sea; nor that on a blockaded coast the disappointed chiefs would, as at Gallinas, put to death 200 men and women, and stick their heads on poles, along shore, in sight of the squadron1. In short, they never anticipated having to plead as they now do for the abandonment of coercion.
Again, how great and how self-evident to the artisan mind, were the promised advantages of that trades-union project, whereby master manufacturers were to be dispensed with! If a body of workmen formed themselves into a joint-stock manufacturing company, with elective directors, secretary, treasurer, superintendents, foremen, &c., for managing the concern, and an organization adapted to ensure an equitable division of profits amongst the members, it was clear that the enormous sums previously pocketed by the employers, would be shared amongst the employed to the great increase of their prosperity. Yet all past attempts to act out this very plausible theory have, somehow or other, ended in miserable failures.
Another illustration is afforded by the fate which befel that kindred plan recommended by Mr. Babbage in his "Economy of Manufactures," as likely to be to the benefit of the workmen and to the interest of the master; that namely, in which factory hands were to "unite together, and have an agent to purchase by wholesale those articles which are most in demand; as tea, sugar, bacon, &c., and to retail them at prices which will just repay the wholesale cost, together with the expenses of the agent who conducts their sale." After fourteen years' trial a concern, established in pursuance of this idea, was "abandoned with the joint consent of all parties;" Mr. Babbage confessing that the opinion he had expressed "on the advantage of such societies was very much modified," and illustrating by a series of curves "the quick rise and gradual decline" of the experimental association.
The Spitalfields weavers afford us another case in point. No doubt the temptation which led them to obtain the Act of 1773, fixing a minimum of wages, was a strong one; and the anticipations of greater comfort to be secured by its enforcement must have seemed reasonable enough to all. Unfortunately, however, the weavers did not consider the consequences of being interdicted from working at reduced rates; and little expected that before 1793, some 4000 looms would be brought to a stand in consequence of the trade going elsewhere.
To mitigate distress appearing needful for the production of the "greatest happiness," the English people have sanctioned upwards of one hundred acts in Parliament having this end in view, each of them arising out of the failure or incompleteness of previous legislation. Men are nevertheless still discontented with the Poor Laws, and we are seemingly as far as ever from their satisfactory settlement.
But why cite individual cases? Does not the experience of all nations testify to the futility of these empirical attempts at the acquisition of happiness? What is the statute-book but a record of such unhappy guesses? or history but a narrative of their unsuccessful issues? And what forwarder are we now? Is not our government as busy still as though the work of law-making commenced but yesterday? Has it made any apparent progress toward a final settlement of social arrangements? Does it not rather each year entangle itself still further in the web of legislation, confounding the already heterogeneous mass of enactments into still greater confusion? Nearly every parliamentary proceeding is a tacit confession of incompetency. There is scarcely a bill introduced but is entitled "An Act to amend an Act." The "Whereas" of almost every preamble heralds an account of the miscarriage of previous legislation. Alteration, explanation, and repeal, form the staple employment of every session. All our great agitations are for the abolition of institutions purporting to be for the public good. Witness those for the removal of the Test and Corporation Acts, for Catholic Emancipation, for the repeal of the Corn Laws; to which may now be added, that for the separation of Church and State. The history of one scheme is the history of all. First comes enactment, then probation, then failure; next an amendment and another failure; and, after many alternate tinkerings and abortive trials, arrives at length repeal, followed by the substitution of some fresh plan, doomed to run the same course, and share a like fate.
The expediency-philosophy, however, ignores this world full of facts. Though men have so constantly been balked in their attempts to secure, by legislation, any desired constituent of that complex whole, "greatest happiness," it nevertheless continues to place confidence in the unaided judgment of the statesman. It asks no guide; it possesses no eclectic principle; it seeks no clue whereby the tangled web of social existence may be unravelled and its laws discovered. But, holding up to view the great desideratum, it assumes that after an inspection of the aggregate phenomena of national life, governments are qualified to concoct such measures as shall be "expedient." It considers the philosophy of humanity so easy, the constitution of the social organism so simple, the causes of a people's conduct so obvious, that a general examination can give to "collective wisdom," the insight requisite for law-making. It thinks that man's intellect is competent, first, to observe accurately the facts exhibited by associated human nature; to form just estimates of general and individual character, of the effects of religions, customs, superstitions, prejudices, of the mental tendencies of the age, of the probabilities of future events, &c., &c.; and then, grasping at once the multiplied phenomena of this ever-agitated, ever-changing sea of life, to derive from them that knowledge of their governing principles which shall enable him to say whether such and such measures will conduce to "the greatest happiness of the greatest number."
If without any previous investigation of the properties of terrestrial matter, Newton had proceeded at once to study the dynamics of the universe, and after years spent with the telescope in ascertaining the distances, sizes, times of revolution, inclinations of axes, forms of orbits, perturbations, &c., of the celestial bodies, had set himself to tabulate this accumulated mass of observations, and to educe from them the fundamental laws of planetary and stellar equilibrium, he might have cogitated to all eternity without arriving at a result.
But absurd as such a method of research would have been, it would have been far less absurd, than is the attempt to find out the principles of public polity, by a direct examination of that wonderfully intricate combination—society. It needs excite no surprise when legislation, based upon the theories thus elaborated, fails. Rather would its success afford matter for extreme astonishment. Considering that men as yet so imperfectly understand man—the instrument by which, and the material on which, laws are to act—and that a complete knowledge of the unit—man, is but a first step to the comprehension of the mass—society, it seems obvious enough that to educe from the infinitely-ramified complications of universal humanity, a true philosophy of national life, and to found thereon a code of rules for the obtainment of "greatest happiness" is a task far beyond the ability of any finite mind.
§ 4.
Yet another fatal objection to the expediency-philosophy, is to be found in the fact, that it implies the eternity of government. It is a mistake to assume that government must necessarily last for ever. The institution marks a certain stage of civilization—is natural to a particular phase of human development. It is not essential but incidental. As amongst the Bushmen we find a state antecedent to government; so may there be one in which it shall have become extinct. Already has it lost something of its importance. The time was when the history of a people was but the history of its government. It is otherwise now. The once universal despotism was but a manifestation of the extreme necessity of restraint. Feudalism, serfdom, slavery—all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kinds of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is in all cases the same—less government. Constitutional forms mean this. Political freedom means this. Democracy means this. In societies, associations, joint-stock companies, we have new agencies occupying fields filled in less advanced times and countries by the State. With us the legislature is dwarfed by newer and greater powers—is no longer master but slave. "Pressure from without" has come to be acknowledged as ultimate ruler. The triumph of the Anti-Corn-Law League is simply the most marked instance yet, of the new style of government—that of opinion, overcoming the old style—that of force. It bids fair to become a trite remark that the lawmaker is but the servant of the thinker. Daily is statecraft held in less repute. Even the Times can see that "the social changes thickening around us establish a truth sufficiently humiliating to legislative bodies," and that "the great stages of our progress are determined rather by the spontaneous workings of society, connected as they are with the progress of art and science, the operations of nature, and other such unpolitical causes, than by the proposition of a bill, the passing of an act, or any other event of politics or of state."2 Thus, as civilization advances, does government decay. To the bad it is essential; to the good, not. It is the check which national wickedness makes to itself and exists only to the same degree. Its continuance is proof of still-existing barbarism. What a cage is to the wild beast, law is to the selfish man. Restraint is for the savage, the rapacious, the violent; not for the just, the gentle, the benevolent. All necessity for external force implies a morbid state. Dungeons for the felon; a strait-jacket for the maniac; crutches for the lame; stays for the weak-backed; for the infirm of purpose a master; for the foolish a guide; but for the sound mind, in a sound body, none of these. Were there no thieves and murderers, prisons would be unnecessary. It is only because tyranny is yet rife in the world that we have armies. Barristers, judges, juries—all the instruments of law—exist, simply because knavery exists. Magisterial force is the sequence of social vice; and the policeman is but the complement of the criminal. Therefore it is that we call government "a necessary evil."
What then must be thought of a morality which chooses this probationary institution for its basis, builds a vast fabric of conclusions upon its assumed permanence, selects acts of parliament for its materials, and employs the statesman for its architect? The expediency-philosophy does this. It takes government into partnership—assigns to it entire control of its affairs—enjoins all to defer to its judgment—makes it in short the vital principle, the very soul of its system. When Paley teaches that "the interest of the whole society is binding upon every part of it," he implies the existence of some supreme power by which that "interest of the whole society" is to be determined. And elsewhere he more explicitly tells us, that for the attainment of a national advantage the private will of the subject is to give way; and that "the proof of this advantage lies with the legislature." Still more decisive is Bentham, when he says that "the happiness of the individuals of whom a community is composed, that is, their pleasures and their security, is the sole end which the legislator ought to have in view; the sole standard in conformity with which each individual ought, as far as depends upon the legislature, to be made to fashion his behaviour." These positions, be it remembered, are not voluntarily assumed; they are necessitated by the premises. If, as its propounder tells us, "expediency" means the benefit of the mass, not of the individual—of the future as much as of the present, it presupposes some one to judge of what will most conduce to that benefit. Upon the "utility" of this or that measure, the views are so various as to render an umpire essential. Whether protective duties, or established religions, or capital punishments, or poor laws, do or do not minister to the "general good," are questions concerning which there is such difference of opinion, that were nothing to be done till all agreed upon them, we might stand still to the end of time. If each man carried out, independently of a state power, his own notions of what would best secure "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," society would quickly lapse into confusion. Clearly, therefore, a morality established upon a maxim of which the practical interpretation is questionable, involves the existence of some authority whose decision respecting it shall be final—that is, a legislature. And without that authority, such a morality must ever remain inoperative.
See here then the predicament. A system of moral philosophy professes to be a code of correct rules for the control of human beings—fitted for the regulation of the best, as well as the worst members of the race—applicable, if true, to the guidance of humanity in its highest conceivable perfection. Government, however, is an institution originating in man's imperfection; an institution confessedly begotten by necessity out of evil; one which might be dispensed with were the world peopled with the unselfish, the conscientious, the philanthropic; one, in short, inconsistent with this same "highest conceivable perfection." How, then, can that be a true system of morality which adopts government as one of its premises?
§ 5.
Of the expediency-philosophy it must therefore be said, in the first place, that it can make no claim to a scientific character, seeing that its fundamental proposition is not an axiom, but simply an enunciation of the problem to be solved.
Further, that even supposing its fundamental proposition were an axiom, it would still be inadmissible, because expressed in terms possessing no fixed acceptation.
Moreover, were the expediency theory otherwise satisfactory, it would be still useless; since it requires nothing less than omniscience to carry it into practice.
And, waiving all other objections, we are yet compelled to reject a system, which, at the same time that it tacitly lays claim to perfection, takes imperfection for its basis.
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