Political
Theory and Ideology
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Like
economics, political theory is both normative and descriptive. This is a
simply written article about complex social life. It is therefore meant to be
read with the accompanying footnotes of relevant fact.
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People seek broader meanings in political theory. Political
theory gives a society’s history meaning; it inspires and justifies the
institutions which shape political perceptions and political life.
Political theory also exists in a historical context. To
consider it otherwise would be as if Plato wrote about the virtues of
dictatorship without experiencing the Peloponnesian Wars and Thomas Hobbes
wrote about the social contract without being enmeshed in the English Civil War
and Adam Smith wrote the Wealth of
Nations without being aware of the Enlightenment, a movement that sought,
in part, to socialize the “nasty, brutish” individuals subsisting in the
Hobbesian state of nature. The following essay discusses the historic origins
of the liberal philosophy, in particular U.S. political philosophy which is the
product of the English civil wars and its later system of free market
economics. We then ask how these ideas are relevant to the 21st
century.
Greek History
Almost all Western patterns of governance harken back to ancient Greece. To provide some chronological
context, the Homeric myths of the Iliad
and the Odyssey were set in Greek
prehistory, describing the monarchial Bronze Age societies around the 12th
century B.C. After the ecological collapse of these societies and a time of
chaos, the Greek city-states of the 6th century B.C. abandoned
monarchy in favor of democracy and oligarchy, these two groups constantly
warring both within and without the city-state. As the following quote
illustrates, the social conflict (stasis)
between the two could be severe in the close confines of the polis, particularly when aggravated by
foreign alliances that involved democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta. This
is British historian Arnold Toynbee’s translation of Thucydides, describing
social conflict on the Greek island of Corcyra in B.C. 427 (modern day Corfu)
during the Peloponnesian war that fatally weakened Greece for later conquest.
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The civil disorders in Corcyra began with the
return of the prisoners taken in the naval battles of Epidamnus, who had been
liberated by the Corinthians (ally of Sparta) …to bring in consideration of
the fact they had agreed to bring Corcyra over into the Corinthian camp.
These ex-prisoners duly started to intrigue, by canvassing their
fellow-citizens individually, with a view of detaching their country from the
alliance with Athens. Meanwhile, the (oligarchic) party in power at
Corcyra took advantage of the arrival of a Corinthian warship with a
Lacedaemoninan (Spartan) diplomatic mission to attack the proletariat (demos)
and to defeat them in regular battle. When night descended, the proletariat
took refuge in the citadel and the high-lying parts of the town and
concentrated their forces…while the other party occupied the (agora), where
most of them lived….fighting started again, and this time victory was secured
by the proletariat, who possessed the superiority in position and
numbers….The decision was reached late in the evening, when the reactionaries
- in a panic lest the proletariat rush the dockyard and annihilate them - set
fire to the houses and tenements surrounding the (agora), without sparing
either their own property or their neighbors’, with the consequence that a
vast quantity of merchants’ stocks was consumed, while the entire town was in
danger of destruction if the flames had been fanned by a wind blowing in that
direction. 1 |
After Greece, with a few exceptions, the main
pattern of western governance was oligarchy (aristocracy) rather than absolute
monarchy. In the 17th century, Europe began to remake its political
order for a modern democratic political system and economy.
British and American Disagreements
The English civil war began in 1640 with a
disagreement over how to finance a war in Scotland, between the pro-Catholic
Charles I and a popular Puritan parliament with deep roots in the counties.
This resulted, after many twists and turns, in the financial and administrative
reforms of the Glorious Revolution of 1688. These reforms created Europe's
first modern state and a vital balance between a strong centralized
government, preventing local oligarchies, and a self-confident participatory
local government. 2
Recall that America was founded by colonists seeking
religious freedom. In successive waves, the Puritans of New England and the
Catholic Royalists of Virginia sought to escape the English civil war of
religions. 3 Not affected by the government reforms of the Glorious
Revolution, the American colonists, whose political perceptions were formed in
an earlier tumultuous era - whatever their religious differences - were unified
by their resistance to increased British central authority, particularly
taxation. Read closely, the U.S. Declaration of Independence is a Bill of
Particulars against that rule. This resulted in the Boston harbor Tea Party
that sparked the American Revolution of 1776.
Political Theory
Replacing feudal authoritarianism, liberalism,
whether classical or modern, is a reasoned form of government. Writing during
the intense conflicts of the English civil wars, Thomas Hobbes based his
politics on reason applied to a very antagonistic world, beginning with a
fictive state of nature where, “…the condition of man…is a condition of Warre of every one against every one…” As a result, the
life was, “…solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and
short.” 4 To obtain security, individuals in the state of nature
agreed to a social contract and established civil society by transferring a
revocable authority to a sovereign legislature or monarch, to preserve their
safety and their property. By its starting point of individualism, however,
Hobbesian political theory justified the liberal order and the competitive
capitalist economy, where the worst that could happen was red ink.
The main theoretical objection to Hobbes’ view was
that it neglected man’s natural sociability, a view that the Enlightenment of
the 17th century sought to correct. 5 The practical
objection to Hobbes’ view is that political democracy also requires compromise
with others, which is impossible after all political authority has been neatly
transferred to the sovereign.
In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, where he justified the nascent market system
growing in England. Rather than finding order in an imaginary social contract,
Smith found a natural social order and harmony in the free market, driven by
rational self-interest. Robert Heilbroner wrote, “It was Smith’s greatest
achievement to show how the mechanism of competition
would bring about a state of economic provisioning as dependable as any
provided by state command, and a great deal more flexible and dynamic.” 6
Contrast this freely self-organizing economic system with the feudal system
that Heilbroner also described:
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Lacking land, labor, and capital (our note: tied to their
social institutions), the Middle Ages lacked the market; and lacking the
market (despite its colorful local marts and traveling fairs), society ran by
local command and tradition. The lords gave orders, and production waxed and
waned accordingly. Where no orders were given, life went on in its
established groove…. There would be nothing for any economist to do for several
centuries - until this great, self-reproducing, self-sufficient world erupted
into the bustling, scurrying, free-for-all of the eighteenth century. 7 |
For Smith, humans had a natural acquisitiveness. What made
this selfishness work for all societies, and is the basis of democracy and
capitalism, was Smith’s lesser known Theory
of Moral Sentiments (version 1790), that provided the psychological basis
for capitalism.
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As we have no immediate experience of what other
men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but
by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our
brother is on the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses
will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can, carry
us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form
any conception of what are his sensations....By the imagination, we place
ourselves in his situation. 8
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Smith wrote that the sympathy principle was the basis of
conscience and personal freedom. It is also the basis of all societies,
particularly democratic and capitalist ones where the concept is wide. It
makes possible the political bargaining and compromise that democracy requires
and is furthermore a basis of all innovative economic activity, where
entrepreneurs perceive and seek to predict the demands of their customers. 9
Political Theory and Ideology
A political theory is born out of specific historical
circumstances. Thus, although broadly applicable to the institutions of society
and the nature of its people, it can’t be considered holy writ written by
“inspired” authors. The original authors of the U.S. Constitution were inspired
by reason, and thus if circumstances change reason can change some of the
Constitution as well. That is why the founders foresightedly gave the
Constitution an Article V amendment clause.
Ideology is crystallized political theory, turning
the latter into a thoughtless social recipe book, supposedly enabling people to
achieve their goals: virtue, wealth, economic development or whatever. But
rather than existing only as an idea, political theory also once existed in the
history of its author. Its applicability and effectiveness to future history
therefore depends upon the conditions that any theory, social or natural, will
encounter. For social theory, history – speaking very broadly – is one of the
conditions.
Adam Smith in the 21st
Century
Should societies be more like Greece of the 5th
century B.C. and England of the 1640s? Extremist social philosophies are born
out of intense conflict and socio-economic displacement, for instance as in the
Mideast or as perceived by the U.S. Tea Party. 10 But success in a
globalized world now requires of societies an internal cooperation that results
in a dynamic social stability 11 around institutions that makes
possible long-term investments in education, infrastructure and scientific
research. This cooperation is the result of Smith’s sympathy principle.
Economic growth doesn’t just happen because future returns require present
investment.
The extent of the
sympathy principle varies. It can extend only as far as one’s family, gun club,
social group, state, nation or it can extend further. More generally, the
justice abstraction of Smith’s sympathy principle makes large non-kinship
systems possible. Eli Sagan (1991) writes,” Justice is a primary mode of social
cohesion; it holds all groups, including large societies, together….Justice is
the attribution of rights I claim for myself to others whom I do not know…” 12 To
maintain globalization’s large-scale economic activity, people should try to
politically extend the sympathy principle and the more abstract concept of
justice as far as possible. Smith’s sympathy principle is a key assumption of
social systems, enabling people to do business with each other to their mutual
advantage.