Political Justice Read online

  The philosopher Isaiah Berlin was the first to theorise that liberty falls within two distinct schools. These are the concepts of ‘positive liberty’ and ‘negative liberty’. Positive liberty is generally considered to be the granting to people of the right to fulfill their own potential and act on their free will. It might be defined within the attitude of ‘I am my own master’. A positive liberal will generally see social blights as constraints on his free will and will pursue progressive social policies in order to allow certain people to have more of a voice in politics. Therefore, positive liberty has generally been associated with modern social liberalism and the centre to moderate centre-left brand of liberalism that it is associated with.

  Negative liberty, on the other hand, is more of an ‘I will not be anyone’s slave’ attitude. It is the belief that people should be free from external constraints imposed by others. For a long time, negative liberty was the brand of liberalism subscribed to by the greatest political philosophers, and its practice can be seen in the policies of more modern politicians as well.

  Positive liberty is founded to an extent in modern egalitarianism. Negative liberty’s argument for freedom from restraint is founded in moral philosophy. When considering what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’ by moral standards, many people are guided by different things. Different religions have different outlooks based on cultural and historical definitions of morality. In Britain, even though we are living in an increasingly secular society, it would be fair to say that the vast majority of British people retain a sense of what is right and wrong, regardless of whether they are religious or not. Generally, we view any sort of harm done to others that could have been avoided to be morally wrong, especially in today’s age. It is for these reasons that we have the law — to prevent people from causing harm to others and punish them by removing them from society and limiting some of their previous freedoms as they learn how to be a part of a functional society.

  Civil liberties that are most commonly upheld in Western liberal democracies are entwined with the concept of negative liberty. Guaranteeing freedom of speech, freedom of the press and other such freedoms guarantees no repression or restrictions on an individual’s right to present his opinions and conduct his way of life as he sees fit. It was not initially out of ideology that the American revolutionaries rose up against the British but out of a desire for moral treatment. If liberty is restricted, then we, as a people, are harmed. If our freedoms are restricted, then we are either living under a tyranny or we are on the way to living under one. Tyranny of any kind, be it the tyranny of one person or the tyranny of mental fear in lawless societies, is fundamentally morally harmful, because it controls individuals — it does not allow them to blossom freely; it seeks to program and control them in line with the tyrant’s own wishes.

  Tyranny does not allow for free intellectual progression, nor for the sharing of ideas, and it often degenerates into the physical harming of those who dissent to it. Therefore, for the state to be truly moral, and refrain from the harming of its citizens intellectually and physically, it must firstly guarantee liberty and secondly punish and seek to rehabilitate those who infringe upon the liberty of others, physically or arbitrarily. This is why anarchy is an ineffectual system, since whilst it abolishes the concept of normative law, and citizens of anarchy may have the freedom to act as they please, it cannot guarantee complete liberty of both mind and body. As Edmund Burke said, ‘Liberty too, must be limited in order to be possessed.’ The boundary for liberty is drawn at harm and unnecessary distress.

  Liberty, then, is a philosophy, an idea, and one that has been proved to work in countless societies. Britain, the United States, and several continental countries have all prided themselves on the concept of liberty (though only a few have ever come close to achieving complete liberty). By this logic, then, libertarian societies (as we might call them) are possible across the globe. The only thing that has held back many societies from striving for liberty within their countries has been the attitudes of their leaders, defined by Godwin as ‘the higher orders who profit by a contrary system’. He is correct, and those ‘higher orders’ care little for systems which benefit those who lie outside of their orders; however, it should be the goal of every society to find a system which benefits everyone, not just the higher orders and not just the lower orders — this has been established wisdom since at least the time of Aristotle. So, a society which operates under the premise of complete liberty, one which protects its citizens from the fear of loss of liberty and security as much as it maintains the laws which have been made to protect its citizens, can be said to be truly just. This situation is ideal for both those of wealthier and poorer disposition: both are protected, and both are afforded the same rights and social potential. In a fully free society, talent can arise from all parts of society, allowing for the enrichment and improvement of that society.

  Let it then be said that by coming to know and understand the nature of the world and our moral and physical perceptions, we can work to create the most morally just government by the means of complete liberty.

  Chapter VIII

  Luxury and Decadence

  We have not yet faced what is perhaps the largest elephant in the room: decadence. It is all too easy to speak about the capacity for continuous self-improvement within man but then to look at the state of affairs in the world today and despair. It increasingly seems that such assertions could never bear truth, at least in the times in which we now live.

  It has always been self-indulgence which has crippled and destroyed the most stable and respectable of civilisations. The Roman Empire’s demise came about with the excessive spending of its emperors and governors and the failure to maintain effective forces for the maintenance of its borders. In the modern age, we frequently hear of those in the news, such as bankers and financial managers, who are paid exceedingly high salaries and bonuses which reward them for no outward achievements other than the destruction of our financial system. It is certainly not a good sign for our times that this sort of situation is now requiring management, and one need only cast his eyes upon the sorry state of national debts across the world to see just how ridiculous this situation has now become. But despair should not be our sole response to the troubles of our times, for whilst we may despair at the luxury and decadence eating away at our national wealth and integrity that we observe around us, we have no choice but to work on, lest we face a total collapse.

  Earlier we used the example of the Dark Ages to prove that mankind continues to improve itself exponentially even in ages when it has been set back several paces. Of course, what this undulating line of progress proves to us is that there will be times in which we are required to live on the declining side of one of the undulations. Slothful habits, moral degeneracy and a lack of interest in political justice and the general commonwealth marks ages such as this. This is of course to be criticised, and it is to be desired to live in one of the inclines of societal improvement rather than one of the declines. What we must never forget in our pursuance of political justice is that mankind will always, as history proves, pull itself upwards, but sometimes it is necessary to fall down in order to pull ourselves up yet higher again. Ages are much like human beings in the sense that like humans, they have the capacity to be worn out, to run out of the energy which first drove their intellectual and social improvements, and as they slow, they begin to lose that verve which provided success. In losing that energy, we may lose some things which were dear to us, but once things become so bad that it would seem there is little further to fall, humankind will realise there is a necessity for another boost of intellectual and moral energy.

  In order for this to become a reality, one crucial element is required: undying effort. Those who notice and reflect upon the decline going on around them must refuse to indulge in it with their peers, even if it seems sumptuous and inviting. Work must never cease to criticise the excesses of the age and defend the principles of
liberty and justice which have upheld human civilisations for millennia. By these efforts, it may be possible to soften the blow of decline, or if not, then it will certainly be possible to inspire others to achieve greater things once future generations have reached the very bottom of the decline which we have witnessed.

  Now of course such declines will affect our political institutions as well as the people within our societies. Justice may seem to weaken and pull away at the edges, and legislation may seem inadequate or may even serve to reduce liberty rather than maintain or further it. To this end, there is little to be done but to criticise and to defend, but once again, we must remember to take heart, for eventually all such attempts at destroying these political institutions will result in such an awful state of society that the original state of these institutions will not be merely demanded by the people of the nation but deemed to be more than necessary. An age of decadence is a time of immense change, and it may well be distressing to witness; we shall now lay out three key principles by which the progress of mankind and its institutions may be maintained throughout such ages.

  We should hold no sympathy for the partakers in decadence; it is one thing to enjoy a little personal pleasure here and there, quite another to spend excessively and debase the body with meaningless and worthless activities and objects which offer no contribution towards moral good. We must continue in our search for truth; it would not be right to surrender — if not in body and expense, then in mind — to decadence, so if society is threatened, we must not be afraid to openly speak out against its threats and continue to promote political justice. Finally, we must not fear the decline; humanity will always find a way, and justice will eventually be served, so use the decline as an opportunity for the good of man — do not be afraid.

  Mankind will always be guilty of error, and it is these errors which lead us into situations such as decline. Political institutions and ideas which have been proved to work pragmatically will prevail, however, so long as there are good men present to continue to promote and defend them. The presence of such men, either in large or small quantities, has aided humanity throughout its history, and the quest for truth and justice should not end purely because it is the opinion of some that those values are no longer welcome in our ancient societies.

  Book II.

  Principles of Society

  Chapter I

  Introduction

  One of the chief debates of the Enlightenment was that over the existence of the social contract. Today we take the nature of political society for granted. If you were to ask anyone in a democratic country today whether it is the people who give legitimacy to their government or whether the government itself derives its own legitimacy, that is to say, whether power is given upwards by the people or imposed downwards by government, then I should think most of them would say that it is the people who hold the power and merely consent to others representing their power in legislative bodies via elections. This is generally known as contract theory. For its time, such theory was groundbreaking, for it completely cut God out of the equation; the giver of legitimacy was no longer God but the people. Considering how few of us make the leap of religious faith in the West today, or at least apply that faith to politics, the same holds true for most societies.

  The problem with contract theory is that it could be applied to almost anything; all rests on the nature of the contract itself. If the people of a nation were to elect a dictator, such a man could commit all sorts of tyrannical acts merely by claiming that he derives his authority from the election of the people. A social contract, we might then say, is only effective in democratic or representative forms of government. But there is often an objection raised in schools of philosophy — what if there is a benevolent dictator? Absolute rulers are not always evil, so why would the people wish to not elect such a leader? The nature of the sort of contract that a political society chooses for itself depends closely on the sort of moral justice it chooses. We have already considered morality itself to be semi-absolute and viewed political morality to be a certain kind of complete liberty. However, we have yet to consider contentious points of morality, to discern right from wrong and whether there is a perfect set of morals which binds society together as a whole. Indeed, we cannot have a contract without terms.

  In choosing a government of any kind, we are not entrusting our leaders merely with power but with our very morals and social integrity. It is a huge trust to place in others, so let us now consider what sort of morals this society should build itself upon before we even consider what sort of government would best defend it. One thing must be made absolutely clear, however: there is such a thing as society. As Godwin writes, ‘society is in every state a blessing’; we may consider society to be that desire for mutual assistance that humankind tapped into in order to begin the first stages of moral improvement and the creation of civilisation. Government, or the direction and restriction of such interpersonal interaction, arose from separate needs which only became apparent when society grew into civilisation.

  Chapter II

  Morality and Justice

  Godwin’s overarching view of morality does some justice (if you will pardon the pun) to morality as a whole. Individuals exist individually, but ultimately they are parts of a whole. Therefore, in distinguishing between what is right and what is wrong, there must be some virtue afforded to society (the whole) by the act of judging between these two. Thus, since politics is a search for another sort of justice — the search for an effective government which offers complete liberty — politics is inexorably linked with moral justice. Moral infringements must be considered a threat to complete liberty because of the fear and instability they offer to that liberty, if not immediately then over the course of time. As such, a politically just government must subscribe to morality, lest it lose the very thing which allows humankind to flourish, and thus itself.

  In Godwin’s tract, his discussion of justice begins by considering the command ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’. It is of course a Biblical command, often known as Christ’s ‘Golden Rule’, and it holds a particularly special place in the conduct of many Christians. However, it is not merely a Christian phenomenon today, nor is it a concept devised exclusively by Christ. Many cultures have taught similar concepts, and there remain similar proverbs and maxims, such as ‘you reap what you sow’ and ‘you get back what you give’, the former, for instance, quoted from the Roman orator Cicero.6 The foundation of society pivots around this: that my neighbour, or as we might call him today, my fellow citizen, shares certain rights with me, certain political aims (such as liberty, or perhaps more broadly, happiness) and certain values and characteristics; hence, I owe my fellow citizen a certain respect in the same manner that he owes me respect, and by respecting each other and recognising that we both must seek a path to happiness, we might help each other and more easily come to find what it is that we seek. Justice, then, is as much about benefitting each other as it is benefitting ourselves, for it is only through benefitting one another that we can benefit society as a whole, since individuals are part of the whole. This is the foundation of nationhood as a whole. Some have called this sort of relationship between fellow citizens to be the ‘first-person plural’7 which binds me (the individual) to my neighbours (the nation).

  Understanding the value, role and place of each individual within society is crucial in the search for justice. The truth is, whilst there is an inequality of nature in man, that some will not have the capacity for the judiciary, whilst others will be adept farmers, and still others will have the capacity not for farming but for architecture, but the role of every labourer, be he a physical or mental labourer, serves some benefit to his nation. Both the bricklayer and the philosopher contribute; the philosopher to the search for truth, the bricklayer to the housing of his fellows. Work should not simply be a means to an end; it should be an act confirming the binding of society. This is why we must consider a crime against the brick
layer just as serious as a crime against the philosopher. It matters not that the bricklayer’s name might not be remembered by history, for he made a contribution to his country no less worthy of respect than that of the philosopher. So even in a world of inequality, each part of society relies on the other for its survival. There would be no homes without bricklayers and no ideas without philosophers.

  An objection often raised is this: why cannot the bricklayer be a philosopher too? Or the philosopher a bricklayer? Perhaps they could be either, but one cannot be everything. As we have stated before, there is a certain inequality of aptitude in humankind. We may have varied interests, but interest is quite different to aptitude. There is no reason why the bricklayer could not have an interest in philosophy, but if he has an aptitude for philosophy, he should not be wasting his time laying bricks; rather, he should be debating and adding to public discourse on ideas. Equally, those who offer nothing original or nothing rational and worthwhile to philosophical discourse should spend their time on other things which suit them better, and which serve to benefit society in other ways. Morally, the bricklayer and philosopher are equal, even if they are intellectually unequal, and so in a just society, both should be treated equally by the law.