Political Justice Read online

  The expression of private opinion, then, is important for the sake of maintaining a completely libertarian society. By hearing the views of those who express discontentment with it, we may do ourselves favours by identifying the true deficiencies of society and may set about correcting them. Equally, it should spur us on, when we hear what the proposed alternatives are, to persuade and campaign for the protection of the rights which we know to be the best structure in which to nurture virtue and human progress. Our virtue system itself will also continue to develop as time goes on and new moral challenges are faced by society. Political discourse and engaging debate will be necessary to find the truly virtuous path as a result of these challenges. If only those of both radical and conservative persuasions would recognise the need for discourse!

  At which point, however, does private opinion become dangerous? Never, if truly private, is the answer. The freedom to express truly shocking, perhaps even violent, opinions in a confidential and fully private setting should be the right of every citizen living under liberty. A publicly expressed opinion urging citizens towards acts of vice should be the sole concern of crime and punishment. If life is sacrosanct, then expressing the opinion that others should end the life of an individual or group cannot be tolerated. It is one thing to express the public opinion that a group or individual should be brought before justice; it is quite another to encourage heinous sins which can only damage the structure of society and its capacity for self-improvement.

  Godwin considers many institutions on which a society is built to exist merely as a child of personal opinion and considers concepts such as law as a deterrent against future crimes to be nothing more than a construct which works against society itself. Private opinion is one thing, and whilst there may always be those in a society who believe that there should be no institutions, that society itself should not exist as an organised entity and that the populations of Earth have sold themselves into slavery by permitting it, the minority of such opinions proves the opposite of their beliefs. The rational nature of humankind urges us to question the nature of how we structure society and government, yet everywhere there is society. Society is structured in the way that it is, not out of an organised attempt to restrict the human race but out of an attempt to further itself. There is therefore in most societies a consensus built on cultural and historical traditions which dictate the defining points of their societies’ constitutions. In Britain, for instance, calls for the abolition of Parliament and the institution of absolute rule are unheard of; equally the opposite: calls for the abolition of all government and institution of absolute freedom is also unheard of. Societies form a majority consensus over time based on the inheritance of their ancestors.

  To place absolutely every part of society down to a mere construct of subjective opinion is nothing more than reductio ad absurdum, but private opinion must remain the driving force of mainstream political discourse. Modern times have shown an increasing intolerance of traditional interpretations of society, with many conservatives being dismissed as having views taken from the wrong century. What those who seek to implement a virtuous society where moral improvement is politics’ principal aim must remember is that capitulation of their opinion is the path to defeat. Those with serious opinions to offer to political discourse must be firm in their advocacy and constant in their principals. As politicians in recent ages have proved their mettle to be grounded on weak foundations, through consistent falsehoods and misconceived policies which seek to benefit interested individuals rather than society as a whole, alternative viewpoints must be consistently offered if political change is to come about.

  It is a cutting indictment of modern radical leftist politics that it is creating the precise conditions for an unsustainable society. When they talk of freedom, they offer restrictions, and when others speak about the defence of their society from the cultural changes which will lead to the deconstruction of the liberty that has been enjoyed for hundreds of years, ‘progressive’ politicians dismiss it with vague notions of egalitarianism.

  In our study of society, we have found that moral virtue and common values are the glue which binds the individuals together into an effective whole. True, or complete, liberty can only flourish within this context, and warped notions of ‘freedom’ without restriction, without proper punishment for vicious conduct, will only lead to the undoing of society itself. Individuals do not owe each other anything but their virtue, but society owes itself a great deal. It is impossible to force individuals to conform to a moral code of ‘fairness’ or ‘equality’, since it is inequality itself which is the foundation of society in the first place. Without inequality, there would be no need for society. It is recognising this, and our need for society itself, that should drive us towards more virtuous actions on behalf of our fellow citizens. That notion of citizenship, of participation in a grander endeavour, is what has bred liberty and held strong societies together. Once individualism is pursued to such an extent that cohesion no longer matters, and the individual no longer feels part of society, he feels as though there is no virtue to be had in supporting that society, and we lose all chance of real ‘progress’.

  Society is fundamentally virtuous as a concept, but without virtuous men and women to live in it, it becomes nothing more than a space in which individuals live to be governed by tyranny rather than held together by a love of liberty and justice.

  Book III.

  Principles of Government

  Chapter I

  Introduction

  The problem of government is a troubling one for every political philosopher, and opinion remains divided over one of the largest political issues of all time: the question of whether government should be ‘big’ or ‘small’. What is the role of government, and what should be its scope? Traditionally speaking, the right wing of political thought has often been called the home of the small state, but this distinction is rather artificial. On the one hand, we might think that a belief in liberty should lead us to favour a state which is restricted in terms of its power, in order to ensure the maximum freedom of its citizens. However, this is not so clear-cut; if, as we have already considered, complete liberty walks hand-in-hand with morality, then the state must have a moral onus placed upon it, an onus as great as the one concerning the maintenance of liberty.

  The distinction between the political ‘right’ and ‘left’ itself is somewhat misleading. Modern political parties in Britain, for instance, have proved that a hodgepodge of various political ideas from both the right and left can be frequently employed in order to deceive members of the electorate of various political persuasions into voting for a party with a particular label. The Conservative Party in Britain has attracted much criticism for retaining the ‘Conservative’ label, when it fails on many counts to stay true to right-wing ideas traditionally considered to be conservative in nature. In order to examine the purpose of government, we must examine the nature of different forms of government and consider their advantages and disadvantages. Before we enter the detail, however, we shall introduce the topic with a brief history of the driving force of governmental competition today: the battle between conservatives and radicals, traditionalists and reformers.

  Modern conceptions about conservatism and radicalism were born out of the struggles of the French Revolution in the late 18th century. It seems only right, then, that the main focus of our critique of political justice is driven by Godwin’s text, a prime example of the political radicalism which gave birth to modern left-wing politics. Even the terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ are derived from the positions in the debating chamber of the French National Assembly in which radical Jacobins and conservative Royalists sat.

  For a long time, in Europe, the dividing line between radicals and conservatives was drawn between those who supported the establishment of republics and those who supported the old order, the monarchies and aristocracies of Europe. Today, with monarchy and aristocracy having lost power either formally or informall
y, this distinction is no longer always useful. It has been said that conservatives gradually came to defend capitalism rather than aristocracy as the power of their traditional supporters waned, but this is not completely true either. Conservatives are defined purely by their name: they are those who wish to preserve traditional societal structures, morals and customs out of the belief that these are the best framework in which to encourage liberty and the betterment of mankind. Radicals are those who seek the radix, the root, of society, and tear it up to reform the function of society in its entirety.

  Sometimes, however, the distinction becomes turned on its head. When radicals succeed in reform, they themselves may become the conservatives, seeking to preserve the changes they have made, and conservatives may have to become radical in order to remove or reverse that change. Political distinction is constantly in flux.

  It is not always very easy, then, to define a particular set of values as ‘conservative’ or ‘radical’. In laying out the principles of an effective government, we must have our critique of society in mind. We must consider how institutions relate to government and whether there is a particular form of government which can be considered the most perfect, either as a hybrid of many different institutions which have been proved to be effective in certain areas or as a single system which has either been tried and tested in the past or can be proved to be effective by other reliable means. We must ask whom a government should serve and who should constitute it; should it have a relationship to religion, or should it be purely secular? If it makes a conservative to look at the past in order to consider the most just political society for posterity, then that must make us conservatives; if we are forced to change an existing and defective order to implement these measures, perhaps that makes us radical conservatives as well.

  Chapter II

  The Social Contract

  We have already considered the social contract briefly. It is the principle that government is founded upon the assent of its people to hold power on their behalf. But the social contract itself presents problems; it is of course just a theory and is not defined by any real, signed contract. If we assume that the social contract is a legitimate principle of government, then who are the parties to the contract? If every citizen is a member of society, then surely every citizen is part of the contract, yet a contract must be made with someone else. The question we face is this: what is the value and purpose of government?

  It is certainly not true that each successive generation gives assent to their government to continue to govern in their place as soon as each member of that generation becomes politically conscious. Of course, the principle of ‘consent’ is a difficult one, since we can all attest by personal experience that we do not so much consent to our governments’ existence but rather somewhat apathetically come to terms with the fact that they exist, that we must tolerate their edicts and that we may influence them under a democratic system from time to time in an election. This is not really a system of ‘consent’. If the people were truly the givers of consent to their government, then they would recognise that government may only legitimately act within the bounds of the customs of a particular society, and that if power truly lay within the hands of the people, they would be constantly on edge to keep up with new political developments. Some philosophers have tried to solve this problem by describing the unwritten state of governance to be a system of ‘tacit consent’ between the people and their government, but again, this is not really consent but a kind of wary tolerance.

  Another problem with defining a set of ‘unwritten rules’ as the foundations of a government is that we face a dilemma once these rules are broken: since they are unwritten, a break with convention within this ‘contract’ cannot be considered explicitly unlawful, since the rules were never perfectly defined in the first place. It is also difficult to define exactly how unwritten rules may be broken, since due to the subjectivity of human opinion, different men may consider different unwritten rules to be the most just in constituting a social contract.

  Social contract theory itself was developed in the late 17th and early 18th century as a rival to the long-established principle of the divine right of kings, which stated that the monarchs of Europe had a legitimate right to rule their people since they could explain their power as a gift bestowed upon them by God. If we believe in an omnipotent God, perhaps it is right that ultimate power is held by him? Is the social contract signed with God, then? Obviously not. The Western Christian tradition is rooted in the belief that God gave man free will, and if this is true, then society, which is made up of individual members of mankind, should have the right to freely choose their government. This has been established over many thousands of years of development, and the governmental traditions of every nation have been shaped by separate historical events and demands of their people over time. In this case, we cannot say that one particular perfect form of government can work equally effectively in every single nation, even if they are capable of the same political goals; and yet, if monarchy is the tradition of a nation, it should not be so easily dispensed with in the name of ‘the people’ or otherwise.

  The social contract is not inherently wrong in its placement of authority in the people of a nation as a whole. However, it is not so much a contract as an interested co-existence between the people of a society who are not in government and those who are in government. Therefore, it is hard to draw up a perfect ‘contract’ to suit the needs of every citizen, whose agendas and opinions may be distinct. What citizens of countries need more than abstract notions of a non-existent ‘contract’ are principles which define the goals of all government and a promise to adhere to certain virtues in the pursuit of their aims. Documents such as the American Declaration of Independence expressed sentiments of that nation’s zeitgeist, expressing the purpose of an American citizen to be ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. Each nation has its own individual structures and traditions, but every government, in order to be truly virtuous and seek the path to political justice, must be governed by a set of principles which it owes to its citizens. Just as individual citizens have a sense of duty towards their fellows, and thus to society, government is not exempt from duty. We can express this duty in the form of a written set of principles to replace this contract. Burke famously defined the conservative approach to the social contract as a political understanding between those who are currently living, those who are dead, and those who are not yet born. In this sense, the social contract is a product of history: an organic development which should be free from radical change, but which exists for the sake of the common-wealth of those who live within it. When, as it so often seems in modern Western society, that contract is abused by forgetting the dead and the unborn, a selfish contract is the result, and one which has a troubling tendency towards vice.

  Based on what we have considered to be the purpose of human civilisation, and how we have sought moral virtue, a just government should guarantee the following to its citizens:

  1. To recognise that power is bequeathed to government by inheritance, not created by it, and is ephemeral.

  2. To recognise that the purpose of government is to defend the rights of those in society.

  3. To recognise that the goal of society is complete liberty.

  4. To defend society from existential threat.

  5. To defend the institutions which uphold the fabric of society.

  6. To act according to moral virtue.

  7. To be just.

  8. To never remove the rights which centuries of political discourse and institution have proved to be virtuous, and allow mankind the freedom to better itself.

  9. To support those whom society has failed by ensuring an equality of opportunity.

  10. To ensure representation for every part of society that has shown a commitment to its values.

  To ensure that a government has these principles in mind when it comes to govern offers a new take on the social contract. Governments
should not merely operate on the basis of unwritten laws of power but guarantee certain rights and create explicit goals not merely in terms of policy but in terms of the human population which it serves.

  By expressing goals such as these, the tyranny of a majority opinion and oppression of a minority opinion can be for the most part avoided, since it continues to allow for the free expression of opinion but lays down certain human goals and natural laws within which government is obliged to act. So long as the principle of virtue is considered sacrosanct, government can set itself any legitimate goal. If personal interest is championed, and virtue is not considered important in the conduct of government, with nothing more than vague abstractions offered to the public, then government cannot be said to be a valuable part of any political society.