Sovereign v.s. Democracy
It is somewhat disturbing how words get so confounded that their meanings are generalized to accomodate ideas that are disadvantageous in any rational discourse to have to disentangle. There is probably a social agenda inherent in such convolutions, which protects social norms from reason. Obviously, since what exactly are the influences that determine the behavior of the social animal is known by a strictly ignored few, reason is perennially incapable of penetrating the social awareness at an effective level.
On the one hand are the Cerberus hounds that guard the social leviathan, the one the use of force, termed the political. The other is reward, which we currently term capitalism. But these guards serve only to maintain the social creature within its own form. They are powerless to actually influence the social beast, except with the greatest effort over unbearably long periods of time, which most citizens will not tolerate. Regimes that attempt to influence their citizenry are termed repressive, since they do not really change the social form, they simply repress its expression.
Two terms that are really troubling are 'democratic' and, what most people actually mean when they use the term, which is 'sovereign'.
"Thirdly, there is the will of the people or the sovereign will, which is general both with regard to the state considered as a whole and with regard to the government considered as part of the whole." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "The Social Contract", 1762, p108).
The sovereign is synonymous with the terms 'social animal' or 'leviathan'. the term democratic implies a governmental form where the government is entirely in the hands of the people, where there is no aristocratic class or branches of government other than a 'House of Representatives'. In most oligarchical or totalitarian forms of government, the term 'democracy' is used liberally by all active in the actual repression of the democratic class of society. For instance in the U.S. recently, the dictator completely disregarded the power of check by the House of Representatives in its veto of the war spending legislation. If the democratic were the dominant power in this nation, the House of Representatives would have the greater authority over the dictator, which is obviously not the case.
But, getting back to the distinction between 'sovereign' and 'democratic', the sovereign is the power of the state as a whole. The democratic, the capitalistic, and the governmental are all parts of this whole. In an informed republic for instance, each of these classes would have an equal share of the power. In the U.S., the governmental class has way too much of the sovereign power and dictates to the rest, which goes against the nature of the sovereign or social animal and is ultimately repressive.
It would be difficult even to call this nation an oligarchy, since the dominant economic player is the military industrial complex, which is technically capitalist, but it is not a form of capital that contributes to the wealth of the country, as defined by Ricardo or Smith as " the sum of necessaries, conveniences and luxuries in a nation", failing to contribute to the wealth of the nation, these industries fail to be part of the 'reward' segment of the sovereign and align perfectly with the 'force' segment.
Considering the failure to comprehend the mechanics (organics?) of the social animal, it is impossible to truly alter its behaviour and all that the state is capable of, is repressing it. In the modern world (post modern is really nothing other than alienation from reason) the social animal has failed to adopt behaviours consistent with what is obviously rational, what modern science and technology have brought to light, and what industry has conceived. To accomodate this disfunctionality, two primary escape mechanisms have emerged. The one is blatant bigotry, under the paliative of 'conservatism', which pouts about religious and racial alienation and considers that a sufficient argument to attack anything diverging from the anachronistic social form. The other escape mechanism is the aforementioned 'post modernism' which basically is a style of phyronism, or a rejection of reason in light of any incidence of exception, which allows the individual to flow along with the social form and associate only with whatever reason opportunity happens to allow.
Aristotle was not really wrong about social change being something to approach with caution, but at the same time, forcing a disfunctional social form on a people by empowering the political to the disadvantage of reward is a losing game. Reason will not go away with time. Where there are concrete facts and principles that are near certainties and repeatable ad infinitum, ignoring the finite is not a responsible policy, especially for a large or powerful state. With regard to the immutable, the social form must adapt to it, or waste energy and freedom and promote immorality sustaining the ignorance of it.
The European Union, managed within three years time to change the form of currency in most of Europe to one universal currency from many. This is a major social change that was readily adopted and with great benefit to all players (although they have not done away with the institution of interest, which is not based on any principal with a fiat money).
[For this later () comment, there is a solution. A fiat money is actually the property of the sovereign itself, which is everyone. So no one individual or institution has any right to collect an interest, since that is ultimately a de-facto tax. On the other hand, all three segments of the sovereign state have a right to one third of the social product. If banking insists on charging interest on money, the people should be exempt from an income tax. That would leave banking and capital to battle it out for profit and government would be reduced to collecting taxes strictly from banking and capital and have an incentive to ensure that banking is not repressive of productive capital, which was the point of the control of interest by the 'Fed' in the first place. The only other alternative is for government to completely take over the banking industry and make it a branch of government, but that is idealistic and would distort the sovereign state into a dictatorship even further.]
Where reason contradicts the social form, the reasonable will follow reason. And as Aristotle says: "A man will receive less benefit from changing the law than damage from becoming accustomed to disobey authority". This is highly relevant to the social context as well. As social norms diverge from rational and moral behavior, individuals become increasingly accustomed to being dyssocial and not following social norms becomes problematic when social norms become dictated politically.
Buying organic food is such a deviation. The political was active in repressing the transgenetic labeling of food for individuals trying to make moral choices. The pro choice political movement was repressed by government trying to adhere to an era when women were considered the equivalent of slaves and forbidden to make moral choices. Overpopulation is a greater immoral fact than the destruction of a fetus. That the CIA has considered it reasonable to investigate global warming and resource exhaustion as sources of military conflict is proof enough that having babies will lead to the murder of sentioned adults.
These are only two examples of reasonable and moral choices being actively repressed by the use of force. That organic food is more expensive though it cost less to produce is another indication that the reward aspect of society is diminishing with respect to the forced aspect along the lines of moral and rational choices. And with respect to supply and demand, the cost of an abortion must be growing astronomic, if one includes the cost of travel and lodging that probably accompanies such a choice today.
That the European Union has abandoned the death penalty and its use in the U.S. has increased dramatically since the 1970s is evidence also of the rise of the use of force against reason. Does unnecessary war and trivial vengeance war in place of diplomacy not also show an abusive level of political force to the exclusion of reward mechanisms for maintaining the social security? This is all difficult to resolve as 'democratic'. It suggests that we as free individuals living in a state with liberty as its foundation, prefer to be forced to conform to irrational norms, rather than be rewarded for conforming to rational norms. Would not a democracy prefer to be rewarded for conforming to rational norms? A sovereign state that has no real control over its social charge on the other hand, may tend to force conformance to dysfunctional norms and impose these anachronistic and immoral 'norms' even upon those willing to give up their social identity to adhere to a more reasonable and moral code.
These are distinctions that need to be recognized.
Peace:
Ca Te Go Re Ya Ho Wa Le Ni Bo Su Po Mo Fe E I A U O Xi Qo Ke Ju Da Vi Ze
On the one hand are the Cerberus hounds that guard the social leviathan, the one the use of force, termed the political. The other is reward, which we currently term capitalism. But these guards serve only to maintain the social creature within its own form. They are powerless to actually influence the social beast, except with the greatest effort over unbearably long periods of time, which most citizens will not tolerate. Regimes that attempt to influence their citizenry are termed repressive, since they do not really change the social form, they simply repress its expression.
Two terms that are really troubling are 'democratic' and, what most people actually mean when they use the term, which is 'sovereign'.
"Thirdly, there is the will of the people or the sovereign will, which is general both with regard to the state considered as a whole and with regard to the government considered as part of the whole." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "The Social Contract", 1762, p108).
The sovereign is synonymous with the terms 'social animal' or 'leviathan'. the term democratic implies a governmental form where the government is entirely in the hands of the people, where there is no aristocratic class or branches of government other than a 'House of Representatives'. In most oligarchical or totalitarian forms of government, the term 'democracy' is used liberally by all active in the actual repression of the democratic class of society. For instance in the U.S. recently, the dictator completely disregarded the power of check by the House of Representatives in its veto of the war spending legislation. If the democratic were the dominant power in this nation, the House of Representatives would have the greater authority over the dictator, which is obviously not the case.
But, getting back to the distinction between 'sovereign' and 'democratic', the sovereign is the power of the state as a whole. The democratic, the capitalistic, and the governmental are all parts of this whole. In an informed republic for instance, each of these classes would have an equal share of the power. In the U.S., the governmental class has way too much of the sovereign power and dictates to the rest, which goes against the nature of the sovereign or social animal and is ultimately repressive.
It would be difficult even to call this nation an oligarchy, since the dominant economic player is the military industrial complex, which is technically capitalist, but it is not a form of capital that contributes to the wealth of the country, as defined by Ricardo or Smith as " the sum of necessaries, conveniences and luxuries in a nation", failing to contribute to the wealth of the nation, these industries fail to be part of the 'reward' segment of the sovereign and align perfectly with the 'force' segment.
Considering the failure to comprehend the mechanics (organics?) of the social animal, it is impossible to truly alter its behaviour and all that the state is capable of, is repressing it. In the modern world (post modern is really nothing other than alienation from reason) the social animal has failed to adopt behaviours consistent with what is obviously rational, what modern science and technology have brought to light, and what industry has conceived. To accomodate this disfunctionality, two primary escape mechanisms have emerged. The one is blatant bigotry, under the paliative of 'conservatism', which pouts about religious and racial alienation and considers that a sufficient argument to attack anything diverging from the anachronistic social form. The other escape mechanism is the aforementioned 'post modernism' which basically is a style of phyronism, or a rejection of reason in light of any incidence of exception, which allows the individual to flow along with the social form and associate only with whatever reason opportunity happens to allow.
Aristotle was not really wrong about social change being something to approach with caution, but at the same time, forcing a disfunctional social form on a people by empowering the political to the disadvantage of reward is a losing game. Reason will not go away with time. Where there are concrete facts and principles that are near certainties and repeatable ad infinitum, ignoring the finite is not a responsible policy, especially for a large or powerful state. With regard to the immutable, the social form must adapt to it, or waste energy and freedom and promote immorality sustaining the ignorance of it.
The European Union, managed within three years time to change the form of currency in most of Europe to one universal currency from many. This is a major social change that was readily adopted and with great benefit to all players (although they have not done away with the institution of interest, which is not based on any principal with a fiat money).
[For this later () comment, there is a solution. A fiat money is actually the property of the sovereign itself, which is everyone. So no one individual or institution has any right to collect an interest, since that is ultimately a de-facto tax. On the other hand, all three segments of the sovereign state have a right to one third of the social product. If banking insists on charging interest on money, the people should be exempt from an income tax. That would leave banking and capital to battle it out for profit and government would be reduced to collecting taxes strictly from banking and capital and have an incentive to ensure that banking is not repressive of productive capital, which was the point of the control of interest by the 'Fed' in the first place. The only other alternative is for government to completely take over the banking industry and make it a branch of government, but that is idealistic and would distort the sovereign state into a dictatorship even further.]
Where reason contradicts the social form, the reasonable will follow reason. And as Aristotle says: "A man will receive less benefit from changing the law than damage from becoming accustomed to disobey authority". This is highly relevant to the social context as well. As social norms diverge from rational and moral behavior, individuals become increasingly accustomed to being dyssocial and not following social norms becomes problematic when social norms become dictated politically.
Buying organic food is such a deviation. The political was active in repressing the transgenetic labeling of food for individuals trying to make moral choices. The pro choice political movement was repressed by government trying to adhere to an era when women were considered the equivalent of slaves and forbidden to make moral choices. Overpopulation is a greater immoral fact than the destruction of a fetus. That the CIA has considered it reasonable to investigate global warming and resource exhaustion as sources of military conflict is proof enough that having babies will lead to the murder of sentioned adults.
These are only two examples of reasonable and moral choices being actively repressed by the use of force. That organic food is more expensive though it cost less to produce is another indication that the reward aspect of society is diminishing with respect to the forced aspect along the lines of moral and rational choices. And with respect to supply and demand, the cost of an abortion must be growing astronomic, if one includes the cost of travel and lodging that probably accompanies such a choice today.
That the European Union has abandoned the death penalty and its use in the U.S. has increased dramatically since the 1970s is evidence also of the rise of the use of force against reason. Does unnecessary war and trivial vengeance war in place of diplomacy not also show an abusive level of political force to the exclusion of reward mechanisms for maintaining the social security? This is all difficult to resolve as 'democratic'. It suggests that we as free individuals living in a state with liberty as its foundation, prefer to be forced to conform to irrational norms, rather than be rewarded for conforming to rational norms. Would not a democracy prefer to be rewarded for conforming to rational norms? A sovereign state that has no real control over its social charge on the other hand, may tend to force conformance to dysfunctional norms and impose these anachronistic and immoral 'norms' even upon those willing to give up their social identity to adhere to a more reasonable and moral code.
These are distinctions that need to be recognized.
Peace:
Ca Te Go Re Ya Ho Wa Le Ni Bo Su Po Mo Fe E I A U O Xi Qo Ke Ju Da Vi Ze
Labels: Aristotle, democracy, democratic, dictatorship, normative, social, sovereign
posted by lou_srewlect | 12:09 PM
2 Comments:
The trouble with your reading is that it is uninformed by broader recent commentaries. You take a fairly naive objectivist position that would fit a classic conservatism about 40-100 years ago. Read Russell Kirk? Irving Babbitt? That's what your stuff seems a rehash of. Try reading serious critiques of libertarianism to get a new grounding. Paul Treanor is one place to start. A close reading of his work...which is informed in your classical gods, would give you some new perspectives.
Ryan,
So, I read some of Paul Treanor's stuff, and I feel your contest of my take unjustified. For starters, statements such as the following are feckless and border on anacoluthon in their conjunction.
They do not represent a logical or a closely reasoned argument: "The market needs internal regulation, in order to function: the state, in the form of the legal system, ensures contracts are enforced. In the form of the police, it prevents theft and fraud. It establishes uniform systems of weights and measures, and a uniform currency. Without these things there would be no free market, no market forces, and no resulting market society. Bill Gates disputes the US Government's authority over his business - but if there was no government at all, the poor would soon steal his wealth"
The fallacy is that it misses the point of a republic, which is a balance of power not a bias of power. When power is concentrated in one center it rapidly shifts to tyrannical oppression. The fact of the state is a necessary condition of any economic form, but it is not a sufficient condition to qualify capitalism.
another example:
"The modern free market came into existence primarily because liberalism demanded its existence. This demand was a a political demand, and it was enforced through the state."
The fallacy is in the terms "enforced by the state", which is obtuse to the extreme. The free market, on a reading of Adam Smith, came into existence by the rapid expansion of industry and trade, due primarily to innovation (something all the ancients abhored), which impoverished the remaining feudal lords and forced them to concede legal rights to yeomen and the like, to profit from the leasing or ownership of property. Contrast his form of production with that of feudalism wherein: all proceeds were the property of the feudal lord, no one profited from their personal merits. Everything worked toward the benefit of the few. The state was in fact compelled by the force of economic change to adapt to the sovereign conditions rather than the other way around.
Reading further, I can see that this Paul Treanor is extremely naive and has no conception of the historical categories of Democracy, Aristocracy and Monarchy, or as Machiavelli classifies: Democracy -> anarchy, Aristocracy -> oligarchy, Monarchy -> despotism. These latter transitions occur rapidly from the insolence of those in power who feel they have some inherent right to it and do not feel they are required to follow the laws that govern the state. Thomas Hobbes criticizes balanced government on the powerful reality he witnessed on the 'above the law' nature of political and economic power, which he perceived to be insuperable. Today we are completely ignorant of this quality of human nature which was the shaping force of all history. Mainly because we inherited a constitutional republic which means we have a written system of checks and balances that supresses the inflation of egos that leads immediately to tyranny. Sadly today, no one is aware of how the system works, no one is vigilant and the checks and balances are not being exercised. The consequences are beyond the scope of what is today considered horror.
It is in fact to escape from the superstitions and hand waving that I chose to return to a reading of the classics from whence the idea of the modern republic emerged. To judge those works based upon the obtuse sophistry of modern "thinkers" is an insult to human reason.
Again:
"Liberals reject the idea of redistribution of wealth as a goal in itself."
true enough, but a real liberal is against economic power distorting the balance of power between the three categories of people in a state.
And:
"Liberals feel that society and state should not have fixed goals, but that 'process should determine outcome'."
an economy is a tool, it has no outcome unless we give it one. To randomly swing a hammer at stuff does not build a house. What that outcome is, however must be decided carefully and with all participating equally.
but:
"Liberalism is therefore inherently hostile to competing non-liberal societies - which it sees not simply as different, but as wrong."
this is soooo true, but are we guarding against it, or shifting our vigilance elsewhere to effect tyranny here?
"Classic political liberals reject the idea that there are any external moral values:"
Morality is a concern for how actions in the present affect the future. Freedom, in fact is nothing other than exercising morality as the only contrast to the slavery of serving immediate biological need.
why:
"Many liberals were therefore sympathetic to biological theories of inequality."
Africa, for instance had three or more written languages, even an alphabetic language (Meroitic), and had explored or conqured almost an entire continent while Europeans were still hunting in primitive tribes.
"Note however, that by recognising a non-market underclass, neoliberals undermine their own claims about the universal applicability of market principles."
The biggest flaw in this brand of 'liberalism' is this:
"They believe that the market produces the best 'design for society', and that is is wrong to substitute any other design."
This is oligarchical tyranny as clear as day. Tyranny and liberty are not synonyms.
The only 'best design is one where the people have 1/3 the input, capital 1/3 the input and the government 1/3 the input. Today, government has 2/3 the input and capital and people share 1/3. Yet neoliberals believe that they run things... War anyone?
"market liberals demand a privileged social status for the entrepreneur."
It's called the Senate.
"The general ethical precept of neoliberalism can be summarised approximately as:
"-act in conformity with market forces"
"-within this limit, act also to maximise the opportunity for others to conform to the market forces generated by your action"
"-hold no other goals"
If everyone lives by such entrepreneurial precepts, then a world will come into existence in which not just goods and services, but all human and social life, is the product of conformity to market forces."
So where is the liberty? Or rather, whose liberty is this tyranny being imposed upon people to gratify?
"For neoliberals it is not sufficient that there is a market: there must be nothing which is not market."
Morality? Freedom? Liberty? Humanity? Reason? Love?
Sorry if there are typos, its late and time is short these days...
-lou
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