Humanist Politics - 2
3. The concept of an Ideal
State
1.
“Political thought, ever since the days of
Plato has theorized about the Ideal State, - a political organization of
society in which the relations between man and man would be governed by
justice.
Throughout
the Antiquity and the Middle ages, political thought was dominated by abstract
notion which served either the harmless purpose of building utopias or the
sinister design of hiding the concrete realities of life. Plato was not quite
the utopian that he has been made out by many uncritical historians of
political philosophy. Nevertheless, his doctrine of the ideal state rested on a
postulate which still holds good. For him, justice was not a vague conception.
His definition of the notion of justice, which confounded thought throughout
ages, was bitterly criticized by his opponents, particularly the sophists. But
Plato did give a definition of the notion of justice, which set a concrete
ideal for politics. Justice is good life; to establish good life, therefore, is
the purpose of politics. In other words, an ideal state is that which
established good life.
This
clear purpose of politics could be confused so long as life was divided in to
two compartments – spiritual and temporal. What appeared to be bad for the
temporal life, for life on this earth, was not the criterion of good life.
There was a life after – the spiritual life. The goodness of that life could
not be measured by the standards of the life on this earth. Bad life on this
earth could after all be the condition for a good life after. In other words,
the hope of a good life after, justified a miserable life on this earth.
Political
thought was developed in this direction by astute theologians in Europe as well
as in India. Thomas Acquinas was a landmark in the history of political
thought. He was a European by accident of birth. The political philosophy of
the ancients, which started not from Plato’s idealism, but from the dictum of
the Sophist Protagoras, that man is the measure of everything, was completely
overwhelmed by theological sophistries which subordinated human relations to
the metaphysical laws of a teleological moral order of the Universe.”(1)
2. “The store of cultural values, piled up since
the dawn of civilization, is far from being exhausted. That precious heritage of the
past provides a solid foundation for the magnificent structure of the future
dreamt alike by romanticists or revolutionaries, idealists or utopians. If the
germs of Socialism or Communism grew in the womb of the capitalist society,
then the inspiration for a truly liberating philosophy for the future should
also be found in the moral and spiritual values of the so-called bourgeois
culture. No Marxist could disagree, without belying the master. To be true to their
liberal tradition, the democratic Socialists should also find the ways and
means to enable individual citizens to stand out in sovereign dignity, which is
not attainable within the limits of formal parliamentarism based on atomized
electorates.” (2)
3.
“Politics cannot be divorced from ethics without jeopardizing the cherished
ideal of freedom. It is a fallacy to hold that the end justifies the means. The
truth is that immoral means necessarily corrupt the end. This is an empirical
truth.” (3)
4.
“Democratic practice which is no more than mere counting of heads is, in the
last analysis, also a homage to the collective ego. It allows scope neither for
the individual, nor for intelligence. Under the formal democratic system,
unscrupulous demagogues can always come to the top. Intelligence, Integrity,
wisdom, moral excellence, as a rule, count for nothing. Yet, unless the
purifying influence of these human values is brought to bear upon the political
organization of society, the democratic view of life cannot be realized.
The contemporary world is not poor in men
and women incorporating those values of the humanist tradition. But disdaining
demagogy, they can never come to the helm of public affairs. On the other hand,
a dictatorial regime, even if established as the means to a laudable end,
discourages the rise of that type. Thus, between formal democracy and
dictatorship, humanity is deprived of the benefit of having its affairs
conducted by spiritually free individuals, and is consequently debarred from advancing
towards the goal of freedom.” (4)
5. “Moral sanction, after all, is the
greatest sanction. It has been shown above that the real guarantee of
parliamentary democracy is not law, but the moral conscience of the majority in
power. In the last analysis, dictatorship also rests on a moral sanction; it
claims to be the means to an end. But group morality is a doubtful guarantee
against the temptation of power. Values operate through the behavior of
individuals. Therefore, government composed of spiritually free individuals,
accountable to their respective conscience, is the only possible guarantee for
securing the greatest good to the greatest number.”(5)
6. “Even if elections are by universal
suffrage, and the executive is also elected, democracy will still remain a
formality. Delegation of power, even for a limited period, stultifies
democracy. Government for the people can never be fully a Government of the
people and by the people, and the people can have a hand in the Government of
the country only when the pyramidal structure of the State will be raised on a
foundation of organized local democracy. The primary function of the latter
will be to make individual citizens fully conscious of their sovereign right
and enable them to exercise the right intelligently. The broad basis of the
democratic State, coinciding with the entire society, will be composed of a
network of political schools, so to say. The right of recall and referendum
will enable organized local democracy to wield a direct and effective control
of the entire state machinery. They alone will have the right to nominate
candidates for election. Democracy will be placed above parties representing
collective egos. Individual men will have the chance of being recognized. Party
loyalty and party patronage or other forms of nepotism will no longer eclipse
intellectual independence, moral integrity and detached wisdom.
Such an atmosphere will foster
intellectual independence dedicated to the cause of making human values
triumph. That moral excellence alone can hold a community together without
sacrificing the individual on the altar of the collective ego, be it the nation
or the class. People possessed of that great virtue will command the respect of
an intelligent public, and be recognized as the leaders of society
automatically, so to say.” (6)
7. “Until the intellectual and moral
level of the entire community is raised considerably, election alone cannot
possibly bring its best elements to the forefront, and unless the available
intellectual detachment and moral integrity are brought to bear on the
situation, democratic regimes cannot serve the purpose of promoting freedom.”(7)
8. “Public life in the political field
is dominated by political parties. Their main object is to capture power,
because it is believed that nothing can be done except by governments in power.
If the best of programmes is ever to be realized, the first need is power. Once
it is taken for granted that capture of power, by whatever means, is the
precondition of any good to be achieved, and without power nothing can be done,
the logical conclusion is that anything and everything done for capturing
political power is justifiable. Once popular mentality is dominated by the
principle that anything done for a good end is right, morality disappears, and
that is the main evil in the public life of all countries in the world today.
All thinking people complain about this, and are looking for ways and means to
introduce decency and morality in public life. Morality has disappeared because
it is forgotten or ignored that only individuals can be moral. Morality is an
attribute of men and men have been lost in the masses. If you deal with men ,
ultimately you an appeal to their reason
and deal with their conscience. But in the mass, men’s reason and conscience
are also submerged and suspended. Masses respond more easily to emotional appeals,
because men merge in to masses on their lowest common denominator. The level of
the politicians then adjusts itself to this mentality. Elections do not ensure
democracy but put a premium on demagogy.” (8)
9. “Although the problem of reconciling
the apparent contradiction of man and State has occupied political thought ever
since antiquity, the eclipse of the individual at the cost of growing emphasis
on the State, first under theocracy, later in monarchies, yet later in
parliamentary democracies, not to mention the modern dictatorships, is one of
the outstanding features of history. The 19th century held out hope
for the triumph of the individual. But the two concepts with which it was
heralded were defective. They were, parliamentarism in the political field, and
laisser faire in economics.
Parliamentary democracy formally recongnised the sovereignty of the individual,
but in practice deprived all but a privileged few of effective use of that
sovereignty. The sovereign individual became a legal fiction. For all practical
purposes, most individuals were deprived of all power and even of their dignity
In the economic field, the doctrine
of laisser
faire gave unbridled liberty to a small minority to exploit the vast
majority of the people everywhere. Free enterprise meant freedom of a few to
exploit many. That being the practical manifestation of 19th century
Radicalism – the political expression of which was Liberalism - it was bound to
be discredited and lead to a new period of crisis.” (9)
10. “In the critical moment when this
perspective became obvious, Socialism appeared on the scene and seemed to hold
out the only hope for the majority of human beings. But Socialism frankly
places the collectivity above the individual. Now, if society originated in the
need of man to progress according to his inborn urge for freedom, with the help
of the collective efforts of others like him; if society was created as an
instrument to promote the progress of man as an individual, then Socialism or
any collectivism should be regarded as an antithesis of the entire history of
social evolution.” (10)
11. “So long as Socialism continued in
the tradition of 19th century Liberalism, it attracted a large
number of adherents from among the best of men everywhere. But it could not
succeed anywhere. Ultimately, Socialism had to advance the concept of
dictatorship as antithesis to parliamentary democracy, if it was to have any
chance of succeeding. Parliamentary democracy had failed to achieve its ideals.
The experience of parliamentary democracy had in fact raised the question
whether democracy was possible at all.
As people were losing hope in one form
of political organization, it was necessary to advance an alternative. The
alternative advanced to the disappointing form of parliamentary democracy was
dictatorship. Only after a certain section of socialists came forward with that
novel proposition, could Socialism gather strength. With that strength did it
finally capture power in one country, and to many open-minded people, it
appeared that the world had at last emerged from the crisis precipitated by the
failure and decline of 19th century Liberalism, and entered a new
chapter of human progress.” (11)
12. “These collectivist ideas have had
yet another consequence. They have resulted in a certain mental attitude, a
habit of thinking, which completely disregards considerations of ethics, of
morality in social behavior. They have led to confusion about the relation of
means and end. On the one hand, an end is made of the means. On the other, any
means is believed to be good enough to achieve a desired end. For the last
hundred years, a growing section of mankind had come to believe that Socialism,
or Communism as it came to be called subsequently, is necessary for
establishing freedom and progress, and ultimately it came to be believed that
Socialism or Communism as such is the goal. But why should Socialism or
Communism be our goal? Presumably because we believe that under Socialism or
Communism we shall have greater freedom and happiness. Thus it is obvious that
Socialism or Communism is only an instrument, a means to an end, and not an end
in itself.” (12)
13. “The political and social practice
of Liberalism having negativated the moral excellence of its philosophy,
parliamentary democracy was bound to be discredited. If that was not the case,
the stormy rise of Fascism could not be rationally explained. Fascism grew out
of the crisis of parliamentary democracy, within the limits of which the social
and economic problems confronting Europe in the inter-war period could not be
solved. In order to survive Fascism, democracy must outgrow the limitations of
formal parliamentarism based on an atomized and therefore helpless electorate.
An organized democracy, in a position to wield a standing control of the state
should be the political foundation of the new social order. By reorienting
itself in this direction, democratic Socialism will open up before the modern
progressive humanity a new vista of
political and economic reconstruction, which will neither postulate an
indefinite period of blood and tears, nor be clouded by doubts about the
alternative courses of peaceful development.”(13)
References:
1.
(Articles written by M.N. Roy for
the weekly journal, Independent India.),1945. Acknowledgement: Essence of Royism, compiled
by G.D. Parikh, Nav Jagrity Samaj Publication, 1987. ( Chapter:1. Problem of
Freedom, Pp
- 32,33.)
2.
Pages – 163, 164: New Orientation, M.N.Roy,
Ajanta Publications (India), Jawahar Nagar, Delhi – 110 007
3.
Page – 164: ibid
4.
Pp – 165, 166: ibid
5. Page – 166: ibid
6.
Page – 167:ibid
7.
Page - 168: ibid
8.
Pp – 174, 175: Politics power and Parties, M.N. Roy, Ajanta Publications(India), 1981.
9. Pages 19, 20: ibid
10. Page - 20: ibid
11. Page - 21:ibid
12. Pp - 22, 23:ibid
13. Pp – 162,163: New Orientation, M.N.Roy,
ibid
