Post by vaibhavnarula on Apr 17, 2020 8:34:04 GMT
Concerning the different forms of government Dictatorship is the worst. Dictatorship is not a form of a government as much a sign that the system has completely decayed and now a collapse is imminent. It demonstrates the inability of the people for self-governance. In one way it is good because till the old is not destroyed nothing new can be built over it but the transition is an extremely painful process and besides the old is never completely destroyed; the materials to build something new are always got from the ruins of the old. Anyways if we say that inherent within a society are two forces - a destructive and a constructive then we can say that the final stage of the preponderance of the former force is dictatorship. Hence it is not a form of government but an offshoot of a decadent system.
A dictator doesn’t really have to perform well. His fame depends on public perception. But the fame of a monarch depends less on public perception than on actual performance. But if democracy can collapse into mob rule then monarchy can collapse into tyranny. The main problem with monarchy is that a single person no matter how capable cannot become a legitimizing principle of the society. By legitimizing principle I mean what in a society is counted as a reason that legitimizes one action as opposed to another. Hence when the leader is dead and the charm over - the society collapses (see the last chapter of Sir Jadunath Sarkar’s Shivaji And His Times for a practical demonstration). And so it has happened in the past that instead of the monarch the Church has sought to become the legitimizing principle and a monarch who does not perform the duties that God has inscribed for him as interpreted by the Church should be removed. We know the scale of problems this led to and thus the separation of the Church and the State is an important achievement of the more or less recent times.
As far as Communism is concerned there are two problems - the extent of control or centralization of power it seeks is not possible and it works with what I call a mathematical conception of equality rather than a substantive conception. Briefly the difference between the two is since we all are created unequal - the distribution of goods should depend on the individual concerned and not the abstract individual who is reduced to just a number. I’ll illustrate through two examples - 1. you are jealous of your neighbor who has recently bought a new car and to demonstrate your equal status you buy a car too despite that fact that while he earned more he could afford a car while you couldn’t and you could have spent the same amount of money in a better way, 2. you have 10 apples and 5 people to distribute to. Mathematical equality says that everyone should get 2 but substantive equality says that the one who is more hungry and weaker than the rest should get more. Now the government can never have that kind of information that allows it to judge what is best for an individual - a concrete real individual and not an individual who is simply to the government a number. Hence the centralization of power and the control sought by such a government is an illusion. If I may state this conclusion paradoxically - the more power they gain; the more power they loose. It is like inflating a balloon to a point where it would burst.
Finally coming to democracy - the system is justified on the basis of the ability of people to govern themselves. But Prince Metternich an eminent Austrian Statesman of the 19th Century in the aftermath of the French Revolution made three very pertinent criticisms of Democracy which every supporter of Democracy should take seriously. First, the ideal of freedom on which democracy is based is an illusion. There can be no freedom without authority and if authority goes then so does freedom degenerate into anarchy. Second, we have to take into consideration that human beings are not perfect. As Hume pointed out justice would not be counted as a virtue if you were sure that the person concerned has your well-being in mind and would honour his word. Human beings are motivated by complex motives many of which are irrational and hence we cannot simply assume they are capable of self-governance and the requisite self-restraint needed in a society. Third, this difficulty cannot be assuaged through protests for it would a) condemn you to an empirical policy in which a problem is fixed only when it is brought to notice whereas in a more rationalistic policy one seeks to anticipate and fix the problems before the need to protest arises. b) a protest undermines a democracy because the state is not something over and above the individuals and hence the protests demonstrates the incapability of the state to govern thereby undermining its moral authority. This also leads to erosion of trust and to eventual mob rule since the state is made susceptible to individual whims and fancies. (See Henry Kissinger's A World Order for details on Metternich).
I will now state my reasons for considering democracy despite all its defects to be the best form of government we have and also in the process answer Metternich. First democracy demands participation of the people and since we are all imperfect we require another in order to work for our own good. If we premise democracy on the ability for self-governance and that on human rationality then Metternich’s objections are unanswerable but things change considerably if we understand that the reason democracy should be preferred over other systems is because of human imperfections then it would turn out that democracy is the best form of government over others because it seeks to alleviate human weakness through greater participation of people affording them greater avenues to learn and improve which however is possible if the society is co-operative and willing to tolerate mistakes. This also tells us that current democratic systems are not encouraging participation enough. A citizen should get more training in being a citizen and this would happen if he is allowed to participate in the management of his local affairs like in the area in which he lives and thus local self-governments are a good way to achieve this end.
Second, comes the question of authority. I assumed that a society will be co-operative but that does not undermine my argument for democracy. The reason is we need to separate the state and the individual. For instance on being wronged an individual may harbor feelings of revenge but a state cannot act on that basis. It has to act with the motives of justice and order. Metternich was right that the mandate for social rules and regulations cannot come from the individual will or the whims and fancies of the individual but he was wrong to think it could come from religion. The mandate comes from the values themselves (justice in this instance). Our thinking is limited to the extent that we see the world as filled with heroes and villains - more fundamentally what is good or bad is the system. A system can promote actions that embody certain values that can benefit the society and lead to people acting with greater co-operation.
The question is how to solve the antinomy between the individual and the system. If the system is preferred over the individual then it benefits no one i.e. furthers no good and if the individual is given preference over the system then that would be to the detriment of the individual because without organization individuals cannot further their own interests. We need to strike the right balance between the two so that on the one hand an individual can maintain his individuality without being assimilated into the larger whole and on the other he can be a true unit or part of the whole and thereby contribute both to his own good and to that of the greater whole. This should answer the first and the third objections of Metternich though not completely. At least I hope to show that in a democracy the extent to which authority is undermined can be limited to a great extent and even desirably so.
In every discussion we need to keep in mind the principle and the application of the principle and the questions pertaining to the two should not be mixed up. We cannot make a normative self-assessment if we are unaware of what is ideal or what values we should value. The ideal of a government should be culture and culture is the elevation of an individual in proportion to his intrinsic abilities. This is to say that a poet should be allowed to become a better poet and an engineer a better engineer and a poet should not be made an engineer and an engineer a poet either through coercion or through exposure to uncongenial circumstances in name of freedom. The job of the system is to further the interests of the individual. But the individual independent of the system or as assimilated within a system or reduced to a number - both are abstractions. The concrete individual is both an individual and necessarily related to the system as a part of a whole. Democracy is the best means to achieve this end and hence despite all its defects and limitations it is still better than other systems being more flexible and adaptable than others and hence should be preferred over them.
A dictator doesn’t really have to perform well. His fame depends on public perception. But the fame of a monarch depends less on public perception than on actual performance. But if democracy can collapse into mob rule then monarchy can collapse into tyranny. The main problem with monarchy is that a single person no matter how capable cannot become a legitimizing principle of the society. By legitimizing principle I mean what in a society is counted as a reason that legitimizes one action as opposed to another. Hence when the leader is dead and the charm over - the society collapses (see the last chapter of Sir Jadunath Sarkar’s Shivaji And His Times for a practical demonstration). And so it has happened in the past that instead of the monarch the Church has sought to become the legitimizing principle and a monarch who does not perform the duties that God has inscribed for him as interpreted by the Church should be removed. We know the scale of problems this led to and thus the separation of the Church and the State is an important achievement of the more or less recent times.
As far as Communism is concerned there are two problems - the extent of control or centralization of power it seeks is not possible and it works with what I call a mathematical conception of equality rather than a substantive conception. Briefly the difference between the two is since we all are created unequal - the distribution of goods should depend on the individual concerned and not the abstract individual who is reduced to just a number. I’ll illustrate through two examples - 1. you are jealous of your neighbor who has recently bought a new car and to demonstrate your equal status you buy a car too despite that fact that while he earned more he could afford a car while you couldn’t and you could have spent the same amount of money in a better way, 2. you have 10 apples and 5 people to distribute to. Mathematical equality says that everyone should get 2 but substantive equality says that the one who is more hungry and weaker than the rest should get more. Now the government can never have that kind of information that allows it to judge what is best for an individual - a concrete real individual and not an individual who is simply to the government a number. Hence the centralization of power and the control sought by such a government is an illusion. If I may state this conclusion paradoxically - the more power they gain; the more power they loose. It is like inflating a balloon to a point where it would burst.
Finally coming to democracy - the system is justified on the basis of the ability of people to govern themselves. But Prince Metternich an eminent Austrian Statesman of the 19th Century in the aftermath of the French Revolution made three very pertinent criticisms of Democracy which every supporter of Democracy should take seriously. First, the ideal of freedom on which democracy is based is an illusion. There can be no freedom without authority and if authority goes then so does freedom degenerate into anarchy. Second, we have to take into consideration that human beings are not perfect. As Hume pointed out justice would not be counted as a virtue if you were sure that the person concerned has your well-being in mind and would honour his word. Human beings are motivated by complex motives many of which are irrational and hence we cannot simply assume they are capable of self-governance and the requisite self-restraint needed in a society. Third, this difficulty cannot be assuaged through protests for it would a) condemn you to an empirical policy in which a problem is fixed only when it is brought to notice whereas in a more rationalistic policy one seeks to anticipate and fix the problems before the need to protest arises. b) a protest undermines a democracy because the state is not something over and above the individuals and hence the protests demonstrates the incapability of the state to govern thereby undermining its moral authority. This also leads to erosion of trust and to eventual mob rule since the state is made susceptible to individual whims and fancies. (See Henry Kissinger's A World Order for details on Metternich).
I will now state my reasons for considering democracy despite all its defects to be the best form of government we have and also in the process answer Metternich. First democracy demands participation of the people and since we are all imperfect we require another in order to work for our own good. If we premise democracy on the ability for self-governance and that on human rationality then Metternich’s objections are unanswerable but things change considerably if we understand that the reason democracy should be preferred over other systems is because of human imperfections then it would turn out that democracy is the best form of government over others because it seeks to alleviate human weakness through greater participation of people affording them greater avenues to learn and improve which however is possible if the society is co-operative and willing to tolerate mistakes. This also tells us that current democratic systems are not encouraging participation enough. A citizen should get more training in being a citizen and this would happen if he is allowed to participate in the management of his local affairs like in the area in which he lives and thus local self-governments are a good way to achieve this end.
Second, comes the question of authority. I assumed that a society will be co-operative but that does not undermine my argument for democracy. The reason is we need to separate the state and the individual. For instance on being wronged an individual may harbor feelings of revenge but a state cannot act on that basis. It has to act with the motives of justice and order. Metternich was right that the mandate for social rules and regulations cannot come from the individual will or the whims and fancies of the individual but he was wrong to think it could come from religion. The mandate comes from the values themselves (justice in this instance). Our thinking is limited to the extent that we see the world as filled with heroes and villains - more fundamentally what is good or bad is the system. A system can promote actions that embody certain values that can benefit the society and lead to people acting with greater co-operation.
The question is how to solve the antinomy between the individual and the system. If the system is preferred over the individual then it benefits no one i.e. furthers no good and if the individual is given preference over the system then that would be to the detriment of the individual because without organization individuals cannot further their own interests. We need to strike the right balance between the two so that on the one hand an individual can maintain his individuality without being assimilated into the larger whole and on the other he can be a true unit or part of the whole and thereby contribute both to his own good and to that of the greater whole. This should answer the first and the third objections of Metternich though not completely. At least I hope to show that in a democracy the extent to which authority is undermined can be limited to a great extent and even desirably so.
In every discussion we need to keep in mind the principle and the application of the principle and the questions pertaining to the two should not be mixed up. We cannot make a normative self-assessment if we are unaware of what is ideal or what values we should value. The ideal of a government should be culture and culture is the elevation of an individual in proportion to his intrinsic abilities. This is to say that a poet should be allowed to become a better poet and an engineer a better engineer and a poet should not be made an engineer and an engineer a poet either through coercion or through exposure to uncongenial circumstances in name of freedom. The job of the system is to further the interests of the individual. But the individual independent of the system or as assimilated within a system or reduced to a number - both are abstractions. The concrete individual is both an individual and necessarily related to the system as a part of a whole. Democracy is the best means to achieve this end and hence despite all its defects and limitations it is still better than other systems being more flexible and adaptable than others and hence should be preferred over them.
