A discussion regarding Save Democracy Front’s manifesto #2

I suggested to Surajit that we consider these policy issues in public, so we can both share our views a little bit more widely, and others can chip in through comments.

1. THEORY OF STATE

Surajit: "Where individual liberty is supreme, there is no need for a nation-state; early human beings were doing fine without the earth's total landmass being divided into countries when they were roaming around like nomads as freely as possible."

Sanjeev: This is an assumption from Rousseau. My assumption is from Hobbes. More importantly, it is based on actual scientific studies. There is no doubt that primitive man's life was brutish and short. I now cite the relevant portion from The Discovery of Freedom (manuscript). I'll continue this discussion in the next blog post.

6.1 Deductions from human nature

Our understanding of human nature doesn’t necessarily lead to a single perspective on the sate of nature. There are two alternative possibilities – competition and collaboration.

Type A: Competitive

            If our self-seeking attributes (cunning, egoistical, aggressive, covetous, brutal) come to the fore, then the state of nature will be competitive.[1] Xenophobia (tribalism) and ethnocentricity are often part of this mix. Belligerence leads to a chronic struggle or power. Things are seen as a zero sum game. Family, power, sexual, intra- and inter-group rivalries are rife. As conflict and war revisits its history, a cycle of revenge sets in, leading to ceaseless disruption. Unrestrained egotism and strategic competition tends to turn towards aggression, with a desire to forcibly acquire the wealth produced by others. Plundering is, historically, often a celebrated way to social success.

            This may be a daunting and unpleasant view of the pristine human condition, but it does accurately reflect most human history. As a result of these human proclivities, the demand for a strong ruler necessarily builds up: someone who can, with the exercise of power, reduce conflict. Civilisation emerged in history only after such strong rulers enforced justice – no matter how rudimentary and whimsical.

            Ancient Hindus understood the state of nature quite well. In the Mahabharata , (a scripture created between 3000-300 BC), Bhishma says: ‘A kingdom in which anarchy prevails becomes weak and is soon afflicted by robbers.’ He adds: ‘It hath been heard by us that men, in days of old, in consequence of anarchy, met with destruction, devouring one another like stronger fishes devouring the weaker ones in the water.’

            Niccoló Machiavelli (1469-1527) was an early proponent of such a view in the West. In his 1517 book, The Discourses, he wrote:

For whenever men are not obliged to fight from necessity, they fight from ambition; which is so powerful in human breasts, that it never leaves them no matter to what rank they rise. The reason is that nature has so created men that they are able to desire everything but are not able to attain everything: so that the desire being always greater than the acquisition, there results discontent with the possession and little satisfaction to themselves from it.[2]

            Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) extended this insight further. Recognised by some[3] as the founder (or co-founder, with Locke) of the underlying philosophies of classical liberalism, Hobbes based his model of society on the scientific analysis of human nature. In doing so, he established politics as a science. I cite from John Danford:

Hobbes’s lifelong ambition was to establish the first genuine political science, which by “a clear and exact method” would establish the basis for any legitimate civil, order. He studied very carefully the emerging natural sci­ence of Galileo and Descartes, great continental philoso­pher-scientists, and applied the method of science to the study of man. He believed that if he could achieve a truly scientific understanding or human nature it would be possible to show how natural needs lead men to constitute political society in order to satisfy their prepolitical, natu­ral needs—namely self-preservation, security, and the means for “commodious living.” It is important to grasp that Hobbes intended his science to apply to all human beings, to men and women in any cultural or historical setting. To do this he believed that science must strip away all merely cultural or historical accretions and study human beings as they exist before particular customs or societies distort or influence human behavior.

Hobbes believed political science could not begin from the answers different cultures have given to the question… All Hobbes’s predecessors, he wrote, failed to use the scientific method. … ‘To reduce this doctrine to the rules and infallibility of reason,’ he said of political science, ‘there is no way, but first to put such principles down for a foundation, as pas­sion not mistrusting, may not seek to displace’. [4]

In this forthright and pitiless analysis, he noted the chronic competition for power (to him ‘power’ included wealth and social status). Thus, from a ‘perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death’[5], there arises perpetual war ‘where every man is enemy to every man’[6]. Man sleeps like a dog, with ears alert. This leads people to seek security with ‘their own strength, and their own invention’.[7]

Such war – aggressive competition – has been with us throughout history. In ancient India it was customary that ‘[a]s soon as a king has established himself on the throne he should, as a matter of course, attack his neighbours’[8]. In similar vein, Kautilya wrote that ‘[t]he king who is weaker than “the other” should keep the peace; he who is stronger should make war.’[9]

            Along with Hobbes, John Locke (1632-1704) is the co-founder of liberalism. Fearing persecution, he published his most important work – Two Treatises of Government (1689) –  anonymously. He had earlier fled to Holland for five years, returning only after the 1688 Glorious Revolution – in motivating which his ideas played no mean part. Locke at first appears to criticise Hobbes by arguing that the state of nature is not a State of War but is characterised, instead, by ‘peace, good will, mutual assistance and preservation’[10]. It would be unnecessary to seek the security of a sovereign under such conditions. But Locke soon slips into Hobbesean arguments, noting that the state of nature is in fact ‘a condition, which, however free, is full of fears and continual dangers’.[11] These dangers are both external (from chronic exposure ‘to the Invasion of others’[12]) and internal (from the corruption and ‘vitiousness of degenerate men’[13]).

Type B: Cooperative

            Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx and Robert Nozick (a group you’d not always associate with each other), among others, viewed humanity more charitably, suggesting that we are predominantly cooperative; and that therefore peace comes naturally to mankind. People can apparently work cooperatively without control or coordination. Presumably they are like bees and will naturally cooperate to hunt, grow food, educate their children, and to partake in cultural festivity. Bad behaviour is apparently rare and sporadic, and common methods of dispensing justice are feasible. The benefits of community including some division of labour [although how a cooperative society can organise this is not made clear], friendships, and a shared religious and cultural life – are prsumably widely shared.

Although voluntary cooperation sounds attractive and plausible, it is not sustainable without the basic freedom to maximise our competitive, innovative nature. The competitive state of nature, based on theory X, is superior in its explanatory power and more likely to be reflective of the truth. If the state focuses on preventing the negative outcomes of our competitive human nature, the cooperative society is likely to more spontaneously emerge (cf. Hayek – for the concept of spontaneous order).  

6.2 Evidence from primitive tribes and the breakdown of political order

Evidence from the breakdown of order leads us to support the competitive, not cooperative theory. In March 2003, Iraq degenerated into mass looting, theft, even murder, minutes after the fall of Saddam Hussain. Criminals come out from the woodwork the moment political order broke down. That happens when the cost of crime (namely, punishment) drops significantly in the disordered state. ‘Rational’ criminals therefore increase their demand for crime, by pulling out their guns, unhindered by the state. Mayhem begins. Indeed, looting by thugs from shops and homes whose owners have temporarily left in the aftermath of natural disasters, occurs even in otherwise ‘civilised’ societies.

To this, one can add the constant struggle in developing societies to overcome corruption and crime. And the constant pressures for redistribution of wealth in the West, well beyond the social insurance that is sufficient to provide for a frugal social minimum.

Evidence from extant tribes rudely confirms the competitive theory. Thus, before some control could be exercised by the state over the violent behaviour of India’s North Eastern (NE) tribes, these tribes lived peacefully within their group but engaged in frequent internecine warfare. The eminent scholar of NE tribes, Verrier Elwin wrote about his ‘age-old heritage of war’ in the North East Frontier Agency, which:

meant that many villages have been established for security reasons on the tops of hills and widely separated from each other. … The heritage of war has given the tribesmen spears, swords, the ubiquitous and invaluable dao, the cross-bow and the ordinary bow, and has made them good marksmen and expert hunters. …In certain tribes it has stimulated the corporate men’s dormitories, which were originally guard-houses for warriors.[14]

                Anthropoligists [cite from Science of Liberty] have largely confirmed this theory, as well. Hobbes was right. The state of nature is violent and brutish not peaceful or idyllic.