Contrasting Philosophies
The three views I’ve chosen to examine for my research essay on:
What is good government?
Are those of:
Karl Marx was born in the small German town of Trier in 1818. Following an uneventful youth, he graduated from university with a degree in philosophy and history. After a brief stint as the editor in an anti-government newspaper decided to move to France when his work was suppressed. Arriving in Paris in 1843 he struck up a friendship with a fellow radical named Freidrich Engles, heir to a prosperous textile business. Friedrich helped maintain Marx for many years while the latter was forming the basis of his theory of Marxism, which became the intellectual foundation of Communism. After being expelled from France in 1848, Marx moved to Brussels where he and Engels published the Communist Manifesto, which was later used as the bible of the communist movement and the inspiration for the Russian revolution of 1917. After being expelled from Brussels the following year (noticing a pattern…) Marx ended up in London in 1849, where he spent the remaining 30 years of his life publishing a collection of brilliant pamphlets outlining his theories on the formation of a Socialist state. In 1867 he published his last full length book, Das Kapital, which is widely regarded as one of the most influential books in the history of the world. After a period of illness, Marx died in London in 1883 and lies buried in Highgate cemetery.
Marx viewed the history of the world as one great cycle, and he saw the industrialist/capitalist society of his day as the last phase of the rotation before the advent of a conflict-free society. His theory was that as further automation of industry occurred, putting more and more people out of work, the wealth in the world would be concentrated into an ever-shrinking minority of aristocrats, who would continue to get richer and richer while the middle and lower classes swelled in numbers but shrank in wealth. He theorised that eventually society would be polarised into two factions, the capitalists and the workers who he referred to as the ‘proletariat’. Eventually the proletariat would rise up and overthrow their imperialist masters, taking the means of production in their own hands. This revolution would be in a sense the end of history, because it was the climax towards which events were moving, and after it there would be no more discernible change. The means of production would be owned by all and operated in the interests of all. Society being class-free would be conflict-free. This would supposedly lead to a ‘workers paradise’ where there would be no need for the government of people, merely the administration of things. Left free of the constraints that formerly bound their world human beings would finally be able to fulfil themselves.
Thomas Hobbes was born prematurely in 1588 when his mother panicked upon hearing news that the Spanish Armada was approaching. This event seemed to be a signal of what was to come in the life one of the Elizabethan eras foremost philosophers. Hobbes lived in a time of change and dissent, during a breakdown of the established social order brought on by the English Civil War, his philosophical theories seem to lament the passing of a stable government, for in his writings he claims that absolutist government is the only way of ensuring order.
After being educated at Oxford, Hobbes became the tutor of the son of the Earl of Devonshire, which gave him access to a first-class library, as well as connections with most of the foremost intellectuals in England at the time. The beginning of the Stuart era was very stimulating for Hobbes, as he travelled widely striking up friendships with most of the famous thinkers of the time, including Sir Francis Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo. After becoming the tutor to the future King Charles II, Hobbes found himself sidelined during the English civil war, which saw the execution of England’s monarch, Charles II and the exile of the rest of the Stuart dynasty. After being forced into political exile in France he wrote his masterpiece Leviathan in which he advocated absolutist government as the only way to ensure order. In keeping with his published views in 1651 he made his peace with Oliver Cromwell and returned to England, where he died in 1679 age 91.
Hobbes basic premises was that it was the fear of death that caused human beings to form societies. He claimed that without society human beings would live in a state of nature, where there were no rules and life was ‘a war of every man against every man,’ with all outcomes being decided with strength and courage, or as he called it ‘force and fraud.’ He claimed that in order alleviate themselves from these circumstances; human beings took to banding together and forming alliances with one another. But he also claimed that as ‘covenants (agreements,) without swords are but words with no strength to secure a man at all,’ human beings would try to break these agreements as soon as they find it in their interests to do so. He theorised that the only way out of this dilemma was to create a situation where it is not in anyone’s interest to break laws.
Hobbes claimed that the only way to do this was to have everyone agree to hand over power to a central authority whose job it was enforce the law and to punish anyone who broke it. For this authority to work it had to posses more power than any individual or group of individuals could attain, power that if no citizens could defy would be basically absolute power. This could be taken a number of ways, in some it bears a comparison to a fascist state where dissent is disallowed, but this is countered by Hobbes’s assertion that absolute power is given to the sovereign not for the gratification of the sovereign but for the good of all.
Hobbes basic political insight was that what populations fear even more than a dictatorship is social chaos, and they will submit to any tyranny in preference to that.
Although this seems to be an excuse for implementing a fascist state, where although safety is assured from outsiders, the freedom citizens is close to nil, we must remember that Hobbes lived during the English Civil war, a time of unparalleled strife, where the authority of the monarch was challenged and a long and bloody war, including the breakdown of society was the result.
Karl Popper was born in Vienna in 1902, to Jewish parents who converted to Christianity when he was three. After a brief stint as radical Marxist during his teens, he rejected Communism as a philosophy when he grew disgusted at the Communist’s willingness to sacrifice ordinary people if it furthered their aims. After a stimulating youth in Austria where he wrote some of his formulative works, he was forced out of his native country by the onset of Nazism. In 1937 Popper accepted a job at a New Zealand university, moving his wife and children overseas for the remainder of the war. When World War II ended in 1945, he travelled to England where he lived a life a complete opposite from his time in Vienna, spending his time in virtual isolation in order to produce some of his masterpiece works which covered a wide range of subjects, including The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and The Open Society and Its Enemies which spelled out his theory of an ‘open’ society, which he maintained was the only pure form of government until his death in 1994 at age 92.
Popper maintained that the most undesirable forms of society are those in which control is centralized and dissent is disallowed, and that he criticism of a government is the chief way in, which its social policies can be improved. Therefore a government/society, which allows critical discussion and opposition, will be more effective at solving the practical problems of its policy-makers than one, which does not. Popper believed in ‘perpetual problem solving,’ the idea whereby as society is in a state of perpetual change, the creation of an ‘ideal’ society that is a society in which everything remains constant as it is perfect, is not an option.
Popper believed that as society does not remain constant it is impossible to totally fix one particular problem that society has, he maintained that we should at all times be seeking to eradicate the worst of our social evils, child labour, poverty, ect. He believed that as perfection and certainty are unattainable in society we should concern ourselves less with building model schools and hospitals than with getting rid of the worst ones and improving the lot of the people in them. This approach of ‘we do not know how to make people happy but we can remove their suffering and hardship’ was the basic tenant of the open society theory.
There is a significant contrast between the works of the three philosophers I chose, notably between the theories of Popper and Marx, which, although they are both leftwing, differ radically in how they deal with scrutiny and criticism by those living under them. Poppers theory of an, ‘open society’ where criticism is encouraged is in direct opposition to Marxism where although everyone is supposedly equal, dissent is disallowed.
Another major contrast is in the theories of Marx and Hobbes. Although both advocate the control of a nation by a single force or party, and do not tolerate dissent from individuals in the respective societies, a major difference is that Hobbes’s theory of a society where no citizen or group of citizens has the right to question it has striking similarities towards Fascism and even Nazism. As Fascism and Nazism both have far rightwing ideologies, they are in direct opposition to the Marxists and as events such as the Spanish civil war have shown, both groups hate each other with a passion.
The two theories which are the furthest apart in they’re claims of what makes a good government are Poppers theory of an open society and Hobbs’s theory of an absolutist one. Both have radically different ideas of the rights ordinary citizens should possess in an ideal society, and who should rule it. Hobbes’s call for an absolutist government where the power of the state is infinite and cannot be challenged by any citizen or group of citizens, can almost be seen as the blueprint for George Orwell’s novel 1984. Although in Hobbes’s ideal society, the ruler or state would be just, it is easy to see how a person or group of people who have complete power over their society, could use it for their own whims. It is my opinion that Hobbes’s view of society is the one out of the three in which power can be abused by the ruling class.
Personally I find that Popper’s concept of an open society to be the most appealing as it allows for the maximum freedom for its citizens and the minimal opportunity for abuse of power by those who run the society.
You’re asking for it now…
Although comparing Marxism with tolerance is a good way to loose the respect of your peers, call me crazy, but given the choice between goose-stepping and making tractor parts, I’d have to say that I’d rather be an oppressed Russian peasant with a terminal vodka addiction than a sexually repressed xenophobe in jackboots.
If none of that made sense then I suggest you stop, because it ain’t getting better
That’s theoretical of course…if I REALLY had to pick between the pair, I’d probably take the third option and just shoot myself, It’d save a lot of time in the long run, because lets face it I really couldn’t take living under a dictatorship, every night after work I’d have to come home and punch the stuffing out of a pillow to avoid shouting from the rooftops that I think goose-stepping is just a ridiculous idea. Eventually I’d snap, go tap Adolf Jr on the shoulder and tell him that the moustache makes him look as if he’s hiding something, and then promptly be hauled out to face a firing squad, all the time screaming that the reason I don’t wear jackboots isn’t because I’m a ‘subversive element of society, who has to be subjugated,’ but because they make my thighs look fat.
Although Hobbs’s ideas on how we should be governed are the most abhorrent of the trio, you have to remember that he was just theorising, in his vision of the perfect state we would all be guided by a ‘benevolent’ dictator instead of a power hungry maniac, of course if Hobbes didn’t realise that in this form of society abuse of power is almost encouraged by its rulers as the state cannot be challenged, then he was, there isn’t a nice way to say this…a naïve little prat.
It is also arguable, the influence Hobbes’s ideas had on later day dictators. I’m pretty sure that Hitler hadn’t stayed up late tucked up under the covers reading Hobbes when he decided to invade Poland. Whereas, Marx can’t claim this ignorance, he knew perfectly well what he was doing, and although his die-hard fans many say that his ideas were misused by the Bolsheviks and the Chinese communists the fact remains that if he did not publish the Communist Manifesto, these radicalists would never have had a premise for overthrowing the governments of their respective countries. Marx didn’t intend for his vision of a communist state to be just theory, throughout his life he was urging rebellion against the elected governments of the world, and although the first communist state was created over 30 years after his death, he still was indirectly responsible for the suffering of the almost one third of the worlds population who were forced to live under communist rule, a name he invented, based on a philosophy he wrote.
I think its safe to say that the majority of people living in a democracy, (which is almost an ‘open’ society,) would prefer to gnaw off one of their limbs rather than live under a regime based on one of Hobbes’s or Marx’s zany ideas, and just for the record so would I.
Its midnight again…I’m going to stop writing now.
Loki