The Views of Spinoza, Locke, and Adam Smith :-
The belief that the state is in some way a result of a social contract among men is also seen in the teachings of SPINOZA. In the natural state, he held, might makes right, and man has the right to do anything which he is able to do. He may destroy others to gain his ends, cheat, lie, or engage in any activity which will help him. But, in such a state, conflict will inevitably arise and many will be destroyed.
Part – I, can be read from here – Click Here
Part – II, can be read from here – Click Here
Part – III, can be read from here – Click Here
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Note :- Not all names of philosophers to be remembered or used. The idea is to show the under current of thought and processes that shaped the idea of good and evil. So, a word of caution, don’t be over-whelmed by the reference to various philosophers.
Consequently, men give up many natural rights so that there may be a degree of peace in which they can realize other desires. The state is the result By general agreement, men in a state agree to limit their natural rights for good of all. Therefore, only in a state can justice and injustice have a meaning. According to natural rights anything may be Just. However, in a state, disobedience to laws set up by virtue of the social contract is unjust. The just is that which makes social life possible.
JOHN LOCKE was in complete disagreement with Hobbes and others who believed that the natural state of man was one of war and self-seeking. Further, he was opposed to the doctrine that the king rules by divine right and that he has absolute power to govern men as he wills. Locke held that the original and natural state of all men is one of perfect freedom and equality. Since all men are free and equal, no one has the right to take away another’s life, liberty, or possessions. Further, the original nature of man is that of peace, good will, and mutual assistance. Thus, men naturally move toward social living. In a society, men set up law, an impartial judge, and one with executive power in order to attend to matters of common interest This structure is established by a social contract agreed upon by the members of the group.
After the society has been established, each member is under obligation to submit to the authority of the majority. This is necessary for efficient living together, since unanimous consent is next to impossible in a large group. The main purpose of law, Locke taught, is to preserve the social group and thus it must be limited to the public good of society. Beyond this, men are to be left free.
Locke said that there are certain areas into which law cannot come. He specifically excluded the right to enslave, to destroy, or to impoverish men. Locke did not think it good that those who made the laws should also have the right to execute them. Consequently, he would divide the powers of government into the legislative and the executive and would keep these two branches separate for the public good. The people have the power to remove the legislators whenever they wish since power rests ultimately in the people. They also have the right to punish their legislators or their executive whenever they are convinced that either is acting in opposition to the public good.
It is obvious that Hobbes and Locke were exponents of two very different doctrines. While Hobbes was interested in presenting a philosophical justification for absolute monarchy and the divine right of the ruler to rule without being accountable to the people, Locke was interested in justifying the doctrine of political freedom.
Locke sought to prove that the power of the state always rests in the people and that their rulers are merely their servants subject to their will. This power can never be taken from the people nor can they give it up. Hobbes held that once the people gave power to the ruler, they were unable to get it back regardless of what the ruler did. These were two points of view which appeared often in the political writings of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century. They were in constant conflict, and the conflict has not died down even today.
This theory as developed by Locke, a theory of man’s freedom and of the state as an institution charged with keeping order among men, but one very limited, led to the famous doctrine of laissez faire. This is the doctrine that the state should not interfere any more than is absolutely necessary with the affairs of its members, that the individual has a natural right to exercise his activity in the economic sphere with the least possible interference from society.
ADAM SMITH wrote his famous Wealth of Nations to show that the best state exists only when men are permitted to engage in unrestricted competition, freedom of exchange, and enlightened self-interest. In this work the pendulum of philosophic thought was swinging away from the theory that the state should regulate every activity of men, a theory held by Plato and many other thinkers, to the opposite extreme that the state should observe a strict policy of hands off and permit men to exercise their natural rights in all directions save in those where the safety of the group is threatened.
In Adam Smith, and other philosophical writers who followed Locke, we see the attempt to carry Locke’s theory of freedom and natural rights into various fields of human activity and to free men in each of these fields from the restraints of government which had become so common since the beginning of written history at least. In most instances it was felt that the best results would be obtained if each individual was left as free as possible in all his activities. Government was to keep hands off except in those necessary affairs where the safety of the state was in danger.
The position of Voltaire and of Rousseu :-
The brilliant VOLTAIRE never tired of condemning the traditional authorities and championing human freedom. Yet, he did not believe that the lower classes had the capacity for self-government. He believed that the “ignorant rabble” was a danger whenever restraint was removed. Thus, freedom was to be the privilege only of the enlightened, the intelligent.
A powerful opponent of this position was JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU. He believed in all men and fought for their freedom. Indeed, he would rule out representative government and place in its stead direct government by all the people. The Swiss republic was his model, a small, closely knit group of people considering every issue as a group and determining their destiny by popular vote.
Indeed, ROUSSEAU took the Lockian idea of democracy seriously” and argued that since all men were created free and equal they should not be robbed or ruled by a privileged class. To attain this freedom, Rousseau would cast away all the trappings of modern society and return to nature.
Natural society, he believed, is based on a “social contract” by which the freedom of the individual is surrendered to self-imposed laws which are the result of the general will. Sovereignty lies, he argued, with the people at all times and cannot be taken from them. Government merely carries out the will of the people, and the people have the right at any time to recall their government and establish another.
Locke, Rousseau, Fichte, Schelling, and many other thinkers, although differing in some details, held the general position that man’s true self could be realized only in the right kind of a social group. They saw that human association is not a detriment but is rather a means to the best kind of life. When a man lives among his fellows he develops characteristics which are most worth while. Therefore, they sought the right land of social group, and reached the conclusion that a group in which the greatest amount of freedom was possible would meet the requirements of this society. Schelling argued that an isolated ego could have no consciousness of freedom. We only know freedom when we live with others and see it in relation to possible restraint.
The State According to Hegel, Marx, and Lassalle:-
HEGEL taught that universal reason reaches its height in a society of free individuals, each subordinating its individual reason to the universal reason. The individual, if living by himself and exercising his own caprice, is not free. Only as he blends himself with the group does he attain to true freedom.
History, he held, has been striving throughout time toward the realization of a perfect state, a state in which each member so blends himself with the whole that the will of the whole is his will. For Hegel, there is a universal reason to be discovered throughout history. It is seen working itself out in one society and then shifting to another. Thus, when one society destroys or conquers another, the universal reason shifts to another group and continues to work itself out. The conqueror becomes the agent of this universal reason. War, then, is justified in Hegel’s mind because it is the means by which progress is made.
The Hegelian system was adopted by the Prussian state and many Prussian thinkers held that the Prussian state was destined to carry forward the realization of universal reason through its eventual conquest of the world.
KARL MARX and FERDINAND LASSALLE, along with other early socialists (founders of modern socialism), derived certain of their views from Hegel, especially his idea that change is but the road to better things. They held that one type of society, which appeared good at one time, would inevitably give way to another which would be seen to be better, a synthesis of opposites. Thus, for example, a society based on private property would give way to one in which socialism was supreme. They saw in Hegel a philosophical justification for the new society which they desired.
De Maistre, Saint-Simon, and Comte:-
The result of the Lockian tradition of freedom and popular sovereignty in France was the revolution and the accompanying social and political upheaval This inevitably gave impetus to a great deal of conservative reaction with its emphasis upon the need of authority. JOSEPH DE MAISTRE, for example, held that man had shown his inability to govern himself and argued that a stable society was possible only on the basis of tradition and strong authority.
However, the desire for liberty, equality, and fraternity” continued to burn brightly and the dream of reforming society haunted thinkers. They recognized that merely to proclaim freedom and equality was not enough, but that actual reforms of society were necessary.
CLAUDE HENRI DE ROUVROY, COMTE DE SAINT-SIMON believed that the goal of freedom and equality could be reached if men could build a science of society based upon the laws of group living. Such a scientific society would elevate the poor and the lowly with its doctrine of love for the oppressed.
In such a society there would be equal distribution of property, power, culture, and happiness. But Saint-Simon was not the thinker to develop this science of society. He could see the need for it and could preach this need, but it was left for a man of the intellectual strength of AUGUSTS COMTE to actually attempt the logical construction of such a positive philosophy.
He saw that social reform was impossible without a knowledge of the laws of society, the development of a social science equal in logical accuracy to the other sciences of his time. Sociology, the science of society, Comte held to be the most complex of the sciences, including both an understanding of society as it now is and also a study and understanding of the progress of society.
Comte held that society begins as a way to satisfy man’s social impulse which is fundamental to him. As man progresses, his social life passes through the three stages: militarism, in which discipline and force are supreme; revolution; and the positive stage, in which the emphasis is upon social rather than political problems. It is this positive stage in which the expert guides scientific research and controls all phases of living. This expert is not to be dependent upon the ignorant; therefore popular government is not desirable. The ideal of social living, the positive state, is for Comte one which has passed beyond the stage of chaos represented by the revolutions which followed the Lockian influence. Here the expert has emerged and is able through the strength of his ability to direct society toward more and more perfect living. He sees the needed reforms of society and is able to effect them. The masses of men accept his guidance because he is an expert.
To be continued..
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The United Nations has shaped so much of global co-operation and regulation that we wouldn’t recognise our world today without the UN’s pervasive role in it. So many small details of our lives – such as postage and copyright laws – are subject to international co-operation nurtured by the UN.
In its 75th year, however, the UN is in a difficult moment as the world faces climate crisis, a global pandemic, great power competition, trade wars, economic depression and a wider breakdown in international co-operation.
Still, the UN has faced tough times before – over many decades during the Cold War, the Security Council was crippled by deep tensions between the US and the Soviet Union. The UN is not as sidelined or divided today as it was then. However, as the relationship between China and the US sours, the achievements of global co-operation are being eroded.
The way in which people speak about the UN often implies a level of coherence and bureaucratic independence that the UN rarely possesses. A failure of the UN is normally better understood as a failure of international co-operation.
We see this recently in the UN’s inability to deal with crises from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, to civil conflict in Syria, and the failure of the Security Council to adopt a COVID-19 resolution calling for ceasefires in conflict zones and a co-operative international response to the pandemic.
The UN administration is not primarily to blame for these failures; rather, the problem is the great powers – in the case of COVID-19, China and the US – refusing to co-operate.
Where states fail to agree, the UN is powerless to act.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the official formation of the UN, when 50 founding nations signed the UN Charter on June 26, 1945, we look at some of its key triumphs and resounding failures.
Five successes
1. Peacekeeping
The United Nations was created with the goal of being a collective security organisation. The UN Charter establishes that the use of force is only lawful either in self-defence or if authorised by the UN Security Council. The Security Council’s five permanent members, being China, US, UK, Russia and France, can veto any such resolution.
The UN’s consistent role in seeking to manage conflict is one of its greatest successes.
A key component of this role is peacekeeping. The UN under its second secretary-general, the Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjöld – who was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace prize after he died in a suspicious plane crash – created the concept of peacekeeping. Hammarskjöld was responding to the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the US opposed the invasion of Egypt by its allies Israel, France and the UK.
UN peacekeeping missions involve the use of impartial and armed UN forces, drawn from member states, to stabilise fragile situations. “The essence of peacekeeping is the use of soldiers as a catalyst for peace rather than as the instruments of war,” said then UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, when the forces won the 1988 Nobel Peace Prize following missions in conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Central America and Europe.
However, peacekeeping also counts among the UN’s major failures.
2. Law of the Sea
Negotiated between 1973 and 1982, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) set up the current international law of the seas. It defines states’ rights and creates concepts such as exclusive economic zones, as well as procedures for the settling of disputes, new arrangements for governing deep sea bed mining, and importantly, new provisions for the protection of marine resources and ocean conservation.
Mostly, countries have abided by the convention. There are various disputes that China has over the East and South China Seas which present a conflict between power and law, in that although UNCLOS creates mechanisms for resolving disputes, a powerful state isn’t necessarily going to submit to those mechanisms.
Secondly, on the conservation front, although UNCLOS is a huge step forward, it has failed to adequately protect oceans that are outside any state’s control. Ocean ecosystems have been dramatically transformed through overfishing. This is an ecological catastrophe that UNCLOS has slowed, but failed to address comprehensively.
3. Decolonisation
The idea of racial equality and of a people’s right to self-determination was discussed in the wake of World War I and rejected. After World War II, however, those principles were endorsed within the UN system, and the Trusteeship Council, which monitored the process of decolonisation, was one of the initial bodies of the UN.
Although many national independence movements only won liberation through bloody conflicts, the UN has overseen a process of decolonisation that has transformed international politics. In 1945, around one third of the world’s population lived under colonial rule. Today, there are less than 2 million people living in colonies.
When it comes to the world’s First Nations, however, the UN generally has done little to address their concerns, aside from the non-binding UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007.
4. Human rights
The Human Rights Declaration of 1948 for the first time set out fundamental human rights to be universally protected, recognising that the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
Since 1948, 10 human rights treaties have been adopted – including conventions on the rights of children and migrant workers, and against torture and discrimination based on gender and race – each monitored by its own committee of independent experts.
The language of human rights has created a new framework for thinking about the relationship between the individual, the state and the international system. Although some people would prefer that political movements focus on ‘liberation’ rather than ‘rights’, the idea of human rights has made the individual person a focus of national and international attention.
5. Free trade
Depending on your politics, you might view the World Trade Organisation as a huge success, or a huge failure.
The WTO creates a near-binding system of international trade law with a clear and efficient dispute resolution process.
The majority Australian consensus is that the WTO is a success because it has been good for Australian famers especially, through its winding back of subsidies and tariffs.
However, the WTO enabled an era of globalisation which is now politically controversial.
Recently, the US has sought to disrupt the system. In addition to the trade war with China, the Trump Administration has also refused to appoint tribunal members to the WTO’s Appellate Body, so it has crippled the dispute resolution process. Of course, the Trump Administration is not the first to take issue with China’s trade strategies, which include subsidises for ‘State Owned Enterprises’ and demands that foreign firms transfer intellectual property in exchange for market access.
The existence of the UN has created a forum where nations can discuss new problems, and climate change is one of them. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up in 1988 to assess climate science and provide policymakers with assessments and options. In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change created a permanent forum for negotiations.
However, despite an international scientific body in the IPCC, and 165 signatory nations to the climate treaty, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase.
Under the Paris Agreement, even if every country meets its greenhouse gas emission targets we are still on track for ‘dangerous warming’. Yet, no major country is even on track to meet its targets; while emissions will probably decline this year as a result of COVID-19, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will still increase.
This illustrates a core conundrum of the UN in that it opens the possibility of global cooperation, but is unable to constrain states from pursuing their narrowly conceived self-interests. Deep co-operation remains challenging.
Five failures of the UN
1. Peacekeeping
During the Bosnian War, Dutch peacekeeping forces stationed in the town of Srebrenica, declared a ‘safe area’ by the UN in 1993, failed in 1995 to stop the massacre of more than 8000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. This is one of the most widely discussed examples of the failures of international peacekeeping operations.
On the massacre’s 10th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote that the UN had “made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality”, contributing to a mass murder that would “haunt our history forever”.
If you look at some of the other infamous failures of peacekeeping missions – in places such as Rwanda, Somalia and Angola – it is the limited powers given to peacekeeping operations that have resulted in those failures.
2. The invasion of Iraq
The invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, which was unlawful and without Security Council authorisation, reflects the fact that the UN is has very limited capacity to constrain the actions of great powers.
The Security Council designers created the veto power so that any of the five permanent members could reject a Council resolution, so in that way it is programmed to fail when a great power really wants to do something that the international community generally condemns.
In the case of the Iraq invasion, the US didn’t veto a resolution, but rather sought authorisation that it did not get. The UN, if you go by the idea of collective security, should have responded by defending Iraq against this unlawful use of force.
The invasion proved a humanitarian disaster with the loss of more than 400,000 lives, and many believe that it led to the emergence of the terrorist Islamic State.
3. Refugee crises
The UN brokered the 1951 Refugee Convention to address the plight of people displaced in Europe due to World War II; years later, the 1967 Protocol removed time and geographical restrictions so that the Convention can now apply universally (although many countries in Asia have refused to sign it, owing in part to its Eurocentric origins).
Despite these treaties, and the work of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there is somewhere between 30 and 40 million refugees, many of them, such as many Palestinians, living for decades outside their homelands. This is in addition to more than 40 million people displaced within their own countries.
While for a long time refugee numbers were reducing, in recent years, particularly driven by the Syrian conflict, there have been increases in the number of people being displaced.
During the COVID-19 crisis, boatloads of Rohingya refugees were turned away by port after port. This tragedy has echoes of pre-World War II when ships of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were refused entry by multiple countries.
And as a catastrophe of a different kind looms, there is no international framework in place for responding to people who will be displaced by rising seas and other effects of climate change.
4. Conflicts without end
Across the world, there is a shopping list of unresolved civil conflicts and disputed territories.
Palestine and Kashmir are two of the longest-running failures of the UN to resolve disputed lands. More recent, ongoing conflicts include the civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
The common denominator of unresolved conflicts is either division among the great powers, or a lack of international interest due to the geopolitical stakes not being sufficiently high. For instance, the inaction during the Rwandan civil war in the 1990s was not due to a division among great powers, but rather a lack of political will to engage.
In Syria, by contrast, Russia and the US have opposing interests and back opposing sides: Russia backs the government of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whereas the US does not.
5. Acting like it’s 1945
The UN is increasingly out of step with the reality of geopolitics today.
The permanent members of the Security Council reflect the division of power internationally at the end of World War II. The continuing exclusion of Germany, Japan, and rising powers such as India and Indonesia, reflects the failure to reflect the changing balance of power.
Also, bodies such as the IMF and the World Bank, which are part of the UN system, continue to be dominated by the West. In response, China has created potential rival institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Western domination of UN institutions undermines their credibility. However, a more fundamental problem is that institutions designed in 1945 are a poor fit with the systemic global challenges – of which climate change is foremost – that we face today.