The State

The State. It is foundational in every respect to politics. Connecting individual members to one another through a shared institutional framework, it is a necessary requirement to other social structures, enforcement, stability, inequality and wealth. How to understand, justify and guide this beast, or ‘Leviathan’ is a question that has perplexed anyone with even the most nominal interest in political philosophy for a very long time. Today, I give my take.

I am going to set things out here first in order to give clarity and structure to my overall argument.

First I am going to argue that the state is part of the ‘natural’ condition of mankind. I will explain exactly what this means, and why I think it to be the case in the first section entitled – ‘natural law’.

Second, I want to explain what the job of the state is. In my view, this is left as the idea of the state existing to promote the social good. What the social good is depends on circumstances – and will vary in accordance to specific conditions.

Natural Law

In my view the state does not need to be justified in itself for two reasons. The first is that it will naturally arise in conditions where the state is not present. The second is that the state provides us with so much, that to live without it is to strip humans of the capability to exercise much of what makes them human. In my view this makes the state ‘natural’. It will naturally arise when humans exist, and without the state humanity loses its ability to do so much of what makes human life valuable.

How to prove this? Let’s start with the first of these suppositions – that humans naturally form states, which makes attempting to get rid of them a hopeless task.

I think we are a bit like ants. We are a bit like ants because like ants, humans naturally act in a predictable way. Similar to ants, we form predictable forms of association with one another. Some of these forms of association are naturally deferential – because when humans start to form social, political and social structures they need both differentiation and hierarchy. They need differentiation because specialised jobs are needed to create things bigger than what a singular individual can make. We need hierarchy for various reasons. There needs to be some ability to have goods which we all assign shared value to – i.e. money. This in turn means someone can collect many of these goods and become rich. Another reason for hierarchy is the need for what I define as ‘elites’. These are those responsible for creating both societal purpose and order. These qualities provide direction and a basic level of stability to societies. These elites tend to evolve out of a sudden and simultaneous need for these things. Therefore, an ‘elite’ naturally exists in any human society where other institutions exist. This is why, post-Revolution, the USSR could not eliminate inequality. Essentially, the USSR tried to shout at ants to stop forming colonies. Eliminating inequality doesn’t work as it naturally arises. Instead of eliminating inequality, those closest to power transmorphed into those roles which the USSR swore to stand against – and so those close to the party and bureaucracy became the new ‘elite’. The USSR perhaps provides a fantastic historical proof of this point in general. In so many instances, patterns of behaviour which the USSR had associated with capitalism, and so had attempted to eliminate were frustratingly persistent.

The collection of all these predictable, natural forms of behaviour – those relating to hierarchy and differentiation – create a ‘state’. A state is a complex web of relationships between different members of society – providing the society with direction and purpose. To attempt to live without it is impossible, because the state is inevitable.  

Why the State makes us Human

The second supposition is that without the state human life loses part of what makes it human. Even if we could make individuals exist in a stateless society, they wouldn’t really be human in the way in which we conceive of ‘human’.

This point rests on the assumption that the state provides us with stability. The state provides us with stability because it is what Hobbes calls ‘the Leviathan’. To summarise his argument – without the state, life has some unenviable characteristics. In Hobbes’ state of nature, humans compete with each other – because humans naturally want things. As there are no rules in the ‘state of nature’, it is frequently the case that in competition with other individuals, they put themselves at risk of death. For Hobbes, death is the worst thing that could happen to any rational being. Death stops men from getting what they want, so any rational one would try to avoid it. It is this that justifies the state. We agree to remove the fear of death by allowing the state ultimate undivided authority to decide a set of rules. The state provides a shared framework within which we are able to compete without putting each other at risk of death.

In my view, this analysis is half true, half false. I am not convinced – as you may already have gauged from my commentary on the inevitability of the state – that without the state we live in the worst form of anarchy, and that we somehow consent to the state to get us out of it. However, I think where this argument is more right is the centrality of stability to human life. In my view, the state provides this stability in exactly the way Hobbes says it does – however, Hobbes misunderstands why this stability is so important. In my view, this stability provides us the ability to create meaningful political, social and economic structures which allow us to have more than just a brief existence with limited meaning. In essence, humans are unable to access all that which a sophisticated, complex society provides them – and that is a hell of a lot. The stability and institutions of the state with all their inevitable hierarchy, economic differentiation and sophistication are the basis on which these structures rest. In the absence of the state, we are like mayflies – here to live, but only in a nominal sense.

An alternative definition of the state tends to try and justify it rationally. It often asks a question that, given our status first an foremost as individuals, why would we willingly submit ourselves to a state. This justification often tries to use reason or justify the existence of the state through some grand principle like ‘freedom’. It tends to be that these days, soft socialist or neoliberals think like this – pointing out that we should attempt to promote something abstract to fulfil some innate human need.

I find this unconvincing. In fact, it represents a clear example the closed-mindedness of the supposedly open-minded soft socialists and neoliberals. There is an assumption that the first rights we are to ever possess are individual rights – and that this is a basic, unquestionable fact. This is an extraordinarily Western, quasi-Christian way of seeing the world. The idea that we exist as individuals first and foremost, and not members of society makes a hell of a lot of assumptions – ones that are unprovable. Why would be individuals first and foremost? In a secular world where most people believe there is no God, it seems that there could be no justification for this sort of worldview. No one grants us rights as individual humans – no one could. Trying to discuss whether individual rights exist, whether they exist before the rights of society and whether they are ultimately arbitrary expressions of a willingness to believe in rights is a pointless exercise. In the absence of God, morals are slipped into discussion by sleight of hand – referencing the fact that we must have some quality like individual human worth, which may sound nice, but is ultimately also a meaningless expression of will. Instead of trying to fashion some justification out of nothingness in a way that not everyone accepts, it makes more sense to reference the existing structures of society and what they naturally tend towards.

This is not to say I do not believe we don’t have ‘individual rights’ or ‘group rights’, I just think it is unconvincing to make both or either the basic fact of politics. Rights only make sense in the presence of society and the state – and are not universally applicable things that relate to some innate truth.

We need to recognise that generally, things as they are should be the basis for any sort of understanding of humanity. The state, society and individuals all exist naturally together in some sort of dynamic synthesis – and it is the combination of the three that make a meaningful human existence, the necessary condition for anything. The state and society, of course, are exactly what allows human life to be elevated to a level above that of animals. The ability to create sustainable institutions, structures and physical things that other members of human civilisation are able to reflect upon provides us with the ability to be more than creatures whose existence can be summed up as relating solely to being born, surviving, reproducing and then dying. The state exists in the natural condition of humanity – because without the state we are mayflies, living to live and nothing more, unable to access core aspects of a meaningful human life, because we must focus on mere survival. Humanity involves the state, or else humans are only nominally human, with nothing to separate us from animals or robots.

I would recommend you stop and reflect here, because I have said a lot – and this point is a natural break. This is the end of my passage on why I think the state should be justified. This is part one. Next is part two, dealing with what the state should do?

What is the State For?

A lot in the preceding passage is contentious– I know. You may reasonably disagree with me, you could be right, I could be wrong. The point is not that I am wrong or right, but that I think this is a reasonable stance for an individual to take in regard to the conception of the state. However, it is also not a full definition. It is a partial one that does not deal with the nitty gritty of what the state does on a day-to-day basis. One of the nice things about justifying a state rationally as Hobbes, soft socialists or neoliberals like to do is that it gives it a clear purpose. What I have done – justify the state as an entity but make it purposeless – then seems to pose a problem. This is: ‘What is the State for?’

It’s a good question. In my view, the most right thing to establish right away is a basic and uncontroversial basis for an understanding of what the state is for. I think that the state can be reasonably be conceived of as existing to make people’s lives better.

In my view, however, it is best to leave it at that and that only. The state exists as a means to make people’s live better – but I don’t think there are any universally applicable answers to exactly what ‘making people’s lives better’ actually means. In fact, I think there can only be ‘guidelines’ to what ‘making people’s lives better’ actually means – and no set rules about what to do or how to act. It is up to the political leader to decide what is best given the cultural, economic, political and social conditions.

I’m going to set out my reasons why I think this is the case in the following way. First I am going to say why I don’t think that we can justify the state through abstract principle. Secondly, I want to say what I think the broad guidelines I have hinted at actually are.

Diatribe against the Abstract

I don’t think we can justify the state as existing in order to further the achievement of specific abstract principles. I don’t think we can do this for a variety of reasons. However, by far the most significant reason is that I think it assumes far too much about human nature.

Humans need many things. Humans are complex creatures which we don’t fully understand. They need basic requirements essential for survival. In order to gain a life that seems satisfying and potentially meaningful they also need other things. Humans potentially need social respect, social, economic, religious and cultural structures around which they can attribute importance to, affection, friendship and a purpose. This is not an extensive list – and that is sort of the point. Human needs are complex. We are never completely satisfied. In fact, it tends to be that perceived needs vary significantly in differing social, economic and cultural contexts. What’s more, discerning that we miss something essential to our wellbeing is far removed – and much simpler - from discerning a roadmap to human happiness. In many respects, human needs are often a game of finding the middle road between conceivable extremes. Liberty without knowing how to use that liberty is completely worthless – so it is obvious that we need some socially useful combination of both. Similarly, equality without the recognition of the utility of some inequality is likely to devolve into a rotten political and economic system that either is inefficient or in denial.

Through historical example, and historical example only, it seems that it is very often the case that we take principles that depend are often contingent to the conditions we live under and universalise them. For example, the calls for a small state in the wake of Thatcher and Raegan only made sense in the historical moment of the 1980s – when large, inefficient states propped up anaemic struggling wrecks of economies. Using the principles which justified Thatcherism and making them universal to the way in which we think about society made economic neoliberalism cause major social and economic damage. Following the 1990s, there were several significant downsides of universalising the principle and attempting to turn it into an ideology. Among other things, deregulation was at least part responsible for the 2008 financial crisis and is probably – certainly partly - responsible for the stagnation of real wages in the west over the last 20 years.

Of course, I could be wrong – because ultimately my evidence is historical in character, and therefore based in large part around instinct and specific examples. However, I do think there is a tendency for defining ideology in the way I described. We tend to give too much significance to events today, thinking that the world is one defined by our – ultimately historically contingent – priorities.

The Guidelines

Nevertheless, I have promised you some direction in understanding exactly how we should interpret the role of the state in society given the fact it cannot actually be subsumed to an abstract principle. Any set of guidelines need to be predicated on the idea – to quote Socrates – that the best solution comes in the knowledge that ‘we know nothing’. The strength of these guidelines is ultimately predicated on the recognition of the limitations of any rules for governing what the state can and cannot do.

I think that there are three broad guidelines. The first is intellectual tolerance. The second is a cautious restraint and recognition of the importance of what we have inherited. The third is to be long termist in the way we conceive of political policy.

The first principle – that of intellectual tolerance – relies on the idea that no one has the answers. It is not the case that socialists or neoliberals have the solution to a problem before it actually happens. In my view, this is the problem with an ideologically defined attitude towards the world – it assumes that we must look at the world through a certain lens before we actually have all information to make a decision on a given basis. It is certainly the case that both the left and right have interesting and partly true reflections on the way in which we should organise society. However, no one has a monopoly on the truth. A member of UKIP or an unrepentant Marxist are not lunatics – they are people with sincerely held, and usually well thought out, beliefs about the nature of the world.

This brings me onto the question of what is currently seen as a controversial and potentially axiomatic point – that of freedom of speech. I believe unrestricted freedom of speech is the basic principle of politics. There are no self-evident truths. In the absence of a God, who is going to grant you a clear set of principles which we can ground truth on? Instead, everything needs to be justified through human argument. What’s more, a sincerely held belief – one that in part defines who you are – often requires considerable amount of reflection. It is best to assume that someone has spent just as much time reflecting on the world as you – as there always are those who have who hold views opposing or acting in a contrary fashion to yours who have spent longer than you thinking. As a result, you have no right to shout them down. The idea that just because you think it to be erroneous or abhorrent that you can use the force of the public sphere to shut them down – without attempting to engage with their claims – is the one thing that cannot be tolerated. If a claim is truly abhorrent – one that should not be shared or spread – you should convince the individual of the falsity of their claim, rather than talk down to them.

The second principle is that of cautious restraint when making political decisions. It must be noted that I am not denying that political change needs to happen. In fact, I think that regular, often rapid change needs to occur in the face of changing circumstances. However, I think that it is also the case that total overhaul of institutions for the sake of it is unduly and disproportionately harmful to the furtherance of the social good. Change needs to be structural, and with a mind to the long term flourishing of the social good – but it also needs to be tempered and not disruptive for the sake of it.

This makes sense in the light of the principles that most things exist for a purpose. Most things result from considerable thought by many, many individuals on how to solve a particular solution. This tends to mean that to redesign a whole political world on the basis of one’s own thoughts disregards the knowledge and deep reflection of many, many individuals. You are likely to be wrong – in part because you simply cannot comprehend the intentions of every single individual who has been involved in the formation of the set of institutions. It is only in the face of change of circumstances or if an idea can be incrementally improved upon that an institution should tampered with. In both these cases, incremental change that accepts the foundational principles of the previous order is logical and essential.

In my view, these two tendencies combine to mean that Liberal Democracy is probably the best governmental system. Liberal Democracy’s premise is that everyone can and should contribute.  The basic principle is that of intellectual tolerance. Freedom of speech, freedom of association, societal trust and the centrality of public debate when making political decisions all add up to a robust system that allows the best ideas to bubble up to the top. The other admirable quality about Liberal Democracy is that changes can and usually don’t undo other desirable features of the existing political, social, economic and cultural framework. Instead, Liberal Democracy acts to release pressure from political systems – and tends to be incredibly hardy. When part of the system is rotten, political pressure is placed on that part of the political system to reform – instead of political pressure undoing the whole edifice of society.

I think an example would enlighten. Think back to what I said about the rottenness of the economic system in the UK and the USA in the 1970s. Although there was a problem, the intellectual freedom of Liberal Democracy allowed a potential solution – that of neoliberal and deregulatory reform – to become the intellectual mainstream. What’s more, this solution was not one that upturned the whole of society. Instead, it offered a specific solution to a specific problem. When neoliberalism was taken too far, resulting in 2008 and too much globalisation, the intellectual freedom granted by Liberal Democracy allowed this to come to the attention of political leaders. Brexit and Trump once again made the West aware of the importance of relating questions of identity and community – as well as allowing communities which have been politically forgotten to once again contribute to the debate. In my view, this may synthesise into a new political reality that accepts that realises that there are elements of truth in both the previous reality, and the ‘Trumpist’ reaction to it. A sensible recognition of the need to recognise the will of the ‘left-behinds’ as well as the benefits of economic and political the previously intellectually and political dominant neoliberal seems to be the right ‘juste milieu’ between the two positions.

Again, it is important to say that I could and may be wrong. My political theory here relies a lot on instinct ascertained by a close study of specific historical examples. I therefore cannot scientifically ‘prove’ anything.

Long Termism

The final of my three guidelines actually acts contrary to the ordinary instincts of Liberal Democracy. This is long termism. I define this to be planning in such a way that recognises the probable structural pressures on the political system in the near future.

Individuals in government often have to react to short term pressures. There may be, for example, intense political pressure on government to act on an issue that the media puts disproportionate emphasis on because of a single particularly vivid event or image. For example, the image of a dead baby refugee stranded on the shores of the Aegean in the 2015-6 refugee crisis put immense pressure on several European governments to act. However, in my view, reacting because of a short term political pressure makes long term purpose and direction harder. This in turn means later problems, and less political flexibility in the future. Tragedies happen all the time – the dead baby was just a peculiarly horrid and vivid one that did not decisively alter the facts on the ground, facts most politicians already knew. Basing political reality on it disregards long term plans for short term political victory. In this case, high immigration to several European countries did in fact contribute to the rise in several anti-immigrant parties. Whatever way you cut it, it was probably a failure that did more against the cause of immigration than for it, catalysing the rise of anti-immigrant parties in the immediate aftermath of 2015.

Long-term and short-term fixes are very different things. It is easy to throw money at a problem. It is easy to say that struggling public services are in need of money. It is harder to acknowledge that a problem is getting worse, and that in 10 years’ time, unless we put political capital into solving the issues relating to an aging population and a rusting manufacturing sector, our nation will be in far worse shape. Acting in a way that prioritises structural issues is therefore key – in part because things are almost always easily to solve at their root.

Democratic leaders need the ability, therefore, to have some freedom of manoeuvre built into the system – because ordinary democratic structures often put far too much emphasis on some of the wrong things. A good historical example of where long termism has been necessary and useful is in post-war Germany. Here, the emphasis was put on long-term dangers and threats based on what had just gone so wrong in Germany. A democratic system which was more susceptible to consensual politics - one where the electoral system excluded smaller parties, yet the main parties have to work together to get things done - created a really effective constitutional and political structure. Most impressively, the consensual approach to politics allowed decisive steps to be taken that gave Germany the edge that it does today. Long-term planning created a political environment susceptible to more long-term planning. Germany today is willing to take sensible short-term risks to solve long-term problems. For example, dealing with the problem of a declining and aging population by allowing the entry of a massive amount of Syrian refugees. Similarly, Germany is also currently acting to rebalance the structural imbalances within the European Union at its own massive short term cost – albeit in a cautious way. The ‘Corona bonds’ package seem to be a first step in the right direction for an EU that has historically failed to get the balance between centralised monetary powers and decentralised fiscal powers right. Of course, Germany does not equal perfection here – because no system is perfect – but its political and cultural structures encourage do encourage a more thinking politics. The UK government currently seems to want to become a practitioner of this sort of politics – but it has become nigh high impossible in the face of media resistance. The media has attempted to make every discussion about short term failures of the government, and to be fair to the media, the government has many an incompetent minister who seem insufficiently effective to implement the most basic form of change. This is not to blame the media – the media cannot help but operate within a relatively strict framework of what is conceivable and possible – but rather to say that political energy should be better expended by government to reduce structural inhibitors to government better adjusted to long term success.

Conclusion

To conclude, let me recap.

First, it is my view that the state naturally exists. This means we do not have to justify its existence a priori. Instead, we should recognise that without the state humans would (a) naturally form a new state, (b) without the state, human life would lose much of what makes it meaningful. In the absence of the state, human life loses much of what makes it meaningful.

This, however, by no means is a recipe for the state to do what it likes. Instead, it means that we should know that the state just exists – and that, given this, how do we make life better for people. My answer to how to do this is twofold.

The first part is that we don’t generally have total answers to the question. We cannot know what makes life good – instead we should approach every situation with an open mind where we recognise that no one has a total understanding of what is right and wrong.

The second part of my answer is that there are some general guidelines, based on rules ascertained from historical example, that can inform politicians instincts. The three I pick up on as foundational are intellectual tolerance, a recognition of the value of things as they exist currently and that we should always keep in mind the importance of long term planning.