The French election: Melenchon's Moment

The rise of Jean-Luc Melenchon has caught the international media off guard. After ignoring the man for months, the English-speaking press is suddenly obliged to analyse the chances of the most viable left-wing candidate. Even the Anglophone left has been caught out here.

As always the English left is divided over its own concerns and strategy. Some see Melenchon as the only option in a race where the mainstream candidates are faltering. Others are suspicious of Melenchon’s platform and, in classical sectarian style, demand more purity of socialist convictions.

In short, the English left doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind about Melenchon, but this doesn’t matter if Melenchon makes it to the second round. The French people will decide.

Nevertheless, it’s worth exploring the reasons behind this division. It appears that the English left is looking at France in terms of the crises it faces at home. Brexit has polarised the left and the questions of nationhood rests at the core of this. For better or worse, Melenchon remains stubbornly committed to the idea of the nation-state. And this draws suspicion from some quarters of the left.

Unsubmissive France

A part of this is cultural, the English left is wary of all nationalisms. This is understandable given the history of flag-waving in the British Isles. It’s not like red patriotism has ever taken hold in England. A left-wing civic nationalism has emerged in Scotland and Wales, yet English nationalism remains trapped by potent forms of ethnic and cultural chauvinism.

It is possible to appeal to patriotism in the French context given that the nation-state itself was the creation of the 1789 revolution. The dark side of French history – the empire, slavery, the civilising missions in Africa, and the capitulation to fascism – are conveniently dropped; but this mythmaking is necessary to every form of patriotism. Whether or not it is a good thing is separate from its effectuality.

What cannot be disputed is that Melenchon’s charismatic appeals to French history and culture have gripped the imagination of many people. He has successfully married a left social democratic project to la patrie. The French left may be divided over strategy and candidates, but it’s clear who stands the best chance of subsuming all left forces under one umbrella in time for the second round: Benoit Hamon and Philippe Poutou were never going to play this role.

Not only does Melenchon have the edge because of his red patriotism, he has the Front de Gauche (The Left Front) – a coalition of the Left Party (his own creation), the French Communist Party and rogue elements of the New Anticapitalist Party and the Socialist Party. This bloc has allowed Melenchon supporters to move freely outside the French ruling class and the European establishment.

It’s why Melenchon has been able to build France Insoumise (Unsubmissive France) as a Podemos-style left populist insurgency. This has granted Melenchon a great deal of credibility. The fusion of grassroots and social media activism created the basis for his candidacy to finally breakthrough into the mainstream. It sets an example for the wider European left about how to advance against all the odds.

Questions of nationhood

At the same time, there is a lot of disinformation going around. We’re told Melenchon is pro-Assad and pro-Putin because he opposes NATO in Ukraine and Western involvement in Syria. We’re told Melenchon is “soft” on racism and “hard” on immigrants. I can’t disperse all the claims here, but I will look at the debate around immigration – which is a vital one in the election.

As I understand it, Melenchon has argued for a ‘regularisation’ of illegal migrants in France so as to document and officialise migration. This seems like a good alternative to what Marine Le Pen wants, namely a racist police state based on the state of emergency. However, it is also true that the officialisation of migrants is a pre-condition for whether or not they are deported or granted residency. This is where the debate begins.

There is an ongoing debate about freedom of movement on the left. A traditional social democratic position would be that the flow of migrant labour has to be controlled under capitalist conditions because it serves as a reserve army of labour. In effect, the migrants provide cheap labour and in turn threaten the wages of workers in the host country. This is until the migrant workers can be unionised and brought into the labour movement.

The opposing view is that the free movement of labour is a progressive step forwards for the working class because it prevents the illegal status of migrant labour. After all, the existence of illegal workers is conducive to greater exploitation, not a barrier to low wages and falling standards of living. So if you want to stop wages from being undermined, you ought to throw out the possibility for illegal migration. Thus, free movement has a great deal of support on the radical left.

This is how the opening up of borders can allow for working class unity and an equal playing field. The answer to wage competition on that equal playing field is not to erect barriers, but to extend solidarity through trade unions. Yet there remains a contingent of left support for restricting immigration, and this has to be accounted for and understood. The Melenchon platform is not free from the more old-fashioned centre-left arguments about the necessity of migration controls. But it’s not inherently anti-migrant.

You can disagree with the line that border controls and workers’ rights are compatible, however, it is hardly in the same platform as the Le Pen position. After all the Front National wants to abolish dual nationality and force French Africans and Arabs to choose (at least until they can be deported back to their ancestral lands) whether they are really French or not. Make no mistake about it: the FN is still fighting for an ethnically pure France, whether Le Pen admits it or not.

Down with the centre!

It still looks like the battle will be between Melenchon, Le Pen and Macron. Faced with this three-way split, the French electorate has a real choice for perhaps the first time in decades. The hope of Melenchon supporters is that Macron can be knocked out in the first round. If Melenchon and Le Pen both make it to the second round, the French may just get to make the kind of decision which was denied to the American people in 2016.

It could be the battle of outsiders that should have taken place between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Yet liberal centrists placed their bets on Emmanuel Macron and the alleged ‘safeness’ of his candidacy. Many American liberals believed the same about Hillary Clinton. They thought it was impossible for a self-described socialist to win against a populist outsider. They were so arrogant as to believe Trump could not win, and the flaws of Clinton were dwarfed by his vulgarity.

The French election is even more volatile. At first, it looked like Francois Fillon would be the main challenger to Marine Le Pen, but he has since been blown out of the water by a corruption scandal. The Socialist Party never stood a chance thanks to the unspeakable mediocrity of the Hollande government. Then the party base surprised everyone by picking Hamon. And then Macron emerged as a serious contender.

Suddenly, the liberal commentariat had found its man: a millionaire stockbroker with an astroturfed mass of support. Mainstream European liberal opinion began to coalesce around Macron, as the guy who can save the centre ground and restore the Franco-German compact. The populist zeitgeist could be defeated once and for all. But the possibility that it might be too late escapes their minds.

Almost everywhere you look the centre ground is in crisis. The time for moderation and compromise is not today; there is no gradualist strategy for fending off Le Pen indefinitely. Instead, the only sensible choice is to take the consensus with both hands and throw it to the ground shattering it into a million pieces. It’s only with Melenchon that France and Europe have a chance.

This article was originally published by Souciant Magazine.

The General Will?

A great number of liberal critics have charged Jean-Jacques Rousseau as one of the progenitors of totalitarianism insofar as Rousseau inspired GWF Hegel and Karl Marx thereby setting some of the wheels in motion towards really existing socialism. It is true that Rousseau was a critic of equality before the law and the notion of private property. The interventionist state implied in the opposition to the market society of individual property-owners seems at odds with fundamental ideas of liberalism.[1] The blunt advocacy of ‘force’ to compel people comes across as authoritarian. Let alone the distinction between the general will and the will of all seems to posit an opposition between what people might decide and what they should decide. The insistence on the indivisibility of sovereign power seems to eliminate any possible system of checks and balances which are given in a liberal democracy. We are lead, by this view, to see Rousseau as at least on the slippery slope towards authoritarianism.

If we follow on this line of thought we might take Rousseau as a proponent of positive liberty on the grounds that he holds happiness and freedom lies in the individual setting aside their own particular wills and finding their true freedom by aligning themselves with the general will of the people. It may be necessary to ‘force’ people to be free, specifically the people who did not realise that their best interests were in line with the Common Good.[2] It has been said that Rousseau’s outlook is much more complicated for the reason that the particular notions of freedom evoked in his work do not fit easily into the distinction between positive and negative liberty.[3] The rejection of slavery comes out of an adherence to a notion of freedom as non-subjection to the particular will of others and this seems in line with the liberal tradition of negative liberty. But Rousseau goes further to the claim that the basis of legitimate authority is ‘agreed convention’ and rests on this same basis of non-subjection.[4] The aim of The Social Contract was to uncover a ‘form of association’ in which each individual is as ‘free as before’.[5]

In The Social Contract Rousseau makes a distinction between three forms of freedom: natural, civil and moral.[6] Natural freedom is the absence of all restraints people experienced in the state of nature; the only possible impediments are the forces of the individual. Only the physical power of others could impede such a freedom, the only form of ownership was a form of physical possession but there were no obligations to others. When we become citizens of a society we forfeit natural freedom as to attain civil freedom. We can understand civil freedom as the freedom guaranteed by its limits, or more specifically, the general will. The limits imposed are the reason to associate in a civil state, the bi-product of this association rather than the reason for it is moral freedom. This kind of freedom should be understood as the submission to laws prescribed to oneself. It might be broken down as a formula: each person only obeys himself and remains as naturally free as before; each person only obeys himself and remains as civilly free as before; by these means each person remains as morally free as before.

It is important to note that moral freedom seems to presuppose a democratic system whereby we can prescribe laws onto ourselves. This is a bi-product of association in society rather than its ultimate aim, whereas civil freedom is the freedom maintained through the limitations set by the general will. This may seem dangerously close to the suggestion that the agreement we set into is not in itself a guarantee of freedom, but it might lead to a greater freedom by accident. But the general will arises out of the will of each individual, it is where we find our true interests, so submission to the general will is not subjection in the way Rousseau understood it. All of this seems to presuppose a democratic system and is in accordance with Rousseau’s emphasis on autonomy over subjection. It was the dependency of the poor on the rich, and vice versa, which was created and sustained by inequality. It would seem the idea here is that the citizenry should be bound by the laws forged in democratic participation, which they have participated in making, even if a citizen does not agree with them.

The point being to prevent the laws from being undermined by a particular will. The laws would apply to all and arise from all. There are no exceptions and any opposition to the laws would be intolerable as it would undermine the whole framework at a fundamental level. The law has to be enforced and since these laws have been self-prescribed there is no violation of freedom, at least in Rousseau’s terms. This seems to run against the individualism of liberal thought, if the law is one we prescribed to ourselves through collective decision-making then the opposition to it is not just ‘individualistic’. It is ideological because it is more so about the egalitarian order Rousseau advocated rather than the framework which is meant to guarantee such order.[7] Rousseau thought individuals might have to be ‘forced to be free’ in order to guarantee the conditions whereby individuals could coexist freely and equally. This is down to the trajectory of history, particularly in the last century, which saw the rise and fall of socialist states around the world. The need to refute Marxism in the Cold War went as far as looking to uproot the ‘seeds’ of totalitarianism to Rousseau and even as far back as Plato.[8]

As sovereignty is based on the citizenry through which the general will is expressed, it is directed towards the Common Good by the general will and cannot be shaken by the particular wills of individuals – which are preoccupied with preference rather than aimed at equality. Sovereignty is indivisible and inalienable; it derives its being from the sanctity of the contract into which the people have entered. The general will cannot be ‘delegated’ nor can sovereignty be transferred as it is the only legitimate form of representation.[9] The general will is the will of the body of the people, the will is either general or it is not. It holds legal authority because of its vital role in the establishment of sovereignty. This is where Rousseau states bluntly that the division of sovereignty, of power from will, of legislature from executive. The power to raise taxes, declare war and so on must rest within reach of the people, this is the application of sovereignty rather than the thing itself.[10] Sovereignty is really about the capacity of the people to deliberate and direct the state.

The establishment of society is only possible when the interests of individuals converge rather than stand in opposition. The Common Good is essential to the foundation of society and from there it is easy to see why society should be governed in the common interest. We are subject to no one’s will but our own in the sense that the laws enforced are those which we have willed. This is the reason that the general will is not a violation of autonomy and a notion of freedom as non-subjection can remain. Rousseau holds that once the citizenry become servile to a ‘master’ then sovereign authority comes to an end and the body-politic is destroyed. Consent remains important as the decrees handed down by a ‘master’ could pass for the general will, but only if the sovereign authority does not oppose them even though it is free to do so. The government is not the sovereign itself, rather it is the intermediate body between subjects and sovereign, whereby mutual correspondence is ensured through the practice of law and the maintenance of freedom.

Clearly there is a tension in the work between the democratic conception of general will as what the citizens of the state have decided together and the transcendental conception where general will is the incarnation of the citizens' common interest in abstraction from what any of them actually wants.[11]   We might be led to interpret the argument as specific of the right conditions and subject to the right procedures whereby citizen legislators may converge on laws that correspond to the common interest. The state lacks legitimacy whenever these conditions and procedures are absent. So the theoretical state, which Rousseau stood for, may exercise authority over its citizens even though really existing states fail to meet the criteria for legitimacy. This is where Rousseau might be tied in with the anarchist tradition. But it has to be noted that the transcendental conception seems to be more in accordance with Rousseau’s view that the best kind of government is an elective aristocracy. This has even more in common with the liberal system of representative democracy, where elected officials hand down decrees.[12]

It is difficult to say definitively whether or not Rousseau stood for an authoritarian state. It might be said that the conception is an authoritarian one insofar as it doesn’t affirm classical liberal doctrines of individualism, that the state may be a tool for shaping society, institutions and even people. There are problems with the institutions that Rousseau advocates and there are indeed illiberal aspects of his thought. But there are also similarities between Rousseauian ideas and the liberal tradition, we also shouldn’t lose sight of the anarchist strain running through Rousseau’s work. To some extent whether or not the supposed authoritarianism of Rousseau is problematic comes down to the political leanings we hold. Therefore it becomes a matter of whether or not egalitarianism as an end is worth so-called "authoritarian" means. If we are to take ideals such as liberty, equality and fraternity seriously then it means (to the chagrin of liberals everywhere) we may have to embrace the means as justified only by the end.

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[1] Bertram, C: Rousseau and the Social Contract, Routledge Philosophy Guide to, (2004, Routledge) pg.190-203

[2] Thompson, Mel: Understand Political Philosophy (Hachette UK, 2010) pg.143-144

[3] The particular understanding of liberty is important here. Isaiah Berlin drew a highly influential distinction between negative and positive forms of freedom. The negative conception of freedom is defined by the absence of constraint on actions and aims which we can choose to pursue without such impediments. This is the standard conception originally defined by Thomas Hobbes and typically embellished in liberal thought. The positive conception is focused on the capacity of the agent to set their own goals and pursue what they wish to do with their lives.

Thompson, Mel: Understand Political Philosophy (Hachette UK, 2010) pg.131-153

[4] The possibility of an ‘agreed convention’ of slavery is dismissed by Rousseau on the grounds that a man does not ‘give himself’ but sells himself in such a scenario. Anyone who does so should not be considered sane, as Rousseau argues to give up freedom is to give up our humanity in terms of morals, rights and duties.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: The Social Contract, A new translation by Christopher Batts (Oxford University Press, 2008) pg.48-53

[5] In simple terms, communism is an egalitarian order which emerges on the basis of the material proper material preconditions generated by advanced capitalism and after the development of socialism via the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism has been achieved once a common ownership of the means of production has been established, where there is no exploitation of man by man and the state has "withered away". It is the ideal which anarchists strive for in the immediate breakdown of capitalism, whereas Karl Marx held that there has to be an intermediate phase. By contrast, Rousseau is out to draw up an alternative social contract to the ones put forth by Hobbes and Locke. This vision of a new society is not made to include the transition from society as it is to a new system. Instead the contract is posited in a kind of alternative universe, where what should have been is possible. Consequently Rousseau has had a great influence on the traditions of communism and anarchism, for the reason that the ultimate aim is a free and egalitarian order.

[6] Bertram, C: Rousseau and the Social Contract, Routledge Philosophy Guide to, (2004, Routledge) pg.190-203

[7] It is hardly allowed in a liberal democracy for people to decide not to follow the law and to step out of the political system of rights and liberties to establish a competing system. Theoretically, in a liberal society there is no space an exception as every individual is equal before the law in terms of rights and freedoms. We have to keep in mind that even at the origins of liberal thought with John Locke such an exception in order to justify slavery, slaves were not equal in terms of rights and freedoms because slaves were not counted as human beings. A much more relevant and befitting analogy is in the work of JS Mill, the ‘tyranny of the majority’ is specifically about an exception. The idea is that the majority cannot impose discriminatory or threatening laws on a minority, who are less powerful by the fact of being a minority.  The problem is that there are powerful minorities in society, whether they are politicians, intellectuals or economic elites. A Marxist would be keen to point to classical liberalism as superstructural to the economic base, with the privileged class falling back on the doctrines of property rights and individual freedom to insulate itself.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: JS Mill, Social and Political Philosophy –

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#SocPol

[8] Bertram, C: Rousseau and the Social Contract, Routledge Philosophy Guide to, (2004, Routledge) pg.82-89

[9] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: The Social Contract, A new translation by Christopher Batts (Oxford University Press, 2008) pg.56-65

[10] Bertram, C: Rousseau and the Social Contract, Routledge Philosophy Guide to, (2004, Routledge) pg.97-127

[11] Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: Rousseau, the Idea of the General Will – http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rousseau/#IdeGenWil

[12] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: The Social Contract, A new translation by Christopher Batts (Oxford University Press, 2008) pg.91-117

Liberal Violence.

Barbarians of Civilisation.

We might see John Locke as the father of liberalism today as the Two Treatises of Government were the earliest of liberal ideas. Though it is important to note that at the time John Locke was embedded in the English ruling class and was close to Lord Shaftesbury, the founder of the Whigs. So Locke was one of the elite when England was taken hold by a political crisis in the 1680s as the reign of King Charles II came to an end and the Duke of York succeeded him as James II. The new monarch had ambitions to restore Royal absolutism and Catholicism to England, which would have meant another war of religious sectarianism. The succession was inevitable as Charles II had plenty of illegitimate children, but no legitimate heirs, so when he died in 1685 it fell to his brother. There was a campaign to prevent the succession throughout the 1680s and just as James II stepped up to the throne. The King was successful in crushing all rebels, whether they be Archibald Campbell or the Duke of Monmouth (one of the illegitimate sons of Charles II).

Finally in 1688 the Whig nobles were successful in their treason and found a way for Prince William of Orange to invade England from Holland and seize the crown. This was the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Unsurprisingly, as he was involved in the plot, John Locke set out to provide a retrospective justification for instigating the downfall of King James II. If the Whigs had failed, Locke would not be the father of liberalism and 1688 would just be another year of another failed rebellion. The grand narrative of liberalism is accepted because it has been successful in achieving hegemony. These same writings went on to influence the American Revolution and directly influence the US Constitution. As opposed to the pursuit of happiness guaranteed by the US Constitution Locke advocated property along with life and liberty. The French Revolution was influenced in a more indirect fashion by Lockean philosophy, it was Rousseau and Montesquieu who had a greater influence over the French revolutionaries.

Despite the fact that the French Revolution smashed a lingering feudal order into pieces, which could only then be reconstituted as the liberal order for the sake of capital accumulation, the likes of Niall Ferguson and Simon Schama are not so happy with the "excessive violence" of Jacobinism. The American Revolution is commonly put forward as a favourable alternative of a bloodless revolutionary shift from colony to republic. The only blood that had to be spilled was from the millions of Native Americans and countless African slaves who were butchered and terrorised into subservience. Slavery destroyed the cultural heritage of African-Americans, the religions native to Africa were supplanted by Islam and Christianity. The hands of the East and the West are responsible for the destruction of Africa, but in particular without the material preconditions established in slavery the US would not exist as it is. Not only without slavery but without warfare and genocide, the United States would not exist as the vast concentration of a political and economic power today.

The American Dream.

In the US slavery would drag on for centuries and was officially abolished after the Civil War. During the war between states which raged from 1861 to 1865 at least 630,000 people (equivalent to 2% of the population) were killed out of the 3 million who fought in the war. Around 50,000 were slaughtered in the three-day battle of Gettysburg, close to the number of American soldiers who died in the Vietnam war. Without the bloodbath at Gettysburg the abolition of slavery may have come much later in the history of the United States. This great advance came under Abraham Lincoln, who had suspended habeas corpus, it brought emancipation as well as barbarism in even more advanced forms. After Reconstruction slavery was in effect re-established in the United States through an alliance between the corporations and state-authorities with the courts and prisons. It would last in a covert form through the prison system until the 1940s and slave labour was vital to the process of industrialisation.

As a colony of the British Empire, the American economy was prosperous, none of which would have been possible without slavery and ethnic cleansing, the revolution was a push for independence from which the process could be completed. The inspirational documents of the revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself, were based on the ideas of John Locke and provided a retrospective justification for insurgent militias who had killed Crown troops. The white people who had settled in America and had done very well out of it's prosperity did not want to pay taxes, but they did want 'Indian' land and a lot more slaves. Some even wanted to seize Mexican and Canadian soil, which they would go onto attempt and succeed in the theft of half of Mexico. Though these tendencies were real in the colony, the prospect of American independence was not a popular one, it was the revolutionary leadership which had to win over the masses who were heavily armed.

New England had done particularly well out of the colonial experience, specifically out of shipbuilding, whaling and warfare. Out of the booming economy a merchant class emerged with such prominent figures as John Hancock, whose firm had done very well out of supplying the British army and Royal Navy. The idea that the American colonies should gain independence from Britain was held by very few in the Americas until the British began to impose further taxes on the colonies in a period of economic decline. The Treasury was heavily in debt and was looking for a way to shift the tax burden off of the British tax-payer in order to maintain the Empire. Prime Minister Grenville decided that the prosperous colonies should take on more of the burden. So new taxes were imposed on the Americans, the merchant class that had developed around shipbuilding, whaling and war resorted to tax-evasion and smuggling. Even while encouraging the British to smash Louis XV the Americans refused to pay their way.

Revolutionary Terror.

The accepted reading of the French Revolution functions to restore the counter-revolutionary doctrine, in that the cynical liberal wisdom cuts to the 'truth' that all revolutions fail and furthermore "anti-totalitarianism" is preferable to avoid the gulag. Naturally this involves avoidance of any historical analysis of the circumstances under which the Revolution emerged. The obscene situation in pre-revolutionary France is commonly ignored and even glossed over by liberal historians. The country had been devastated by crises of finance and food, which led to the repudiation of the national debt and the bread riots. It was a social order in which there was a huge gulf between the rich and the poor, the latter of whom were the only people who paid taxes in pre-revolutionary France. There was a great explosion in a French society which was inevitable because of the pressures that had mounted up in the stagnant order.

It ultimately led to the rise of the Committee of Public Safety, which initiated a slaughter that was only rivaled by the orgy of violence which would follow after its end. Thousands were slaughtered in reaction to the military assault launched against France by powers such as the Holy Roman Empire, Britain and Russia. Contrary to common sense, order and disorder are not opposites rather the imposition of a contingent order onto a chaotic situation is the highest level of disorder. In the words of Walter Benjamin "There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism." This is the reason that if the Declaration of Independence of US was re-declared by a newly independent society today, we would rightly condemn them as Nazi-ish for the Declaration identifies black people as "subhuman". This is true regardless of the inspirational nature of the Declaration, which is based on the ideas expressed by John Locke and the Putney Debates at the time of the English Revolution.

Just as the unconscious is the founding act of repression upon which consciousness is established, the Act onto which a new political order is predicated are often unjustifiable at the time before the act. Only when looking backwards we might wonder whether or not it was justifiable for an Irishman to shoot a police officer in the head. The Act can lack a justification in preceding standards of justice, politics or even ethics. But violence is not just sequential, it is not just a necessary evil for the establishment of liberal society, it is synchronous to the development of civilisations and the US is no different. The debt owed by liberalism to feudalism and the institution of slavery is hardly, if ever, recognised. Especially by liberals and conservatives, for whom only seductive dreams of egalitarianism might lead to mass-murder. For them any revolution which doesn't fit the idealised vision of the Tea Party is a step too far. The truth is that if we the British had crushed the Americans then we would probably celebrate hanging Jefferson and Franklin as 'traitors'.

The Original Sin of Liberalism.

The Truth as a Whole.

At the origins of liberal thought, in the political writings of a certain anonymous Englishman all the way back in 1691, is the idea of the state of nature and notions of consent. Man is by nature free and equal in the state of nature, in which there was no impartial authority and no solid legal framework to resolve conflict. In order to preserve property and constrain the powers, which might oppress the individual, man entered into a social contract and by consent submit to a government. The writer went on to draw a distinction between expressed and tacit consent. The first of which is obvious, expressed consent is the willful acceptance of society and the state. In exchange for freedom and equality the netural state will act to preserve property, as well as the rights and liberties entrenched in property. Tacit consent is a less simple concept. Everyone who has profited or benefited in any way from the state and society has automatically surrendered equality and freedom in exchange for such rewards.

So in one way or another the people consent to society and the government, all freedom and equality is surrendered for the sake of life, liberty and property. As some critics of Michael Moore will point out, Moore has consented to the system and American society in benefiting so much from it all - so why does he make such terrible films? Next comes the demand that Moore should give all of his money to charity and go to live in Cuba. In other words Michael Moore "consented" to American capitalism when he was born in the US and started to benefit enormously from the system as it had developed. If he wants to criticise America he should give away everything he has gained from living the American dream. This is the line of the American Right, reactionaries everywhere and at the fundamental level of it is the idea of "consent". The assumptions of freedom and equality are embellished throughout liberal ideology, concealed at the base of notions of individual responsibility and meritocracy.


Many of the arguments against positive discrimination and political correctness rest lazily on these assumptions. Affirmative action is often slapped down as putting black people before whites, that in itself is a double-standard and an inequality. This assumes that there were equal in standards and background, when in actuality there is a huge inequality as black people have been disenfranchised and kept in a miserable place. A common argument against political correctness is that while white people are not permitted to use racial slurs, the groups of the ethnic groups often subject to such language are themselves allowed to use the slurs. But there is a difference in context and once again the assumption of equality is false. According to the vague distinction of tacit consent just by the use of money people surrender their equality and freedom. We've all bought into this system of free enterprise and competition, individual freedom and responsibility so stop whining about the crimes of the past and calling for social justice! The historical context of slavery, segregation and racial oppression are removed from the picture.

Look at the grounds onto which the soup-run has been done away with in Westminster, it encourages homelessness and brings more homeless people into the borough so it is being scrapped. The homeless are viewed as a public nuisance and as failed citizens, they were free to work and live normally but failed somehow and are responsible for their own plight. This is consistent with the atomised interpretation of the world which liberals adhere to. This is in denial of the 'Truth as a Whole', so the contextual determinants are removed from view and society becomes a mass of autonomous individuals. Hegel held that there is no phenomenon that can be grasped in isolation because this would ignore the network of relations that constitute such things. To understand the world reasonably is to take into account the context of events. In denial of the 'Truth as a Whole' liberals remove all the contextual determinants which led people to become homeless and instead emphasise the freedom and responsibility of the individual. An informed answer would be to have soup-runs throughout London combined with serious efforts to eliminate homelessness.

If we go further than this to look at the Enlightenment interpretation of history as progress we find this same fundamental problem. The material conditions onto which liberalism is predicated, it's foundations are coated in blood, is the accumulative processes of slavery and feudalism. The debt owed to the suffering of slaves and serfs is quietly kicked under the rug. The advances of Western civilisation are often achieved through slaughter, such advances open up new possibilities of barbarism as well as emancipation. The countless generations butchered and terrorised into subservience to advance the mode of production and amass a vast material resources which enable the emergence of new forms of exploitation. American capitalism is indebted to the genocidal bloodbath and centuries of misery and injustice preceding the Revolution and merely change in form after independence. The liberal order providing retrospective justifications for slavery, low-taxes, the theft of Native American land and the accumulation of capital. The huge debt to the slaves, who built the White House, is the legitimate claim for reparations and positive discrimination.

Plato's Cave.

In the Republic Plato not only uses the sets out his vision of the ideal city-state, which would be the equivalent of drawing up a utopia today, which was an organic conception segmented into three parts that we might liken to castes or classes. Plato saw the state as organic in the way that it mirrored the tripartite model of a human being – reason, spirit and desire. The ideal society would be stratified into three classes along the same lines. The workers being desire, the guardians are spirit and the ruling class are reason. Plato had a specific idea for the rulers of this utopia, it would be a ruling class made up entirely of philosophers who would be able to steer society in the right direction.[1] The model for the ruling class in the Republic was the Spartan oligarchy (a stark contrast to the Athenian democracy) who had achieved a degree of unity through austere discipline, military training and communal living.[2]

In order to fully understand the notion of philosopher-kings and eventually the specific qualities which qualify such thinkers to rule, it’s vital to first understand the underlying theory – the theory of Forms – as well as the simile of the cave. According to the theory the senses can only inform us of a poor copy of reality, and not what the world really is like, only through reason can the world be understood for all it is. Everything is a shadow of its Form and each horse is a lesser version of a perfect horse, such a horse exists in a world of Forms which can only be perceived through reason alone.[3] In the cave there are prisoners who are being held in place with chains preventing them from escaping. In between them and a wall is a fire, the light of which projects shadows onto the wall. Everything from people to objects is understood by these people through these "projections" – who have been held captive here since childhood. The prisoners only really see the shadows of the world, but they think they are looking at the world as it is. When the chains are broken and one of these prisoners is liberated, the compelling light shining into the cave will initially distress him and the transition will be painful.

At first the freed prisoner will be unable to see the world as it is, because their eyes will have adjusted to the darkness of the cave, after the transition the prisoner will experience an “upward progress of the mind” and may eventually see the Form of the Good which is essential for rational thought. But an enlightened person breaking the chains of the prisoners to lead them out of the cave and into the real world might be killed by the newly freed prisoners. For the prisoners might be so embedded in the shadows of the cave that they will not want to be liberated. For this reason the prisoner, who is enlightened, may not be so willing to return to the cave especially after seeing the real world which might make him prefer to live, as Homer put it, like "a serf in the house of some landless man" than in the cave. This is the primary qualification of the philosopher to rule in the cave, the unwillingness to return to the darkness of the lower levels where the prisoners are still enthralled by shadows.[4] A similar sentiment to all of this was later expressed by Gore Vidal "Any American who is prepared to run for President should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so."

The philosopher is somewhat obligated to “return” to the lower levels and rule in the “cave”, regardless of their own unwillingness which is in itself a qualifying factor, because philosophers were “bred” and are “fully educated” to lead. In other words, their education and background has ensured a level of expertise and Virtue which enables them to govern in such a way as to benefit society as a whole. The Spartan oligarchs had been anti-intellectual, oppressive and militaristic. Plato thought these aspects could be avoided through such a political system which placed power in the hands of philosophers. Every citizen is a part of society and each belongs to one of the three parts of the hierarchy. No class of people, nor any particular individual, should be the focus of special treatment over the rest of society and it ought to be society as a whole that is the focus. Therefore philosophers can’t be left to live in perpetual contemplation and must lead as they have seen the Form of the Good. Though, the implications of the qualified philosopher-rulers are unsettling today as we know too well about authoritarian regimes.

It has been argued that the Republic is a philosophical precursor to forms of authoritarianism in the modern age, particularly as the philosopher-king is similar to the concept of a benign dictator. The complete absence of checks and balances on the edicts of the philosopher-kings and -queens would concern any liberal today. Karl Popper went as far as to claim that the Republic was the progenitor of 20^th Century totalitarianism – even more fundamental than Nietzsche or Marx as others had claimed – from which Communism and Fascism were eventually spawned.[5] Ironically, Karl Popper was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society alongside prominent libertarians such as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, both of whom were defenders of authoritarian states in Europe and Latin America along far less scrupulous grounds than Plato.[6] In theory a ruling class consisting of philosophers would be virtuous and not oppressive. It would be beneficial to the common people, whilst maintaining an orderly hierarchy, ensuring harmony through expertise and unity. Whether or not it would turn out like that in practice is another matter, especially as philosophers are not perfect figures and could easily advocate a disastrous measure.[7]

It’s important to note the circumstances of Plato’s life, we will assume what we know of his life is accurate of him in order to explore what influenced his philosophical opinions, especially when it comes to politics and the kind of society Plato had in mind in the Republic. Plato was an aristocrat, had he not been a philosopher he would have probably been a politician as he was related to various political figures linked through his uncle Critias and cousin Charmides to the ‘Thirty Tyrants’ who were installed through a coup supported by Sparta. The family ties to Sparta may explain Plato’s admiration for the oligarchy. As a young man he saw Athens defeated in war and may well have attributed the defeat to rise of democracy. As if Plato’s position in Athenian society was not reason enough to despise democratic principles Plato witnessed these same principles applied to condemn Socrates to death.[8] The disposition towards a benevolent authoritarianism in his work is easily understood within this context. It is not simply the case that Plato favoured a form of oligarchy, which placed not the rich in power but those rich in knowledge in power, over democracy. Both oligarchy and democracy had failed in Athens, leading either to oppression by the ‘Thirty’ or senseless results like the death of Socrates, Plato opted for an oligarchy with a high benchmark that would exclude almost all despots.

In regards to democracy, for Plato, it is not simply that the masses will make the wrong decision because they do not truly know what they want, but a cynical resignation which creates a gap between what the people actually want and the way the people vote. Take the 2005 General Election which Tony Blair came out as Prime Minister, even though he was regularly voted the most unpopular man in Britain, New Labour won the election because there was no way for the political discontent to be effectively expressed and ultimately turned into disillusionment. There is an awareness of this in the Platonic critique of democracy, the plurality of interests given representation in a democracy and the negotiation between such private interests leaves no room for Virtue. For Plato it was a matter of privileging Virtue above such a plurality. Similar instances of this have been seen in the Republic of Virtue that the Jacobins tried to create in France as well as many socialist revolutions that have sought to replace liberal democracy with a dictatorship of the proletariat.[9]

As Plato saw it the philosopher was qualified to rule because of an unwillingness which would prevent the power hungry from gaining power, the expertise philosophers had gained through a high standard of education and noble backgrounds would ensure a virtuous and harmonious rule in the Republic. Though this is a utopian vision, which Aristotle diverged from greatly and went on to argue that democracy was preferable to the other systems (oligarchy and aristocracy) and it would function best if inequality was eliminated.[10] The elimination of such inequality could resolve the problems Plato saw in the plurality and negotiations of democracy which left no room for Virtue. With this in mind it might be best to advocate freeing the prisoners in the cave.

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[1] Plato, The Republic, Melissa Lane, Introduction (Penguin, 2007) pg.29-32

[2] Plato, The Republic, Melissa Lane, Introduction (Penguin, 2007) pg.14-17

[3] The Philosophy Book, W Buckingham, D Burnham, C Hill, PJ King, J Marenbon, M Weeks (Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2011) pg. 50-55

[4] Plato, The Republic, Melissa Lane, Introduction (Penguin, 2007) pg.240-248

[5] Plato, The Republic, Melissa Lane, Introduction (Penguin, 2007) pg.13-14

[6] Mises served as an economist for the Fascist regime of Austria in the 1930s, providing a theory of the 1929 Crash which held state intervention responsible, and praised Mussolini “It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilisation. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.” Richard Seymour, The Meaning of David Cameron (Zero, 2010) pg.32-35

[7] For example, when Maoist China developed nuclear weapons and detonated its first atomic bomb in the 1960s it was a philosopher, namely Karl Jaspers, who was quick to advocate a large-scale atomic assault on China to prevent it from becoming a threat to world peace. Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times (Verso, 2010) pg.10-11

[8] Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy (1946) pg.122-124

[9] Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (Verso, 2009) pg.136-137

[10] Aristotle, The Politics (Penguin, 1981) pg. 361-375