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Political Holism
hilosophical history contains a wealth of
insightful documents that reflectively consider
the basis of a viable and legitimate political
and social order. These go back to ancient Greek
and Roman thinkers such as Plato (who reflected
on the nature of justice), Aristotle, and
Cicero. They continue through medieval thinkers
such as Thomas Aquinas, and emerge with great
vigor in the Renaissance reflections of such
thinkers as Athanasius, Duplessis Mornay, and
Machiavelli.
Reflections
systematically laying the groundwork for
contemporary democratic theory especially
emerged in the 17th century thought
of writers like Gottfried Leibniz, Baruch
Spinoza, and John Locke. During the 18th
century, thinkers such as Baron de Montesquieu,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant brought
reflection on the social contract through which
society defines legitimate government into a
powerful focus, helping to define the democratic
societies that emerged out of the French and
American revolutions toward the end of that
century.
In the 19th
century, thinkers such as G.W. F. Hegel, Jeremy
Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Alexis de
Tocqueville, and Karl Marx helped refine and
critically analyze democratic theory, defining
many of the issues and difficulties faced in the
functioning democracies. Marx, for example, saw
political democracy (with equal political rights
such as voting) as a great step forward, but not
sufficient for “substantive democracy”:
“Political emancipation certainly represents a
great progress. It is not, indeed, the final
form of human emancipation” (1978: 35). For
“people cannot be liberated as long as they are
unable to obtain food and drink, housing and
clothing in adequate quantity and quality”
(1978: 169). Political freedom must be
accompanied by substantial economic freedom from
want and deprivation. Democracy is impossible
without actualizing that moral dimension of
equality under the law that necessarily includes
reasonable economic equality. Marx’s critique
was a great step forward in the philosophical
understanding of democracy.
The 20th century saw new and deeper
understandings emerge concerning the nature of
the social contract, the nature of humans in
relation to language, the relation between
individuals and society, and the role of
technology and mass society. Our understanding
of the nature, extent, and meaning of the social
contract deepened even while serious threats to
democracy arose in the form of totalitarian
societies like Nazi Germany, the USSR under
Stalin, or Maoism in Communist China.
A wealth of studies
and political theories emerged, too numerous to
mention here (some of which are listed in the
bibliography). Outstanding thinkers such as T.H.
Green, Herbert Spencer, Bernard Bosanquet,
Ernest Barker, Hannah Arendt
, John Rawls, David Held,
Benjamin Barber, Errol E. Harris, and Jürgen
Habermas created substantial theoretical
underpinnings for democracy in the light of a
more sophisticated contemporary understanding of
the human condition. At the heart of their
understanding, as we will see in greater detail,
is the insight that democracy requires a
genuinely “public space” where persons can
transcend their partisanship, special interests,
and individual particularities and engage in
communicative discussions that, on some level,
transform the participants and allows a higher
perspective ever more closely representing the
common good of the whole to emerge.
Ironically, as suggested above, at the same time
that this profound insight into the fundamental
requirement of democracy developed during the 20th
century, rapidly changing global conditions and
technologies began undermining functioning
democracies worldwide. This fostered regimes
premised on fear and national security that
severely curtailed civil liberties and modified
the democratic “spirit of the laws” that
Montesquieu had identified as a fundamental
feature of a social contract predicated on
“consent of the governed.”
The idea of a social
contract between people to create government
over themselves as an impartial authority,
representing the common good and responsible to
the people who remain sovereign, was articulated
by John Locke, Montesquieu, and the other 18th
century theorists. Montesquieu insists on a
clear separation of the branches of government,
creating a diversity of power centers and the
checks and balances necessary to keep government
responsible to the people as a whole whom it
serves, rather than to special interests, a
ruling elite, or an absolute monarch. Locke
distinguished clearly between “tacit consent” by
the people and “overt consent.” Overt consent is
what is given at the founding of the social
contract, when, for example, a constitution is
signed by the founders and then is ratified in a
free and fair referendum by the people whose law
of the land it will become.
The idea of tacit
consent presents greater conceptual
difficulties. Can people born and raised within
a society be said to have given tacit consent to
its laws? In Plato’s
Crito,
Socrates argues that the coherence and order of
the society within which he lived, the fact that
he was free to leave and never left, and the
fact that he was free to “persuade” his
government to change its laws, together indicate
that he has consented to obey its laws. However,
most people are more embedded within their
social situations than Socrates appears to have
been when he claims he was free to leave at any
time. Many people have family, friends,
recognition in their local communities, a job,
and other forms of significant investment in the
societies within which they were born and grew
up. The fact that they do not immigrate hardly
indicates an active consent to obey laws that
they may consider unjust or an active consent to
some non-democratic government that happens to
reign in their societies.
Does the right to
vote indicate consent of the governed? There
are, of course, many variations on this right,
and many ways
governments can allow people this right without
compromising their undemocratic or even
dictatorial character. In his study of the
United States entitled
Democracy
in America that appeared in two volumes in
1835 and 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville speaks of a
kind of universal tacit consent that
characterized the society in the United States.
He characterized it as a general feeling among
the people of a
“consensus universalis.”
This feeling was perhaps generated by the
right to participate in government and the
freedom of speech and association that prevailed
(in addition to voting), a freedom that allowed
even many minorities to form associations and
become active political advocates.
In her 1972
discussion of Tocqueville’s observations, Hannah
Arendt asserts that this
consensus
universalis, if it ever existed, has been
lost in the United States, having been replaced
by lobbying for special interests and party
politics directed toward winning power for
certain interests rather than political debate
based on alternative conceptions of how best to
realize the common good of the whole society
(1972: 85-102). This loss of a sense of the
legitimacy of today’s democratic societies is
clearly a worldwide phenomenon. The idea of a
common good, developed and pursued through
citizen participants who feel they can
effectively participate in the generation of the
laws under which they are governed, is
disappearing from many so-called democratic
societies worldwide.
The reasons for this
are, doubtless, many and complex. The present
writer has had the opportunity to gain some
familiarity with the governing of both
Bangladesh and Libya, for example.
In the former the “Freedom Fighters Movement”
and in the latter the "Revolutionary Committees
Movement” claim to be struggling against odds to
keep alive what each perceives as the original
democratic spirit of their society. Threats to
this struggle come from a number of sources,
including fundamentalist religious forces within
each of these societies. However one evaluates
these claims, perhaps the intent of these
movements are not that different from movements
in the United States like “People for the
American Way” that struggle against the
destruction of democracy within the U.S. by
fundamentalist religious forces and other right
wing threats to a free society.
However, the
reasons for the threat to
democracy within many nations today have much to
do with a globalized world that has generated
immense forces transcending the boundaries of
nation-states. The development of ever-faster
and ever-more-lethal weapons in a militarized
world threatens civil liberty within nations and
forces their governments into a national
security state mode. Gigantic global economic
forces, stripping economic independence and
internal economic control from nations, means
that governments can no longer protect their
citizens in the interest of a common economic
good. The consequent separation of extreme
wealth for a few within every nation and serious
poverty for the majority further erodes the
social contract.
The disappearance of basic resources such as
fresh water and arable land worldwide (and the
power for foreign interests to control the
internal resources of sovereign nations) has
forced governments to take measures that appear
to violate the social contract. Global climate
activity has created major droughts, storms,
flooding, and other severe weather patterns
that, again, force governments to interrupt the
coherence, consistency, and regularity of the
social processes of free association, dialogue,
and citizen participation that appear
fundamental to generating a
consensus
universalis among the population.
These globalized historical forces will
necessarily worsen over time, making it clear
that there is no possibility of reversing the
historical process and returning to the kind of
“democracy in America” described by Tocqueville
in the 19th century. If democracy is
to be protected and defended, this can only be
through a
new social contract that is now globalized
to the point where an Earth Federation
government can deal with the international
forces (military, economic, resource depletion,
and climate destruction) that now destroy
legitimate political processes everywhere on our
planet. Consent of the governed within a free
society cannot function when government exists
in a perpetual state of emergency, which is
exactly what our globalized world order has
imposed on all nation-state governments.
The idea of an active consent of the governed
within a sustainable society that protects
peace, freedom, and justice to the point where
the citizens recognize that government
represents their will and their sovereignty can
no longer happen at the nation-state level. Even
the most powerful nation-states have lost the
ability to sustain functioning democracy within
their borders. We return to the inseparability
(described above) of the moral dimension from
the dimension of political responsibility. Our
moral and political responsibility requires that
we establish a genuine community among human
beings living on the Earth, a community that
necessarily requires a protected
planetary
public space where genuine dialogue and
communication can take place.
How are human beings to come together in a forum
capable of action to reach, through honest
dialogue and debate, a mutual understanding
concerning the realities of our human situation
(its totality) and how are we to move into the
future on the basis of this understanding? How
are we to reach collective decisions on the
coordinated actions that must be taken to create
and protect a future for humanity and our common
home, the Earth? It is clear that there is
little public space for genuine discussion
within
nations, since their false assumptions about
negative freedom have led to an internal space
dominated by slogans, ideologies, accusations,
public
relations, and other forms of strategic
language. The wealthy plutocracy, on the one
hand, and government with its militaristic
propaganda, on the other, colonize the internal
informational spaces within nations.
However, at the planetary level, there is no
significant space at all for open dialogue.
There are no global institutions at present that
might even make this a genuine possibility.
The U.N. General Assembly, as is widely
admitted, is merely a forum for representatives
of sovereign nations to represent the negative
sovereign “rights” and the fragmented interests
of their nations
vis-à-vis
one another. Some agencies of the U.N. (such as
UNESCO) attempt to create a framework for
genuine dialogue among cultures and peoples of
the world, but the militarized, political
framework of sovereign nation-states everywhere
defeats these feeble attempts. A global public
space framed by a global community making
possible dialogue concerning our endangered
future does not exist at the international level
of nation-states. Hannah Arendt
writes:
Only in the freedom of our speaking with one
another does the world, as that about which we
speak, emerge in objectivity and visibility from
all sides…. The freedom to interact in speech
with many others and experience the diversity
that the world always is in its totality….is
rather the substance and meaning of all things
political. In this sense politics and freedom
are identical, and wherever this kind of freedom
does not exist, there is no political space in
the true sense. (2005: 128-129)
“The world,” as an objective set of qualities,
processes, and characteristics, only emerges in
its fullness through the intersubjective
encounter of different human viewpoints with one
another. In today’s globalized situation, such a
dialogue requires a global social contract. Only
such a contract could create a public political
space for humans to intersubjectively articulate
an objective “world” in terms of which we might
take action to forge a decent future for
ourselves. Where this democratic public space
for authentic politics does not exist, as on the
global level, then neither does freedom exist.
Human beings on planet Earth are pulled toward a
calamitous future, as if by a raging river, yet
lack any meaningful freedom to determine their
common destiny.
The more this dialogic encounter of differing
perspectives is lacking, the more our ideas
about the “world” become illusory ideological
fantasies. Without genuine dialogue among the
diversity of human beings, the more we get
institutions like the Pentagon, employing the
immense violence at the disposal of its
ideological fantasies (ideas about “the world”),
and wondering why its policies always lead to
unmitigated disaster both at home and abroad.
Such illusions (products of a lack of genuine
dialogue) are the stock in trade of most of the
nations in the U.N. General Assembly.
Freedom and the public space for communicative
interaction (politics in its highest, ethical
sense) are substantially identical, and neither
exists at the global level where concerted
action on the part of nations, corporations,
groups, and citizens is so fundamental to human
survival and the creation of a decent future for
ourselves as well as future generations. The
“objectivity and visibility” of the world emerge
when people dialogue from different points of
view and come together in mutual understanding
or, at the very least, mutual toleration and
respect, which allows them to collectively act
to create a future for the community.
Freedom requires not only public space but human
beings who have entered that public space as
full human beings, not as distorted mouthpieces
of some ideology, interest group, or social
pathology. The ratification of a global social
contract and the creation of the public space of
the World Parliament will likely attract the
best among us who see the opportunity to express
their deeper and common humanity in service to
the planet and its citizens. The Earth
Federation government will function
above the vast concentrations of wealth in
banking and multinational corporations and
above
the fanatical religious or other interest groups
that today colonize governments worldwide.
The
Constitution is designed to prevent such
colonization. Mature human leaders, capable of
intelligence and compassion and internally free
of compulsion, fear, and hate, will likely staff
both the World Parliament and the agencies of
the Earth Federation. Humanity will be in the
process of taking its next step from
fragmentation to wholeness. Psychologist Erich
Fromm expesses something of the kind of freedom
to which I am referring:
This discussion of “humane experiences”
culminates in the statement that freedom is a
quality of being fully humane. Inasmuch as we
transcend the realm of physical survival and
inasmuch as we are not driven by fear,
impotence, narcissism, dependency, etc., we
transcend compulsion. Love, tenderness, reason,
interest, integrity, and identity – they all are
children of freedom. Political freedom is a
condition of human freedom only inasmuch as it
furthers the development of what is specifically
human. Political freedom in an alienated
society, which contributes to the dehumanization
of man, becomes un-freedom. (1968: 89-90)
The creators of the
Earth
Constitution deeply understood the urgent
need for an institutionalized public space, a
viable global social contract, where peoples and
nations could together participate within the
protected public space of a tricameral world
parliament to make those laws and decisions that
open up a viable future for humanity. In deeply
alienated societies like the U.S. today, what
remains of “public freedom” in the national
security state has become the “unfreedom” of
hate speech, political hypocrisy, partisan
dogma, and vicious self-interest at the expense
of the common good.
The
Constitution provides humankind with a
carefully worked out structure for democratic
world government centered on public freedom. It
articulates a process of discussion,
decision-making, and action that completes and
embraces the historical human project of
temporalized freedom that all along (going back
to the ancient Stoics) included the entire human
community as its most basic presupposition. Its
Preamble expresses the dynamics of a mature,
compassionate response to the human condition.
Its detailed structure as a global social
contract invites fully humane and mature human
beings to step into that hallowed public space
and create the conditions of freedom for all of
humankind.
Article One of the
Constitution states six
“broad
functions”
of the Earth Federation – revealing that the
sphere of action of the world government shall
be all those global problems beyond the scope of
individual nation-states. The ability to deal
with these global problems constitutes grounds
for ratification of the
Constitution by the people and nations of
Earth. But the ability of the Earth Federation
government to act effectively with regard to
these global problems depends on the public
space created for decision-making by the World
Parliament and within the ministries responsible
to the Parliament. The history of political
philosophy with its reflection on the grounds of
human freedom culminates in human beings taking
practical steps to create public space and
mature public freedom at the planetary level.
The sixth
“broad function”
of the
Constitution captures something of this
dimension:
“to
devise and implement solutions to all problems
which are beyond the capacity of national
governments, or which are now or may become of
global or international concern or consequence.”
Drawing on the collective knowledge of the world
(especially represented in the House of
Counselors within the World Parliament) and the
entire World Parliament representing the people
of Earth (in the House of Peoples) and the
nations of Earth (in the House of Nations), the
Earth Federation government makes it possible
for humanity to address global problems that are
beyond the capacity of the nation-states.
Having understood the communitarian foundations
of our individual personal freedoms, political
philosophy has articulated the theoretical and
practical foundations for democratic and
republican forms of government. However, with
the ascent to the philosophy of democratic world
government, political philosophy now fulfills
its historical quest to understand and properly
institutionalize the relation between individual
and public freedom in its only fully coherent
and logical possible form – public freedom for
the entire human community that can only be
affected through a global social contract
(Harris 2008, Ch. 8).
The maturity
of this planetary political form will enhance
the process of transformation toward personal
maturity of all the citizens, religions, and
associations comprising the Earth Federation.
The social contract within nations can no longer
function properly. The democratic agreement
between people and government assigning rights
and duties to both disintegrates as global
forces influence nation-state contracts from
without and make functioning democracy focusing
on the common good of the nation impossible.
Freedom, national self-determination, and
self-governance arising from the limited
communities of nation-states is no longer
possible in the face of a multiplicity of
economic, political, environmental, and military
decision-making forces beyond the scope of
national sovereignty. The social contract,
democratic governance, and corresponding human
freedom can now only authentically exist at the
planetary level.
We have seen that the Preamble to the
Constitution for the Federation of Earth
provides the most basic philosophical framework
for the
Constitution through making clear that the
“principle of unity in diversity”
is the only possible coherent basis for
planetary peace, justice, and freedom. Unity in
diversity is the principle of human maturity and
holism that transcends puerile compulsion and
fragmentation. And the
Constitution itself provides a framework for
global public space within the World Parliament
encompassing all the peoples and nations of
Earth along with the set of institutions, from
judiciary to civilian police, necessary to
maintain and protect that global public space.
Here lies the real significance of the
Constitution for world citizens and global
thinkers. It culminates the human quest for
freedom and draws humanity together into the
global community that is
already
presupposed by every individual life-project
and every community of decision-making on Earth.
The practical effects of this planetary
political holism will likely result in binding
humans together within a framework of common
dialogue and decision-making regarding our
common human fate.
For institutions are established that make all
persons equally responsible as legal world
citizens before one, universal common law that
allows for democratic diversity at every level
within the world federal system. It brings the
theoretically understood structure of human
freedom (that the human community is presupposed
in every individual freedom) into the practical
public realm by institutionalizing a public
freedom for the human community (where that
public freedom ultimately belongs) to deal with
issues unsolvable at the local and regional
levels.
This public freedom is not only a fulfillment of
the philosophical quest of political thought
over the centuries and a major actualization of
our human quest for mature freedom. It is also
the foundation stone for human survival and
flourishing upon planet Earth – for that
survival and flourishing can only take place in
freedom – through the establishment of a
holistic planetary public freedom embracing and
protecting the individual personal freedom (and
hence the future) of every citizen of our
precious planet Earth.
A new social contract is necessary, a
newly-founded global society, in
which the
participants understand that their freedom,
security, and survival depend on their universal
affirmation of a
consensus
universalis. Political holism understands
that positive freedom ultimately arises from a
planetary human community that has consented to
create that global public space necessary for
human beings to envision their world and take
action to actualize a peaceful, just, and
sustainable future for the Earth and all its
creatures. The ratification of the
Earth
Constitution constitutes by far our best bet
for affecting this planetary social contract
before it is too late.
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