Classic Political Philosophy for the Modern Man

by Andrew Lynn

  They divide mankind into two parts. Men in general, except one, form the first; the politician himself forms the second, which is by far the most important.

  In fact, they begin by supposing that men are devoid of any principle of action, and of any means of discernment in themselves; that they have no initiative; that they are inert matter, passive particles, atoms without impulse; at best a vegetation indifferent to its own mode of existence, susceptible of assuming, from an exterior will and hand an infinite number of forms, more or less symmetrical, artistic, and perfected.

  Moreover, every one of these politicians does not hesitate to assume that he himself is, under the names of organizer, discoverer, legislator, institutor or founder, this will and hand, this universal initiative, this creative power, whose sublime mission it is to gather together these scattered materials, that is, men, into society.

  Starting from these data, as a gardener according to his caprice shapes his trees into pyramids, parasols, cubes, cones, vases, espaliers, distaffs, or fans; so the socialist, following his chimera, shapes poor humanity into groups, series, circles, subcircles, honeycombs, or social workshops, with all kinds of variations. And as the gardener, to bring his trees into shape, needs hatchets, pruning hooks, saws, and shears, so the politician, to bring society into shape, needs the forces which he can only find in the laws; the law of tariffs, the law of taxation, the law of assistance, and the law of education.

  It is so true that the socialists look upon mankind as a subject for social experiments that if, by chance, they are not quite certain of the success of these experiments, they will request a portion of mankind as a subject to experiment upon. It is well known how popular the idea of trying all systems is, and one of their chiefs has been known seriously to demand of the Constituent Assembly a parish, with all its inhabitants, upon which to make his experiments.

  It is thus that an inventor will make a small machine before he makes one of the regular size. Thus the chemist sacrifices some substances, the agriculturist some seed and a corner of his field, to make trial of an idea.

  But think of the difference between the gardener and his trees, between the inventor and his machine, between the chemist and his substances, between the agriculturist and his seed! The socialist thinks, in all sincerity, that there is the same difference between himself and mankind.

  No wonder the politicians of the nineteenth century look upon society as an artificial production of the legislator’s genius. This idea, the result of a classical education, has taken possession of all the thinkers and great writers of our country.

  To all these persons, the relations between mankind and the legislator appear to be the same as those that exist between the clay and the potter.

  Moreover, if they have consented to recognize in the heart of man a capability of action, and in his intellect a faculty of discernment, they have looked upon this gift of God as a fatal one, and thought that mankind, under these two impulses, tended fatally towards ruin. They have taken it for granted that if abandoned to their own inclinations, men would only occupy themselves with religion to arrive at atheism, with instruction to come to ignorance, and with labour and exchange to be extinguished in misery.

  Happily, according to these writers, there are some men, termed governors and legislators, upon whom Heaven has bestowed opposite tendencies, not for their own sake only, but for the sake of the rest of the world.

  Whilst mankind tends to evil, they incline to good; whilst mankind is advancing towards darkness, they are aspiring to enlightenment; whilst mankind is drawn towards vice, they are attracted by virtue. And, this granted, they demand the assistance of force, by means of which they are to substitute their own tendencies for those of the human race.

  …

  I shall now resume the subject by remarking that immediately after the economical part[3] of the question, and before the political part, a leading question presents itself. It is the following:

  What is law? What ought it to be? What is its domain? What are its limits? Where, in fact, does the prerogative of the legislator stop?

  I have no hesitation in answering, law is common force organized to prevent injustice—in short, law is justice.

  It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them from injury.

  It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things.

  Law, because it has force for its necessary sanction, can only have the domain of force, which is justice.

  And as every individual has a right to have recourse to force only in cases of lawful defence, so collective force, which is only the union of individual forces, cannot be rationally used for any other end.

  The law, then, is solely the organization of individual rights that existed before law.

  Law is justice.

  So far from being able to oppress the people, or to plunder their property, even for a philanthropic end, its mission is to protect the people, and to secure to them the possession of their property.

  It must not be said, either, that it may be philanthropic, so long as it abstains from all oppression; for this is a contradiction. The law cannot avoid acting upon our persons and property; if it does not secure them, then it violates them if it touches them.

  The law is justice.

  Nothing can be more clear and simple, more perfectly defined and bounded, or more visible to every eye; for justice is a given quantity, immutable and unchangeable, and which admits of neither increase or diminution.

  Depart from this point, make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, industrial, literary, or artistic, and you will be lost in vagueness and uncertainty; you will be upon unknown ground, in a forced utopia, or, what is worse, in the midst of a multitude of contending utopias, each striving to gain possession of the law, and to impose it upon you; for fraternity and philanthropy have no fixed limits, as justice has. Where will you stop? Where is the law to stop? One person, Mr de Saint Cricq, will only extend his philanthropy to some of the industrial classes, and will require the law to slight the consumers in favor of the producers. Another, like Mr Considérant, will take up the cause of the working classes, and claim for them by means of the law, at a fixed rate, clothing, lodging, food, and everything necessary for the support of life. A third, Mr Louis Blanc, will say, and with reason, that this would be an incomplete fraternity, and that the law ought to provide them with tools of labor and education. A fourth will observe that such an arrangement still leaves room for inequality, and that the law ought to introduce into the most remote hamlets luxury, literature, and the arts. This is the high road to communism; in other words, legislation will be—as it now is—the battlefield for everybody’s dreams and everybody’s covetousness.

  Law is justice.

  In this proposition we represent to ourselves a simple, immovable government. And I defy anyone to tell me whence the thought of a revolution, an insurrection, or a simple disturbance could arise against a public force confined to the repression of injustice. Under such a system, there would be more well-being, and this well-being would be more equally distributed; and as to the sufferings inseparable from humanity, no one would think of accusing the government of them, for it would be as innocent of them as it is of the variations of the temperature. Have the people ever been known to rise against the court of appeals, or assail the justices of the peace, for the sake of claiming the rate of wages, free credit, tools of labor, the advantages of the tariff, or the social workshop? They know perfectly well that these matters are beyond the jurisdiction of the justices of the peace, and they would soon learn that they are not within the jurisdiction of the law quite as much.

  But if the law were to be made upon the principle of frate
rnity, if it were to be proclaimed that from it proceed all benefits and all evils—that it is responsible for every individual grievance and for every social inequality—then you open the door to an endless succession of complaints, irritations, troubles, and revolutions.

  Law is justice.

  And it would be very strange if it could properly be anything else! Is not justice right? Are not rights equal? With what show of right can the law interfere to subject me to the social plans of Messrs Mimerel, de Melun, Thiers, or Louis Blanc, rather than to subject these gentlemen to my plans? Is it to be supposed that nature has not bestowed upon me sufficient imagination to invent a utopia too? Is it for the law to make choice of one amongst so many fancies, and to make use of the public force in its service?

  Law is justice.

  And let it not be said, as it continually is, that the law, in this sense, would be atheistic, individual, and heartless, and that it would mold mankind in its own image. This is an absurd conclusion, quite worthy of the governmental infatuation which sees mankind in the law.

  What then? Does it follow that if we are free, we shall cease to act? Does it follow that if we do not receive an impulse from the law, we shall receive no impulse at all? Does it follow that if the law confines itself to securing to us the free exercise of our faculties, our faculties will be paralyzed? Does it follow that if the law does not impose upon us forms of religion, modes of association, methods of education, rules for labour, directions for exchange, and plans for charity, we shall plunge headlong into atheism, isolation, ignorance, misery, and greed? Does it follow that we shall no longer recognize the power and goodness of God; that we shall cease to associate together, to help each other, to love and assist our unfortunate brethren, to study the secrets of nature, and to aspire after perfection in our existence?

  Law is justice.

  And it is under the law of justice, under the reign of right, under the influence of liberty, security, stability, and responsibility, that every man will attain to the fullness of his worth, to all the dignity of his being, and that mankind will accomplish with order and with calmness—slowly, it is true, but with certainty—the progress ordained for it.

  I believe that my theory is correct; for whatever be the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, or economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labour, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit, or government; at whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing—the solution of the social problem is in liberty.

  And have I not experience on my side? Cast your eye over the globe. Which are the happiest, the most moral, and the most peaceable nations? Those where the law interferes the least with private activity; where the government is the least felt; where individuality has the most scope, and public opinion the most influence; where the machinery of the administration is the least important and the least complicated; where taxation is lightest and least unequal, popular discontent the least excited and the least justifiable; where the responsibility of individuals and classes is the most active, and where, consequently, if morals are not in a perfect state, at any rate they tend incessantly to correct themselves; where transactions, meetings, and associations are the least fettered; where labour, capital, and production suffer the least from artificial displacements; where mankind follows most completely its own natural course; where the thought of God prevails the most over the inventions of men; those, in short, who realize the most nearly this idea that within the limits of right, all should flow from the free, perfectible, and voluntary action of man; nothing be attempted by the law or by force, except the administration of universal justice.

  I cannot avoid coming to this conclusion—that there are too many great men in the world; there are too many legislators, organizers, institutors of society, conductors of the people, fathers of nations, etc., etc. Too many persons place themselves above mankind, to rule and patronize it; too many persons make a trade of looking after it. It will be answered: ‘You yourself are occupied upon it all this time.’ Very true. But it must be admitted that it is in another sense entirely that I am speaking; and if I join the reformers it is solely for the purpose of inducing them to relax their hold.

  I am not doing as Vaucauson[4] did with his automaton, but as a physiologist does with the human frame; I would study and admire it.

  I am acting with regard to it in the spirit that animated a celebrated traveller. He found himself in the midst of a savage tribe. A child had just been born, and a crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks were around it, armed with rings, hooks, and bandages. One said: ‘This child will never smell the perfume of a calumet, unless I stretch his nostrils.’ Another said: ‘He will be without the sense of hearing, unless I draw his ears down to his shoulders.’ A third said: ‘He will never see the light of the sun, unless I give his eyes an oblique direction.’ A fourth said: ‘He will never be upright, unless I bend his legs.’ A fifth said: ‘He will not be able to think, unless I press his brain.’ ‘Stop!’ said the traveller. ‘Whatever God does, is well done; do not pretend to know more than He; and as He has given organs to this frail creature, allow those organs to develop themselves, to strengthen themselves by exercise, use, experience, and liberty.’

  God has implanted in mankind also all that is necessary to enable it to accomplish its destinies. There is a providential social physiology, as well as a providential human physiology. The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their state religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun—reject all systems, and try liberty—liberty, which is an act of faith in God and in His work.

  * * *

  General Council of Manufactures, Agriculture, and Commerce, 6th of May, 1850. ↵

  If protection were only granted in France to a single class, to the engineers, for instance, it would be so absurdly plundering, as to be unable to maintain itself. Thus we see all the protected trades combine, make common cause, and even recruit themselves in such a way as to appear to embrace the mass of the national labour. They feel instinctively that plunder is slurred over by being generalized. ↵

  Political economy precedes politics: the former has to discover whether human interests are harmonious or antagonistic, a fact which must be settled before the latter can determine the prerogatives of government. ↵

  Jacques de Vaucanson (1709-1782): French inventor of robotic devices and automata. ↵

  11

  John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

  Introduction

  Why does freedom matter?

  That is the central question addressed in John Stuart Mill’s essay, ‘On Liberty’. The work is a milestone in the history of classical liberalism and the most spirited defence of free speech and free action ever written. At its heart is the basic insight that the individual is sovereign over his own body and mind, and the only purpose for which power can be exercised over any member of a civilised community against his will is to prevent harm to others.

  John Stuart Mill (1806-1883) was born in London around the turn of the nineteenth century. His was an unusual upbringing: his father set out with the intention of cultivating in his son a genius intellect to carry forward the cause of utilitarianism, which was to be effected by teaching him Greek at three and Latin at eight, encouraging him to ask questions about everything he read, and shielding him from association with children his own age other than siblings. When
Mill’s father took up a post as a senior administrator with the East India Company, the younger Mill followed him into the company’s employment, where he would remain until the Company was abolished around a quarter of a century later. A turning point for Mill came, however, when he was hit by a mental crisis upon arriving at a realisation that even the creation of a just society, his life’s goal, would not make him happy; he concluded from this episode that education must cultivate the emotions as well as the intellect, and that there are important values existing outside the scope of utilitarian philosophy, such as autonomy and dignity. Mill published his major work on political democracy, Considerations on Representative Government, in 1862, in which he advocated for a ‘democratic elitism’ whereby the franchise would be extended to those who possessed basic educational competencies and who were not reliant upon public support, while the more competent would be given greater say in government, through plural voting and a Second Chamber composed of those who had already held high employment. In his later years, Mill was elected Liberal MP for the City of Westminster. He died in Avignon, France, where he was buried next to his wife.

  Freedom for Mill meant, in the first place, freedom of thought and freedom of speech. There are, he says, three kinds of belief: those wholly true, those partly true, and those wholly false. If an opinion is condemned to silence, it may be one that is wholly true—to deny this possibility would be to assume our own infallibility. The silenced opinion may, on the other hand, be an error containing a portion of truth—in which case the only chance of the full truth being obtained would be through the ‘collision of adverse opinions’. The condemned doctrine may, of course, be entirely false. Even this, though, would not justify censorship, as it is only when vigorously and earnestly contested that true beliefs become more than mere convention and prejudice.