The life of Man in the state of nature, before the invention of the Modern State was, famously, according to Thomas Hobbes "Solitary, poor, nasty, bruThe life of Man in the state of nature, before the invention of the Modern State was, famously, according to Thomas Hobbes "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In order to escape this condition he argued that Humans had created the Leviathan, his poetic-mythological term for the State, wherein each subject gave his consent and approval in order that the King, or Sovereign, "has the use of so much power and strength conferred on him that, by terror thereof, he is enabled to form the wills of them all, to peace at home, and mutual aid against their enemies abroad." Thus instituted, the modern state, working through the auspices of a single individual had the authority and power to rule effectively over all his subjects and prevent the anarchy and terror which Hobbes had described as 'The war of all against all.' This rather pessimistic, almost tragic sense of human nature has shaped thinking about Governance ever since.
David Runciman takes Hobbes' view as the start of modern thinking about the State. Of course, questions of Democracy and Authority, Kingship and Anarchy go back to the very beginnings of human History. It was Hobbes however, writing against the backdrop of the English Civil Wars, who had lived through the chaos that ensued when the power of the King waned, and it was he who provided the most stirring description of the role and significance of Political authority. He saw this for himself at close quarters, tutoring the young Charles, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne, whose father was beheaded by the Parliamentarians and who later ruled after the Restoration as Charles the second. Since Hobbes, criticisms of this view have come from all quarters. Anarchist writers, to take one instance, have contended that this paints a far too dreary a view of human nature. Is it really the case, they ask, that man in nature exists in constant conflict? Doesn't man have an innate capacity to coexist and cooperate? Doesn't the State instantiate the violence and domination that it purports to save us from? Were our nature really so base and violent, humans would surely never have been able to evolve such Political structures in the first place. This argument marks the key dividing line in our politics between the Conservative and the Progressive.
From this starting point Runciman takes us on a whistle stop tour of multiple writers who have found aspects both to commend and to critique in Hobbes and in the very concept of the State itself. Marx and Engels saw it as an instrument of class domination used by the wealthy and powerful to exploit the poor and use the apparatus of State control to legitimise their dominance. They called infamously, for the seizure of power by the Proletariat which would ultimately lead to the withering away of the State so that "The Government of Persons is replaced by the administration of things." Gandhi saw it as a betrayal of man's benevolent nature, used by wealthy countries like Britain to impose its material and spiritual values on weaker countries such as India. Catherine Mackinnon provides a Feminist critique which sees the State as an instrument of Patriarchy. Hayek worried that the growth of State power would ultimately lead us all down the road to Serfdom, while Francis Fukuyama wondered if the modern State, with its blend of market forces and liberal democratic values, had in fact won out in the battle of ideas, and that we may have reached the end of History.
Whatever your own thoughts on this varied cohort, Runciman is thoughtful and perceptive. He asks the right questions, places them each in their appropriate historical context and refuses to reduce complicated ideas to slogans. Although there are some rather glaring omissions (Rousseau, for example) he is fair-minded to those which he does include and gives ample space and time even to thinkers and ideas which he does not share. Towards the end of the book he also teases out some fascinating thoughts on how the role of the State may yet develop. In the era of the Tech Billionaires, where unelected bro-ligarchs have more wealth and power than half the countries on the face of the earth, what value does the Nation State still have? Maybe our democratic experiment has come to an end, and we should welcome the advent of our new Feudal overlords Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg et al. Or, just possibly, the only effective counterweight capable of taming and subduing these all mighty Masters of the Universe is the power of the modern State. Which prompts one final tantalising thought: What if the battleground of the future is not between Individuals, nor between States, but between The State and the Transnational Corporation. Like some terrible dystopian movie, what if our future really is Leviathan Vs Behemoth?...more
"We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others."
"Old men delight in giving good advice Hilariously scathing. Consider the following:
"We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others."
"Old men delight in giving good advice as a consolation for the fact that they can no longer provide bad examples."
"The desire to appear clever often prevents one from being so."
"What makes the vanity of others insufferable to us is that it wounds our own."
"The reason that there are so few good conversationalists is that most people are thinking about what they are going to say and not about what the others are saying."
Very rich fare and can only be read in small chunks before it gets too much....more
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