Concentrated Political Power Essay, Research Paper
CONCENTRATED POLITICAL POWER
Should political power be concentrated in the hands of a few leaders,
or should it be widely dispersed among the members of a society? Many
great Philosophers ranging from Plato to Marx have pondered this question
over time. Historically many major civilizations were based on systems of
organization stressing centralized power and control. The attempt was to
create and ensure a stable and orderly way of life but as society evolved the
defenders of concentrated power felt compelled to justify the need for
centralized authority. This attempt at justification can be found in Plato s
famous work The Republic. According to Socrates, the principal speaker in
The Republic, an ideal state would consist of three classes. The philosopher-
kings would exercise political power in the service of justice and wisdom; the
soldiers would protect the state as a means of acquiring honor; and the
civilian population would provide for the material needs of society. A large
part of The Republic is devoted to a detailed presentation of the rigorous
intellectual training of future rulers. This section also contains a fundamental
analysis of metaphysical and scientific thought. The government of the state
acts to enforce the virtue, and consequently the true happiness, of the
individual citizen, and an orderly and productive public life is the result.
Criticizing the doctrines of atheism and materialism, Plato reaffirmed his
idealistic position and asserted his belief in the moral government of the
universe and the immortality of the soul. The Republics anti-democratic
implications are clear. A successful democratic politician must give the
people what they want, which is not (or may not be) what is good for them;
to succeed he must become like them. The true politician would give the
people what was good for them, and (at first, at least) they would not like it.
The true politician is not like the people, he knows what is good for them
better than they do, he must rule them (at least at first) against their will.
(Plato, Collected Dialogues, Contemporary Philosophy,p.357).
For Plato concentrated power is based on the citizens duty to serve the
state, which completely supervises their lives. The state gives meaning and
purpose to their lives and continues to exist in its own right over and beyond
the separate existence of its members.
Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth-century English Philosopher, argued the case
for concentrated power from a totally different viewpoint. That the condition
of mere nature, that is to say, of absolute liberty, such as is theirs that
neither are sovereigns nor subjects, is anarchy and the condition of war:
that the precepts, by which men are guided to avoid that condition, are the
laws of nature: that a Commonwealth without sovereign power is but a word
without substance and cannot stand: that subjects owe to sovereigns simple
obedience in all things wherein their obedience is not repugnant to the laws
of God. I have sufficiently proved in that which I have already written.
(Abel,p.414) Hobbes s viewpoint is that every citizen owes total
allegiance to the government, regardless of what type, so long as the
government is able to rule. Rousseau takes a unique view of the role of
concentrated political power in many of his works most notably in The Social
Contract. This formula shows us that the act of association comprises a
mutual undertaking between the public and the individuals, and that each
individual, in making a contract, as we may say, with himself, is bound in a
double capacity; as a member of the Sovereign he is bound to the
individuals, and as a member of the State to the Sovereign. But the maxim
of civil right, that no one is bound by undertakings made to himself, does
not apply in this case; for there is a great difference between incurring an
obligation to yourself and incurring one to a whole of which you form a part.
Reformers like Rousseau in France, began to reexamine the origins and
purposes of the state. Rather than the right of a monarch to rule, Rousseau
proposed that the state owed its authority to the general will of the
governed. For him, the nation itself is sovereign, and the law is none other
than the will of the people as a whole. Influenced by Plato, Rousseau
recognized the state as the environment for the moral development of
humanity. Man, though corrupted by his civilization, remained basically good
and therefore capable of assuming the moral position of aiming at the
general welfare. Because the result of aiming at individual purposes is
disagreement, a healthy (non-corrupting) state can exist only when the
common good is recognized as the goal.(Contemporary Philosophy,p.401)
Rousseau’s ideas reflect an attitude far more positive in respect of human
nature than Hobbes, his 16th-century English predecessor. The “natural
condition” of man, said Hobbes, is self-seeking and competitive. Man
subjects himself to the rule of the state as the only means of self-
preservation whereby he can escape the brutish cycle of mutual destruction
that is otherwise the result of his contact. (Abel, p.413)
Rousseau deviates from the defenders of concentrated power, in that he
proposes having the people enter into a social contract and thus taking on
more of a democratic view of political power, the dispersing of power among
members of society.
Again, the Sovereign, being formed wholly of the individuals who compose
it, neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs; and
consequently the sovereign power need give no guarantee to its subjects,
because it is impossible for the body to wish to hurt all its members. We
shall also see later on that it cannot hurt any in particular. The Sovereign,
merely by virtue of what it is, is always what it should be. (Contemporary
Philosophy, p. 406)
One the most widely supported and controversial stands in support of
concentrated power are found in the works of the nineteenth century
German political philosopher, Karl Marx. His stand is commonly referred to
as Communism. Communism is a system of political and economic
organization in which property is owned by the community and all citizens
share in the enjoyment of the common wealth, more or less according to
their need. The origins of the idea of communism lie deep in Western
thought. The idea of a classless society, in which all the means of production
and distribution are owned by the community as a whole and from which
any traces of a state have disappeared, has long held a fascination for
human beings.
A number of the utopias that have been described in literature, including
Thomas More’s Utopia, provide for the common ownership of property to
some extent. The philosophical view of Marx s work is that creativity, that is,
the ability to exert labor on objects of nature in order to satisfy one’s
needs, is the defining characteristic of humanity. Further, one labors not
merely for the individual but for the species. All human works, from food to
art, houses to governments, form the human world, which consists of the
various forms of the objectification of humanity’s productive powers as a
species. Man is a species being, and the species as a whole should enjoy the
objectification of its labor. There is a strong element of Humanism in Marx s
theories in that all people are good even though he advocates a high
concentration of power deeming his idea of concentrated power totalitarian
in nature.
The philosophical debate over concentrated political power has
spanned centuries encompassing various political ideologies and ideas. No
perfect system or utopia has been found, and the debate continues.
Bibliography
h Honer, Stanley M; Hunt Thomas C; Okholm Dennis L, Invitation to
Philosophy, Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998
h Abel, Donald C, Fifty Readings in Philosophy, United States of America,
McGraw-Hill, 1994
h Kaplan, Abraham, The Pursuit of Wisdom-The Scope of Philosophy, London, Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1977
h Holt, Henry, Contemporary Philosophy, New York, Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1954