From the notes under the anniversary note, it is the most everyone wants me to compose about politics. However, I would like to remind you that I am disgusted by the politics understood by it as understood by the "300 politics" services, so don't anticipate me to be "an opinion journal". You've got another places on the net to discuss "Schetin this, Petru that."
I like politics at the level of ideas. I don't think I've always written about my worldview in the convention of the "Searching for the Absolute (May Be Finland)" series where I expressed my philosophical views epistemological, ethical, eschatological and anthropological. Well, I'm gonna hit politics, in my favourite historical perspective.
Modern political discipline begins with Hobbes' “Leviathan”. The author, philosopher and mathematician, who witnessed the civilian war in England, came to the apparent conclusion that civilian wars are a bad time for philosophers, mathematicians and, in fact, all professional groups, but soldiers and bandits (during the civilian war indistinguishable).
He felt that the best alternate was a state powerful as a title biblical monster. Holding everyone by the mouth will at least defend us from the even worse destiny of the permanent war of everyone.
If we decision even 1 brick in the social structure, we hazard everything falling apart. Therefore, everyone who wants to change something is an irresponsible madman, and in addition acts unlawfully, due to the fact that social order was born out of the covenant that the people have made with their Sovereign – no 1 has any moral right to modify this covenant afterwards.
Especially madmen are those who praise individual freedom. For erstwhile the individual is free, he will do what he wants to do most: harm his neighbor.
"Leviathan" Hobbes started modern secular political science. Before that, authors writing on the subject either referred to ancients, or to theology, or to any potion. Hobbes utilized reason.
Many people immediately rejected his reasoning (he fell under both sides of the civilian war, not just the Republicans – against whom he directed “Leviathan”). It was harder to find counter-argumentation as strong as the logical argument of the Leviathan.
In the next century, the philosophers of Scottish Enlightenment succeeded in creating a liberal doctrine (as opposed to conservatism, developed by Hobbes supporters). Adam Smith in “The explanation of Moral Feelings” wrote that the society of free individuals does not gotta fall into the Hobbesian “war of everyone”.
We all have a natural feeling for empathy (Smith did not usage that word due to the fact that it was invented after a 100 years, but that is what he meant). Free individuals do not request any Leviathan to work for the common benefit – empathy directs them like an invisible hand.
You most likely know the quote about “the invisible hand of the market”. The problem with him is that it's a quote from Balcerovich or Starry, but it's surely not a quote from Smith.
He never explained whose hand it was. In fact, he thought it was the Hand of Providence (Here. I explain this more widely) because, like many philosophers of his era, he considered a individual God to be something of a "necessary hypothesis", but he believed that God created us so that we ourselves would strive for freedom and prosperity.
W In this way, liberalism has reached today's liberalism, which is the equivalent of the European left. It was simply empathy and emancipation that included further groups, through “Jackson democracy”, thirteenth amendment, nineteenth amendment, fresh Deal and Freedom summertime all the way to Lawrence vs.Texas.
In Europe, it was more complicated due to the fact that it was zigzag. In half a century, Robespierre, Napoleon, Frederick Wilhelm, and Earl Grey collapsed.
These zigzags made us look at the problem of individual freedom with greater subtlety. In Rhineland, which had already experienced 2 despotisms—freedom (Napoleon) and conservative (Fryderyk Wilhelm), a group of entrepreneurs entrusted in 1842 a young liberal with editing a liberal magazine, "Rheinische Zeitung".
This noted that the fundamental dispute in society does not run between supporters and opponents of freedom, but between the owners of the means of production and all the remainder that must fart on these holders. These possessors make different ideologies to justify this good state to their pockets – aristocrats make conservatism, bourgeois liberalism, but they both boil down to the same message for the masses: work hard and face the bucket.
This Liberal popularized the word "socialism", which so far was utilized mainly by quasi-mystic sects (in which Adam Mickiewicz worked). Both movements yet separated from each another in 1848: in February liberals and socialists formed a common revolutionary government in Paris, in June they already shot each other.
I am a Marxist due to the fact that I besides believe that there is no more crucial conflict than the conflict work/capital. As a rule, I am on the side of employees, even if a given owner of the means of production – Gdańsk Shipyard in 1980 or a vegan burger store in 2016 – will pretend to have something to do with the left.
At the same time, however, I am a democratic socialist. I realize Smith's arguments, even Hobbes. I like peaceful getting along with revolutions or civilian wars.
I'm as influenced by Marx as American liberals, whose books have mostly shaped my worldview. So much for the Absolute today, cheers.
