The starting point for discussion of governance ideals would be the perspective of scholarly political philosophy, well summarized in the following selections from the introduction to Will Kymlicka’s, Contemporary Political Philosophy[1], and intended as an introduction to and critical review of contemporary debates in political philosophy:
“[T]he recent emphasis [among the major schools of thought which dominate contemporary debates in political philosophy] has been on the ideals of justice, freedom and community which are invoked when evaluating political institutions and policies… Our traditional picture of the political landscape views political principles as falling somewhere on a single line, stretching from left to right. …People on the left believe in equality, and hence endorse some form of socialism, while those on the right believe in freedom, and hence endorse some form of free-market capitalism. In the middle are the liberals, who believe in a wishy-washy mixture of equality and freedom, and hence endorse some form of welfare state capitalism…. There is some truth to this way of thinking… [b]ut it is increasingly inadequate. [There is also a need to value group interests, community and feelings of brotherhood as ideals in themselves.]… On Dworkin’s view[2], every plausible political theory has the same ultimate value, which is equality…. While leftists believe that equality of income or wealth is a precondition for treating people as equals, those on the right believe that equal rights over one’s labour and property are a precondition for treating people as equals… Whereas the traditional view tells us that the fundamental argument in political theory is whether to accept equality as a value, this revised view tells us that the fundamental argument is not whether to accept equality, but how best to interpret it.”
Kymlicka evaluates the debate in favor of Liberal Egalitarianism, acknowledging both freedom and equality as legitimate values by which to govern, but he also allows room to separately value brotherhood and community by leaving open the definition of equality, and by implication justice. With respect to brotherhood, Kymlicka asks, “What is the basis for such a sense of communal belonging? What more, or what else, is needed to sustain unity than shared political principles? This is one of the great unresolved questions of contemporary political philosophy”[3]. It is also one of the great unresolved issues of information age restructuring insofar as alienation permeates contemporary society and its reduction is one of the most fertile areas for societal progress and raising of collective wellbeing at minimal or negative resource cost.
In my view, there is a place for both socialism and market capitalism in an overarching ideal that would also include some aspects of utopianism, a three-part macro-ideal where the separate sub-ideals co-exist in dynamic balance, much as an individual balances body, mind and spirit interests and activities in daily life. Market capitalism, in its extreme libertarian form, would maximize capital growth and accumulation. Government would be reduced to an absolute minimum and all public goods, including all real property (streets, rivers, parks, natural resources, and everything else) would be sold off to private interests. Police functions would be fully privatized, other government services including sanitation would be privatized, and even contract enforcement would be privately arranged. Socialism, in its ideal form, would maximize the bureaucratic extension of centralized governance, an ideal that is not without some advantages – witness the Chinese model. Socialism is the ideal of the relational sphere, the ideal of the government sector. Ideal socialism would gather complete market information and bureaucratically allocate resources to satisfy demand. It would control all decision making through a single unified hierarchy, a maximal governance structure. By utopianism, I am referring to an array of political philosophies designed to bring about maximum individual vitality, happiness, well-being, or other such non-materialistic representation of the human spirit. The literature contains many versions of the utopian ideal, but to my mind, Rudolf Steiner expressed it best in his “social motto”, which states: “The healthy social life is found when in the mirror of each human soul the whole community finds its reflection, and when in the community the virtues of each one are living.” By this description, society is alive, and its health is the paramount concern. And just as human health is usually described indirectly by the absence of illness, societal health is measured indirectly as something only recognized when found. Societal health is expressed as a constructive, conscious and reciprocal relationship between the individual and society, implying the sense of brotherhood and community that eludes identification in the political philosophical debate.[4]
I conclude from the political philosophical discussion that the ideal toward which government naturally aspires would display aspects of free market, socialist and utopian ideals, acknowledging the essential need and roles for capital, governance, and the human spirit, and would value justice, freedom and community, seen through a prism of equality.
[1] Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: an introduction (2nd Ed.), (London: Oxford University Press, 2002)
[2] Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, (London: Duckworth,1977)
[3] Kymlicak, op. cit. p. 257
[4] Libertarian and American Indian philosophies have polar views regarding the ownership of property and its origin, and the American Indian philosophy can be viewed as the basis of Henry George’s philosophy to fund government entirely from land taxes. The Libertarian argument derives from John Locke’s philosophy that one’s physical being is sacrosanct, as are the products of one’s labor, be it mental, physical or other. Contracts among freely consenting individuals are also sacrosanct. The arbitrary element in Locke’s argument, and by implication the Libertarian argument, is that Locke believed that nature belonged to the first person to claim it, with the provision that no others are inconvenienced by such claims. Kymlica points out that this is an arbitrary way to assign ab initio ownership of nature, and that the first, second, third and so forth individual’s to stumble upon some natural resource could agree to share the resource and work it together. Libertarians take the position that there is no central collectivity that could claim ownership until individuals formed such a collectivity, and that therefore nature does not ab initio belong to the collectivity. By contrast, consider the view of societies like some American Indian tribes, that believed all of nature’s resources belongs to a god-like spirit above, and that human beings merely borrow nature’s resources for a lifetime, with a responsibility to custody them to be handed back at some point to the spirit above. The Libertarian position raises individual property to the level of highest value, while the American Indian philosophy raises collective property to its highest level. If a balance were to be struck between these opposing philosophies, the collectivity as represented by government, would retain some degree of ownership of nature. By extension all real property could be claimed as a collective resource and one can arrive at the Georgist position that all governance should be funded by taxes on land, essentially socializing land ownership and granting central governments as much of the rental revenue they require.