Political Justice

by Alexander J Illingworth

  In the spirit of Hegel, it is more appropriate to say that a written constitution or set of constitutional laws should be the embodiment of the spirit of a society, and that this constitution may only be added to, and never have any of its tenets removed. Government is merely a part of the whole that is society; it is not above it. Therefore, government is obliged to act for the benefit of humankind, through the medium of the authority given by the society it serves. If virtue and liberty are the strongest bonds within a society, then these must also be the strongest bonds in any kind of contract between the people outside of government and the people within it.

  Chapter III

  Political Promises

  A constitutional contract between government and people requires the affirmation of promises. It has become all too common to hear sources of political discontent come from the tendency amongst politicians to promise policy changes and fail to deliver. It is a sorry reflection of the immorality of government that this has to be the case; indeed, if the very relationship between a government and its people relies on a promise, how can we bring ourselves to trust an organisation inundated by those who break promises?

  The truth is that promises are necessary in government. They are necessary in electioneering in order to garner votes, but they are a fundamental part of the relationship between government and people. Godwin considers promises to be incompatible with the advancement of humankind, since they cannot be relied upon and depend solely upon the expectation of action rather than an indicative action itself. Humans can promise to do both good and bad things and then fail to do either. Promises are also difficult to keep in political society, where opinion and circumstance may change without warning; something promised in the past may be impossible to implement once the time actually comes to implement that promise.

  We should therefore make a distinction between necessary promises and unnecessary promises that governments might make. Our primary concern should be the following question: is it moral for a government to make promises?

  Once again, we must return to the concept of virtue. Let us imagine a situation where a particular crime, say, armed robbery, has increased by a significant amount. Some politicians might promise to reduce the crime by punishing those involved to deter further acts of violence, whilst others might believe that deeper social issues require addressing in order to reduce the prolificacy of that particular crime. It is right for government to promise action, and to follow through, but it is much more than simply ‘right’ for a government to act against an increase in a particular crime: it is a moral imperative, and it is a moral imperative to both punish the perpetrators and to address the social issues which create the crime. Often, crime arises from society failing to be able to offer liberty to the most downtrodden.

  Social issues such as crime can be treated as one-off incidents which government can promise to address. It is consistent with virtue to pursue a policy of protecting citizens from the moral encroachments of others upon their liberty. When long-term promises are made, the moral imperative of government to follow through on a promise falls away from a practical perspective but is strengthened in the eyes of those to whom it is promised.

  The British welfare state, which has its origins in the Liberal reforms of the early 20th century, but properly became established in the late 1940s following the end of the Second World War, is a prime example of a long-term government promise which is now proving to be the undoing of virtue itself. Promises were made to supply free healthcare at the point of use, a generous government pension for every worker employed by the state and welfare handouts to those on incomes which failed to provide for the most needy. It sounded just at the time of implementation, but now that we have reached the modern period, we have discovered that government is habitually spending beyond its means, and the welfare system created in the ’40s is no longer sustainable. Huge levels of national debt continue to rise, and government is forced to cut key services, which attacks the downtrodden yet further, in order to create a semblance of fiscal responsibility. Meanwhile, the people have become so accustomed to receiving certain provisions of life from the state that a sense of entitlement pervades all, and demands for personal provision from the state are all too common. No longer does concern lie in the interests of others, in society or in humankind’s freedom progress, but rather in what we might call the ‘culture of myself’: a constant obsession with what ‘I, myself’ am owed by the state on account of my identity, my personal needs and my individual situation. Virtue and selflessness are completely replaced with bitterness and division, as government comes to realise that its promises are now unsustainable, but is unable to remove the promise that is so deeply ingrained in the national mindset.

  These sorts of promises, which seem doomed to fail and cause great hardship to the people of the nation in the future, prove the explicit value of remaining true to virtue. Failing to align a policy with virtue and failing to consider the long-term consequences of that policy have been the undoing of many admirable goals of society. Our conclusions about political promises are as follows.

  Beware political promises — hear this, both government, and people! Government must ensure that promises it makes do not involve a perpetual promise to provide. That is itself an assault on complete liberty, for it removes the autonomy of the individual from himself. No longer will the citizen make his own decisions or govern his own fate; he will merely expect provision and answers from his government. Equally, short-term promises, whilst they may be necessary in order to protect a particular right, or ensure that virtue is upheld for the benefit of society, must be followed through, and must be founded not on the purpose of popularity but on virtue. It may be popular amongst criminals to promise them the vote, for instance, and therefore to expect them to vote for the one who emancipated them, but is it truly virtuous to allow criminals the right to vote? Absolutely not; to commit a crime against society involves punishment by removing the ability to participate in influencing that society until such time as the criminal can prove he will not be a menace and will follow the path of virtue. Such is the exact point of rehabilitation.

  We cannot claim to live in a virtuous society when government consistently makes promises it cannot keep. When a candidate for an election makes a promise, and he or she is elected, he or she has an obligation to keep it. In politics, promises may not be broken: they must come from deep-set concerns, or legitimate interests in the betterment of society, and breaking them is not a matter of political tussle. We are always taught that lying is not a virtue, yet often we tolerate lying too much in political spheres. In politics, principles and opinions are the spirit of improvement, and a corrupt political society is marked by a lack of principles, a lack of opinion and a plethora of deceit. When a government structures its whole agenda around promises, nothing is guaranteed. A good government focuses on what it can provide: a security of administration, a set of values and goals. Promises may well be necessary from time to time, but they are not really acceptable in government. Hard principles are what are required. We may even go so far as to say that a political promise cannot be kept at all if it is not backed up by strongly held, genuine principles, rather than pandering to ephemeral notions of ‘popularity’ or the desire for election, for there is a significant difference between being elected and governing a nation.

  Chapter IV

  Political Authority

  We have seen that the power, or authority, of government is derived from a relationship between people and the government which is concerned with the protection of rights and liberty to allow for the furtherance of certain values with which man may pursue moral self-improvement. The next problem we must trouble ourselves with is the question of why citizens should submit to government authority at all.

  It would seem to naturally undermine the purpose of government to hand it authority and then to disobey that authority. However, as we know, there will always be those in society who are dissatisfied with the wa
y of things, and whilst some of these may be obliged to make their complaints known in a civil fashion, others will seek active disobedience to the authority of government. As we shall discover later, civil disobedience, and ultimately armed revolution, should only ever be the last resort of any group of virtuous men who can prove that government is acting against the interests of the people to such an extent that there is an existential threat to society, and all other avenues for legitimate and civil political change have been exhausted and have failed.

  But the government cannot hold its authority together, and expect its people to obey it, if it does not adhere to the terms of the constitutional values it has drawn up with the people and sworn to uphold and protect. Edmund Burke used the analogy of a military commander to present a cogent point in this regard:

  In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous…until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself.10

  Governmental authority, too, cannot be seen to be worth anything in the measure of guiding a country if those in government are naturally unprincipled and weak. Soldiers will not follow a leader without conviction, nor will the people of a nation have confidence in a leader who sways with the wind and fails to present a coherent platform. The risk for government in examples of poor leadership is the power of their electors at the ballot box.

  To properly exercise the authority with which the people have endowed them, the people in government must be principled, and they must be committed to the virtues which have been laid down by national constitutional decree. The government derives its authority not merely from paper documents but from the very spirit of the nation. Since direct democracy is incredibly difficult in greatly populous nations where the people cannot gather together in common political cause, as they did in ancient Athens, representative democracy creates the need for new breeds of politically minded men and women. Due to the fact that the people at large must elect representatives to hold their authority on their behalf in a parliament, those people who put themselves forward for election must be wholly sure that they represent the spirit of their constituents, if they can truly claim to have any governmental authority.

  If government is truly an instrument of virtue when it expresses the spirit of society, then government authority must be obeyed for the sake of society. If it is virtuous to have government because it protects the liberty of society and allows mankind the ability to better itself, then government authority must be derived from moral virtue. If government has no moral virtue, then it cannot be said to have any legitimate authority whatsoever, and it must be changed either by means of election, petition or organised opposition in order to correct its deficiencies and restore true authority over society.

  It is equally possible of course for government to have too much authority. When government overextends, it is generally because it has impinged on complete liberty, or restricted particular rights for the sake of some ephemeral whim of those with power. When government overuses its authority, it is generally because it has not considered the most virtuous path of conduct. Corrupt influence and viciousness are what detracts from all authority and leads to the mismanagement of society; burdening it with debts, false promises and prodigal spending are all hallmarks of a weak government without virtue, and thus without true authority. Any authority that such a government might have can only be artificially enforced, and so we must consider it unacceptable. If government cannot be seen to be authoritative by nature of its conduct, then it is not worth respecting.

  If government has a responsibility to its people — which it does — then authority is held not as an instrument for the means of control but for benefit. The reaction against virtue ethics in modern times is worrying, for while traditional virtue-based morality is often mocked as old-fashioned, it is in fact the binding material within society and the guiding light of good government. What many critics of virtue ethics do not realise is that they are destroying the exact thing they claim to be defending by criticising it: personal liberty. A government with a sense of morality may be seen to be an embodiment of the spirit of virtue in a nation and thereby encourage it through its actions in the defence of the right and means of the people.

  Godwin considers that government is a mere contrivance in ensuring the security of people, and that every man should have a share in securing his own security, and as each man is party to the powers of reason, he should have a share in dictating the bounds of political authority. Since, however, we know that men are not equal, Godwin cannot be said to be reliably presenting an alternative vision of political authority. He places individual opinion on a pedestal — in Godwin’s opinion, individual opinion should be given maximal liberty so that every individual may define his own life and exercise his own authority. Whilst individual opinion, as we have seen, is important in political development, individual opinion cannot be allowed to be the only source of authority. If every individual defined his own morality, his own way of interacting with government, and did not conform to a set of rules and values which are common to society as a whole, there would be nothing but chaos, incompatibility and violence, since the differences between his own personal opinions and others’ would be great enough to encourage social discord. If one man considers a particular action against another moral, in his opinion, and the other considers it immoral, there will be conflict — this is a society without a governing set of values and without an authoritative government to enforce them.

  Authority is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of society, but it must be based on strong foundations. No citizen can respect authority which is not derived from meaningful appreciation of national values and a stable moral code.

  Chapter V

  The Purpose of Legislation

  The suggestion that government legislation is only ever used for the purposes of treading on those without government authority is ludicrous. Godwin’s proposed solution, suggesting that ‘reason is the only legislator’, is attractive in the sense that we may wish for a time when legislation is only ever introduced out of pure individual reason and the justifiable need for change, but to allow every individual to follow his own laws by entrusting him with the spirit of ‘reason’ is a justification for a destructive form of anarchy that does not even stand on its own two feet. We should accept the criticism that legislation can be, and often is, used for the purposes of vice or to restrict the rights and liberties of the people of society. As an alternative to current attitudes towards legislation, how can we approach legislation in a meaningful way?

  Legislation, as the introduction of new laws, is in effect the introduction by government of new terms to their agreement with the people. Government must bring legislation before the representatives of the people as a whole for consideration before it can be agreed to by a parliamentary body and assented to by the higher powers of state. Legislation, therefore, should not be about promoting a particular agenda or forcing an ideology on the people of society but about changing constitutional and personal legal rules when change becomes a necessity given the changes in circumstances over time; this could be due to changes in technology or popular will, or indeed as a result of extraordinary events which deserve national attention. It is therefore necessary for parliamentary bodies to pay particular attention to any attempt to introduce new legislation. It is imperative that representatives of the people analyse proposed new legislation to ensure that it does not violate or restrict the constitutional agreement between government and people which maintains the spirit of the nation on which society depends.

  New legislation may well be necessary at times in order to defend the rights of the people of society, but it may also be subject to corrupt influence and be used to gradually remove certain rights. It is therefore a matter of virtue for representatives to defend the rights of the
people who elected them, for if they do not, they cannot be said to have respected the arrangement between the electors and the elected personnel holding authority in their behalf.

  A virtuous government should try to operate on the principle that new legislation ought to be avoided. Changes to constitutional arrangements and long-standing legal traditions often embody the particular cultural spirit of a nation and should only be changed if it can be definitively proved that they no longer work in a beneficial way. It should be every representative’s concern to properly consider the virtues and vices of new legislation before lending support or opposition to it, rather than be swayed merely by partisan concerns. Modern legislation is frequently dictated by the practice of parliamentary ‘whips’, who ensure that members vote for a particular piece of legislation in support of their party’s policy. Forcing representatives to vote in a particular way is an easy way to use legislation to follow particular agendas and immoral means.

  Often, long-standing laws are changed for the purposes of ‘modernisation’, but legislation is inherited from our ancestors and must be respected. Change is necessary, but only when virtue requires it. Fixing what is not broken is often the path to tyranny; unfortunately, so long as partisan concerns overcome genuine considerations about the benefits of particular pieces of legislation, there is little hope for meaningful debate and the use of legislation for virtuous purposes, as it was devised for.

  Chapter VI

  Obedience

  The question of obedience is linked closely with our discussion of authority. Obedience to genuine authority is a necessary part of living in society. We have already considered the case for being obedient to authority based on the principles of virtuous authority, but we must consider this within the context of governmental structures. Why is it appropriate to obey a government that fosters liberty but not a tyrannical one?