Political Justice

by Alexander J Illingworth

  This again highlights the inequality of man, and the difference in aptitudes between humans. It is partly this recognition that led to the deputation of democracy that is nearly universal in democratic states today. Since it would be impractical to assemble the millions of people which populate nations today, we elect representatives on our behalf. This is mostly a question of practicality, but we must also ask ourselves the question: would every citizen of society really want to, or have the education and understanding to debate the intricacies of economy, social policy and infrastructure, amongst other complex political discussions? The answer of course is no, and it is undeniable that the election of representatives is at least in part a projection of political power onto those with greater wisdom than the electors. This does not mean that the elector cannot consider the same political questions as the candidate for election — he must, if he is to exercise his true judgement in the election of a representative — but the intricate details of political legislation will never be the concern of every ordinary man.

  If awarding peerages for politically and socially virtuous actions affords the bearer of the title a right to a parliamentary seat, then it is only right that he be denied a vote for the election of representatives to a lower house. If the purpose of election is to delegate power to another for the purposes of practical parliamentary discussion, a man or woman guaranteed a seat in parliament has no need of a vote. Democracy is still served, and so long as the number of peerages awarded remains low enough to be practical, it will remain as an effective situation. This has been the case in the British House of Lords for almost its entire life as an institution.

  Democracy is about the people, from all layers of society, being afforded the right of representation. It relies on virtue being the goal of society, and certain freedoms being valued above all whim and popular opinion. The freedom of speech in particular forms the cornerstone of democracy, since without it, the soul of political discourse itself is torn out of the nation, and democracy, along with many of the libertarian freedoms which the best societies give their citizens, will swiftly fall into the dust. Democracy, like the abstract terms so readily used such as ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’, is much more complex than its status as a mere word. True democracy, where power is balanced between all the people of society, relies on the people placing their trust in a set of common values, and recognising that they have obligations beyond the self, which involves the community of citizens on both national and local levels.

  Chapter XII

  War

  War is, in general, an evil to be avoided at all costs. In a modern world especially, where the nuclear threat is ever-present, war does not simply carry the danger of great and unnecessary sacrifice any longer, but the danger of complete and utter global destruction on a scale that threatens to extinguish the human race entirely. War is a political consideration not just because of its history, but because the prerogative to make war often lies with the legislative and executive branches of government.

  Modern leaders have proven that they are prone to rashness. The slightest sign of potential ‘war crime’ in a foreign country leads to the most destructive and unhelpful interventions, with the recent wars in Iraq and Syria being prime examples of how military meddling in foreign affairs for the sake of petty ideology can only lead to instability and yet more conflict. The heroic values previously attached to war from the ancient world to the early modern period died with the end of the First World War. The true nature of modern warfare is demonstrated in these early 20th century conflicts: no longer is the question of honour a matter for soldiers’ consideration, but slaughter. Masses of military casualties and the involvement of civilians in violent persecutions, genocides and war crimes are the defining features of modern warfare. The virtues of valour, love of one’s country, and individual heroism extolled in works such as Julius Evola’s Metaphysics of War are dead, or at least incredibly difficult to emulate in today’s world. It is hard to recreate the conduct of warriors with sword in hand, matching the measure of each other’s strength on the battlefield when war has become so dishonourable and a pure matter of sheer firepower — the ancients hated those who struck from afar, yet now war is almost never fought hand to hand, and the lonely farmhouse caught in the middle of a global conflict stands no chance in the face of a hail of Katyusha rockets. Citizen and therefore economy alike are in a literal firing line, and Hell itself descends upon the world as fire and pain rains from the skies. War is not a glorious exercise, it is a universal shame, which does not lift up the virtuous but stamps them down in the mud.

  Aggression, however, is a character trait of every human, and whilst many of us may be able to control our aggression, there will always be those who cannot. Not even Christ could contain his anger in the Temple of Jerusalem as he flipped the tables of the moneylenders and scattered their coins across the marbled floors. War is ubiquitous throughout human history, and wars of some kind, whether fought directly, by proxy, or as a new-fangled cyber-war, will be present in humankind’s future. From a purely philosophical point of view, however, we must consider the morality of war. A discerning reader need not think too hard about what perspective we will be approaching this subject from considering the introduction to this chapter presented above, but even still, we must find justifications for our disdain of conflict. A note to be remembered is this: we cannot say outright that heroism and bravery can never be achieved by modern soldiery, merely that the means for obtaining it has become negligible. Soldiers will always have to be brave if they are to face the onslaught of fire that modern battlefields present them, but to be a true hero is to be powerful yet merciful, to be brave yet wise, to be loyal yet honourable. Modern warfare cannot offer us a return to the epic feats of Homer’s Iliad any time soon, but loyalty to one’s nation remains one of the cornerstones of modern militaries. We would do well to remember that this loyalty should not merely be a characteristic of the soldier, but of the citizen as well.

  We may approach the problem of war in the same way as we have approached the problem of crime. It is a sin to harm another, to deny them of their liberty by attacking their person or their property, and a nation, since it is comprised of many individuals, is much the same. For one nation to lust after the wealth, territory or influence of another is the same sin as if a man lusts after the wife of another man, and seeks to win her over by persuasion or by force. To be hungry for war is an act of collective selfishness, though often stirred up in the minds of the people by the violent rhetoric of a few leaders, for to seek war is to seek harm, to seek beyond the means and requirements for happiness that a nation already has at its disposal. Provocation to war is also the same as provocation to violence between individuals — it is certainly more virtuous to keep the moral high ground and refuse to be provoked, and instead to work for virtue internationally. In a truly just world, disputes would be settled by agreements, but this is not always possible. When nations have their own interests at heart, the interests of others become overlooked, and soon enough, the less virtuous of the nations of the world may pursue the option of force to set examples, or to crush their enemies completely.

  Let us assume that a dispute over territory has occurred between two nations, let us say an island has been the territory of nation A for the past few hundred years, but nation B once owned that island a few hundred years before that. For reasons of sentimentality, and to distract the population from problems at home, nation B invades the island. Just as when a man is assaulted he may use force to defend himself until such time as his assailant may be brought to justice, so too is the war of defence acceptable. It is clear that, if hundreds of years have passed, and the islanders are now ethnically members of nation A, any claim nation B might have is weak. Nation A has an obligation to defend the citizens who are now threatened by the invading forces of B, whilst B alone has history as a justification for an act of aggression. History can teach us about how we ought to behave, it can teach us how
our ancestors lived and how we might best strive for virtue as they did, but it does not justify selfishness; in fact as we have discovered it does the exact opposite. Therefore, we may comfortably say that the only justifiable form of war is a war of self-defence used for the protection of citizens, and national integrity against the aggressive selfishness of other nations.

  Today, the meaning of a war of self-defence seems to have extended to include aggression in order to justify non-defensive wars. The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was called defensive, since it was a pre-emptive attack upon the al-Qaeda terrorist group to supposedly prevent further terrorist attacks on Western Europe and the United States. Indeed, as a result of this defensive-offensive strike by the United States, terrorist attacks have not stopped in the Western world, hundreds of people have been displaced, and new and more extreme groups have arisen, whilst the fleeing populations of the Middle East make for Europe itself in the largest refugee crisis ever seen since the Migration Period of the 300s AD.

  Offensive wars cannot, by any mode of nature, be defensive. War, as we have seen, particularly modern wars, are destructive not just materially, but mentally and sociologically. Entire ethnic groups are displaced, nations destroyed and civilians tortured for the sake of the greed of superpowers. When the entire world loses sight of virtue, offence becomes defence, destruction becomes valour, and the whole world is turned upside-down, linguistically and physically. The words ‘war’, ‘bombs’ and ‘national defence’ should send just as cold a shiver down the spine of every law-abiding citizen as the word ‘terrorism’ already does. Often, the source of civil woes at home can be found to have their roots in the consequences of wars fought abroad. Soon enough Western nations will find themselves with no alternative but to further their own destruction: after all, it was they who displaced these thousands of people from their homes with their selfish wars, was it not? Is it not right for the destroyer of a home to provide a new one for the home owner? The war-hungry neoconservatives of Western foreign policy schools have sown the seeds of the destruction of their nations by enforcing policies which they claimed would be our salvation.

  Let the nations defend themselves if they must, but let the aggressors of this world be punished, that war might be so irregular it does not threaten the happiness and liberty of the people of the world. ‘Let it be so’ — we might pray to God.

  Chapter XIII

  Democracies and War

  In the United States and the United Kingdom, it is the legislatures, Congress and Parliament respectively, which reserve the right to declare formal wars; the executives of both countries, however, retain the authority to authorise minor military operations and air strikes on targets which do not legally constitute a declaration of war, but for certain amount to such an action. The obvious moral question that political philosophers face is ‘How can this be right?’ Legislatures are naturally inclined to produce more reasoned and sensible solutions to dilemmas because they discuss issues from multiple standpoints and personal opinions; this of course does not mean that legislatures always find the right answer, but their tendency towards the truth is more profound than a small executive. By this logic it might seem as though a virtuous constitutional solution would be to limit the decision for all military action to the legislative branch of government, but we might be able to take things even further, considering the conclusions we have reached regarding the purpose and nature of a mixed constitutional government.

  If we consider the system of government which we have defended in the previous chapters and book divisions to be democracy proper, then we must ask the question: is it ever lawful for a democracy to declare wars? Different forms of government, as we have previously discovered, are characterised by different attitudes towards morality and political control. The tyrant and even the benevolent absolute ruler must be inherently selfish, since they limit power to themselves, and even if they have the approval of their people, they must maintain their power by surreptitious means and secret pacts, restrict the rights of the people in order to ensure that their power is not infringed upon by democratic protestors, or to protect themselves from the paranoia of being removed from office. These forms of government are inherently selfish, and inherently damaging to the pursuit of a politically just society. A balanced democracy is the best form of government, since it tends towards truth, and upholds social structures whilst allowing for the free dissemination and discussion of all opinions within a framework which promotes virtue among every echelon of society. Based on this analysis, we immediately face a problem when confronted with war or warlike actions: if war is selfish as we have asserted above, then war must be incompatible with the very principle of democracy itself. It can never be right for a democracy to authorise aggression against another party unless it is in response to an aggression made against the integrity of the society which government is supposed to serve.

  The constitution of a virtuous society should not permit its legislature or executive to authorise offensive military action against another nation, neither through declaration of war nor undeclared military action, which on an international level, amounts more to a war crime than a pre-emptive strike. It will be obvious when national territory is attacked — only then should a legislature be permitted to authorise military action. Offences against other nations can only ever be characterised as the actions of tyrants and have no place in democratic states.

  It goes without saying that if offence is the action of selfish tyrants, and should not exist in the minds of democratic leaders, then we ought to think carefully about what sort of position that theory places many modern ‘democracies’ in. When we live in societies which claim to be democratic, yet openly indulge in warlike acts for the benefit of corporations rather than the general good, for the sake of interest groups and the ‘security’ of allied nations rather than the defence of their own home territory, we should be forced to question whether or not we live in democracies. It may seem harsh to place our leaders in the dock, but truly this is what we ought to be doing every single day. The more we question, the more likely we are to find the truth, and we may assert quite confidently given the rationale behind our theories that many Western countries today which call themselves ‘democracies’ fail to show many valid characteristics of just democracies. It may seem controversial, perhaps even a stretch of logic to claim that we no longer live in democracies, but we do not. There will be some who are shocked, perhaps even offended by this viewpoint, but our arguments are clearly laid out — let the individual be the judge of these conclusions.

  Finally, let us consider internal war within democracies. By this we do not mean civil war or revolution necessarily, although as we have made clear in the preceding division of this work, they may become necessary elements of political life in the course of a nation’s history; rather, we mean the struggle between classes and opinions. Class war, and the question of its very existence, has been a contentious issue since Marx’s day, and remains topical among the New Left, despite its change of tactics since the days of revolutionary communism. Class war, however, has been a feature of political history since long before Marx: in Niccolò Machiavelli’s work Discourses on Livy, the Italian master guides us through his theory of classical republicanism, and reaches cogent conclusions. He identifies the class orders of ancient Rome, which for the most part prevented the capricious mob from corrupting the freedom that Rome earned across various parts of its history. Perhaps most controversially, however, he contends that struggle, sometimes violent, between the classes was what kept the Roman state in check and drove it on to greater successes. The power shifts between dictators riding the back of populist movements and traditionalist republicans seeking to preserve the old orders were the source of much internal war and strife for Rome across its republican history, but, Machiavelli argues, ultimately reminded many Romans of the need for honesty and virtue in the conduct of government.

  Perhaps the most important theory that we may draw f
rom Machiavelli concerns both internal and external war: that not money, but the spirit of men, is the true driving force of war. Human spirit breathes into every war — the loyalty of the defender, the glory of the conqueror, the conviction of the dogmatist. Machiavelli identified the early beginnings of what we have already concluded is the spirit of post-Enlightenment political society: opinion. The move towards civilisation was designed to prevent violence when differences in opinions were encountered, and the Roman republic was one attempt at diffusing social hatred and class suspicion into a peaceful constitution which promoted political discourse between those classes. The exploitation and corruption of the Roman republic prevented this vision from being properly realised, and as any student of ancient history knows full well, the republic collapsed into the absolutist empire which remains famous in world history.

  Opinion drives political discourse, but the tensions between varying opinions can easily amount to war if differing opinions are not afforded respect. Hegel claimed that there is a grain of truth in every ‘foreign phenomenon’, by which he refers to unsettling or controversial ideas. It is not merely selfish and virtueless therefore for a democracy to seek belligerence with other nations, but equally sinful to hate the opinions of any of its citizens: if it is the freedom of opinion which defines a just democratic society, then modern ‘democracies’ which refuse to tolerate certain opinions deny themselves the right to use the label of democracy.

  If one wishes a state to live long, it is necessary to often look back towards its beginnings…it is clear as day that such states do not survive if they are not renewed [from the example of their origins]26