Community, Society and Justice

Definitions from Oxford Languages

A month ago, I wrote about my views on ethical philosophy. Today, I’ll look at the other side of the coin – my political philosophy.

At the outset, I feel a need to issue a Radical Ideas Warning. Some of the ideas I offer here, indeed, are far more than radical. I make no apologies for this. For the future, even the survival, of human civilization, and of our human species as a whole, is at stake.

Politics versus Organize

When I first started thinking about ethics and politics, I found it hard to discern a clear dividing line between the two. Eventually, I asked myself: what question is each of these branches of knowledge trying to answer? For ethics, it is: What is right and wrong for a human being to do? For politics, I identified the question as: How should we human beings organize ourselves for maximum benefit to all?

Over time, I have come to feel more and more negative about using the word “politics.” In its place, the name I use for the part of my philosophy, which governs relations between people in societies and communities, is Organize.

Community versus society

The first key idea in my political (organizational) philosophy is that I make a very important distinction between a community and a society.

Community

A community is a group of people, bound together by some shared characteristic; but not necessarily by anything more. A community has no “general will.” It is merely a group of individuals.

Examples of communities are: The people who live or work in a particular town. The community of left-handed Italian grandmothers. The people who reside in a particular geographical area. And what I called in my ethical essay the “convivial community.” That is, the community of people, who make every effort to obey the natural law of humanity. And so, to make themselves convivial, or fit to be lived with.

Society

A society, on the other hand, is a group of people who have agreed to join in a common cause. A society has a “general will,” a will shared by the members as a whole. Namely, the objectives for which the society aims. Provided, of course, that those, who cease to agree with the objectives or the conduct of the society, can freely leave the society.

Examples of societies are a football club, a musical ensemble, or a political party.

Society in the singular

I am aware that many use the word “society” in the singular, in a meaning such as “the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.” In this meaning, it is often dignified with a capital S. I regard this usage as collectivist and misleading. My view is, there is no such thing as Society, only societies.

Those that use the word in this way seem to think that people owe a loyalty to, and should be prepared to make sacrifices for, this “Society.” (Or for something they call “the community,” with a definite article – essentially the same thing.) Further, in the minds of the political class and their hangers-on, this loyalty is owed, not to their fellow human beings, but to the political state that rules over them.

The voluntary society principle

My second key organizational idea, I call the voluntary society principle. It is: All societies must be voluntary.

This principle is explicitly supported by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Article 20(2): “No one may be compelled to belong to an association.” When this right was first mooted, it was probably intended to apply to organizations like the Hitler Youth. But in my view, it is equally valid in regard to any society, including political and religious ones.

Thus, no-one is a member of any society, unless they have voluntarily chosen to become a member, and have not in the meantime countermanded that choice.

This is the reason why I do not accept the word “society” in its meaning of all the people in a geographical area. The people who live in that area are only a community. And because they are not a voluntary society, there is no common cause in which they can be considered to have all agreed to join. So, they cannot be assumed to support or to accept any particular political ideology or set of policies. Therefore, they cannot reasonably be expected to keep to rules or policies imposed by any political or religious ideology or faction.

To look at it another way. If you are opposed to some political philosophy – such as socialism, fascism or deep green environmentalism – then no-one has the right to force you to join, or to obey the rules of, any society that operates, or favours, that philosophy. And you must be able freely to leave any society that adopts any such philosophy into its tenets. The same is true for religious movements, for example militant Islam or Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Moreover, no-one has any right to treat you as if you were part of some collective that you have not voluntarily joined. You do not, by lawfully residing in an island called Britain, automatically become a member of a political society called “Britain.” You do not even become a member of such a society merely because you approve of the British culture of the past – the culture which seeded the Enlightenment, and nurtured the Industrial Revolution. To identify with, or not to identify with, such a political collective is your choice. And to cease to do so, if you desire, is also your choice.

Rejecting the political state

The voluntary society principle leads me to reject altogether the idea of Society in the singular. And thus, to reject also the idea that I should feel or show loyalty to any political state. In this, I go some way beyond most adherents of Reform UK.

I also reject all derived ideas like “social justice.” And I reject all political ideologies that depend on the idea. Such as socialism, where Society is supposed to own the means of economic production. Communism, where Society owns everything, and all resources are controlled and allocated by the political state. And fascism, which subordinates the interests of individuals to Society and to the nation.

Further, far from feeling loyalty towards the state, I see it for what it is – an outdated, failed political structure, that supports a tyrannical gang of inhuman, psychopathic criminals. And I reject it, and all those that use it for their own gain or to push other agendas. I simply want to be rid of all political states. And of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,” in particular.

My support for Reform UK

Myself, I only feel loyalty to a society as long as I agree with its principles and its direction. This is so, indeed, even for Reform UK. I voluntarily chose to become a member of the Brexit party, and voluntarily chose to allow my membership to flow over when Brexit morphed into Reform.

Right now, I choose to remain and be active in the party, because it seems to me to be “the only game in town.” Reform is the only movement in the UK with the potential to blow away the current ruling classes and their failed political system, right the wrongs they have done to us, and make life worth living again. But if, at some point, I lose confidence in the party’s principles, leadership and direction, then I will feel compelled to resign from the party.

The social contract

Those that make out that each of us is part of some geographically or politically based “society,” even if we do not wish to be, seek to base it on an idea that we have entered into what they call a “social contract.” My third key idea of political philosophy is that this social contract idea is invalid.

Two forms of the social contract idea have been suggested. The Hobbesian version, dating from 1651 and enshrined in Thomas Hobbes’s “Leviathan.” And the Lockean version, published in 1690 in chapters 8 and 9 (§95 to §131) of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government.

The Hobbesian social contract

According to the Hobbesian narrative, at some time in the past, a group of people (or, at least, a majority of them) made a contract with each other. They consented to be ruled over despotically by an absolute sovereign, and by so doing authorized and approved whatever the sovereign chose to do. Moreover, once the system has been set up, there is no possibility of changing it, or of escape from it. And we, today, are still bound by their agreement.

But I find this narrative absurd. Even if my ancestors might have subscribed to such a thing (and, as far as I know, they didn’t), I as an individual have never agreed to any social contract! Where is my signature on any such damn thing? Moreover, where are the statements of the benefits I am supposed to get from it, and the procedures for me to get justice and redress if the government party fails to deliver? They do not exist.

This social contract narrative is not only absurd, but has been foisted on us human beings fraudulently, by those that do not have our interests at heart.

The Lockean social contract

There is an alternative form of the social contract idea, put forward by John Locke. He says that a group of people may choose to form a “political society.” This they do “by agreeing to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe and peaceable living.” But he is very clear about the purposes of the agreement: The objectives are the preservation of their property, and the preservation and enlargement of their freedoms.

Of course, even this Lockean form of the social contract suffers from many of the problems of the Hobbesian version. Where is this contract? What is in it? Where is my signature on it? What procedures should I follow when the government party fails to deliver on its end of the bargain? Fortunately, unlike Hobbes, Locke does offer some answers to this last question.

As I related back in June in the first essay of this set, Locke cautions that any government in such a political society must always act for the “public good.” That is, the good of every individual in that society, as far as that can be achieved by setting common rules for all. Indeed, anyone in government that acts against the interests of the people, or fails at least to strive to deliver services that the people value positively, is failing to act for this public good.

If a government departs from or goes beyond this, or seeks to “impoverish, harass or subdue” the people it is supposed to be serving, then it has become a tyranny, and is no longer legitimate. It is no more than a criminal gang. Its laws should not be obeyed, except for those entirely compatible with the natural law of humanity.

How to deal with a government that fails to deliver its side of the bargain? Locke gave us three options. One, put new people in charge. Two, dismantle and replace the system. Or three, abandon the whole idea of government. But we’ve tried the first of these on several occasions before, haven’t we – like 1642 and 1688? Without any recent successes at all.

Quite clearly, even if the Lockean version of the contract is to be believed, UK governments of the last several decades have persistently failed to act for the public good of all the people. In most cases, as with Labour today, the new gang in power has proven itself to be even worse than the old.

Indeed, since I have been old enough to think about these things, with just three exceptions (and two of those were very short-lived), every UK government has been worse than its predecessor. The three exceptions, in my view, were: Margaret Thatcher’s first term, 1979 to 1983. The first few months of the Coalition in 2010, when David Cameron and Nick Clegg, briefly, each served to restrain the other from their worst excesses. And Liz Truss’s 2022 government of 49 days, which, while showing good – if naïve – intentions, was suppressed by the usual establishment suspects.

Isn’t it high time we gave the dismantle-and-replace idea a go? Let’s get rid of the political state, and in its place build a system of governance that works for human beings.

Justice and freedom

Having explored at length the ramifications of the voluntary society principle, I will be content with far briefer introductions to my remaining two key ideas in organizational philosophy: common-sense justice, and the maximum freedom principle.

Common-sense justice

The fourth, and perhaps the most important, of my key ideas of organizational philosophy is the principle I call common-sense justice. I state it as follows: Every individual deserves to be treated, over the long run, in the round and as far as practicable, as he or she treats others. Thus, common-sense justice is individual justice. Put another way, if properly implemented, common-sense justice is the part of the system which turns David Hume’s “ought” into “is.”

The principle implies that if you don’t do, or seek to do, harm to innocent people, you don’t deserve to suffer any harms being done to you. On the other side, if you do harm to others, or seek to do harm to others, or impose on others unreasonable risks that lead to actual harm, you should be required to compensate those whose lives you damaged, and if appropriate to be punished in proportion to the seriousness of what you did.

In essence, common-sense justice is Charles Kingsley’s “Be done by as you did.” It is a hard taskmaster; but it is a fair one.

This kind of justice also teams up with the judgement by behaviour idea I discussed in my essay on ethics, rights and obligations. Together, they provide an ideal of justice, in which what matters is not who an individual is, but only how they behave (and, on some occasions, their motives for doing what they do).

It doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter what colour someone’s skin is. Or where they were born. Or what religion they were brought up in. Or what their gender or their sexual preferences may be. All that matters are their actions and their intent towards others. Thus, under common-sense justice, everyone is truly “equal before the law.”

Moreover, when an ideal of common-sense justice is in place, I expect it to lead to a far better tone of life than we have today. For, if you want to be treated better by others, all you have to do is find a way to treat others better!

Maximum freedom principle

My final key idea is the maximum freedom principle. I like to put this as “maximum freedom for everyone, consistent with living in a civilized community.” And maximum freedom for an individual is, of course, conditional on that individual respecting the equal rights of others.

There will also be a general presumption of freedom. Anything not prohibited will be allowed, unless it violates others’ rights, or causes or is intended to cause unjust harm to others, or imposes unreasonable risks on others.

To sum up

To the eight key ideas I listed at the end of my ethical paper, I will add five more, which are the keys of my political or organizational philosophy.

9.     Community versus society. A community is a group of people, bound together by some shared characteristic; but not necessarily by anything more. A society, on the other hand, is a group of people who have agreed to join in a common cause. The two are not the same.

10.  Voluntary society principle. All societies must be voluntary.

11.  Falsity of the social contract idea. The Hobbesian version of the social contract is false, and has been foisted on us human beings fraudulently, by those that do not have our interests at heart. In the Lockean version, as soon as government fails to act for the good of the people, it loses its legitimacy. It must be reformed, or dismantled and replaced.

12.  Common-sense justice principle. Every individual deserves to be treated, over the long run, in the round and as far as practicable, as he or she treats others.

13.  Maximum freedom principle. Except where countermanded by common-sense justice or the natural law of humanity, every individual is free to choose and act as he or she wishes.