Chapter 51 Part Two Results Chapter Thirteen Ideology: The Secular World 1

(Mr. Bentham) practiced turning wooden utensils in a lathe, thinking he could reform a man in the same way.He had little love for poetry, and could hardly learn anything from Shakespeare.The steam made his house warm and bright.He was one of those who preferred man-made products to those of nature, and believed that human intellect was omnipotent.He had the greatest contempt for the outdoors, for green fields and woods, and always measured everything in terms of utility. —W. Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age (1825) Communists disdain to conceal their views and intentions.They openly declare that their purpose can only be achieved by the violent overthrow of the existing social system.Let the ruling class tremble before the communist revolution.The proletarians will have nothing to lose in this revolution but their chains.What they get will be the whole world.

Workers of the world, unite! —Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848) 1 For the world of 1789-1848, the quantitative title of ideology should still be awarded to the religious world; while the qualitative throne should be attributed to the secular world.With very few exceptions, all significant thinkers of the period under review, whatever their private religious beliefs, used a secular language.Much of what they thought (and what ordinary people take for granted without consciously thinking about it) will be explored in the science and art chapters that follow.In this chapter, we will focus on the overriding thesis raised by the dual revolution: the nature of society, and the way it is and should be.There are two major differences of opinion on this key issue: one is those who agree with the current world trend, and the other is those who do not; in other words, those who believe in progress and those who do not.For, in a sense, there was only one dominant world view at the time, and countless others, whatever their merits, were essentially negatively critical: a critique of the , rational, humane "enlightenment".Defenders of the Enlightenment firmly believe that human history is ascending, not descending, and not in horizontal waves.They were able to observe humanity's increasing scientific knowledge and technological control over nature.They believe that human society and individual development are equally capable of using reason to achieve perfection, and that such development is destined to be accomplished by history.With regard to the above arguments, the positions of bourgeois liberals and proletarian social revolutionaries are the same.

Until 1789, the most powerful and progressive expression of this progressive consciousness was classical bourgeois liberalism.In fact, its basic system has been elucidated in detail in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is beyond the scope of this volume.It was a narrow, clear, sharp philosophy, the perfect exponents of which, as we might expect, were found in France and England. Bourgeois liberalism is strictly rational and at the same time secular, that is, it is convinced in principle of the human capacity to understand all things and solve all problems rationally, convinced that irrational behavior and institutions (including traditionalism) and all irrational religions) will only make matters darker rather than enlightening.Philosophically, it tends toward materialism or empiricism, which is very fitting for it as an ideology that draws its strength and methods from science (mainly mathematics and physics in the 17th century scientific revolution).Its general view of the world and of human beings is deeply individualistic, based more on middle-class introspection or observation of its behavior than on the a priori principles it professes; The term did not exist in 1789), this so-called "associative" school of psychology was an echo of seventeenth-century mechanism.

In short, for classical liberalism, the human world is made up of individual individuals with certain inner passions and drives, each individual whose primary purpose is to seek maximum satisfaction and minimize dissatisfaction. At the very least, all are equal at this point. (The great Hobbes vehemently endorsed—for practical purposes—the complete equality of all men in every respect except “science.”) At the same time, each individual is also “innately” convinced that his desires Impulses should be unlimited and uninterrupted.In other words, every human being is "born" with his own life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, as stated in the American Declaration of Independence, although the most logical free thinker would prefer not to include this in the " natural rights".In the pursuit of this self-interest, each equal competitor in anarchy finds that he inevitably forms certain, often beneficial, connections with other individuals, a complex set of Arrangements (often expressed in the frankly commercial term 'contract') constitute society and social or political groups.Of course, such arrangements and connections imply a certain diminution of the inherent freedom to do as one pleases, and one of the tasks of politics is to reduce this interference with liberty. to the minimum practicable.Except perhaps for such impossibly small groups as parents and children, the "man" of classical liberalism (whose literary symbol is Robinson Crusoe) is a social animal only to the extent that it coexists in large numbers.Social goals are thus the sum total of individual goals.Happiness (a word that troubles its definers as much as its pursuers) is the supreme aim of every individual; the "greatest happiness of the greatest number" is clearly the aim of society.

In fact, pure utilitarianism, which professes that all human relations can be reduced to the above-mentioned model, is confined to the most unwitted philosophers or the most self-confident defenders of the middle class, the former exemplified by the great Hobbes of the seventeenth century. The latter includes those British thinkers or political commentators related to Bentham and Mill Sr., among which the classical political economy school is the most representative.There are two reasons for this limitation.To begin with, the ideology of pure utilitarianism—that everything but a rational calculation of self-interest is "melodramatic nonsense" (Bentham)—conflicted with some powerful behavioral instincts of the middle class. (It should not be assumed that "self-interest" necessarily implies antisocial egoism. The benevolent and socially concerned utilitarian holds that the greatest satisfaction an individual seeks includes, or with proper education may include, "benevolence," that is, helping Companion impulse. The point is that this is not a moral obligation or an aspect of social existence, but something that makes the individual happy. Holbach argues in his Natural Systems, Vol. I, p. 268: " Interests are nothing but what each of us thinks is necessary for his own happiness.") Thus, we can say that rational self-interest and "natural liberty"—to do what one wants and to keep what one has earned— The conflict between them is far greater than their consistency. (Hobbes, whose writings were reverently collected and published by English utilitarians, had long shown that self-interest precludes any a priori limitation of state power; to the greatest happiness of the people, as readily to bureaucratic state administration as to laissez-faire.) Those who seek to secure private property, private enterprise, and individual liberty, therefore, often prefer to confer a metaphysical rather than granting a vulnerable license to "utility".What's more, a philosophy that completely excludes morality and duty through rational calculation is likely to weaken the foundation of social stability, that is, the fixed sense of right and wrong, good and evil among the ignorant and poor.

For these reasons, utilitarianism never monopolized the liberal ideology of the middle class.It offers the sharpest radical ax to bring down a traditional system that fails to answer the question: Is it justified?Is it useful?Does it benefit the greatest happiness of the greatest number?But it was neither strong enough to spark a revolution nor strong enough to prevent one.The favorite thinker of vulgar liberalism is still the weak Philosophical Locke, not the excellent Hobbes, because he at least classifies private property as the most basic "natural right", so that it can be placed in the sphere of intervention and attack outside.The French revolutionaries found it best to combine their demands for free enterprise (“Every citizen is free to use his hands, his skills, his capital as he sees fit and for his own benefit . . . what he likes"), placed in the general form of natural rights ("everyone exercises his natural rights only to the extent that the other members of society are guaranteed the same rights").

In its political thought, classical liberalism thus departed from the audacity and severity that made it a powerful revolutionary force.In its economic thinking, however, it was less constrained, in part because the middle class had far more confidence in the triumph of capitalism than in the ability of the bourgeoisie to gain political superiority over absolutism or an ignorant populace; Partly due to classical assumptions about human nature and the state of nature, the adaptability to the particular conditions of the market is far superior to the general conditions of human beings.Classical political economy thus becomes, thanks to Hobbes, the most moving intellectual monument of the ideology of liberty.Its glory days predate the period covered in this book.The publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) marked its beginning, Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy (1817) represented its culmination, and 1830 It is the beginning of its decline or transformation.But its vulgarized version continued to gain a following among industrialists throughout the period covered by this book.

The social arguments of Adam Smith's political economy can be described as elegant and fluent.Indeed, human beings are basically composed of individual individuals with specific psychological qualities who compete with each other to pursue their own self-interest.However, we can state the following: when the act of competition operates as unchecked as possible, it produces more than a "natural" social order (as distinguished from vested interests of the aristocracy, obscurantism, tradition, or an artificial order imposed by ignorant intervention), but as rapidly as possible the increase of "national wealth", that is, the comfort and welfare of all, and the happiness that comes with it.The basis of this natural order is the social division of labour.Just as it can be proved scientifically that the respective interests of Great Britain and Jamaica are best served by the manufacture of finished goods by the one and the supply of raw sugar by the other, so it can be proved scientifically that the existence of a capitalist class possessing the means of production is beneficial to all , including the working class employed by capitalists, are beneficial.Because the increase of national wealth is driven by the operation of private enterprises with property and the accumulation of capital, and science can also prove that any other way of obtaining wealth will definitely slow down or even stop the increase of national wealth.What is more, that economically unequal society—an inevitable consequence of the natural workings of man—is not incompatible with the inherent equality of all people, or with justice.For, besides securing even the poorest man a better life than he would otherwise be, this society is founded on the most equal of all relations, that is, on the exchange of market equivalents. above.As one modern scholar puts it: "No one depends on the charity of another; for everything a man receives from anyone he gives in exchange an equivalent. And the free play of natural forces destroys all Not a status based on contribution to the common good."

Progress is thus as "natural" as capitalism.Removal of the obstacles to progress erected by man in the past, progress must take place, and it is plain to see that the progress of production goes hand in hand with the general progress of art, science, and civilization.Do not think that those who hold such views are merely defending industrialists with vested interests.They believed that capitalism was the inevitable path of human progress, based on a great deal of historical extrapolation from that era. This overly optimistic view stems not only from a deep belief in economic theorems proven by deductive reasoning, but also from the apparent progress of capitalism and civilization in the eighteenth century.On the contrary, it began to falter not only because Ricardo discovered internal contradictions in the system that Adam Smith had overlooked, but also because the actual economic and social consequences of capitalism were not as good as expected.Political economy became a "dull" rather than a hopeful science in the first half of the nineteenth century.One can of course still think that those who (as Malthus argued in his famous Essay on Population in 1798) ought to be on the brink of starvation, or those (as Ricardo argued) that) the misfortune of those who suffer from the introduction of machinery still constitutes the greatest happiness of the greatest number, though it happens to be far less than would be desired.But facts of this kind, and the apparent difficulties of capitalist expansion in the period from about 1810 to the 1840s, have dampened optimism and stimulated critical inquiry, especially A study of "distribution".This is in contrast to the "production" which was the main concern of Adam Smith's generation.

Ricardo's political economy, a masterpiece of rigorous deduction, has thus introduced a large number of discordant factors into the natural harmony predicted by early economists' bets.It emphasizes even more than Adam Smith those factors which, as expected, can stall the engine of economic progress by reducing the necessary fuel supply, such as the downward trend of interest rates.More importantly, he developed a basic general labor theory of value that, with just a little development, would become a powerful theory against capitalism.Ricardo, however, not only possessed the industrial virtuosity of a thinker, but also enthusiastically supported the practical goals (free trade and opposition to landowners) that most British industrialists favored, thus helping to give classical politics Economics is in a firmer position than before.For practical purposes, the commandos of post-Napoleonic middle-class reform in Britain were armed with Bentham's utilitarianism and Ricardo's economics.In turn, the achievements of Adam Smith and Ricardo, supported by the achievements of British industry and trade, made political economy a largely British discipline, making French economists (who were also at the forefront at least in the eighteenth century) status) to the secondary status of anachronists or auxiliaries, also turning non-classical economists into sporadic partisans.What is more, they make political economy an important symbol of liberal progress.Brazil established a professorship for this discipline in 1808 (much earlier than France), and it was established by Adam Smith's popularizer J.B. Say (an outstanding French economist) and the utilitarian anarchist Christian Godwin (William Godwin) served. Argentina had just achieved independence in 1823, when the new University of Buenos Aires began teaching political economy on the books of Ricardo and Mill the Elder.Still, Argentina lags behind Cuba, which established its first professorship of political economy as far back as 1818.The actual economic behavior of Latin American rulers horrified European financiers and economists.And this fact has nothing to do with the orthodox economics they cling to.

In political science, as we have seen, liberal ideology is neither rigorous nor consistent.Theoretically, it is still divided into two factions, utilitarianism and compliance with ancient natural law and natural rights, with the latter predominating.In its practical programme, it still struggles between two beliefs.One is the belief in the government of the people, the rule of the majority.This is in line with its logic and reflects the fact that it is not the arguments of the middle class but the mobilization of the masses that actually bring about the revolution and exert effective political pressure at the level of reform. (Condorcet's ideas are really the epitome of the bourgeois enlightened man whose belief in limited suffrage was transformed by the fall of the Bastille into a belief in democracy, though he remained fiercely protective of the individual and the minority.) Another One is the widespread belief in a government controlled by a propertied elite.In British terms, it is somewhere between "radicalism" and "whiggism".For, if the government is really of the people, if the majority really rules (that is, if the interests of the minority are logically unavoidable at its expense), then it is possible to rely on this de facto majority ("at most poor class") to secure liberty, to enforce the imperatives of reason that apparently fit in with the program of middle-class liberals? Before the French Revolution, this phenomenon was alarming mainly because the toiling masses, always at the mercy of priests and kings, were so ignorant and superstitious.The revolution itself introduced the added danger of a left-wing, anti-capitalist calculation, such as was implicit (and in some cases explicit) in some aspects of the Jacobin dictatorship.Moderate Whigs abroad had long noticed the danger: Edmund Burke, who in economic thought was pure Adam Smith, was politically openly regressing to the belief in traditional virtues, continuity, and slowness. While irrationalism grew organically, and has since provided the mainstay of conservatism, liberal realists across the continent have largely shunned political democracy in favor of constitutional monarchies with property restrictions on electoral rights, or, Any old-fashioned despotism that safeguards their interests will do, if necessary.After 1793-1794 only an extremely disaffected or self-confident bourgeoisie, such as the English bourgeoisie, was prepared to believe, with the old Mill, that even in a democratic republic they had the capacity to secure the permanent support of the working masses . The social discontent, revolutionary movements, and socialist ideologies of the post-Napoleonic period all exacerbated this dilemma, and the Revolution of 1830 sharpened it.Liberalism and democracy appeared to be enemies rather than allies, and the three slogans of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, seemed to express a contradiction rather than a unity.Not surprisingly, this contradiction appears most clearly in France, the homeland of the revolution.Tocqueville concentrated, with astonishing wisdom, on the analysis of the inner tendencies of American democracy (1835) and, later, of the French Revolution.He left behind the finest moderate liberal democratic criticism of the period, or rather, he has identified a moderate liberalism particularly suited to the post-1945 Western world.Perhaps it will not be surprising to look at his following dictum: "Since the eighteenth century two rivers have flowed, as if from a common source. The one has led mankind to free institutions, the other to despotism. ’” In England, Mill’s stubborn faith in bourgeois democracy also contrasted strikingly with his son John Stuart Mill’s concern and anxieties about protecting the rights of the minority from the encroachment of the majority.Such concerns and anxieties loom over this generous and worried thinker's On Liberty (1859).