Philosophical guide: the background of today’s political structure
Liberty, equality, democracy, individualism, unity, and diversity. We internalize some basic concepts that we do not think on, we are born to them or born with them. But, they are derived from philosophical foundations that aroused hundreds of years ago. They guide the way we think, but we are not consciously aware of them. This piece aims to make those things more explicit to be able to defend our worldview, through being aware of the historical context. All we say and argue today were someone else’s words in a much better context.
These basic values and norms that we have internalized seem to be self- evident for us such as “democracy”. Everyone is a democrat today and we have democracy. We may disagree about what it entails but we all are sure that it is something that we value almost universally. World map from the Economist below classifies democracies based on the functioning level of the regime.
We see authoritarian, full democracies, half democracies, hybrid and flowed democracies, etc. which indicate a spectrum of diversity. Except for Saudi Arabia, Vatican, and Myanmar; the entire world claims to be a democracy regardless of how their political regime looks like. This leads us to say it has become a keystone of legitimacy for any kind of political regime to claim to be a democracy of some sort for stability. Today’s structure is a 180 degrees reversal. Until well into the 19th century, no one would embrace the label of being a democrat, it has a long history from the killing of Socrates and for hundreds of years after the Athenian “democracy”. How come this change occurred?
Alternatives were discussed from Plato to Nietzsche. They were critical about democracy for different reasons. Plato disapproved democracy because he believed it was a mob rule so we should not care about what the common people think since they are uncultured, uneducated people that do not know how politics works. So, he does not see how we should care about what the majority thinks. Why is this a guiding principle when making political decisions? He argues that experts who know how politics works should rule societies so that they can design the world structure in the best possible way to serve everyone’s interest. This argument is still alive today, ironically in democracies, by people who claim to be democrats, when we say we need experts in our economy, central banks, technocrats who are educated to serve at high levels of decision making, and these institutions should be independent of the government since they are experts who know the management.
Nietzsche opposes by claiming that democracy is not a mob rule but a herd rule. The problem here is not that the common people are ignorant, but they are boring. The majority is boringly average, and they are mostly concerned with the comforts of life, enjoyment, entertainment, they do not think deeply. For Nietzsche, what we need in politics people who live life like a work of art, that is exceptional and spontaneous, poetic like the national glory in the wars that were won, the battles and turning points of history. This is what we call anesthetization of politics, which is very prominent today, by people who claim to be democrats.
In the realm of economy, relations to politics have changed as well. To win elections today, political agenda should highlight economic promises. But Aristotle used to stress that the economy was sub-political, the economy was not a matter of politics but rather it was what less capable people are involved in like slaves, women and other individuals. For him, politics was something above the economy and above the household. Manual labor was a degrading thing. The more you do it, you become more habituated in these kinds of bodily activities, and the less inferior being that you become. In medieval politics, labor was a punishment. Adam and Eve were kicked out of paradise, and Adam’s punishment was laboring on land, sweating and working on fields, come from soil and end upon the soil. Punishment for Eve was being in “labor” and giving birth to children, where we can associate pain with labor, said Augustine. For Aristotle, labor is degrading that makes you a lower kind of being, while for Augustine, it is a kind of punishment. These changed drastically again, thanks to Marxism, socialism, and liberalism. Work was glorified in these regimes, in the USSR and Weber thought us the Protestant Ethics.
Adam and Eve were expelled from the heaven and their punishment was labor, so money was something that lower beings had to deal with. It was not worthy. Economics was sub-political, according to Aristotle. Today, politics is sub-economical. Here is a picture of Donald Trump and how his claims on strengthening the national labor and economics that gave him the power to execute. Economics rule mostly every aspect of life and include the political, whereas politics is perceived as something dirty.
