Prelude to Politics (6) -- Managing New Social Risks Inherent in Social Arrangements Containing Natural Risks -- Summary I - No. 1 of the English Collection

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Continued from here.

I.

Freedom is a Political Product

In (1), I argue that ignoring the role of politics in organising freedom is not a valid option, nor its one-sided denigration. Politics is a modus operandi inextricably attached to human self-organisation, an enterprise that human beings as social creatures are incessantly occupied with, irrespective of the species's level of development. Politics is an anthropological constant. 

The waning and fading of politics, desired and recommended by libertarians, far from being a sign of progress, is in actual fact an impossibility. To the extent that politics can be beaten into retreat, the reduction of its scope tends to coincide with the greater exclusivity of practising it by a hermetic circle of power-holders. As far as liberty is concerned what stands out as particularly noteworthy is that people are capable of  becoming more adept at social self-organisation by means of politics. The upshot of this trend is the explosion of politics in a free society where the entire populace is encouraged to participate in the political sculpting of society.

Freedom is a dynamic condition, that is she requires intervention and change to come about in increasingly mature and comprehensive forms. Liberty requires intervention and change to be what she is, to fulfil her purpose, and to remain defended and viable. In large measure the dynamics of freedom is identical with what we call political behaviour.

Distinguishing good from bad types of governance and appreciating efforts of man to improve politics is important in understanding the emergence and reality of freedom. Markets, law, the multifarious institutions of freedom depend on political design and engagement, they do not drop from heaven, or spring into life by abjuring political conduct. 

Thus, if one desires a truthful account of the conditions of freedom one needs to come up with a theory of the central role of politics in her practical evolvement and functioning.

Freedom is a political product - it depends on the inclusion of the entire population in determining the tolerances the community has for the various forms of human action by which people try to express themselves, their views and ambitions, their relationship with other members of the community.

This job cannot be accomplished exhaustively by mere observance of certain rules and principles, it requires the possibility for everyone to participate in challenging and changing these norms. The result of these contingent processes cannot be anticipated by any static set of principles, but must be worked out among competing approaches to the task. 

II.

Freedom: Managing New Social Risks Inherent in Social Arrangements Successfully Containing Natural Risks

One way of looking at freedom is to see it as a milieu congenial to managing social risks and capabilities at a stage of human development where natural risks have come under considerable control by virtue of social advancements that, however, are accompanied by increased social risks.

Judging by the earliest evidence on longevity in Egypt, since the first century AD  life expectancy has been a constant 24 years until the 19th century. From then on, longevity would increase until today, showing promise to continue its rise.

Of course, many other indicators support an exponential steepening of improvement rates since the onset in the 18th century of the age of history's most advanced forms of human freedom. More people survive birth and infancy, live longer and better. Nonetheless, the higher forms of social organisation that underlie this kind of progress come with new risks of a social kind. Most notably, the modern state, incomparably powerful by historical standards, carries great dangers with it that need to be diffused if the destructions of nature stymied thanks to more efficient forms of coexistence and cooperation are not to be overwritten by equally or perhaps even more devastating dysfunctions in the social machinery - think Hitler, Stalin or Mao.

The management of these new social risks is a political task par excellence, as it depends on including larger and larger parts of the population.  

Rules versus Commands - Self-Perpetuating Inclusion

Why? If a rules-based society is significantly more efficient than a commandeered society, then more and more people need to be brought under the umbrella of efficient rules, which, in turn, will tend to give rise to developments that strengthen and perpetuate high levels of inclusion - for instance mass movements, parties and constitutions, but also corrective pressures from civil society.

Thus I write in (1),

Man is an uncertainty remover. In this capacity humankind has invested enormously in the business of reducing uncertainties (threatening its survival and welfare) that arise in the physical world. The result of man's efforts are mind-boggling. However, in order to achieve the levels of advancement in improving his protection against an adverse environment, man had to chance upon as well as create appropriate tools not only in the physical world but in the social realm as well. A certain, more advanced level of command over the physical world presupposes commensurately higher degrees of specialisation, division of labour and concomitant social complexity.

[...D]uring the course of human progress man replaces uncertainty emanating from the physical world by uncertainty generated by the social world. More complex social arrangements help conquer the physical environment more effectively, but expose the species to new risks of a social nature. Nowadays, we are not as much jeopardized, say, by the inclemency of weather than by defects in the social "technologies" that we have chanced upon and developed by and by to be able to gain more control over nature.

Storms are less of a problem than Stalin.

Continued here.