Politics - 7 - [Draft]**

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Continued from here.

In appreciating just how politicised a modern free society is—and, indeed, must be—it is helpful to get a glimpse of what politics used to be like prior to the emergence of liberty in a small number of countries of the West.

§10 Politics Before Modern Politics — The Privilege of Being a Political Agent

As we have seen in the first chapter—The State—the most basic challenges faced by human communities are violence and distrust. Avoiding anarchy—highly uncertain prospects for personal inviolacy and survival—and removing obstacles to at least essential productivity and its precondition peace is the first task of governance.

Mankind has taken a long time before it was able to ensure these conditions for communities larger than a hunter gatherer tribe, which used to be limited to perhaps 25 and hardly more than one hundred kinsmen.

Early states—or natural states as I shall call them—encompassing several thousand or even significantly more members, guaranteed minimal peaceableness and sufficient output to sustain the larger population by limiting the ability to act politically to a very small elite of power-holders. That is to say, the select few in possession of the means of coercion would keep a jealous watch over their privilege to determine the kind of conduct that a person was authorised to elicit within their sphere of power. In principle, any kind of human action was subject to being sanctioned by their arbitrary discretion; in practice, the ruling elite would seek to monopolise the ability to make any decision that affected their advantage in terms of power and their personal welfare.

Low Performance Equilibrium Trap

Formative to the face of politics and society over most of the last four thousand years was a more or less delicate equilibrium of power yielding

• precarious peace conditions, 

• low-level economic performance, and 

• pervasive routines of intensive social and political repression, 

especially virulent among the vast majority of the populace that were deprived of a political voice and practically all other modern personal rights.

Note, however poor the outcome of a world of elite politics and suppressed individuality, it probably was still the best among attainable options; and it appears that transcending this low-performance equilibrium trap was exceedingly difficult, even unlikely, and turned out to be due to lucky circumstances when eventually achieved.

Essence of the Closed Access Society

The logic of power in the age preceding liberty was this: in order to avoid violence, those most capable of it would tend to form coalitions, transposing to the best of their ability catastrophic confrontations into a regime that would secure them privileged access to society's most important resources—land, labour, capital—allow them to control key functions in society—governance, the founding of organisations, trade, religion etc—and make sure that any organisations or activities that pertain to these resources and key functions remain strictly under their supervision.

Closed Access versus Open Access

Compare this to the situation in a modern free society, where land, labour, capital, creation of organisations, governance, trade and the market for beliefs are in large measure either part of civil society—the sphere of extensive personal autonomy—or open to contestation and change initiated from any member of society who cares to make an effort at impacting the community and the powers-that-be.

For modern societies it is of the greatest importance that the initiative for contestation and change is squarely lodged in civil society's autonomous spheres of social interaction. For this takes a substantial part of power out of the hands of the monopolist of coercion, threatening aspirants for absolute power with forces of resistance that are insurmountable in the medium to long term, if not earlier.

Modern society becomes restive and unstable when power is monopolised. In the natural state, society is more stable when power is monopolised by a smallish coalition of rulers. 

Modern society depends for its stability and functional integrity on a broad diffusion of the right to politically relevant initiative among the populace; in earlier societies the opposite is the case—uncontrolled or beyond a certain measure, dispersal of political influence encourages strife, anarchy and destruction, until power is back in the hands of a dominant elite.

That is the great tragedy in the age of limited access societies - attempts at dispersing power tend to trigger conditions that are even less tolerable than the repressive milieux of personally privileged rule by the few.

Society and politics are organised around an equilibrium of power—the equilibrium condition of the natural state and an closed access society— such that greater benefits accrue to the coalescing agents of power

• (a) by sharing among themselves their privileges over the rest of the population 

than

• (b) from fighting for a larger share of the spoils by vanquishing and robbing one another.

The Rationality of Arbitrary Power and Its Contribution to the Common Weal

Armed to the teeth and willing to resort to violence, the contenders for power always face the prospect of catastrophic defeat. We shall see later that the permanent threat of harm and annihilation creates a latent readiness for power-holders to move amongst themselves closer to rudimentary versions of the rule of law, from which will emerge the modern, democratic variants of generally binding legal discipline. For the most, politics in the natural state is dedicated to helping members of the ruling coalition avoid savage harm to themselves while reaping attractive benefits unavailable to the rest of the population. The regime is based on a trade-off whereby the few assert positions of arbitrary power, self-aggrandisement by suppressing and exploiting the many, while, in return, making sure that violence and disorder remain at levels less gruelling and perilous than in more anarchic conditions. This trade-off, however, is an intrinsically unstable condition. It is always possible that circumstances arise that disrupt the equilibrium.

It is paradoxical and tragic that maintaining a framework props up a reasonably peaceful and productive life should presuppose a considerable measure of arbitrary power on the part of the dominant political forces. Arbitrary discretion affords them the flexibility

• to enforce their privileges vis-à-vis society at large, in the first place,

• to bar, punish or oust partners deemed unsuitable for the coalition, but also

• to cause turmoil by disrupting, unbalancing—say by entering into problematic alliances—or breaking free from the coalition

It is arbitrary power that keeps the peace, and it is arbitrary power that is the origin of strife and discord.

There is not yet a more effective social technology available—one which will bring about freedom thanks to broad political participation, or put differently: thanks to the heavily politicised populace of a free society.


Continued here.