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The Puzzle of Political Authority: Philosophical Anarchism
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At the root of all contemporary discussions of the legitimacy of authority is the problem posed by Robert Paul Wolff concerning the incompatibility of moral autonomy and political authority. The problem is really only connected with the kinds of political authority that imply content independent duties to comply with authoritative commands. The basic idea is that it is incompatible for a subject to comply with the commands of an authority merely because it is the command of the authority and for the subject to be acting morally autonomously. Wolff thinks that each person has a duty to act on the basis of his own moral assessment of right and wrong and has the duty to reflect on what is right and wrong in each particular instance of action. Such a person would be violating his duty to act autonomously if he complies with authoritative commands on grounds that are independent of the content of the commands. So the duty of autonomy is incompatible with the duty of obeying political authority. This is the challenge of philosophical anarchism (Wolff 1970).
The worry is that authority is never legitimate because the kind of obedience associated with authority is inconsistent with the autonomy of the subject. We can see, however, that this worry applies only to certain accounts of authority, which imply duties to obey on the part of the subjects. The account of authority as justified coercion is not affected by this argument nor is the account of legitimate authority consisting of a justification right affected by this worry. Still, most accounts of the nature of authority do imply content independent duties on the part of the subjects. We can see that any content independent duty, whether it is a duty not to interfere with the authority's command or it is a duty to obey the authority, is called into question by this argument.
The basis of political authority: divine right, knowledge, and consent-based theories
The rationale of political authority, the grounds on which we might sensibly desire to have authority as a feature of our social life, does not translate directly into a reason why a particular person or group, or political unit, should possess or exercise it. Such a reason provides a basis of authority. Three such bases have been urged influentially by political theorists at different times: divine right, knowledge, and consent.
Divine right
The doctrine of the divine right of kings is apt to receive short shrift. I include it here, not because it is a live option for most people — the last monarch claiming and widely acknowledged to rule by divine right was Nicholas II (1868-1918), Tsar of Russia (1894-1917) — but rather because it is a frequently-cited and commonly misunderstood account of political authority, a miscast pantomime character in political theory. Most political philosophy students 'know' only that, as expounded by Sir Robert Filmer, Locke subjected the doctrine to a devastating critique in the First Treatise of Civil Government.
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The theory carries four main claims (Figgis, 1896: 5-6):
• monarchy is a divinely ordained institution
• hereditary right is indefeasible (the right cannot be forfeited by individuals who have it)
• monarchs are accountable to no one but God
• non-resistance and passive obedience are enjoined by God
The non-accountability of monarchs came into conflict with the well-entrenched doctrine of the rule of law. To hold that the monarch should be under the law was, King James I affirmed, simple treason (Lippmann, 1937:339). It also means that the normative reason for compliance is, on this model of political authority, a conclusive reason.
Roughly two sets of arguments were used in support of the doctrine: one biblical, the other based on analogies and correspondences between the natural world of the family and the political. The biblical arguments were largely to the effect that, as Filmer put it, all kings 'either are, or are to be reputed, as the next heirs of those progenitors who were at first the natural parents of the whole people, and in their right succeed to the exercise of supreme jurisdiction' (Filmer, 1949: 60-1). In a word, Adam was the first king, with supreme jurisdiction, and other kings are, or are to be presumed, his heirs.
But, as Rousseau pointed out, if we start from King Adam we may not get so far as present kings:
I have said nothing about King Adam, or about emperor Noah... I hope my moderation will be appreciated; for since I am a direct descendant from one of these Princes, and perhaps from the elder branch, for all I know, I might, upon verification of titles, find I am the legitimate king of humankind (SC, 1.2: 43).
The second set of arguments rested on correspondences and analogies between the natural and the social worlds. By appeal to the order of nature, patriarchy within the family was used as a political model. Kings stand to their subjects as fathers stand to their children; the Russian Tsar was, in exact illustration batyushka, 'the Little Father'. But Aristotle had long since shown the limitations of the patriarchal family model as applied to politics (P 1.12: 17ff.). And few would now accept the patriarchal family as an intrinsic part of the order of nature. In any event Locke felt he was able to show the incompleteness of the analogy. The 'superiority' of fathers to their children is temporary only, until the children reach years of discretion when they are sufficiently mature to run their own lives (ST, ch. 6: 303-18).
Natural Subordination
Some beings' natures are such that they instinctively do, and ought to, submit to and take direction from other beings whose natures fit them for dominance, rulership, and power. But can there be natural dominance within the human species? That is, can human beings be sufficiently unequal in capacities and talents such that the better-endowed human beings naturally (and inevitably) have dominion over these lesser-endowed human beings in the way that human beings have dominion over an ox or a sheep? It has been commonplace throughout history to assume that the answer to this last question is yes. And those who do so accept an instance of what I call the natural subordination theory of political authority.
Institutions such as slavery, racism, and the subordination of women have all been justified on the basis that those being ruled are inferiors who are naturally—and rightfully—dominated by their betters. Conceptions of how that domination should be construed have varied: Sometimes the inferior has actually been allowed to be owned (as property) by the superior (e.g., in systems of slavery, which can vary in how much control the master has over the slave by virtue of owning him); other times the inferior is merely controlled by the superior, who is taken to be more like a guardian or a trustee than a master (for example, in nineteenth-century Britain married women were not allowed to have property in their own name, so that any property left to them would have to be administered for them by a male trustee).
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There are two questions this theory raises. First, is there really the kind of substantive inequality among human beings that consistently results in the superiors' dominating inferiors? This view assumes that the biology of the human species is such that each of us is born with traits that, when developed, determine in any relationship with another human being whether we are dominant over the other or else dominated by the other.
Aside from this issue, the second question this theory must address is why natural superiority entitles someone to dominate over an inferior, and what sort of natural superiority does so. Even if there is substantial inequality among people that results in the inferiors' being dominated by the superiors, that alone is not sufficient to explain why the superiors are supposed to be entitled to dominate over the inferiors. Just because they all dominate (unless stopped from doing so) doesn't mean that they my, or ought to, do so. So we must understand the difference between a (mere) descriptive account of the origination of power relationships among human beings and a normative account of these relationships that establishes their legitimacy. Descriptions merely tell us what these relations are and where they come from: That is, descriptive accounts tell us what is. Normative accounts tell us why these relationships are justified and hence ought to prevail: That is, normative accounts tell us what ought to be.
There are two ways of developing such an account. The first involves arguing that nature itself provides the entitlement. On this view, insofar s such dominance will occur in nature, it is therefore justifiable. The idea is that just as there are physical laws of nature, there are political laws of nature that invariably determine political hierarchies in human communities.
This view of nature is antithetical to the view of the world taken by modern science. Biologists today, for example, do not think that within any species nature provides its members with a "right" way to behave or operate, and they certainly deny that the world contains any normative principles about who "ought" to rule over whom. And when biologists' studies of various species frequently involve statements concerning which gender of the species is dominant, they do not purport to establish the dominance as "right" or "justifiable" by virtue of some fundamental natural order. So, for example, even if in the hyena species females tend to dominate over males, that fact does not mean, for the biologists who study them, that they ought to do so or that nature has ordained (and will also enforce) that dominance.
However, the natural subordination theory can also explain the authority of the superior over the inferior in a second way, such that it is consistent with a more scientific view of nature. On this view, an inferior ought to be subordinated to a superior if and only if the nature of the inferiority is such that the inferior and/or the community of which he is a part would, on the whole, be better off if his actions were subject to the control of the superior. Thus, for example, if the inferior were unable to reason well, one might argue that both he and the community of which he is a part would be better off if he were subject to the control of someone who was able to reason well; such a rational superior could direct him to behave in ways that would ensure his safety and the safety of others and help him to satisfy his desires and achieve his plans better than he would be able to do on his own. In view of the fact that this argument derives the naturally superior person's authority to rule from the good consequences that he takes to follow from such rule, I call it a "consequentialist" argument for natural subordination.
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This second explanation is suggested in the work of Aristotle, whose Politics is one of the great classics of Western political philosophy. Although Aristotle was not mainly interested in developing a natural subordination theory of political authority in that book—and actually suggests a quite different, consent-based justification of authority in most of it (which I discuss later in this chapter)—he does believe that natural subordination exists and suggests that such subordination is justified by virtue of its good consequences for all concerned. Aristotle recognizes two forms of natural domination: the domination of the (natural) master over the (natural) slave and the domination of men over women. Both forms of domination presuppose the idea that some human beings, in particular those with "slavish" natures and those who are female, are unable to reason effectively about the world, and it is in virtue of that deficiency that they must be subordinated to the control of others, both for their own good and the good of the community.
How is slavery good for the slave? Aristotle explains that the slave needs the master because his own reason is insufficient to develop a life plan. In other words, the slave needs the master to direct him because he can't it himself. Again, such sentiments strike modern readers as fantastic and offensive. But notice that neither Aristotle nor the American apologists for slavery ever suggest that if in a particular case these good consequences don't occur, the slave is entitled to "rebel" against the inadequate rule of s master.
In a sense, Aristotle's argument portrays women as permanent children. It has been relatively uncontroversial in all times and places that parents have authority over children insofar as the latter are deficient in ruling themselves through reason because they lack the experience necessary to draw rational inferences or because they/lack the intellectual development necessary to perform various sorts of reasoning or because they are easily swayed by emotions or passions. Aristotle is in effect saying that female children never actually rid themselves of these immaturities, necessitating their subordination to free male adults who do achieve rational maturation.
So the natural subordination theory also fails as a theory of political authority, which means that we still don't have an answer to the anarchists' worries. Hence if we are to understand and appraise the justification of olitical authority, particularly in modern democratic societies, we will need to look for a justification of political authority very different from that provided by the natural subordination theory, one that accepts a far more egalitarian conception of the ability of human beings to direct their own lives.
The most ambitious attempt to found political authority on knowledge is that of Plato in the Republic. Plato invites us to accept that every systematic human activity admits of skill which can be developed and which is possessed in different degrees by different people. In Republic VI he produces the parable of the ship. If we were embarking on a sea voyage, he asks us to reflect, we would surely seek to enlist the skills of a trained navigator. He describes a voyage on which precisely the opposite happens. The captain is rather dim and is persuaded, or even forced, to pass the navigation over to people who deny that any special knowledge is needed. The result is a meandering round of pleasure in which the ship follows no determinate course and the trickster pseudo-navigators help themselves to whatever the ship provides. This, for Plato, is an exact image of democratic politics, the dim captain being the general run of citizens and the tricksters, the politicians who insinuate themselves into power. We need knowledge in order to navigate: what is different between navigation and politics? This approach to authority explains Plato's implacable antipathy to democracy.
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Consent
Moving on now to consent as the basis of political authority, one must distinguish between:
consent as necessary for the existence of a stable political society
consent as important as a political goal
consent as necessary for the entitlement to command
the nature of consent
the criteria for consent
Plainly our concern in normative political theory is with the third view. Actual consent can be either express or tacit. In express consent I formally make a declaration, sign a document, utter a conventional form of words (e.g. 'I agree to your doing Y'); in tacit consent, my consent to Y can be reasonably inferred on either of two conditions: (1) ex silentio, (2) where I expressly consent to X and by the strongest implication X involves Y. In the first case, I tacitly consent to your smoking if, in face of your statement, 'Unless anyone objects, I shall light a cigarette', I remain silent. In the second, I expressly consent to your translating my book into Italian and tacitly consent to your translating it into a European language. Both express and tacit consent are, to repeat, actual consent as distinct from hypothetical consent. Hypothetical consent relies on the idea of what people would agree to in certain circumstances — say, if they were fully or better informed or (more) rational (§§18.1, 24.1). I shall ignore hypothetical consent for present purposes; to talk of what people would agree to is not to talk of what they do agree to. Hypothetical consent is not consent.
The ideas of consent, contract, and democracy are closely entwined in practice, but conceptually they need to be held apart. Contract and democracy are forms of the politics of consent, supposedly conferring or embodying authority. As citizens we might express or instantiate our consent through a contract. We may also exercise and have the readiest means of withdrawing our consent through democratic procedures. But there can be consent where there is neither contract nor democracy. The doctrine of the divine right of kings, accepted by the citizen body (as it once widely was), is an example of this. There can also be a contract without democracy. In Hobbes' political theory, a commonwealth by institution is described in Leviathan by which the citizens make a mutual contract to obey a supreme coercive power (a political unit with the ability to quell all opposition and ensure compliance (§9.2.1)) in order to escape the disadvantages of the state of nature. There is no guarantee of that power's being democratic and every likelihood of its not being so (Hobbes prompts us) in the interests of efficient government.
A long tradition of political thought has sought to secure consent through contract; this is the tradition of 'social contract' theory. The heyday of contract theory was the seventeenth and eigtheenth centuries. The central texts are Hobbes' Leviathan (1651), Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), and Rousseau's Social Contract (1762). On Hobbes' account, the social contract creates not only political society and a ruler but, through that ruler's exercise of supreme power, the very possibility of organised social life. In Locke, organised social life precedes the contract, which simply creates the political machinery to make social life accord with principles of justice; the role of political authority is to protect our natural rights to life, liberty, and property, and to prevent the excesses that arise when people act on their own perceptions of threats to, and violations of, those rights. Again, Rousseau's social contract does not create organised social life, but ushers in the political conditions to enable independence within that life.
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Three objections are common coin in the critique of social contract theory. The first rests on the ahistoricity of the contract; it never happened in the history of any contemporary state. This objection is hardly decisive. It is effective enough against claims that the actual basis of political authority is a social contract. But a radical theorist such as Rousseau need maintain only that, if there were to be a political order possessing de jure authority, a social contract would be its underpinning. Rousseau is uncommitted to the position that there is any current basis of political authority; no political order possessing de jure authority exists outside the pages of the Social Contract. He makes clear in SC 1.1 that he is not writing history.
The second objection is that, even if a social contract were the basis of political authority, it would bind only the original contractors. It is intuitively clear that contracts cannot bind third parties, in this case succeeding generations. But this argument works only against contract theorists who suppose that a social contract does or would bind in this long-term way. Against a theorist such as Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), who argued for a regular renewal of political authority, the objection misses the mark. Each generation would renew or reject the contract explicitly on their own account.
The third objection is an attempt to defeat what might be termed the moral logic of contract theory. It stems from Hume's 1748 essay, 'Of the Original Contract' (Hume, 1987: 465-87). This is often presented as the classic refutation of social contract theory. It actually has a more limited status, that of a devastating critique of social contract theory, given Hume's own assumptions. Stripped to basics, Hume's argument is that the moral institution of promising is a product of state-supported society. Therefore any attempt to deduce a moral reason for obeying the state from a contract or promise — to use this as a basis for political authority - is back-to-front. Simply said, the state creates, in the sense of enabling the possibility of, the moral institution of promising; the institution of promising cannot provide a prior moral ground for obeying the state.
ГОСПОДСТВО (БРЭ, Т. 7, С. 508-509)
ГОСПОДСТВО — в широком смысле представляет собой устойчивые и воспроизводящиеся отношения власти и подчинения, обеспечивающие стабильные преимущества одних людей над другими; в узком смысле — это легитимная система власти, опирающаяся на право одних людей командовать и обязанность других подчиняться.
Г. возникает по мере формирования постоянных отношений власти между группами людей, проявляющихся в повторяющихся формах их поведения, ролях и функциях в обществе. В отличие от власти, которая бывает нестабильной, ограниченной по времени своего существования, а ее субъекты и объекты часто меняются своими местами, Г. обладает относительной прочностью, которая поддерживается существующими социальными институтами и структурами. Г. не сводится к единичным актам реализации воли отдельных людей и групп по отношению к другим; оно выражает момент устойчивости в их отношениях между собой. Хотя Г. может проявляться и в отношениях между отдельными людьми (хозяин — слуга, рабовладелец — раб, муж — жена, образованный — необразованный), оно имеет групповую (классовую) природу: в условиях Г. властные отношения постоянно воспроизводят существенные преимущества одних групп над другими (рабовладельцев над рабами, дворян над крестьянами, собственников над наемными работниками, мужчин над женщинами, большого этноса над малым) и тем самым формируют и закрепляют социальное неравенство. Однако не любое неравенство является выражением Г., а только то, в котором господствующие группы направляют и предопределяют действия других групп.
Г. обусловливается различными факторами, определяющими специфику его форм и видов. Оно может быть основано на силе, численности, военном и техническом превосходстве, сословных привилегиях, религиозных нормах и традициях, экономическом могуществе, культурной идентичности, знании и т.д. Г., опирающееся на силу и военное превосходство поддерживается тем, что люди понимают реальность угроз и повинуются господствующим группам даже в тех ситуациях, где угрозы не осуществляются. Экономическое Г. обусловлено сложившимся в обществе характером разделением труда и концентрацией средств труда и экономических ресурсов в руках отдельных групп, вынуждающими другие группы принимать невыгодные им (несправедливые) условиях экономического обмена. Происхождение, принадлежность к определенному роду, религиозной или этнической общине обеспечивают определенным группам доступ к значимым социальным ценностям и благам и одновременно исключают аналогичные возможности у других групп (иммигрантов, иноверцев, этнических меньшинств и т.п.), которым придается низший или маргинальный социальный статус. Политическое Г. заключается в монополии (или постоянном преобладании) определенных групп (элит) в процессе принятия важнейших политических решений, в контроле за деятельностью государственных институтов. Идеологическое Г. проявляется в принятии людьми ценностей и идеалов, которые выражают интересы господствующих групп. Отношения Г. могут возникнуть и в результате того, что каким-то группам (священникам, идеологам, профессионалам) приписываются качества экспертов, обладающих особыми знаниями и умениями, недоступными другим людям.
Эти и другие формы Г. в реальности, как правило, тесно связаны между собой и взаимодополняют друг друга. Политическое господство отдельных групп обычно сопровождается их доминированием в экономике и духовной сфере. При этом не все формы Г. осознаются людьми (например, идеологическое Г.), а многие его следствия воспринимаются как проявления естественного неравенства: мужчины обычно не считают, что так или иначе участвуют в осуществлении Г. над женщинами, а работодатели — над наемными работниками. Поскольку осознание Г. может вызвать сопротивление, господствующие группы могут вполне сознательно участвовать в формировании стратегий сокрытия Г. путем убеждения общества в том, что отношения Г. выгодны всем его членам, или имеют естественный характер и потому не могут быть преодолены.
Г. в широком смысле как стабильная структура власти одних групп над другими, опирающаяся на различные основания и проявляющаяся в различных сферах социального взаимодействия может трансформироваться в устойчивую систему легитимной власти (Г. в узком смысле) в результате признания людьми своей обязанности подчиняться определенным индивидам и группам. В зависимости от специфики легитимного авторитета, на котором основывается Г. в узком смысле, вслед за М. Вебером обычно выделяются традиционный, рационально-легальный и харизматический типы Г. В первом случае основанием Г. выступает уважение к традиции, во втором — законопослушность, принятие общепризнанных норм, правил и процедур, в третьем — вера в особые качества лидера или организации. Эти типы Г. редко встречаются в чистом виде, обычно образуя разнообразные комбинации и взаимодействуя с формами Г. в широком смысле.
В силу того, что Г. закрепляет преимущества одних людей над другими и часто сопровождается дискриминацией, эксплуатацией и угнетением, ориентация на создание общества, в котором не будет Г. одних групп над другими (по крайней мере, Г. в широком смысле) присутствует в целом ряде течений общественно-политической мысли (анархизм, марксизм, феминизм и др.) и проявляется в деятельности различных общественных групп и политических организаций, в основном левой ориентации. Однако в целом преобладают более пессимистические взгляды на возможность преодоления отношений Г. в обозримом будущем — в силу прочности институтов, закрепляющих Г. одних групп над другими и сохраняющемся (а порой и увеличивающемся) неравенстве в распределении ресурсов власти между ними.
Лит. Вебер М. Политика как призвание и профессия // Вебер М. Избранные сочинения. — М., 1990; Power: Critical Concepts /Ed. by John Scott. Vol. I-III. — L., 1994; Scott J. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. — New Haven, 1990; Scott J. Power. — Oxford, 2001. В.Г. Ледяев
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