from monarchy to democratic...

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FROM MONARCHY TO DEMOCRATIC ORIGINS

D. Morgan Pierce

1. MONARCHY

　The extinction of popular freedom for the sake of social stability is a profound

opposition between government and subject, ruler and ruled. Originally the State had

been conceived to be the embodiment of God's will, and by inference the expression

of the king's will. The principle of monarchy is that unity of sovereignty is essential

to viable government; origination of all powers from one source, for instance the

king, guarantees the interior consistency of all laws (Jean Bodin). If in the fi nal will

of the State one principle contradicted another, laws would confl ict at every level; all

law must therefore converge in one indivisible person: the king. Internally consistent

royal omnipotence would preserve the unity of sovereignty, under which the folk were

conceived to be wards in guardianship; the king was under divine obligation to care

for his folk. Appointment by God connoted immutability of government. Monarchy

identifi es the composition of society from social classes as the inherent cause of social

insecurity; society is stable because the king, external to social groups, is disinterested

and impartial.

　Equitable treatment of each social class depends upon monarchical impartiality;

royal omnipotence is justice in that nothing is withheld that the king might desire.

Royalty is therefore unlike class domination or class confl ict, in that the king's fi nal

power over aristocracy is no more germane to him than his power over every social

group; absolute monarchical power, unlike class society, entails that the king be not

dependent on his aristocracy or any other group. Lifelong tenure and inheritance

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insulate the king in such a way that he is never pressed to bargain or to ingratiate any

social sector to obtain anything he might want; the king is thus never pressured from

any need to depend on some social sector. What he needs to modulate policy will not

need to alter policy in order to receive what he needs from any sector of society. During

the donatist controversy St Augustine stipulated that a Christian folk must obey their

King even when he is indisputably evil.

　The monarch is immune to popular pressures. Democratic impulses to guide

government policy stimulate popular passions and rivalry; popular participation

facilitates political rivals to aggregate groups of population in civil strife. The severe

monarchical distinction between ruler and ruled precludes popular turbulence from

political involvement, although royal legislation was expected to have benevolent

interest in keeping the people as quiescent as possible. Inheritance is also an imperative

element of monarchy, in that safety of monarchical succession sustains impassivity to

popular will; the impassivity of the king is the foundation of government impartiality

and continuity. The mortal body of the king is transient; the divine body of the king is

eternal, the once and future king: "The king is dead. Long live the king!" The unity of

sovereignty, embodied in lineage, establishes concretely the precedence of monarchical

over popular will. The king maintains the unity of sovereignty, whereas the fragmentary

wills of the subjects disrupt it. Tyranny must be understood exclusively as the will of

the king that is not representative of divine will; tyranny is not cruelty, injustice, or

willfulness, but the disruption of continuity. Hereditary powers provide the necessary

continuity of government, but exclude popular welfare from political consideration.

　Contrary to fact, if the will of the king were conceived to be the will of the people,

legitimate monarchy would equate with benevolent guardianship of popular will. But

the precocious idea of government as the servant of society could subsist only if it

subserved the primary conviction that the king is God's representative. Monarchical

legitimacy is contingent solely on the will of God, not satisfaction of the popular

will. The idea that government should express the will of the people was strongly

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sacrilegious. Monarchy imposes the unitary will of God over the fractious plurality

of popular will; monarchy was to be untrammeled by the irreconcilable plurality of

popular desires. Truth was conceived to be TRUE, not contingently on demonstration,

contract, or on majority will. The truth is TRUE because it is God’s will, full stop.

Though sadly circular, the king is infallible because he conveys the will of God;

justice or popularity is irrelevant. Divine Right, conceived on the basis of absolute

truth, justifies monarchy, aristocracy, and unconditional obedience to the king. St.

Augustine’s pronouncement that the State is a divine punishment imposed on man

in requital for sin repudiates the popular objection that monarchy does not serve the

popular will; the monarch served God by executing God’s anger at mankind.

　The vulnerability of monarchy was not primarily tyranny, but consanguinity. Royal

will preempts obligation to satisfy popular will, thereby instigating what the Greeks

contrarily conceived to be tyranny. The divine election of the King is a creature

of patriarchal authority; the king is sovereign due to blood-right, by virtue of his

membership to a royal family. Because the king was a natural heir to the throne, his

election to monarchy was not a human choice, whether by government or aristocracy.

The independence of the election of the king from human politics signifi ed divine will.

Naturally, on the other hand, the king was the scion of only one family; what elected

the king unequivocally excluded the scions of other aristocratic families from royalty.

Aristocratic families conditionally support the monarch in conjunction with certain

advantages, but would be happier if the royal succession were installed in their own

lineage. Transfer of "Right of Succession" was categorically impossible because, as a

divine right, the "offi ce" of the king was never an offi ce; offi ce is a political artifact but

kingship is sacred.

　Classical Greece was the only pre-modern culture to have extricated itself from the

monarchical dogma that government was immutably ordained by God. The weakness of

consanguineal succession was the paucity of high position or reward for the numerous

retinue needed to keep a government. The earliest adjustment to pragmatic necessity,

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long prior to the advent of democracy, absolute monarchy instituted representatives,

which would ingratiate the aristocratic families gathered in the polity. The earliest

representation did not jeopardize absolute monarchy; the role of the representatives

had been to advise the king on apposite policies for the various parts and aspects of

the kingdom. The representative role was advisory, bereft of political authority; it was

an appointment, not an offi ce. The overwhelming strength of absolute monarchy had

depended on the concentration of all powers in one person, as supposedly entailed for

the unity of sovereignty. Conception of the will of the king as the will of God entails

the king's unconditional power; if, contrarily, the will of the king had been conceived

to be the will of the people, the monarchical power would have been contingent on

satisfaction of the collective desires of his subjects. Royal continuity however entails

that the king's decision must take precedence over the singular or collective wishes

of his subjects; a type of representative whose advice could obligate government

action would fragment the unity of sovereignty. Royal omnipotence can have no

representational limitations, although royal immunity entailed a distinction of the

subjective will of the person of the king and the will of the king as the representative of

God. The "two bodies of the king" managed a bridge over the embarrassing fact of the

king's death and his presumed omnipotence, immortality, divinity, etc. The two bodies

of the king facilitated a transition from divine right to limited monarchy by suggesting

real distinction between the mortal person of the king and the divine, abstract survival

of the king in succession, thus suggesting a potential distinction between the person of

the king and the offi ce of the king.

　Constitutional monarchy is the maturation of that anticipated in classical Greece: a

monarch under constraint of law. Oligarchy is potentially stronger than the omnipotent,

absolute monarch because of the solitary familial support of a monarch; a majority

of the aristocratic families support the oligarchy politically, not naturally, insofar as

each family would directly benefi t from participation in government. Consanguineal

succession was an obstacle to extension of oligarchic rule; blood-relation threatened

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to disqualify from rule too many aristocratic families who would need induction in

order to mollify aristocratic rivalry. However, adjustment to oligarchy wrecks the

ideology on which monarchy is legitimated. Oligarchy must prioritize aristocratic

families at the expense of the folk whose family lines are not rooted in government.

Herodotus had ascribed the deterioration of monarchy to pride and envy; it was

incumbent on oligarchy to accentuate aristocratic privilege for otherwise the internal

loyalty of the governing body would dissipate. The mechanism necessary to sustain the

internal cohesion of the governing body ineluctably amplifi ed resentment; oligarchy

remained vulnerable to the residual rivalry of aristocratic families and to popular

disaffection. The appearance of the tyrannos amidst oligarchic strife was the first

manifestation of disaffected popular will; the tyrannos attracted power by representing

the disaffected folk against aristocratic rivalry. The success of tyrannoi in the 7th and

6th centuries B.C. inseminated the conception that popular oppression might be a

legitimate ground for resentment against monarchical rule. For the singular exception

of Greece, throughout antiquity the proposition, that government might be designed,

was sacrilege; government was given from God. The idea, that government could be

an object of thought, originated in Greece and culminated in the death of Socrates. This

impiety was the quintessential germ of democracy. The Greeks had been original in

their conception that injustice was the domination of one social class over another; in

all the other ancient societies it was conceived that justice was the immemorial, that

is, not deliberated, given order of social classes, according to which injustice was any

turbulence of the given order of classes.

　Why did Greek culture uniquely engender a consciousness in addition to the timeless

reality of class order? The revolutionary component in this idea was that society

was a composition of classes, inadvertently suggesting that as a composition society

was alterable. The definitive moment of this supposition consisted in the conjecture

that each class might have an orthodox and a false relation to each other. Whereas

oligarchy prioritized the élite and democracy prioritized the folk, at the expense of

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the other, Greek thought approached a notion of a holistic justice in which each group

is somehow properly, or improperly, adjusted to the others. The ideas of justice and

social class did not engender democracy. Contemporaneously both Plato and Aristotle

postulated that stasis was the cause of Athenian defeat; democracy had excited greed,

politically manifested as territorial expansion, provoking the Peloponnesian war.

The Athenians had ascribed defeat to the ancient concepts of hubris and cosmos; the

universe has only one correct arrangement, and the pride of Athens, its hubris, had

brought the cosmos into imbalance. Athenian defeat had discredited democracy for

more than the following thousand years; it had attested that democracy by its inherent

nature degenerates from coordinated self-rule into rampaging ambitions solicited

by demagogues. The disunity of democracy, animating the plural and incompatible

claims of the folk, engenders rivalrous factions that culminate in "the popular but

illegitimate monarch." What could distinguish the illegitimate monarch, i.e. the tyrant,

from the monarch? The earliest component of illegitimacy consisted in failure of the

tyrant to have been chosen by God, cohering with the conception of the king as God's

representative. Previously the will of the people did not have the slightest relevance to

legitimacy; primacy by lineage pervaded early European history. The classical Greek

conception of justice had however displaced Divine Will with a new, negative criterion

of legitimacy: popular oppression.

　Any unit of society is primarily self-interested and accordingly expands alliances

bearing on self-interest; social injustice forms from the natural impetus of every group

composing society to reserve surplus for itself. Monarchy or oligarchy is interested

primarily not in the welfare of the folk, but in its own welfare. Competition in every

society produces inequality. Aristocratic partiality is the default point; the self-interest

of government is unlikely to coincide with the self-interest of the folk. Hereditary

tenure shelters oligarchs from answerability to popular will; the folk, being wards,

have no rightful voice in government; popular welfare fi gures in governance only as

a precautionary condition against insurrection. The aristocratic hostility against the

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folk is as ineluctable as economic law. In order to form a group, an inner number must

economize against the periphery so as to provide enticement for inner membership.

Wealth was concentrated to sustain loyalty, and inheritance concentrates wealth and

precludes rival growths of wealth. Hereditary right is essential to stabilize group

formation because it concentrates weath. Indispensable to group formation, especially

oligarchy, it aggravates popular misery. The illegitimacy of the tyrant was thus newly

conceived as failure to fulfill popular guardianship, whereas previously tyranny had

been conceived as ignoble lineage. The tyrannoi had been characterized as illegitimate

(i.e. by lineage) leaders who generously benefi tted popular and mercantile groups. The

idea of guardianship promoted the revolutionary thought, not that the king imposes law

on society, but rather that justice imposes law on the king. A monarch who creates law

will be arbitrary, i.e. A tyrant in the new sense, whereas a king under constraint of law

will be just. The Greek concept of cosmos proposed that the monarch (not the tyrant)

was "in his proper place," i.e. "just," whose duty was to preserve all other things in

their cosmic places. This new understanding of tyrant and king does not yet comprise

popular participation in government, but the new formulation, "keeping things in their

proper places," does obligate the king to popular welfare.

　Limited monarchy is a further transition from the will of the monarch to the

will of the people, exhibiting new emphasis on the protection of popular will from

monarchical tyranny. Limited monarchy solidifi es in representation. If representatives

are direct appointees of the monarch, they represent regions or social classes to the king

in that they provide expert information about the given sector, but such information

and advice is not advocacy for the people represented. Such representatives have no

authority to infl uence the will of the king, nor is their advice for the benefi t of the social

groups of whom they are representatives; their advice about those represented is for the

benefi t of the king. Democratically oriented change in the concept of representation

would attenuate autocracy in government. The representative would need to depend

on popular election, so that representation might be equivalent to advocacy for the

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people who are represented. Secondly, representatives should have such independent

political power as to make royal policy reasonably conform to their recommendations.

The previous objection to democratic representation had consisted in its foreseeable

dissolution of the unity of sovereignty. Parliamentarism, rule by democratic

representation, does not challenge the necessity of undivided sovereignty, but disputes

the premise that undivided sovereignty must concentrate in a monarch. Omnipotence

concentrated in one person forms despotism, and division into several sources of

power foments stasis. Parliamentary sovereignty was the 17th century continuation of

undivided sovereignty; it sustained apprehension that division of the highest authority

would collapse into civil war. A division of government to preempt tyranny had to

reconcile contradictory conditions: 1) not any one function of government could

function without cooperation with the others; 2) a function of government would retain

autonomous power in its own sphere but would have no coercive power within the

sphere of another function. To surpass the principle that the monarch was indispensable

for undivided sovereignty, the constitutional monarchy made independent functions

of government adversarial. Complex government prefi gured the separate functions so

that if one part of the sovereign arrogated power, the other functions would lose power.

Any part of government (executive, legislative, judicial) had a vested self-interest in

preventing another part of government from exceeding its limits, in that any gain of the

rival department would constitute a zero-sum loss for the other. The dependence of the

executive, legislative, and judicial branches on a balance of power could preempt the

germ of tyranny inherent in each of the three branches. The effi cacy of the division of

powers entailed that an offi ce-holder must not hold offi ce in more than one of the three

divisions; the divided powers had to be independent if they were to mutually prevent

each other from tyranny. The evolution from appointment, originally rooted in kinship,

to political offi ce, theoretically without nepotism, was a necessary innovation for the

sake of non-despotic government.

　Political participation successively appeased aristocratic and then popular will, but

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the previous social stability successfully achieved by divine right was demolished.

Protection of liberty depended on the ability of one organ of government to

countermand another. How could one organ of government be fully independent from

others in the operation of its function, and at the same time be liable to contravention

by another government organ? The divided powers, by design, did not work in

harmony, but adversarially; the three separate powers function by checking each other

from action that might exceed their allotted powers. Deliberate division of power into

three jealous and rivalrous powers, not protected by inheritance, reinvigorates fault-

lines that may split into civil war.

2. SELF-GOVERNMENT

　Self-government is a potential solution to Aristotle's depiction of perennial

struggle between rich and poor. Indifference to popular misery is perhaps the greatest

vulnerability of oligarchy, because formation of a group depends on perception of

common interest. Initially no individual joins a group in which he is assured of worse

treatment than others. The initial phase of a group cannot help but emphasize equality

rather than priority. A group must be protracted equality, for the individual defects as

soon as he perceives that the group does not serve his interests. Each unit, individual,

sub-group, group, seeks self-aggrandizement anaclitically. The individual promotes

himself by reliance on prestige of the group for his own advancement. The group

becomes stronger as it grows, and each individual defects if he does not increase

in pace with the growth of the group. Respect for the cost of others in a group is a

function of the degree to which other members are requisite for the individual's success.

Individuals and groups unite because a larger group constitutes greater certainty of

accomplishing one's desire. The group approaches a limit to its growth because the

amount of individual desire embedded in group action is in inverse proportion to the

number of the group. The object of the general will diminishes because the object of

the general will can comprise only that which is common to each member. Members

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defect when a larger part of the individual desire is accessible without leaning on the

collective power. A group, necessarily based exclusively on a common object, requires

that each member curtail pursuit of personal desires, so that his energy will come into

the effective focus with the energies of the other members. Every group therefore

begins with an egalitarian ideology, by which the greatest number of individuals

will discover common interest in the pursuit of the group. The group will show a

hierarchical form when the greater part of the common object is obtained, and fewer

individuals are still better able to obtain satisfaction inside rather than outside the

group.

　Assume that individuals [x,x,x,x,...] each has the same desire; it should follow that

the addition of [x,x,x,...] should combine into a single aggregate desire, and that the

aggregate desire [X] should be far more powerful than the conglomerate of [x,x,x,...].

How does this ensue? An interest such as can form a group must be an interest that

is individually cherished by each member; a "general will" cannot develop from an

interest that, though willed independently by P and Q, is not also common to P and Q;

the riddle is that x must be separate in each individual and common to each individual.

Preliminarily, membership in the group cannot be a motivation for P and Q to have

the interest x in common. [x] independently of Q must motivate P and independently

motivate Q. How can a distributive desire (x) though granting homogeneity across

plurality, change into an aggregate desire X? 　

　A common interest such as can form a group is what promotes the homogenous

distributive interest of each member. It is illusory to suppose that a group formed

from homogenous distributive desires should mystically transmute into an aggregate

desire unmoored in personal desire. If P personally desires a hot-dog and Q personally

desires a hotdog, how is it plausible that the interests of P and Q might combine into an

aggregate desire for nuclear devastation of Berzerkistan? The demagogue can pursue

personal interest beyond the limit of aggregate interest by disguising personal as

aggregate interest; if Berzerkistan were annihilated there would be a plentiful supply of

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hotdogs for everyone. But individual desire is for hotdogs, hamburgers, egg rolls, tacos,

crêpes, and felafels; a group will coherence if generic supply is inadequate, but the

group should defl ate if generic supply approaches suffi ciency. Not only the demagogue,

but every other member of the group must similarly disguise his personal desire as if it

were common. The success of P to attain personal through aggregate desire depends on

whether Q can be made to believe that he, whether by persuasion or deception, like Q,

does not desire a hamburger as he previously thought, but like P desires a hotdog.

　The demagogue can pursue personal interest beyond the aggregate interest only

by disguising it as aggregate interest. This moreover applies to each member of the

group engendering complex consequences. 1) Every personal desire, whether or not

common, must be disguised as if it were common: the object of the General Will. 2)

The general will being motivated by self-centered personal desire, the natural life of

a group formation persists under the condition that aggregate satisfies distributive

desire. 3) If the general will succeeds, so that aggregate desire procures for distributive

desire, the group will disaggregate as individuals defect in search of specifi c instead

of generic desires. 4) Opposition develops between groups. A group sustains itself

only by satisfying the distributive desires of its members. The group must economize

its resources to supply enough to keep fi delity among its members, and must retract

expenditure on extraneous ambitions and members. Development results in hierarchy

inasmuch as the group will expend more to retain the fi delity of its most vital members.

Economy of resources results in more inter-group rivalry, and disaffection; such

effects can be alleviated by merging with another group in a common ambition, but

the enticement binding the new group becomes weaker, in that it is constituted of the

reduced number of objects common to both groups. 5) If membership is excessive,

the membership will dwindle if membership is too numerous, because its object will

become too trivial to solicit loyalty. If the object of the General Will is very enticing,

membership will be small and internal cohesion will be strong. The group will be

small because the object will not have wide appeal. If membership is numerous, the

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object will be common to wide varieties of membership, but as the intention of the

object grows stronger it will appeal to fewer types of membership. Extensive fi delity is

precarious because its enticement grows weaker with increase of membership.

　A group is limited to a natural lifespan. Oligarchy is an instance of a small group

of very strong internal cohesion; it's domination of a massive population is subject

to economic perimeters. Oligarchy is built upon strong internal cohesion, which is

a strong correspondence of aggregate and personal desire, whereas correspondence

of aggregate and distributive desire has a foundation of mud; aggregate gratifi cation

cannot bind distributive loyalty. Since the object of the oligarch's will is very large

relative to the remainder of his personal desire, the internal fidelity of oligarchy is

indomitable, but extensive fi delity is precarious.

3. SOCIAL CONTRACT

　Every "group within a group, true to paradigm," seeks self-aggrandizement. Each

mudslide introduces a new regime, which in turn fails because at every level self-

interest is the only force to constitute a group. The ideal limit is enticement of the self-

interest of all, in which all those who are ruled also rule. The General Will purports

to supersede the inherent inequality of monarchy by assuming priority of common

over individual good. The identity of the self-interest of society and State would

expunge the inherent self-interest of monarchy; if those governed furthermore govern,

identity of interest would enable liberty and equality. But priority of common good

is unstable. Assume that the General Will is the thorough equality of all participants

in a decision. Group formation is efficacious because equality renders self-sacrifice

nominal; General Will supersedes the principled inequality of monarchy by the priority

of communal good. Rule by those ruled is a popular epithet for self-rule, but its

coherence is dubious. Self-government fails if individuals seize priority by gathering

individuals in a sub-group. Cincinnatus rarely returns to his farm. If integrity entails

that opinions not be weighted according to the status of the individuals proposing

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them, the pristine equality of interest corrupts. Apart from pragmatic conditions, there

is an irremediable logical fl aw in the combination of self-rule and General Will. The

ideal limit in which the ruled are also the rulers requires that the vote in which each

member participates should be unanimous. Otherwise, some individuals are subject

to laws that they opposed, conflicting with the principle of liberty. The discrepancy

is rectified by the principle that the free individual is obligated only to rules. Then,

the dissenting individual is either not free, or consent must be redefi ned. The General

Will might be defi ned more leniently as the will that has gathered the greatest number

of individual assent. The General Will is not the same as every individual will; some

members of the self-governing group are obligated to support a resolution to which

they did not consent. If the resulting General Will overbears individual dissent, it

nevertheless has the merit of canceling fewer individual assents than upholding the will

of the dissenter would. Nevertheless, the consequences of majority rule produce self-

stultifi cation. The legitimacy of the General Will is founded upon popularity: not truth,

not intelligence, not consequence. Superiority of judgment is ruled out as a possible

objection to majority decision. The individual cannot resolve the failure of unanimous

consent by the priority of his opinion, as a monarch can. The member is obligated

both to propose only his own opinion, and subsequently to support the general will

against his own opinion. A preliminary solution to this self-contradiction may be

a formulation that government is the will of all people, not the will of the king or

oligarchic party, or majority. If all people formulate the same proposal, parties would

not divide into contention. Accordingly government is illegitimate not immediately

because it is monarchical, but insofar as it does not approach unanimity. Government

is not antisocial only when it promotes the individual will, of all; how could this fail to

be oxymoronic? Because the folk are inherently factious, the function of the monarch

to impose unity is a positive function. How might individual will be accommodated to

government without resuscitating the fractiousness that monarchy had resolved?

　The State of Nature is a condition of lawlessness in which every individual is free

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to do whatever he wants. To escape a condition of unmitigated insecurity and violent

death, the individual might agree not to harm others in return for assurance that others

will not harm him. Consent ensues because the liability of loss is much greater than the

possibility of gain; invocation of the earliest version of social contract is unanimous.

However, the contract is vacuous until some convention reliably prevents default.

　The human condition in the state of nature accounts for the formation of a

tyrant without reference to God. An apposite interpretation for meaning consists

in consequences; power to enforce rights endows rights with consequences. Under

the Hobbesian premise that no natural law exists, law is flatus vocis; a law with no

consequences for infraction is meaningless. People cannot transcend bellum omnium

contra omnes; the individual inherently fights every other for his own advantage.

Enforcement instills meaning by imparting consequences to rights; therefore no law

exists prior to the sovereign. Interpersonal strife ceases only by certainty that the victor

will suffer more than he might benefi t. The Law is reliable only if the contenders are

unable to defeat the sovereign. The sovereign eliminates violence by suppressing

individual liberty; the monarch remains in the state of nature. Freedom from violence

depends on sovereign omnipotence.

　Delegation of authority to the sovereign is a sacrifice of all individual freedoms

in return for mutual security; the delegation imperfectly resembles a contract, in

which individual freedoms are exchanged for something in return. However, the

"social contract" between ruler and ruled is misconceived; it cannot be a contract. A

conventional contract contains conditions for its extinction, but the "social contract"

does not. A contract presupposes equality and independence in that each party is

authorized to withdraw from the contract if the other party reneges on its conditions.

Sovereignty is not susceptible to cancellation, because no greater force constrains his

will. Relapse into the state of nature is instantaneous if any power or combination

of powers exceeds the power of the sovereign. Absolute power is an unavoidable

condition of the social contract; if a hypothetically legitimate combination of powers

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could exceed the sovereign, a criminal combination could accomplish the same.

Because sovereignty is not credible unless it can overpower any counterfeiters, the

sovereign once instituted is irreversible. Sovereignty eliminates violence at the cost

of unconditional subjection. Individual servitude seems to be a logical entailment of

society.

　Anticipating an emergent solution, government could not be divided into parts

such that one part of government might countermand the excess of another part

of government; civil war would persist until only one sovereign remained. No

subject under the social contract could have non-contingent rights; the sovereign

cannot be bound by any conditions of the social contract because omnipotence

precludes retaliation. Consent is operative until the social contract is formed, but not

subsequently. Omnipotent sovereignty being the indispensable condition by which

humanity might be spared from the state of nature, government is immune to revision.

A government strong enough to enforce civilization is too powerful to be limited. The

social contract epitomizes the genie-in-the-bottle.

4. THE STATE OF NATURE

　The Hobbesian conception of sovereignty is no less absolute than divine right. The

social contract presents the conceit that humanity controls its environment because

society is artificial, being a product of human consent rather than of God or nature.

Freedom is conceived to be equivalent with self-determination. If society is neither

divine nor natural, humanity is a free agent not totally determined by external forces.

If society is artifi cial, it is pathetic that the highest achievement of human freedom is

unlimited tyranny.

　The social contract does not accommodate revision; voluntary consent terminates

upon creation of the contract. Either sovereign power can crush opposition or society

founders into the state of nature. The effect of the Lockean distinction between

formation of society and of government intends to break the logical validity of the

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dilemma. The Hobbesian argument posits that absence of the sovereign is semantically

equivalent with resumption of the war of all against all. If society did not cascade into

the state of nature upon removal of sovereignty, sovereign omnipotence would be

unnecessary. What supports Locke's proposal that a minimally secure society might

survive abolition of government? How might the war of all against all be prevented

if the sovereign were defeasible, or conversely, why would a sovereign be necessary

if the war of all against all could otherwise be contained? How might aggression be

prevented if the aggressor did not anticipate retribution from an irresistible power?

How might it be imagined that a government necessitated for suppression of violence

might preserve personal liberty? Locke's theory of revolution attempts to reconcile

omnipotent sovereignty and individual liberty; it transpires through a theory of natural

law. A chronologically earlier concept of natural right had posited that moral principles

are embedded in Nature, prior to society, revealing God's will to all, without the

intermediation of the monarch. A fi ne point of the Lockean distinction of society and

State is that society, antecedent to government, ensues by agreement from a primordial

common sense of natural right; establishment of a sovereign would be a continuous

agreement from the same intuition. This implies that conditions for sovereignty do

emerge in place of arbitrary will. Derivation of rights from God via nature, rather

than via the king, implies that the king does not confer the fi rst rights of his subjects;

individual rights are independent of sovereignty. Social formation through natural

rights implies exemption from sovereign decrees that infringe natural rights. Tyranny is

redefi ned as a sovereign act that fl outs natural right; a natural right is inalienable in that

an infringement of natural right makes the sovereign susceptible to justifi ed revolution.

　The priority of rights is essential for the Lockean justification of revolution. The

distinction of formation of society and formation of State forces a resemblance of

social contract to conventional contract, in which revolution is analogous to abrogation

of a contract when the other party has reneged on its conditions; the application of

the social contract shifts from social formation to a separate and subsequent event:

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formation of government. Social formation is a spontaneous event neither planned

nor imposed from without. If in the state of nature rights are products of agreement

they are vacuous, whereas catallaxy acquires operative force from reciprocity. Mutual

benefi t from reciprocity dispenses with reference to God or sovereignty, but remains

precarious inasmuch as one party might benefi t more from reciprocity than another.

　The hypothesis that natural rights are a sedimentation of countless momentary,

interpersonal pacts accounts for the antecedence of social formation to the social

contract. The imbalance of reciprocity may ruin equilibrium whenever one dependency

might be stronger than another. The subsequent social contract, conceived as the

formation of sovereignty, serves to maintain reliable reciprocity despite fugitive

imbalances between unequal parties. Sovereignty is not an independent party, of

contract as previously supposed; it is a commission formed from the reciprocal

parties to stabilize their agreements. If the sovereign is not an independent party in a

contractual relation, the sovereign as such has no rights. The posterior formation of

sovereignty presupposes rights articulated in prior social formation. If sovereignty is

not externally imposed, individual freedom survives social formation by having made

all contractual constraints self-imposed. But this is equivocal. The priority of social

formation to social contract contradicts the Hobbesian premise of natural lawlessness.

If enforcement makes social contract first intelligible, law comes exclusively from

the sovereign. Removal of the sovereign is ineluctably regression into the state of

nature. Since the war of all against all is the worst human condition, the inevitability of

regression justifi ed for Hobbes the unlimited power of sovereignty. If, contra Hobbes,

social formation is distinct and prior to the social contract, law antecedes sovereignty

and the sovereign is liable to deposition without regression into the state of nature.

This is integral to Locke's theory of revolution; the intermediate space between nature

and State, a primitive stage of society, provides opportunity for refutation of sovereign

omnipotence.

　State formation is not compulsory if society forms without externally imposed law.

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D. Morgan Pierce

Consent to social contract entails that the consenting individual is free not to consent.

Herein lies a contradiction. What endows the individual with the ability to consent,

prior to the sovereignty that enforces agreements? Consent and defection at fi rst seem

to be aboriginal abilities logically prior to social contract, but rights generated from

social contract are defi nable only as relations contingent on the contract. What endows

the individual with ability to consent prior to the contract that enforces agreements?

Hobbes, Hume, and Nietzsche have separately adverted to the conceptual dependence

of consent on the concept of promise. If promise is unintelligible in a state of nature, a

"natural right" is a fi ction because consent presupposes social conventions. Language

and social institutions are requisite to the idea of a responsible future self. Consent to

a social contract, being a kind of promise, presupposes Intelligibility prior to the social

contract, i.e. prior to society, but intelligibility would be posterior to society. If promise

is definable only in social terms, consent to formation of society or State would be

logically impossible.

　The primitive form of consent consisted in reciprocity. Rights might be interpreted

to be prior to positive law, i.e. prior to enforcement, in the attenuated sense in which

agreement is self-reinforcing from reciprocity. Supposing that reciprocity is a proleptic

form of sovereignty, subjects have continuous power to grant or withhold legitimation

of the sovereign. The Lockean revision confi gures the social contract not to sequester

the individual from bellum omnium contra omnes, but to prevent tyranny. The

legitimacy of government is contingent on continuous consent from the subjects to a

disinterested commission conferred on the State.

　All of the above may be nonsense because eschewal of sovereign omnipotence

renews the problem that sovereignty had surmounted. Sovereignty is a practical, not a

normative postulate. Equivocation originates in God; divinity is uniquely a normative

and a practical argument, supposing punishment after death, whereas sovereign

omnipotence is purely practical. An argument for what morally ought to be cannot

refute the social contract. If society depends on an impregnable sovereign, it is quite

－ 41－


immaterial whether a normative condition justifies or condemns sovereignty; the

genie is already outside of the bottle. A Hobbesian premise is speciously normative:

people "consent" to institute an omnipotent monarch. How could it be semantically

coherent to suppose that people could consent? The event is not normative because it is

a consequence of necessity, not free will; if the monarch is not omnipotent, the people

have not escaped from the state of nature.

　Natural derivation of rights means equivocally either that the individual has a

normative entitlement to a right, or that he is naturally endowed with power to exercise

a right. If rights normatively derive from nature, how does one verify that a right-claim

is well-founded in nature? Derivation of natural law perhaps does not depend on the

premise that nature is informed by natural law, but on the premise that nature is a state

of unlimited lawlessness. The "laws of nature" are not precisely natural creatures, but

rules improvised in response to nature.

　Interpersonal agreement supplants God as the foundation of natural right. How

could the subjects have power not only to withhold consent in originating sovereignty,

but retain continuous power to withdraw consent after the sovereign is established?

Perhaps the necessity to concentrate sovereignty in one does not entail concentration

in one person; Hobbes however argued that there can be no division of omnipotence,

because the more powerful of the holders of power would then be sovereign.

5. THE GENERAL WILL

　General Will is an attempt to remove the incoherence of the social contract. The

dilemma of the social contract is that it accounts for social security based upon

irrevocable extinction of individual liberty. If for the sake of individual liberty the

social contract is abrogated, how could liberty compensate for the security it has

destroyed together with monarchical sovereignty? Sovereignty prevents social

disintegration, but omnipotence debilitates personal liberty.

　The social contract transforms asocial savages into citizens by subjecting them

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D. Morgan Pierce

to rules to which they have consented. This is circular; the social contract is merely

hermeneutic. History exhibits that government results from violence, not consent

(Hume); no individual is ever explicitly asked for his permission to have him live in

the social conditions in which he finds himself. Metaphorically the social contract

might delineate passage from the state of nature to society: social equality, individual

liberty vis-à vis society, and obligation to society. If sovereignty could exist without

concentration in a person, social security might not entail letting the genie out of the

bottle. If all individuals were equal, no one could be a sovereign. Could sovereignty

exist without concentration in a person? Two points defeat Locke's proposal that

natural rights could substitute for a monarch. Natural rights give a normative limit for

sovereignty but do not provide substantive counterforce against infraction. Second,

derivation of "natural rights" from nature is tenuous. Society foments emotional

forces that fi x the individual in social inequality. The social contract is a surrender of

abilities one previously used without restraint, in exchange for security; each individual

surrenders self-reliance. Natural, unbounded self-interest confl icts with consideration

of others. Individual will motivates impulses discrepant with other-regard, but social

support enables achievement of what is individually impossible. Social support

motivates obsession for an object that does not exist in nature: admiration. The

individual adopts behavior discordant with authentic desire in preference for producing

a good impression of himself in other people; social support raises the probability

of achievement, but amplifies dependence on others. Dependence on social image

subdues the priority of authentic will, as the individual compensates for what he lost

in self-reliance with acquisition of prestige. Social conformity for the sake of prestige

engenders ambition, rivalry, and inequality (Rousseau).

　The conception of General Will proposes to make equality the foundation of liberty,

whereas servility rests on other-dependence, the ability of one individual to force his

will on another. In context with General Will it would be convenient to defi ne liberty as

a social condition in which one individual cannot be dominated by the will of another.

－ 43－


The premium of social contract over divine right consists in volition, which retains its

advantage only if consent is in recurrent renewal. The fi rst axiom of social contract is

immunity from the will of another individual.

　It is axiomatic that formation of any group is instantaneously self-interested; even

the fi rst organization of a government instantly ensues as a self-interested government

against a self-interested people. Preservation of a "general will" entails universal,

transparent, direct, continual mutuality between all members of society, and is always

in immediate peril of decomposition into antagonistic self-obsessed groups. Equality is

an evanescent mentality in fl ight that is precariously saved only by laborious renewal

of agreement over communal self-interest. Only renewed discovery of identity of

interest can militate against residual opposition of individual and social will. The

General Will is viable only in very small polities because consolidation ensues only

from earnest participation of all individuals. It is a mandate of citizen equality that the

individual never delegate his freedom to another because delegation would ruin the

solidarity upon which the General Will depends. The General Will categorically rejects

representation.

　How would general will be possible? Most pungently, a human rights theory cannot

account for a General Will; any final consent of the General Will is unconditional

law. A "human right" is either a conclusion of the General Will, in which case it is

predicated on unanimity or majority. If the General Will should reverse its conclusion,

then the same human "right" would retain no validity. If "human right" is founded upon

something other than unanimity or majority, then it would have no foundation from the

theory of General Will. Basic rights are arbitrary, not natural. Dependence of right on

individual will supersedes reference to whether or not a right is natural.

　How, then, can General Will be possible? Unanimity enables the General Will, but

unanimity is in practice impossible. A right-claim can emerge solely from individual

will, but is not a right at all unless the collectivity of individuals has ratifi ed it. Since

the individual alone cannot create a right, no right can exist prior to society; no right

－ 44－

D. Morgan Pierce

is natural. The General Will is the only force that binds arbitrary agreement; it is a

condition of unanimous legislation of laws to which all are subject. The theory of

General Will is a proposal to account for how individuals, naturally free prior to the

social contract, can be not less free after concluding the contract, i.e. forming society.

But the social contract forbids liberties that the individual previously had; how could as

much freedom exist subsequently as previously?

　Freedom is equated with self-determination; the individual is more constrained, but

as long as the individual (freely!) imposes the constraint on himself, it is not constraint.

Freedom is immunity of one person's will to that of another; if the individual imposes

on himself constraints that limit others no less than himself, society is free and equal.

Solidarity arising from the contract defends individual freedom with the will of all.

If the individual obeys no individual except himself he remains as free within social

constraint as he had previously been. However, the improbability of unanimity calls for

an operable criterion for the General Will. The individual might be said to be free, on

the ground that he participated in assent/dissent, although his preference was rejected.

　This embeds an impenetrable equivocation in the Idea of personal will. The

individual is said to be free because he imposes law on himself. If this "unanimity"

avers that an individual is free when he is compelled to "unanimity" in a law that he

opposed, two premises appear equivocal. The individual joining unanimity under

duress is free if the constraint is self-imposed: is this coherent? Second, the idea of

a self-imposed constraint presupposes unanimity, for a proposal is not a law until it

has universal approval. If unanimity is required, then no constraint can become a law,

because unanimity is improbable. Alternatively, constraint is "self-imposed" although

individually opposed, if the constraint is collectively formulated by all members, most

of whom approved it. If a constraint issues from the general will that negates individual

preference, it is self-imposed by the individual by virtue of his having been a member

of the legislative body. The same constraint is not self-imposed in the sense that the

individual opposed it. In fine, the constraint is self-imposed because even voting

－ 45－


against the constraint is a positive involvement of the individual in the process of its

passage; the endorsement of the constraint was "unanimous". Such a "self-imposed"

constraint preserves the dissident individual's freedom if (1) it applies impersonally to

every individual and (2) submission to such a law never subjugates the individual to

the will of another individual.

　Defi nition of truth as the general will excludes notions of God and of objectivity;

truth is the collective will of all individuals, full stop. Any law proceeding from the

general will applies to each individual, every individual in the social contract is free,

and the General Will embodies absolute power over each individual. The assertion

of individual liberty refers to the premise that the law for each individual us self-

imposed, inasmuch as the General Will forbids opportunity for one individual to

control the will of another. This may still be equivocal. The General Will coerces

every individual will, therefore no individual will coerces another. Is it equivocal to

infer that a self-constraint is "free" if the individual tolerates it as a double effect of his

primary will for social Existence? General Will cannot tolerate individual defection,

because exceptions to uniform rule would break the axiom of social equality. Two

equivocations impede resolution: (1) discrepancy between self-interest and general

interest, and (2) confl icting perception of general interest. (2) seems to resolve itself;

the general interest is merely the majority preference, and is not challengeable by

reference to truth. The General Will is the truth despite confl ict between individual and

the aggregate of individual wills. Does the General Will preserve the formulation that

the individual is spared from the state of nature if he is bound only under laws to which

he consented? If the individual obeys the General Will when he individually opposes it,

his "freedom," i.e. dispensation from the state of nature, depends on submission to the

General Will, i.e. The individual is "free" under condition that he gives up his freedom-

freely(!)

　The individual is spared the state of nature if he is bound only under laws to

which he consented, but coherence with the General Will is imperfect. Unanimity

－ 46－

D. Morgan Pierce

is the inaccessible condition in which individual liberty and social existence do not

confl ict. When the individual is forced to be free, in the words if Rousseau, obligating

himself to a law he opposes, either: (1) the individual is forced for his own good,

while misunderstanding the benefi t forced on him or (2) he is forced against personal

benefit for the general benefit. If unanimity culminates in "forcing to be free," the

General Will must be refi ned to account for internal contradiction. The bedrock of the

contract principle of justice is social equality; in a confl ict between individual liberty

and equality, the social contract prefers equality. Unconditional freedom may serve to

abolish freedom. A right to autonomy may justify refusal to decide; a right to life may

justify suicide; a democratic vote might abolish democracy. The General Will confi nes

perverse outcomes of individualism; it confi nes the individual to what each individual

would will if he understood what his real interests were. Although individuals intend

their real interests, the lens of social existence distorts accurate perception, whereas

in the state of nature no criterion guides preference. Presuming that general appetites

rectify idiosyncrasies, deviants from the General Will must be "forced to be free".

Individual and voluntary preference of a false desire diminishes personal freedom;

the General Will identifies the true interest of the individual, the object of desire

when the individual understands his real interests. Integration of individual wills may

be conceived as a superordinate personal Will. General Will is the distinction of an

inscrutable, collective, unitary will and the aggregate of individual wills of which it is

composed. The General Will is the "real will" while the individual will is the "apparent

will". Individual intelligence cannot simulate the collective thought of the General Will.

When the individual does not align with the General Will, he does not know what he

really wants. When the individual conforms to the General Will, he is obeying himself

under another identity. The idea of the General Will seems hostile to individualism,

inasmuch as it supposes the individual is never so truly himself as when he rejects his

apparent individuality in favor of the General Will. The General Will seems to be the

precursor of majoritarian tyranny.

－ 47－


6. CONSERVATISM

　Relegation of divine reference suggests that sovereignty is a product of popular will;

the object of the social contract had been concerned with impairment of liberty by

divine right. Locke's justifi cation of rebellion culminated in paradox; the individual is

free only when he is forced to be free.

　The non-temporal feature of the social contract posits valid continuity from

the Stone Age into the interminable future; a contract must be presumed to bind

subsequently to the moment of agreement. The "General Will" had successfully

functioned as protagonist against monarchical tyranny, but unlike the laws of nature or

the will of God, the universal consent implicit in the legitimation of contract introduces

temporality. Conclusion of a contract, albeit unanimous, precludes fresh consideration

from the moment of conclusion. The social contract binds by reference to preterite

agreement, settled by participants who no longer exist, in accord with conditions of

a point of time which are perhaps defunct; the individual is then "free" according to

an agreement for which his consent was never solicited. Rectifi cation might plausibly

keep up with the passage of time if the contract underwent incessant, continuous

renewal. However, temporality might oppositely justify cataclysmic change; inasmuch

as renewal diverges from any arbitrary point in the contract's past, return to a prior

moment of the contract might as easily justify revolt as fossilization. The temporality

of contract necessitates a non-temporal criterion to determine whether alteration, be it

cataclysmic or trivial, is justifi ed. Imprecision stemming from temporality may endorse

rigid resistance to any change whatever, infi nitesimally constant change, or cataclysmic

revolution.

　Supposing that both unanimity and recurrent referenda are impossible, a plausibly

coherent account of social contract might be tacit agreement; a contract is valid until

the moment in which it is positively challenged. Although the citizen never explicitly

agrees to the conditions of life within which he finds himself, his silence over a

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D. Morgan Pierce

question never posed to him is interpreted to be binding consent. That revolutions

almost always result in conditions worse than previously might stimulate skepticism

about both tacit consent and revolt. The origin of most societies seems to result from

partisan violence rather than instinctive unanimity. A normal contract, by contrast,

provides safety against unauthorized change by holding in its content conditions

for automatic expiration; a contract is limited to a ponderable length of time so that

contractual obligation may adjust to the passage of time.

　Unanimity does not function at all unless the term consent is equivocated; a more

feasible interpretation of unanimity as tacit consent would contain in its concept a right

to withdraw consent. What would count effectively as withdrawal of tacit consent?

As conditions of tacit consent are inexplicit, it obfuscates criteria for both licit and

illicit withdrawal, obligation, and transgression. Society, being an infi nitely detailed

and immemorial process of myriad and incessant efforts at balance and correction,

complication defies any rational prediction of the ramifications of any alteration.

Even the most rationally deliberated social alteration generates unforeseen changes to

the social substance. The "social substance" is the millennial sedimentation of those

alterations by which society normally and for the most part has managed to survive,

while grand initiatives may be pernicious to social dimensions that have not even come

into consideration (Burke). A utilitarian procedure of accurately matching very small

social mutations to very small legal alterations preserves an opaque social body that

provides security. A social alteration motivated by a political ideal, but not well tailored

to a specific problem, may result in cataclysm; an apparently progressive alteration

may overlook society's degree of dependence on centuries of adjustment by trial and

error. Incremental rather than radical change protects the legacy of social stability by

tiny adjustment to emergent conditions (Godwin).

from monarchy to democratic...

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