Role of the State
Perhaps the most common ‘type’ of debate that you’re likely to encounter are debates about the role of the state. To engage in these debates at a principled level, it is critically important to have a decent grasp of the different theories concerning the proper role of government. It’s also important to appreciate that a commitment to a particular view of government is very likely to be a practical function of an antecedent moral principle (e.g. those committed to the principle of equal rights often favour judicial review in order to ensure that the majority cannot curtail the rights of the minority). A solid foundation in moral theory, therefore, is also very valuable.
This post will go through a few typical “role of the state” or “nature of democracy” arguments and some common objections to each of them. The theorists that each conception comes from are listed at the end of each theory, together with some further reading.
The Minimal State – The Libertarian Argument
Worth noting before you read this is that it is an extremely radical position. It’s useful in debates like “THW Abolish Income Tax” where you need to challenge the moral legitimacy of government itself. Beyond debates like that, though, be wary of using this argument; it’s very hard to defend (see the objections below). In most cases where you have to argue for a reduction in the role of government, you’re better to run with a general case for freedom of choice and the reciprocally minimal role for government that that principle implies, rather than seek the complete destruction of government.
Individuals have a right to the property that they own and have acquired justly.
E.g. if I’ve bought a bag of shopping, I’ve made a sacrifice of money, have incurred a cost, and therefore have the right to the fruits of the cost that I’ve incurred. It would be a violation of the rights that I have in that property to seek to take it away from me. No-one else is entitled to it because they’ve not made any sacrifices to acquire it.
Similarly, a person is entitled to the proceeds of the property that they own because without sacrifice on their part that property would never have existed.
E.g. if I’m running a business, my customer’s aren’t entitled to steal money from the till – only through my labour did the revenue arise and no-one else is entitled to any of it.
You own yourself.
The only conceivable person who has a property right in your person is you yourself.
Therefore you have the right to all the proceeds of your labour.
You’re the person that made the sacrifices in order to earn that money, therefore it is only you that may justifiably reap the rewards of the labour you’ve expended.
Taxation, therefore, is akin to forced labour.
Most people would object to being forced to labour for some period of time for the sake of others.
But taxation is the equivalent of this – a particular proportion of the income that you make is literally confiscated from you and redistributed.
All the edifices of government are unjust because they have arisen out of an unjust state of affairs.
If it is unjust to raise tax it must also be unjust to use it to fund government initiatives. Therefore, the very existence of all the institutions of government is unjust.
The only exception to this principle are those services that, if individuals purchased for themselves in the absence of a government, others would free-ride off and so exploit those who had paid.
E.g. if a group of people banded together and purchased a police service, the whole of society would benefit, not merely those who had paid for it. Therefore, it seems reasonable to tax people to provide that service. Such a police service would possibly also be linked up to a court system to enforce contract laws (to make sure that everyone’s holdings are just). National defence would probably also fall within this category.
Objections
The first objection targets the notion that no-one else is entitled to any of the proceeds of your labour. The issue with saying this is that it ignores the fact that your success as an individual is only possible in a social context, where the things that you’ve relied on for your success are communal goods. E.g. If you’re selling electronics, you’re relying on a wide array of infrastructure (transport, electricity etc…) that could only ever have been funded by individuals acting collectively. Moreover, selling electronics relies upon a public that demands such things. Such a public is likely only to exist where that public is sufficiently educated, probably through a system of public education. It seems reasonable then, that if your income couldn’t really exist without the help of others, that others are entitled to some of the fruits of your labour after all.
Moreover, the assumption that you’re entitled to all the income that you make carries with it the assumption that the state of affairs that lead to you making that income in the first place was itself just. The biggest factors in the level of income we make tend, ultimately, to be functions of things that we weren’t in control of. Those who are highly educated and highly paid may have made the choice to go to university and study finance, but the factors that meant that that choice was itself a realistic one were probably unchosen. They were probably sent by their relatively wealthy parents to a good school that was not of their choosing, are likely to have been brought up in a household where education was valued. They were possibly born with a higher IQ, or possibly born with wealthier parents who could afford to fund their education for them. None of these benefits they can be said to deserve in the strong sense (i.e. they didn’t sacrifice anything in order to get their benefits in the first place). Meanwhile, some people (e.g. the physically and mentally disabled, members of disadvantaged social classes) similarly did not choose to lead a more difficult life. Neither, therefore, can it be said that they deserve the life that they have. Something must be done; if you’re not entitled to your wealth, and they’re not entitled to their poverty, that’s an unjust state of affairs that needs addressing. Solution? Tax the rich and redistribute (sophisticated [and awesome] account of arguments along these lines are found in the work of John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin).
Most modern societies are themselves built on top of great injustices (e.g. there’s a case to be made that the Australian wealth depends upon the fact that the Aboriginal people were unjustly dispossessed of their lands). If that’s the case, and you’re only entitled to property that you’ve acquired justly, and the whole structure of modern society is built on injustices, it doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot that we’re actually entitled to.
Finally, libertarians simply neglect many things that we think are important. For instance, most people accept that the right to freedom of choice is both very important for living a good life and requires that we make authentic choices (choices that genuinely reflect the will of the individual). Making authentic choices requires both basic psychological aptitude and knowledge about the world. You’re only going to get either of those things where people are educated to a sufficient degree. Most individuals cannot afford to set up their own school, nor pay for private education, but still think that freedom of choice is central to living a good life; something we generally think everyone is entitled to. The only really viable option is public education. Analogous arguments can be made concerning public health, sanitation etc…
Further Reading
Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, 2002) 102.
An excellent commentary on libertarianism. The whole book is absolutely terrific!
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Basic Books, 1974).
The most well-known argument for libertarianism. Written in response to John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice
The Choice Maximising State
This is a much more defensible view of a non-interventionist minimal state than Nozick’s libertarianism. It’s a bit of a hodge-podge of different ideas from ethical theory that, taken together, have a reasonable degree of currency in debaterland. The argument is essentially a fusion of this freedom of choice argument and Hobbesian social contract theory. Just to be clear; the conclusion that I’ve drawn from this argument is one that Mill, whom we’re friends with from our liberty argument, might be sympathetic to (though to be fair he’s not a contractarian) but one that Hobbes would abhor.
The Social Contract
The reason that government exists in the first place is because individuals tacitly recognise that there is a mutual advantage to be had in surrendering certain liberties to a central government.
E.g. it’s obviously in everyone’s interest to surrender the personal capacity to inflict physical harm to a government. Doing so guarantees that only legitimate bodies will be able to use force and hopefully prevents everyone from being subject to arbitrary violence. That’s an obvious mutual advantage.
The point here (or at least the point that you’d draw in a debate) is that only where there is a mutual advantage in a particular action is the state allowed to act.
E.g. Passing a law banning the consumption of cod liver oil between 1AM and 5AM isn’t really to anyone’s mutual advantage. Government, therefore, ought not create such a law.
Mutual Advantage and Freedom of Choice
On this view, the laws the state is allowed to enforce turn primarily upon the question of what constitutes mutual advantage.
At this point, it’s useful to borrow from the liberty argument.
The ultimate mutual advantage would consist in a society where everyone has the best possible chance of achieving their own conception of the good life.
The individual is the entity with the greatest stake in their own welfare and is therefore the person most likely to make decisions best calculated to lead them to the attainment of their conception of the good.
Mutual advantage therefore consists in a state that continually expands the sphere of choice available to its citizens, because in offering as much choice is possible, individuals are likely to be able to make the best choices possible.
Note – you can also use this argument to defend democratic conceptions of government (e.g. mutual advantage must be measured in terms of the benefits that it delivers for the population, therefore it makes a lot of sense for the people to be in charge of the country [or at least in charge of appointing representatives to be in charge of the country] they live in because they’re likely to insist upon policy that best maximises their interests [probably by maximising their freedom of choice] and is, therefore, to their mutual advantage). There are better arguments out there though.
Objections
There never was a social contract. It’s just a thought experiment that doesn’t reflect reality.
This view leaves no room for moral principles. Indeed, as Kymlicka has argued (see further reading), this view isn’t so much a moral view of governance as an alternative to a moral view of governance. Mutual advantage could well be found in the exploitation of a particular underclass. There’s nothing on this view to stop that happening because there are no moral principles to guide the actions of government.
Moreover, mutual advantage won’t always mean maximal choice – e.g. national security is a matter of mutual advantage, but requires secrecy, itself a restriction on choice because without complete information, people can’t make completely informed choices.
Further Reading
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1854). Available here: http://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/one.html.
Will Kymlicka, ‘The Social Contract Tradition’ (1991), in Peter Singer (ed), A Companion to Ethics (Blackwell, 1991) 186.
Communitarianism
Communitarianism constitutes perhaps the most prominent challenge to mainstream liberal political philosophy. The central claim of communitarians (or at least the communitarian argument we’ll explore here) is that whilst liberals are right to care about individual autonomy, they ignore the fact that individuals can only really exercise their autonomy in particular types of societies. The argument then goes on to claim that the liberal emphasis on individual rights is the problem with modern societies – they seek to guarantee autonomy whilst all the time undermining the social institutions and conventions essential to the realisation of that goal. The argument, more formally, is as follows;
Individual flourishing is a basic good and consists, approximately, in being able to make autonomous choices concerning the types of lives that we want to lead and the moral and metaphysical beliefs that we want to have about the world.
The capacity for individual flourishing however, is only possible within communities.
We can’t really make decisions about basic things like how we want to run our lives or distinguish between right and wrong without reference to some kind of store of information and in a social context that makes us feel secure enough to act upon whatever view of the good we wind up coming to. The only possible store of information is the practices, norms, and institutions of the communities in which we live.
These communities offer us valuable things like a stable set of options that we can choose between in deciding how to live our lives, and a common way of life in which we can all share and from which we can all draw vital conclusions concerning the manner in which we want to lead our lives.
From these basic premises, a number of conclusions can be drawn concerning the role of the state. Here’s just two.
The state is entitled to protect the community’s way of life. If the good lives of everyone in the community hinge upon the strength of that community, the state ought to seek to protect that community’s common form of life in order to guarantee the good lives of those who depend on the community. It’s easy to see how this clashes with liberal ideas of individual rights – if we are able to assert our individual rights against the good of the community, the community will be unable to sustain its common form of life. For instance, the individual right to engage in prostitution could arguably be said to undermine the community’s way of life by disrupting the norms that the community adheres to in its consideration of sexual practices.
Charles Taylor has argued that the legitimacy of government hinges upon that government’s support for the community’s common form of life.
Individual flourishing depends upon a stable society.
A stable society in turn depends upon a stable political system.
A stable political system is only possible where the individuals governed by that political system view its authority as legitimate; only under such conditions will they voluntarily accept the burdens that that government places upon them. If they don’t see the government itself as legitimate, they won’t voluntarily follow its orders. Government becomes unstable, together with society.
Citizens will only see government as legitimate where they perceive that that government is in pursuit of a supremely important good in which they themselves have a stake.
The only possible such good is the support of the common good of the community. In accepting the burdens that government places on them in order to continue to support that common form of life, individuals also serve their own interests, given that they depend on that community’s strength for their own quality of life.
The state, therefore, is entitled to override individual freedom of choice where doing so would further the common good. Indeed a precondition of political legitimacy is its willingness to do so.
Objections
The state that would be created on this view would be extremely invasive. If the state is entitled to defend, at all costs, the community’s common form of life, it’s very likely that minorities will wind up effectively being forced to “fit in” with what the majority wants of them (given that the ‘common form of life’ in question is likely to simply be a function of the preferences of the majority). This seems an odd way to build legitimacy with those with whom that state is likely to have the greatest imperative to engage – minority groups.
It’s also not clear why the government has the right to literally force individuals to conform with the wishes of the majority. Just because the majority has a preference for something doesn’t give anyone else the right to force it upon them.
There are many different types of goods that governments can pursue in order to build legitimacy.
Common principles of justice.
National ideals.
Community projects that do not require the curtailment of other practices.
Further Reading
The work of the philosophers Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor.
I’ve unfortunately read little of either of their work on this aspect of communitarianism so I can’t really give a decent direction as to what you should read – sorry!
As always, Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, 2002), covers this issue with terrific clarity.
Ronald Dworkin’s book Sovereign Virtue also has a really good chapter in it on the communitarian challenge to liberalism.
Equalitarian Liberal Democracy
Democracy ought to be more than majoritarianism. The popularity of a particular policy does not determine its moral justifiability.
E.g. segregation in America was wrong, despite its popularity.
Nonetheless, governments acting directly contrary to the interests and wishes of the people over whom they rule is also obviously undesirable (e.g. if the Australian government was to abolish public education, that would be so contrary to the public interest and will we’d probably want to pronounce it illegitimate).
A view of democracy is required that both permits the will of the majority to prevail in most circumstances, whilst simultaneously preserving the rights of those who might suffer under majority rule.
In effect, we might think of this as a filter through which laws must pass. They’re prima facie legitimate if they follow all the procedural rules we lay down for them, unless they contravene particular rules of justice. Usually, liberals define these rules of justice in terms of rights.
Ronald Dworkin has argued that we ought to think of democracy in terms of a partnership. Citizens in a democratic state ought to be able to view their government as their own. Citizens in a democratic state cannot see government in this way unless they see themselves as free and equal partners in that government. Only a government such as this could be a legitimate government.
Equality requires that individuals be equal before the law and due process prevails. Laws must also be general and not apply to specific individuals or groups on arbitrary grounds. Only under such conditions is the use of force just. In any other circumstance it is inevitably the arbitrary use of coercive measuring against non-consenting individuals.
Freedom requires that citizens be accorded a maximal possible liberty compatible with the same degree of liberty for everybody else. This is a precondition of legitimacy because the individual is the person best placed to judge what their conception of the good is and how they wish to pursue it; not the state. Moreover, any attempt to restrict freedom to engage in private conduct (i.e. conduct that doesn’t violate anyone else’s interests that we have a duty to respect) must inevitably be arbitrary and violate the principle of equality. The state has no special capacity to choose between different conceptions of the good, and it’s not clear why it has the right to do so.
Where government violates either freedom or equality, therefore, it acts illegitimately.
The Role of Courts
Democratic legitimacy requires limits to be placed upon legislative bodies. Any majoritarian institution left unconstrained will eventually violate the principles of either freedom or equality.
The virtue of courts with the power to review decisions therefore is clear – they are a counter-majoritarian institution that works to preserve both values. Legitimate democracy requires constitutional limits on power that can only be enforced by a body ambivalent to the wishes of the majority. An independent court is the only possible entity that could fulfil that role.
Objections – see all the other theories above!
Further Reading
Ronald Dworkin, ‘The Partnership Conception of Democracy’ (1998) 86 California Law Review 453.
Liberal theory is replete with similar accounts of democratic legitimacy. Perhaps the best known is: John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, (Belknap, 1971).