Monday, November 30, 2009
SOCIALISM, POPULISM, AND DEMOCRACY
Politicians, pundits, and demagogues in our country today are prone to the over-use and incorrect use of terms like “socialist” as an attack adjective or name-calling noun. Their followers can be worse. Some know better and don’t care. Others are just ignorant. Politicians and pundits use that term to score political points with an audience that often doesn’t know any better.
In the political realm “communist” has a dark connotation, similar to “Bolshevik,” meaning an extreme form of economic and political system where productive property is centrally held and managed by a dictatorial government. Today this term is inappropriate, incorrect, does not apply, and should be excluded from our current political dialogue. Too bad it is not.
“Socialist” is a bit more difficult to define. Traditionally it refers to the ownership or common rights of the people (as a society), perhaps as opposed to exploitive private and corporate property rights. It has normally been applied to areas such as the national park system, the highway system, law enforcement, food and drug standards, the postal system, or sometimes to ownership of natural resources. It may cover government ownership of utility systems and public transportation, including railroads. It also covers other government services to the population, including the elderly, widows and orphans, the sick, and the needy. What is there about “socialist,” in this latter context, do we not like?
“Socialist” as a concept is difficult to separate from “we, the people.” It is intertwined with populism and democracy itself. Was Lincoln actually speaking as a “socialist” when he talked of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people?”
We think not in the way critics of government use the term today, but affirmative in the generic meaning of the term.
Lincoln was speaking of democracy, where governmental power initiates with the people, is conducted by the people, and for the benefit of people. That is pure Athenian democracy. Our popular slogan “power to the people” has roughly the same connotation.
Our historic founding documents in America were not prepared hastily, nor in an unthinking, whimsical fashion. These were not written by dunces, nor by ignorant, revolutionary, ordinary backwoods farmer-colonists.
Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were skillfully drafted in a manner much as might be demanded in a scholarly community of persons well acquainted with philosophy and logic. In some ways these resemble the logical style of drafting an academic thesis, a legal brief, or a position paper, and in others the logic is similar to philosophy or the proof process learned in plane geometry.
The reference points of our founding fathers were in the philosophic writings of philosophers who guided the British in establishing the rights of the people and limits upon the power of the crown. They studied the works of French philosophers undergirding the revolution of the French people against that monarchy.
Consider these early words of the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
A supporter of the restoration of the British crown after the rule of Cromwell and a tutor of the future Charles II in French exile, Thomas Hobbes considered anarchy the worst of conditions. He wrote in C.1660 that governments are formed for the common good of the people to prevent anarchy, saying that the people give up many of their individual rights for the common good through government, which could be a monarchy.
John Locke in C.1670 wrote in disagreement with Hobbes, emphasizing individual rights of the people. He wrote that government existed to protect the life, liberty, and property of (individual) people, and that certain rights remained inherent with the people – including the power of the people to restrain or replace their government. He was not popular with the new king.
Thomas Jefferson was a devotee of John Locke, drawing many of his ideas from that source. Jefferson’s “all men are created equal” derived from Locke’s view that indeed all persons were born with equal innate abilities, as well as rights, which could be developed through education and training. Locke is known for his “tabla rasa” theory, meaning that the minds of youth are “like unto wax tablets upon which the stylus of experience engraves” to make them whatever they are.
Jefferson, too, was an ardent advocate of public education and a founder of the University of Virginia. He said that the survival of democracy depended upon an educated citizenry.
Rousseau’s “Social Contract” in 1762 followed his “State of Nature,” in which he reasoned that man is born inherently good, only to be corrupted by the society of which he is a part. That view, different from prevailing religious thought, was followed by the “Social Contract” in which he held that all power resided in the people, and that the people contract with government to offer certain kinds of services with limited authority derived from this contract. He stressed “the common will.”
If we now look at the Preamble of the Constitution, we will see further evidence of its philosophic background and foundations:
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, and ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity …..”
Again, one may readily see in these words of our founding fathers the philosophic tenets of their learned and intellectual European forebears. The forming of the Constitution is clearly the drawing up of a “social contract,” as per the thoughts of Locke and Rousseau, just as the rebellion of the people against George III of England had been so justified.
Abraham Lincoln, something of a scholar himself, joined these others with his immortal “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Today false prophets abound, perverting the writings and the thinking of our “founding fathers” in such ways as to advance their own ideas and agenda of social and economic conservatism. They have become extreme and demagogic is so doing. These people are offensive to the truth.
Thus, to understand fully the words of our forefathers, it is helpful to look at the history of political thought undergirding them. Some are entirely too quick to attack critically as “socialist,” with a bad connotation, the words, the ideas, and the agenda of political figures of our day. If judged by these imposed standards, then our founding fathers were clearly “socialists” also – especially in the etymological sense of that term.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
In the political realm “communist” has a dark connotation, similar to “Bolshevik,” meaning an extreme form of economic and political system where productive property is centrally held and managed by a dictatorial government. Today this term is inappropriate, incorrect, does not apply, and should be excluded from our current political dialogue. Too bad it is not.
“Socialist” is a bit more difficult to define. Traditionally it refers to the ownership or common rights of the people (as a society), perhaps as opposed to exploitive private and corporate property rights. It has normally been applied to areas such as the national park system, the highway system, law enforcement, food and drug standards, the postal system, or sometimes to ownership of natural resources. It may cover government ownership of utility systems and public transportation, including railroads. It also covers other government services to the population, including the elderly, widows and orphans, the sick, and the needy. What is there about “socialist,” in this latter context, do we not like?
“Socialist” as a concept is difficult to separate from “we, the people.” It is intertwined with populism and democracy itself. Was Lincoln actually speaking as a “socialist” when he talked of “government of the people, by the people, and for the people?”
We think not in the way critics of government use the term today, but affirmative in the generic meaning of the term.
Lincoln was speaking of democracy, where governmental power initiates with the people, is conducted by the people, and for the benefit of people. That is pure Athenian democracy. Our popular slogan “power to the people” has roughly the same connotation.
Our historic founding documents in America were not prepared hastily, nor in an unthinking, whimsical fashion. These were not written by dunces, nor by ignorant, revolutionary, ordinary backwoods farmer-colonists.
Our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution were skillfully drafted in a manner much as might be demanded in a scholarly community of persons well acquainted with philosophy and logic. In some ways these resemble the logical style of drafting an academic thesis, a legal brief, or a position paper, and in others the logic is similar to philosophy or the proof process learned in plane geometry.
The reference points of our founding fathers were in the philosophic writings of philosophers who guided the British in establishing the rights of the people and limits upon the power of the crown. They studied the works of French philosophers undergirding the revolution of the French people against that monarchy.
Consider these early words of the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
A supporter of the restoration of the British crown after the rule of Cromwell and a tutor of the future Charles II in French exile, Thomas Hobbes considered anarchy the worst of conditions. He wrote in C.1660 that governments are formed for the common good of the people to prevent anarchy, saying that the people give up many of their individual rights for the common good through government, which could be a monarchy.
John Locke in C.1670 wrote in disagreement with Hobbes, emphasizing individual rights of the people. He wrote that government existed to protect the life, liberty, and property of (individual) people, and that certain rights remained inherent with the people – including the power of the people to restrain or replace their government. He was not popular with the new king.
Thomas Jefferson was a devotee of John Locke, drawing many of his ideas from that source. Jefferson’s “all men are created equal” derived from Locke’s view that indeed all persons were born with equal innate abilities, as well as rights, which could be developed through education and training. Locke is known for his “tabla rasa” theory, meaning that the minds of youth are “like unto wax tablets upon which the stylus of experience engraves” to make them whatever they are.
Jefferson, too, was an ardent advocate of public education and a founder of the University of Virginia. He said that the survival of democracy depended upon an educated citizenry.
Rousseau’s “Social Contract” in 1762 followed his “State of Nature,” in which he reasoned that man is born inherently good, only to be corrupted by the society of which he is a part. That view, different from prevailing religious thought, was followed by the “Social Contract” in which he held that all power resided in the people, and that the people contract with government to offer certain kinds of services with limited authority derived from this contract. He stressed “the common will.”
If we now look at the Preamble of the Constitution, we will see further evidence of its philosophic background and foundations:
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, and ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity …..”
Again, one may readily see in these words of our founding fathers the philosophic tenets of their learned and intellectual European forebears. The forming of the Constitution is clearly the drawing up of a “social contract,” as per the thoughts of Locke and Rousseau, just as the rebellion of the people against George III of England had been so justified.
Abraham Lincoln, something of a scholar himself, joined these others with his immortal “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Today false prophets abound, perverting the writings and the thinking of our “founding fathers” in such ways as to advance their own ideas and agenda of social and economic conservatism. They have become extreme and demagogic is so doing. These people are offensive to the truth.
Thus, to understand fully the words of our forefathers, it is helpful to look at the history of political thought undergirding them. Some are entirely too quick to attack critically as “socialist,” with a bad connotation, the words, the ideas, and the agenda of political figures of our day. If judged by these imposed standards, then our founding fathers were clearly “socialists” also – especially in the etymological sense of that term.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
