PREFACE
In 1848, Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto.
During the twentieth century there were serious efforts to implement
its vision of a classless society. The results were uniformly
disastrous. When the century ended Communist rule had collapsed in
the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Although still governed by a
Communist party, China had repudiated the Marxist vision even before
the Soviet Union disintegrated. Only a few tiny countries like Cuba
were governed by people still professing a commitment to Communism.
The failure of
the Marxist vision does not imply that "capitalist"
countries are perfect. Far from it! It is easy to compile long
lists of outrageous problems afflicting these countries.
In the following
pages I will to argue that, mixed in with the nonsense in his ideas,
Marx got two things right:
First: To
achieve an ideal society we must indeed move beyond capitalism.
Historical experience since Marx wrote, and a principled, systematic
analysis of his ideas, however, indicate that the direction in which
he proposed to move away from capitalism was profoundly incorrect.
Second: An ideal
society will indeed be classless. But it will not be achieved by
liquidating the bourgeoisie by a revolutionary process, as Marx
thought. Instead, it will be reached by elevating the proletariat
into the bourgeoisie by a process of reform.
As the following
chapters will show, my concept of a classless society is
one where "bourgeois" values of individual liberty, limited
government, and market economics, are pushed to their logical
conclusions.
I am interested
in discussing the ideas in this book with readers who have questions
or comments. Correspondence can be addressed to me by e-mail at
pdeles@proaxis.com.
Paul F.
deLespinasse
Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer
Science
Adrian College
Adrian, Michigan 49221
Now living in
Corvallis, Oregon
Chapter 1: BEYOND CAPITALISM
"I
propose to beg no question, to shrink from no conclusion, but to
follow truth wherever it may lead. Upon us is the responsibility of
seeking the law, for in the very heart of our civilization today
women faint and little children moan. But what that law may prove to
be is not our affair. If the conclusions that we reach run counter to
our prejudices, let us not flinch; if they challenge institutions
that have long been deemed wise and natural, let us not turn back."
Henry
George, Progress and Poverty,
(1881).
My
friend Dewey Larson argued that Einstein correctly concluded that
Newton's ideas about gravitation were inadequate. But, continued
Larson, Einstein moved our attempts to explain gravity in the wrong
direction. To get back on the right track, said Larson, we need to go
back to Newton and then move forward in a different direction. Hence,
he chose to name his book Beyond Newton rather than Beyond
Einstein.
In
the following pages I will make a similar argument regarding Karl
Marx's program for replacing capitalism. Although agreeing with Marx
that capitalism is far from ideal, I will suggest that achieving an
ideal society will require moving beyond capitalism in a different
direction than Marx prescribed. Also, we must use reforms to
implement the necessary changes, not the revolution advocated by the
Communists.
1. Problems With Capitalism
The
litany of imperfections in today's "capitalist" countries
is long and depressing. We often find high unemployment even in good
times. We see insecurity even among people who are employed.
Recessions, technological change, and unfriendly corporate takeovers
constantly threaten to destroy the organizations which employ us. We
see poverty that persists in spite of crusades and even "wars"
against it. We see incredible economic inequality, billionaires and
paupers.
We
see violent crimes depriving millions of people of personal security.
We see prisons whose former inmates often return to society less
prepared for decent lives than when they were sentenced.
We
see local environmental blight and large scale trends which threaten
the ecology of the planet as a whole, including the climate. We see
continuous inflation and skyrocketing increases in debt both in our
private lives and in the public arena.
We
see neglected and abused children, disintegration of families,
rampant sexual promiscuity, epidemics of STD's. We see societies
where--reversing Marx's description of religion as "the opiate
of the masses"--opiates have become the religion of the masses.
In an age of supposed tolerance and of widespread antidiscrimination
legislation, we see increases in racial hostility and hatred.
Clearly, the socio-economic systems of the developed and
industrialized democracies are not perfect. They don't even come
close!
I
am not contending that these problems exist only in capitalist
countries. Conditions are even worse in the "less developed
countries" of the third world. Likewise, crime, environmental
devastation, and inequality permeated the Communist-run countries.
Only after Gorbachev introduced a free press in the U.S.S.R. did the
extent of these problems became widely understood. It was no accident
that Communist and third world countries have had problems with
citizens who want to leave illegally, whereas capitalist countries
have problems with people who come in illegally. But the fact remains
that capitalism has not only failed to solve or reduce many of these
problems, but that some of them are actually getting worse in the
developed countries.
Some
problems afflicting capitalist societies have been mitigated by
private charity and governmental programs: unemployment compensation,
welfare, food stamps, medical assistance, and the like.
But
welfare programs can have a down side. They can encourage the breakup
of even more families. They can make it more profitable for some
people to refuse employment than to work, thus depriving them of the
dignity, discipline, education, and other "non-economic"
benefits of working. Properly structured welfare programs will
probably exist even in an ideal society. But many existing programs
are probably substitutes for, not examples of, adequate social
institutions.
2. Fixing Capitalism's Problems
Capitalism's
problems have been addressed by three major schools. One school,
urging that today's systems are not really capitalist, wants to
restore "true", laissez-faire, capitalism. "Deregulate"
everything, get the government "off our backs," limit
government to enforcing contracts, policing the streets, and
defending from foreign attack, and let markets take care of
everything else. I will explain why this strategy is grossly
inadequate, and likely to become more so, in chapter 7, "How
Much Government Do We Need?" However implementing my own
recommendations will produce a society where arbitrary government
regulation of the economy is eliminated and nearly all prices are
determined by market forces. While mine will not be the society
envisioned by the "back to true capitalism" people, many of
its features should give them some satisfaction.
A
second school holds that capitalism's problems can be solved by doing
more of the things that have already been tried, or by doing them
better: more or better welfare, more or better social insurance, more
or better regulation of economic transactions. These people may have
a point. It is difficult to hit exactly the right note in initial
efforts to fix serious problems. However considerable time and talent
have already been devoted to this approach. Results have been modest
and sometimes even disastrous. And the net effect of the various
welfare, insurance, regulation, and legal measures taken under this
traditional approach is to move society in the direction of the
excess centralization found in the Soviet Union and its satellites
before their Communist experiments self-destructed.
The
third school of thought, that of the Marxists, was by far the most
influential during the twentieth century. Communists insisted that
capitalism was hopelessly inadequate (though admittedly a step
forward from feudalism), and that it could not be fixed by a
patchwork of reforms.
Although
the Marxists correctly pointed to many weaknesses and deficiencies in
capitalist societies, their diagnosis was profoundly incorrect and
their prescriptions proved disastrous.
Although
capitalism was clearly imperfect, Marxist propagandists exaggerated
its vices. They portrayed capitalism not just as bad, but as
impossibly bad. For example, they claimed that capitalism produces
unemployment and also exploits (substantially underpays) workers. Any
system producing either of these results would deserve criticism, of
course. But the Marxist charge that capitalism produces both
unemployment and underpayment of workers ignores the fact that these
two problems cannot exist at the same time. A society where some
people are unemployed and others are underpaid can certainly exist.
But it is impossible to have a society in which people in general are
underpaid and there is also any substantial unemployment. (I will
explain why this is so in chapter 5, "Voluntary Associations and
Organizations.")
The
more important problem with Marxism, however, was the deplorable
results produced when it was put into practice. The catastrophic
political consequences cannot all be blamed on Joseph Stalin. Without
a totalitarian political system, it would have been impossible to
create an economic system reflecting the Marxist vision. When Mikhail
Gorbachev introduced a free press and democratization, therefore, it
soon became necessary to abandon the effort to "build socialism"
in any historical sense of the term.
Even
with all the "advantages" of its totalitarian political
system, the Soviet Union never attained a viable Marxist economic
system. The basic reason for this failure is clear. The fundamental
problem in Marxist theory is its hostility to markets. In markets,
people and organizations are free to buy and sell at mutually
acceptable prices, and decisions about what and how much to produce
are widely decentralized. Marxists noted the huge economic
inequalities existing under capitalism and attributed them to the
market economy. But the Soviet effort to suppress markets and to
dictate politically the quantities and prices of all goods and
services produced terrible results: shortages, bottlenecks, lack of
coordination (in a "planned economy"!), technological
stagnation, and gross waste of natural resources.
Well
before Gorbachev came to power, a healthy, implicitly anti-Marxist
trend was already visible in the Soviet Union. The new Constitution
of 1977 stimulated officially tolerated calls for "socialist
legality," One more step led to the official goal, under
Gorbachev, of adhering to the "rule of law." As I will
demonstrate in the following chapters, the rule of law requires both
a market economy (contradicting a basic Marxist economic goal) and
political democracy (contradicting the necessary political means by
which Marxists sought to achieve their economic goal.)
The
unsuccessful experiments in the Soviet Union and elsewhere thoroughly
discredited Marxism as an escape route from the problems of
capitalism. To go beyond capitalism we need to move in a very
different direction from that proposed by the Marxists.
3. The Continuing Appeal of A
Classless Society
In
spite of Marxism's colossal failure in practice, it still has one
feature which is very appealing: its vision of a classless society.
If a class society is one where there are unjust distinctions between
various categories of people, few would favor such a society as an
abstract goal. Individuals belonging to a favored category
understandably might support the status quo from which they are
benefiting. But no one would favor a class society from behind a
Rawlsean veil of ignorance or "original position," from a
pre-birth sentient existence in which one knows the general contours
of the society but could not find out into what class or specific
circumstances he or she will be born.
Anti-Communists
long assumed that the ideal of a classless society was a monopoly of
Marxists. It is now high time to recognize that such a society is an
ideal with very wide appeal.
Marx
himself rather backhandedly admitted this in the Communist Manifest
(1848). Attacking "the socialistic bourgeois," he
sarcastically exclaimed that their idea of a classless society was
one in which there would be "a bourgeoisie without a
proletariat." For Marx, this idea was crazy. But Marx's own
logic suggests that such a society would be just as classless as the
one he had in mind.
Marx
explained how a classless society would emerge from capitalism. He
saw the history of mankind as a product of class conflict. Each major
historical stage was dominated by the class which owned the
prevailing form of productive property. A prehistorical phase of
"primitive communism" in which nothing is owned is followed
by a stage of slavery in which people are the prevailing form of
productive property. As a result of the class struggle, society
moves upward to feudalism, in which the dominant form of productive
property is land and landowners are the ruling class. Capitalism, in
which factories are the prevailing form of productive property, then
emerges from feudalism.
According
to Marx, prior to capitalism there were often many classes, but under
the conditions of capitalism they shake down to the irreducible
(under capitalism!) number of two. One class is the bourgeoisie, the
city-dwelling capitalists, the owners of the factories. The other
remaining class is the proletariat, the "working class,"
whose members have no property and who can live only by selling their
labor power to the capitalists on terms which are very
disadvantageous to the workers. As capitalism matures, according to
Marx, it drives the proletariat into deeper and deeper misery until,
realizing where their interests lie with the aid of perspicacious
analysts (like Karl Marx!) the proletariat unites and rises up to
overthrow the dominant bourgeoisie. It is not clear whether Marx
himself thought that the revolution had to be violent or that it
could be achieved peacefully via the ballot box. But the dominant
Marxist school in the twentieth century argued that violence was a
(regrettable) necessity and that those who felt otherwise were
"revisionists," i.e. heretics.
In
either event, according to Marxism the "revolutionary"
overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat does not immediately
change the fact that the society is divided into two classes. The
difference is that after the revolution the proletariat is on the top
(the "dictatorship of the proletariat") and the bourgeoisie
is on the bottom. The society is now in a transitional stage, which
Marx calls "socialism" to distinguish it from the ideal
system "communism," towards which it is heading. Under
socialism, there is still a state--which for Marx is merely a
mechanism by which one class subjects and exploits the other class or
classes in the society. But unlike the capitalist state, the
socialist state promotes the interests of the proletariat. In
contrast to capitalist exploitation the society now works on the
principle, "From each according to his ability, to each
according to his work." Workers are now to be paid the actual
value of their labor, not ripped off as they allegedly are under
capitalism. Footnote 1.
Communism,
the ultimate Marxist vision, comes when the transitional socialist
stage has run its course. By now the bourgeoisie has been
"liquidated," an ambiguous term that could mean the
physical extermination of its members or merely their peaceful
absorption into the ranks of the proletariat. Whatever the details,
once the bourgeoisie has been liquidated, all that remains is the
proletariat. But classes cannot exist singly! In order for there to
be a class, there has to be at least one other class. Once the
bourgeoisie has disappeared you therefore do not have a one-class
society, you have instead a classless society.
This
is not a trivial, "merely semantic" point. To a Marxist
this is a qualitatively different society than the previous ones
(whether capitalist or socialist). For one thing, since Marx defines
the state as merely an instrument for the subjection of one
class by another, by definition no such state can exist in the
classless society. Thus, the state has "withered away." For
another thing, the ruling principle now would be "From each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs"
(emphasis added).
Marx
thus maintains only two classes are left under capitalism and that if
one of these classes is abolished what is left would be a classless
society. The class that Marx chooses for the honor of disappearing
happens to be the bourgeoisie. But there is no reason in principle
why classlessness could not be achieved instead by eliminating the
other class, the proletariat.
This
is why Marx's wisecrack in the Communist Manifesto is so
interesting. By referring to his rivals' desire for a society in
which there is "a bourgeoisie without a proletariat," Marx
is admitting that there is another path by which we might move
forward from capitalism to a (the?!) classless society: by absorbing
the proletariat into the ranks of the bourgeoisie.Footnote 2.
Only if it is impossible for some reason to eliminate the proletariat
could this alternate route be rejected. Furthermore, this alternate
route may provide a very different perspective on the nature of a
classless society than Marx was able to furnish.
Given
the utter failure of more than 70 years of Communist experiments, I
submit that the "proletarian" route to the classless
society turned out to be impossible. The possibility of a "bourgeois"
path to the same goal remains to be determined.
4. The Metaconstitutional Vision
I
invented the word "Metaconstitution" to describe my concept
of the ideal society, one in which bourgeois values of individual
liberty, limited government, and market economics, pushed to their
logical conclusions, produce a classless society.
Far
from repudiating bourgeois, capitalist values, the Metaconstitution
would implement them to the greatest degree imaginable. Individual
liberty, political and economic, would be maximized, limited only by
government conducted in accordance with the requirements of democracy
and of the rule of law. Prices of nearly all goods and services would
be determined by the market rather than by central decree. Legitimate
property rights would be fully respected.
The
basic sense in which the Metaconstitutional society would be
classless is that government would have no power to enact or enforce
pseudolaws. I will explain precisely how pseudolaws are to be
distinguished from genuine laws in Chapter 2. For now, let it simply
be noted that the principal defect in pseudolaws is lack of
generality. Pseudolaws do not apply the same standard to all actors.
Some notable examples of pseudolaws would be:
$100
fine for black persons who sit in the front of the bus.
All Jews not wearing
a yellow star shall be imprisoned.
Persons under 21
shall be fined if they consume alcoholic beverages.
Women may not be
licensed to work as a bartender; people bartending without a license
shall be fined or imprisoned.
To
achieve the Metaconstitutional society we must eliminate all
pseudolaws. This is easy enough to say, but this will require major
changes in institutions: 1) Democratization of all governments
(chapter 3); 2) Radical changes in rules regarding the ownership of
land and all other natural resources (chapter 4); 3) Abandonment of
present strategies for regulating employment (chapter 5); (4)
Reconsideration of widespread attitudes regarding the place of work
in human life(chapter 8); (5) Establishment of a universal
government (chapter 6).
The
most controversial change needed to get rid of all pseudolaws is
establishment of a universal (world) government. Universal government
is not just an additional ingredient casually thrown into the pot
because I happen to think it would be a good idea. It is necessary if
we are to enjoy a secure democracy. It is necessary if we are to have
legitimate property. Its absence is incompatible with the goal of
exterminating pseudolaws. I propose to demonstrate that the concept
of an "illegal alien" is not only a philosophical
abomination, it epitomizes pseudolaw.
5. Metaconstitution Versus Utopia
The
reader may wonder how I came up with the word "Metaconstitution."
"Meta" means "beyond." "Metaphysics,"
for example, is a standard philosophical term referring to areas of
discourse such as ethics and aesthetics that go beyond the study of
our physical universe. So "Metaconstitution" means
"beyond a constitution."
Actions
can be evaluated on the basis of moral rules and legal rules. Legal
rules in turn can be evaluated to see if they are consistent with a
constitution. (We call this practice "judicial review".)
But constitutions themselves can be created and destroyed, modified
and amended. By what standards can we evaluate the adequacy of
constitutions and proposed changes to constitutions? A set of
principles by reference to which we can evaluate actual or proposed
constitutions is a metaconstitution, a vision of the ideal
constitution.
In
a world filled with billions of people who see things from many
different perspectives, there are bound to be conflicting opinions
about what an ideal constitution would be like. These opinions do not
all constitute a metaconstitution. Some may contain motley sets of
desired elements, knocked together with little thought of their
mutual compatibility. Footnote 3. Others may propose a society
containing some elements that are inherently, not just immediately,
impossible. Footnote 4. Such visions should be called Utopias,
not metaconstitutions.
A
metaconstitution must give due heed to the limits imposed by our
natural environment, by the rules of logic and mathematics, and by
human nature. (Those proposing to change human nature and not just
its particular manifestations are utopians.)
Unlike
a Utopia, a metaconstitution does not promise such overwhelmingly
attractive conditions that its proponents will rush out to implement
it by all means fair or foul, "at any price." And a
metaconstitution focuses on fundamental institutions and does not
purport to provide a complete, detailed picture of the ideal society
and of life.
Most
visions of an ideal society are probably utopias, not
metaconstitutions. But there probably will be many metaconstitutions,
not just one. As the apparent inventor of the word, I have therefore
taken the liberty of appropriating the capitalized version of the
word-- Metaconstitution--to designate my own vision of the ideal
society which wi ll be presented in the following chapters.
6. What Ought To Be Done?
The
Metaconstitution presented in chapters 2-8 is my effort to answer one
of the three fundamental questions of political philosophy: what
ought to be? Footnote 5. Chapters
9-10, on the other hand, discuss a second fundamental
question: what ought to be done? How should we go about trying
to achieve a Metaconstitutional society? If we ever get to such a
society, how should we act to maximize its longevity?
A
simple analogy indicates that it is not necessarily a good idea to
try to achieve a Metaconstitutional world. Imagine that you are
shipwrecked alone on an isolated island, like Robinson Crusoe. You
can survive, but your island is not ideal in its ability to supply
adequate food, shelter, and clothing. But not too far away across the
water you can see another island that clearly would be much better.
So
what ought to be? Obviously, you ought to be on the other island.
But exactly what ought to be done does not follow simply and
straightforwardly from your answer to the first question. What ought
to be done depends also on circumstances that you presently find
yourself in. Circumstances may make some conceivable actions
impossible, and they may determine whether the consequences of those
actions which are possible will be satisfactory or unsatisfactory.
Suppose
that you do not know how to swim, and that there is nothing on your
current island with which you could construct a boat or raft. (This,
alas, is just another way in which the island is inferior!) If this
were the case, it would make sense to say:
Or
perhaps you do swim, but the water between the two islands is full of
sharks. Again, this is something that you should consider before
deciding what to do, no matter how convinced you are that the other
island would be a better place.
One
danger of utopias is their promise of such an absolutely wonderful
future that people may ignore the dictates of prudence in trying to
bring them into existence. The Metaconstitution--or indeed any vision
of an ideal society that qualifies as a metaconstitution--presents no
such danger. It portrays a future society that is relatively
wonderful, compared to today, but which still leaves people with
plenty to be unhappy or worried about. A bad socio-economic system
may make decent lives impossible for most people. A good system can
make a decent life for most people possible but it cannot guarantee
everyone will actually achieve it. There is little danger that rabid
Metaconstitutionalists will rush off unwisely to try to bring their
blessings to mankind via war or revolution, the usual methods adopted
by zealots who are in a hurry.
Chapter
9 explain why reform rather than war or revolution is the only way
to go. Even reform, however, is not without its problems as a method
of bringing about progress.
Reformers
don't work in ideal circumstances. (Ideal circumstances would be
found only in an ideal society, i.e. one not needing reform!)
Reformers must work within existing circumstances, no matter how bad
they may be, and must be content to take advantage of the limited
opportunities these circumstances offer to move things in the right
direction. No matter how bad current circumstances are, the reformer
must remember that it is always possible for unwise actions to make
those circumstances worse.
Also,
reformers must be careful about the order in which the elements of a
better society are introduced. Reform is inherently gradual. All the
elements of the ideal society cannot be put into place
simultaneously. But sometimes introducing one element of the ideal
society into an otherwise un-ideal one may worsen the total state of
affairs. In a town with two polluting factories, for example, one may
be emitting acid pollutants and the other basic (in the chemical
sense) pollutants. Since acids and bases neutralize each other, they
may cancel each other out and the net effect on the local environment
may be minimal. But if some anti-pollution crusader shuts down one of
the two skunk works in the name of progress, the damage done by the
remaining factory may be immense.
Reformers,
thus, must cope creatively with strong limits on what can be achieved
in any given period of time. They must work to overcome inherently
conservative public and elite opinion, while fending off criticism
from revolutionaries who accuse them of selling out to the status
quo. They must cope with the natural tendencies of a society to
comply with the laws of inertia and drift.
Most
difficult of all, perhaps, reformers must try to persuade people to
invest in the future. Reforms can be seen abstractly as actions under
present circumstances that try to improve the circumstances we will
be working within in the future. Investment requires that we
"consume" less in the present in order to be able to
consume more in the future. There may be other, shorter run, goals
that we could achieve with the same time and resources that we
instead must use if we are going to improve the future.
Fortunately,
investment is congenial to the bourgeois mentality, and as I have
noted the Metaconstitution is an expression of bourgeois values
pushed to their extreme limits. Unfortunately, before the proletariat
has been liquidated by absorption into the ranks of the bourgeoisie
by no means everybody will be supportive of investing in the future.
In the non-ideal present there are many who are "lower class"
in Edward Banfield's sense, people who will not personally defer any
gratification in the interest of a better long run, people who cannot
look beyond their noses. Footnote 6. Nor will all of these
"lower class" people be poor and powerless. They will
include many people in the elites who, living as well or better than
they could expect to in any other conceivable society, have no
interest in investing, but prefer to "eat, drink, and be merry,
for tomorrow we die!"
Present
trends in the more "advanced" societies toward family
instability and the devaluation of children will aggravate the
problems facing reformers. Concern for the future welfare of their
children can be a powerful incentive to make both economic and
political investments. Parents who are not well off may work so
their children will have it better. Parents who "have it made"
may still wish to improve society so as to guarantee their
descendants a decent future even if they are not similarly
privileged. To the extent people do not have children or do not take
those children they do have seriously, they have less reason to be
concerned about the future of society.
Reform
implies a particular outlook towards the past, the present, and the
future. Thinking about a desired future state of affairs requires us
to study the present in order to understand the specific
opportunities for action and the limits thereto that our present
circumstances allow. The desire to act effectively rather than
ineffectively in the present so as to bring about a better future
requires us in turn to take a careful and sustained look at the past.
By studying past efforts to bring about desired changes and the
actual, often undesired results of those efforts, perhaps we can
learn how to act wisely in the present. As Bismarck said once, fools
learn by experience; wise people learn from other people's
experience.
Reformers
owe it to society to go about the job thoughtfully and intelligently.
Noble intentions are not enough. We must never forget what the road
to hell is paved with.
*******************************
Footnotes
1.
Marx's concept of socialism as a transitional stage on the path to
communism should not be confused with the socialism which was the
ultimate goal of the democratic socialist parties in western Europe.
The vision of the democratic socialists was so different from that of
the Marxists that it is no exaggeration to say they were two
different visions sharing a common name. As Alfred Korzybski, S.I.
Hayakawa, etc., repeatedly warned us, "the name is not the
thing."
2.
Because of the great size of the proletariat, compared to the
bourgeoisie, it would be unthinkable to advocate "liquidating"
it in the physical sense in which some Marxists seemed to intend for
the bourgeoisie. Nor could there be any plausible motive for
advocating any such physical extermination of the proletariat. It
might be argued that the bourgeoisie had an interest in not being
pulled down one by one into the proletariat and that their resistance
to this would make extermination necessary. The proletariat, by
contrast, has no interest in resisting being pulled up into the
bourgeoisie. The moral and political logic of the two cases is thus
entirely different.
3.
As any economist can tell us, not all good things can be had at the
same time because of the "opportunity costs" problem.
Robert Nozick has done an especially thoughtful job of pointing out
the political implications of this fact in his Anarchy, State, and
Utopia (N.Y: Basic Books, 1984).
4.
Impossibility exists in two different senses. The term can refer to
actions that are never possible, or to those which are not presently
possible. It is important to try to be clear about which form of
impossibility we are talking about. There is no use in tilting at
windmills or breaking our heads against a brick wall. On the other
hand, "much historical experience. . . tells us that goals
unattainable now will never be reached unless they are articulated
while they are still unattainable." (Leszek Kolakowski, in Ann
Fremantle, Communism: Basic Writings, New York: Mentor, 1970,
p. 389.) Going to the moon was only presently impossible when the
Kennedy Administration decided to do this in the early 1960s. By
1969, the impossibility had been turned into a realized possibility.
Having one's cake and eating it too is impossible in the other sense,
just as is increasing government spending while reducing taxes
collected and preserving a stable currency all at the same time. When
political leaders promise us the "impossible," we need to
ask ourselves which kind of impossibility they are promising before
we decide how to respond. The person wishing to convert present
impossibilities into tomorrow's actualities may be a statesman who
deserves our support. The person who promises to deliver the
intrinsically impossible is a demagogue who should be hounded from
public life as unceremoniously as possible.
5.
These three questions of political philosophy are discussed in my
previous book, Thinking About Politics: American Government in
Associational Perspective (N.Y: D. Van Nostrand, 1981), and are,
respectively, the subjects of the three final chapters of that work:
"Beyond Utopia" (what ought to be?), "Beyond
Revolution" (what ought to be done?), and "Beyond Politics"
(what is the nature of man?).
6.
See Edward Banfield, The Unheavenly City (Boston: Little,
Brown), pp. 47-50.
