Concentrated Political Power Essay Research Paper CONCENTRATED

Concentrated Political Power Essay, Research Paper

CONCENTRATED POLITICAL POWER

Should political power be concentrated in the hands of a few leaders,

or should it be widely dispersed among the members of a society? Many

great Philosophers ranging from Plato to Marx have pondered this question

over time. Historically many major civilizations were based on systems of

organization stressing centralized power and control. The attempt was to

create and ensure a stable and orderly way of life but as society evolved the

defenders of concentrated power felt compelled to justify the need for

centralized authority. This attempt at justification can be found in Plato s

famous work The Republic. According to Socrates, the principal speaker in

The Republic, an ideal state would consist of three classes. The philosopher-

kings would exercise political power in the service of justice and wisdom; the

soldiers would protect the state as a means of acquiring honor; and the

civilian population would provide for the material needs of society. A large

part of The Republic is devoted to a detailed presentation of the rigorous

intellectual training of future rulers. This section also contains a fundamental

analysis of metaphysical and scientific thought. The government of the state

acts to enforce the virtue, and consequently the true happiness, of the

individual citizen, and an orderly and productive public life is the result.

Criticizing the doctrines of atheism and materialism, Plato reaffirmed his

idealistic position and asserted his belief in the moral government of the

universe and the immortality of the soul. The Republics anti-democratic

implications are clear. A successful democratic politician must give the

people what they want, which is not (or may not be) what is good for them;

to succeed he must become like them. The true politician would give the

people what was good for them, and (at first, at least) they would not like it.

The true politician is not like the people, he knows what is good for them

better than they do, he must rule them (at least at first) against their will.

(Plato, Collected Dialogues, Contemporary Philosophy,p.357).

For Plato concentrated power is based on the citizens duty to serve the

state, which completely supervises their lives. The state gives meaning and

purpose to their lives and continues to exist in its own right over and beyond

the separate existence of its members.

Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth-century English Philosopher, argued the case

for concentrated power from a totally different viewpoint. That the condition

of mere nature, that is to say, of absolute liberty, such as is theirs that

neither are sovereigns nor subjects, is anarchy and the condition of war:

that the precepts, by which men are guided to avoid that condition, are the

laws of nature: that a Commonwealth without sovereign power is but a word

without substance and cannot stand: that subjects owe to sovereigns simple

obedience in all things wherein their obedience is not repugnant to the laws

of God. I have sufficiently proved in that which I have already written.

(Abel,p.414) Hobbes s viewpoint is that every citizen owes total

allegiance to the government, regardless of what type, so long as the

government is able to rule. Rousseau takes a unique view of the role of

concentrated political power in many of his works most notably in The Social

Contract. This formula shows us that the act of association comprises a

mutual undertaking between the public and the individuals, and that each

individual, in making a contract, as we may say, with himself, is bound in a

double capacity; as a member of the Sovereign he is bound to the

individuals, and as a member of the State to the Sovereign. But the maxim

of civil right, that no one is bound by undertakings made to himself, does

not apply in this case; for there is a great difference between incurring an

obligation to yourself and incurring one to a whole of which you form a part.

Reformers like Rousseau in France, began to reexamine the origins and

purposes of the state. Rather than the right of a monarch to rule, Rousseau

proposed that the state owed its authority to the general will of the

governed. For him, the nation itself is sovereign, and the law is none other

than the will of the people as a whole. Influenced by Plato, Rousseau

recognized the state as the environment for the moral development of

humanity. Man, though corrupted by his civilization, remained basically good

and therefore capable of assuming the moral position of aiming at the

general welfare. Because the result of aiming at individual purposes is

disagreement, a healthy (non-corrupting) state can exist only when the

common good is recognized as the goal.(Contemporary Philosophy,p.401)

Rousseau’s ideas reflect an attitude far more positive in res

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