4 Finding A Form Of Government Conducive To Justice, Prosperity, And Happiness

Amid the current pandemic, economic turmoil, and political discord, it is a good idea to reflect on the nature of government with the aim of figuring out which model is most likely to bring justice, prosperity, and happiness.

How do we measure happiness? Is it wealth, freedom, peace? All of the above? Everyone has their own definition of happiness, but we can agree on many factors that contribute to general happiness. The United Nations publishes The World Happiness Report every year, where respondents rank the general evaluation of happiness in their lives on a scale of 0 to 10.^[1] Last year, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and The Netherlands ranked at the top.

We will examine some forms of government and see how effective they might be at supporting happiness.

Meritocracy

Plato considered the direct democracy of Athens to be a form of chaotic mob rule, a disastrous system which led the Athenian Assembly to vote to put to death the innocent Socrates. Plato argued in The Republic that he had found a fool-proof system for avoiding the chaos of democracy. He suggested that we give both boys and girls a good education. ^[2]

Plato’s reason for wanting to educate women was philosophical. He believed that all humans, male and female, have a soul which enables them to gain wisdom. In his dialogue, “The Meno,” a boy who cannot read or write is asked questions about the Pythagorean theorem. (You probably remember that from high school. In modern algebraic terms, it is: a squared plus b squared equals c squared, when a and b are the two short sides of a right-angle triangle.)

The boy figured out the theorem just by reasoning in his mind. This led Plato to believe that since the Pythagorean theorem was not a material thing, the boy (and everyone else), must have a nonmaterial mind (a mind or soul aside from just a brain) in order to know this. Since girls could reason too, Plato concluded that they also had souls, and should be educated. Ultimately, he believed, since people have souls, they can develop their understanding and achieve true wisdom (the knowledge of eternal reality), and hence become immortal.

Plato believed that wisdom was true liberation. In his famed “Allegory of the Cave,”^[3] he likened the human condition to that of people chained in a cave, only able to see shadows cast on the back of the cave from fires behind them. One person escapes and sees the outside world with all of its beautiful forms and colors. Out of compassion, he goes back into the cave to tell the others what is outside. But when he enters the dark cave from the sunlight he is blinded and cannot see even the shadows. The captives mock him and refuse to believe what he says. They refuse to try to attain what will bring them true happiness.

Plato thought true happiness was to be found not in ordinary things like money and fame, but in developing the mind so as to experience eternal, nonmaterial reality. This view influenced the mystical traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All three religions believe that God is beyond our understanding and is the source of true happiness. This concept underlies Plato’s ideal government.

For Plato, education was ultimately designed for spiritual development, although in his view, not all were capable of excelling in education. The system he designed was truly unique. It began with a plan for what resembles a kindergarten. Plato believed that small children should begin their education non-verbally. They should learn gymnastics to develop their bodies (which involves both courage and skill), and music to develop their minds. (Scientists today have discovered that learning music increases intelligence.)

Imagine an upside-down ice cream cone. At the bottom are the boys and girls in kindergarten. Afterward, they learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. Along the way, those who become bored or cannot do the work drop out. (They would have jobs Plato considered to be less important, such as soldiers, producer of goods and services, etc.) The cone narrowed. Some would learn sciences, architecture, etc. At the top of the cone, those who remained, would study philosophy. It is from this elite group that the wise Guardian Kings and Queens would be chosen.

Plato was well aware that intelligence and learning were not enough to make someone a good person. Rulers could be greedy for money and possessions, and so emotionally attached to their children that they would give them more benefits than others (nepotism). Plato sought to avoid this by insisting that the rulers remain in a state of financial poverty. Further, children would be produced in mating festivals and when born, would be separated from their parents. The rulers would not know who their children were! Do you think such a system would work? Do you think it would be a good idea today to insist that politicians take a vow of poverty?

The Republic describes a type of meritocracy. The form envisioned by Plato has never been attempted. Two criticisms that have been leveled at this idea of governance are the following: First, the rulers would be so far removed from the desires and needs of ordinary people, they would not be able to legislate in such a way that would make the people happy. For example, Plato wanted to ban popular plays on the ground that seeing horror and murder would hamper moral and spiritual development. Second, Plato had a plan for curbing financial greed and nepotism, yet he seemed blind to the fact that the desire for power could lead to more abuses than anything else.

Another model of government using merit as its base was suggested by the Chinese philosopher Confucius c. 500 BCE. Confucius believed, like Plato, that education should be the basis for developing leadership. Unlike Plato, Confucius’ ideas for doing this did not include women. Confucius himself had to overcome great poverty. He was the child of a nobleman who, in his seventies and longing for a healthy son, took as his mistress a sixteen-year-old girl (a worker on his estate). When the nobleman died, his angry and jealous family cast off the three-year-old Confucius and his mother. They went to a nearby city and nearly died of hunger. Confucius helped his mother by cleaning houses and doing errands. The brilliantly gifted child managed to acquire an education. He became a teacher.

Having suffered from poverty, Confucius sympathized with young people who longed for an education and were without funds. He never demanded payment for more than his students could afford. He believed that government should not be run by the nobility, but rather by educated men of good character (shih)Confucius’ view could be termed a contagion theory of good government. If the rulers were good, then the people they ruled would be inspired by them and would be good themselves.

Can you imagine a form of meritocracy conducive to justice, prosperity, and happiness?

Virtue ethics is used in a different manner in religious governments. The danger of self-serving governments being able to abuse their power led the Islamist political theorist Al Mawdudi (1908–1979) to believe limits must be set on democracy. He lived in India during the rise of Hitler and was shocked to see racism and genocide supersede democracy in Germany. His solution was to establish the authority of the Koran, which mandated care for the poor and forbade genocide, among other things.

From the point of view of many people, Mawdudi argued against women’s freedom and equality, stating that this threatens to bring about the fall of civilization in the west. Many religious states have been accused of ignoring the rights of minorities (women, other religions, LGBTQ, etc.) However, some other religious governments have been very tolerant.

If a religious government does not suit you as a way of limiting elements of corruption in democracy, what does? My late husband Raziel Abelson and I used to argue about this. I suggested writing the Bill of Rights in stone, so it could never be changed by a vote. Raziel replied that times change, and changes may need to be made. For example, some have argued that the right to bear arms is not good at all. What do you think?

Democracy

Our government is a republic, but not the virtue-based one of which Plato wrote. Our American republic is a representative democracy, where we elect legislators to represent us in government. This is a step divorced from the direct democracy of ancient Athens. A strong streak of libertarianism runs through our democratic culture. This can be traced back to philosophers such as the utilitarian John Stuart Mill. Mill, like Plato, believed that good government depends on the populace being well educated. In addition, he was convinced that involving people in government, and in the voting process in particular, was a means of educating them. This is one of the reasons he gave for fighting for women’s right to vote.

However, Mill argued (unlike Plato), that if people were allowed to vote in such a way that their desires would be met, the happiness of all would increase. He believed that democratic procedures provided ways to bring people’s needs and desires to the government’s attention.

For Mill, liberty enabled a human being to develop in new and creative ways. “Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.”^[4]

In Mill’s view, there should be some limits governing permissible behavior. No one should be allowed to do what would physically harm another. This includes financial harm. Let me give examples of my own. Following Mills’s view, you would be allowed to insult someone, and you could walk around naked because this would not physically harm anyone. You might, however, be required to sit on a paper towel so as not to spread germs. You could not punch out a person who insulted you. In Mill’s words:

“The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection… The only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”^[5]

This is an intoxicating vision of an almost totally free society. What fun! Sobering up, however, we may see problems. Do you remember that old slogan from childhood, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me”? Is that really true? Look at the harm that bullying on the internet does to people. Cruel words can completely threaten one’s self-image, and even lead to suicide.

In addition, as Mill discovered, failing to ‘rein in’ greedy people, such as capitalists whose wealth has given them too much power over their workers, may actually enslave people. (Later on in life he became a socialist.) Unbridled freedom for some may take away freedom for others. In our democracy, we constantly read about the corruption of elected officials, and there’s a lack of meaningful campaign finance laws to prevent it from happening. What occurs when elected representatives no longer represent the interest of their constituents? Does this remind you of the Athenian assembly that demanded the death of Socrates?

Social democracies are known for strong regulation of corruption (though they don’t always succeed), and reining in the influence of corporations in politics, while maintaining a capitalist system. When government enacts policies that cut healthcare or worker benefits, the people take to the streets, even blocking roads, and usually come out victorious. We’ll talk more about democratic socialism at the end of the chapter.

Communism

Marx (1818–1883), born in Germany, began his intellectual life as a follower of the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831), who argued that everything that we know and everything that happens, is a result of what we have thought. Thought is the source of history. And history develops through a process of dialectic (from the Greek, ‘change’). Hegel argued there are many dialectics that determine the course of history. The initial step in the dialectic is the thesis (from Greek, meaning place/the place where you start). For Hegel, that was the Age of Religion when everything was explained as due to the will of God. Eventually, with the development of science, people began to doubt religion, and became alienated/estranged from it. This alienation produced a reaction resulting in the Age of Science, the antithesis, or contradiction to religion. This was the age in which Hegel found himself. But he did not believe that was the end of history. He predicted that people would become alienated from science. This would produce the Age of Philosophical Religion, the synthesis (merging) of science and religion. There would be no more alienation, and this would be a golden age. And the process would go on and on…

It has been said that the philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels turned Hegel on his head. They kept the dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, but argued that the real source of change was economic, and not mind.^[6] They examined feudalism in the middle ages as a thesis, where society was based on the need for security and food. Small warring states protected themselves by organizing into three classes: nobility, clergy, and peasants. The peasants provided the food as well as the labor needed to build protective walls around the cities. In Marx’s view, clergy kept everyone in their place, insisting that they were nobility or peasants because of the will of God. The only way to escape being a peasant was to become a priest or nun, study hard and rise to the rank of abbot or abbess. Then, even the high lords and ladies of the land would show you respect.

Times changed, however, and danger from barbarians, Vikings, etc., decreased. It was possible to travel from place to place and not be robbed or killed on the way. Roads were built and trade developed. The need for a centralized government regulating currency and relations with foreign countries was needed. This became an antithesis to the small, feudal state, and an age of absolute monarchs ruling countries like Spain and France began.

Problems soon developed. The monarchs became greedier and sought more and more power over the people. The people were taxed beyond endurance to build fancier and fancier palaces, jewelry, etc. In France, the affair of Queen Marie Antoinette’s costly diamond necklace added fuel to a fire that resulted in the French revolution.^[7] The alienation was so overwhelming that blood flowed in the streets of Paris, where countless members of the nobility were decapitated. Many innocent people died this way. The form of these changes varied from country to country. In general, in Europe and America, democracy was established and prevailed. Even where there were monarchs, they became subject to congressional bodies or parliaments. Financial success, not nobility, was the theme of the day, and industrialization led to a dominant bourgeoisie (owners of the means of production) that eclipsed the power of the old nobility.

Democracy in a capitalist system became the new thesis. Marx viewed capitalism as a necessary step toward liberation. The industrial revolution had broken the social power of the nobility. Marx wrote that the goal of capitalism was to provide an ever-increasing profit to the owners of the factories, at the expense of the workers. According to Marx, only the bourgeoisie were truly free. Society was divided into four classes: The bourgeoisie, who owned the means of production (factories and mines), the proletariat (who worked in city factories and in mines), the lumpenproletariat (helpless people like orphans, the disabled and prostitutes), and finally the rural peasants. The bourgeoisie wielded power over the other three, who had very little freedom. The government was no help. For example, in England, they passed the Enclosure Act which took away from farmers the ability to use land owned by the rich. This, as was the intention, forced them out of the farms and into the polluted factory towns.

The workers in the factories and the mines were only nominally free, and sometimes not free at all. This occurred, according to Marx, because they had been robbed of the fruit of their labor. For example, in medieval times, if a family skilled in making furniture produced a chair, they could sell it for a fair price or trade it for something they needed. This was not the case in the factories, where tasks were simplified, making workers easily replaceable. The result of this was general terrible working conditions and depressed wages. A factory worker repeated the same task over and over. For a tragic-comic take on this see the film by Charlie Chaplin, “Modern Times.”

Because these tasks were so simple, even a child could do it. Hungry families sent their children to join the adults working in the factories. In England, children could be chained to their workplaces, and sexual assault was not uncommon.^[8]

This life was unforgiving. If a worker fell sick and could not pay rent to the company-owned housing, or owed money for food to the company store, they became officially in bondage, and could not leave the company until the debt was paid. This was true in the mines too. There was a song popular in the U.S. in the fifties:

You dig sixteen tons
And what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter don’t you call me
Cause I can’t go.
I owe my soul to the company store.^[9]

Marx argued that if the workers revolted and seized the factories and the government, they could liberate themselves from capitalism and create a society where all were equal (Communism). He labeled this seizure of power, or antithesis, “The dictatorship of the proletariat.” The slogan was, “Workers unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains.”^[10] Where the revolutions in the 18th century were the antithesis to feudalism and monarchy, Marx saw workers’ revolutions in the industrial age as antithesis to capitalism, leading to a new synthesis in the form of communism, a workers’ utopia, where all would equal. Under this regime, Marx argued, private property would be abolished, and everyone would naturally share.

There’s a fun limerick about this notion: “According to Marx, All the trees want to be parks.” Silly as this may sound, it presents a much-overlooked aspect of Marx’s philosophy: the notion that people, who are naturally social, like to share, and that capitalism distorts their true nature. Marx called his envisioned end result the “Classless Society.” In this society, the state and the party would become useless, and government would “wither away.” People would willingly share and work to keep the farms and factories functioning efficiently. This would take about four hours a day and the rest of the time people could paint pictures, write poetry, etc. The arts would flourish. The disabled would be cared for: “From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs.”^[11]

Years ago, there was a TV show called “Family Ties,” in which a hippy, non-competitive mom and dad had a son (played by Michael J. Fox), who was very politically conservative, and thought competition was important and healthy. He became very upset when his parents sent his little brother Andy to a non-competitive preschool. Down he went to the school with a copy of the Wall Street Journal tucked under his arm. He tried to talk the children into being competitive, but they only praised him for sharing his ideas. At the end of the day, he was helping and sharing too. Could this be what Marx envisioned for society? Do you think it would work with adults?

Marx’s philosophy was very popular and led to communist revolutions in Russia, China, and Vietnam, among others, but it did not lead to a utopian state in any of them. One primary reason is that communist revolutions occurred in countries that had not yet undergone industrialization, so the revolutionary governments had to force the people to industrialize, which caused great suffering for millions. These governments also had to fight off threats from pro-capitalist countries like the U.S., which saw communism as a threat to freedom and democracy. As a result, free speech was often left by the wayside in state efforts to keep power.

In addition, while communist revolutions did create a great deal of economic equality and drastically improved education and access to healthcare, it turned out that people were not very content with the elimination of private property and huge restrictions on political freedom.

Most importantly, Marx’s vision had a fatal flaw. When people have power, they usually want to hang on to it. Unusual exceptions were the powerful leaders of two Buddhist countries, Tibet and Bhutan. Both the Dalai Lama and the king of Bhutan abolished their power by decree and established democratic systems. This, however, did not happen with the governments in Russia and China. People were not granted political freedom in Russia until the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s, and while in recent decades, China welcomed elements of capitalism into its system, its citizens still do not have political freedom. China’s current communist/capitalist hybrid is also an important example of how nepotism can lead to abuse of power. Many of China’s rulers have amassed private fortunes which they use to benefit their children and establish them in important positions.

Democratic Socialism

In Chapter One, I suggested that instead of choosing between rule-following, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics, we look for the good points in each, and try to use one to check the other. Could this be possible in government too?

Considering what role government plays in happiness, it is interesting to note that the countries at the top of the United Nations’ World Happiness Report are democratic socialist ones. In these nations, government is run democratically but industries, while free to compete in the economy, are strongly regulated and taxed in order to provide a clean environment and social services for all citizens. People pay high taxes, yet are able to have private businesses and profit from them.

When evaluating a government’s contribution to its citizens’ happiness, one could consider how people are faring in a particular country during the COVID-19 crisis. Do they have jobs, housing, and healthcare? Certainly, citizens of the above democratic socialist countries have less to worry about in all three of those categories.

One social-democratic model, adopting some forms of meritocracy, was used in France. Free education is available to all from the age of 2½. At about age 16, students take an exam called ‘the bac’ (baccalaureate). If they pass, they go on to college, medical school, law school, etc., for free. They can take tests which will land them a position for life in the government or education. (Vocational training is available as an alternative, and unions are still relatively strong, so most workers have good wages and benefits.) Nevertheless, positions like president or mayor of a town are gained through election, so anyone can run for office.

What about our own country? The United States has some elements of democratic socialism (social security, the 8-hour workday, and Medicare) but our system does not offer the same level of government-sponsored programs as many of our Western European counterparts. We also have a two-party system. (Most European governments are formed by coalitions of a number of parties.) But generally speaking, most modern democracies are republics, where elected representatives serve the interest of thousands of citizens. The ancient Greeks practiced direct democracy^[12] but perhaps the United States is too large for direct democracy to be practiced. Or is it? Could we use modern technology to enable all voters to participate in legislative votes? Would voters have time to focus that much on politics?

In conclusion, how should we envision a good government? Many models might work but as philosophers, we can evaluate systems to assess if they are really benefiting citizens. Consistency is foremost. Our Declaration of Independence calls for “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” How we envision that has changed over the years in America, and will certainly change in the years to come.

Additional reading: The economist Thomas Piketty recently published Capital in the Twenty-First Century, widely considered to be one of the most important political books of our times. It was praised by progressives and conservatives alike.

Here is a link to a Harvard Gazette interview with him about the book, where he discusses the link between economics and political participation, and how it’s integral to the strength of democracy:

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/03/pikettys-new-book-explores-how-economic-inequality-is-perpetuated/