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Man and the State

Owing to his rational and social nature, man tends towards community life to be with his
fellows to work together for their own common welfare. The state or the government is
established by man to minister to his temporal and material well-being and happiness.

Various solutions to this problem have been offered:

Pantheistic Theory of the State:

The chief exponents of this theory are Plato of ancient times and Hegel of modern times.

Plato’s teaching is colored by pantheism. He viewed the different parts of the universe as
unified by a psychic principle, of which the individual things we see are just manifestations or
extensions. This is in accordance with his idealism, his teaching that universals really exist in
extramental reality and that ideas are real, independent of time and space and, therefore
universal, absolute and eternal. .

Marxian Socialism

Despite their imagination and dedication to the cause of the workers, none of the early
socialists met with the full approval of Karl Marx, who is unquestionably the most important
theorist of socialism. In fact, Marx and his longtime friend and collaborator Friedrich
Engels were largely responsible for attaching the label “utopian,” which they intended to
be derogatory, to Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen, whose “fantastic pictures of future society”
they contrasted to their own “scientific” approach to socialism. The path to socialism proceeds
not through the establishment of model communities that set examples of harmonious
cooperation to the world, according to Marx and Engels, but through the clash of social classes.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” they proclaimed in
the Manifesto of the Communist Party. A scientific understanding of history shows that these
struggles will culminate in the triumph of the working class and the establishment of socialism.

According to Engels, the basic elements of Marx’s theory are to be found in German
philosophy, French socialism, and British economics. Of these, German philosophy was surely
the formative influence on Marx’s thinking. Born in Trier in the German Rhineland, Marx was a
philosophy student at the University of Berlinwhen the idealism of G.W.F. Hegel dominated
German philosophy. Hegel maintained that history is the story of the unfolding or realization of
“spirit”—a process that requires struggle, agony, and the overcoming of obstacles to the
attainment of self-knowledge. Just as individual persons cannot realize their potential—
especially the potential for freedom—if they remain forever in a childish or adolescent condition,
so spirit must develop throughout history in a dialectical fashion. That is, individuals and even
nations are characters in a drama that proceeds through the clash of opposing ideas and
interests to a greater self-awareness and appreciation of freedom. Slavery, for example, was
long taken for granted as a natural and acceptable practice, but the slave’s struggle to be
recognized as a person was bringing an end to slavery as master and slave came to recognize
their common humanity—and thus to liberate themselves, and spirit, from a false sense of the
master’s superiority.

Like Hegel, Marx understood history as the story of human labour and struggle. However,
whereas for Hegel history was the story of spirit’s self-realization through human conflict, for
Marx it was the story of struggles between classes over material or economic interests and
resources. In place of Hegel’s philosophical idealism, in other words, Marx developed a
materialist or economic theory of history. Before people can do anything else, he held, they
must first produce what they need to survive, which is to say that they are subject to
necessity. Freedom for Marx is largely a matter of overcoming necessity. Necessity compels
people to labour so that they may survive, and only those who are free from this compulsion
will be free to develop their talents and potential. This is why, throughout history, freedom has
usually been restricted to members of the ruling class, who use their control of the land and
other means of production to exploit the labour of the poor and subservient. The masters in
slaveholding societies, the landowning aristocracy in feudal times, and the bourgeoisie who
control the wealth in capitalist societies have all enjoyed various degrees of freedom, but they
have done so at the expense of the slaves, serfs, and industrial workers, or proletarians, who
have provided the necessary labour.

For Marx, capitalism is both a progressive force in history and an exploitative system that
alienates capitalists and workers alike from their true humanity. It is progressive because it has
made possible the industrial transformation of the world, thereby unleashing the productive
power to free everyone from necessity. Yet it is exploitative in that capitalism condemns the
proletarians, who own nothing but their labour power, to lives of grinding labour while enabling
the capitalists to reap the profits. This is a volatile situation, according to Marx, and its
inevitable result will be a war that will end all class divisions. Under the pressure of depressions,
recessions, and competition for jobs, the workers will become conscious that they form a class,
the proletariat, that is oppressed and exploited by their class enemy, the bourgeoisie.

Armed with this awareness, they will overthrow the bourgeoisie in a series of spontaneous
uprisings, seizing control of factories, mines, railroads, and other means of production, until
they have gained control of the government and converted it into a revolutionary dictatorship of
the proletariat. Under socialism or communism—Marx and Engels drew no clear or consistent
distinction between the two—government itself will eventually wither away as people gradually
lose the selfish attitudes inculcated by private ownership of the means of production. Freed
from necessity and exploitation, people will finally live in a true community that gives “each
individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions.”

Marx maintained that the revolution by which socialism would be achieved was ordained by
the logic of capitalism itself, as the capitalists’ competition for profits led them to create their
own “grave diggers” in the proletariat. Even the role of the revolutionary, such as Marx, was
confined to that of “midwife,” for revolutionaries could do no more than speed along the
inevitable revolution and ease its birth pangs.

This, at least, was Marx’s more or less “official” doctrine. In his writings and political
activities, however, he added several qualifications. He acknowledged, for example, that
socialism might supplant capitalism peacefully in England, the United States, and other
countries where the proletariat was gaining the franchise; he also said that it might be possible
for a semifeudal country such as Russia to become socialist without first passing through
capitalist industrialism. Moreover, Marx played an important part in the International Working
Men’s Association, or First International, formed in 1864 by a group of labour leaders who were
neither exclusively revolutionary nor even entirely committed to socialism. In short, Marx was
not the inflexible economic determinist he is sometimes taken to be. But he was convinced that
history was on the side of socialism and that the equal development of all people to be
achieved under socialism would be the fulfillment of history.

A membership card of the International Working Men's Association, bearing the signature of
Karl Marx as the corresponding secretary for Germany.

Plato's myths in the Platonist tradition

Aristotle admits that the lover of myths is in a sense a lover of wisdom


(Metaphysics 982b18; cf. also 995a4 and 1074b1–10). He might have used a myth or two in his
early dialogues, now lost. But in general he seems to have distanced himself from myth
(cf. Metaphysics 1000a18–9).

On the philosophical use of myth before Plato there are a number of good studies, notably
Morgan 2000. There is, however, little on the philosophical use of myth in the Platonist
tradition. Of Plato's immediate successors in the Academy, Speusippus, Xenocrates and
Heraclides of Pontus composed both dialogues and philosophical treatises. But, with one
exception, none of these seems to have used myths as Plato did. The exception is Heraclides,
who wrote various dialogues—such as On the Things in Hades, Zoroastres and Abaris—involving
mythical stories and mythical, or semi-mythical, figures. In the later Platonist tradition—with the
exception of Cicero and Plutarch—there is not much evidence that Plato's philosophical use of
myths was an accepted practice. In the Neoplatonic tradition various Platonic myths became the
subject of elaborate allegorization. Porphyry, Proclus, Damascius and Olympiodorus gave
allegorical interpretations of a number of Platonic myths, such as
the Phaedo and Gorgias eschatological myths, or the myth of Atlantis.

KARL MARX

Marx was a leader and teacher of the world proletariat, the founder of scientific
communism, dialectical and historical materialism, and scientific political economy. His spiritual
evolution was influenced by Hegel’s philosophy.
He supported most consistently revolutionary democratic ideas both in theory and in
practice. In his early work, his Ph.D thesis on Difference Between the Democratean and
Epicurean Philosophy of Nature (1841), Marx drew, in spite of his idealism, very radical and
atheistic conclusion from Hegel’s philosophy.

In his mode of fundamental actions and theoretical investigations, he directly disagreed with
Hegelian philosophy, because of its intermediary tendencies, conformist political conclusion, and
of disagreement between its theoretical principles and the actual societal relations and as well
as the task of transmuting those relations.

Marx’s knowledge of real economic developments and the philosophy of Feuerback acted
significantly in the procedure of his of his switching to materialist positions.

His world outlook was molded by his permutation in his calss stand and his enactment from
the revolutionary democracy to proletariat communism (1844). This conversion was effectuated
by the development of the class struggle in Europe, with his study of political economy, utopian
socialism and history.

His philosophy is the most appropriate method of cognition and transformation of the world.
The advancement and development of science and its applications in the 19th- 20th centuries
have convincingly proven the superiority of Marxism over all forms of idealism and metaphysical
materialism.

ARISTOTLE (384 – 322 B.C.)

He was a pupil of Plato who wrote about logic, ethics and methaphysics. He became the
mentor of the greatest world conqueror, Alexancer the Great.

His contributions to mankind were:


- Virtue is a state of mind
- God is the First Cause, and the Source if change
- Reality and performance are the highest functions
- The goal of human life is happiness
- The greatest good for human being is the exercise of rational
faculties

Knowledge according to Aristotle comes from perception. One has to experience something
in order to acquire knowledge. Example is feeling one’s aversion towards something to conclude
that he dislikes that thing. Ot it may mean having a particular inclination or a liking towards an
activity like painting to accept he is learning to like sketching a person’s face. The delight he
derives from doing it is knowledge.

Man is a political animal. What separates man from animal is the ability of man to think,
give and articulate with reason. Man can be the best animal when he uses his intellect and acts
as a beast when overshadowed by his passion.

As a political animal, each has its own role to partake of in the society. We are surrounded
by best minds in the country.
COMMUNISM

Communism is a social system and a political movement and ideology of which ownership of
property is owned by the community and not by individuals, with the ownership of property is
owned by the community and not by individuals, with the benefits of the system distributed in
accordance with the common good. The essential difference between socialism and communism
would be one of industrial output. Communism would be attained when the socialist economy
had achieved such as high level of abundance that it would be possible to replace the formula
of socialism – from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

It is based on dialectical materialism which was proposed by Karl Marx and Engles which
was practiced in Russia by Lenin and his followers.

Dialectical materialism or “damat” is centered on State morality, religion, revolution, history


and society.

Principled of Dialectal Materialism

1. Law of Polar Unity of Opposites. This law states that all things, all processes and all
concepts are merged into an absolute unity; that there are no opposites, no differences
which cannot ultimately be comprehended into a unity. Likewise, it states that all things
are at the same time absolutely different and absolutely opposed
2. Law of Negation. This law or principle is expressed in terms of three (3) propositions:
thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The first proposition or statement is the thesis, the new
proposition arrived at through the first negation is the antithesis; and the negation of
the antithesis leads to their proposition or statement, the synthesis. The new statement
of proposition is created out of the old, antithesis.
3. Law of Transformation. The increase of a thing causes qualitative and quantitative
change in that thing. This law is primarily derived from the first law (the law on polar
unity of opposites), that is quality and quantity are opposites. This means that that
when either one is negated, it permeates the other and is converted into the other.
Simply put, a negated quality becomes a quatity; a negated quantity is tunned into
quality.

Principal Doctrines of Communism:

a. Socio-economic system
b. Economic determinism (historic materialism)
c. Ownership of the means of production
d. Abolition of private property
e. Profiteering and exploitation of labor
f. Scientific socialism
g. Violent revolution
h. Class struggle
i. Dictatorship of the proletariat
j. Existence of a classless society
k. Implementation of social reform
l. Rejection of religious doctrines
CAPITALISM

Capitalism is the the economic and social system (and also the mode of production) in
which the means of production are predominantly privately owned and operated for profit, and
distribution and exchange is in a mainly market economy. It is usually considered to involve the
right of individuals and corporations to trade (using money) in goods, services, labour and land.

Some form of Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end
of feudalism in the Middle Ages, and has provided the main, although not exclusive, means
of industrialization throughout much of the world. Its rise to prominence sprang out of
the mercantilism of the 16th to the 18th Centuries, and followed the rise
of Liberalism and laissez-faire economics in western society. The capitalist mode of production,
however, may exist within societies with differing state systems (e.g. liberal democracy,
fascism) and different social structures.

In Marxist terms, the owners of capital are the dominant capitalist class (or bourgeoisie),
and the working class (or proletariat) who do not own capital must live by selling their labour
power in exchange for a wage. Thus, according to Karl Marx, Capitalism is based on
the exploitation of workers by the owners of capital, and under his theory of historical
materialism, represents just one of the stages in the evolution of a society which would be
overthown as the workers gain class consciousness and take control over the state.

There are many strands of socialism, ranging from Marxism through to social democracy
Socialism, the State is nothing more than a machine for the oppression of one class by another.

The world in which we live is very imperfect. E may try to improve it. If we do it is very
natural to attack the problem in the following way: by producing a blueprint for a good society
in which the manifest evils of the present society will be eliminated; by introducing national
central planning into the affairs of the society; and by asking society’s members to follow
certain rules designed to increase their welfare. That is why socialist thought has had distinctly
centralist orientation throughout its history: from Thomas More (14778-1535), Tommaso
Campanella (1568-1639), Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and Etienne Cabet (1788-1856) in
its utopian phase; and from the Internationals and social democratic parties in the nineteenth
century to Lenin, the Comintern, and Communist parties in the twentieth century in its second
phase, when practical applications are attempted.

In the nineteenth century, the social reformers began to question the desirability of a
centralist order. If the good society means maximum freedom for each individual, then clearly
the elimination of the state and complete decentralization is the goal for which one should
strive. William Godwin (1756-1836), to a certain extent Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865).

“It is difficult to subsume all the various socioeconomic beliefs that have been referred to as
‘socialism’ under one definition. In its broadest sense, socialism refers to the views of those
who: (1) claim that capitalism has grave moral flaws and (2) advocate some revolutionary
socio-economic reform to remedy these flaws.

Certain elements of what is typically thought of as socialist thought appear throughout the
entire history of philosophy, such as in Thomas More’s Utopia and even Plato’s Republic. But
the term ‘socialism’ was first used in connection with the views of early nineteenth-century
social critics, such as Robert Owen, Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Pierre Proudhon. These
social critics were reacting to the excesses and injustices of early capitalism, and advocated
reforms such as the transformation of society into small communities in which private property
was to be abolished and the radical redistribution of wealth. Socialism is also an important part
of the philosophy of Karl Marx and Marxism. For Marxists, socialism is viewed as a stage in
history characterized, in part, by state ownership of all capital goods and central planning of the
economy. This stage in history they see as transitional between capitalism and the final stage of
history, communism, which will be characterized by the absence of differing social classes and
thus the end of class warfare.

Among the grave moral flaws that socialists typically claim to be inherent in capitalism are
vast, unjust inequalities in wealth, income, opportunities, and power. Other moral flaws seen in
capitalism include excessive individualism, competition and materialism, and the exploitation of
ordinary working people. Perhaps more than anything else, however, socialists oppose the
unjust oppression of one group by another, whether through class domination, discrimination,
or an unequal distribution of power. In short, socialism, in the broad sense, champions the
‘underdogs’ of society. The revolutionary socio-economic reforms that have been proposed by
socialists for remedying the declared moral flaws of capitalism are so diverse as to defy any
precise characterization. Typically, these reforms involve radical changes in the ownership or
distribution of property throughout society.”

The Role of the Social Contract

Distinctiveness of the Social Contract Approach

The aim of a social contract theory is to show that members of some society have reason to
endorse and comply with the fundamental social rules, laws, institutions, and/or principles of
that society. Put simply, it is concerned with public justification, i.e., “of determining whether or
not a given regime is legitimate and therefore worthy of loyalty” (D’Agostino 1996, 23). The
ultimate goal of state-focused social contract theories is to show that some political system can
meet the challenge Alexander Hamilton raised in Federalist no. 1 of whether “men are really
capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are
forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force” (Hamilton
1788). Going further, David Gauthier argues that any system of moral constraints must be
justified to those to whom it is meant to apply. “What theory of morals,” Gauthier asks, “can
ever serve any useful purpose, unless it can show that all the duties it recommends are truly
endorsed in each individual’s reason?” (1986, 1).

The ultimate goal, then, of social contract theories is to show, in the most general sense,
that social (moral, political, legal, etc.) rules can be rationally justified. This does not, however,
distinguish the social contract from other approaches in moral and political philosophy, all of
which attempt to show that moral and political rules are rationally justifiable in some sense. The
true distinctiveness of the social contract approach is that justification does not rely on some
exogenous reason or truth. Justification is generated by rational agreement (or lack of rejection
in T. M. Scanlon’s version), not by the reasons that generate agreement. That is, the fact that
everyone in a society, given their individual reasoning, would agree to a certain rule or principle
is the critical justification for that rule, rather than certain correct or sound reasons that
sufficiently rational individuals would appreciate and, if appreciated, would lead to agreement.

Although contractarians differ in their account of the reasons of individuals, with some being
attracted to more objectivist accounts (Scanlon 2013), most follow Hobbes in modeling
individual reasons as subjective, motivationally internal, or at least agent-relative. This may be
because of skepticism about moral reasons generally (Gauthier 1986, Binmore 1998), a
conviction about the overwhelming importance of self-interest to the social order (Hobbes 1651,
Buchanan 2000 [1975], Brennan and Buchanan 1985), a concern to take seriously the
disagreement of individual view in modern society, and this includes differences about
objectivity (Gaus 2016, 2011a; Muldoon 2017; Moehler 2014, 2015, forthcoming) or because
this approach is consistent with the most well-developed theories of rational choice in the social
sciences (Binmore 2005, Buchanan 2000 [1975]). In any case, the reasons individuals have for
agreeing to some rules or principles are importantly their own reasons, not “good reasons” from
the impartial perspective. Of course, those same individuals may care about what they perceive
to be the impartial good or some other non-individualistic notion—they need not be egoists—
but what they care about, and so their reasons will differ from one another. This point, as
Rawls highlights in his later work, is crucial to understanding political justification in a diverse
society where members of a society cannot reasonably be expected to have similar conceptions
of the good (Rawls 1996). Recent contractarian accounts put even greater weight on
heterogeneity (Southwood 2010, Gaus 2016, Muldoon 2017, Moehler forthcoming, Thrasher
2014b, Thrasher and Vallier 2015, Thrasher 2015).

The Social Contract as a Model

Given these features, we can think of social contract theories as having a general schematic
form. Social contract theories are a model of justification that have several general parameters
that are set differently in different theories. What distinguishes contractarian theories is how
they specify these general parameters. The goal of the model is to represent our reasons for
endorsing and complying with some set of social rules, principles or institutions. This is done by
showing that some model representatives choosers who would agree to these rules in some
specified choice situation. Critically, there are two sets of relevant individuals (I and I*). The
first set is the model choosers (I) constructed in the “device of representation” such as the
original position. The second set is composed of real individuals (I*) whose terms of interaction
are to be guided by the contract. If the deliberations of the contractors (I) are to be relevant to
the actual participants (I*), the reasoning of the former must, in some way, be shared by the
latter. Another variable is the deliberative setting (M) in which the model choosers (I) endorse
some principles or rules, principles, or institutions (R).

Given all of this, we can identify a general model of social contract theories:

General Model of the Social Contract: I chooses R in M and this gives I* reason to endorse
and comply with R in the real world insofar as the reasons I has for choosing R in M are (or can
be) shared by I*.

The social contract, then, is a model of rational justification translating the problem of
justification (what reasons individuals have) into a problem of deliberation (what rules they will
agree to). As Rawls argues:
Understood this way the question of justification is settled by working out a problem of
deliberation: we have to ascertain which principles it would be rational to adopt given the
contractual situation. This connects the theory of justice with the theory of rational choice”
(Rawls 1999, 16).

At the simplest level, models take something complex and make it simpler. Along these
lines, both the economist Ariel Rubinstein (2012) and the philosopher Nancy Cartwright (1991)
compare models to fables. Fables are stories that communicate some important lesson in a
simple, easy to understand fashion. Fables, like models, communicate important general rules
through particular, though fictional, cases.

Models involve abstraction and idealization, but they do more than that: they help us see
what our key assumptions are, identify the factors that we see as relevant (Gaus 2016, xv-xvii).
Michael Weisberg concurs that models, as techniques of idealization, do more than abstract
(2007a, 2013). Consider the periodic table of the elements. It is an abstraction, but not a model
according to Weisberg. He calls abstractions like the periodic table abstract direct
representations to distinguish them from models (2007b). Modeling seeks to isolate the
important features of the target phenomena, allowing the modeler to understand and
manipulate important elements of the phenomena in simulations. John Rawls’s representatives
to the original position, for instance, are not only abstractions of real persons. They are
idealizations that isolate particular aspects of persons that are relevant to justification as a
choice, specifically their thin theory of rationality, and their values (in the form of primary
goods). Isolating these features is important for modeling the agreement procedure in Rawls’s
theory.

The social contract models our reasons for endorsing and complying with some set of social
rules or institutions. How the theory does this depends on the assumptions made and the
specification of the parameters.

COMMUNISM

Communism, political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a
profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means
of production (e.g., mines, mills, and factories) and the natural resources of a society.
Communism is thus a form of socialism—a higher and more advanced form, according to its
advocates. Exactly how communism differs from socialism has long been a matter of debate,
but the distinction rests largely on the communists’ adherence to the revolutionary socialism
of Karl Marx.

In State and Revolution (1917), Lenin asserted that socialism corresponds to Marx’s first
phase of communist society and communism proper to the second. Lenin and
the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Partyreinforced this distinction in
1918, the year after they seized power in Russia, by taking the name All-Russian Communist
Party. Since then, communism has been largely, if not exclusively, identified with the form of
political and economic organization developed in the Soviet Union and adopted subsequently in
the People’s Republic of China and other countries ruled by communist parties.
For much of the 20th century, in fact, about one-third of the world’s population lived under
communist regimes. These regimes were characterized by the rule of a single party that
tolerated no opposition and little dissent. In place of a capitalist economy, in which individuals
compete for profits, moreover, party leaders established a command economy in which the
state controlled property and its bureaucrats determined wages, prices, and production goals.
The inefficiency of these economies played a large part in the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991, and the remaining communist countries (excepting North Korea) are now allowing greater
economic competition while holding fast to one-party rule. Whether they will succeed in this
endeavour remains to be seen. Succeed or fail, however, communism is clearly not the world-
shaking force it was in the 20th century.

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