On Governance
To
be GOVERNED is
to be watched,
inspected, spied upon,
directed,
law-driven, numbered, regulated,
enrolled, indoctrinated, preached
at,
controlled,
checked, estimated, valued,
censured, commanded, by
creatures
who have neither
the right nor
the wisdom nor
the virtue
to
do so.
P.-J. Proudhon
P S NATARAJAN
Address : R.K. Mission
T.B. Sanatorium Road
Tupudana, P.S.-Dhurwa, Distt. -Ranchi
State- Jharkhand PIN-835221
email id: psnatarajan.tupudana@gmail.com
Contact No.: 09771630380
Address : R.K. Mission
T.B. Sanatorium Road
Tupudana, P.S.-Dhurwa, Distt. -Ranchi
State- Jharkhand PIN-835221
email id: psnatarajan.tupudana@gmail.com
Contact No.: 09771630380
Politics
is the art
and craft of
the governance of
the many by
the few, but in essence
only through the
integral personality of
a governing individual.
Such an individual,
whom we may call the
King, symbolizes the egoistic
will to govern.
However, this King
can only be
the product of
a silent reconcilement
of the psychic
and worldly contradictions through
the folklorization to
legitimize the absurd
task of governance,
rather than be created
by a rationally
framed social contract
or some other
legal or constitutional fiction. And this royal
prerogative through such
folklorization of the
absurdity of governance
legitimately rules over the innately
equal, autonomous, indeterminate
and the sovereign
individual wills which
in their servitude
or rebellion severally
act and decide,
but not as
an abstract idea
of the people.
No governance is
possible by a single
individual even at
the highest level
of decision-making. But
also no governance
is possible where
the important decisions
are made or
delegated by a
large multitude or
masses to govern
themselves. Hence, the
King in spite
of being endowed with
an integrated ruling
personality, cannot govern
without the assistance
of a few advisers
or bureaucrats who
form a kind
of subordinate oligarchy
in an interpersonal
space of familiarity. (65) Because there is no
direct sentient communication
between the King
and his governing
set-up and the ruled
populace, such as
a single organism
has for its
different organs, the
King and his
men can at best
guess the real
effect or extent
of its governance,
and to compensate
for the inevitable
mistakes or miscalculations, must
have recourse to
coercion or violence
by way of
correction.
For example, Louis XIV can
be thought of
as the folkloric
reconcilement of the
innate contradictions of
the governance rooted
in some sort
of an internalized
illusion which was
provisionally disturbed in
1789, but the
idea of governance in
its monarchist absurdity
was not only
folklorized, but was
equally internalized to
transform the First
Consul into the
French Emperor in
1804. To present a
rational idea of
governance is very
difficult, and nearly
impossible to implement,
for like the
life itself, governance
is beyond reason
or even rationalization. The
absurdity of governance
cannot even be
properly explained, but,
as Wittgenstein might
say, can only
be pictorially shown, such
as in the
sudden and inexplicable
arrest of Joseph K.. Therefore, governance
is the folkloric reconcilement and
monarchically internalized habit
and act of
the irreconcilable at
the margins of
absurdity, and sometimes
even madness.
All governance is
absurd, but this
absurdity cannot be
practically rationalized in
the absence of
a legitimate or
legitimized coercion or
force. And as
Thrasymachus might argue,
force knows no
logic or argument,
and for this reason,
the force, though
usually camouflaged through
the various forms
of legitimacy, naturally
fits in very
well in the innate absurdity
of governance. But there are two
types of the
internalized folklorization in the matter
of governance. First
is the idea of
pragmatic legitimacy with
its Chinese formulation,
where the king’s
divine mandate to
rule must be
reflected in the
good governance in
the interest of
the people or
else the mandate
is deemed to
be withdrawn. The
Indian concept of Ramrajya
is also a
reflection of the
same idea where the divinity
is in the
service of the
pragmatically conceived good
governance for the
general welfare. The
second idea of
governance comes from
the Roman traditions
and law which
legitimizes the absurdity
of governance through
the law as
consciously formulated by
a law-giver or
a body of
legislators. In this
context, the Islamic
version has the divine legitimacy
to rule, but
its details are
to be worked
out by the
fallible human beings. In
effect, the human-legal legitimacy
to rule does
not seem to
be there in
the Islam despite
the acceptance of
the idea of popular consensus.
This has led to a
lot of instability
and uncertainty in
the practice of
Islamic governance.
The absurdity of
the governance lies
in the equals
being governed by
the equals, for we are
so naturally constituted
as to obey
the superior, but
not an equal
or inferior. A
good resolution of
this difficulty, and
a good candidate
for the internalized
belief, has thus
generally been in
the idea of
God, who is
superior not only
to all sorts
of human individuals,
but to everything.
Hence, the King in
order to rationalize
his absurd business
had an easy
recourse to God,
who in His
omnipotence and omniscience
could fully incorporate
all the life’s
contradictions and their
consequent absurdities. India’s
Mughal Emperor was
God’s shadow on
earth, and even
till recently, Nepal’s King was
an incarnation of
Vishnu. King James I of
Great Britain put
it very clearly: a deo
rex, a lege
lex, the King
from God, and
the law from
the King. Even
in the modern
democratic times, the
constitutions of many
a Muslim nation-state
refer to the
God’s sovereignty in
governance rather than
the people’s.
Here we
must distinguish between
a monarchy and
a dictatorship or
a dictatorial oligarchy. A
King draws his
legitimacy from tradition,
and not from
the popular approval.
A dictator invariably
builds his power
on the alleged
or real popular
support, but in the
long run naturally ascends
to a monarchical
summit. The New
Model army under
the command of
Baron Fairfax and
Oliver Cromwell was
meant to fight
the Stuart absolutism
on behalf of
the parliament. However,
having defeated Charles I,
Cromwell acted first
against that same
parliament by purging
its 143 Presbyterian
members. And having
thus “rumped” the
parliament, Cromwell further
transformed it into
a “Barebone” one
to be further
reduced to a
dictatorial Protectorate. After
1655, even this
façade of constitutionalism was dispensed
with, and Cromwell
simply made himself
an hereditary dictator. On
a much larger
scale and more
clearly, Napoleon exemplifies
the same law
of the movement
from the revolutionary
republicanism to a
monarchy via dictatorship.
In
reality, a ruler
or dictator always
desires to
be the King.
The communist royals
of Cuba, North
Korea and many
similar republican-royals of
Afro-Asian countries fully
establish this natural
law of monarchy.
Accordingly, a powerful leader or
dictator nominates his
successor who at
times can be his brother,
son or daughter,
or a close relation
or at least
a trustworthy follower.
This monarchical law
variously affects even
the formal democracies
of Japan and India. In
Japan, apart from
there being a
constitutional Emperor, the
prime minister and
his cabinet generally
belong to a
very limited number
of the politically
and administratively well-established families.
In India, described
as the largest
democracy of the
world, most of
the political parties
run as monarchies,
where the politician
in power nominates
or projects his
or her sons
and daughters either
on the basis
of the political
lineages or the
caste loyalties. However,
in so far as the
King comes out
of the tribal
or blood loyalties
which cannot be
universalized, he must
face the contradiction
between the narrow
sanguine homogeneity and
the wider promiscuous
heterogeneity of his
subjects. Ibn Khaldun
has well discussed
this contradiction when
he emphasizes in
his Muqaddimah the tribal
basis of kingship
and the desirability
of its maintenance
even at a
time when Islam
was turning into a universal
Caliphate.
Generally speaking,
folklore is missing
in the grandiloquent religion
or ideology. Folklore
combines all that
is silently human.
It needs no
logic nor any
rhetoric, but follows
blind instinct and
unreason for the
sake of life
or happiness. Hence, it
is the King
who retains the
folkloric essence of
governance at all
times with its
varying unreason and
arbitrariness. For the key
question whether this
or that political
will is for
the good or
the bad for
the governed can never
be ultimately or
even reasonably settled.
If the righteousness
of governance is
objectivized and perfectly
rationalized, then it
would cease to
be the governance
and result in the abolition
of the King
in all his
manifestations of the
political power; this would
mean the abolition
of all political
power. But so
long as such rationalization is
not possible, the
King in his
different manifestations would
always be there
to fulfill the
self-contradictory claims of
the desire. Even
in our democratic
age, Mahatma Gandhi
dreamt of the Ramrajya
or Ram’s governance,
but then Ram
was not only
the King of
Ayodhya, but also
the incarnation of
Vishnu, who, being
God Himself, could
alone tackle the
self-contradictions of governance.
No doubt, the
monarchy, or even
the “governance of the many
by the few”,
contradicts the innate
equality of all
the human beings
either in all
of us being
creatures of God or otherwise
equal within an
order of inequality. For the
governance is absurd
as none deserves
to be either
absolutely righteous over
the errors of
the rest, nor
what one says
or does has
the assured and
innately correct answers
to the questions
of governance. And
an impersonal or
abstract concept of
the rule of
law is even
more absurd, for
it would follow
an objective paradigm
defined by a
few ideologues or
opinion-makers, which is
morally or habitually
indifferent or even
hostile to the
contingent and contradictory
requirements of the
individual’s desire.
But since we
all must wade
through the quagmire
of life’s absurdities
of which the
governance is one,
it is better
to recognize the
absurd, and, so
to say, give
the devil his
due, rather than
be befooled by all sorts
of wooliness in
the name of
the legitimate governance,
or in the
democratic context, the
people’s governance.. Even in
a democratic governance,
the people’s elected
representatives have various
powers of the
King and his
life-style and riches
which are denied
to their electors
or masters, or
the so-called people. In
principle, the democratic
governance reverses the
natural relationship of
the King and
his subjects, but
in practice only
as a façade
or rather as
a practical joke..
Ideally speaking, the democratic
politics must be
interpersonal implying direct
participation of all
its citizens in
the governance, but
in the post-Revolutionary times,
the political space
has become totally
social wherein the
subjected populace is
nearly reduced to
the state of
an insentient amoeba
of an abstract
collectivity. It is,
however, in this
spirit of the
interpersonal space of
all its citizens’
participation in governance
that Pericles spoke
of the Athenian
democracy as the
role model to
be imitated by the
rest of the
Greek city-states, and
which in words,
but seldom in
spirit or deeds,
are still verbatim
repeated by our
politicians. We call such
democratic ideal interpersonal, because
individuals or their
classification in various
groups never appear
as the self-conscious conglomerates, but
only manifest through
their individuality. In
the modern aestheticized
or democratic age,
the constituent individuals
are endowed with
indeterminate and volatile
psyches, but yet in
being collectivized in
the social space, they
lack a personality
or a distinct
self-consciousness.
Similarly, the various post-Revolutionary collectivist and democratic
confusions arise because
we wrongly associate
the abstract idea
of democracy as
a collectivity with
the concrete idea
of individual through
his or her
constitutional rights and
freedoms.
For the individual,
however, what is
attractive in democracy
is not its
substantial collectivism, but
the attributive individual
freedom from such
collectivism. This is
because the “people”
as a collectivity
are fictive than
real. And paradoxically, it is J.
G. Herder, the
founder of the
collectivist idea of
the Volksgeist, who is
quick to catch
the fictive nature
of any such
collectivity: “If one groups
into one mass the peoples
and the periods
which succeed each
other eternally like
the waves of
the sea, what
has one described ? To whom
does the descriptive
term apply ? Finally,
one brings all
of it together
into nothing but
a general word, whereby
each individual thinks
and feels as
he will. How
imperfect the means
of description ! How great
the ease of
misunderstanding !” (66)
The various ideas, such as the rule of
law or the equality before
law, are not
organically linked to the democratic
hypostasis as a
collectivity, but are
its accidental features
as gleaned from
the assorted individual
ideas. No such collective
noun or imaginary
entity in the
name of “people”
can ever be
realized as a
diffused individuality in
terms of the
rule of law
in its application
to the individual
rights. For the idea of people as
a collectivity is
far too absurd
to be subjectively
authenticated or be objectively acted upon.
Hence, the grand
proclamations of the
modern political regime
centred on the
idea of “people,” (67) howsoever
rational or attractive
they appear, turn
out to be
an unwarranted reduction
of the uniquely
concrete. But in its
sinister collective application
in politics and
governance, it is
the rationalization and
justification of the
worst forms of
tyranny against the
many by the
few, and only pretentiously on
behalf of the
many. And here
the few need
not be endowed
with what Ortega y Gasset called
the “aristocratic virtues”,
but occupy their
advantageous positions mostly
due to the
accident of birth
and circumstances. (68)
The democratic ideal
in the sense
of being the
“governance of all by the
all,” besides being
an absurdity, can
hardly be applied
in the social
space in which
most of the
people are blind
or at best
purblind in relation
to each other
and more specially
to those who
take collective decisions.
All governance in
the modern society
pertains to what
we call the
social environment, for
the interpersonal anonymity
or at best
the selective or
partial view of
individuals in the
wide social framework
works against all
rational activity. The democratic
ideal can, if
at all, be fulfilled only
in very small
communities, which would altogether
dispense with the
idea of governance
as the will
of an equal
to be subordinated
to that of
another equal. An
ideal governance, call
it democracy or
anything, is no
governance in the
sense of the
violation of the
innate equality, and
for this the global
humanity must be
splintered in villages
or very small
townships, which I
call micro-habitations,
where the conditions
of interpersonal environment
would prevail.
To resolve such
anomalies of our
democratic age, the
political authority must
carefully follow the
art of rhetoric
in the name
of the objective
truth in the form
of Rousseau’s general
will. The essentially folklorized
and subconscious social
authority must surrender
to the self-conscious
and rationally articulate
political establishment in
the name of
the rule of
law. John Austin’s
jurisprudence thus separated
law from morality,
Hans Kelsen’s
Grundnorm provided
amoral foundations for
the modern legal
system, and Lon
Fuller invented a
new “morality” for
the procedural laws.
Within the democratic
set-up, this legalism
is reflected in
the supremacy of
parliament as interpreted
by the deified
judiciary within a constitutional framework. (69) And
to watch over
all this is
the “independent” media
which tends to
be responsible and
accountable to only
its own mundane
interests, but otherwise
to act on
behalf of an
overweening Mother Grundy.
In the ancient
polities various conventions
and even theories
regularized and justified
a particular political
regime, but which
also indirectly admitted
the irrational and
self-contradictory nature of
the desire as
congealed in a
folklore. In the
modern age, however,
the general framework
within which the
political communication takes
place is still
affected by this
irrational and self-contradictory nature
of the desire,
but now it must
be processed through
the general pantomimic,
rather than the
folkloric, form of
the modern constitutions. And
this constitutionalism is
bereft of the
popular emotivism, which
Georg Buchner demands
for a “real”
people’s constitution in
Camille Desmoulins’s
brilliant speech in Danton’s Death, “The
Constitution should be
a transparent veil,
clinging closely to the body
of the people.
It must answer
to every throb
of their veins,
every tension of
the muscles, every
pulse of desire.” (70) But this
romantic idea of the people’s desire
in its republican
confusion is transformed
into the ideologue’s
general will, first
through the revolutionary
action, and later
through the democratic
brainwashing; and having
been further put
through a juridical brain processing,
it finally takes the shape
of an high-brow preamble of a
modern constitution. Within
this constitutional jargon
alone the modern
politician can play
the game of
political power, but
without any feel
for his real
audience, that is
to say, without any
feel for the
pulse of
the people’s desire.
(71)
However, the modern
ideas of governance,
whether democratic or
collectivist, all take
account of the
people or their
general will. Specially
because of the
aestheticization of the
modern society, this
general will can
only be a
mirage. What we
call the public
opinion as a
conglomerate of the
individual opinions is
neither determinate nor
predictable, and far
from being free
or rational. This
is not because
of some defect
in the individual
consciousness, but because
of the irreducible
distinct individuality which doesn’t
dovetail with the
rest of the
world. Even if
such an individualistically sentient
organism in the
form of a
pulsate collectivity emerges
on the rare
occasions in short
but intense periods
of the collective
euphoria, it withers
away sooner than
later. Hence, the
idea of people
as the real
conscious phenomenon with
its distinct configuration
and implication is
an illusion.
For example, individual
A and individual
B may be
as different psychically
and behaviourally from
each other as
is a wolf
from the sheep,
and for this
reason, it would
be folly to
treat them similarly
in terms of
an abstract classification or
what we have
called the composite
similarity. Therefore, we
make a proper distinction
between the wolves
and the sheep,
and put them
in different species
not only because
of their taxonomic
differences, but also
due to their
radical difference in
being predators and
prey. We are
not sure if
the wolves or
sheep have a sense
of an individual
self, but apart
from their respective
intra-species individual differences,
their inter-species differences
are so radically
different as to
render a common
animal community of
the wolves and
sheep an impossibility.
The human individual
differences are likely
to be much
more sharp than
between the two
wolves or the
two sheep. The
basis of such
radical interpersonal difference
in the human
species lies in
the psychic malleability
through its volatility
and indeterminism which
must belie any
generalization of the
species-oriented human nature. What
we call the
human nature or
the man being
a social animal,
and so on,
is nothing but
an environmental strategy
in all its
contingency, though apparently
internalized to various
degrees, to facilitate
the individual’s struggle to
live and be
happy. Hence, this desire
for life and happiness
has no fixed
blueprint; it can
have a social
or altruistic component
as well as
a personal or
selfish one, and
more often the
various combinations of
the two. The ultimate basis
of all such
strategy is in
the last resort
guided by the
desirous whims and
fancies of a
species-transgressing sovereign and
autonomous ego.
When we apply
this reasoning to
the human individuals,
the interpersonal psychic
and behavioural differences,
even in the
case of their
being as radically
different as those
of the wolves
and the sheep,
become relatively invisible
because of the
universal human faculty
of the hidden
mind, and its
accompanying faculty of
the subjective misrepresentation. While
the “human” wolves
and sheep can
very well work
in the same
office or even
live in the
same family, the
actual wolves and
sheep cannot be
put in the
same enclosure if
we wish to
preserve the latter. For
these animal individuals
cannot acclimatize to
live and survive
in an artificial
community or environment
such as the
human society is,
where wolves would
be taught to
be polite to
the sheep, and
the sheep be
unwary enough of their dangerous
presence. For the wolf-ness
of a wolf
is innate and
fixed as is the
sheep-ness of a sheep, for unlike the
human beings, these
animals are not
species-transgressors.
Specially in the
seventeenth century Europe,
the individual freedom
was juxtaposed to
the royal absolutism,
but the contradistinction in
essence was spurious.
For none really
stood for the
sovereignty of the
individual’s concrete psychic presence,
but the argument for
freedom was advanced
in the form
of certain fundamental
rights, specially those
of the life
and freedom in general.
But when it
comes to the
legal formulation and
the bureaucratic execution
of an actual
individual’s right and
freedom, then they
must perforce be
expressed in abstract
and collective terminology
as the general principles of
the natural justice,
where the human
wolves and human
sheep would be
treated as if
they belonged to
a single species.
However, the desire
is neither abstract
nor general, and
never collective. While
the individual’s participation
in the religious,
social and political
activity is not
ruled out, but
in the modern
times, this tends
to be performed
in a self-conscious mode. Therefore, all the
socially conditioned or
regulated life in
the legal or
bureaucratic abstraction is
equally opposed to
the sovereign individual’s
struggle for life
and happiness. Such
abstract principles transform
themselves into the
newer forms of
the collective restrictions
which are part
of an objectively
resistant and indifferent
environment in which
the individual struggles
to survive. From this,
however, it does
not follow that the
British democracy and
the Chinese communist
serfdom are one
and the same
for the individual
freedom, but yet
they equally partake
in the abstract
collectivized themes of
the modern technocentric-technologized civilization
and its collectivist
illusions.
Since the French
Revolution, it is
not the King
or a small
coterie who is
privileged to govern,
but the
people are to
govern themselves; and
for this they
pay in the
form of taxes
and grant other
“privileges” to their elected
or appointed public
servants. If
the entity “people”
were an integrated
personality abstracted in
a single human
species like all
of us are
as individuals, then
the people’s self-governance should
cost us nothing,
for then our
live and sentient
bodies in being
a “people” are
so well-organized as to act
directly in relation
to what we
want. If we are
rich, we may
employ servants like
cooks and drivers,
or engage in
activities which serve
us mutually on
a reciprocal basis.
In the first
case, a servant
becomes an inferior
subordinate to his
master, and in
the latter, all
are servants, and therefore
equal in servitude,
in being mutually
serviceable to each
other. In the
democratic system, the
law enacted by
the popularly elected
legislature is the
command of the
people directed towards
themselves, while a
large army of
their “servants” in the
form of president,
prime minister, ministers
of various types,
legislators, judges, bureaucrats and
others formulate and execute this
command not to
themselves, but to
their “masters.” Here the
folklorized social authority
as repository of
the Volksgeist is gradually
eroded and subjected
to the democratic
fantasy of the masters
play-acting as servants.
Accordingly, the common
perception of the
master and servant
is inverted by
the constitutional and
legal jargon of
the equality before
law. Now, the
politically and legally
manufactured truth becomes
the people’s
voice, while the
individual constituents of
the so-called people
are left with
no voice.
Call the people a
phantom, and the democratic
governance (like any
other governance) only
an absurdity, but
yet the actual
governance today in
a country like
England and France
or India and
Japan is mostly
guided only by
this “phantom” of
the people. We
cannot say that such
an absurd democratic
governance is necessarily
inferior to what
it could have
been under the
“natural” governance of the Stuarts or the Bourbons. But
who are the
people, and in
this democratic confusion,
who governs whom ?
It is not
suggested that an
individual ever lived
or can ever
live in an
environmental vacuum, for
he can define
and shape his survival
only against and through
the manifold environmental
resistance, such as,
to use Kant’s
expression, a bird
can fly only against
and through aerial
resistance. But the
individual right and
freedom lose their
concrete or subjective
authenticity if subjected
to the abstract
or impersonal legal
and bureaucratic mechanics
of the modern
society. Hence, the apparently
liberated individual in
the modern society is
not necessarily more
liberated than he was
in the traditional
authoritarian society. Apart
from the newly
formed technocentric-technologized restrictions
of the modern
society, the remaining
individuality is nearly
obliterated by the
various collectivist fictions
of which the
“people” is the most
dangerous and sinister.
What is real
is an individual and
his varying manifold environmental contexts.
Therefore, a fantastic
and absurd idea
of the people’s rule or people’s sovereignty could
never have prevailed
till such times
when this could
be thoroughly mystified,
deified, and finally
reified in a
peculiar facade of
the democratic governance. For the
natural or “teleological” (in
the Aristotelian sense)
nature of governance
is always towards
monarchy anchored in
the concrete person
of a King.
That is why
the ancient forms of
consensual governance, such
as the ancient
Roman or Indian
Republic, always evolved
into a monarchy or
empire. The nascent
Islamic polity which
was to follow
the principle of
the consensual choice
of the Caliph
later on perforce
evolved into the
ubiquitous monarchy. Similarly,
Europe’s feudal privileges
which weakened the
royal prerogative to
govern also evolved
in the monarchical
direction in the
fifteenth and sixteenth
century. And this
“Law of Governance”
persisted even in
the Revolutionary France,
where the Revolution’s
Republicanism only evolved into
the Napoleonic Empire.
And under the
totally “unnatural” systems of
the modern governance
too, the removal
of the King
is invariably followed
by the gross
anarchy and innumerable
sufferings to the common
man, such as
what has been
witnessed in Iran,
Afghanistan, and more
recently in Nepal.
Hence, the natural
state of governance can
only be the
monarchy, and this
reality, although jarring
to the modern
political sensibility, can
at best be
formally camouflaged in a democratic
jargon and ritual,
but its monarchical
content is always
there. This is because
of the individual’s
hidden mind that
the interpersonal relations
become opaque, and
the social relations
thus lost in
the intersubjective darkness. Hence, any
kind of abstract
or general classification or
categorization for the
human individuals violates
the principle of the
human species-transgression.
However, we are
not denying certain
expressive and functional
role for the
collective nouns, but
then there is
little justification for
taking such collective
abstractions in their
general application to
the human individuals
who as the
species-transgressors transcend all
species or abstract
collectivities. What we call
the “people,” therefore,
are composed of
individuals of the
various mental and
physical capacities and
attributes, and, excluding
the babies and
small children or
the insane, each
one of them
has his or her unique
individuality or the
selfhood. All these
individuals have hidden
minds, so that
the social or
interpersonal environment is
permeated by the
interpersonal opacity and
the social darkness
to make a
concrete universal like
the “people” an
absurdity.
The collectivist fiction
of the “people”
is derived from
the popular hybridization
of the individual
wills. This distorts the
individual psyche into a confused
or semiconscious state
at the verge
of losing self-consciousness, and
be finally transformed
into the collective
madness. While
a madman can
easily be noticed
by the normal
persons, but the
large collectivities, such
as the nations
and civilizations with
their weakened or
diluted consciousness through
this collective hybridization
easily succumb to
the complete or
partial madness. Such
a collective madness
can be observed
only by the
individuated sanity from
an outsider’s perspective.
However, the collective
madness in its
space has no
outside in which
an outsider can
position himself.
B. Against
the Nation-State
Prior to
the French Revolution, state was
territorially defined as a kingdom
or an empire. The
rationale of such a state
lay in the
strength of the
royal arms rather
than consent of
the governed, for
even the early
nation-states of the
western Europe were
more monarchical than
national. (72) The royal nature of
such statecraft made
the politics interpersonal
and temperate, where kings
and emperors were
on familiar terms
with each other,
and often with
family or matrimonial
ties. Such a system
was also conducive
for the international
peace, provided a
few royals could
settle their inter-state
family disputes amicably
and rationally. Similarly,
the pre-Revolutionary wars,
though often needless
and wasteful, were
devoid of any
patriotic emotion, and
conducted with restraint,
rather than the
post-Revolutionary mutual mass
killings of the
national armies burning
with patriotic fervour
in their fight
to finish. (73) Hence, the pre-Revolutionary military
system was more
rational and peaceable
in being operative
only in an
interpersonal space of a few
kings and emperors as
opposed to the
impersonal or the
mass social space
in which decisions
are more of
a guess affecting
and affected by
the nearly insentient
and sometimes mad
collectivities called a
people or nation,
but yet can
accidentally acquire the
force of unpredictable
emotions to turn
into big destructive
outbursts and explosions.
The
modern nation-state is
basically a seventeenth
and eighteenth century
French sentimental idea,
and with important German
romantic contributions from
Herder and Hegel.
This nationalistic idea
was put into
practice during the
course of the
French Revolution, propagated
in the Napoleonic
Europe as a
republican critic of the
ancien
regime and the
multi-national Austrian Empire.
And nationalism gained
further success and
popularity in the
unification of Italy
and Germany in
the nineteenth century.
Finally, in the twentieth
century the nationalism
was transformed into
the anti-colonial movements
which succeeded in
gaining political independence
as the newly-born
sovereign nation-states, though
many of them
hardly fit to
govern themselves.
This nationalistic idea
seems to have
three components right
from its Franco-German
birth. First is
the Bacchic rowdyism
well portrayed by
Rabelais in the
first half of
the sixteenth century
with all its
rustic emotivism. Second,
this raw emotivism
must be euphemized
and even mystified
in some sort
of an anti-monarchical and
anti-ecclesiastical feeling and
doctrine, though only
very suggestively rather
than directly. This
would make the
Rabelaisian emotivism less
vulnerable to a
moral or rational
criticism. Third, this emotivism
must be used
to individualize and
further glorify the
various collectivities fictively
called the “people”
as defined through
their national identities,
and which replace
God in the
new secular, populist
or republican order.
The idea of
the nation-state in
its Franco-German context implies the
idea of a
populist democratic or
republican regime. The democratic
idea in turn
suffers from its
two contradictory birth
defects, namely the individualism with
its connexion with
the Montaignean-Cartesian rational
self-consciousness, and the collectivism from
its Bacchic-Rabelaisian genealogy
in the form
of Rousseauism. But the
spatial or parochial
element rooted in
a specific Volksgeist of
a nation-state has
the German legacy
of Herder and
Hegel.
In the French
context, the destructive
or negative role
to remove the
“irrationality” of the ancien
regime first began
in the Apollonian
self-consciousness of Montaigne
which unwittingly paved
the way for
the Cartesian doubt
and its consequent
rationalism. Both Montaigne
and Descartes are
self-conscious and rational
which can threaten
the traditional social
authority and its
“arbitrary and irrational”
monarchy. For the French
King didn’t administer the French
“people”, but simply
acted as the
lord and protector
of his subjects
who might have
their individual wills,
but no
general will to
supersede the royal
will.
Then there is the Rabelaisianism. It
is free-floating, and
thus not aimed
at anything in
particular, but its
disrespect towards the
ecumenical authority, such as
that of the
Franciscans or Jesuits,
is apparent. We
can call this
the “democratic” lack of
respect or decorum
towards the superior
and learned. Rabelais, for
example, presents the
Gargantuan gluttony and
drunkenness in the
format of an
immense classical erudition,
and thereby debases
the latter.
However,
the Rabelaisian enthusiasm
and popular rowdyism
could hardly overthrow
the thoroughly rationalized
ideas of God
and the King,
such as taught
by Bishop Bossuet.
Here the trick
is to employ
the destructive rationalism
rooted in the
free-floating self-consciousness of
the individual to
effectively de-rationalize God
and the King,
and then to
replace it with
the duly mystified,
but yet secularized
God as People
within the framework
of an emotively
charged idea of the
nation-state. Since this replacement
is essentially nonsensical,
it requires intense
efforts for its
rational embellishment to
turn it into an internalized belief,
but only with
the necessary help
of the Rabelaisian
enthusiasm. Once the
national god of
People is installed
in the temple
of democracy, its
extremely complicated rituals
can only be
performed by an
huge and expensive
priesthood consisting of
the various grades
of the “people’s
representatives”, and the bureaucrats. However,
the sacred numen
of this priesthood
lies in the
judiciary, which in
its absolute smugness
can never be
held in contempt.
And the residues of the individual
freedom in such a secular
theocracy are finally
appropriated by the
media, intellectual and
the academic specialist,
who pontificate on
what the “common
man” must feel or say. But
the basic modern
civilizational problem still
can’t be solved,
which lies in
the aestheticization of
the individual and
its direct impact
on the collective
structures which render
them unstable and
uncertain.
While the Rabelaisian
enthusiasm laid the
foundations of the
ecstatic religion of
the populism, it
is Jansenism which
mystified this in the mould
of a mystical
and world-renunciatory act
of rebellion against
the Jesuit orthodoxy and
the French monarchy,
specially at a
time when the latter
was gaining strength. All
this culminated in
Rousseau’s praise of
the noble savage
and the call
to nature, where
perhaps the Jansenist
mysticism might have
paved the way
in its anti-Jesuit
and anti-Bourbon ideas
for the mysticism
of the general
will. (74)
The Rabelaisian enthusiasm and
the Jansenist mysticism
fit in very
well in Rousseau’s general will, but
at the same
time run counter
to the Montaignean
self-consciousness and the
Cartesian rationalism. In
fact, rationalism through
the Enlightenment demolishes
the apparently irrational
King and the
superstitious Church in its destructive
mode followed by the
reconstruction of the
mystified idea of
the People, and
its further reification
in the regicide and the
establishment of the
First Republic.
There is also
an eighteenth century
German version of the idea
of nationalist sentiment
which in its
pure “universal ethnicity”
is best represented
by Herder. He,
however, emphasizes the individuation of
a particular people
and their culture to
be called Volksgeist or
something similar, but he is
opposed to any
evaluative generalization from a
particular cultural point
of view. For
the peoples of
different ages and
places have their
own transformation of
a spatio-temporal circle
of a Volksgeist culture
into a permanent
horizon. Although Herder
is very conscious
of the concrete
universality of the
individual, but yet he
advances the idea
of a parochial
horizon. Hegel too propounds
the universal national
spirit, but then
he believes that
the Absolute Idea
is discriminatory in
its benevolence for
which Germans must
naturally be the
most deserving. Therefore,
Hegel’s position is
somewhat ambiguous, for
while he believes
not merely in
an ecumenical, but
rather the cosmic
Idea, yet in
its particular historical
or dialectical motion,
it is selectively
parochialized in the
German nation.
Most of us
are endowed with
some kind of
the space consciousness
and its ethnic
folklore. In its
gross assertion, this
can be transformed
into a spatially
and ethnically defined
nation-state. Even when
the people were
ruled by kings
and emperors, such
“nationalistic” feelings had
a role to
play, though not
very prominently or
effectively. But this national
spirit cannot supersede
individual in his
indeterminate desire, for the
national spirit is
a semi-frozen unidirectional emotive
flow, but which
can always be
thawed and its
direction changed. It
is vital for
the trans-national relations
that the individualized sentiment
of the ethnicity
should be facilitated, but
never allowed to
become a coercive
nation-state which threatens
its own citizen
as well as
the world at
large.
Now, in our
democratic nation-states Rousseau’s
general will has
become the Holy
Ghost of the
new god as
People, along with a stiff
competition among various
aspirants to become
the only Son,
even if it
be for a
brief time. The general
will thus mystifies
the individual freedom
and the social
good as the
individual wills cannot
supersede this good
in abstract. In fact, Rousseau is
the real progenitor
of all such
sinister collectivism reflected
in the abstract
good, and not Babeuf,
Blanqui, Marx or
some such mélange
of intellectual hallucination
and revolutionary fervour. And
the general or
abstract good is
further hidden behind
the bourgeois-liberal John
Rawls’ veil
of ignorance; that
is, only if
you were to
veil or be
ignorant about your desire,
only then you
can see the
general good as
justice.
In the modern
times, many nation-states
have proved to be
worse than the earlier
imperial or colonial regimes. The
imperialists or colonialists at
least carried the
direct responsibility for
the administration of
their colonies, while
under the present system of the so-called
“international community consisting
of the free
and sovereign nation-states”, a
few powerful or
domineering nation-states compete
for their imperialistic
sway over the
poor and backward
countries. But the
so-called international community
has nothing much
to do with
the care or
protection of the
poor and backward
people from their
own “nationalist” robber chieftains like
a Mobutu or Idi
Ameen, or prevent
the civil wars
such as waged
by Hutus against
Tutsis, lest this
violate their independent
and sovereign status
as a nation-state. What these
people need is not
so much the
national independence or
sovereignty, but the
fulfillment of the
conditions of their
basic survival as
individuals and their
communities. And this holds
good not only
for the so-called
banana republics, but also
for a vast
and powerful communist
serfdom like China,
or a chaotic
and corrupt Indian
democracy.
In the modern
times, the idea of
the nation or
the right of
a particular people
or community for
self-determination is often transformed into a democratic façade, for
such self-determination is
often the amalgamation
of the smaller
sub-communities into a
larger one rather
than being an
interpersonally constituted space. As such the
nation-state, and all its political
manifestations, stand against
the individual, and
while the latter
has the will
and the intelligence
as the marks
of his or
her individuality, the
former has none
in being primarily
an abstract or
collective phantom. On
the contrary, a
universalistic empire, such
as the Roman
or the Ottoman,
might be unwittingly more
conducive for the
individual freedom in so far
as it would
be relatively more
difficult to watch and
control a larger
and diffused count
of individuals than
a smaller one.
For the democracy
as a working
hypothesis of the
individual freedom must
function individually. It means
the direct participation
of citizens as individuals in
the governance in
a relatively transparent
interpersonal space, and
not through their
elected representatives or
an hired bureaucracy
in the opacity
of social space.
Since such a
democratic ideal is
impossible to be
realized in the
today’s large nation-states
which are generally the
artificial conglomerations of
disparate regions and
ethnic communities, the
governance, including in its
democratic or the
semi-democratic versions, remains
generally absurd as
well as oppressive.
In this context,
how the modern
technocentric tendency towards
the pragmatic or
practical blinds us
to the obviously
stupid is best
shown by the
universal acceptance of
the nation-state as
the spatial unit
of governance. But
in fact the
nation-state has proved
to be more
disastrous than a
trans-ethnic empire could
ever be. Therefore,
most of the
wasteful nation-state paraphernalia
as well as
its armed forces
“to defend” itself
are an enormous
burden on the
global resources which
would be saved
the moment the
nation-states are abolished.
Here the political boundary of
a country has only a
limited rationale in the homogeneity
of its people’s
ethnicity of which
the two most
important constituents are
the language and
religion. In the ancient
times, usually the
political units were
small or if
expanded into empires,
their control over
the distant or
different ethnic subjects
was never complete
and far from
permanent. Also the political
grip of an emperor
over his numerous and
ethnically heterogeneous subjects
was loose and
often mere symbolic.
This seclusion of
the populace from
the ruling class
made the political
affairs royal and
imperial rather than
popular, but the
smaller communities under
an imperial umbrella
could exercise their
individual and communal
rights.
That a political
or sovereign unit
should have some
rationale beyond the
strength of the
royal arms can
only find the
governing rationale in
the nation-state in terms of
its already discussed
Franco-German origins. But
if the governance
in general were treated
purely as a
matter of techno-administrative function,
like running the
city transport or
electric supply, then
the Franco-German rationale
of a nation-state
has little relevance. For while
the ancient idea
of the supra-ethnic
empire was based
on the military-administrative nexus, the
modern state in its pure
techno-administrative
functionalism tends to
be the predominantly
techno-administrative.
Therefore, the idea
of nation-state is
anomalous for the modern
technocentric-technologized
society. To run
a society with
such an high
degree of rational-technological exactitude
within an irrational
ethno-nationalistic
framework is bound
to result in
needless confusion and
conflict.
At present, much
of the intra-national and
international tensions prevail
on account of
an artificial and
absurd idea of
the nation-state conceived
primarily in its
nationalistic ethnicity of
the language, religion
or the race.
The criterion of
the ethnic homogeneity
can be fulfilled
only by very
small states like Bhutan
or Maldives, but
larger the state
in terms of
the population and
territory, the more
diluted becomes its
ethnic basis. A vast
nation-state like China
has roughly forty
percent of its
territory which is
not “Chinese” by
any stretch of imagination, and, therefore, has
to be euphemized
as composed of
the various autonomous regions.
Accordingly, a large
nation-state must give
high precedence to the individual
identity of a
minority or a
sub-national group over
and above the
membership of a
national collectivity. However,
such a democratic
or liberal idea
rooted in the
individual as the
basic unit of
the nation-state inadvertently
rejects the latter’s
very collective raison
d’etre in the
cultural or ethnic
homogeneity.
If we apply
this paradigm of
the cultural-ethnic homogeneity
to the today’s
political frontiers, then
most of the
nation-states are aberrations.
However, while a political
frontier is drawn
strictly in the
national-ethnic homogeneity or
its rationalization in
terms of the
past military conquests and
their treaties, it is
generally wrong to
talk of the
ethnically multiple formation
of the modern
nation-state, for the
two are mutually
exclusive.
To remove such
a basic contradiction
of a large
nation-state, their political
masters often describe
them with the
politically correct hypocrisy
as the pluralistic,
multi-ethnic,
multi-religious, and so
on, and come
up with the
artificial solutions of
the autonomous regions
or the minority
privileges. For example,
these days the
British liberal opinion
suggests Britain to be a
multi-ethnic country wherein
the Asians and
other non-Europeans in general,
and the Muslims
in particular, are
to be treated
as equal partners
in its national
governance. But if the British
ethnicity does not
matter for being
British, then why
should Britain exist
at all as
a nation-state ? Or
if we adopt
the national-ethnic stance
for the nation-state,
then why the
totally non-Chinese Tibetans
be forced to
be in China ?
While the ethnicity
mainly consists of
the religion and
language, a universal
religion like the
Christianity or Islam
or a universal
secular religion like
the Marxism cannot
form the core
of such ethnicity
or national identity.
On the contrary, a pagan and ethnic religion like
the Hinduism easily can. To
remove such contradictions, the
only correct, though
right now utopian,
solution lies in
the abolition of
the nation-state to
be replaced by the micro-habitations to possess an
interpersonal, but not a social,
environment, where their
laws and institutions,
mostly reduced to the
unwritten covenants, are
enough to guide
an interpersonal micro-habitation. In fact,
the logic of
the modern global
society demands the
disintegration of the
nation-state into a
universal technocentric-technologized
polity where the ethnic
identities must be devoid
of arbitrary political
frontiers.
In the prevalent
international order, the nation-states
aberrantly represent
their popular conglomerations as
if through them
the latter become
such sovereign and
autonomous entities. On the
contrary, the nation-state
tends to be
a phantom in the name
of a conglomerate
called the “people”;
but in its
collectivity, the individual’s
integral intelligence as
will is absent.
In fact, these
insensate nations as
popular conglomerates act in the
world arena like
headless chickens running helter-skelter and
often colliding or trouncing
upon each other
in their reflexive
stupidity and panic.
However, as far
as their internal
individual constituents are
concerned, they have
no sentient connexion
with the abstract
organism of the
nation-state. Hence the
generally insentient or the paralytic
character of the
nation-state.
As an exceptionally
original and brilliant
advocate of the
global harmony and
peace in the
modern times is China’s
K’ang Yu-wei (1858-1927). In his Ta-t’ung
shu or Book of
the Great Unity, he
wanted all nations
to be abolished,
and instead the
mankind to be
placed under one
government legitimized through
election at the
central and regional
levels. Since the
nation comes out
of the family
and clan, so
he sought the
sexual relations to
be free of
the permanent marital
regulation, and accordingly
men and women
to be made
equal. Racial distinctions
too are to
disappear through the
promiscuous sexual relations. (75)
No doubt, such
ideas are totally utopian
at present. A
utopia, however, can
be malignant, if
it demands its
concrete and practical
implementation with coercive
or violent measures.
This flows from
the prejudice in
favour of actions
as opposed to
mere ideas. However,
having truly great
or original ideas
is much more
difficult and rare
than accomplishing difficult
or great deeds,
and these are
the ideas, and
not the deeds
or their pragmatic
consequences, which ultimately matter.
The idea of
the abolition of the
nation-state or of the micro-habitation is
indeed far-fetched and
downright impractical, as
is the earlier
discussed impractical
suggestion about the
abolition of patriarchy
and its related
sexual regulations. However,
important thing is
to have the
idea, for in
some sense the
idea would work
itself out not
exactly as intended,
but often unpredictably.
So, here I
am not going
to make details
of the implementation of
the abolition of
the nation-state, yet
two issues of
a somewhat practical
nature may be
discussed here. First,
there is a
general tendency towards
technocentric-technologized homogeneity all
over the world
which renders the
nation-state more and
more a redundant
political-administrative
structure, and more specially
its attendant idea of
the national sovereignty.
But if a much bigger national identity is
likely to be
submerged in a
global homogeneity, then a
tiny micro-habitation would hardly
be able to
retain its emotional
or ethnic identity. And if a
micro-habitation would lack emotional roots in
the community and
its space consciousness, then
it may just
be a smaller
version of the
administrative division of
the world state
like a county,
prefecture or district.
Hence, it is
important to have
not only the
individual identity intact,
but also one’s
ethnic, linguistic and
religious identity, wherein
the political decision-making is
wholly transparent in
an interpersonal environment,
and which must
not be superseded
by an impersonal
global agency. For
example, the individualism
of the present
bourgeois-liberal regime tends
to prevail at
the expense of
the ethnic identity
which is generally
reflected through what
we have called
the social authority,
but the idea
of a micro-habitation recognizes
individual not in
the abstract, but
in his or
her emotionally rooted
ethnic and religious
ambience.
Second, it would
be a great
problem to micro-habitate the
very large macro-habitations which
are growing at
a break-neck speed.
This is because
these days more
and more people
want to be
materially rich for
which money can
be earned only
in the mega cities
as a consequence
of the destruction
of the rural
habitations. So this
gross urban concentration
will have to
be reversed in
favour of a
more rural decentralization, and
for which mankind
must inculcate spiritual
rather than material
values, and seeking
happiness in simplicity
than in luxury.
The
process of micro-habitation need
not violate the
broader ethnic or
religious identities of the much
bigger ethnic-nationalistic regions
which have more
or less “naturally”
formed themselves into
the nation-states. France
and Japan, for
example, are ethnically
fortified nation-states, but their
ethnic homogeneity in
the absence of
an interpersonal environment
cannot ensure their
political governance with
complete transparency. This is because
these nations are
too large to
have an interpersonal
environment where alone
the political, administrative or
juridical decision-making can
be free and individualistically democratic. If
we reduce such
national conglomerates into our
micro-habitations, it does
not mean that
a particular Indian
village would loose
its broader Indian
identity, but then its
political-administrative
structure will have
to be autonomous
and small enough
to work in
an interpersonal environment.
At present
we are probably
living in a
transient phase of
the natural growth
of a universal
political order. If in
the long run,
the individualistic component
of the democratic
idea prevails upon
the collective one,
then gradually the
nation-state format of
the democratic collectivism
may disintegrate where
governance will be
subordinated to the
individual will within
the de-nationalized micro-habitations. This
will be a
de-powered and de-politicized state
of individual freedom
and rationality where
the routine or
mechanical administration would
be conducted by
the machines or
computers, and not by the
human politician or
bureaucrat. But if the
democratic collectivism remains
strong, then the
monarchical, but not
dictatorial, tendencies would
dispense with the
present democratic façade
of the people’s
governance.
The present globalization
by freeing individuals
from their artificial
national boundaries has
already come to
form a global
village, but
this village is
too big. In being uprooted
from his parochial
moorings, the individual
is not allowed
to entertain the spatial
feelings in his
conduct and speech.
While a Muslim
woman cannot move
without the burqa
in the
Saudi Arabia, but
may soon be
prosecuted in France
for putting it
on! Hence, despite
Marshall McLuhan’s instant electronic
communication, we cannot
turn the social
space of the
global community into
an interpersonal space.
For this the
modern global village has
to be interpersonalized into
micro-habitations, but with
open windows through
which fresh air
and sunshine can
come in from
the rest of
the world.
Such an idea
of the interpersonalized micro-habitations strikes
at the de-personalized democratic
or the semi-democratic nation-state
which in essence
is parochial, but
not interpersonal. This
is also a
great contradiction of
the modern nation-state
that while the
parochialism is its
core, in its
actual space and
the related space
consciousness it often
grossly violates that
parochial spirit. Having done
away with the
need for the
hugely wasteful national
“defence” expenditure
through the abolition
of the nation-states, a
global organization might
“govern” such micro-habitations with
the help of
an inexpensive police
organization. In such a
system, a Somalian
need not seek
a U.S. visa to
stay and work
in New York, and
there should be
no problem for
an American to
stay in Pyongyang
for as long
as he enjoys
the place. Isn’t
it very utopian ?
Posts
nice to read your views .