Posts Tagged ‘Leviathan’
“Power always reveals”*…
Apposite to yesterday’s post, a provocative piece by Ben Ansell, who is reacting to a [terrific] piece by Henry Farrell in which Farrell, as he contemplates Trump’s moves, unpacks the “coordination” problems facing– and, Farrell suggests, often limiting– autocratic rulers…
… But you will notice an assumption I and Henry have been making – that Trump is like any other authoritarian leader. I suspect that in lots of ways Trump does wish to behave like one – certainly the treatment of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his current refusal to follow court judgments meets that mark.
But Trump is attempting this in an otherwise democratic system and I think there is a risk that we overstate the degree to which that system has already deteriorated by assuming that the language and logic that we use to describe authoritarianism fits his case. Part of the risk is we give up on democracy while it’s still here. But the other danger is that we think Trump behaves like a rational authoritarian leader, a la Svolik, when it’s all just bluntly a lot dumber than that…
… In an earlier post I referred to Donald Trump as a ‘chaotic authoritarian’. I don’t think it’s implausible that a democracy could have such a figure as a leader, though I do think it’s unlikely that it would remain democratic indefinitely under such leadership.
But in the absence of already having subverted elections, stymied courts, shut down the media, banned opponents and the other types of effective institutional backsliding that are the tell-tale signs of a democracy dying, I think we might do better to think about how such a figure operates in, what for now, is a democracy.
The temptation when talking about dictators is to reach for Thomas Hobbes. We depict them as the Leviathan – imposing order on the body politic to prevent chaos but also any rivals. Hobbes’ vision was after all a painstaking justification for monarchical absolutism.
If you are not familiar with Leviathan, well do read it, it’s a banger. But the very basic gist is a theory of government built from the ground up. Hobbes even starts with a slightly rococo account of how we process sensations. But his core mechanism is to imagine a world without government – his famous state of nature – in which every individual was essentially on their own. A self-help system if you will, but not the kind in the woo-woo psychology section of the bookstore – the kind where if you don’t look after number one, you’ll get an axe in the back of the head.
The Hobbesian state of nature is anarchy and life in it is – say it with me – ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. And so anyone living in this state would seek to escape this ceaseless terror and have some entity that could guarantee security. Hobbes is a social contract theorist, and the contract upon which we could all be presumed to agree is a third party that can ruthlessly crush insecurity. An absolute sovereign power that would protect its subjects…
… The Hobbesian vision of the state is draconian of course and in… err… pretty sharp contrast with the social contract theories of John Locke or Jean Jacques Rousseau. But one way it has come down to us is in how we think about authoritanism. As about order and control, crushing dissent mercilessly, but also preventing anarchy, rebellion, and so forth. It is governing with an iron fist. Rational authoritarianism if you will.
Whatever Trump is trying to achieve, it’s not hitting this mark. Instead of authoritarianism containing chaos, it is chaos personified. Instead of quelling the anarchic state of nature, it is spreading anarchy and confusion. Hobbes’ frontispiece Leviathan is a steady ruler, holding sword and staff, made up out of their ordered subjects [In contrast to the disintegrating beast in the illustation above]…
… Hence, it’s not clear to me that the standard tools we use to think about authoritarianism accordingly make that much sense with Trump. Is he really thinking about how to coordinate among the elites to keep his support base? Because he’s not doing a brilliant job here having already lost the support of the Wall Street journal editorial board, a litany of very conservative judges, and increasingly corporate elites…
… what I find most interesting about Trump’s anti-Leviathan is that his rule is creating anarchy everywhere else too. And that means not only are his promises not credible but nor are his threats…
[Ansell reviews Trumps’ attack on universities, his approach to tariffs, and trade policy, his “crackdown” on immigration, and his foreign policy (or lack thereof)…]
… We will spend a lot of time over the next few years trying to figure out if Trump’s America remains a democracy. Already the main indices we use are starting to downgrade the USA. I struggle as to whether that coding is premature or not – we will of course know much more by the midterms about the stability and freedom of elections, though by then it could be too late.
It is very clear that Trump wishes to act as an authoritarian. But it is not yet obvious to me that analysing him using the logic of dictatorship makes sense. Because he lacks the control, the ruthlessness, and the rationality of normal authoritarian leaders. As Henry says in his post, ‘absolute power can be a terrible weakness.’ True. However, for many – perhaps most – dictators, absolute power is a terrible (in the original sense of that word) strength. Think to the horrors of the twentieth century.
That, however, is not Donald Trump. He may be the master of chaos. But he is not the Leviathan…
What if we abandoned the social contract for the state of nature? “Donald Trump’s Anti-Leviathan,” from @benansell.bsky.social (with @himself.bsky.social).
* “Power doesn’t always corrupt. Power always reveals. When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do.” – Robert Caro (riffing on Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”) Or as David Brin put it: “it is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible.”
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As we rein in reigns, we might recall that it was on this date in 1945 that Hermann Göring, head of the Luftwaffe and Adolf Hitler’s designated successor as leader of Nazi Germany, wired the Führer asking permission to assume leadership of the crumbling regime. The telegram caused an infuriated Hitler to strip Göring of power and to appoint new successors, Joseph Goebbels and Karl Dönitz, as chancellor and head of state, respectively.
“One of the biggest obstacles to making a start on climate change is that it has become a cliche before it has even been understood”*…
Once upon a time in Europe, the winters got very very cold and the summers got unbearably hot. “The spring of this year was like winter, cold and wet, the wine blossom terrible, and the harvest bad,” wrote the Swiss theologian Heinrich Bullinger in 1570.
Initially, this seemed like a temporary problem, just one bad year. So across the continent, cultivators shrugged off their poor harvests, and vintners sold wine made of sour grapes which consumers drank angrily as they contemplated rising grain prices.
But the extreme weather continued, season after season after season, until abnormal became the new normal. As William Shakespeare put it in the 1593 play Richard III, “Now is the winter of our discontent.”
In his book Nature’s Mutiny, German journalist Philipp Blom posits that Shakespeare wrote those words as a literal description of the string of difficult winters he’d just endured. This period of extreme weather, which would continue for more than 100 years, is now known as the “Little Ice Age,” and Blom argues that if we look back at its effects in Europe—where they were best documented—we’ll better understand how we got to where we are today and anticipate what’s ahead as climate change increasingly affects our lives…
Lots of cautions– with an optimistic kicker– at: “What the 17th century’s “Little Ice Age” teaches us about climate change.”
The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
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As we bundle up, we might send absolutist birthday greetings to Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury; he was born on this date in 1588. A father of political philosophy and political science, Hobbes developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be “representative” and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid– all this, though Hobbes was, on rational grounds, a champion of absolutism for the sovereign. It was that, Hobbes reasoned, or the bloody chaos of a “war of all against all.” His 1651 book Leviathan established social contract theory, the foundation of most later Western political philosophy.
“Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me”*…
The British Library has recently digitized part of a multi-authored play, “The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore,” written between about 1596 and 1604. Three pages of this draft of the play are apparently written by William Shakespeare, and they represent the only available sample of his handwriting in a play script.
Another playwright, Anthony Munday, wrote the bulk of the play, about the life of Henry VIII’s chancellor Sir Thomas More. Shakespeare was apparently called in to add a single scene to the middle of the script: a speech the historical More gave on May Day 1517, calming rioters who were looting and destroying property in an attempt to expel foreigners from London…
“Though proving that More’s words were indeed written by Shakespeare is not straightforward, in their keen sympathy for the plight of the alienated and dispossessed they seem to prefigure the insights of great dramas of race such as The Merchant of Venice and Othello,” the British Library’s Andrew Dickson writes. “Whoever wrote them had a fine ear for the way rhetoric can sway a crowd … but also a sharp eye for the troubled relationship between ethnic minorities and majorities.” …
The complete text of the speech, with more of the backstory, at “A Plea on Behalf of Immigrants, Written (Most Likely) in Shakespeare’s Hand, Now Digitized.” Watch it delivered beautifully by Sir Ian McKellen in this short video:
* Carlos Fuentes
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As we marvel that plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, we might send absolutist birthday greetings to Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury; he was born on this date in 1588. A father of political philosophy and political science, Hobbes developed some of the fundamentals of European liberal thought: the right of the individual; the natural equality of all men; the artificial character of the political order (which led to the later distinction between civil society and the state); the view that all legitimate political power must be “representative” and based on the consent of the people; and a liberal interpretation of law which leaves people free to do whatever the law does not explicitly forbid– all this, though Hobbes was, on rational grounds, a champion of absolutism for the sovereign. His 1651 book Leviathan established social contract theory, the foundation of most later Western political philosophy.
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