Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[ipecac]

@ipecac,

If you think that serfdom can be well characterized as a purely economic relationship based on the assymteric distribution of ownership, you just don't really understand what serfdom is or how opressive it is.

It's sufficient to describe how the very strong asymmetry persists across cultures and times.

Regarding land, for example, the issue with serfdom is not just that serfs didn't own the land, is that they never even could own the land, even if they managed to earn money to buy it, as many did. It's like saying that the issue with slavery was that the landlords owned plantations and the slaves didn't.

Except that I said nothing about the [moral] 'issues'. I think it's important to focus on other aspects despite the well-worn ones in liberal cultures.

Being able to interact with others purely economically, contractually, as two independent, if unequal parties is a major recent achievement of human politics.

I'm not sure I could describe it as an unblemished achievement, not least because subsequently huge swathes of people would (or are) heading towards a dependent 'give me living wage, welfare, medical fees etc etc'.

For most people, through most of history this was an unattainable privilege. You don't need to be "liberal" in any sense to register this, you just have to know what conditions of living in bondage were like beyond calories consumed or hours worked... Being a person, rather than a thing, is really valuable, but it can be a little difficult for a modern to really feel this value.

I agree that it can be difficult, for the reason stated above. Great numbers of people have never valued being an "[independent] person" and never will, instead preferring to be dependent.

[ipecac]

I dunno, what /do/ you do as a national government once the courts have declared it illegal but the regional government says basically "screw that" and decides to go ahead anyway?

Exactly. One of the main purposes of police (or other law-maintaining group) is to imply threat of force, and enact the force when some governing entity deems fit.

Without opining specifically on 'which side is right', secession is rebellion, possibly the greatest transgression against the rule of those ruling, so people shouldn't be shocked.

[ipecac]

It's not that the system works well in the UK, it's that the society works extraordinarily well, so that that the system doesn't really matter. Once you get someone like Lutfur Rahman on the scene, it all becomes a little different. I have no doubt that at least large cities in the UK will move to a photo ID standard over a period of 10-15 years, if not sooner.

The current system, like many, used to work well because of societal trust, which eliminates the need for checking mechanisms. Once trust breaks down due to unassimilated diversity, things don't work half as smoothly any more.

[Bacchus]

I'm not sure I could describe it as an unblemished achievement, not least because subsequently huge swathes of people would (or are) heading towards a dependent 'give me living wage, welfare, medical fees etc etc'.

There's no contradiction. Or rather, again, contradiction only arises if you reduce everything to economics in the crudest sense. A Swiss citizen on a living wage is not in anything like an equal position to a slave on his master's subsistence (in a fictional country at the same level of development). Being economically dependent and being legally dependent are just two different things, if you adopt the position that all that legal stuff is just window-dressing, you just miss out on a huge part of human reality and history. More than that, in many important senses the legal stuff is prior to the economic outcomes, given that the very ability to possess property, almost any property, large or small, rests on the society's acceptance of that possession. There is very little you can own through pure force, so getting to the point where you can exercise the right of ownership (as opposed to being owned and having no rights) is requisite for any real wealth accumulation.

[ipecac]

I'm not sure I could describe it as an unblemished achievement, not least because subsequently huge swathes of people would (or are) heading towards a dependent 'give me living wage, welfare, medical fees etc etc'.

There's no contradiction. Or rather, again, contradiction only arises if you reduce everything to economics in the crudest sense. A Swiss citizen on a living wage is not in anything like an equal position to a slave on his master's subsistence (in a fictional country at the same level of development). Being economically dependent and being legally dependent are just two different things, if you adopt the position that all that legal stuff is just window-dressing, you just miss out on a huge part of human reality and history.

I would say that seeing the patterns that persists illuminates a great deal of human reality.

More than that, in many important senses the legal stuff is prior to the economic outcomes, given that the very ability to possess property, almost any property, large or small, rests on the society's acceptance of that possession.

'The legal' is not a separate domain, it and economical practice can be subsumed under what we could roughly call 'society's acceptance', which is why from certain perspectives they can be analysed as not "two different things".

Which brings us back to my point: society accepts that large swathes of people will be dependent, whether explicit writings in law (that different societies value differently) exist or not.

A Swiss citizen on a living wage is not in anything like an equal position to a slave on his master's subsistence...There is very little you can own through pure force, so getting to the point where you can exercise the right of ownership (as opposed to being owned and having no rights) is requisite for any real wealth accumulation.

I was particular about using the word 'serfdom' and not 'slavery', because lots of serfs could exercise rights of ownership.

[Bacchus]

I was particular about using the word 'serfdom' and not 'slavery', because lots of serfs could exercise rights of ownership.

Slavery is a more useful focus for discussion, because it is a pure type -- a state where the individual cannot exercise any rights at all. When you start talking about serfdom, or any other form of not-quite-total subjection, the issues can get pretty confused, especially as serfdom was so different in different places at different times. In Russia, serfs couldn't own any real estate, immovable property, which was the primary store of wealth in those days. And of course they were not in full ownership of their bodies. So they were somewhere between slaves and modern citizens, and it is exactly the ways in which they were akin to slaves that are important for distinguishing them from modern citizens.

I would say that seeing the patterns that persists illuminates a great deal of human reality.

But so does seeing the patterns that change. Case in point, calling the modern condition serfdom is closing your eyes to significant differences. It is also a practical-political matter: a promise of economic re-distribution at the expense of legal rights, on the grounds that the latter are ephemeral and the former really matter, is a promise that has been quite widely made and fulfilled, tragically, in recent history. It really pays to see that the promise is false, and that in trading rights for wealth you are not trading like for like. Being unequal or dependant in an economic sense is not the same as being unequal or dependant in a legal sense. As I mentioned above, this distinction is not a matter of liberal affectation -- it is a reality that has been well-understood by political actors throughout history, who often and passionately fought for rights, and were prepared to pay for them with wealth. If anything, it is the conception that rights don't matter and that we need to look to the "underlying material causes" that is a distinctly modern ideological affectation.

[ipecac]

I was particular about using the word 'serfdom' and not 'slavery', because lots of serfs could exercise rights of ownership.

When you start talking about serfdom, or any other form of not-quite-total subjection, the issues can get pretty confused, especially as serfdom was so different in different places at different times.

Certainly. But brandishing rhetoric against slavery when I'm talking about serfdom is setting fire to strawmen.

But so does seeing the patterns that change. Case in point, calling the modern condition serfdom is closing your eyes to significant differences.

Being unequal or dependant in an economic sense is not the same as being unequal or dependant in a legal sense.

As in my previous post, the economic and the legal aren't separate worlds.

As I mentioned above, this distinction is not a matter of liberal affectation -- it is a reality that has been well-understood by political actors throughout history, who often and passionately fought for rights, and were prepared to pay for them with wealth.

Your example of European cities still have the citizenry subject to rulers of their own city; what they didn't want was some distant monarch, likely a foreigner, ruling from afar and imposing alien rule, law, and culture on them.

If anything, it is the conception that rights don't matter and that we need to look to the "underlying material causes" that is a distinctly modern ideological affectation.

Sure, the monomania about 'rights' in modern times has naturally been met with some pushback in modern times. This doesn't imply in any way that such criticism is false.

[Ichabod]

'The legal' is not a separate domain, it and economical practice can be subsumed under what we could roughly call 'society's acceptance', which is why from certain perspectives they can be analysed as not "two different things".

Which brings us back to my point: society accepts that large swathes of people will be dependent, whether explicit writings in law (that different societies value differently) exist or not.

What is law is a very difficult thing to answer and there has been a lot of different ones. Your perspective that laws can be subsumed to society's acceptance made me remember the little I know about Hart's theory in The Concept of Law. Let me quote the brief Wikipedia article on what I want to point out:

Hart draws a distinction between a social habit (which people follow habitually but where breaking the habit does not bring about opprobrium - going to the cinema on Thursday for example) and a social rule (where breaking the rule is seen as wrong - neglecting to take off one's hat upon entering a church, for example). We feel in some sense bound by social rules and laws frequently appear to be types of social rule.

There are two perspectives to this: the external aspect, which is the independently observable fact that people do tend to obey the rule with regularity, and the internal aspect which is the feeling by an individual of being in some sense obligated to follow the rule, otherwise known as the critical reflective attitude. It is from this internal sense that the law acquires its normative quality. The obedience by the populace of a rule is called efficacy. No law can be said to be efficacious unless followed by the majority of the populace. Though an average citizen in a modern state with a developed legal system may feel the internal aspect and be compelled to follow the laws, it is more important for the officials of the society/peoples to have the internal aspect since it is up to them to follow the constitutional provisions which, if they wish, could ignore without accountability. Yet, the officials must use the internal aspect and accept the standards as guiding their behaviour in addition to also guiding the behaviour of other officials.

I think you are underestimating the internal aspect of legal rules, as mentioned above, that separate them of the social rules, in a strict sense, and of what is just simply accepted by society. Even if people are obligated by a material need to work for subsistance, we do not feel obligated to do this because it's a rule (as Hart puts it, if I remember correctly, you could say, in this context, that "I'm obligated to work because I need to eat", but you could not say "I have an obligation to work for food"), nor does our society feels we are obligated to do it. This internal aspect makes the current social phenomenom of working for subsistance different from a situation where people felt there was an obligation of the serf to follow the master orders, as in the context of servitude.

Bottomline, I'd say that the legal has a paticular sociological quality different from the economic aspect or the socially accepted, that makes a difference and should be taken into account (i.e. what Bacchus is saying). But I'm by no means an expert in the subject. The good thing about Hart is that he tries to explain law without taking it out of context from how societies experience law, so it's pretty appropriate for the current discussion.

[Bacchus]

As in my previous post, the economic and the legal aren't separate worlds.

Economic and legal aren't separate, they are aspects of the same more general thing -- social existence, but they are pretty distinct aspects, at a crude level it's the difference between talking about how much stuff everyone has, and what does it even mean to "have" stuff. Economics tends to presuppose some law, even if only implicitly. It may be worth talking through the difference, but frankly if this subject requires discussion, the discussion will be around such foundational and abstract concepts that it is highly unlikely to be productive, especially in this format..

Your example of European cities still have the citizenry subject to rulers of their own city; what they didn't want was some distant monarch, likely a foreigner, ruling from afar and imposing alien rule, law, and culture on them.

The concepts of "alien" law and culture are largely modern, related to nationalism, community and authenticity. In the middle ages that didn't figure much, people certainly more readily accepted a foreign noble as a ruler than a local peasant. Even in the early modern times, a Protestant foreigner was preferred for a king to a Catholic Englishman (the first two Georges couldn't even speak English, the first at all, the second hardly).

Being a citizen in a city and the subject of a sovereign were also two fairly distinct statuses. It's not just about being "subject to rules". In fact to be subject to rules, as opposed to whims, was precisely the goal, and citizens were subject to rules, which they could appeal to, knowing that the city would support their claims. The thing about subjugation is that it's arbitrary — the subjugated has no right of appeal, no standard against which he can hold his lord, it's a state of fundamental uncertainty and precariousness. Again, for a modern, who has never really experienced subjection, it may be difficult to see what's peculiar about it, but subjugation structures your existence far more than mere economic assymetry. With respect to serfdom, for example, it's the state of living in constant realisation that your lord might today decide to beat you to death, and that will be that (again, Russian example -- only a few landlords have been prosecuted for murder of serfs, and then only in completely atrocious cases of systemic, sadistic and mass mutilation). For economic assymetry to start having similar effects, a single monopolist would have to enjoy complete control over life-critical substances, with no substitutes available.

[ipecac]

As in my previous post, the economic and the legal aren't separate worlds.

Economic and legal aren't separate, they are aspects of the same more general thing -- social existence, but they are pretty distinct aspects.

As long as the focus is on the de facto, then it's easily seen that the dividing point matters little.

The concepts of "alien" law and culture are largely modern, related to nationalism, community and authenticity.

Tribalism is baked into human nature.

In the middle ages that didn't figure much, people certainly more readily accepted a foreign noble as a ruler than a local peasant. Even in the early modern times, a Protestant foreigner was preferred for a king to a Catholic Englishman (the first two Georges couldn't even speak English, the first at all, the second hardly).

It is certainly true that there are other concerns as to 'who I prefer rules over me', such as 'is he entitled to it by his class?', and that those concerns in certain circumstances could trump others. but that doesn't imply in any way that 'is that guy from my people?' was not a concern at all.

Being a citizen in a city and the subject of a sovereign were also two fairly distinct statuses. It's not just about being "subject to rules". In fact to be subject to rules, as opposed to whims, was precisely the goal, and citizens were subject to rules, which they could appeal to, knowing that the city would support their claims. The thing about subjugation is that it's arbitrary — the subjugated has no right of appeal, no standard against which he can hold his lord, it's a state of fundamental uncertainty and precariousness.

I think it's entirely reasonable to note that many sovereigns ruled by law, and also that the mere existence of the de jure doesn't in itself imply anything practically, that an appeal from a commoner would be fruitful or even taken into consideration.