More on the balance of power and ostracism, with Hume and Kant, but illuminated by Hobbes, and Plato
Yesterday I suggested that Hume’s wholehearted embrace of the international balance of power was reason to deny he is a (proto-)liberal. I did this in the face of some evidence that even Kant treats the balance of power as a respectable instance of second best theorizing.
That the balance of power itself is by no means a liberal normative commitment is evident from an analysis by way of analogy that Hume makes of it: “The same principle, call it envy or prudence, which produced the Ostracism of Athens, and Petalism of Syracuse, and expelled every citizen whose fame or power overtopped the rest; the same principle, I say, naturally discovered itself in foreign politics, and soon raised enemies to the leading state, however moderate in the exercise of its authority.” (“Of the Balance of Power” (1752)). As I noted yesterday, while liberals do not reject prudence (and arguably Smith and Bentham make it a lower part of morality), it’s not the whole of the first best theory.
It is, of course, tempting to treat Hume here as merely using ostracism as a domestic social practice to illuminate the international practice, but otherwise keeping it at arm’s length. He is undeniably using the practice of ostracism as an illustration. But since he is not critical of the balance of power in international affairs (the point of the 1752 essay is, in fact, to advocate for a judicious version of it), there is, hence, also no reason to read the domestic balance of power example as merely illustrative or (to use a Humean term) anatomical. While this passage is written in a neutral way, the overall argument of the essay would suggest that ostracism/petalism is a prudent policy.
Now, ostracism/petalism as practiced in Athens and Syracuse is an expression of their democratic ethos and institutions. It also, let’s stipulate, anticipates and exhibits the liberal concern with the dangers of concentrated power and influence. But since ostracism/petalism is often pre-emptive and actually has little procedural safeguards built into the prevention of any abuse of the process, it violates liberal commitments to what one may call the rule of law (as distinct from the rule of the majority). So, from a liberal perspective ostracism/petalism are very much second or nth best social institutions.
In fact, ostracism keeps the underlying source of wealth and power in tact and so is very badly designed institution to tackle the dangers from concentrated power derived from wealth. Plato’s idea to tackle the danger by limiting wealth inequality — limitarianism as Ingrid Robeyns calls it— is surely a better mechanism and, when predictable and procedurally more soundly deployed (say as a death tax), also more liberal in character even if the liberal hopes that competition will prevent this from arising in the first place.
In an essay that I praised yesterday ("Robertson, Hume, and the balance of power." Hume Studies 21.2 (1995)), Frederick Whelan claims,
I have no idea of Whelan’s own ideological orientation (although he has warmth toward a branch of realism.) But I think of the first sentence as instantiating a rather unfortunate argument pattern. It is, in fact, characteristic of critics of liberalism (e.g., Schmitt, Vermeule) that over-emphasize invisible hand theory in classical liberal social theory. Here, by invisible hand’ what’s meant is an unintended consequence theory that sees morally good outcomes emerging from interactions that are motivated by baser instincts/preferences. (As regular readers know, I deny that’s what Smith meant when he used ‘invisible hand’ in Wealth of Nations or The Theory of Moral Sentiments.)
For, one can embrace unintended consequence arguments without being a liberal at all. Arguably Adam Ferguson is a good example of this claim. (Ferguson has the distinction of having offered the most quotable version of the argument: “Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.”) Ferguson is a republican not a liberal no more than Machiavelli is a liberal. Machiavelli loves unintended consequence explanations; his explanation of the growth of the Roman republic is built on them.
As an aside, I do happen to think liberalism (this is especially visible in Kant and Smith) is greatly indebted to Machiavellian social theory (including Spinoza’s version of it). And in many contexts it is a useful corrective to emphasize this. But the embrace of an unintended consequence explanation can never be sufficient to count as identifying a liberal social theory. (Today I sidestep the question whether it is necessary.)
At this point one may well worry that I am sliding into a taxonomic quarrel. But stick with me because I promise that’s not the pay-off of today’s post. In fact, I want to focus on two other features.
First, what really matters here is that domestic and international contexts can be treated as analogous in certain respects and that the analogy can reveal something about the character or tenor of the mechanism being analyzed. That’s the valuable point I want to take from Whelan’s (otherwise misguided) observation. (I’ll get to why it’s misguided shortly.) So, for example, while Rawls is echt-liberal, arguably the standard bearer of liberal theorizing during the last half century, his tendency to analysis the basic institutions in terms of a closed society and so to draw a sharp contrast between domestic and international social theory/processes is a mistake or an error from a liberal point of view. A world of closed societies that are all Rawlsian may undoubtedly be better than the present status quo, but it would neither be fully liberal nor an ideal worth having (say, international federalism).
Whelan’s observation is misguided because ostracism, even if it were liberal, is not an instance of a self-regulating system, even if it were true as an empirical fact that “the excessive power of one man provoked an opposite reaction!” In fact, petalism was discontinued because it predictably made wealthy people withdraw from political life and, thereby, made them less interested in the common good even inimical to it (and so risked the survival of the polity).
As I have noted before, the idea that a system is structured around checks and balances is explicitly derived from Bolingbroke by Hume. Hume treats it (correctly) as an empirical mistake and scorns it normatively. Unfortunately, Montesquieu doesn’t realize it is a mistake and so it shapes the American founding. I am perfectly happy to distinguish sharply between the principles that shaped the American founding and those that identify liberalism. So, for me it is unproblematic to deny the identification of liberalism with checks and balances (although the ills that are supposedly treated by it are ills that liberalism also wishes to treat). And so, by implication, Whelan is making a provincial mistake (treating the American experiment as a wholly liberal experiment).
Second, the institution of ostracism/petalism has clear affinity with at least two features of Glaucon's version of the origin of the social contract at Republic 358E-359B: that is, "[i] those who lack the power to avoid [being harmed by others] and [unable to impose harms on others] [ii] determine that it is for their profit to make a compact with one another" (translated by Shorey).
Perhaps, Glaucon’s account of the social contract is even modeled on the practice of ostracism (or would have evoked it to Plato’s audience—not the least because enforced/nudged exile was one of the options on the table during and after Socrates’ trial and sentencing.) Or, perhaps, we may say that Glaucon’s social contract story on the origin of justice shows that Athenian ostracism is the avatar that reveals the true (origin and) nature of Athenian democracy in the strong being subdued by numerical strength.
I have noted before that Hobbes evokes (the conceptual structure of) Glaucon’s account of the social contract early in chapter 13 of Leviathan. There is a more general moral lurking there: in order to argue for the conceptual possibility for an egalitarian social contract (that is compatible with liberal commitments) in which we the contracting parties are treated alike as homogeneous in non-trivial ways (and that has normative or political authority), the construct seems to rest on a prior suppressed (illiberal) step in which the many politically collaborate in subduing the strong. (If one has Lacanian, Zizekian, or Straussian sympathies the previous sentence will be highly significant, of course.)
But that — that balance of power international politics is structurally analogous to ostracism and it to Glaucon’s social contract — just illustrates my main point: none is liberal in character. But it also points to the claim I made yesterday: that in so far as balance of power is thought instrumentally necessary or prudent, it is at best a step toward a liberal social theory or politics. That is, it is part and parcel of the liberal self-understanding of the transition from a bad status quo toward a liberal ideal.