Too Close for Comfort

  One fact, when reading Hobbes, need always to be born in mind. Here was a man who lived through the slippage of a country from an apparently well ordered, prosperous, and by and large peaceful state, into anarchy, in a matter of two years. Hobbes is fixated, both by how incredibly easy it is for any, even the most apparently stable of systems to collapse; but also by the very many ways there are for anarchy to slowly, but malignantly grow within any apparently ordered system, including our own. To see the closeness of such anarchies, even in our day, one only needs to think back seven years or so to the so called ‘fuel protest’. Refineries were blocked by lorries, and the normal rules broke down, fuel ran dry by panic buying, and the entire country juddered very suddenly to a halt, with the government apparently powerless to stop it.  Anarchy seemed possibly just around the corner, and the sigh of relief when the blockade was lifted was palpable. Or once again, on a local level, one only needs to think of the corrosion to normality effected by terrorism. Once a certain set of the population start behaving in unpredictable and dangerous ways, then the entire rues by which the police capture ‘criminals’ appeared suspended, and a man was shot for merely ‘looking like someone who looked like a terrorist’. The ‘normal rules of the game’, are so very easy to lose, when faced with an emergency, a loss, which Hobbes was only too aware could have serious, and often very far reaching effects.

  Hobbes’ analysis might perhaps usefully be divided up, in the context of the current discussion, into three main topics. Firstly there is the very deep problem of where anarchy comes from. That is - why is order never simply enough? Why is it unstable and in need of defence? Secondly there is the problem of how one avoids anarchy growing within a state. What is it then that a state can do, or more importantly what must it not do, to preserve the order it cherishes? Thirdly, there needs to be some kind of analysis of the forces internal to society, whose effect is naturally to destabilise the whole. In this last topic perhaps one needs to go beyond Hobbes, as it appears to be the case, for modernity at least, that there are more anarchies than the simple brute violence of the state of nature which Hobbes allows for; anarchies that need to concern us all. Each topic will be briefly examined in turn.

  Firstly - where does anarchy come? From here Hobbes’ argument is at once profound and original. He turns the problem of the growth of anarchy within a system into a problem for reason. That is, he asks why is it that reason can never save us from anarchy? Or better, why is it sometimes reasonable to be an anarchist? His answer was that reason is merely a form of reckoning up what is  (akin to counting), and does not contain any high ideal of its own. What it is reasonable to do, therefore depends very much on the circumstances from which one is reasoning. Thence one cannot expect reason, to form a rational whole cogent in all its parts. On the contrary, it will produce a whole variety of different ‘worlds’; each growing out of a certain set of assumptions and with no compulsion about never being simply reconcilable. This does not of course mean that one cannot pose the problem of reconciling the whole in reason itself. Of course one can, but this ‘whole’ will merely exist alongside all the parts, as yet another product of reason, and cannot expect to simply engross them all.

  In short reason is terribly pluralistic. It reckons up what is in very many different voices. To give an example, drawn from current political turmoil: It is clear that the current turmoil in Kenya is the product of very many stories; there is a  story about simple corruption; but also a story about post colonial politics; a story about the oddness of foistering nation states on Africa; a story about riches; and one about the corrupting effect of tourism; a story about so called ‘ethnic’ tensions…All these stories, all these ways to ‘understand’ the all too real violence, and the reasoning informing all of them, stoke the unrest, without any one needing to be dominant. The problem is of course, is that for us in the West, all this complexity is a little dangerous to grasp. For if we understood the violence in its richest complexity, not only would we be implicated within its inception (colonialism), but also (and even more worryingly), we might start to worry that some of the same themes were found in our own society (and therefore violence might stalk us too). In order to counter this fear, no doubt, we focus in on the most alien aspect of the violence, the ‘tribal’ dimension; and thereby collapse a complex and highly intricate problem into merely yet another colonial tale from Africa…

  For Hobbes’ answer to the problem of pluralistic reason, is stark. A state is only possible, he suggests if it is able to ensure, by whatever means, a certain set of fixed assumptions. Once these assumptions are fixed, the role of the ruler (whoever they might be) is essentially done, as reason can be trusted to do the rest. But what reason can never do is to set up the assumptions in the first place. This of course leads Hobbes to consider how these rules might be created. Here he is notoriously ‘realistic’. At the most basic of levels, he argues that it does not matter how the rules are set up, since they are created in a domain of anarchy. Any robber chief, or brigand capable of enforcing his word by violence might do the trick, so long as they suitably impress people with a certain set of do’s or don’ts. Moreover it is always better to have such a tyranny, than it is a state of anarchy, where the violence is at once unpredictable and horrific. This is of course the Iraq problem. Is it better to live under an evil old tyrant, or an anarchy?

  However one needs not to over simplify Hobbes at this point. He is very aware that on the most general level of reason, there are certain ‘rules of generalized reason’, which, if always followed would create a stable order. Key to these is the rule to treat others as one would wish to be treated oneself. These rules, encompass both the state of war, and the state of law. Not all sets of assumptions need to be of equal value therefore (although all lead one beyond the state of nature). However, for Hobbes this very fact, creates a new, and bitter problem. It is perfectly possible to live within a tyranny, and be its dutiful citizen, and yet look enviously to other systems, where the assumptions are closer to the more generalized rule of reason. However between the two systems there will still exist an unpredictable chasm of anarchy. It becomes therefore impossible to plot a simple path between the two systems, as every path is beset by the irruptions of anarchies. So that Glasnost and Perestroika tumble rather easily into anarchy. One needs care here not to be too pessimistic. Hobbes is not saying that such reforms are impossible, merely that the path which one plots will always be far more complex than one thought it should be.

This last point leads one to the second of the topics mentioned above. How is it that a state destabilizes itself? For Hobbes the essence of law, and reason lies in its very universal application. Hobbes means this very seriously. The great act that inaugured the English Civil War was the quasi-judicial murder of the Earl of Strafford by an act of attainder. That is, by a law, passed by Parliament that declared it illegal to be the Earl of Strafford, and fixed the penalty at death. Such an act, which saw a state step beyond the role of fixing assumptions, and so beyond reason, in effect impelled the most apparently stable of states back into a state of nature; And once the state itself has committed this sin against its own nature, anarchy naturally (and for Hobbes inevitably) followed.

  It is well for us not to be too smug here. For it is clear that we are currently, in Britain at least, running at the smallest of levels, an experiment, in personalized law. What else after all is the so called ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order), but an attempt to make a person (or certain of their thoughts) illegal? Here is surely a very modern equivalent to the act of attainder. The penalty might, in keeping with modern sentiments, be not be death but prison; and the policy might be supported by statistics (cod or otherwise), but the basic idea of making the person and not the crime the criminal is the same. And, so on a deep level is its effect. That is, once the state has become involved, legally, on the level of the person, the effects of that involvement become unstable, and highly problematic. An ASBO very easily becomes a badge of honour; while the high street, replete with its personalized criminals, collapses into a state of near anarchy every Saturday night.

  Here one can put in an additional qualification. As the ASBO, unlike the act of attainder does not condemn the whole person, so the anarchy it produces pertains not to the whole society, so much as that portion of it, that are caught up in the betrayal of the ASBO. That is, one is not simply in the world of Hobbes here. For Hobbes, anarchies, once conjured up grow, like a cancer, consuming the entire state. We, on the contrary, appear to have uncovered a principle where localized betrayals lead to localized anarchies, which the state strives to contain, rather than to anything more general. Or at least we have to hope that that is the case… Perhaps it goes without saying here, that one can make pretty much the same series of observations about the anti-terrorist laws. And yet here, as the laws enacted against the person are far more draconian (and so far more like the act of attainder), it is far less clear that we are so very far removed from the state of anarchy, at least, that is, in the mind of those who feel themselves betrayed. - The one consequence of ‘the war on terror ‘ which we all need to be terrified of.

  This last observation leads one to the third of the topics. How is it that anarchy might develop within a state, and whether there are more anarchies than the state of war itself (although it is always the limiting case)? Hobbes is very clear on the first of these points. Anarchy can very easily grow within a system when elements of that system have a vested interest in undermining the assumptions upon which the entire edifice of reason is built. Hobbes mistrusted democracy on precisely this point. It is, in a democracy all too easy for the losing party to cry foul (or the winners to have cheated), querying the entire process, and impelling one back towards a state of war - one thinks irresistibly of Kenya or Pakistan here at the moment…

  And yet it is clear enough that there are far more insidious processes possible here. What matters after all is that the assumptions, and the language expressing those assumptions, is fixed by the state. Once that language, and those assumptions start to be systematically changed and challenged, by elements inside the state (whosoever they may be), then the very parameters upon which politics is based, will slowly be warped, and twisted out of all recognition. Essentially this is of course very much the situation in which we currently find ourselves. The language by which we express and think about the state is being slowly, and yet systematically reworked by both the media and politicians, who thereby both hope to gain relatively short term advantage.

  The result has once again not been a violent state of war  (although it is possible this might happen), so much as gradually slipping into what has so far been a ‘gentle’ (if highly corrosive) anarchy. We are told the old social and political order of respect, and policy led government, has been replaced by a far ‘freer’ system, where personality is king. And yet, one wonders what is an anarchy (as Hobbes at least uses the them) but a system where personality (that is an individual’s ability to oblige others to their will) matters over law, and where anyone or everyone might become a king (we could after all, - we all can become a ‘celebrity’, no matter what our talent). Moreover, once it is conceded that there are more forms of violence than simple blood letting (and Hobbes did not have the necessary experience to allow for this fact), then it becomes clear enough that, on its own level, the viciousness of the celebrity culture, with its endless creation and destruction of ‘stars’ is just as brutal as any state of war might be…

  As with other essays in this series, there are two rather different Hobbes. The one (as by and large taught on classic political theory courses up and down the land) is seen exclusively in terms of his times, and rivets all his terms into their historical context (a state of war therefore equals a state of violence). A second Hobbes however becomes possible, immediately one pulls out the ideas from their historical context, and allows them to sing for our times. This Hobbes clearly has rather too many, and rather too uncomfortable things to say to our times, for comfort. Hobbes might claim, with some reason, that our times seem to delight in flying in the face of most of his principles. The result, he would add, in the West at least, has not been violent anarchy (yet), but rather an insidious corrosion of our political systems, which has quietly impelled us towards new, but just as problematic, if gentle anarchies. Anarchies that perhaps we need the clarion call of Hobbes to be able to truly understand and resist.