| Mathematics of political power |
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| Written by Ianko Stoianov |
| Saturday, 27 September 2008 21:02 |
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Mathematics of political power
Being aware of the fact that men invested with uncontrolled power have a profound desire to abuse it, Montesquieu ? one of the great philosophers of the Enlightenment ? raised the principle of division of power so that power may check and balance power. The division of the executive, legislative, and judicial powers of government aimed at making it impossible for one person or body to hold all these powers and abuse them and, once introduced, it empowered different persons or bodies to exercise these powers giving them the authority to check the others so that no one and no institution can act tyrannically. A huge merit of Montesquieu?s doctrine is that he taught humanity how to prevent governments from corruption and despotism. Montesquieu?s principle has always been deservedly praised as a great achievement in the development of constitutional law in modern times; due to him the principle of division of power has laid the foundations of development of the bourgeois parliamentary system. His ideas for a mixed and balanced government have proved beyond doubt that they are a relatively good solution to corruption. And last but not least, his theory of separation of powers had an enormous impact on liberal political theory. What the apologists of capitalism never say is that this principle serves predominantly and perfectly well the interests of the exploiting Big Bourgeoisie; however, it does not take into consideration and, therefore, does not care enough about the absolute ends and interests of the peoples and humanity. True, Montesquieu?s principle of division of power helped to make the corrupted feudal states more humane; however, it does not change the fact that Montesquieu failed to criticise and overthrow the very reason for corruption ? the principle of private property over the means of production and, consequently, the total domination of private property over the common good. His theory was not radical enough. The principle of private property is not and cannot be the principle of a state of genuine political freedom for being in possession of all the three powers, the Big Bourgeoisie have unlimited power. Its government is essentially oppressive and thoroughly corrupted and for this reason, it is an immediate and permanent threat to liberty. Real political liberty is not possible in such a state at all. It might pretend to be the real thing, its propaganda might be successful in fooling all people, yet nothing can change the fundamental fact that it is immanently rotten. Montesquieu?s principle still presents a relatively low stage of development of constitutional law because being based on the legitimacy of the principle of private property of exploiting capitalist type, the division of power can only lead to certain limitation of state power over the citizens while the political system created in accordance with it guarantees huge independence of the citizens only in the sphere of their small-minded private affairs. At the same time it imposes on the citizens such far going restrictions that the extent of their political freedom is minimal and insignificant. In a humanist democracy, the People is the sovereign of political power while in the conditions of today?s dictatorship of the Big Bourgeoisie ?the power? of the people to elect the ministers and senators of the Bourgeoisie once every four years is the absolute maximum of power they are allowed to exercise. Being in the camp of the apologists of the principle of private property, like Locke, Machiavelli, Hobbes and most of their contemporaries, Montesquieu bases his teaching on the alienation of the state from Man and society; by its very nature a state, which is based on the principle of private property, is and will always be alienated from Man and society. It cannot be the other way round. The state is a further consequent division of power after the division of power over what used to be common property in the early days of development of humanity, it is a further consequent alienation of Man from the state ruled by one dominating and exploiting class after Man?s alienation of the products of his labour. The Big Bourgeoisie still successfully implements its will to create petty-minded and weak people. The weaker and meeker the ruled and unknowingly totally brainwashed sheep are, the thirstier for power and force their shepherds ? the wolves in sheep?s clothing ? are. Like each exploiting class, which benefits the most from the principle ?Divide et impera,? the modern bourgeois class implements internal state imperialism and creates its own empire. The members of the suppressed class are not completely free; like the freed slaves in ancient Rome they are without any influence on the life of the society. They are ?idiotes?, useless, only biological amorphous mass, which is not organised in any social organisations. These are the symptoms of political alienation and the political nothingness of the people?s masses. The people are suppressed to silence and zero participation in the political processes despite the fact that only they themselves can defend their interests. The dividing line between the ruled and the rulers is more often than not far away from the real political interests of the ruled at any given moment. There is no real political freedom; there is only the limited freedom of a limited democracy. Theoretically speaking, the power of Parliament as well as the executive and judicial functions of government represent totally the power of the all-powerful People; the practice is completely different. The principle of private property concentrates the whole public power in the hands of the ruling class; it vests the ownership of the total public property in the ruling class. Thus, as one of the founding principles of modern quasi-democracies the Montesquieuan principle of division of power is carried out into practice in states, which are based on the even more fundamental principle of division of sovereignty. The division of sovereignty is and must be made illegitimate for sovereignty is indivisible and inalienable. The humanists want to develop and develop Montesquieu?s teaching because the division of power has always served and continues to serve first and foremost the dominating class, not the genuinely common good; nothing can prevent the ruling class from constituting its ?freely elected? dictatorship as long as it holds all the powers of the government in states based on the principle of division of sovereignty ? a principle, which the liberal bourgeois theories and doctrines never talk about. Political systems, in which the principle of division of power is implemented, are still unreliable; constituting despotism, tyranny, dictatorship or totalitarianism cannot be definitely prevented by a Montresquieuan style of mixed and balanced government as long as this government serve the corporate interests of one dominating class and the unspoken principle of its domination ? the principle of division of sovereignty. Without question, the principle of division of the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of government among separate and independent bodies, which are supposedly bound by the rule of law, is still not the true way of manifesting the Universal Will as long as it leads to division of power only within the dominating class, which has already robbed the universal power and has divided the people into two big classes ? the haves power and the have-nots power. Division of power within the frames of the sovereignty of only one dominating and exploiting class and its ideology leads to division of state power between the members of this class and, consequently, cannot but only be a source of demoralising corrupt practices in the highest degree for nobody can be his own judge. No class can ever deserve to be trusted as an unbiased one. That is the reason why we, the Humanists of today declare: This kind of class sovereignty must be destroyed once for ever; only unification of the power of the sovereign People is the truly most important ethical moment for founding a humanist state. True, Montesquieu developed the positive idea of division of power. However, he failed to attain the standpoint that division of power is still susceptible to corruption as long as it is realised in the conditions of the democratic oligarchy established by a greedy, exploiting and totally dominating ? and, therefore, utterly uncontrolled ? class; there has never and nowhere on earth been true democracy since the time of the Great French Revolution. He also did not attain the truly greater idea of uniting powers; Rousseau did it with his idea of the indivisible and inalienable sovereignty of the People, of the integration of the People-ruler. Yet, Rousseau still did not examine the political and economic institutions of the new social order desired by humanity for ages; this task still waits for its meticulous theoretical examination and vigorous practical implementation. Unlike Rousseau, Montesquieu failed to realise and attain the standpoint that the very division of power is not sufficient if the People is not in full possession of its indivisible sovereignty. The division of power in the conditions of totally robbed sovereignty is convenient only for the dominating class; it serves the Big Bourgeoisie as a camouflage. It is only a magnificent way of masking the fact of removing the People-sovereign from power. In Montesquieu?s teaching the principle of rule is taken into its one-sidedness. Being a faithful representative of his class, Montesquieu cannot have failed to take into account the fact that the division of power of an only one dominating class is only possible through removing the people?s masses from power, i.e. through usurpation and privatisation of the power of the sovereign people and, in so doing, annulment and abolition of people?s sovereignty. The politically and economically dominating class robs the total public property of the People-sovereign and deprives it from the public good; thus, the principle of division of power leads to expropriation of the legitimate owner of res publica and founding an unethical state, in which the corrupting nature of power is concealed in the dark corridors of state institutions and seldom sees the sun of truth. So far all ruling classes have been successfully implementing the principle ?Divide et Impera? as a principle of total differentiation. To destroy the Man in man, to differentiate him to his infinitely little individual sovereignty, to make him an infinitesimal quantity ? this is the aim of each exploiting class. The People sinks in the dark night of apathy because its sovereign will for living in a state with an ethical constitution and its development is reduced to the limit of total political nothingness. Our aim is to integrate these infinitesimal quantities in a powerful people with great universal public sovereignty like drops of water from a small stream run into and integrate with the waters of a powerful river so as to become a part of the great ocean. Only such integration will lead to establishing a humanist state order in which all laws of state importance will be based on the will and the knowledge of the sovereign people and will be discussed and passed by it. The French Revolution changed one aristocracy with another, one privileged class with another; the principle of domination of private property of exploiting type continued in much the same way to be the supreme principle of the bourgeois state as it used to be the supreme principle of the feudal state. Thus, the people?s masses had lost their political freedom before they even managed to taste it. It was a destruction of the sovereignty of the people, a destruction of its will for a humanist constitution and a humanist state. Humanity has needed the whole following development up to our time in order not only to understand the absolute necessity with which the humanist state must be established but also how to establish it. A magnificent epoch of ethical Renaissance of humanity constituting the principles of rational state law and truly just legislation is forthcoming. This is the good news of XXI century: a total ethical transformation of the peoples as a way of overcoming the moral decline of capitalism and all kind of societies ruled by an exploiting class is coming. Rousseau is right: ?As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march out to war, they pay troops and stay at home: when it is necessary to meet in council, they name deputies and stay at home. By reason of idleness and money, they end by having soldiers to enslave their country and representatives to sell it. ... As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State What does it matter to me? the State may be given up for lost.?1 This is a beautiful theorem about the total differentiation of the infinitely great, which disintegrates into infinitesimal private worlds; a state without citizens with strong political will is based on an atomised society. Man?s voice is of no significance before, during and after the elections because the social order at which only one class is in possession of state power is only possible by virtue of a perfectly planned and perfectly implemented system, which ensures the quantitative nothingness of each voice in the state. The constitution of each class state is possible only due to the preliminary destruction and abolition of the political freedom of the community, the result being that the influence of each particular individual and the sovereign people as a whole is an infinitesimal quantity in the very beginning when the state is founded. The task of such constitutions is to destroy the desire of the People to be in possession of the public good; the exploiting class can successfully defend its prosperity only when it deals with the infinitesimal wills of the so called citizens, who in fact are nothing else but modern feudal subjects deprived of their supreme property, i.e. of their political Freedom. The XXI century will declare such constitutions illegitimate and will throw away once and for all the bourgeois institutions of modern slavery. As for the role of political parties in modern political life it must be said that they also restrict and impose ideological frames on what is unlimited and infinite by nature. They limit the power of the sovereign and control it; their governments quickly become oligarchic ones. We recognise the validity of the principle of division of power but only as a subordinate moment of the principle of integration and unification of power in the hands of its sovereign owner ? the People. Mathematically speaking, in real political life differential calculus and integral calculus are equally important and it is absolutely necessary that they are used in their unity. We want the principle of unification ? the principle of integration ? of power to become the dominating principle in the ethical humanist state. Therefore, we want to perform the most beautiful act of expropriation of the expropriators of public property. The absolute monstrous power of the Big Global Capital has to be limited and controlled. We have to cut the heads of the insatiable hydra. We have to develop Montesquieu?s theory and achieve a balance of power. On the one hand, we should not be in the way of our most motivated entrepreneurial compatriots. On the other hand, we cannot allow them to destroy our sovereignty, the beauty of our social life as members of an ethical political community, the beauty of our world as well as our environment. The humanists want to begin to apply the method of political integral calculus with a view of performing a new humanist revolution; the name of this method has been well known for millennia: fight. A fight for a just social order based on the principle of integral and indivisible sovereignty of the people. Division of power realised on the basis of the indivisible sovereignty of the People is a sine qua non for genuine democracy. Only the principle of universal public property can lead to the establishment of a new humanistic civilisation. We reject the present social order in which everyone is forced to pay attention to their private affairs only so that a limitless number of members of the middle class deals only with their private needs and incomes, take care of their private interests and satisfaction of their egoistic desires; excluded from the decision making process and totally expropriated, they are politically alienated and totally apolitical. They have never been brought up to love their political freedom and public happiness. The common deeds of the nation are as alien to every alienated individual as they used to be during the absolute monarchy because time and time again the common deeds of the People are thoroughly in the hands of an increasingly narrowing circle of the economically and politically dominating class, which has the extraordinary privilege to reap the benefits of its enormous power to deal with the state affairs and defend its interests in full conformity with its class will. This formula has already outlived its time. The time of the principle of humanism has come. The Humanists, search for and want to propose solutions which promote political freedom, which is only possible when the People has the supreme legislative power. A true limitation and genuine legitimacy of state power can exist only if the state order is based on public freedom, not on the one-day preposterous performance of the people in its role as a ?sovereign? once every four years; a state order, which is based on direct not representative democracy. No matter how good Montesquieu?s principle of division of (state) power is, as long as it is supposed to work within the frames of a capitalist society, a society based on the principle of private property of exploiting type, it is utterly unethical. The Humanists want to base ethics on the principle of public property; the only one that can make the citizens ethically great for it aims at limiting the power of private property and, thus, achieving the highest possible citizens? independence. We want to change the world; the standpoint of the newest politovolia is: freedom of the political community as such, equality of communities, brotherhood of people. We come to make it happen. We want to wake up the will of the European People for sovereignty, liberty, equality and fraternity. With this end in view we want to educate it, to help it perfect its statesmanship talents, political ethics and make the voice of its powerful will the source of its universal state legislation. The ethical imperative of the will of each individual is to develop himself up to the degree at which he enters into possession of the universal principles of Universal Will, i.e. understanding it and willing it as his own, he wills to constitute himself as a statesman having the political will and the necessary big life experience to implement these principles ? the principles of humanism ? in life. What is the opposite of DIVIDE ET IIMPERA? Isn?t it UNITE AND RULE? Under this flag we will win and change the world. The winners have it all ? united we are invincible. The days of representative democracy are counted ? we will not leave the exploiting Big Bourgeoisie and its political puppets in charge of the decision making process any more. The Equality of human beings running their own public affairs is of enormous importance; the majority decides. It cannot be limited to a subordinate role. It is sovereignty that generates political capital uniting the people and makes them statesmen through a universal positive mindset and orientation towards the absolute ends of Man and humanity. Due to the positive energy of uniting the people and their integrating as a powerful and sovereign political community, the society has and enjoys a high degree of political mobilisation, social unity and solidarity. The task is to increase the legislative rights of the sovereign to whom the whole totality of power in the sphere of state ruling belongs; it is time for us to begin this powerful humanist revolution. Every law can be valid only as an act of the integral people?s sovereignty. Now when the spare time of the people belonging to the modern political proletariat ? the working class and the middle class ? is above and beyond the daily effort for mere survival, it is time for them to unite, roll up their sleeves, go to the streets and defeat the all-embracing neo-liberal ideology. The potential of their rational will is incredible; united they will overcome and win. Mathematically speaking, their integration will be possible then and only then when they cease to be political nulls, come out of the darkness of their political nothingness and unite their wills for achieving their well deserved enormous political magnitude and magnificence. Division of power without united and indivisible people?s sovereignty can only create an extreme inequality of wills and a very unjust state ? only the will of the dominating class is imposed and implemented. The world is bound to be changed radically; the old-fashioned form of Bourgeois democracy must be decisively overthrown for it promotes first and foremost the self-interests of the Bourgeoisie. The division of political power only amongst the members of the economically exploiting class, which robs the united and indivisible sovereignty of the People in order to reap the benefits of exploitation, can only create and always creates an extreme inequality of wills and a very unjust state for only the will of the dominating class is thoroughly imposed and implemented. No more! Nevermore! This is unacceptable in the XXI century and in the centuries to come. Private property ends there where public property begins. Only such a society can be humane. No division of power can be authentically legitimate as long as the Big Bourgeoisie is in possession of the state. Montesquieu failed to understand that or he did not want to understand it. The ideologues of Big Capital cunningly hide this fact. Only a society, in which the people?s masses are in possession of the sovereignty and participate in power can be truly humanistic. Establishing full democracy in which the voters directly take the decisions they want and abolish the division between the rulers and the ruled is a must. The integration, the unification of the people is put high on the agenda. The political proletariat must be educated so as to become capable of establishing humanism and a truly republican form of government. Unlike the particulars selfish wills of the ?people's? representatives in the bourgeois state, the Common Will of the sovereign People is based on the union of as many voices and Wills as the number of the members of the universal parliament is, i.e. it is based on the will and energy of the whole people. A People cannot take part in the political life of its country as an elector only; it is the sovereign. A truly public power is based on the sovereignty of the People and belongs to the People. Yet, if it does not carry out into practice its will energetically, public freedom dies and nobody enjoys public happiness in such a political community. Unfortunately, nowadays the People is still the servant not the master of governments. No more! The Neo-Humanist Will is revolutionary because it goes beyond the bourgeois idea of state based on the principle of private property of exploiting type. Humanism develops all preceding political principles in new light so that there is a new leading idea ? the principle of a truly humanistic state: ?Unite and rule together. The sovereignty of the people is indivisible.? This is the soul and will of the neo-humanist revolution. Our task is to transform the now existing division of power in accordance with this principle. The newest social revolution aims at changing the very organisation of the political community so as to adapt it to the absolute ends of Man and humanity better than ever before; it aims at freedom. But it is going to be a freedom of a new kind, a humanist freedom ? the source of public happiness.
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