HOBBES AND THE STATE

Hobbesian theory of the State, which he calls Commonwealth, is the centerpiece of his political philosophy, and the reader may already have guessed what interests me in it the most. There are just two distinct types of political mindset, in my judgment, worth being closely analyzed and compared; they are the democratic mindset and the totalitarian mindset. Hobbes is by no means a democrat. Among the three principal forms of government, which he identifies,-- monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy-- he clearly prefers monarchy. But this does not make him a totalitarian, of course, because autocracy, which is the usual form of rule in historical monarchies, stands almost as far away from totalitarianism as modern Western democracies do. (We are obviously not talking in terms of oppression versus freedom, but about the rationale behind each form of government.)

We start with Hobbes’s identification of the different forms of government. Here is the pertinent passage from Leviathan, Chapter XIX, which explains that there are only three:

“There are other names of government in the histories and books of policy, such as tyranny and oligarchy, but these are not the names of other forms of government, but of the same forms… disliked. For, those who are displeased with monarchy, call it tyranny, those who are displeased with aristocracy, call it oligarchy, and those who find themselves grieved under democracy call it anarchy which means want of government; and yet, I think, no man believes that want of government is any new kind of government: nor, by the same reason, ought they to believe that the government is of one kind when they like it, and of another when they dislike it, or are oppressed by the governors.” (From Leviathan, Chapter XIX.)

(The word Commonwealth, however, is used most profusely, in reference to any kind of government among the three, since all of them are presumably organized under some kind of contract, or covenant. Meantime, I don’t think that Hobbes likes the word Republic, as it is nowhere to be found in his works although he must have been aware of its use by Machiavelli and in all probability saw the word commonwealth as the English equivalent of the Latin res publica, which two terms are linguistically compatible, but in practical usage not identical at all!)

Now, before we get to the promised discussion of the totalitarian ideal, and whether it is present or absent in Hobbes, here is how Russell writes about Hobbes’s preference for monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government (the quotation is rather lengthy, but extremely valuable and therefore indispensable):

Hobbes prefers the monarchy, but his abstract arguments are equally applicable to all forms of government, in which there is one supreme authority not limited by the legal rights of the other bodies. He could tolerate Parliament alone,  but not a system in which government power is shared between the king and Parliament. This is the exact antithesis to the views of Locke and Montesquieu. The English Civil War occurred, says Hobbes, because power was divided between King, Lords, and Commons.

The supreme power, whether a man or assembly, is called the Sovereign. The powers of the Sovereign are unlimited. He has the right of censorship over all expression of opinion. It is assumed that his interest is the preservation of internal peace, and that therefore he will not use the power of censorship to suppress truth, for a doctrine repugnant to peace cannot be true. A singularly pragmatist view! (This is also reminiscent of Giovanni Gentile’s vigorous defense of the fascist /totalitarian/ ideal against its unconvinced practitioners.) The laws of property are to be entirely subject to the sovereign; for in a state of nature there is no property, and therefore property is created by government, which may control its creation as it pleases.

It is admitted that the sovereign may be despotic, but even the worst despotism is better than anarchy. And moreover, in many points the interests of the sovereign are identical with those of his subjects. (Running a little bit before my horse to market, here is a trademark of the totalitarian mindset if I ever saw one!) He is richer if they are richer, safer if they are law-abiding, and so on. Rebellion is wrong both because it usually fails, and because, if it succeeds, it sets a bad example, and teaches others to rebel. Aristotelian distinction between tyranny and monarchy is rejected; a tyranny, according to Hobbes, is merely a monarchy that the speaker happens to dislike.

Various reasons are given for preferring government by monarch to government by assembly. Admittedly, the monarch will usually follow his private interest, when it conflicts with that of the public, but so will an assembly. A monarch may have favorites, but so may every member of the assembly; therefore the number of favorites is likely to be fewer under a monarchy. A monarch can hear advice from anybody secretly; an assembly can only hear advice from its own members, and that, only publicly. In an assembly, the chance absence of some may cause a different party to obtain majority, and thus produce a sharp change of policy. Moreover, if the assembly is divided against itself, the result may be civil war. (It is easy to see that none of the arguments in this paragraph are applicable to the ideal totalitarian society, where private interests of the sovereign are never supposed to clash with the public interest, because they both converge in the interest of the state presumably representing the common public interest and the private interests of all those who hold the interests of the State close to their heart.) For all these reasons, Hobbes concludes, a monarchy is best.

From all that we can find in Hobbes’s political philosophy, his mindset is very close to the totalitarian one, except that unable to formulate the totalitarian principles and perhaps unable to understand them in his time and age, he stops short of endorsing the pure totalitarian ideal, and picks up the second best, as corresponds to his specific mindset. (It is quite clear that Locke and Montesquieu were considerably more up to par with their own political philosophy, as based upon their democratic mindsets, but Hobbes’s immense value is in presenting us with the other side of the political story, against which the democrats are biased, or else, their mind is shut close to it.)

In my distinction between the two mindsets, formulated in my entry Totalitarianism And Democracy, there are two key criteria, the first of which is the concept of national interest, identified as State interest, and in no way allowing a multiplicity of conflicting interests within the State. Whenever such multiplicity should be present, this is an indication of an existing anti-State, or anti-national interest, and such interest must be extinguished by force. Ironically, Russell criticizes Hobbes for this very reason that he always considers the national interest as a whole, and assumes, tacitly, that the major interests of all citizens are the same. He doesn’t realize the importance of the clash between different classes, which Marx makes the cause of social change.

What Russell himself ignores in this critique is that the Marxian class struggle within the same State is an indication of a revolutionary potential, meaning that the state has not reached its optimum of development and social stability. The totalitarian ideal indicates the reaching of such an optimal point, and now, just as Hobbes asserts, the unity of national interest becomes the basis of social stability and institutional health.

The other criterion is the basic attitude of trust or mistrust of power. Clearly, the democrats distrust power, with which in mind they have come up with the system of checks and balances. To Hobbes, any diffusion of power is anathema, and, therefore, in his trust of power, he reveals the unmistakable totalitarian mindset, limited only by his ignorance of the basic tenets of totalitarianism, with its glorification of the State-as-one. Hobbes comes somewhat close to it, but only Hegel, many years later, was first able to discern and formulate it in its philosophical essence.