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Marx, Hobbes, Rawls, Burke, Mill, Rousseau, Locke - Coggle Diagram

- - - - This is also why he believed slavery was abolished under capitalism, because slavery violates the idea that everyone owns their own labor.
      - Marx believes that its this contraditcion in capitalism that will primarily lead to its downfall as the working class keeps understianding their power and their shared interests in challenging capitalism, or what he calls "class conciousness".
        
        Marx believes the 2 main reasons as to why the workers will want to escape capitalism is because of alientation and exploitation.
        
        Marx believes that capitalism crushed the human spirit and denied most people their greatest potential. Capitalism is marked by people working long hours and doing repetative uncreative tasks. Marx points to 4 different types of alienation.
        
        Alienation from the product of labor. They produce goods and services which they have no control over and are produced for the capital owner.
        
        Alientation from productive activity. This is the feeling of being estranged from the process of work itself (forced, repetitive, controlled by others)
        
        Alienation from 'species being'. This is when humans get alienated from their true nature which marx defines as creative and productive.
        
        Marx later drops this conception of human nature because he doesnt want to engage in normative debate unlike the rest of the political philosophers.
        
        Alienation from each other. Marx believes that capitalism is inherently atomic and individualistic, as it gives rise to individual freedoms and rights and competition.
        
        From the middle writings onwards he analyzes the relationship between the worker and the capitlaist and is inherently exploitative.
        
        Exploitation stems from the worker creating a good that can be sold for more. Marx believes the capitalist extracts the surplus value in form of profit here.
        
        Here he comes close to making normative claims however he still vehemently argues that he doesnt make moral claims and doesnt have a theory of justic as the sets of ideas will always be formed in a specific mode of production. I think I lean to agreeing with him that he isnt making normative claims here.
        
        Marx believes this will bring about a "non-peaceful" revolution, much like the bourgoise revolution in france.
        
        He thinks the capitalists will defend their institutions in 3 different ways.
        
        inculcation of false conciousness. essentially using things like religion or other forms of false conciousness to distract the masses. Famously marx called religion "The opium of the masses."
        
        Amelioration of worker conditions. He believes that the state will improve conditions slowly to reduce the pressure cooker effect slowly realeasing steam.
        
        Force. He believes its impossible to believe a smooth transition.
      - Marx believes the state is part of a 'superstrucutre' of capitalism. He disagrees with other conceptions of the state and believes that the state is just a product of the mode of production. He believes the state is the "executive comitee of the bourgousie" and executes the will of it.
        
        He thought the economic structure of society "is the real foundation on which rise a legal and political superstructure."
        
        He is opposed to working class reforms, he is opposed to the theories of distributive justice which see the state as a vehicle that can impartially arbitrate between different classes.
        
        He believes that after capitalism falls the state will wither away because once there is no need for an entity to uphold the power of the owners, there will be no need for a state.
        
        This is obviously the most retarded point.
  - - - The force of production is a marxian term for the existing tech and productive capactities that the tech gives rise to.
        
        These forces of production give rise to different modes of production (eg. feudalism, capitalism, communism) He says "the hand mill gives you a society with the feudal lord, the steam mill the society with the industrial capitalist."
        
        Because the forces of production evolved faster than the relations of production the system breaks.
        
        For example: The Steam Engine (Force) is invented. It requires mass labor in factories. But the Feudal system (Relation) ties serfs to the land. The Force clashes with the Relation. The Relation must "burst asunder" (Revolution) to create a new Mode (Capitalism) where workers are free to move to factories.
- - - - Because of the "right of nature" people want to escape the "State of Nature" (War of all against all) and thus willingly and rationally abdicate all rights and freedoms to the soverign to maximize self-preservation. "covenants without the sword are but words"
        
        To uphold peace the power of the state must be absolute. Rebellion can never be justified as our obligation to the state is absolute and it would be irrational to dissobey it because it is absolutely powerful
        
        Hobbes says the best form of government would probably be a monarchy becaus it centralizes power the most and reduces potential factionalism, but he doesnt rule anything out. The soverign is an "artificial person" so they dopnt have to literally be just one person.
        
        This makes sense however it creates the threat of making a ruler who isnt motivated to uphold the natural rights and instead to engratiate himself with more power. Locke argues that this actually puts the soverign in a state of nature, there is nothing impeding him from acting capriciously.
        
        The paradox here is that hobbes escapes the state of fear by creating another artificial state of fear (however one could argue that if the state would function as hobbes says self preservation would acutally be upheld thus maintaining rationality.)
        
        Locke argues that this isnt necessary because we are giving up small violences for a larger violence, we go from equality to no power
        
        The only time a person can disobey the soverign is if the soverign directly impinges on their right to preservation.
        
        However this then raises the issue that if a person has a right to resist when their self preservation feels threatened we actually havent left the state of nature.
  - - - Another argument against this comes from Burke because Burke believes that our basest nature is probably filled with conflict but our second nature civilizes us. He believes that second nature restrains and guides our natural passions.
- - - - Rawls believes society, like the contractarians, as being based on agreement, specifically hw asks what agreement could we make about the nature of justice. He does this by devising an explicitly hypothetical social contract.
        
        This hypothetical seeks to answer the question of what people would agree to in, what Rawls calls the original poistion, to be fair.
        
        The original position is a device to model the initial situation from which the contract is agreed.
        
        All parties must have a self-interest in securing "social primary goods", for example health, wealth, education, all things needed for a decent life.
        
        All parties must be mutually disinterested, and not act in groups or blocks and must be rational, in this case they must be able to make informed and coherent decisions about different options.
        
        All parties must be put behind a veil of ignorance.
        
        Parties in the original position dont know their conception of good, they dont know if they are religios, utilitarians, they dont know anything that make them individuals and inform them of what is important and good in life.
        
        The veil of ignorance is intended to ensure fairness, since nobody can design principles to favor their specific conditions.
        
        They dont know their class or location, their gender or ethnicity, their genetics or natural skills, they literally know nothing.
        
        These things then lead Rawls to believe that people would rationally agree to 2 principles of justice due to a maximin (maximizing the minimum position) strategy, which is basically designed to ensure that no matter where they spawn they have access to the best possible life.
        
        Each person has an equal right to pursue the maximum basic liberty, as long as it doesnt impose on others' basic liberties. This is the most important principle as it has lexical priority above the others.
        
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        (The Difference Principle) Social and economic inequalities are aranged so they provide the most benefit to the least advantaged.
        
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        Society should have maximum equal opportunity allowing any person to reach any office or position.
- - - - He believes its an aggregate way to view morality and doesnt recognize the seperatness of persons. He is heavily influenced by Kant here and believes people cant be a means to an end, they have to be an end in of themselves.
      - Rawls believes utilitarianism is a moral theory that imposes a conception of good onto people, which may not track with ones own definition of what good is.
- - - - He didnt believe in absolute monarchy where the monarch can act outside the law. However the french attempt to establish a republic had no stabalizing institutions.
        
        He also was worried about the atheism of the french revolution because he saw the church as one of those stabalizing institutions.
- - - - This is very appealing to me and feels very intuative. "if it aint broke dont fix it", there is a lot of sense to this to, if something has survived for a long time it stands to reason there may be some virtue to it. However this may quickly devolve into anti-progressivism, for example "we have lasted this long without vaccines, why do we need them now" or "women have never had the right to vote and we have been doing well, why do we need it now". The mentality that just because something has always been done one way, its the correct way to do that something can be very damaging. Yes we cant throw out the baby with the bathwater, but we also cant let the baby drown in the bath.
- - - - The only exception to this rule is when people dont have their full mental capacity, this include children, but also people from non-european nations.
      - This then naturally followed that Mill believes speech should only be restricted if it causes harm to other people
        
        Things like "offense" are strictly exceptions however because if offense constitutes harm then free speech is impossible. A Christian is "offended" by an Atheist. An Atheist is "offended" by a Christian. If the state polices offense, nobody can speak.
        
        Mill argues that "harm" must be direct and assignable (e.g., physical injury or theft), not just "hurt feelings."
    - - He thought dangerous or unpopular views shouldnt be censored, instead they should compete on the "Marketplace of ideas". In this view the "bad ideas" would fall out of fasion and the "good ideas" would rise to the top.
        
        He believed individuals were mor elikely to see the errors of their ways if they were to engage in open debate. This also forced people to defend their ideas and prevent them from becoming an unchallenged dogma.
        
        Mill also believed this would increase the diversity of perspectives allowing us to see problems from different points of view, this is important because he believed no single position expressed everything that was important, particularly in politics.
        
        This is also a good defense against tyranical government in his eyes.
  - - - This undermines his Liberty Principle. If "Competent Judges" say reading is objectively better than drinking, the state could justify taxing alcohol to fund libraries, arguing it is "increasing utility." This drifts from Negative Liberty (freedom from interference) to Positive Liberty (freedom to be a "better" human).
- - - - Locke argues that god has given mean both the earth and reason, and that men have property of their own person, nobdoy has a right over the body of anyone else.
        
        So if man mixes his labor, his body, with the eart, he makes it his property. However this belief gives rise to a proviso.
        
        The "spoilage proviso" states that individuals can only claim ownership over natural resources if they use them and prevent waste, ensuring there's "enough, and as good" left for others. This was because god didnt give it to us to spoil or destroy but rather to cultivate and improve.
        
        But what happens where there is no property left in the commons? This is where money comes in. You cant own 1000 appples, they will rot, but silver doesnt.
        
        By agreeing to use money, humanity tacitly agreed to the consequence of money: the ability to accumulate infinite wealth without spoilage. Therefore, inequality is not unjust; it is a product of mutual consent to use money.
        
        A massive critique is that this ignores individuals who dont directly mix their labor with their lands such as native americans who wernt farmers.
  - - - This therefore leads to the justification of the state which exists to settle those disagreements as an independent body. It exists to determine how to uphold enforce and protect those natural rights
        
        As opposed to Hobbes Locke believes that the state must uphold the laws of nature, and if it ever doesnt the people have the right to overthrow it through a "Right to Resistance" (Popular Sovereignty).
        
        He argued that if the government is tyrannical and acts against the laws of nature, its the government thats in opposition to legitimate authority and should be considered a rebel to civil society. The people are reinstating a rightful order by taking themslves out of the state of nature produced by the tyrannical government.
        
        Locke believed the first step to forming the state is universal consent by all peoples to form a political community.
        
        the second step is that they take a majority vote on who would rule them.
        
        This differes with hobbes as it sets up a contract between a preformed political society and a soverign, where hobbes saw the sovereign as independent from the contract.
        
        Locke believes people provide "tacit consent" to the social contract by accepting benefits such as livbing in the country, using its roads, consuming its goods, or enjoying the benefits of it.
        
        People can dispute that this is a valid form of consent because they dont believe you can consent if there are no other reasonable options.