Headline Aug 20, 2014/

''' THE POWER OF THE POWERLESS ''' : !WOW!

''' EVIL- INJUSTICE- SUFFERINGS '''    -have for long, rather  very, very long, been great teachers and great guide to the powerless, and even the quagmired and lost.

I cannot say for sure. but I do hope that the world has  -over many. many centuries learnt something from them  -starting with and not limited to, the great master :  political philosophy. 

More than that, it is always argued, and correctly,   that liberal democracy may constitute the ''end point of mankind's ideological evolution''   -and the final form of human government.

That is, while earlier forms of government were characterised by  grave defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, transparent, fair, free  -liberal democracy was arguably free from such fundamental internal contradictions.

Any country, and society, that attempts to evolve with internal contradictions, withers away. Have no doubt, that the world's most developed countries are also its most successful democracies. 

REALISM  is a theory that maintains that insecurity, aggression, and war are permanent possibilities in the international state system, and that this condition is a  human condition, that is:

A condition that cannot by altered by the appearance of specific forms and types of human societies because it is ultimately rooted in unchanging human nature.

In support of this contention, realists point to the prevalence of war throughout human history, from the first bloody battles recorded in the Bible up to the world wars of this century.

All of this sounds intuitively plausible, but realism rests on two extremely shaky foundations : an impermissible reductionism concerning the motives and behaviour of human societies, and failure to address the question of History.

In its purest form, realism tries to banish all considerations of internal politics, and to deduce the possibility of war from the structure of the state system alone.

According to one  realist, ''Conflict is common among states because the international system creates powerful incentives for aggression.........States seek to survive under anarchy by maximising their power relative to other states.

But this pure form of realism covertly reintroduces certain highly reductionist assumptions about the nature of the human societies that make up the system, mistakenly attributing them to the  ''system''   rather than to the units that make up the system.

There is, for example, absolutely no reason to assume that any state in an anarchic international order should feel threatened by another state, unless one had reason to think that human societies were inherently aggressive. 

The international order described by realists closely resembles the state of nature of Hobbes, where man is in a state of war against all.

But Hobbes's state of war does not arise out of the simple desire for self-preservation, but because self-preservation co-exists with vanity or the desire for recognition.

Were there not some men who desired to impose their views upon others, particularly those imbued with the spirit of religious fanaticism, then Hobbes himself would argue that the primordial state of war:

Would never arise in the first place.

Self-preservation alone is not sufficient to explain the war of all against all.

A peaceful state of nature is precisely what is postulated by Rousseau. Rousseau denies that vanity or  amour proper is natural to man, and argues that man...........fearful and solitary, is essentially peaceful because his few selfish needs are easily satisfied.

Fear and insecurity lead not to the perpetual seeking of power after power, but to isolation and quietude:

The state of nature is inhabited by  cow-like  individuals  who are content to live and let live, to experience that the sentiment of their own existences without dependence on other human beings.

The original anarchy therefore produces peace. Or, to put it in different language, a world of slaves seeking the preservation of their own natural existences would be free of conflict, for only masters are driven to the bloody battle.

It is perfectly possible to imagine anarchic state systems that are nonetheless peaceful, in which questions of bipolarity and multipolarity  are totally irrelevant. if one postulated that human societies behaved like:

Rousseau's man in the state of nature or Hegel's slave, that is, if there own interest in self-preservation 

The realist contention that states perceive each other as threats and arm themselves accordingly does not arise from the system so much as from a hidden assumption that human societies in their international behaviour tend to resemble Hegel's master seeking recognition-

Or the vainglorious first man of Hobbes, rather than the timid solitary of Rousseau.

The Honour and Serving of this subject and post will continue. Thank you for reading and see you on the following one.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on  !WOW!   -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' To The Barricades '''

Good Night and God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless