February 24, 2010

Apologising for the Leviathan

Posted in History, Intellectual History, Nerd Posts, Political Philosophy, Politics at 10:19 am by Paul Sagar

Today Gordon Brown will make an apology to thousands of people who were forcibly deported to other Commonwealth countries whilst growing up in care from the 1920s to the 1960s. Many were abused and ended up in institutions, or as slave labourers on farms.

There are at least two possible reactions to Gordon Brown’s deciding to issue such an apology.

The first is to object that it is meaningless. The complaint might run as follows: “Gordon Brown did not authorise any of the decisions to send those people to Canada and Australia. Indeed, he wasn’t even in government, let alone the cabinet, at the time. In fact, nobody presently in the British executive had anything to do with those decisions, so how can they apologise for something they did not do? Indeed, isn’t this apology insulting to the victims? Given that Brown and Co. bear no responsibility for this, their apology can only be a piece of crowd-pleasing populism, turning the victims into means for political ends. Brown should say he is sorry that the deportations happened – but it is nonsensical for him to issue an apology for something he didn’t do”.

I used to think this was the correct position to take. But it’s worth noting that not many people appear to share it. I doubt there will be outrage from victim support groups, or the people who were themselves deported, condemning Brown’s “phony apology”. Instead, it will likely be welcomed. Why?

A plausible explanation is that Brown is commonly understood not to be apologising on behalf of himself, or on behalf of his cabinet or even government, but on behalf of the British state. That is, we appear to accept the notion of an entity standing behind the government of the day, which is not identical with it – and indeed which precedes and succeeds each individual government and prime minister. When Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair was the Prime Minister, we did not say that either of them was the British state, and neither were their governments. The state is something more monolithic, more powerful, more immortal.

So when Brown issues his apology, it appears that he is apologising not for the actions of himself or his government, but of the past actions of the British state. Perhaps this should be a very bizarre idea, given the logic of what exactly it is Brown is apologising for. But it nonetheless strikes most of us as perfectly normal.

Yet it’s worth noting that this conception of Brown apologising “for the state” isn’t illuminated by the famous definition of the state that Max Weber supplied, and that I’m fond of quoting. That:

“the state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” [emphasis original]

Even if that’s a good description of what the state is in terms of its functional powers, it hardly captures the distinction between the state and the government. After all, Brown’s government is presently a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within Great Britain. Yet we’ve established that we’re not happy simply saying that Brown’s government is the state. Quite the opposite.

To see where the idea of Brown apologising “for” the state – but by definition not being the state – comes from, we need to go further back. We need to go to Thomas Hobbes:

“For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which the sovereignty is an artificial soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body; the magistrates and other officers of judicature and execution, artificial joints; reward and punishment (by which fastened to the seat of the sovereignty, every joint and member is moved to perform his duty) are the nerves, that do the same in the body natural; the wealth and riches of all the particular members are the strength; salus populi (the people’s safety) its business; counsellors, by whom all things needful for it to know are suggested unto it, are the memory; equity and laws, an artificial reason and will; concord, health; sedition, sickness; and civil war, death.”

“This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence.”

The idea that the government of the day merely represents – and speaks and acts for – a more powerful entity existing behind it, possessed of ultimate sovereignty which the Prime Minister of the day happens to wield but does not ultimately possess, comes from Hobbes. When Brown apologises to the deportees today, he apologises not for his own actions, but for that of the Mortal God, the Leviathan, which Brown presently speaks for.

That the apology will be widely welcomed, and that its bizarre logic will go largely unremarked, indicates the extent to which that artificial man called Commonwealth, or State (in Latin, Civitas) is now an integral part of all our lives. Again, how ironic that the central ideas of history’s greatest proponent of absolutism should come to have shaped the intellectual framework that we who call ourselves democrats, liberals, republicans or libertarians think within.

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The Weber quote is taken from his 1919 lecture that became the essay Politics as a Vocation. The Hobbes quotes are taken from the introduction and Chapter 15 of Leviathan respectively.

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