Political Theory Final Flashcards
Explain Gandhi’s argument for non-violent political resistance. How do Gandhi’s arguments compare with those of King?
Gandhi - Ahimsa as nonviolence to the 10th power, even your enemies
* Humility of truth and your opinions, which is why you don’t act violently, relation to Socrates and humility
King - morally we have a duty to not my complicit in injustice and nonviolence goes with that
* Civil disobedience as a way to effectively defy unjust laws
Difference - King is more nonviolence by the people and Gandhi is nonviolence and love by God
Explain Lenin’s concept of the Vanguard Party. Why does Lenin think such a Party is necessary, and how does it relate to Rousseau’s concept of the General Will?
Rousseau - 18th century Genevan of Social Contract influenced by Locke
* General will ≠ will of all, common interests vs. sum of private interests
* What is beneficial for everyone is not what everyone wants or what is the majority’s will
* The people must make and decide the laws because sovereignty is an exercise of the general will
* Issue with representative government because we are only free while we elect our representatives and civil freedom is incompatible with this form of government
Lenin - Soviet that led the Bolshevik socialist party during the Russian revolution of the early 20th century
* Vanguard party is a group of intellectual revolutionaries that conceptualize the general will better than the proletariat
* Better working conditions and hours vs. capitalist system
* Proletariat exploitation of labor as capital idea from Marx
* “one step ahead of the people, but just one step”
Difference - idea that Rousseau and Lenin both use the general will to picture an ideal government, but Lenin says that a form of elite that holds the people’s interests can properly represent them and change the system. Rousseau instead argues against representative government, while their definition of the general will is similar
Explain the ideas of “bourgeois private property” and “bourgeois freedom,” as they are presented in the Communist Manifesto. How might Marx and Engels use these ideas to critique Locke’s conceptions of private property and of the social contract?
Locke - 17th century British “father of liberalism” law and state of nature
* Private property can be owned if there is some left for others and the accumulation of goods doesn’t spoil because that would violate the social contract
* God gave earth to man to mix his labor with goods, also idea of master’s property is the worker’s spoil
* We are free individuals that agree to the social contract
Marx - Communist Manifesto 1848 German economic and political reform of capitalism
* Bourgeois private property contains proletariat capital as a collective product that is privately owned
* Bourgeois freedom means bourgeois exercise free reign over the economy and capitalist “free trade” becomes the “only game in town” and working class lacks the ability to decide whether or not to sell their labor
* Capital is a social power and amassing it leads to external power outside the economy, Marx wants to abolish it
Difference - master’s property is the worker’s spoil goes against Marx who believes that it’s wrong for the worker to be paid less than the value of his labor
* Creation of money as tacit consent and inequalities that come with it, society comes together to make the capitalist system but we are not as free to leave as we believe by Marx
In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr. states that there is a “need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood” (623). How does this claim reflect Socrates’ understanding of his philosophical mission as he describes it in Plato’s Apology? How does it reflect King’s own use of nonviolent direct action?
King - Civil rights leader in 1960s, believed in civil disobedience to solve injustice complicity
* “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” pairs well with Socrates’ “believing you know everything means that you know nothing”
* White moderate and inability to hold one’s self accountable for their role in injustice; there is not peace, but only the absence of tension, when they should be striving for peace with the presence of justice
Socrates - Greek philosopher in 400s BCE
* Gadfly metaphor as Socrates makes everyone in the community question and defend themselves on their opinions; oracle to find wisest man and limits of knowledge as true wisdom
* His accusers in Plato’s Apology say everyone else is improving the youth, and Meletus gives a non-answer
Similarity - because of the nonviolence of King’s protests and their lack of aggression, they are able to challenge people in society to question how they might be complicit in injustice just like Socrates and his role in Athens’ wisdom
* when you see a community as a cycle/group of people that collectively contribute to the improvement and/or injustice of everyone else, Socrates and King and their positions make sense
Explain Khomeini’s argument for the political authority of Islamic jurists. How does it compare to Plato’s arguments for the political authority of philosopher-kings?
Ruhollah Khomeini - leader of Islamic revolution and introduced Islamic law
* Islamic jurists have the right to lead because of their education and knowledge of divine law
* Hidden imam and his role as executor of the law from God, the jurists are the closest to the imam so they have political authority
Plato - Greek philosopher student of Socrates
* Philosopher-kings rule because of education and ability to seek justice in the soul equal to justice in the city
* ability to look beyond political and economic systems and question the complications of those systems
* fire vs. sun cave analogy
Similarity - both identify justice as a necessary element/virtue of rule and the ability to seek justice is used by Plato as reason and by Khomeini as divine law and lack of sin
* Khomeini and the jurists instead use a system governed by God’s will rather than the will of the people as sovereign
Compare the conceptions of the state of nature found in Hobbes and Locke. Why for Hobbes, is the state of nature necessarily a state of war? Why, for Locke, is the state of nature not necessarily a state of war?
Hobbes - 17th century British political philosopher, author of Leviathan
* The state of nature is a state of anarchy as every individual strives for self-preservation through competition
* The state of anarchy where everyone is motivated by fear and there is no law to enforce goodness
Locke - 17th century British “father of liberalism” law and state of nature
* In the state of nature, there are a set of laws we naturally subscribe to and while there isn’t a positive law that binds everyone to a social contract, we naturally seek order and want a social contract in order to leave the state of nature
* The state of nature has 3 pitfalls that people want: established, written laws, an executive to enforce those natural laws, and an impartial judge
Differences -
*Hobbes believes that naturally we seek glory/victory through competition and natural laws hold no incentive to uphold agreements or commit/cooperate, you endeavor for peace as long as other are #prisoner’sdilemma
* Rights of citizens vs. rights of subjects; Hobbes supports a monarchial sovereign and absolutism, hence Leviathan
* Locke believes that the if people are unable to achieve the social contract and leave the state of nature, a state of war can break out, but he disagrees with Hobbes that everyone is motivated by fear and thus wants to use self-interests to cause anarchy, he thinks it’s more likely that individuals will leave the state of nature for security and private property protection and will give up a bit of freedom to achieve that
Compare the Haitian Declaration of Independence and the American Declaration of Independence.
Haitian Declaration - apart of Revolution which took place late 18th -19th century between Haitian slaves and French colonists
* After violent revolt, Haiti overthrew France, Jean-Jacques Dessalines led the people to declare their freedom and wrote the Independence declaration
* Cultural revolution and idea of reclaiming cultural identity as subjects rather than slaves
American Declaration - took place about 20 years before Haitian revolution and Declaration in 1776 occurred before the war itself
Differences - Haitian Declaration calls for a cultural and social revolution which is not apart of the American Declaration which asks for freedom from tyranny; Haiti is demanding freedom from oppression and slavery
* American declaration is before the war and Haitian declaration is after
* Dessalines seeks a liberation revolution following Saint Domingue’s continuation as a French colony, and it isn’t until Napoleon trie to reinforce slavery that the rebellion begins
* The Haitian Declaration doesn’t justify the rebellion to France, where the American declaration does by listing grievances against King George III
*Difference in audience, to King George III or the Haitian people
Their main ideas are different, while the Haitian Declaration is inspired by the American Declaration through unity, the Haitian Declaration has a level of pathos and call for vengeance that the American Declaration does not have; the American declaration also helps lay out the new government, while the Haitian Declaration is about reclaiming their culture and identity which had been suppressed
Tocqueville emphasizes what he calls the “equality of conditions” in his analysis of American democracy. What does Tocqueville mean by this term? How might Douglass respond to Tocqueville’s account of American democracy?
Tocqueville - French political philosopher aristocrat in 19th century, came to American and studied Democracy in America
* Equality of conditions is a focal point of democracy overall, where political and social systems and institutions circulate faster than in Europe
* “nearly all Americans have to take a profession”
* Compared with France, equality and democracy prevail naturally, not just politically because there is not aristocracy or noble class whose wealth is engrained in the system
*More social mobility and circulation of wealth in families
Douglass - American abolitionist and social reformer from Maryland in 19th century
* What to the Slave is the 4th of July: explains the disparities and hypocrisy with American democracy, how revolutionaries can fight against tyranny while endorsing a somewhat tyranny of the majority
Differences - Douglass went to England to study how slavery and racism effected society and applied it to America, while Tocqueville did the opposite
* Equality of conditions seems to only take place in a homogenous society where race doesn’t effect social hierarchies
* To Tocqueville, equality of conditions exists like a river than perseveres across social structures and class, but Douglass explains the underlying shame of America that they praise democracy and equality of conditions while disadvantaging a demographic based on race
* To Tocqueville, America is 3/4 developed, but to Douglass, it’s 1/4
Similarity - Douglass explains how the tyranny of the majority already takes place in society, while Tocqueville warns against the tyranny of the majority in America from an aristocratic viewpoint
Both Malcolm X and Fanon defend the use of political violence. How might they respond to the arguments of Gandhi and King for non-violent resistance?
Fanon and Malcolm X - political philosopher on colonialism and civil rights activist and defender of necessary violence over voting in Ballot or the Bullet
* to Fanon, violence is necessary because of colonization and the process of decolonization
* in order for the oppressed to be free, they must free themselves from socio-economic and psychological factors which reinforce the oppressive system
* violence allows the colonized to identify with the liberation they seek
* to Malcolm, meeting violence with violence is = to meeting nonviolence with nonviolence, because violence doesn’t answer to nonviolence
*colonizer and colonized identities become so far removed that nonviolent negotiation and retaliation for violent crimes won’t be successful
Gandhi and King - nonviolence is morally sound and uses self-improvement strategy to cause self-rule
* if you are civilly-disobedient, they cannot treat you like a criminal, Gandhi’s movement of swaraj is movement of self-purification
* King thinks morally we must disobey unjust laws and nonviolent direct action forces society to confront its injustice
Difference - Fanon and Malcolm believe that violence is necessary for political change, based on indicators and the benefits it has to actors and perpetrators, while Gandhi and King think that nonviolent better addresses issues of violence
