While going about my business in the 2020s, I am often reminded of the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s rant – truly one of the greatest ever committed to paper – on the subject of being governed:
To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorised, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolised, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
What is interesting about this passage is that it is not so much the indoctrination, fleecing, clubbing, choking, etc., that gets Proudhon’s goat. Those things are bad enough, of course. But what really galls him is that the people doing it are so patently undeserving of occupying any position of authority. It’s one thing to be spied upon, drilled, commanded, abused, ridiculed and so on if the people doing it are paragons of excellence and have an impeccably rational justification for behaving as they do. It is quite another when these ‘creatures’ lack any wisdom or virtue – when they have so self-evidently attained their positions merely through having the right face, the right connections, and the right views, and from jumping through the right hoops and avoiding causing trouble.
This is the position in which we find ourselves in 2023 – our lives administered in ever more minute detail, and in ever more authoritarian ways, by people who have never really achieved much at all beyond playing the system and making the most of the strong hand which they have been dealt by circumstance (well-off parents; good school; good exam grades; good university and so on). We don’t need to name names: we can all think of a long list of examples of this kind of ‘creature’ and the insolence that they embody in imagining that they have earned any sort of right to impose on society a vision of how to live.
As in many things, this brings us back to Machiavelli. In the greeting to Zanobi Buondelmonti and Cosimo Rucellai with which he introduces his Discourses, Machiavelli gives some very good general advice: “To judge aright,” he says, “One should esteem men because they are generous, not because they have the power to be generous; and in like manner, should admire those who know how to govern a kingdom, not those who, without knowing how, actually govern one.” Is there more to the matter than this? Political philosophy, and political science, should really boil down to the question of knowing how to actually govern, but so frequently comes down to a whole host of other tangential or immaterial concerns. What Machiavelli makes absolutely clear in this one remark is that there is often a huge gulf in quality between those who occupy positions of authority, and those who should; and “knowing how to actually govern” must by implication be the focus of much more of our attention in determining who should end up being in charge.
Machiavelli’s position – contrary to popular myth – was that it was more preferable for the populace to govern than a “prince”. This is simply because, as Machiavelli reminds us, “all do wrong”. Given the choice between republican rule (meaning self-governing rule by the people) and that of a prince (meaning rule by one man), the response is therefore obvious – individual members of the populace may do wrong but, in doing so, affect little; but when a prince does wrong, the consequences can be extremely grave. Put another way, power is best dispersed as much as possible via the ‘wisdom of crowds’, and concentrated power is best avoided (although there may be exceptional circumstances, such as war, where it is necessary).
Our societies have, it seems, chosen to adopt almost a diametrically opposite position to that advocated by Machiavelli. Our elites increasingly seem to believe that power is best concentrated within a relatively small group of ‘high information’ experts who can be trusted much more than the populace can to make the right decisions. Rather than accepting that ‘all do wrong’, they tend to take the view that actually it is the populace who tend to do wrong and the expert class who do right, and it is therefore best for all concerned if society is run along essentially technocratic lines. Thus we inhabit polities that much more closely resemble principalities than republics – governed by a relatively small ‘princely’ group who make decisions on our behalf.
Why has this happened?
At the centre of Machiavelli’s answer would I think be the concept of virtù, often mistranslated as ‘virtue’, but really more properly understood as something akin to ‘virtuosity’ or excellence. One who has virtù is one who has initiative, toughness, fortitude, discipline and competence – one who, in short, is capable of governing his or her own affairs in most circumstances. For Machiavelli, the ideal circumstance was one in which this quality was widespread among the populace. In such circumstances, where there is a robust citizenry imbued with virtù, society more or less runs itself as a self-governing republic; all it needs is a set of laws of general application in order to keep the peace and it will be self-sustaining. People will in short solve their problems for themselves, or in cooperation with others.
It follows that in circumstances in which the population lacks virtù, it may be appropriate for a ‘prince’ to rule (with the ultimate aim, Machiavelli makes clear, of restoring the conditions of a republic). This is not ideal, but may be necessary; the trite analogy would be the ‘prince-like’ rule of the Allies in occupied Germany after WWII, aimed at allowing virtù to flourish where it had been stamped out.
What Machiavelli does not spell out for the reader, but what I think he must surely have meant to imply, was therefore a theory of the circumstances in which ‘princely rule’ will arise, and particularly how it will emerge in what was previously a republic. In short, this will happen where those who are in positions of authority convince themselves that the population as a whole lacks virtù and that there is therefore a necessity for the experts to take charge. Since the population is incapable of self-government it is thus unfit for republican rule, and therefore the ‘princes’, who themselves alone embody virtù, have to put themselves in the driving seat.
Machiavelli therefore gives us a sensible theory for explaining how republics are corrupted into principalities: it may happen through force or revolution, but it is much more likely to be the case that it takes place when those who are in positions of power and influence decide for themselves that ordinary people lack virtù and that a group of technocrats must call the shots.
Does this not aptly describe our present predicament? A proliferating ‘new elite’ of overqualified, overeducated men and women who were born into relative privilege, did well in good schools and then at university, and who have been told all the way through life how clever and disciplined and wonderful they are, taking it upon themselves to boss around a population comprising people who they consider to be ignorant, stupid and incapable? This basic formula plays out all around us – from the lockdowns to ‘Net Zero’ to sugar taxes to EDI/DEI initiatives. At every turn we are treated as though we lack the necessary virtù, and need a cabal of princes to make sure we do the right thing.
In closing, of course, all that is needed is to connect the dots back to Proudhon. The manner in which we are governed, and its underlying rationale, is increasingly prince-like. It should hardly surprise us, then, that we are so poorly governed. The point bears belabouring: “it is beyond question that it is only in republics that the common good is looked to properly in that all that promotes it is carried out; [and] the opposite happens where there is a prince”. Where power is dispersed, good will follow. Where it is concentrated, there will be decline. There is nothing much more to add: those who ‘know how to actually govern’ are we, the people, ourselves, and we should expect bad results when this basic truth is forgotten.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. This article was first published on his substack News from Uncibal, which you can subscribe to here.
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Because, in the minds of the many, science is a culture of faith in “experts”.
No, no, no. Science is a culture of DOUBT. But they don’t get that.
The new “science” is the new religion.
…
An excellent article. I have printed it. It will form the basis of a lesson I and my wife shall be giving to our two children – home-educated since October 2020. The council continues to pester and threaten us, bleating about their “duty of care towards all children of [the city]”.
I think the kids got it. A written summary of the main points is my suggestion to them.
“They don’t teach this in school!”
And ‘we’ know why…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvr30mQF9ek
Read Dr. Malcolm Kendrick’s latest blog entry, all about the corruption of science.
Delingpole: Meet the New Health Secretary, Same as the Old Health Secretary
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/06/30/delingpole-meet-the-new-health-secretary-same-as-the-old-health-secretary/
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
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Not to make light of the situation but…I think they’ve all escaped from the Home For Deranged Scientists….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EoJKWR3DIuA
Well you can outsource decision making but you cannot outsource responsibility. The politicians are to blame, primarily. And we don’t know for sure the extent to which SAGE are following orders rather than trying to give them.
Precisely. The most dangerous of times are when individuals outsource their responsibility to those in their immediate surroundings or under their personal care. Stanley Milgram knew this. I wonder if the two “experts” at this little boy’s school have ever heard of his experiment. Or even read any history books, for that matter…
As it is colloquially known, “papering over your arse”.
SAGE is following orders or it would be gone. That being said, SAGE members seem content to spout utter nonsense, perhaps not too surprising as most of them will gain in some way from the over egging of Covid-19, whatever that really is.
“Well you can outsource decision making but you cannot outsource responsibility. The politicians are to blame, primarily. “
Yes.
Though I’d word it slightly differently at the end.
The politicians are responsible. Lots of people are to blame, certainly including all the members of SAGE who have not spoken out, “opposition” politicians who have failed o oppose, the media figures who have meekly collaborated with censorship and propaganda, the courts who have failed to honestly address issues brought before them, the police who have enthusiastically pushed the boundaries of powers they have been wrongfully given…
Responsibility focusses, blame spreads widely.
Indeed. I suggest the root of the problem is that science has become a kind of religion for many scientists. As Richard Dawkins boast, most of the scientists of the Royal Academy are atheists, which means of course they must find meaning in the opposite to the theistic foundations of civilisation.
We have, as Francis Bacon envisaged in his utopia ‘New Atlantis’ (published in 1626), a ‘scientific priesthood’, who believe that society must be run uniquely on empirical knowledge (scientia), disregarding the other forms of knowledge wisdom (prudentia and sapientia).
One might expect, here in England, the Church of England to take on this scientific priesthood, but it doesn’t, it meekly submits to it, just as it submits to Woke, as I wrote in this piece on my blog:
What moves the Archbishop of Canterbury to lead us into this Satanic Revolution? | mark pickles, writer and artist (wordpress.com)
Civilisation derives from reason, not from faith in an imaginary friend.
What an original retort – did you think of it yourself?
Richard Dawkins hardly qualifies as a ‘scientist’
It’s also science without ethics or morals. No one questions whether something should be done, only whether it can be done.
An illustration:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zmOD_Hxjvyo&feature=emb_title
MOUTH WIDE SHUT / Hugo Talks Some More
What brilliant thinkers we had decades ago.
I would summarize this science and big tech simply as ‘trying to play God’.
As someone who has neighbours with an autistic child (admittedly high-functioning) who relishes the framework of school, but has been similarly pushed out – and also having been involved in education and special needs – I feel for any parent in this position.
The reaction of myself and contemporaries, with education backgrounds,pondering schools over the last year and some, has universally been :
“You WHAT??????”
But is this essentially about ‘science‘? I would argue that it is about the corruption of scientific reason by political corruption.
As Julian says – the decision making is in the hands of government. They choose the framing of advice.
I’d say it’s a lot more to do with politics, and selfishness masquerading as concern for the community.
Another drop in this ocean of sadistic, triumphant cruelty.
Indeed.
Long time no see, Jo. Hope you and your girls are well.
Hi Nymeria, lovely to hear from you. I’ve been lurking and commenting now and then. We’re OK thanks, hope you and yours are too.
We’re plodding along reasonably enough, thanks.
That we are under the control of obsessive managers is plain, real to them only in that we are objects of measurement, and suspicious to the extent that we evade it.
But is it correct that this comes out of science? Isn’t science the costume of the managers, and the managers are a rent-seeking class of mediocre types that have somehow interposed themselves between the owners and the workers. Or something like that.
I’ve been reading Samuel T Francis. At some point in the 19th century the small bourgeois capitalist owner/manager could no longer cope with the scale of business and technology. So the managerial class was born, that began to direct to profits to itself. Today’s massive bureaucracies are the same, done at the state level.
Anything that increases its scope to manage is to be promoted: more population, more illness, more technocracy, more atomisation, more cultural division. At the extreme, more crime and war. Anything that resists is suspect: independent small business, cash, privacy, strong borders, hierarchy, particularity, self-organisation, tradition.
It feels like the abolition of cash is the moment the ceiling closes over us. The way out, I suppose, is the collapse of the fiat money: where the wealth of the 19th manager was real & taken from the earth, today’s is unreal (the article’s reference to imagined sciencey ‘ideals’), taken from a projected future.
The language of science is to the managers what coconuts and sticks were to the Pacific Islanders in those cargo cults.
https://rumble.com/vitcgn-following-the-science.html
I urge everyone who hasn’t seen this documentary to watch it. It is an hour long and covers the virus, lockdowns, masks and the vaccines. How we are being misled worldwide is scandalous. I have passed it on to friends and family.
Not scientists, witch doctors or doctators masquerading poorly as science.
This hasn’t really been about science – but about fear. The relentless promotion of fear by our government has been extraordinarily successful. The science says this virus is maybe about twice as bad as a really bad flu in terms of overall mortality (we should start referring to it as “double-flu”). And for this we’ve caused an insane amount of damage. Damage to our country, to our economy, to our businesses, to our psyches, to our social bonds, to our children, to the health of anyone suffering from something other than covid . . . Insane if your goal is public health I suppose. Not so insane if you have some other agenda at play here.
If you try and rationalise any of this in terms of science or health you won’t get very far, because in these terms very little about our response makes any rational sense. It’s even worse – not only does it not make sense, it’s completely, utterly, off-the-scale, batshit doolally.
“Science” has been used by the unscrupulous, and the scientists have been complicit either through greed or cowardice.
It’s about making $£billions from taxpayers, all in the name of safety. Vaccines for all, whether you want or need them.
Excellent article about ‘Technocracy’. If you haven’t already read it, try Pseudopandemic by Iain Davis either on off-Guardian or his own website. It is a great complementary description of the forces combining to bring about the technocracy and how they need a fascist totalitarian regime.
They haven’t. They’ve outsourced to the globalist establishment
An excellent piece of writing, Dr Murphy, thank you.
Delingpole: Meet the New Health Secretary, Same as the Old Health Secretary
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/06/30/delingpole-meet-the-new-health-secretary-same-as-the-old-health-secretary/
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
Delingpole: Meet the New Health Secretary, Same as the Old Health Secretary
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/06/30/delingpole-meet-the-new-health-secretary-same-as-the-old-health-secretary/
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics, keep yourself sane, make new friends and have a laugh.
Join our Stand in the Park – Bracknell – Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
This is an excellent artical. Thank you Sinead.
Science has become so far from its origins. Richard Powers (the Overstory) observes
“Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual sense of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery”
And even more powerful from David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous) –
“The whole universe of science is built upon the world as directly experienced …. We must begin by re-awakening the basic experience of the world, of which science is the second-order experience”.
Because we now live under medical Faucism