Political Thought Versus Political Ideologies
In the Principles of Political Science class, 3 students: Max; Karn; and Smile are waiting for the lecturer.
Max: Hey guys, do you remember that Ajarn wants us to do the midterm presentation after the mid-term week? Just in case you already forgot, I and Karn will work on the chapter 8, political ideologies.
Smile: Yeah, we know. That would leave the chapter 7, political thought, to me and Jimmy. Speaking of him, where is he?
Karn: Who could have known? But he will come, eventually, I guess. Anyway, Smile, do you have any ideas about the presentation? What exactly do we have to do? Do we have to sing and dance like those students in “Glee”?
Max: If we do, I bet Jimmy will score very well because his e-mail address is Jimmy_showstep something. But no, I don’t think we have to do those stuffs. So, don’t be sad, Karn.
Smile: I think we better get ready by reviewing those 2 chapters together and see if we can find some similarities and differences because I feel that our teacher is very picky. She won’t give us good grade very easily if we just give her plain presentations.
Karn: Umm. I agree. And if we help each other out now, I think we can have better understanding on our class materials as well. Last time, I didn’t really get what she tried to teach us about the political thought.
Max: Maaaaaan, totally! I was super confused about those guys with weird names and strange ideas.
Jimmy has just entered the room.
Jimmy: Hey, sorry I’m late! Eh? The professor isn’t here yet?
Smile: No, she is not. I saw her broadcasts on Facebook that she is as sick as a dog. So, I’m not sure if she will make it here today. Also, Jimmy, did you get my e-mail about the presentation plan?
Karn: Wait… You said you have got the presentation plan?
Smile: Oh! It’s nothing. It’s just how we separate our share. Jimmy will work on Plato and the contractarians.
Max: The contract… what?
Jimmy: The contractarians: Hobbes; Locke; and Rousseau. They are called the contractarians because they provided us the “social contract” ideas. Basically, the social contract is what we call the law, the constitution, or the public policy in our present time. So, these guys pretty much explained origins and significance of the law today.
Max: I still don’t get it.
Jimmy: Okay, at first, I didn’t get it as well. You have to read the book, Max. Anyway, I will need to practice for my presentation so I can use you as audience. In Hobbes’ mind, humans lived in a very cruel world—or the state of nature—where no laws existed. Consequently, humans have to fight for their survival and everyone will have only short-term cooperation, not permanent alliance. Then, they realized that their lives could be very much better if they cooperated, but, in order to do so, they needed some guarantee that everyone will follow this new rule—the rule of cooperation. Humans gave up their individuals’ freedom and rights to defend themselves by themselves to the sovereign, or the state, to give the state legitimated power to ensure that everyone would follow the rule and the state would punish those who crossed the line.
Smile: Good job, Jimmy! But I remember that Ajarn said something about the big sword and the small swords. What are they?
Jimmy: Yep. The small swords represent individuals’ right to defend themselves by fighting each other, while the big sword is the state power. That means, the individuals had given their small swords to the sovereign so that the sovereign an exercise its power to serve its citizens.
Karn: You mean that we are individuals who have given our swords to our sovereign, which are the parliament and the law enforcement officers, like cops and solders, in our case.
Max: To serve and to protect kind of ideology, it is.
Jimmy: Yes, you got it right. Then, we have Locke, the second contractarians. He simply suggested that there must be laws protecting private properties so that men can pass their properties to their children, or their heirs. On the other hand, Rousseau kinda implied that we firstly were bonded because of love and preference. Humans had come to live together and the social contract came after that.
Max: Are you saying that Hobbes’ social contract is about safety while Locke’s is about economic aspect and Rousseau’s is about love and somewhat coincident?
Jimmy: Yes. Now you got it!
Max: Yeah, I get it now. Why can’t she just explain to us like you just did? Academics are weird!
Karn: She told me that we have to get knowledge by ourselves because the knowledge is not for transferring or giving. It’s more like enlightening by ourselves. Or, maybe she just doesn’t know how to explain it clearly.
Jimmy: I’m not done yet. I’m also in charge of Plato, a Greek philosopher. For Plato, I think he has a very conflict idea about how the good state, or Polis, should be. It is because his famous work called “the Republic” points that there are three important classes in the republic—the rulers, the soldiers, and the traders and each class performs the role of which it is suited. Like, to put the right man to the right job, you know?
Smile: That doesn’t sound conflict.
Jimmy: Here’s the conflict part. He wanted the abolition of family life and children will be brought up communally so that the family interests will not prejudice political judgments.
Smile: He also recommended sexual equality.
Jimmy: but he also recommended that arts must be highly censored and education must be controlled by the rulers.
Karn: Umm. It sounds conflict to me now.
Jimmy: See? That’s all I got, anyway. What about you, Smile? Did you do your share?
Smile: Of course, I did. Guys you don’t know how tight my schedule is. So just don’t try me!
Max: Okay, okay, we got it. Can you please just show us what you’ve got, Smile?
Smile: Alright! At least Max here knows how to talk to a lady. My part concerns Mill, Marx, Feminism and Muslim thought. I think Mill stressed on individual liberty on the grounds that social freedom is required by the principle of utility. He saw men as progressive being and he also saw individuality as the idea of personal autonomy.
Jimmy: did he also say that the best form of government is democracy?
Smile: Yes, he did. He explained that democracy promotes rationality and public spiritedness by calling on the electorate to be more concerned about public issues in a rational way. And another guy that I’m working on is Karl Marx. Marx believed that the most powerful class in this capital era is the working class, or Marx would call it “proletariat.” He said that the workers have their human resource as power to, at least, bargain with the capitalist—their employers. That’s why we see demonstrations and strikes when the employees are unsatisfied with anything. That’s how they do it, in Marx’s idea. Also, he put equality for every human regardless of gender, education, profession, but more importantly, class. I think people think that Marx is all about economics because he stressed on class and economic issues too much. Actually, he had many interesting recommendations for almost every issue in the world.
Karn: Is he the communist, like Lenin, Mao Zedong and Stalin?
Smile: He is the father of the communists and those guys you just said their names are his followers thought Mao and Stalin kinda fabricated Marxism for their own benefits. Marx said that the workers must conduct a revolution to overthrow the capitalists and to establish the classless world.
Karn: Oh, okay. Just remember that you can’t say that in your hometown, Smile. We still want you here.
Smile: I know. I know. Actually, you can’t say that in your hometown too, Karn. You don’t have more freedom of speech more than I do. Now let me tell you about Feminism and Muslim thought. Feminism explains that women are oppressed by men and the patriarchy. The patriarchy is the law of men. Because everything is there for men, women can’t get their benefits, or even reach their full potential. Therefore, women have to, at least, set themselves free from men. I don’t man that they have to be lesbians, but rather to see themselves as equal as men.
Max: I think you are off the hook, Smile.
Smile: Yes I am. The last part of my content is the Islam thought. I think it is about “the West against the Rest” kind of ideology, meaning that the West wants to run the world and it has been exploiting other parts of the world and they have refused to stand it anymore. America is a big country but it constantly bullies other countries for its benefits for too long and, I think, the 9/11 incident let us know that the world is changing. There are lost of fundamentalists who will defend the Islam with their lives, but there are also moderate Muslims who will use the Islam as a way of life, not the war declaration. All in all, we will have to wait and see what will happen next.
Jimmy: Wow. I think you prepared well, Smile. We will win this mid-term presentation for sure.
Max: Come on. You don’t even know what we will do yet.
Karn: I’ll be in charge of left and right, liberalism, conservatism and socialism, while Max will work on fascism, nationalism, feminism and Ecologism.
Max: And we will put it together so that the presentation won’t look like 2 separate presentations like yours!
Jimmy: Okay. Okay. What will you say about the chapter 8 then?
Karn: First, I’ll explain about all the ideologies. Left and right politics is a common way of classifying political positions, political ideologies, or political parties along a one-dimensional political spectrum. The perspective of Left vs. Right is a binary interpretation of complex questions. Left-wing politics and right-wing politics are often presented as polar opposites, and although a particular individual or party may take a left-wing stance on one matter and a right-wing stance on another, the terms left and right are commonly used as if they described two globally opposed political families. And you will have to listen to my presentation for more explanation on this issue.
Max: Cool, eh?
Karn: And liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals provide a wide range of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but most liberals support such fundamental ideas as constitutions, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights, capitalism, free trade, and the freedom of religion. These ideas are widely accepted, even by political groups that do not openly profess a liberal ideological orientation. Liberalism encompasses several intellectual trends and traditions, but the dominant variants are classical liberalism, which became popular in the eighteenth century, and social liberalism, which became popular in the twentieth century. I think conservatism is almost the opposite of liberalism because conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism and seek a return to the way things were.
Max: And then we have the socialism.
Karn: Thanks Max. The socialism which is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources. A socialist society is a social structure organized on the basis of relatively equal power-relations, self-management, dispersed decision-making and a reduction or elimination of hierarchical and bureaucratic forms of administration and governance; the extent of which varies in different types of socialism. This ranges from the establishment of cooperative management structures in the economy to the abolition of all hierarchical structures in favor of free association. Then, it’s Max’s part.
Max: My part consists of fascism which is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy. Fascism was originally founded by Italian national syndicalists in World War I who combined extreme right-wing political views along with collectivism. Scholars generally consider fascism to be on the far right. See? There’s a connection between left and right politics to other ideologies and I’m sure there must be connections between political thought and political ideologies too! Next, I have nationalism ideology. This ideology involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, for example, a nation. Most of the time, it is the belief that an ethnic group has a right to statehood, or that citizenship in a state should be limited to one ethnic group, or that multinationality in a single state should necessarily comprise the right to express and exercise national identity even by minorities. It’s creepy to apply this idea to the real world events like the holocaust and other wars that were conducted in the name of the nation.
Smile: Yes. There are many wars like that, but I think the next generations will suffer more than the one went to the wars because children will feel the sense of hostility even if they don’t fight anymore. It’s about the history of international relations, diplomacy and war. For instance, I don’t think you, Thais, would prefer to have a Burmese as a friend.
Jimmy: And it is less likely to see the Korean, the Chinese and the Japanese together.
Smile: Yes it is.
Max: That is just sad and unfair. I think the country should not go to war, or start a war no matter what then! Now, feminism! Yeah, I’m working on feminism as well, Smile. So, we better work hard on this if we want the good grades. Ajarn won’t be happy if we end up present the same thing. To me, feminism refers to movements aimed at defining, establishing and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights. Feminism is mainly focused on women's issues, but because feminism seeks gender equality, some feminists argue that men's liberation is therefore a necessary part of feminism, and that men are also harmed by sexism and gender roles. Feminists are persons practicing feminism—can be persons of either sex. Therefore, I don’t have to be a woman or a gay man to be a feminist!
Karn: That’s great. If being a feminist means that we should respect women more, I think we all should be feminists.
Max: Yes, Karn. Also, if we want to respect the environment more, we can be ecologists. The idea of ecologism or environmentalism is a broad philosophy and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the state of the environment. Environmentalism and environmental concerns are often represented by the color green. Environmentalism can also be seen as a social movement that seeks to influence the political process by lobbying, activism, and education in order to protect natural resources and ecosystems. An environmentalist is a person who may speak out about our natural environment and the sustainable management of its resources through changes in public policy or individual behavior by supporting practices such as not being wasteful. In various ways, for example, grassroots activism and protests, environmentalists and environmental organizations seek to give the natural world a stronger voice in human affairs
Karn: And that would be a small part of our presentation. We will have more details, more analysis and ideas for each ideology and we will, as well, try to link it to each other and to political thought in the chapter 7.
Max: By the way, people call ecologists “tree-huggers” because some of them would go hug or even chain themselves with a big tree in order to prevent it from getting cut. Therefore, if I am a feminist and I want to protect women, I can be a “women-hugger.” You know, to keep them from harm.
Smile: That just sounds disgusting, Max. You pervert.
