The Social and Political Worldview Fragments
Freedom, equality, community—words that hold universal appeal but which are rarely understood in the same way. They are intimately connected to our ideas about being human and about the world at large—they are connected to our worldview. This article is part of a series on different worldview fragments.1 Here we discuss the possible social and political worldview fragments by first defining the two types of fragments and then by setting up three dichotomies to help distinguish between commonly held positions.
Social worldview fragments say something about the right social ordering of society—how human beings best live together as a collective. Such a social order is sustained by norms that guide the conduct of persons and symbols and narratives that influence the beliefs of people. These are, in turn, sustained by the collective worldview. To a large degree this worldview determines what we think of as being our community and what kind of inequality and unfreedom we can live with. A classic example is the idea of private property, as Thomas Piketty also argues in Capital and Ideology.2 Whereas modern capitalist societies take property to be largely private, insofar taxes and government property play a limited role (which can be a stretch), there exist(ed) modern and premodern communist societies that share property in some form—property being communal. Still different notions of property are maintained by slave states, colonial states, and feudal societies, where even human beings can be the property of others to varying degrees. Undoubtedly there was much discontent among the peasants of feudal Europe, but the prevailing social norms and symbols, like piety, obedience and the divine right of kings, which in turn were backed up by powerful religious institutions, made it seem like the natural state of affairs and by and large the right social order. However, the (to us) outright injustice of such an order must be balanced with the stability it affords. The violent overthrow of an entire social structure often comes with a deadly chaos that few would prefer—think only of the mass executions of the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution or of the Red Terror following the Russian Revolution and civil war. When possible, social change is best achieved gradually.
Political worldview fragments say something about the right way to organise collective action. When a social group decides to act together to accomplish some goal, they require some arrangement of duties and rights or a set of terms of cooperation, largely determined by the political worldview. These terms—often displayed in a legal code—should specify some distribution of power, a process of appointment of one or more leaders, a process of setting up concrete rules or laws, and a process of amendment of the terms themselves. For a democratic state, these terms of cooperation are laid out by the basic law or constitution. It specifies the powers of different state bodies (government, parliament, courts, etc.), it establishes how elections proceed, how legislation is enacted, and how the constitution itself can be amended. Other political fragments may organise this differently. Theocratic worldviews may derive their laws from scripture, determine leaders dynastically or on the basis of scriptural knowledge, and allow amendment only by events interpreted as divine intervention. As such, a code can reinforce a social order through state sanction. Nevertheless, all ways of organising collective action require the consent of the governed to some degree; the code has to (appear to) be legitimate. This means that the worldview fragment that erects the code must be widely held. No democracy (real or apparent) without democratic individuals.
Enough theory, let’s now look at some dichotomies to help bring out the differences between some more concrete fragments. Keep in mind, though, that we will be using terms that are much-used in the public debate and that also act as labels for political ideologies. These ideological connotations diverge from the original, stricter meaning of the -isms that we will use here. A first major opposition is between conservatism and progressivism. This concerns the value of the contemporary social order and whether it should change and how fast. Conservatives want to retain the order, believing time-proven institutions and stable traditions are important for prosperity and security. Progressives emphasise the social injustice that these institutions and traditions transfix, arguing that we should evolve toward a more inclusive social order. The many social issues progressives fight for have their own associated worldview fragments, like feminism, anti-racism, ecologism, anti-colonialism, LGBTQI+ rights, etc. They value equality and diversity, whereas conservatives want to retain traditional hierarchies and mores, like those of the traditional family.
The second dichotomy is no less relevant in today’s public debate as it concerns the question of who belongs to the social and political community. We can use the term universalism to connote the worldview that recognises only a single, universal community composed of all of humanity. Here, we all have the same duties towards others, regardless of nationality or affiliation. Cosmopolitanism is another word for this fragment, and individualism is a natural attitude for the universalist to have. Other worldviews on the same side of the dichotomy are liberalism, neoliberalism, and libertarianism, which all emphasise individual rights and free association, economic or otherwise, within borders or across. The second pole of the dichotomy is particularism. Here, the particular community holds a special relation to the individual on the basis of a shared sense of being in the world, shaped by a common experience. Duties towards community members are greater than those towards non-members. Nationalism is of course a particularist view, but so is communism, which delineates a community within which property is shared. Other fragments on this side of the spectrum are communitarianism, nativism, and fascism. The extent of the community and one’s duties to it obviously differs among fragments.
A third dichotomy distinguishes worldviews that give a prominent role to the state, especially with regard to the economic system, and others that do not. The state here being the polity with the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence3; the sole rightful enforcer of laws on a territory. On one end of the dichotomy stands anarchism, with anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-communism, among others, as alternate forms of societal organisation. The (non-anarchist, Marxist) communist society, too, is a stateless society (the USSR obviously did not reach this theoretical ideal). Libertarianism and neoliberalism argue for minimal state intervention, which exists primarily to establish and protect property rights and to enforce contracts. At the opposite end we find socialism, which advocates social ownership of the means of production through the state (though there are many interpretations). More central to the dichotomy we can place social market economies (e.g., Germany or Sweden) and regulated capitalism (e.g., the U.S.A.), which are what most countries today put into practice. In essence, this spectrum reflects the various interpretations of freedom. Is being free merely the absence of a state (anarchism), or do we in fact need state power to free us from the more oppressive capitalist forces (socialism), or are we most free when markets and social correctives are balanced (social market economy)?
These three dichotomies are the most important, and most political ideologies can be situated in a graph taking them as axes. Nevertheless, we can still distinguish other relevant fragments that are opposites. The role of religion in social and political life, for example, is different for humanist/secularist fragments and religious/theocratic ones. The accorded role of the leader, too, is significant. Authoritarianism and populism concentrate power in a single individual, while technocratism dissipates power (and therefore responsibility) across leaderless networks of experts. Liberal democracies institute a separation of powers between the different branches of the state.
At bottom, one’s position along the various dichotomies is determined by the values one holds. These values derive from the worldview but also help shape it. Their extent and variety can be uncovered by the different interpretations of words like freedom, equality, and community. Freedom can mean the freedom to hold political office, to buy and sell and have property, freedom from state coercion, … Human beings can be held equal in many ways. Equal politically (one person, one vote), equal economically (in the market or in wealth), equal under God, … To the community can belong friends and family, the region, the nation, the socio-economic group, the cultural-historical group, humanity as a whole, … These many meanings translate into the multitude of social and political worldviews we see around us every day.
The first article in the series is on The Metaphysical Worldview Fragments
Piketty argues ideologies exist to justify the social organisation of societies, especially with regard to inequality and property rights.
Max Weber’s much used definition of a state from “Politics as a Vocation” (1919)