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Western Political Thought

Notes Rousseau has been the inspiration to theorists of participatory democracy in recent times. Pateman
(1970) drawing insights from Rousseau observed the inconsistency that existed between universal
formal rights and class inequality in participation which she felt could be resolved only through
institutions that encourage self-management. Democracy at the workplace would have to deal
with complex problems like market instabilities, coordination of resources and availability of
different types of labour and skills. Democracy also would have to be reconciled with efficiency
and leadership. She accepted the core institutions of liberal democracy, competitive parties, political
representatives, periodic elections but she favoured direct participation and control over immediate
local bodies complemented by party and interest group competition in governmental affairs.

8.11 Federation of Nations for World Peace
The ideals of republicanism and democracy ushered in by the two major revolutions in the
eighteenth century, in America and France, also saw the rise of a school of pacifist thinking that
rejected the medieval moral-legal doctrine of war, including that of just war. The notion of just
war posited that there be a just cause, a right authority for initiating the use of force, a right
intention on the part of the party/parties employing such force, that the resort to force be
proportional (not doing more harm than good), that it be a last resort, that it be undertaken with
the end of peace as its goal and there a reasonable hope of success. Three types of just cause were
recognized in the Middle Ages: to retake something wrongfully taken, to punish evil and to
defend against an attack either planned or in progress. All these ideas existed in the Roman
thought and the practice of war in the classical era. In the twentieth century international law self-
defence against an armed attack in progress was the major justification for the use of force.
The pacifist writers—Desiderius Erasmus (1466/1469-1536), More (1478-1535), John Amos Comenius
(1592-1670), Emeric Cruce (1590-1648), Francois Fenelon (1651-1715), William Penn (1644-1718),
Abbe de St. Pierre’s (1658-1743), Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant and Bentham derived their inspiration
from the Stoics and early Christian radical positions and were reinforced by the then European
ideals of cosmopolitanism, humanitarianism and bourgeois internationalism. Common in their
perceptions was their profound skepticism to war and the military profession and the great goal
of life for European intellectuals was human happiness without any trace of the tragic (Hazard
1963: 18). There was considerable disagreement as to the means—whether it would be through the
application of scientific and technical reason or through man’s return to nature and rediscovery of
his original simplicity—but all of them were convinced that society was on the threshold of
breaking away from the shackles of traditional authority and superstition, erase the historic curses
of ignorance, disease and war and begin as articulated by Condorcet ‘upon the absolutely indefinite
perfectibility of man, which knows no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which
nature has placed us’. There was complete cynicism about the doctrine of just war seen as
smokescreen to hide the aggressive impulses of ambitious monarchs. However, none of them at
the turn of the eighteenth century, including Kant, advocated world government, as they resisted
the “very idea of concentrating power in the form of world government... . The mood was one of
suspicion of all political power and of faith in the beneficence of individual human reason and
wisdom” (Heater 1990: 55). Montesquieu pointed out that reason would help human beings discover
universally valid rules of reciprocity, which, if enforced by positive law, would maintain peace,
security and a certain degree of fairness within civil society. Montesquieu, reiterating Mandeville
counted on the transformation of human existence by the ‘spirit of commerce’ guided by the new
science of finance or economics. Commercialization would help human beings get rid of their
prejudices that veil their true needs. By recognizing the common need and aspirations, human
beings discovered their humanity thus transcending previous religious, ethnic and national
sectarianism. Once captivated by the allure of peaceful trade, human beings would look to military
exploits and war with increasing disgust. Commerce brought in frugality, economy, moderation,

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