OZ Conservative has a well written and interesting article on Michael Ignatieff. The differences between the liberal, nationalist and conservative views on citizenship are looked at in detail.

From the article;

Ignatieff is a liberal. As such, he believes that individuals should be self-defined. Therefore he rejects ethnic nationalism (in which national identity is based on a common ancestry, culture, language and so on)

This is the argument that accidents of birth or geography should not define citizenship. Oz Conservative quotes Ignatieff to display that his take on the liberal side of civics, ie Cosmopolitanism is really quite traditional and conservative in its view. Ignatieff is quoted;

It is only too apparent that cosmopolitanism is the privilege of those who can take a secure nation-state for granted ... The cosmopolitanism of the great cities - London, Los Angeles, New York, London - depends critically on the rule-enforcing capacities of the nation state ...

"In this sense, therefore, cosmopolitans like myself are not beyond the nation; and a cosmopolitan, post-nationalist spirit will always depend, in the end, on the capacity of nation-states to provide security and civility for their citizens."

"I am a civic nationalist, someone who believes in the necessity of nations and in the duty of citizens to defend the capacity of nations to provide the security and rights we all need in order to live cosmopolitan lives.

This is where Ignatieff confuses the intrinsic property of a polity and government system with the emergent properties. Civic identity is a result of individuals pursuing their social, cultural and economic identity.

A conservative reading of that social organisation design pattern would see no difference between the intrinsic and emergent properties of society. The government, law and order, society and culture are all one entity. We see this when conservatives make claims that "our legal system is an Australian value".

Gary Sauer-Thompson writes on this;

Conservatism understands that nationality and society are rooted in biological, cultural and historical heritage. The difference between these two concepts becomes particularly obvious when one compares how they visualize history and the structure of the real. Nationalists are proponents of holism.

Nationalists see the individual as a kinsman, sustained by the people and community. which nurtures and protects him, and with which he is proud to identify. The individual's actions represent an act of participation in the life of his people, and freedom of action is very real because, sharing in the values of his associates, the individual will seldom seek to threaten the basic values of the community with which he identifies.

The liberal viewpoint would be that the emergent property of social organisation does not exist. It is utterly defined by the individuals pursuing their interests. This is the dominance of the intrinsic over the emergent, which is why liberalism and nationalism so often come into conflict.

Again Gary Sauer-Thompson has a discussion of that phenomenon;

The essence of modern liberal thought is that order is believed to be able to consolidate itself by means of all-out economic competition, that is, through the battle of all against all, requiring governments to do no more than set certain essential ground rules and provide certain services which the individual alone cannot adequately provide.

I recently discussed this same issue from an Australian Republican perspective. While the absence of privilege may seem a liberal value, which it is, it is the ground work for enabling the creation and interaction of the emergent properties in a complex system that create social cohesion.

This is a systems view of social interaction and cohesion. In a Harpurian manner the highest form of social organisation, and consequently prosperity, can only be achieved through individual members in the system having the liberty to pursue their social, cultural and economic interests.

The point of greatest cohesion, is the one of greatest interaction and interdependence which by default is an intrinsic system of maximum liberty.

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Hardt and Negri on Liberalism;

The arguments of Madison, who thought representation the key to breaking apart any monarchy of power, now seem merely like mystifications; Montesquieu, who advocated radical division of constitutional powers, has been silenced by the unity of the system; and Jeffersonian free expression has been monopolized by corporate media. The political lexicon of modern liberalism is a cold bloodless cadaver.

They continue;

Liberalism never really even pretended to represent all of society - the poor, women, racial minorities, and the rest of the subordinated majority have always been excluded from power by explicit or implicit constitutional mechanisms.

Today liberalism tends not even to be able adequately to represent the elites. In the era of globalization it is becoming increasingly clear that the historical moment of liberalism has passed.

Big statements.

Is representation purely liberal? It was a democratic advance for its time that connected the increasing equity of social and technological organisation.

On South Sea Republic we are constantly discussing post-representative forms of governance such as ratification and sortition . These technologies were not unknown at the time of the American revolution. Juries are an essential part of American Constitutional rights.

Juries are used to ensure that an individual is judged by the peers under the technical guidance of a specialist, ie a Judge. This was deemed the most efficient, and just form of judicial organisation.

There is no reason why modern liberalism cannot adjust those same principles to Executive and Legislative government. A Harpurian Republic reflects the most advanced form of social organisation that capable at the time.

Madison's beliefs on representation have been overtaken by advances in education, technology, health and enfranchisement. They have also been undercut by political organisation which seeks to increase the alienation and abstraction between representative and voter. Gerry-mandering is one such technique.

Our recent discussion on appointed or elected Ministers raised the issue of division of constitutional powers. The consensus was that factionalism has combined to make the government run pay party than by division of powers. Yet, many parliamentary systems, including Australia's, are specifically set up this way.

Australian government has no real recognition of division between executive and legislative responsibilities. Unicameral systems such as Queensland's and the ACT's have even less recognition of that separation.

Queensland's upper house was suicide squadded by Labor members, but the ACT and Northern Territory systems were created when people were more sensitive to separation of powers. Parliamentary systems are specifically set-up to ensure there is as little conflict between Executive and Legislative as possible.

Is that a failing of Liberalism? I think it is rough to throw that in its lap.

As to the corporate media being monopolised to such an extent that it is a statist mouthpiece, this is nothing new, and something that individuals have chafed under, even back in Jefferson's time. Jefferson himself, was an extraordinary muck-raker who would happily co-ordinate attacks on his opponents through the publishing media of the time.

But is the political lexicon of modern liberalism limited to representation, separation of powers and a free mass media?

It can be argued, rightly in my opinion, that sites like South Sea Republic represent modern liberalism as much as any other; and innovations such as sortition, independent constitutional review, abundant media, technology, etc are all part of the common lexicon on this site.

The American Republic had to update the responses in political science and philosophy to eradicate the ills they saw that damaged liberty and democracy. Republicanism is not static, nor is it conservative. It is an expression of the maximal political innovation and achievement of the time.

Today our list of ills is larger than in 1787 or 1901. The lexicon advances to innovations and technologies that can eradicate the attacks on liberty, democracy and justice.

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There are two competing dominant political forms in liberal democracy, these are the individual and the state. Political philosophies can be divided along these lines. In Australian Republicanism, the individual is the dominant, indivisible and discrete political entity.

Conservatism and Nationalism as political philosophies elevate the state to the dominant form of political authority.

Conservatives see the history, culture and ethnic memory of the political majority as providing sustenance, and nurturement for the individual.

Under conservatism, the nation-state becomes dominant over the individual, as the cultural will and majority, expressed through government becomes more important than an individual.

In the conservative framework, an individual who upsets the apple-cart of ethnic, cultural and political memory is dangerous and acts outside of the political system of order.

For this reason, conservatives can view the rights and perpetuation of the state as being more important than individual rights.

A similar political narrative arises with nationalism. The nationalist philosophy elevates the nation-state to dominance over the individual. As a consequence the nation-state can act in a repugnant manner to an individual in order to ensure its own perpetuation as the dominant political entity.

Laws for sedition is a good example of this. They are meaningless laws in a system were the individual is dominant.

Another example is citizenship which is used by conservatives and nationalist as an exclusionary system of legislative discrimination. Citizenship as it is practiced today by nation-states can only come from a system where the state is dominant over the individual.

The philosophies where the individual is the dominant political entity are liberalism, libertarianism, progressivism and republicanism.

These all stem from the political roots of liberalism even though they use different language to describe the individual's dominance. For instance libertarians talk of individual rights, progressives of human rights and republicans of natural rights; which means the same thing.

Under republicanism the just basis for an individual consenting to be governed is that there is a sphere of liberty that cannot be trespassed on by government.

The state must always justify any restriction on the action of the individual with the default form of consent from the individual being presumed as the negative.

The basis for consent is predicated on the complete absence of tyranny in government. The constitutional and statutory structure must be developed into the most efficient organisational form to ensure that outcome.

An inefficient form of social and governmental organisation is in conflict with republicanism. Especially ones that entrench social, political and executive privilege. For instance a monarchical arrangement is repugnant to republicanism, as is a constitution without enumerated rights.

Republicanism is founded on natural rights. These are a function of being an individual and human. The consequences of this philosophy makes citizenship a universal aspect of interaction with the state. Natural rights establish universalism as a strong principle in republicanism.

Mitchell Fifield is a Liberal Senator from Victoria and one of the Parliamentarians for an Australian Head of State. He made a very interesting speech on Bruce Smith and Liberalism in the Senate recently which was recorded in the September 6th Hansard. I have reproduced it in full.

This is a good political speech. The reader is left in no doubt of Fifield's philosophy of liberalism which is probably best described as cautious-conservative-liberalism [CCL?]. The dominant strand is liberalism itself and Fifield rightly places the individual as the dominant political entity inside his view of liberalism.

The speech drops into some left bashing, but given it was done in the theatrics of parliament, that is probably just par for the course - but far less than the 'politics as sports' that is normally seen in the Hansard.

Fifield also misses with his description of a Bill of Rights as handing legislative function to the judiciary. This is ironic as the central theme is Smith's "legislative meddling" in the speech. A Bill of Rights is to create an area of liberty that the legislative cannot trespass into. It actually ensures that the legislative cannot meddle in areas of liberty.

As we are seeing in the US where habeous corpus has been legislated away by Congress and placed under the arbitrary will of the executive . The only route of appeal for the people in this instance is to the judicial to cast down what is unconstitutional legislation.

A bill of rights stops legislative meddling and ensures that the people can sue the legislative, through the judicial, to ensure that a bare minimum of liberty is guaranteed.

I hope Fifield, and other Senators, do more speeches of this nature. I am also going to have to go looking for Smith's book, Liberty and Liberalism .

Senate Hansard. September 6th, 2006

MATTERS OF PUBLIC INTEREST - Mr Bruce Smith

Senator FIFIELD (Victoria) (12.45 p.m.)--The term `freedom fighter' conjures up images of flag-waving revolutionaries marching through the streets, or perhaps brightly coloured and costumed superheroes, the stuff of comic books and cartoons. We almost certainly do not picture a well-groomed, neatly dressed, moustachioed gentleman of a century ago. Yet that is what Bruce Smith was. He was a freedom fighter who devoted his life to advocating for individual freedom, not because it was popular but because it was in society's best interests. Bruce Smith is not exactly a household name in Australia, nor has he been graced with a parkland statue, but his unassuming name masks his legacy as one of Australia's significant and early liberal thinkers.

Arthur Bruce Smith was born in Surrey, England, in June 1851, educated in England and then at Wesley College in Melbourne. He studied law at the University of Melbourne before returning to London, where he was called to the bar in early 1877. Later that year, he returned to Melbourne and was admitted to the Victorian bar on the same day as Alfred Deakin. The two men would be prominent figures in Victorian and federal politics for the next couple of decades.

Bruce attempted to make his first foray into politics when he stood for the Victorian Legislative Assembly seat of Emerald Hill in February 1880. He was unsuccessful. That was in fact the first of five attempts he made to enter Australian parliaments. He moved to Sydney the following year and practised at the bar. But Bruce's political ambitions remained strong and, on 23 November 1882, he won a by-election for the New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of Gundagai. As luck would have it, parliament was dissolved that same day, so Bruce again went to the polls and was re-elected 20 days later, on 13 December.

An issue of the Bulletin that year praised Smith, saying he added `the strong common sense of the experienced commercial man to the acumen of the practised advocate'. Smith resigned that seat in 1884 and returned to Melbourne to become joint managing director of his father's shipping company, WM Howard Smith and Sons Ltd. He went on to found the Victorian Employers Union in 1885 and served as its first president until 1887.

Bruce enjoyed writing and over the years contributed to several journals, including the Victorian Review, Melbourne Review, Centennial Magazine and the Sydney Quarterly Magazine. He returned to Sydney in 1888 and founded the New South Wales employers union.

Smith made a fourth run at parliament and re-entered via the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, this time in the seat of Glebe in 1889. He joined with the free traders and served in Parkes's last ministry as secretary for public works and then colonial treasurer. The turbulent politics of that time took their toll on Bruce, and his commitment to his immediate family saw him again bow out of politics in 1894. In 1901 Smith made his fifth and final attempt to enter parliament, becoming the first federal member for Parkes, a seat he would hold for 18 years and be re-elected to six times before being defeated in 1919.

Smith never wavered from his enduring belief in the values of liberalism. During his parliamentary career he was one of the most fervent opponents of immigration restriction, the White Australia policy, compulsory arbitration and the new welfare liberalism espoused by some of his colleagues. He was also a vocal supporter of the women's movement, advocating equal rights and opportunities for both genders. He continuously argued that freedom and liberty were the most effective instruments to ensure societal wellbeing, not `meddling legislation', as he termed it. Smith retired to his home in Bowral in 1925 and died there in 1937, aged 86.

Smith penned a number of works including Our Commonwealth in 1904 and the brilliantly titled Paralysis of a nation , attacking socialism, in 1914. But his most important contribution was his documentation of his political philosophy in the aptly titled work of 1887, Liberty and liberalism . One hundred and twenty years later, the principles that underscore Smith's commentary are still relevant. His work has stood the test of time.

Throughout his life he remained true to his belief in championing the rights of individuals and the value of free enterprise--as he coined it, `true liberalism'. Perhaps the most important message Bruce Smith left is the reminder that governments have limited capacity to improve the welfare of individuals. Australians are better off when encouraged and nurtured to work on improving themselves rather than turning to the state for answers. One of Smith's ideological allies, John Bright, spoke in this same vein when he observed:

... there is a danger of people coming to the idea ... that a government can do anything that is wanted--that, in fact, it is only necessary to pass an Act of Parliament to make any one well off. There is no more serious mistake than that.

Liberalism is often shouted down by the Left as an instrument of the wealthy, but Smith knew that those who suffer most from loss of liberty are actually the poorest members of society. Smith reminded those of us charged with the responsibility for legislating that acts of parliament remove `a liberty from somebody, because it must of necessity speak of something which shall or shall not be done, where before it was optional'. As the federal member for Parkes, Smith stunned other members of the House when he addressed them stating:

I have not that exalted opinion of the powers of Parliament. It can transfer things from one person to another, and it can do a great deal of harm.

Bruce Smith held freedom as sacred and recognised legislation as potentially its greatest threat. It is fascinating to compare the ideas of Smith with the opposing ideas of the political Left. Though the Left claim the battleground for women's rights, they forget that classical liberals like Bruce Smith stood strong for their equality. In a speech to the House in 1901, Bruce Smith argued that women should receive equal workplace pay. And it was not the Left but rather proponents of liberalism like Bruce Smith who were the most fervent critics of the White Australia policy.

The socialists of Smith's time, much like their ideological kin today, assert moral ownership over the notion of `opportunity for all', but equal opportunity has always been a strong ideal of true liberalism. Many of Smith's battles were against those who misinterpreted the goals of liberalism or deliberately skewed them for personal advantage. Smith said:

Liberalism does not seek to make all men equal: nothing can do that. But its object is to remove all obstacles erected by men, which prevent all having equal opportunities.

It might at first glance appear odd that a member of a government would be lamenting the influence of the very entity that they are representing. But the spirit of liberalism is not anti government--that amounts to anarchy--but one in which the intervention of government in the private life of a citizen is sought to be thoroughly minimised.

Today Bruce Smith would be turning in his grave. Right around the country, Labor state governments are presiding over a series of emerging nanny states. They tell us what we should say, how we should feel and what we should think, and none is worse than the government of the sovereign state of Victoria, currently headed by Mr Bracks. A case in point is that the Bracks government's Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006--the bill of rights--illustrates exactly what Bruce Smith warned against. This is the sort of meddling legislation that purports to advance freedom and liberty but in fact does exactly the opposite. This bill of rights hands to the judiciary the power and responsibility to make laws.

Labor's bill of rights requires the courts to ensure that every single piece of legislation--past, present and future--must be interpreted in a way that is consistent with human rights. This gives a legislative power to the courts--a power that properly resides with democratically elected parliaments. It does nothing to protect people's rights; rather, it limits them by prescribing them. As the old proposition goes: to define a right is to limit it. The problem with prescribing rights is that, once you start detailing some, other important rights are omitted. For example, property rights are included in the bill, but the bill's explanatory memorandum expressly states that the bill does not deal with the issue of compensation for property being taken.

Bruce Smith would be horrified at the perverse implications of this bill. It was the men of his time who decided against a constitutional bill of rights. In a final slap in the face for democracy in Victoria, the Bracks government refused the opposition's request to put the proposed bill to a referendum. It is, unfortunately, now law. The final word on the Victorian bill of rights should go the author of a personal submission to a parliamentary committee in 2001. It reads:

A bill of rights would pose a fundamental shift in tradition, with Parliament abdicating its important policy-making functions to the judiciary ... A bill of rights is an admission of the failure of parliaments, governments and the people to behave in a reasonable, responsible and respectful manner. I do not believe we have failed.

That personal submission was actually penned by former New South Wales Labor Premier Bob Carr. He got it right.

What disturbs me even more is the restriction of freedom of speech in Victoria as a result of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001. No-one should ever condone racial vilification. It is completely unacceptable in Australian society to vilify anyone on the basis of their racial background. It was a desire to protect members of our community that prompted the bill. Anti-Semitism was particularly in the minds of the proponents and the authors of the bill, but the act has gone too far. It limits freedom of religious expression, freedom of speech and freedom of conscience in a way that is totally unacceptable in a liberal, pluralistic democracy. Religious vilification should be condemned, but the difficulties of legislating against religious vilification have become evident.

Two Christian pastors have been found guilty by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal of making fun of Muslim beliefs and practices. The crime was to quote the Koran and evoke laughter from the audience. No-one suggested that the pastors were quoting the Koran incorrectly, just that the response to quoting passages from the Koran was laughter. In Victoria today, laughter amounts to religious vilification. The core business of clerics is to advocate why they believe--to advocate their world view and why their truth is the right one. Of necessity, this means saying why you believe that another's belief system is flawed. The battle of ideas, the battle of world views and the battle of beliefs is at the heart of what makes us a pluralistic society. Pluralism is not the housing of beliefs in silos; it is the interaction of those ideas and the tolerance of those ideas. But tolerance does not mean a denial of contestability. All ideas in our society should be contestable.

But there is worse to come. A convicted Wiccan paedophile serving time in jail has used the religious vilification provisions of the legislation to pursue the Salvation Army for allegedly vilifying his Wiccan religious beliefs. The paedophile voluntarily enrolled in an alpha course--a church run course to explain Christianity. The crime? Those conducting the course did not speak well of witches, astrologers and occultists. The Wiccan was unsuccessful in his action, but the fact that this matter could even go to a directions hearing means that the laws are fundamentally flawed. I again turn to Bob Carr for assistance. He had this to say about such laws:

As they are used in practice, religious vilification laws can undermine the very freedom they seek to protect--freedom of thought, conscience and belief.

This is yet another example of meddling legislation. The solution to the articulation of poor ideas, stupid ideas and offensive ideas is not to gag those articulating them. The solution is to rebut them with good ideas--the sort of legitimate exchange of ideas that people like Bruce Smith spent their lives engaging in. I fear that I am giving Bob Carr too much credit, but I will give him the final word on this particular piece of legislation. He said, `Leave these matters to the common sense of the Australian people.'

I congratulate the state Liberal leader, Ted Baillieu, and the shadow Attorney-General, Andrew Macintosh, for their stands on these issues of freedom. The Victorian opposition is committed to repealing the bill of rights and to reviewing the religious vilification provisions of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act. Bruce Smith would be proud. We need to be vigilant and resolute and reject being told how to live our lives. It is always time to stand up for individual freedoms, liberty and equal opportunity. It is time to stand against these new nanny states. It is time to revive the spirit of Bruce Smith.

There are two possible dominant political entities in liberal democracy, the individual and the state. Progressivism, republicanism, liberalism and libertarianism see the individual as the dominant entity whereas conservatism and nationalism sees the state as the dominant entity. Most of history has been a struggle for the individual to rise to the position of political dominance, suffering all manner of arbitrary governance, from monarchy, to tyranny, and even colonialism. Liberal democracy is currently the best technology to represent the relationship between governed and governor, but may be replaced if a better technology to represent the individuals interests is found.

Liberalism places the focus on the individual and espouses political equality. Consequently inequalities such as the divine right to rule and hereditary rule were discredited and political equality advanced within the boundaries of nationalisms own political inequalities.

The ideologies of progressivism, republicanism, liberalism and libertarianism all draw heavily from Liberalism and are essentially arguments of what form of Liberalism the relationship between governed and governor should take. The ideologies are also articulations of political technology, after all, politics itself is a human technology. The starting principle of these ideologies and hence technology, can be used to derive the base truths, or relationship, between the individual and state.

Since the central tenet to progressivism, republicanism, liberalism and libertarianism, is that the individual is the dominant political entity it follows naturally that political equality becomes an exclusive right - where a right is a just basis for any relationship between an individual and government.

We see this recognition in the language of ideologies; progressives tend to call it human rights, republicans call it natural rights, liberals call them political rights and libertarians call them individual rights. These are all in the same descriptive bag; because the individual is the dominant entity, there are liberties that the individual holds as unassailable from legislative intrusion and executive force.

Australian Republicanism holds the view that civil order is impossible with the presence of state tyranny or arbitrary governance. As a consequence any just relationship between the individual and state must be predicated on this, as it follows no rational individual would submit themselves to be governed if there are no benefits from civil order, they may as well be in a state of nature. Without the guarantee of rights there is no just relationship, there is no liberal democracy, instead their is the presence of tyranny and arbitrary governance.

Conservatism and nationalism both approach the dominant political entity from the other side, elevating the state above the individual. Gary Sauer-Thompson described this very succinctly ;

Conservatism understands that nationality and society are rooted in biological, cultural and historical heritage. The difference between these two concepts becomes particularly obvious when one compares how they visualize history and the structure of the real. Nationalists are proponents of holism.

Nationalists see the individual as a kinsman, sustained by the people and community. which nurtures and protects him, and with which he is proud to identify. The individual's actions represent an act of participation in the life of his people, and freedom of action is very real because, sharing in the values of his associates, the individual will seldom seek to threaten the basic values of the community with which he identifies.

Because conservatives and nationalists see the state as being the basis for nurturing the individual they allow for political inequality, effectively arbitrary governance, against individuals that threaten the state. We have seen this in the past with sedition laws and political prisoners which made up a significant portion of Australia's initial European immigration. For instance one of the Scottish Martyrs, Thomas Muir , was detained and deported to Australia for handing out copies of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man .

This style of conservatism and nationalism also enable discriminative political inequality often over arbitrary issues such as ethnicity, which are little more than accidents of birth. The treatment of the Australian aboriginal people between the 1880s and 1960s are some of the worst excesses of that mindset. More recently we have seen the creation of camps outside of legislative and judicial jurisdiction such as Guantanamo Bay and the Nauru Detention Centre.

I am not saying conservatism and nationalism are all bad. The steady as she goes nature of small 'c' conservatism and its desire for empirical decision making from history are positive attributes. By the same token the nation-state and nationalism have been decent technologies over the last several hundred years since the Treaty of Westphalia. It has enabled increasing global economic activity and a semblance of international order between nations; though the break-downs in order have been catastrophic but generally only short in destructive length.

However it does need to be recognised that some conservatives and nationalists who support this ideological position enable tyranny and arbitrary governance inside a liberal democratic system. Tyranny is a big word, one that we often equate with dictators and despots but it does not have to be absolute to be destructive - just persistent, and arbitrary governance is what we call persistent tyranny.

The major and minor parties in Australia are predominantly economic liberal, culturally conservative and politically nationalist. Most of the political arguments between the Liberal Party, Labor Party, Nationals, Australian Democrats and Greens are within this framework. It is already a crowded political marketplace in that area.

Often too, ideological naming is mis-appropriated by parties, Australian liberals calls themselves classical liberals to disassociate themselves from the Liberal Party or the slur-like meaning 'Liberal' has taken on in America. Australian Republicans are horrified at the lack of republicanism shown by the American Republican Party. Conservatives are horrified at the authoritarianism being espoused in their name in the United States. Genuine libertarians are also dismayed at the appropriating of their language by liberal-conservative-nationalists who see the claim to libertarianism as carrying a cachet of cool.

All these parties and ideologies require a quiet moment of genuflection, to reassess the basic principle from which they stem. This basic principle of the dominant discrete political entity becomes the basis for the choice of political technologies; ie constitutionalism, separation of powers, governance etc: as well as the founding principles with which prosperity, liberty and the on-going advance of humanity are achieved.

x-posted on clubtroppo

Republicanism is focused on political technologies in order to maximise liberty and minimise tyranny such that tyranny is non-existent. The philosophical under-pinnings for republicanism is liberalism which also has the goal of maximising individual freedom. Republicanism is the political science that under-pins liberalism. Since they are heavily focused on the individual and the technologies to support maximal liberty the counter-argument is that they have blind spots to hostility outside of the individual and politics. Conservatives like to call this the cultural wars, but it also encompasses social division and national division.

To Harpurian Republicans violence is a moral failing, whether the violence is individual, majority, minority or even state on state violence. Charles Harpur believed that with the growth of the individual under republicanism and liberalism, war between nations would become morally impossible.

Immanual Kant argued that domestic constitutions and domestic stability could not be resolved until the relations between nations were. Kant believed that adopting Republican Constitutions domestically were the first step toward resolving this issue, but his warning about state on state violence remained.

Harpur's argument is that the domestic constitution, the relationships between majority and minorities, and the relations between nations would suffer violence until the individual is capable of growing morally such violence becomes an immoral interaction.

Dan Deniehy argued that the greatest inhibition to an individual growing morally, or achieving moral perfection, was the tyranny from the state. Deniehy extrapolated from history to reach his conclusion that political inequity and tyranny limited the ability of an individual to act morally. Additionally it ensured that the political leaders, or ruling class, were also incapable of acting outside of that restrictive moral framework. The political structure enforced immoral behaviour at all levels of the state in a massive feedback loop which reinforced and strengthened itself with each iteration.

So how does Republicanism deal with political violence outside of parliament or another restricted environment where the violence of political faction has been taken into account? How does Republicanism deal with political factions dragging cultural division into a question of political violence?

There is a binary choice in politics as to who is the dominant political entity, it is either the state or the individual. Republicanism and liberalism is predicated on the individual being the dominant political entity - as such an individual enjoys universal rights in their relationship with the state. These political rights are intrinsic to the individual while under the jurisdiction of the state.

A second tenet of Republican forms of representative democracy is that the minority accept the will of the majority, but with recognition that minorities will be secure in their rights. This requires a technological structure of constitutionalism such that the mob-branch of government (legislative) and the discriminative-branch (executive) can be sued by the individual who appeals to the judicial branch which must follow the enumerated rights in the constitution.

Consequently an abrogation of an individuals or minorities rights, as well as any violence toward them, especially political violence such as legislative or executive, become a moral failing of the political leadership.

Tyranny does not have to absolute to be destructive. Insidious tyranny, which we commonly call arbitrary governance, is just as damaging. As per the republicanism of Harpur and Deniehy any addition of tyranny or violence into the political system not only indicates the moral failure of the political leadership, but also negatively affects the moral actions and capability of individuals under the government's jurisdiction. The political system becomes increasingly immoral with each application of violence.

Political and cultural liberty are important concepts for the moral health of the individual and the state. The insight from Harpur and Deniehy was that the immoral behaviour of political leaders is not isolated, it is interdependent, having wider effects through the political system and the individuals who have to exist inside it.

The question popped up whether Classical Marxism is illiberal or not. Are the political actions and philosophies in Marx' and Engel's writings repugnant to, or consistent with, Liberalism and Republicanism? There is often the reminder that Marx' writing is radically different to the political forms that were made in his name, the worst being the totalitarian excesses of Stalin and Mao - however Marx and Engel published the Communist Manifesto which was specifically written for a popular (proletarian) audience and can be compared to the principles of Liberalism and Republicanism.

I am using the common definition of Liberalism and Republicanism that appears consistently on South Sea Republic. Basically liberalism is a political philosophy which maximises freedom and individual autonomy and hence morality. Republicanism is the political science side of liberalism which minimizes tyranny with the goal of eradicating it entirely from political organisation. Both liberalism and republicanism tap into the efficiencies of self-organisation found in political, economic, social and cultural freedom/liberty.

Marx and Engel published the Communist Manifesto in 1848. This became the political document for communism and its approach to proletariat emancipation. Marx divides the political world along class lines, with the powerful minority being the bourgeoisie and the oppressed majority as the proletariat.

The bourgeoisie are the capital class while the proletariat are the commoditised labour class. Inherent in Marx' analysis of mid 19thC economic analysis is that the proletariat are oppressed into slavery by the economic and political conditions of turning a profit on the capital investment. In Das Kapital there is some recognition that the free market helps commoditise products as well, which places pressures on productivity and capital return, but the main focus is on the negative effects this has on free labour.

Marx argues that machinery is a productivity tool but when capitalists are faced with decreasing margins they turn to increasing productivity by oppressing labor - such as making them work longer, or using the commoditising effects of machinery to employ women or children.

While liberalism promotes political freedom and individual autonomy it does so with the recognition that immoral actions are repugnant. The use of child labor is such a case. Morality and social/cultural practices have progressed sufficiently that the use of child labor is repugnant.

An additional issue is that Marx was at the beginning of transformation which was initially capital intensive. Industrialism led to the digital era which has hugely commoditised many aspects of production. Marx was seeing the confluence of capital intensive production and the beginning of specialist labor.

Prior to industrialisation, specialist labor were the crafting guilds who produced one off items. Now labour specialisation is so high that professions we might have once considered blue collar have become white collar. Rather than the commoditisation of labor such that a single labourer cannot make a single item of manufacture has become irrelevant. In telecommunications for instance, what Marx considered proletariat trades, have become highly specialised labour.

The above arguments do not necessarily mean that Marx was illiberal, however his pursuit of political revolution was. For someone who seemed to understand disruptive technology and its social-political transformation qualities, he misjudged the plight of workers as being production and property based - rather than a deficit in political equality.

As a consequence the Communist Manifesto is inherently tyrannical, despotic and creates political inequity. This brings it into conflict with liberalism and republicanism. For instance:

We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling

class to win the battle of democracy.

The focus on socio-economic class rather than political equity is the main error of Marxism. History has been a constant battle against tyranny and political inequality. Each step forward by humanity in this area has been through the retreat of tyranny under new technologies - such as constitutionalism, universal rights, enfranchisement etc.

In the quoted paragraph above Marx and Engels are not concerned with political equality or the republican principles of majority rule as long as the minority are secure in their rights - even a powerful minority. Marx and Engels have more in common with Schmitt - where the otherness is cast from 'ruling'. Unfortunately this cast comes from the state of exception.

Of course, in the beginning, this [proletariat revolution] cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

This is classic "we must suspend the constitution in order to save it" though in this case it becomes we must strip a minority of all rights, property and political freedom in order to save the majority. This is an authoritarian argument. Again this places Marx and Engels closer to Schmitt than it does liberalism.

Communism by its very description moves production from the private to the public sphere:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive

forces as rapidly as possible.

Central planning has shown to be a failure when faced with the more efficient and innovative forms of social organisation and self organisation which are found in capitalism, economic liberty and political freedom. Central to liberalism is the efficiency and collective positives that can be undertaken through self-interest and self-organisation. The collapse of a central part of economic activity - production - to the state is an inhibition and restriction on liberalistic freedom.

Commonly in Marxist communism is the misconception that the eradication of class conflict will create a utopia. This totally misses the concern of political equality and the individual being the dominant political entity. In liberalism this makes all individuals politically equal including those who are categorised by Marx and Engel as being either bourgeoisie or proletariat.

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of

one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of

circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

This is a misjudging of the history of political technology which has been subtractive to the state by the reduction of tyranny by technological means. The main one being constitutionalism. Nearly all political innovations have been undertaken to reduce the despotic, tyrannical, dictatorial or totalitarian powers of the executive. With each step forward political equality is advanced whether it is separation of powers, emancipation, female suffrage, etc etc.

By casting tyranny as being class based - rather than state based - this enables and promotes tyranny in the name of the majority. Again we see parallels with Schmitt.

There remains the issue of property which Marx believed should be abolished in its totality. John Locke advanced the meaning of personal property when he argued that when an individual works on an item of nature, such as a tree, then that resultant product becomes his property. In my case, as a software consultant, under Locke's definition the source code I produce is my property such that it can be sold, licensed or placed in the creative commons at my discretion.

Locke's definition makes labour and goods saleable in a free market as well as enabling the cost differentiation of non-commoditised labour. Property does remain an issue especially when it is backed by the monopoly on violence that the state has.

Australia saw one of its great Republicans in Dan Deniehy rail against the squattocracy who sat atop a malapportioned Legislative Council in NSW and resisted bills from the Legislative Assembly which would remove their power. America faced their own illiberal robber barons who created cartels and monopolies rather than compete free markets and used a corrupt Congress to further their ends.

This is an issue, but in a political equitable system, this is not the issue that it appears. Certainly not to the point of revolution. Marx and Engels, while acute observers of the excesses of capitalism, would have been better in spending more time focusing on political inequity and the republican political technologies that would have enabled the full force of public opinion to be brought to bear on a liberal democratic system.

Is Classical Marxism illiberal and unrepublican? My answer is yes.

A common failure we are seeing in the separation of powers doctrine, especially in political systems with formal branches for executive and legislative (not dumped together in the House/Assembly like they are in parliamentary systems) is the state of exception where the legislative sidesteps their responsibility and allows the executive to rule by decree. This is happening in Venezuela with ley habilitante.

From the first article:

The National Assembly has given initial approval to a measure that would let President Hugo Chavez enact laws by decree for 1 1/2 years, a key step in what the leftist leader calls an accelerating march toward socialism.

The law is expected to easily win final approval next week in a second session of the legislature, which is filled entirely with Chavez allies.

Two things from this, one: parties can actively undermine liberal democracy and establish state's of exception. This occurred in the United States and even in Australia which has poor separation of powers anyway. A quick path to tyranny is party homogeneity in both the legislative and executive.

Two: the state of exception is the exact opposite to liberal democracy. The latter is impossible while a state of exception exists, and with Chavez getting an 18 month rule by decree he is effectively a permanent dictator. Venezuela is in trouble - already many of his economic plans suggest that Venezuela will be in for a rough ride in more ways than one.

Carl Schmitt wrote that without a friend-enemy relationship there was no political. This is a step up from the Hobbesian all against all, to many against few. Schmitt's argument was that the pluralism in liberalism, and its rejection of violence through absorption of liberty and moral consciousness, leaves the political bereft of meaning, so an 'other' has to be created to make the political - political.

There is an 'other' to liberalism and republicanism. It is the state of exception. Unitary government under the whim of the executive is tyranny. A state of exception, or state of emergency, or law by decree, or signing orders, or ley habilitante - whatever - they are all examples of tyranny and despotism within the appearance of separation of powers, constitutionalism and republicanism.

When the executive gets control of the legislative, and usually this is through the party machinery, arbitrary government becomes embedded in legislation. This bill in Venezuela to enable law by decree is an example. Australia has similar legislative issues, for instance the migration act amendment contains the language, "Minister to exercise power personally" which is governance by decree.

In a state of exception: liberal democracy, republicanism and individual moral consciousness cannot exist. In other words liberty is at the whim of tyranny. If western institutions are having a tough time dealing with the executive governing by emergency, then I suspect Venezuela will be in for an even rougher ride.

I know Avo is of the opinion that any op-ed which uses television to make a point turns the argument into farce; however, Albrechtson is arguing for a permanent state of exception and directly repudiating liberalism.

Since marxism collapsed as a political and economic competitor to liberalism in the 1980s, conservatism has arisen as the new doctrine of governance to challenge liberal and republican forms of democratic governance. Liberal republicanism being a system predisposed to maximum liberty and with government balanced by three equal branches who act as checks and balances on each other.

Modern conservatism espouses government by exception, this is where the executive is elevated above the legislative and judicial and can act without checks or balances in the name of emergency. This is the closest thing we have to organised tyranny in a liberal democratic system.

Because the executive can act independently it becomes free of the rule of law, free from constitutional checks and balances, and free to act arbitrarily. The conservative conceit is that the executive philosopher kings will act in good faith to solve the emergency (usually national security concerns) and like cincinnatus give back the constitution in a time of non-emergency.

This a fallacy as new enemies are constantly being fabricated at home and abroad. A good example of emergency governance is in Washington DC - a local council - that uses all manner of emergency legislation to get past public oversight, regulations and even get to meetings on time. Permanent emergency has become a style of governance which Australia is not immune to.

Republicans, liberals, progressives and libertarians are going to have to be aware that this form of governance breaks the very components of liberal democracy. Modern conservatism and liberal democracy cannot co-exist they are different forms of government. Once a government goes into a state of exception, it is no longer liberal democracy - it is a new form of governance.

Nationalists need to be aware that this form of conservative governance affects them as well. Citizenship is not the protection from state discrimination any more. The executive is free to define the 'enemy' that requires the exception, and as Hicks shows, citizenship has no bearing on determining who the state will choose to isolate into a legal never-world.

I am not saying that conservatism is the enemy. I am saying that it is an inefficient form of governance that directly repudiates and trashes the liberal republican/democratic principles. As a system of government, republicanism and conservatism cannot co-exist.

One of the areas where conservatism suffers internal conflict is in collectivism. Because conservatism cannot describe human progress with breaking its own internal logic it turns to economic liberalism while trying to maintain conservative collectivism in culture, society, politics and nationalism. Consequently it breaks the liberty of collectivism in the economy but tries to promote or enforce it everywhere else.

Republicanism accepts collectivism as a liberty as long as it is not predicated in violence, and not protected by the state through involuntary inclusion. For instance, Unions are fine, as long as they are not compulsory or violent. Same with political parties, they are fine, again as long as inclusion is not compulsory or their actions violent. It is the same with other forms of collective organisation such as special interest groups.

James Madison best described this in Federalist No.10. Madison believed that factions, ie political parties and special interest groups, were detrimental to political liberty. However denying them from politics would mean the liberty of political organisation would have to be curtailed; The cure would be worse than the disease.

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

For this reason, Madison accepts political parties as long as they don't cause or foster violence.

It is the same with Workchoices. As long as the liberty to collective bargain does not cause violence, then there is no liberal or republican reason to ban or prohibit such a process through legislation. It becomes a legislative intrusion on liberty of organisation.

The republican response to collective bargaining is; if a republican must accept that there is liberty for political collectivism in political parties, then a republican must accept that there is the liberty for economic collectivism. This is with the caveats that there is no compulsion for an individual to belong to such a collective organisation and that the organisations are free from violence.

Parties are an inefficiency in the political system. As Adam has said in the past, they exist to 'game' the electoral system. James Carville, the US Democrat strategist stated during the 2004 elections that the purpose of a party is to gain government.

The structure of the representative system is specifically to put distance between the representative and the electorate so that the representative can make unpopular decisions which are in the 'common weal' or public good. There is intended to be a barrier between the representative and the fear of mob tyranny.

The problem with a representative system is that, while it denies the individual direct access, it gives political parties permanent access to government; and instead of mob tyranny, we get party political tyranny. This is what a state of emergency effectively is - executive political tyranny.

A fast path to executive tyranny is party discipline in the executive and legislative. This is a particular problem for parliamentary systems which have poor separation of powers anyway due to the Legislative and Executive being in the same body and the Executive making laws through parliament.

Consequently collectivism is not always the most efficient form of organisation for certain outcomes, including political and economic ones. However, the Australian republican, who favours a liberty first approach, has to accept these inefficiencies - as prohibition of the liberties for individuals to organise in their interests is far worse.

Conservatism lacks this internal consistency of republicanism. Because conservatism actively restricts access to the collective structures it sees as being a positive; such as nationalism, citizenship, family, culture etc; while selectively prohibiting the collectivism it dislikes; such as unions, collective bargaining, and even the rule of law when it suits a political purpose; conservatism becomes internally conflicted and hypocritical on the issue of liberty.

To achieve its political ends and to remain consistent conservatism has to use coercion and despotism. It has no other choice. I am sure they do not want to, but the political ideology and the political goals cannot be achieved without delving into a spate of despotism.

This is why marxism is an illiberal ideology. The Communist Manifesto advocates an initial state of emergency or short period of despotism which was excused during the Stalin era with the saying, 'breaking some eggs to make an omellette";

Of course, in the beginning, this [proletariat revolution] cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

This is nothing more than a state of emergency or state of exception. This has been the same method that governments in liberal democracy use to enact their despotic policies. Chavez in Venezuala received the power from the legislature - not the constitution - to make and execute laws for the next six months. This is the process that Marx and Engel advocated in the Communist Manifesto. Chavez's view of socialism is in conflict with economic liberty, and consequently, requires a despotic hand to be brought to fruition and coercion to be maintained.

Anglo nations such as Australia and America are not immune from the state of emergency either. Claiming that the executive can both make and execute laws without oversight for reasons of crisis in national emergency. This excuse for despotism has found sympathetic voices in the mass media.

This is the inconsistency in conservatism and why the area where it does believe human progress stems from - economic liberty - brings its collective beliefs into tension. For instance economic rationalism/liberalism allows companies to market as they see fit to potential consumers. Sex is an extremely effective form or marketing and advertising, but this comes into conflict with conservative family values.

Economic liberalism also values the idea for the sake of it, which can often be a disruptive technology, and radically change the way that collective organisations including the nation, culture and society, interact. Conservativism's reliance on the economy as the only liberal component of its ideology means that the collective and static components of its politics are constantly under threat from progress. The end result of conservatism is a crisis of its ideology and a consequent state of exception to try and reconcile that crisis politically.

Nationalism is another area that conservatism cannot reconcile progress with its ideology. Economic liberalism and the flows of capital, goods and labor mean that the nation-state is unable to handle the political, economic, cultural and social requirements of globalisation. Worse it is often not able to provide the absence of violence in such a system. The big-state nationalist policies of conservatism are another issue as they are introducing inefficiencies into the economic globalisation by interfering with capital and labor flows in the name of nationalism.

Again, economic liberty is bringing conservatism into tension with itself, and forcing conservatism to fall into crisis; of which the easy way out is a Marx/Engel type of despotic emergency; though in the name of collective (national) security rather than marxist materialism.

It is interesting to note that when conservatives recognise the internal inconsistencies of conservatism as a political ideology and the inevitable end result of this philosophy, their 'conservatism' becomes liberal republicanism. Andrew Sullivan is a good example of a conservative who has come to this insight even though he refuses to call it liberal republicanism.

Ultimately this means that conservatism is unable to provide a coherent form of governance in a liberal democracy without dipping into despotism to resolve its lack of internal logic. In liberal democracy we see this as a state of exception. This form of governance is not unique to conservatism, other state-first ideologies such as socialism and nationalism also suffer under this incoherence and must inevitably end in authoritarian emergency.

Ultimately, this form of governance and political ideology is incompatible with liberal democracy and republican government. It must be recognised as such.

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