Haves Without Have-Nots: Essays for the 21st Century on Democracy and Socialism

This book gives you much time think about even though you may not agree with all points.

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Mortimer Jerome Adler (1902-2001) was an American philosopher, educator, and popular author, who worked at various times for Columbia University, the University of Chicago, Encyclopædia Britannica, and his own Institute for Philosophical Research. He wrote many books, such as  How to Think About the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization , Six Great Ideas , We Hold These Truths: Understanding the Ideas and Ideals of the Constitution , etc.He wrote in the Preface to this 1991 book, “I venture to predict that three things will be among the most noteworthy features of the last hundred years. First… its technological advances…. The second feature is the rise of constitutional democracy… Finally… totalitarian communism came into existence and (with a few exceptions) ceased to exist within the same hundred years… In relatively advanced democratic societies, all persons… are enfranchised citizens. All are political HAVES, possessing political liberty and the other rights and privileges accorded citizens. The HAVE-NOTS are limited to those below the age of consent, those confined in hospitals for the mentally incompetent, and all those who have ever been convicted. A politically democratic society is a society of HAVES WITHOUT HAVE-NOTS. The socialist ideal lags behind in the degree to which it has been realized anywhere. Socialism is the economic correlate of democracy in precisely the same terms… Thus a socialist society, like ka democratic society, is also one of haves without have-nots, one in which all… enjoy the right to a decent livelihood.” (Pg. ix-xi)He suggests, “There are elements in the doctrines of Marx and Lenin that have prevented… the Soviet Union from establishing the kind of economic equality that has always been stated as the communist idea… On the other hand, there are also elements in the doctrines of Marx and Lenin… which can and should be retained to provide the intellectual and moral foundations that would legitimate the radical reforms that would amount in effect to the substitution of democratic socialism for totalitarian communism.” (Pg. 4-5)He outlines, “When both liberty and equality are limited by the restraints of justice, they are not incompatible. The conflict is between libertarianism, which asks for unlimited liberty, and egalitarianism, which asks for complete equality and no inequality… The correct principles are: (a) No one should have more liberty than…. Individuals can use, without injuring anyone else or the general welfare of society; and (b) No society should establish more equality than justice requires, combining that with as much inequality as justice also requires.” (Pg. 17-18)He states, “In between these two extremes is a middle ground to be occupied by those, in the United States and the Soviet Union, who are … persuaded that political and economic problems are never likely to be solved by proposals that are either wholly true or wholly false… That Marx was right in predicting the self-destruction of bourgeois capitalism by its adherence to the iron law of wages is a matter of historical record. That he was also right in his proposals of two measures for the alleviation of the misery of the working class… is also attested by the successful adoption of these two measures in the economic reforms which have occurred in this century in the United States, in the United Kingdom and in Sweden.” (Pg. 62-63)He outlines, “there are three principles or elements of political justice: 1. Government is just if it acts to serve the common good or general welfare of the community and not the private or special interests of those who happen to wield political power.. 2. Government is just if it … derives its power of the consent of the governed… 3. Government is just if it secures the … equal, natural rights which belong to men as men… The last of these three principles is the critical one, the one that is essential to democracy.” (Pg. 118-119)He states, “when we say ‘government of the people,’ we are saying that this government BELONGS to the people, they possess it; it comes FROM THEM and therefore IS THEIRS. The significance of this simple point cannot be overestimated. It means, first of all, that the people who are citizens … are the CONSTITUENTS of the government, as well as its PARTICIPANTS through suffrage…” (Pg. 222-223)He argues, “mentally and behaviorally, human beings differ in kind from nonhuman animals. All the differences… are not differences in degree. I shall … state… only the most important and obvious ones. [1] Intellect is a unique human possession.. [2] Free will or free choice… is an intellectual property, lacked by nonintellectual animals… [3] A person is a living being with intellect and free will… [4] Only persons have natural and unalienable rights… [5] Other animals live entirely in the present… [6]… only man makes machines… for the purpose of making products that cannot be produced in any other way… [7] Among the things that man makes are works of art… made for the pleasure or enjoyment they bring rather than to serve some further purpose…” (Pg. 235-236)He asks, “should not an ultimate desideratum of human life on earth be the formation of a single cultural community to which all human beings belong---a single, global cultural community?... My answer to this question is twofold. First, because world government is necessary not only for world peace, but also… to preserve the planet as a viable place for human life… This leads to the second reason: world government is impossible without world community; but the existence of world community requires a certain degree of cultural unity—unity of civilization.” (Pg. 243)He concludes, “I will close with a vision of the new world of the twentieth century, in which the conflict between the two great superpowers---the USA and its NATO allies vs. the USSR and its Warsaw Pact satellites---will be replaced by the USDR (a union of socialist democratic republics). This will be a penultimate state of progress toward a truly global world federal union that will eliminate the remaining potentially threatening conflict between the have and the have-not nations.” (Pg. 251)This book will interest many students of political philosophy.