Logocracy - Chapter 6: Logocracy

On the selection of elites and the tradition of natural law

The Cappadocian Fathers.

Chapter 6 begins with a problem: the selection of elites. As the Machiavellians (or elite theorists) have shown, elites are inevitable. And there are plenty of political philosophies and ideologies justifying this or that aristocratic system, e.g. the idea of hereditary nobility. However, Lobaczewski argues that none of the aristocratic thinkers provide a psychologically sound method of selection. As he puts it, there are too many advantages to being part of the privileged elite, which will cause any aristocratic class to degenerate over time.

The finding of a [selection] method, justified by the laws of nature and the best knowledge of them, and practicable in a modern society on the basis of rational public opinion, will constitute the central question of the considerations contained in this work.

Within this context, Lobaczewski devotes the chapter to placing logocracy within the philosophical tradition of natural law, tracing its development from the Greeks through some of the early Church fathers, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and most recently, in Catholic Social Teaching.¹ The system developed by the church has never been put into practice, for various reasons, but he thinks the ideas are sound. Their main flaw is that they too lacked a psychological basis for selection criteria. Even then, they can be useful, though “it would be necessary to loosen this rather accidental connection with the Catholic Church by restoring its original human character.” That is, they’ll do just fine when stripped of the Catholic gloss.

It will not be as simple as creating an institution devoted to the fishing out of suitable candidates, however. We have the WEF Young Global Leaders as a negative example in that department. Rather, the norms and selection criteria should be “integrated into the whole machinery of the system and work as naturally as possible … so that it triggers natural processes and actualizes social reason”.

The ex-communist countries provided the perfect opportunity for the form of state-building which could have resulted in logocracy. Lobaczewski is convinced that it would have been easier, and more effective, to institute a logocracy in Poland, for example, rather than attempt to reconstruct a democracy.

…the well-known inefficiencies of a naive democracy … further open the way to power for an organized minority which considers this democracy to be an instrumental ideology, well concealing its real plans.

Logocracy

The history of the philosophical justification of the idea of aristocratic systems or the strong power of the monarch is different from that of democracy. For if, in the light of contemporary experience, we regard Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) as the forerunner of autocratic systems, there remains, beginning with Plato, a long line of idealist and materialist thinkers who have justified the need for such a strong power that removes a significant portion of the population from influence on state policy.

With some surprise, however, we must observe that none of these authors of elite concepts provides a psychologically sufficient conception of how the members of these elites were to be selected from society. Biological inheritance of certain traits, as recognized by the Middle Ages, has never worked completely, as is obvious in light of modern knowledge of human genetics. Democratic selection by a broad mass of citizens reveals the flaws already described. How, then, would this elite capable of governing the country responsibly be formed? Without an answer to this question, any aristocratic system must degenerate because there are too many advantages to belonging to a ruling elite.

Still more justify the need to create a system with mixed properties, thus more balanced. Within the tradition of the latter, but benefiting from contemporary scientific achievements, may be included also the system proposed in the pages of this work.

Reflections by thinkers on the assumptions of a system based realistically on the laws of nature and on natural law derived from them are as old as moral reflection on the life of human societies. We find them in European antiquity and in the civilizations of the East. They were already known by the great ethicists Socrates and Confucius. We find such motifs in the Vedanta and in Taoism.

In European antiquity, the distinction between natural law and statute law was already known to the Sophists. Plato, alienated even from the elite Athenian democracy that had passed judgment on his beloved master, became its emotionally committed critic. He believed that democracy was leading the people into a “frenzy of freedom” and into moral regression. He tended to radicalize his understanding of the laws of nature, but distinguished them from statute law. A naturalist by inclination, Aristotle based his idea of justice on a knowledge of the laws of nature, which are objective in nature. He pointed out the dependence of statute law on the laws of nature present in the personality of man and in the social collective. The Cynics—the radicals of antiquity—recognized the essential function of the laws of nature before statute law. On this basis, they criticized the system based on slavery and praised the work of free people as the basis of order and prosperity.

The Stoics, followers of the cult of the sages and already close to monotheism, recognized the rational order of the world. They distinguished between natural law, as the universal divine law that should be the basis of the law of all nations, and statute law or the law of rulers, whose scope of action is limited territorially and in time. The casuistic side of this body of work was supplemented by Roman jurists, who generally regarded natural law as dominant over statute law. Thus, antiquity had already outlined the theoretical basis for what would now be realized in practice.

Already at the dawn of Christianity, in the first half of the second century, Clement of Alexandria took over the achievements of pagan thinkers in this field, enlivening them with the values of gospel teaching. His disciple Origen distinguished well between natural law and written law, pointing out the leading character of the former and that the correct development of social relations is based on the conformity of written law with natural law. In the fourth century, the Cappadocian fathers, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus, adopted the thoughts of the pagan philosophers and Origen. Within a well-understood structure of laws, they proclaimed the fundamental equality of men before the law, the duty of brotherhood, and Christian charity. On this basis they subjected the system based on slavery to fundamental criticism. They proclaimed the dignity and duty of work, condemning those who refused to work. They formed a theory of the sovereignty of goods as “possession” of the Creator’s property, which we shall adopt in Chapter X as one of the bases of our practical solutions.

Aurelius Augustinus, or Saint Augustine (354-430), lived at a time of politically turbulent change that accompanied the collapse of the Roman world order and opened a new era of history. In the year 410 Rome fell under the blows of the Goths under Alaric. The Bishop of Hippo, terrified by the present, turned his thoughts to the times to come. So he took over the achievements of antiquity, and opened the times of medieval thought. He was a religious thinker living the concepts of the Old and New Testaments. He dealt with matters of human nature, society, and the state later, in the face of dramatic changes. In the area of interest, Augustine was a moral theorist endowed with a keen sense of psychological realities. In this way he sought to define more precisely what is an eternal and universal divine law, what is a law of nature encoded primarily in human nature, and what is a legislated law limited in time and space. His considerations in his great work De Civitate Dei do not refer to any particular political system, but are a general theory of the Christian state and law. For this reason they could inspire all his successors, including Thomas Aquinas. This inspirational value they retain to this day.

It took 840 years of less illustrious thinkers in the field of our ideology, but also of trying to put it into practice, before a mind of similar class appeared—Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Equipped with a good knowledge of the rediscovered works of antiquity and especially the logic of Aristotle, just as Augustine had once crossed the threshold of the Middle Ages, Thomas entered the world of Renaissance thought. He made full use of Augustine’s works, quoting him frequently. In the relevant chapters of his works Summa contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica, he brought the theory of the structure of laws and the dependence of positive law on the laws of the Creator and the law of nature to such philosophical maturity that only modern science can make the necessary additions to his distinctions.

St. Thomas resolves and regulates the fundamental issues of morality and law, often choosing extreme examples to do so. He gives ready-made norms of ethics and law, logically derived in light of the above considerations. He developed normative ethics—along with its flaws. He worked six centuries before the development of psychological cognition. However, in order to move from the above theoretical presuppositions to solutions in the area of moral practice, church and state organization, he accepted common sense as the second necessary basis for his reasoning. However, unlike positive law, it cannot contradict “intuitive” law, which is socially accepted as right.²

Leon Petrażycki (1867-1931) seeks criteria of justice and recognizes the fact that it is perceived subjectively and individually. He senses the problem, but in order to better objectify the issue, he lacks data known only to modern psychology. An example of the reasons for this sense of justice, not yet known to him, is given in Chapter III, concerning socio-occupational adaptation. In order to be able to achieve our great aim, this pioneering move to expose the psychological foundations of law should be accepted in its entirety, but enriched and corrected thanks to the modern objective language and the achievements of this science.

This brief overview of the most eminent thinkers makes it clear that we are dealing with a moral, legal, and political doctrine which has developed since ancient times, reaching full philosophical maturity during the Renaissance and undergoing later enrichments. Unlike democracy, it is the theory of the social and state system most richly substantiated in the deliberations of thinkers.

We also accept the social teaching of the Catholic Church as set forth over the past century in the encyclicals of Leo XIII,³ Pius XI,⁴ John XXIII,⁵ Paul VI,⁶ and John Paul II⁷ as the best formulation of natural law based on the laws of nature and on a sense of justice. We do this not so much for the authority of the Church, but for the very content of this teaching as being able to serve Christians as well as followers of other religions. Such acceptance brings glory to the Church, but it also makes it possible to improve these formulations as science progresses and to realize them in the practice of life in a social system which is as modern as possible.

However, a disturbing question arises. Why has this concept of the best state system never been put into practice? When attempts were made to implement it in European systems, they always ended in a too far-reaching compromise with human egoism, local traditions, or the autocratic aspirations of the rulers. However, this science had a significant moderating influence on the minds of the rulers.

Historically speaking, this idea, which was of a human dimension, lost its support first in Byzantine and then in Protestant countries. For wherever a ruler became the head of the churches or wherever they were subject to him in practice, this teaching had to be relegated to the background. Thus its bearer remained the weakened Catholic Church, no longer able to press for its realization in the European states. Thus, through historical events, this doctrine came to be regarded as “Catholic” by popular opinion. In the understanding of many non-philosophical people, it is sometimes understood as aiming at the political domination of the Church or even of the clergy. Therefore, nowadays, in order to be able to realize this idea, it would be necessary to loosen this rather accidental connection with the Catholic Church by restoring its original human character.

A second reason for the difficulty of realizing this doctrine was that, although philosophically mature, it proved psychologically immature. None of the above-mentioned thinkers developed the concept of a necessary social mechanism for the proper selection and extraction from the mass of society of those who could be entrusted with power. St. Thomas Aquinas was a great theologian and theoretician of social morality, but his understanding of psychological phenomena was poorer than Augustine’s. Meanwhile, scientific knowledge of this very area is a necessary condition for bringing an idea to such maturity that its realization becomes possible and does not fail in practice.

It is only in modern times that objective knowledge of human personalities, their differences, and their role in the structure of societies has matured to the point where it can fill this deficit and be used to realize the best conception of the system of society and the state. And the times and the sense of need for such realization are favorable. This state of affairs authorizes the psychologist to come forward with such a proposal.

Under these conditions, the working out of a system for the preparation and election of future members of parliaments and governments will be a question of fundamental importance. The finding of a method, justified by the laws of nature and the best knowledge of them, and practicable in a modern society on the basis of rational public opinion, will constitute the central question of the considerations contained in this work. Without meeting these requirements, no theory of a social system can be considered legitimate for realization in practice. We have experienced enough—and are still experiencing—attempts to realize governments where the system of selection has been replaced by something caricatured. Such a system, however, cannot be ossified. On the contrary, it should be susceptible to improvement as experience and knowledge progress.

Consideration of this problem in the light of objective psychological knowledge also leads to the conclusion that it is practically impossible to establish some kind of psychological institute which would make the necessary selections, selecting righteous and suitably gifted individuals from society. On the contrary, this process of the growth of such individuals into leadership roles must be integrated into the whole machinery of the system and work as naturally as possible. Therefore, this aspect has been included in all the proposed devices of the new polity so that it triggers natural processes and actualizes social reason in this field. The council of the wise, already mentioned, would only patronize this process, realizing also the principle of the rule of the normal man.

Even more complicated problems are encountered where the rule of pathocracy and state capitalism has destroyed both the structure of society as developed through history and a viable system of government, and where human minds have undergone the necessary adaptation to life in abnormal conditions. Then we are faced in each case with the necessity of building a social and state system from scratch. Whether we are trying to reconstruct democracy or to build a system better than it, the task before us will always be extremely difficult. It seems that it is rather easier in the latter case!

We already have experience that on the ruins of a destroyed city it is worthwhile to reconstruct monuments of lasting value, but the reconstruction of the whole should open the way to new urban planning and transportation solutions. Under similar conditions, the reconstruction of a social and political system with known inefficiencies, or the implementation of a new well-thought-out plan, should be the subject of a reasonable public option. In any case, however, recourse to the aid of skills developed by modern biohuman and social sciences will prove to be a necessity. The latter option would require properly organized constructive work, but in its implementation it should have proved less unreliable. Unfortunately, we did not make the effort for which I had pleaded with the Polish government-in-exile in London. At present we are experiencing all the difficulties that could or could not have been foreseen when looking at Polish affairs from across the ocean. If we have not prepared ourselves in such a way, and later on in the planned realization of a modernized system, the well-known inefficiencies of a naive democracy will further open the way to power for an organized minority which considers this democracy to be an instrumental ideology, well concealing its real plans. This is not only a repetition of the situation that occurred after independence after the First World War and that appears regularly in countries that have regained independence. The crisis is deeper because the destruction of the sociopsychological structure and of the social consciousness is deeper and more difficult to understand than it is in countries that have only been under foreign rule. Such a state of affairs would require deliberate action at once.

Therefore, under the present conditions, the planning of an improved and scientifically prepared social, political, and economic system, based on deep philosophical reflection, on the experience of centuries, and on modern knowledge of the laws governing the life of men and societies, seems to be a necessary task. In contrast to all previous doctrines, a scientific justification based on the knowledge of the laws of nature should cover all the solutions to such a system. Thus, it will not be based on any ideology, but directly on these laws. Similarly, some plan of implementation will be needed.

Such a system would be evolutionary by definition, since evolution is a law of nature and further progress of scientific knowledge will stimulate improvements. Objective scientific knowledge will therefore play an important role in such a system and its progress. Nevertheless, social opinion should be well heard and participate in the decision-making process. This opinion, however, would be greatly objectivized by the dissemination of the basics of social and economic science, as well as by the partial elimination of the role of those who distort it in democratic countries.

An improved decision-making process in such a country would reduce the role of emotional and selfish attitudes, preferring rational premises and those derived from an understanding of the public interest. I will call such a system, which will value wisdom and respect human beings, based on the teachings of the best thinkers, on age-old moral values, and modern scientific cognition, LOGOCRACY.

Admittedly, modern science has not yet achieved the full clarity in the necessary areas of biohumanist and social knowledge that the construction of such a system would require, without hesitation or debate. Nevertheless, the present state of knowledge already permits such work to be undertaken, and people and their skills are maturing in creative effort. Such work alone, collective of course, will stimulate the progress of good knowledge. The conception of the devices of such a system, contained in the following chapters of this work, is intended both to sketch solutions, as far as practicable in conformity with the above idea, and to convince the reader of the possibility of its realization in the actual conditions of the life of nations. Therefore, I take the liberty of inviting scholars and people of good will to undertake this work.

Note: This work is a project of QFG/FOTCM and is planned to be published in book form soon.

1. On the latter, An Economics of Justice and Charity: Catholic Social Teaching, Its Development and Contemporary Relevance (2017) by Thomas Storck looks like a decent introduction. It’s a short book, and if I find it useful, I’ll post about it sometime this year.

2. The first part of this sentence doesn’t make sense in Polish (I asked a Polish speaker to help me out on it). In a similar passage in chapter 2 he follows up the comment on common sense by saying that Thomas thus was unable to avoid the errors of the common psychological worldview, so presumably he is making a similar point here, though I can’t tease it out. For Thomas, positive (manmade) law had to align with natural and divine law, otherwise it wasn’t worthy of the name law, though in practice manmade laws can contradict natural law. Lobaczewski says this about common sense in PP: “We shall also continue to respect the wisdom of that ‘common sense’ derived from life experience and reflections thereon, although we recognize its deficits and inadequacies” (p. 19).

3. Rerum novarum [New Things: On Capital and Labor] (1891).

4. Quadragesimo anno [In the Fortieth Year: On the Reconstruction of the Social Order] (1931).

5. Mater et magistra [Mother and Teacher: On Christianity and Social Progress] (1961) and Pacem in terris [Peace on Earth: On Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice and Liberty] (1963).

6. Populorum progression [On the Development of Peoples] (1967), Octogesima adveniens [A Call to Action on the Eightieth Anniversary of Rerum novarum] (1971), and Evangelii nuntiandi [Evangelization in the Modern World] (1975).

7. Laborm exercens [On Human Work] (1981) and Centesimus annus [The Hundredth Year] (1991).