Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Guizot 2; wechselseitige Beziehung: Staat - Gesellschaft; staatl. Macht als Ausdruck natürlicher "Aristokratie" (natürliche politische Macht) -> Abkehr von Hobbes (pol. Macht als Konstruk);

Kurzinhalt: This double movement—the growth of government's power over society, and of society's influence on power—is not contradictory. It is only the two sides of a unique phenomenon, both social and political:

Textausschnitt: 96a This is Guizot's germinal idea: modern political development leads to the simultaneous growth of political power in society and of society's influence on power. The representative regime that he sought to establish must and can be founded only on the recognition and institutionalization of this fact. Representative power that understands its position must know how to seek, within society, the means of governing it. It must allow particular interests already at work in society to participate in its action. For that there is only one means: to let them participate in government. This is what he explains in a text dating from 1821 entitled Des moyens de gouverne- ment et d'opposition dans l'état actuel de la France: "If then you want to profit from all the means of government contained by particular superiorities and influences, then simply hand over a part of government to them. Do not make of power what the miser makes of gold; do not hoard it only to let it remain sterile. The art of governing consists, not in seeming to take over power, but in using all that exists."1 Just as Guizot wanted government to consider society not as an enemy but as a partner, so he wanted to teach the liberal opposition, which wanted to represent society, not to consider power as an enemy, or even as an onerous necessity. He wanted to convince his liberal friends of the nobility of governing, to show them how the liberal idea that power serves society tended to paralyze their political action, without their even being aware of it. On this point, Guizot did not feel that he was evoking a secondary or subordinate aspect of the French political situation. What risked making France ungovernable, or condemning it to be poorly governed, was surely this liberal conviction of the essentially subordinate character of political power:

Power is indeed blind. The people's sovereignty and the aristocracy's aversion are a subject of continual terror for it. It is much less alarmed by that other idea, much more dangerous, much more difficult to handle. (This idea is that) the government is a servant to be accepted only on two conditions: namely, that it will act very little, will be humble and reduce its responsibility. ... It is especially to friends of the new France that it is advisable to be well acquainted with the nature and conditions of power. They have a government, the government of the revolution, to found. To succeed, something other than instruments of warfare and theories of opposition is needed.2

97a The idea of the essentially subordinate character of political power underestimates the irresistible dynamic of the relationship between state and civil society, a dynamic that denies that nonintervention (laissez faire, laissez passez) can be the maxim of government:

I know as well as anybody about the deplorable and the puerile in the mania to govern everything. I am well aware of the latitude that must be given to commerce, industry, and the deployment of individual activities and social forces, and of just how much authority ruins and upsets many things when it touches them in an untimely way.... But, having said that, the question still remains unanswered because the maxim, laissez faire, laissez passer, is one of those vague axioms, true or false, depending on how it is applied, which informs but gives no guidance. M. Turgot professed it more than anyone; and, in his brief administration, he was the minister who handed down the greatest number of rulings and ministerial orders, was in touch with the greatest number of interests, and made the most frequent use of authority. He had no choice, it will be said; M. Turgot used authority precisely to abolish all these troubles, all these irksome interventions of authority itself. Do you think, then, that such necessity will ever be lacking under the rule of a perceptive power, and that, if it wants the good, it will find no occasions to exercise its salutary activity? The failing of things human is too deep to be exhausted in this way. The more society is perfected, the more it will aspire to new perfections. Could it be that you regard public power as uniquely dedicated to repressing, punishing wrongdoing, never as taking the initiative for the good? What a fanciful pretention it is to mutilate power in its relations with society, to arm it on the one hand by paralyzing it on the other! Think again, power will not consent to this, and society itself will not allow it to do so. When its government suits society, when society feels that it is living within its government, when government is truly society's interpreter and leader ... then society will call on the government for the good it is seeking and for the protection against the evil it fears; it solicits government's action instead of fleeing from it.3

97b Thus, even if the government did not wish to intervene in social life, it would be compelled to do so by society itself. Guizot was certainly one of the first authors to have perceived that, contrary to the original liberal idea, the notion of representative government and the distinction between the state and civil society were weighed down with a considerable extension of the state's power over civil society. This extension had its source less in power's despotic proclivities than in "social demand," as we say today. And if the liberal in Guizot looked on this development with favor, it is because the growing action of government on society signified simultaneously a growth in the power of society itself. The means of power for government are above all in society. Every new activity of power does not cause government to abandon its representative role, since it should always be discovering in society the "superiorities" and "influences" that spontaneously form there, in order to make them truly "public." Government must expose them fully, so as to give them all the exercise to which, as superiorities, they are entitled. This double movement—the growth of government's power over society, and of society's influence on power—is not contradictory. It is only the two sides of a unique phenomenon, both social and political: the access to public power of the natural aristocracies or capacities to which it belongs by right. (Fs)

98a Such a conception of the finality of political life or social existence is not as such contrary to the intentions of the French Revolution or to the liberal project. The Revolution wanted men's positions in society to be determined by their "merit" or "talent," and no longer by their birth. The difficulty relates less to the accent Guizot puts on natural superiorities, than to the idea of power of which this accent is only the expression. In his eyes, power as such is something essentially, even emphatically, natural. It is here that Guizot, in order to found representative government and institute liberalism as its doctrine, breaks with an essential element of the liberal doctrine of political power. In our examination of Hobbes's thought, we noted that the idea of political representation linked to the distinction between state and civil society implies that one conceives of political power as artifice. It is not so much that natural inequality should be denied, but rather that its pertinence for the political institution is radically questioned. Hobbes contests the significance of natural inequality so as to establish that the political order cannot be its expression—that political power has its source in a decision, that it is artificial. Here is what Guizot has to say on the subject, his interpretation of the "state of nature":

Take free, independent men, unfamiliar with any previous necessity for subordination to each other, united only by an interest, a common intention; take children in their games which are their business. How is power born amidst these voluntary and simple associations? To whom does it flow by its natural and unanimously recognized inclination? To the bravest, the cleverest, the one who convinces us that he is the most capable of exercising it and of satisfying the common interest, of accomplishing everyone's thought. As long as no exterior or violent cause occurs to upset the spontaneous course of things, it is the brave who command, the clever who rule. Among men left to themselves and to the laws of their nature, power accompanies and reveals superiority. In making itself recognized, it makes itself obeyed. (Fs)

This is the origin of power; there is no other. Between equals it would never be born. Felt and accepted superiority is the primitive and legitimate link in human societies; it is both fact and right; it is the true, the only social contract.4

98b What gave Constant's oppositional liberalism its own particular flavor was the oscillation between the authority of nature and that of history, between the individual naturally entitled to a sphere over which political or social power can have no right, and the individual as modern individual, that is, one necessarily attached to his "pleasures" because of the development of "commerce." The consequence of Constant's oscillation is skepticism, internal division, lost innocence, and irony. What gives a specific cast to Guizot's governmental liberalism, is the reconciliation he asserts between the evolution of history and the characteristics of human nature. No less than Constant and most of the postrevolutionary authors (liberal or not), Guizot believes in the irresistible authority of the European historical evolution, leading men toward a regime founded on civil equality and political representation. We have seen, regarding the death penalty, that for him the notion of anachronism was also an essential instrument of political analysis. However, this notion of anachronism plays a less decisive role than it does in Constant's thought. With Guizot, history's authority is one with that of nature: the historical evolution led European peoples to live in the representative regime which alone satisfies all the moral and political requisites of human nature. Ultimately, authority for Guizot is not, as for Constant, we "modern peoples" or we "modern individuals," but simply "the nature of things" or "the nature of man." Oppositional liberals misjudge nature by belittling political power, because it is natural for man to respect and desire this power; power as such is something good since it is the natural expression of "natural superiority," where fact and right coincide. If the characteristic feature of Constant is irony, directed against himself no less than others, Guizot's is the haughty assertion of oneself and one's principles. I am not saying that Guizot's well-known personal haughtiness can be inferred from his doctrine. The fact remains, however, that it is born naturally in the movement to overcome the critical or ironic posture of liberals, whom Guizot judged to be powerless and, eventually, ruinous. It is born naturally from the awareness that it is necessary to show the primacy of assertion over negation. Here are a few lines where his haughty tone makes the natural loftiness of power especially perceptible:
What are you doing then, you who proclaim that power is only a hired servant who can be paid at a bargain rate, who must be reduced to the lowest degree, in activity as in wages? Do you not see that you misunderstand completely the dignity of its nature and its relations with all peoples? What a beautiful tribute is paid to a nation by telling it that it obeys subordinates and accepts the law of its clerks! Are nations made up of superior beings who, so as to attend freely to more sublime work, would have inferior creatures responsible for the material aspects of life under the name of government? This is an absurd and shameful theory that ignores equally fact and right, philosophy and history. Undoubtedly ... true superiorities do not always rule the roost, and even when they do, they do not always make legitimate use of the position.... Also, with institutions and laws, there must be guarantees: on the one hand against the reign of false and fragile superiorities, on the other against the corruption of the most authentic ones. But these necessities of the social condition change nothing about the nature of things. They do not prevent the fact that generally speaking power belongs to superiority, and therefore superiority is the natural and legitimate situation of power. It is not for itself, but through itself that power exists: power creates itself by its own strength, and still controls even when it is working to obtain the free assent of the men over whom it extends.... Constitutional power is neither better nor worse than oppressing power. In passing from despotism to liberty, nations cease to have masters, but they are not replaced by servants. They then have leaders in whose hands authority is not demeaning, and who, in accepting the necessity to act for the common good, remain heads of state.5