On Religion and Politics (II)

 

In my previous post I ended up almost exclusively discussing the presentation of Émile Durkheim’s concept of society, and the role religion played in it, found in Talcott Parsons’ The Structure of Social Action, hinting that I found such discussion highly relevant for my own work, and advancing that I disagreed with some of its implications. To be more precise, Parsons subscribes to Durkheim’s idea that groups require a common set of beliefs that we would today call religious in nature to solve their internal coordination problems and thus gain stability and viability (as both would be almost impossible to achieve under a purely utilitarian/ positivistic/ materialistic/ deterministic framework). If that were the case, self-identified groups would require their own religion (or pseudo-religion), and thus the distinction between political organizations and religious organizations that I posit would be moot. In discussing why I think the distinction is very much valid, I will also clarify some intriguing challenges posed to me by my much admired teacher Amelia Valcárcel.

Let me start by saying that I can understand why Durkheim confuses political and religious organizations, or at least believes that what applies to one (the set of beliefs) is a necessary condition for the stability of the other (the political group). The origin of the modern nation-state with advanced fiscal and organizational capabilities is very much coeval with the Protestant Reformation, and sharing a homogeneous religious faith (along the lines of the famous phrase elevated to the status of law by the Westphalian treaties cuius regio, eius religio) was indeed one of the conditions of a budding national community capable to stand on its feet in an hostile environment, forged very much in the fire of international strife (whose apex was the Thirty years war, to be duly followed by the war of Dutch independence, the Anglo-Dutch wars, the war of the Spanish succession and the Napoleonic wars). If we think of big “political” groups (organized groups made with the explicit purpose of defending themselves and gaining advantage when possible against other groups whose members could be distinguished from one’s own) we find, apart from whole nations, precious few other than families and dynastic alliances. Ghibellines and Guelphs (factions that grouped a number of Italian city states that preferred to be subject to either the Holy Roman emperor or the Pope, and warred viciously giving North Italian politics its distinctive flavor) may be the only stable instance we can find before the XVI century. But we have already enough examples of multi-religious, multi-ethnic polities (imperial enough, and with enough unity of purpose to have dynasties succeeding each other over vast tracts of land)  in India, Persia, to a lesser extent China, the North of Africa and the Middle East (ruled first by Arabs and later on by Ottomans) to know that religiously united (and racially homogeneous) political units are not the only viable social model.

However, after that historical moment when the main political organization (the nation state) had indeed a strong religious component, soon after the Napoleonic wars that settled the supremacy over the European landmass in the hands of the British, a new form of amalgamation appeared on the stage that led to the creation of political parties not along religious lines (except in some residual, peripheral lands like Ireland), but along another possible dimension of self-identifying: class. Before the social upheaval of early Industrial Revolution, I think it is safe to assume that, at least in Europe, only elites belonged to a “political” organization other than the whole nation, as only them had the means to consciously identify with a subset of society (taking extended family as a model, as had been done since time immemorial in dynastic fights, where different “parties” were simply supporters of different lineages aspiring to occupy the throne, and after the accession had been decided and consolidated the followers of the defeated aspirant to the throne either switched their allegiance or went to exile or to prison). Because the only political groupings were formed within the elites, it is unsurprising that Theda Scokpol identified elite disunion as one of the pre-conditions of revolution and Peter Turchin fixated in intra-elite overproduction (and the consequent intra-elite internecine fighting) as one of the driving conditions of overall social instability in his structural-demographic model.  

But such predominance of elite dynamics was, as I just mentioned, shattered with the bourgeois revolutions (American, English and French) caused by early mechanization (that created a “labor reserve army” that could not count on living from the land, and so had to get itself involved in the fight for the societal surplus that increasing productivity was allowing) and by the rise of a commercial capitalist class that could compete with traditional nobility for social primacy (and thus contest the contemporary dominant reason criterion for assigning status and precedence, namely birth). In such changing conditions (that manifested themselves/ caused the change of the dominant reason, superseding “baroque” reason with the newly minted “economic” reason) the majority of the people realized they had to form new associations to defend their interests against those of markedly distinct social actors. Thus classes were born and, with them, the parties representing their distinctive interests (probably, there is no sense in talking about a class as a recognizable collective actor if it is not accompanied by some sort of representatives that purport to talk in its name and guide its action, that is, if there is not a “party” or, in my more general terms, a political organization that fights for its improvement at the expense of other collective actors).

The question that interests me now is to what extent such parties, to be viable, require a shared metaphysical belief between their adherents. Marxism, probably a paradigm of partisanship (that self-identified by advocating for the primacy of the proletarian “class” which embodied all that was good and truly progressive in history, and was finally undone because one of the weakest links of its founder’s theorizing was precisely that he never really concerned himself with defining with any precision what a class was, and thus who could legitimately claim to be a proletarian) had been denounced since its very inception for constituting a “secular religion” (even a “cult”, by those that wanted to present it as even less rational than it actually was) and certainly almost all known Marxist have subscribed to a set of beliefs (not that different from what Parsons identified as the utilitarian compact: materialism, determinism, and adherence to the “scientific method” as the only way to reach the truth of any question whatsoever, however fanciful their understanding of how science works may have been) that are distinctly metaphysical. Should we conclude, then, that all organizations within society (or at least political ones, as we haven’t said anything about economic and educational ones yet) require for their harmonious and stable functioning to share a common faith, a common set of beliefs about “what reality consists of”, and potentially common rituals for shoring them up?

Definitely not, because political organizations can count on a more powerful unifying force than their sharing of metaphysical beliefs: the defense of their perceived identity (and their shared material interests) against a common threat. During the long stretch of human history when the only organizations of this kind were elite families, it was easy enough (and obviously rewarding enough) to know who you had casted your lot with. As long as the sacrifices required by such alignment were compensated by the benefits you derived from it, you kept your allegiance, and the moment they stopped being so you may consider defecting… if you could (not for nothing were defectors highly despised: it was a temptation always present for those not immediately associated by blood with the ruling family). With the French Revolution we see a different kind of political organization taking shape, as a new kind of group with common interests takes consciousness of its distinct status and its potential to act collectively: the “third state” that purported to represent the whole nation except nobles and priests, and that asserted itself precisely against the two latter categories (also, easy enough to identify). Of course, once the third state had achieved its goals and suppressed any privilege from the erstwhile ruling classes, the infighting begun, as different segments within it not only started trying to arrogate additional privileges for themselves, but required the creation of a clearly defined “other” against which to direct their energies, and that would be needed to help define their own qualities, and thus align their individual member’s interests and actions.

What happened after the revolutionary terror and our days can be understood as the distinct crystallizations of the different subsets of the bourgeoisie (co-opting layers of the peasantry and the industrial workers) to constitute themselves as a separate, easily identifiable group, with its own interests clashing with every other group’s ones, and thus pursuing them in a way that would be detrimental to everybody else (as everybody else was assumed to be doing the same). In most countries, the non-nobles (and non-priests and non-nuns and monks, which the Reformation had already reduced substantially in number) split in an upper class of higher incomes (that, soon, monopolized almost all wealth, which as Saez and Piketty have conclusively shown, is distributed much more unequally than income) and a lower class. Such division had little to do with the Marxian differentiation between capitalists, owners of the means of production, and proletarians, who owned nothing and were forced to sell their work, as in the upper classes we could find a good deal of non-means-of-production-owning professionals: lawyers, middle managers, physicians, teachers and university professors, the higher echelons of public servants and bureaucrats…

Although they formed what Marx (and subsequent follower) would call “the bourgeoisie” none of them were in the least interested in “exploiting the proletariat” or in somehow extracting a somewhat metaphysical “surplus” from their work, as said work had little to do with the source of their income (rather the opposite, being forerunners of today’ prevalent “service sector”, they could only benefit from the improvement in the life conditions of the masses, that would then be able to pay even more for their specialized services -see “Baumol disease”). They certainly did not share a monolithic metaphysical outlook, some of them being Catholic, some Protestant, some Freethinkers, some as atheist as they come. What they shared were tastes, a penchant for good clothes and outer signs of distinction (what Bourdieu would call “symbolic capital”), a desire to live in the most expensive quarters of their respective cities, a high valuation for formal education… essentially, external, easy to grasp signals of belonging to the “right” tribe.

That is, they were the natural members of a fully political (in the strictest sense) “conservative” party, that in each country took different forms and expressions, according to their precise historical circumstances, but that in all cases shared a preference for tradition (as tradition was what had brought them to such comfy and enviable position), for stratification and hierarchization (a natural preference for those that occupy the higher strata and the top of the hierarchy) and for excellence and meritocracy (as those born into privilege tend to think it is, somehow, a position they have “earned” and they “deserve”, even when all they have done is “choosing the right parent”, which obviously is the least chosen thing in life). The rest of the population, that could with similar ease identify themselves as not being part of that tribe (as for belonging it was necessary, first and foremost, to reach certain level of income that was by definition not available to the majority) created one or more equally political “progressive” parties whose professed main value was, unsurprisingly, equality, and which showed little respect for tradition, hierarchy and meritocracy.

The genius of the conservatives everywhere was to realize that in a society ruled by the majority (which, by definition, they could never be part of) they would end up stripped of their privilege and their wealth… unless they could either circumvent majority rule (exacerbating potential conflicts with the openly disenfranchised) or fragment the opposing party. And indeed most of the political history of the XIX and XX centuries in the West has to do with the always unstable balance between the centripetal (“proletarians of the world, unite!”) and centrifugal forces (exemplified by the continuous expulsions of groups from the successive internationals, as well as the breakups between social democrats and communists, anarchists and communists, Trotskyites and Stalinists, Maoists and everybody else…) in what should have been the “majority’s party” (or “progressive party”), but because of those internecine divisions it never truly was (even in particular cases, like Russia or China, where it reached power and consolidated it, it did so through a tiny minority of fully devoted cadres that could never legitimately claim to have been chosen or elected explicitly by a majority of the population).

Needless to say, we are still witnessing the challenges, for progressive parties everywhere, to accommodate and adapt to such centrifugal tendencies, today manifesting themselves in the competing claims of “intersectionality”, as they try to claim the representation of heterogeneous groups that, frankly, may have nothing at all in common (historically disadvantaged racial minorities, immigrants, homosexuals, women, unemployed and less skilled workers definitely constitute a vast majority -hell, just women alone would suffice for that - but as the story of the Democratic party of the USA shows, it is difficult to pander to ALL of them simultaneously, and to have them doing the bare minimum of coordination requested to a modicum of coordinated action, namely voting for their darn candidates).

Again, it is easy to see that such groups (let us call them the “non-elite”, representatives of the majority, although because of the previously mentioned intra-elite competition historically they have been able to claim the allegiance of some scions of the elite dissatisfied wit their prospects within their milieu) do not need to share any kind of metaphysical beliefs to coordinate their actions, and that such coordination will be the more effective (exactly as in the case of the conservatives) the more they see the other part of society presenting a united front “against” them and their interests and their claims (remember that for the member of a political organization, by definition their own claims are just and fair and legitimate, which makes opposing claims from other organizations automatically unjust, unfair and illegitimate, and thus those other organizations must be peopled almost exclusively by bigots, fanatics, morally deficient persons, not meriting the benefits of full citizenship and even not fully human… it is easy to see how dangerous such language and such vision can become!)

So I think we can consider sufficiently proved that we don’t need to extend Durkheim’s analysis too far, and that indeed political organizations can show a very high degree of cohesion, unity of purpose and effective collective action without sharing a religion (be it a set of shared metaphysical beliefs or of rituals that help explain such beliefs to themselves and articulate them in their more day-to-day application). Before finishing today’s post, however, I wanted to apply these insights into the comment of my much admired teacher Amelia Valcarcel about the “great narratives” that are still able to innovate ethically, and thus towards which we can still turn to help meet the new challenges our societies (liberal, technologically advanced, globalized, “postmodern” in François Lyotard’s sense, and “postmetaphysic” according to Jürgen Habermas) are facing. Challenges such as global warming, biodiversity loss and who should pay to ameliorate their more deleterious effects. Such as the kind of treatment we owe to other species (starting with eating them or not). Such as what kind of restrictions should we impose to avoid the spread of a new pandemic, and how we should allocate the means to alleviate it (be it a vaccine or an effective treatment). Such as how to reduce the impact of technological change and increasing automation between the most vulnerable (or the worst prepared) citizens. Such as how we react to a shrinking population in the economically advanced countries and a still exploding one in Africa. You get the point: the world is facing new, unprecedented problems (something Amelia, with her vast and keen historical understanding, knows very well is always the case… biological evolution may find once and again the same solution and apply it to different problems, but as for social evolution, that is seldom the case) and we need ethical innovation to propose solution to all those conundrums that can crystallize in a widely shared consensus, and thus become part and parcel of the social fabric (become “institutionalized”, ultimately becoming part of the law or of universally accepted custom and habit, like we have done with so many previous challenges, from forbidding slave trade to recognizing a basic set of rights to every citizen, regardless of gender, class, faith, age or political persuasion).

Unfortunately, modernity and its latest stage (that she prefers to characterize as globalization, rather than postmodernity) has robbed traditional comprehensive discourses of their strength, and made them unable to raise to the challenge and be credible proponents of solutions in any of those areas. The discourses she explicitly consider exhausted are traditional religion (both the “religions of the book”  -Christianity, Judaism and Islam-, oriental traditional faiths or “new age spirituality”, for which she has little patience), Marxism (both its communist-Sovietic and its socialist and social democrat forms), Capitalism (its free-market, traditional version) and even positivism (as last distillation of the Enlightenment’s faith in progress and social amelioration through the application of the scientific method, which ended up as social Darwinism and a convenient tool for totalitarianism). It could be debated to what extent each of those currents, or meta-narratives, are indeed exhausted and incapable of innovation (and I would direct my readers to my post about how organizations develop along time and are, sadly, corrupted and degraded: how organizations are corrupted), but I want to rather focus on the alternatives that are taking shape since the hinge between the XX and the XXI century: ecologism and feminism.

Because, as my classification of organizations should have made clear, both are very different animals, and thus are likely to follow very different trajectories. Not to beat around the bush, ecologism is a religion, it is not a set of ideas to guide political action (understood as actions that benefit an identifiable set of individuals to the detriment of other, excluded ones), but to be believed, professed, preached, proselytized… it is indeed an alternative grand narrative about “what there really is” (there is this distinct reality: “nature”, characterized by its essential non-humanness, and then there are men, an always negative influence, always corrupting, and for some mysterious and never fully explained reason, entirely apart from the posited “natural order”… unless they accept ecologism and its premises and start living “in harmony with nature”) and what our attitude towards that ultimate reality should be (as in most traditional religions, it should be an attitude of utmost respect and non-interference… ultimate reality is the only source of value, so it is to be adored, reverenced, occasionally appeased and even haggled with, but never exploited or debased or manipulated).

Feminism, on the other hand, is the ultimate political organization: formed by very easily identifiable members (women, which creates a serious difficulty for those that were biologically born as men but want to join, no matter what the cost of the required interventions) that consider that they have not been given the portion of the social product (wealth, riches, status, recognition, respect) they deserve, and are willing to fight for it, obviously taking it from the ones that currently hoard them (men). You can’t get more political than that! And, because of their higher life expectancy, women are already a majority of the population in almost all countries, so in any system of purported majority rule, it should be a clinch for them to seize power and enact the institutionalization of all their claims, shouldn’t it? As it happens, although a “feminist sensibility” is now mandatory in certain spaces (progressive politics, academia, mainstream media) and certainly many claims originated in feminism that once seemed radical (right to vote, unrestricted access to contraceptives and abortion, formal banishment of any limitations in access to any kind of position based on sex, even those, like military combat units, where there may have been a strong rationale for keeping them) have been already incorporated in the institutional framework of most advanced countries, there is no mainstream “feminist party” competing regularly in elections in any of them. And the explanation doesn’t seem to be because they have achieved all their goals, and are content with how things stand, as the public figures we could identify more readily with feminism and that tend to consider themselves the representatives of the movement continuously tell us how far from full equality we still are (that is, indeed, an indisputable fact, regardless of who voices it), how strong the iron yoke of “heteropatriarchy” still is and how many more measures should be taken to advance towards a society that can be said to grant a bare minimum of dignity and recognition to its feminine part (something that the current one, according to these spokeswomen, fails miserably to do, which makes it, I guess, an illegitimate cesspool of sexism, bigotry, shortsightedness and misery).

We may disagree with the level of subjugation currently imposed on women and girls (compared with that thrown on men and boys) and with the reality of said construct (heteropatriarchy), and discuss the urgency of addressing them until we are blue in the face, and we could question why organized feminism doesn’t have a more salient role in electoral politics (the answer would be similar to that given about progressive parties, that necessarily represented more people than conservative ones in most polities: “divide and conquer”, and the fact that many, many women do not identify themselves primarily as belonging to a political group that identifies their needs with those of all the rest of their sisters, but have other, more salient collective identities that they prefer to pursue first), but that will have to wait for another post (that may very well never be written, I’m not that attracted to the issue, and it is a veritable minefield nowadays, with many more downsides than potential upsides). I rest contented with the clarifications I’ve made to the need for religion in political groups that I set out to do. There is another level of political grouping that may be more dependent on shared metaphysical beliefs and rituals (the one identified by Durkheim as the main social unit to study, which explains his fixation on it): the nation. That may indeed merit an additional post that I may sometime write…