The Plight Of Liberal Democracy And Reconstruction

Like other contemporary political philosophers, Macpherson experienced the SecondWorld War, witnessed the rising of terrible Fascism,Nazism and Concentration Camps .All ofthose events are preconditions of contemporary theorists thinking about political problems. Butin the 1950s～1960s, it was against academic current to research these calamities in the academiccircles of North America. In that era, all of researchers believed in value-neutrality, andBehaviorism was prevailing political science. They thought those problems about values wasillusive and could not to be scientific research objects. Macpherson's first academic work is tocriticize such research method in political science.Macpherson' second enterprise is mainly to investigate the destiny of liberal democracy,because in twenty century all of important problems are connected with liberal democratictheory and practice. All cannot deny that liberal democracy encounter some challenges intwenty century which was more severe than any other time. In some degree, we can say that thedestiny of liberal democracy may decide all our human society.In the first part of my paper, I want to discuss mostly Macpherson' criticism aboutseventeen thinkers .According to Hayek, Friedman, Berlin, Popper and other theorists, thecause of modern totalitarianism lies in the certain thoughts of rationalists or monists ,whichdeviates the edification of classical liberalism and abandoned its core values. Those rationalistswould not spare to override individual dignity and freedom for the sake of realizing certainUtopias; even go so far as to sacrifice anybody else for their metaphysical ideas. So democraticsociety must come back to classical liberalism, which can guarantee some sort of inspirit andholy area for anybody.Like these theorists, Macpherson also comes back to classical liberalism of seventeencentury. According to Berlin's explanation, the main arguments in classical liberalism is thatindividual can not accept any other's manipulation and domination .Macpherson also detectssuch kind of individualism ,but at the same time he points out we should know further whatsuch individual wants to do. Berlin believes no matter what these individuals want to do isalways allowable, freedom of choice is essence of freedom, the basic way to actualize one'sdignity is to choice freely spiritual and morals lifestyle, that anybody is unable to intervene.He finds out in the theories of Hobbes and Locke's that, when the individualists breakaway from all old ethic and political obligation without accepting anybody's manipulation, somepart of them are forced into free market and obliged to alienate their labor potency. At the sametime, some others engage purchasing labor potency to produce commodities. Before seventeencentury, labor potency is considered come from God, but now, it is believed owning by one-self and has no any connection with any others. Comparing with those theoreticians, Macpherson'explanation to classical liberalism is obviously more downright,complete and deeper.After dissecting classical liberalism of seventeen century, Macpherson gets the conclusionthat classical liberal thinkers presuppose possessive individualism as human nature in theirtheory. After getting emancipation, individualists engage maximizing power and materials. Thiskind of possessive individualism blooms into Bentham's utilitarianism.Bentham's utilitarianism is criticized by Mill. He points out that Bentham's individualismis too crude and should be changed into developmental individualism. But Mill's endeavor is notsuccessive, and so are others after Mill. we can see that Laski,Green and Dewey inherited Mill'endeavor, but since the Second World War, such endeavor was abandoned in any contemporarytheory, theorists attempted to come back to Bentham's theory, even go so far as to Hobbes'passive freedom .Berlin considers Mill' liberalism may lead to one kind of crossroad, and tocentralization of state power or socialism. Because Berlin does not examine minutely how thefree individual actually live, he reluctant acknowledging that such individualism in fact is a sortof possessive individualism which is discovered by Macpherson. Berlin also can not apprehendwhy those people in the totalitarian state or the third world country abhor liberal democraticsociety.It is intolerable to Macpherson that the contemporary theorists still consciously or halfconsciously build liberalism democracy on capitalist market society and advocacy the possessiveindividualism.That is first part of my paper, the second part mostly inspects his democratic theory .hebelieves that individuals in liberal society are emancipated from social bindings, franchise,hierarchy in the old community, but there are still economic prerogative of capital owners in theliberal society. They want to make material shortage to be a kind of eternal situation ofhumans, and allege humans will ceaselessly conquer the situation, all of social basic activity arein the service of capital's increment .Accordingly, Material wealth is looked as to ultimate valuegoal, not as means, and social member' consumption is just for consumption itself. It iscompletely against humanity and distorts individual' self perfection.Macpherson's intention lies in keeping on Mill's mission to humanize possessiveindividualism. He claims that we should make self-development and self-actualization asdemocratic basic ethic principle, which demands revising liberalism .We must cast away theidea of possessive individualism for developmental individualism, cast away exclusivenessproperty used by capital appreciation for common property, cast away illusive neutral,balanced,multiple democracy for everyone equally bearing a part in political activity. In a word, Macpherson claims that democratic social basic ethic principle is developmentand perfection of all of social member, which demands everyone hold equal rights for theirperfection. The ethic principle has a couple of key concepts, namely equality and perfection. theformer comes from Hobbes' modern political philosophy, the latter from Aristotle's classicaltradition.Macpherson's democratic society is one kind of free man's association, or may be calleduniversal aristocratic society. The society before liberalism allows a little man to be perfection,while liberal society makes everyone to be enslaved by their material appetite. so, Macphersonhopes to equally lift everyone to be aristocrat, which calls for market capitalist society to beunder restriction, and to make abundance material by technologyIs Macpherson's theory feasible? At the end of my paper, I will discuss this issue.