THE PHILOSOPHY CLASS: 981: Who is James Harrington........?

For months now I am lecturing about tyrants, freedom, rule of the people, which was all dealing with historical situations beginning with the Ancient Greeks.

However, anno 2022 we still are confronted with the actions and behavior of a tyrant, who behaves in a way that doesn't fit in this timeframe of history anymore.

Invading a free and sovereign country just because you do not like its political makeup, it is outrageous.

In fact, it is an ultimate test of how much we value the freedom we have created for ourselves. Because that is what we have done.

We live in a world of free speech, freedom of the press and of demonstrating, influence on the creation of laws, protection by an independent justice system, and so on.

Sure, lots of things in our system may have flaws, can be improved or criticized, but we have lots of opportunities to shape our own life in freedom.

And all this is regarded as a threat by certain individuals or small dogmatic political or religious groups.

Yet, when we look at history, already the Ancient Greeks understood, how man could create a peaceful, rewarding and happy life for himself: simply by not being a slave of a political system.

And every time, when some thinker asks the fundamental question about how to organize a society, common sense leads him time and again to the same conclusions as happened to the Ancient Greeks.

One such man was James Harington, (1611–1677). an English political theorist of classical republicanism. His "magnum opus" was "The Commonwealth of Oceana", published 1656.

Harrington proposed that two representative bodies be formed: a popular assembly and a senate.

Both were elected indirectly by all adult males except for servants, and the senate would only be made up of wealthier men.

These representative bodies were to legislate and elect magistrates responsible for executive and judicial administrative functions.

Once a deputy or magistrate has completed his term, he should not be eligible for re-election for a specified period.

According to Harrington, this last principle, the rotation of functions, was critical to holding all magistrates accountable.

In his view, this was the only way to ensure that the people remained king, rather than relying on a man's good intentions.

As you see, straight from the humanist cookbook and derived from the examples as found in the history of the Ancient Greeks and Romans,

But he also came up with an insight we already have discussed here several times as a problem of our current moment in history: property and wealth and its social implications.

Political institutions were not enough. Harrington also emphasized that the preservation of liberty required a certain degree of socio-economic liberty, and in particular freedom of land ownership.

Careful historical research showed that power depended on a balanced distribution of property, or as Harrington put it,

the 'superstructure' of politics depended on a 'foundation', namely the distribution of property and especially land ownership, the main source of wealth.

If all land belonged to one man, the state would become an absolute monarchy. If a small elite had a monopoly on the land, the state would automatically become an aristocracy or an olichargy.

A more or less equal distribution of property leads to the creation of a popular government.

Harrington put it this way: Where there is equality of land, there must be equality of power, and where there is equality of power, there can be no monarchy."

It is 1656 and the economy is still mainly an agricultural economy, but the principle is the same.

Who accumulates wealth through production, can ultimately bend things to their will. It was not even three lectures ago that we discussed this theme:

private property and the growing inequality between rich and poor today and the political power that you have with you can exercise wealth

We are over 350 years later and we are still struggling with the same problem.

Thank you for your attention again......