120421 Consent Theory of Government 21

8/12/2019 120421 Consent Theory of Government 21

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When I read articles, I alter the color of text and insert highlights to underscore portions of the text that

strike me as important, interesting, or confusing. I know that my inclination to colorizetext is annoying to other

readers, but it's important to the way I've come to think and analyze documents.

More, I doubt that my various inserted comments would be as easily understood with my colorized

highlights to indicate whichever words or phrases inspired my comments.

I colorize text in redto indicate something that strikes me as significant and worth noting.

I colorize text in pinkto indicate something that I don't understand or disagree with.

I add a yellow highlightto indicate something that strikes me as important.

I add a green highlightto indicate something that strikes me as very important or even profound.

I add a blue highlightto signify a subject that needs more research.

The authors original text is in black. My own comments are inserted in a text that is [bracketed, bold and

blue].

Alfred Adask

..............................................................................................................

POWER AND CONSENT

REDUCTIONISM, DIALECTICS AND CONSENT THEORY

by DOUGLAS NEWDICK

[According to Wikipedia: Reductionism can mean either (a) an approach to understanding the nature of

complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or (b) a

philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced

to accounts of individual constituents.

I presume this definition corresponds to Mr. Newdick's use of the termreductionism.]

1.0 Introduction


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Advocates of consent theory are aware that their theory is controversial to some degree and naturally

enough this leads to a thorough defence of the theory in any exposition. This is not unusual. What is peculiar is the

quality of that defence; the arguments that are countered are only those ones which offer the least challenge to

the thesis. These advocates of consent theory defend their theory from counter-arguments that share the same

fundamental presuppositions, ie objections from within the liberal democratic tradition, more radical criticisms are

usually ignored or relegated to footnotes. While there is something to be said for not trying to defend one's

theoretical basis all the time, much can be learned by defending particular explanations from criticisms based in

different paradigms. In this essay I will explore some more radical arguments against consent theorythan those it is

usually defended from. Specifically I will attempt to show that the reductionistic and individualistic basis of consent

theory is falseand/or obscures more than it reveals and that a dialectical or non-reductionist picture can make

sense of the problems that have persistently plagued consent theories.

2.0 Why Consent theory?

2.1

The basic appeal of consent theories of political obligation is that they are in harmony with the avowed

ideals, aims and bases of liberal democratic theory. For a theory that places high value on freedom and the

autonomous action of individuals the most obvious basis for legitimate political authority is some form of

voluntary, self-assumed obligation. Consent theory fits the bill. More specifically, some consent theorists think that

any other theory of political obligation is inconsistent with liberal democratic theory:liberalism assumes that

normal adults have the capability for personal self-determination and that it is, therefore, appropriate to ascribe to

them a right of personal self-determination. This right includes the right of political self-determination. From this it

follows that no one can [impose] authority, including political authority, over any normal adult without the consent

of those under such authority. (Beran, 1987, p 34)

[But it's not consent every day, and every transaction, per say. There is one act of consent: a pledge of

allegiance. Once that unilateral pledge is made, the pledgor is thereafter obligated to fullfill the terms of his

pledge without further evidence of consent. That original pledge might be revoked by some formal procedure.

But until that orignal pledge is revoked, the pledgor remains bound by his own pledge.

In the case of government, I have repeatedly pledged allegiance to The United States of America. But I

have never pledged allegiance to the United States. My single pledge of allegiance to The United States of


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America expressed my consent to be bound by the laws of The United States of America. So long as my original

pledge remains valid, no further consent to be bound by the laws of The United States of America should be

required.

Insofar as I have never pledged allegiance to any United States,I have never issued a blanket consent

(pledge) to be bound by the laws of the United States. Therefore, if I'm approached by any agent of the

United Statesattempting to subject me to the laws of the United States,they may require my consent to be

so subject on a transaction-by-transaction basis.

If so, an important addition to any line of defense might to 1) admit and declare my pledge of allegiance

(consent) to be bound by the laws of The United States of America; 2) deny that I have ever pledge allegiance to

the United States; and 3) declare that I have not consented to be bound by the laws of the United Statesin

the particular transaction that is the subject matter of the case at hand.

Under this analysis, once one had pledged allegiance to The United States of America, no further

expression of consent to be bound by the laws of The United States of America would be required. So long as

one had not pledge allegiance to the United States,blanket consent to the the laws of the United States

could, at most, be presumed by the government of the United States--but that presumption could be refuted

on a case-by-case basis. In theory, the cops' and/or courts' presumption that I've consented to be bound by the

laws of the United States(this state) might be refuted by an an express declaration that I have pledged

allegiance to The United States of America and that I have not pledged allegiance to United States.

A similar declaration and denial might be devised relative to The State of Texasand this state. But

the current Texas Pledge of Allegiancewas adopted in A.D. 2001 and is almost certainly code for this state.

The first Texas Pledge of Allegiance was adopted in A.D. 1933and even that is suspicious. I would not claim to

made the government sanctioned Texas Pledge of Allegiancewithout some more research and consideration.

I suspect that merely identifying myself as one of the people of The State of Texasmight be sufficient

to constitute my pledge of allegianceor at least my pledge to be bound by the laws of The State of Texas.

One basis for presuming allegiance to this statemay be the acceptance or use of the benefits of this

state. i.e., if you pledge allegiance, you are entitled to the benefits of this state. If you accept the benefits of

this stateyou might be presumed to have pledged allegiance to this state.

But what happens if you take the benefits of this stateand also deny allegiance to this state? Is that

contradiction untenable? Must you return whatever benefits you've received in order to maintain your claim of

no allegiance/consent? Or could you claim that you received the various advantages they claim to be be

benefitsas giftsand thus without attached liabilities?

What if you claimed that you understood the alleged benefits of this stateto be benefits (or gifts) of

The United States of America?


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(It's conceivable that an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States might be

deemed a pledge of allegiance to that entity. But I doubt that any prosecutor or government employee would

want to argue that point on the record.)]

2.2

Consent theorists appeal to consent to explain political obligation, because they think that the notion of

political obligation is troublesome and highly contested, whereas the practice of promising giving rise to obligation

is as uncontroversial a notion as one can hope to find.

Therefore if we base our account of political obligation on consent, which is modeled on the practice of

promising, [more probably, unilateral pledging] political obligation becomes non-problematic. Pitkin (1972, pp

74-75) argues that the reason consent theorists find political obligation troublesome and the practice of promising

not so, springs from their liberal picture of human nature. Thus contractual theories of the state, including consent

theories, flow naturally from the liberal conception of human nature or the state of nature. [The state of nature

would arguably be subject to the laws of Nature and of Nature's God. Thus, the state of naturewould be

God's law. The liberal constructionmight be to give man the power to choose to be subject to some man-made

laws other than the laws of Nature and Nature's God. Choose this day who you will serve: God or mammon.

i.e., choose this day to whom you will pledge your servitude: Nature's God or mammon (civil law).]

[the liberal] picture of man in the abstract is of a man fully grown, complete with his own private needs, interests, feelings, desires,

beliefs and values...Given man as such a separate, self-contained unit, it does indeed seem strange that he might have obligations not of his own

choosing (ibid)1

2.3

Thus consent theory has strong ties with the methodology and ontology of reductionismand

individualism, which are essential to liberalism.2 Reductionism is a methodology that attempts to give

explanations of the properties of higher level entities, eg societies or cells, in terms of the units, eg individuals or

molecules, of which they are composed.

Reductionism is the thesis that parts are ontologically prior to the wholes that they make up, the parts and

their properties exist before (either temporally or logically) the whole (Lewontin, et al, pp 5-6).3 Individualism is

the manifestation of reductionism in the domain of politics and political philosophy. The properties of societies and

states are to be explained by the properties of the individuals that make them up, and these individuals are

ontologically prior to states and societies.


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Consent theory is obviously an example of this methodology; a property of a complex whole, the state, is

to be explained by properties, such as consent, of the units which make up the whole, ie individuals.4

3.0 Features of Consent Theory

A consent theory of political obligation must have certain features if it is to be a plausible and consistent

consent theory.

3.1

Firstly the theory must rely on actualconsent rather than hypothetical[presumed]consent. An appeal to

hypotheticalconsent as the basis for political obligation seems implausible. The intuitions that lead philosophers to

consent theory (e.g. that political obligation must be self-assumed) are inconsistent with hypothetical consent.

Hypotheticalconsent also requires some extremely implausible metaphysics or psychology. Instead of placing

political obligation on an uncontroversial basis, hypothetical [presumed]consent derives it from a highly

contentiousone. [True. If the courts and/or systemmerely presume my consent, and they depend on that

presumption, there will be contentionover whether that consent is actualor hypothetical/presumed.]

3.2

A consent theory must make dissent possible. [That's axiomatic. If I have a right to consent, I must also

have a right to not consent (dissent). This is the Achilles heel of any presumed consent: I have a right to refuse

to consent.] If it comes out of a theory that all the peopleunder a state's de factoauthority have consented to a

political obligation to that state, and there is no possible way of not consenting, we should be mighty suspicious. It

would seem that in these cases we do not have consent, because consentis supposed to be the voluntary

assumption of obligation and it seems odd to describe an action that it is impossible not to perform as being

voluntary.

3.3

It should also be the case that political obligation is owed by an individual to the state if and only if that

individual has consented. That is to say that it cannot be the case that individual Xowes political obligation to the

state in virtue of an actionperformed by individual Y, such as is the case in theories of originalconsent or majority

consent. If this is not the case then we have abandoned one of the main reasons for choosing consent in the first


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place, ie that political obligation be self-assumed.5

[By original consentI think the author is saying that even though the Founders consentedto be

bound by the laws of The United States of America, I am not also subsequently bound by their original

consent. I, too, must somehow manifest my own consent in my own time and life.

The issue of majority consentis less clear. What if 99% of the persons manifest their consent to be

bound by the laws of this state? Is the other 1% necessary bound even if they don't consent? That probably

depends on whether the 1% are also REGISTERED VOTERS. By registering to vote, you register to be one of the

voters of this state. By registering to vote, you apparently register your consent to be bound by the decision of

the majority of the voters of this state.

That makes good sense to me. If I register to vote, and I vote with the majority, I expect the minority to

be bound by the majority's vote. I implicitly expect that minority to consentto be bound by the will of the

majority of the voters. Similarly, when I vote in the minority, it is nevertheless expected that I will consentto

be bound by the will of the majority.

One of the mechanisms by which I declare my membership in this stateis by registering to vote.

That's not news. But the possibility that, by registering to vote, I register my consent to be bound by the results

of the elections is a new theory (at least to me). If I consent to be bound by the results of an election, I will also

be at least presumed to be bound by whatever laws are passed by those who've been elected.

So long as there's evidence that at least 51% of the people are registered to vote, the cops and judges

can logically presume that anyone entering their court has registered to vote and therefore registered their

consent to be bound by the laws ofthis state

.

I.e., so long as the system knows that over 50% of the people have expressed their consent to be bound

by the laws of this state,it is more likely than not that any particular defendant has registered to vote.

Therefore, the courts can reasonablypresume that any particular defendant is probablya registered voter.

Based on the reasonablepresumption of voter registration, the court might also presume that the defendant

has consented to be bound by the laws of this state.

If this hypothesis were true, then it would follow that a man seeking to avoid the presumption that he

had personally consented to be bound by the laws of this statewould not only deny any pledge of allegiance to

this statebut would also expressly deny being a registered voter. Doing so might refute the presumption that

he had consented to the laws of this state.]

3.4

A consent theorist should not assumethat any or some states are legitimate, and build their theory upon


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this assumption. To do this is to beg the question, because the pointof the exercise is to see whether and to what

extent existing states are legitimate.

3.5

Beran's (1987) membership versionof consent theory appears to meet these conditions, and at the least

comes closer to meeting them than any other consent theory I have encountered. Therefore I will use it as my

model for purposes of discussion.

4.0 Problems for Consent Theory

Traditionally there have been a family of related arguments that consent theories have had problems

dealing with. They are all centrally concerned with the question: When does the form of consent not give rise to

obligation? [The author may be asking if consent must be express or if it can also be presumed from mere

conduct.] In Beran's language, what are the conditions that prevent consent from coming off?

4.1

In the most obvious and uncontroversial example, it is obvious that an actioncannot count as consent if

the consenter was threatenedwith physical violence if they did not comply. Similarly if you consent because I am

likely (and able) to make life hell for you if you don't, then the consent does not "come off". [Consent cannot be

compelled by force and/or involuntary.]

4.2

According to Beran (1987, p 6) "An attemptto promise[pledge?] comes off only if the attempted act is

free, informed and competent." He then lists some defeating conditions that if present prevent a promise from

coming off. The problematic examples come in here, firstly one might wonder whether these are all of the

necessary conditions and secondly it is less than clearas to what counts as "free".

[Similarly, what constitutes informed consentand competent consent? Am I ever competentto

waive my God-given, unalienable Rights? Does informed consentto be bound by the laws of this state

require that I also know that that am waiving my rights and duties under The State and/or under the laws of

Nature and Nature's God?]


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4.3

A problem for consent theory is the case of the happy slave. We assume that a state that has the consent

of its citizens is a legitimate political authority, yet what if the citizenry includes a class of slaves, and these slaves

have apparently happily consented to be slaves? They have not been coerced into this position nor have they been

coerced into consenting.

Perhaps they have been brought up in the expectation of being slaves and are content with their lot. Is the

fact of their consent (freely, fully informed and competently given) a sufficient condition for the legitimacy of their

state? Many liberals (not to mention others) would like to say that it is not. How could consent theory deal with

this problem?6

4.4

Beran (ibid) addresses criticism from Woozley, who argues that the high cost of emigration, both

economic and personal, coupled with the likelihood that potential emigrants will have nowhere to go, makes

people unfree to dissent, thereforethe citizens are not consenting freely(quoted in ibid pp 95-108)

[By high cost of emigration,the author argues that most of us are trappedin our particular country

if only by the high cost of moving to another country. Thus, while some would say, If you don't like it here

(consent to this state'slaws), move to another country,the author recognizes that the high costs of

emigration plus the political barriers to moving to another country force people to stay in their current

country/jurisdiction.

Thus, insofar as high costs prevent dissidents from leaving the country, the dissidents cannot be said to

have consented to the country's laws simply because they remain residentin this state. Residencyis

compelled by the high costs of emigrating. Therefore, the presumed political implications of residency (being

presumed to have consented to the laws of this state) might be challenged by expressly alleging that residency

is compelled by the costs of relocating andbeing compelledcannot be presumed to be evidence of voluntary

consent.

Of course, other than enormous study, there is nocost

(in the sense of transportation) in moving from

this stateback to The State.

Nevertheless, I begin to see how residency in this state (as evidenced by the voluntary use of a Zip Code)

could be deemed evidence that a person had voluntarily consented to enter into this stateand thereby

voluntarily consented to be bound by the laws of this state.]


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Woozley's argument seems to take this form:

1. Consent must be free.

2. For an action to be free, one must be free to do X and free to do not-X.

3. The high cost of emigration means that one is not free to dissent.

Therefore, 4. Membership does not count as consent. [True. But membershipcan justify the

presumption that one has consented to be bound by the laws of this state. That presumption will stand unless

it is expressly denied under oath and refuted with convincing evidence.]

Beran seems to be making two plausible replies to this argument, both involve a rejection of premise 2.

Under one interpretation he is stating thatfor an action X to be free one merely needs to be free to do X, one

does not need to be free to do not-X. Under another interpretation Beran's position is that freedom is not being

prevented from satisfying one's desires. Thus if one does not desire to do X then being prevented from doing X

does not make one unfree.7 Both of these replies are fraught with problems.

The first interpretation runs the risk of violating the constraint 3.2, but even if it does not there are other

problems. The main point worth making here is that one should avoid conflating "free to choose X" with "choosing

X freely". The first is compatible with a high degree of constraint, the second is not. The statement that "A is free to

X" considers only A's relation to the action X, not to not-X or any other action. When talking about consent, we are

interested in A's relation to other courses of action. The fact that consent is free in this sense is surely far less

important than the fact that the citizens are unfree in respect to other actions. What becomes interesting then is

the options which one is unfree to choose, why one is unfree to choose them and the source(s) of that unfreedom .

[I suspect that the answer to this problem is that freedomto choose exists in layers. Once you make

a blanket choice to be a voter, you may be subsequently unfreeto choose to deny your consent to individual

votes, individual politicians, and individuals laws. Once you choose to pledge your allegiance to one

government, you become unfreeto deny your consent to any of the laws or decisions of that government. By

making one bigchoice to consent to the authority of one government, you become unfreeto withhold or

deny your consent to any of the multitude of that government's laws, regulations and policies. ]

With the second interpretation of Beran we run into the problem Berlin (1958) calls "the retreat to the

inner citadel". If freedom is not having one's desires frustrated, then the best, surest, option is to reduce one's

desires. [I'm not convinced that freedomcan be defined as satisfying one's desires because one man's desires

are often in conflict with the desires of other men. I may desire a Cadillac, but other men who make Cadillacs


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may not desireto give me one. The fact that I desire but don't have a Cadillac is not proof that I am unfree.

There are conditions prerequisite associated with the ownership of a Cadillac. You must earn a certain amount

of money or have savings or credit sufficient to buy a Cadillac. You must be willing and able to spend that money

to to buy the Cadillac. Thus, the freedomto own a Cadillac involves more than a mere desire--it involves the

prelimarywork

required to buy a Cadillac. If you

desire

a Cadillac, you are not

free

to merely

have

onebut you are free to work, save and acquire enough money or credit to buy one. Freedom is not so simple

as merely having a desire. Freedom can be far more complex. ] This is surely bizarre. Similarly, there are the

problems of socialisation and/or brainwashing. We should say that someone who has been conditioned, whose

desires have been tampered with (say by Skinnerian or Clockwork Orange style techniques), has had their freedom

reduced, but we cannot if we identify freedom with the lack of frustration of desires. If we believe that such brain-

washing interfere with freedom or consent, what are we to say about socialisation pressures that might bring about

the same results?

5.0 Consent and Power

5.1

These problems are all getting at the same issue: How freedoes the act of consent have to be to count as

an instance of consent? All commentators agree that if one is coercedinto consenting by threat of sanctions, then

the consent does not come off. These cases roughly follow this schema:

1. A wants B to do X.

2. A threatens B with harm unless B does X.

3. B does X because of the threat.

(Beran, 1987, p 100)

5.2

There is an interesting parallel here with the notion of power:


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A causes B to do something that B would otherwise not do.

(Lukes, 1974)

Therefore it is obvious that coercionis a case of the exercise of power(not surprisingly). Most of Beran's

other defeating conditions (Beran, 1987, p 6) involve the successful exercise of power by someone over the

consenter (eg "undue influence", "deception"(ibid)). We should note that in the cases that are problematic for

Beran and other consent theorists (such as outlined in 4. above), it seems that what makes us unlikely to think that

consent has come off is the exercise of power over the consenter. The question then becomes how prevalentis the

exercise of powerin society?

5.3

Lukes (1974) offers some analytical tools that might help us answer this question. His discussion of two-

dimensional power and three-dimensional power offer some insight as to how pervasive may be: is it not

the...most insidious exercise of power to preventpeople, to whatever degree, from having grievancesby shaping

their perceptions, cognitions, and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of

things...because they can see or imagine no alternative to it...? (Lukes, 1974, p 24)

[Everyone is constantly trying to shape the perceptionsof others. If I want a Cadillac, I do not

necessarily agree to first price quoted by the seller. I barteras an attempt to persuade the seller to sell at a

lower price; he barters as an attempt to persuade me to pay a higher price. We are both equally freeto

persuade each other to pay more or less. That persuasion frequently involves lying and deception. I might

falsely claim I 'm too poor to afford the price asked by the seller. The seller might falsely claim that he has too

much invested in the Cadillac to possibly sell at the price I've offered.

The free marketincludes the freedom to lie. The freedom to lie includes the freedom to deceive and

thereby shape the perceptions, cognitions, and preferencesof others.

But the freedom to lie does not include the obligation on the part of the hearer to be persuaded by the

lie. The freedom to lie implies the correlative freedom and even duty to discover the truth.

It's interesting that when we go to court and testify under oath, we consent to forfeit the freedomto

lie. But when we are not under oath we are usually freeto lie.

There are exceptions. There are some laws that that compel telling the truth or allow the freedom to

discover the truth.]


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5.4

Herman and Chomsky (1988) give a concrete example of a structural arrangement that has these effects.

They argue that the structure of the mass media in the USA results in a vast amount of political information never

reaching the public, and a large number of political options are never presented to the public. Therefore the public

are political actors who are largely acting from a position of ignorance.

5.5

Here I think the reductionism of liberalism defeats us because of its concentration upon the individual, and

seeing consent as a propertyof the individual. The structural elements of power within which individuals make

their decisions are invisible to individualism. Autonomy, freedom etc. are (reified) properties of individual agents,

in the individualistic framework. However this ignores the power structures that constrain decision making (and

belief/desire and knowledge formation) by agents. If the institutions of state and society are set up in such a way

as to preclude certain options from ever being aired or taught in the public arena (as Herman and Chomsky (1988)

have shown to be the case in the USA, at least), then those options are unavailable to the populace and we can no

longer give an account of freedom or autonomy that looks to the individual alone.

6.0 Consent, Reductionism and Dialectics

6.1

In opposition to liberalism's reductionistic account of society, I think a dialecticalaccount is inherently

more plausible and gives a better understanding of the problems associated with consent theory.

Reductionistexplanation attempts to derive the properties of wholes from intrinsic properties of parts,

properties that exist apart from and before the parts are assembled into complex structures...Dialectical

explanations, on the contrary, do not abstractproperties of parts in isolation from their associations in wholes but

see the properties of parts as arising out of their associations. [Relationships? Fictions?] That is, according to the

dialectical view, the properties of parts and wholes codetermineeach other. (Lewontin, et al, 1984, p 11) [The

reductionist explanation derives its force from the presumed independence of the individuals who combine into

a society. Insofar as the dialecticalexplanations are based on the relationships (fictions) that exist between

the component individuals, the dialectical force is based on dependence between the component individuals. ]

Therefore individuals and society codetermineeach other in an ongoing process. [The society and


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individuals are interdependent.] "The properties of individual human beings do not exist in isolation but arise as a

consequence of sociallife, yet the nature of that social life is a consequence of our being human" (ibid).

6.2

Consent, as a behaviour, is an outcomeof a dialecticalprocess between individual and society. The

process involves the wants, desires and beliefs of the individual, the power structures of society which restrict and

shape their formation, and the power structures which restrict available options.

6.3

The liberal picture assumes that one can make a disjunctivelist of the defeating conditions for promises,

and that if none of the conditions on the list are present then the action is free. However as a three-dimensional

account of powerand/or a dialectic account shows, all such actions (decisions, promises, consent) are made

within a power structureand are influenced by that structure.

[But the fundamental consentis to be or not to be subject to a particular power structure. Once you

manifest your fundamental consent to be subject to a particular power structure, you've waived or at least

compromised all of your former freedoms to choose to be or not to be subject to the individual laws, rules,

regulations, and policies of that power structure.

The author's analysis of the dialectical explanationof consent does not appear to recognize a

fundamental freedom to choose to consent or not consent to thepower structure

--it appears to treat any

predominate power structureas something as innate and irresistible as gravity and not subject to one's

consent. This analysis seems to see the earthly power structureas the fundamental and inescapable reality

and thereby denies the existence of the Laws of Nature and Nature's Godas primary. If the Laws of Nature

and Nature's God do not exist, then there can't be an opportunity to choose to consent or not consent to the

earthly power structure.

I disagree with that analysis.

More, it becomes increasingly clear that if there is a fundamental choice to be or not be subject to the

earthly power structure(mammon), that choice presupposes the existence of God and the Laws of Nature

and Nature's God. The fundamental choice is to consent to serve God or mammon.

The option to choose to consent or not consent to the power structureis enshrined in the laws that

guaranteed freedom of religion: The Declaration of Independence's unalienable Right to the pursuit of

Happiness; the Constitution of the United States' 1st

Amendment; Article 1.6 of the Constitution of the State of

Texas.


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It's not easy to escape the earthly power structureof mammon,but that escape may be possible by

means of consenting to be subject to the Laws of Nature and Nature's Godrather than consenting to be

subject to the laws of the earthly power structure.]

6.4

Liberalism reifies consent, it is labelled as a unitary behaviour with a unitary cause. [To declare that

liberalism reifies consentmeans that liberation gives consent some sort of tangible reality that it doesn't

actually have. Thus, liberalism presumes that consentisn't real to begin with, but instead some sort of legal

fiction. I believe that 'consentis innately real. If I'm wrong, freedom itself is merely an illusion. There can't be

freedom without consent. If consent is not real,then neither is freedom. They can't call this the land of the

free,they can't argue that we have freedomunless they admit that we have a right to consent or not consent

to earthly government.]What a dialectic account shows us is that it is ridiculous to talk of a general causeof that

behaviour, because the putative cause of that behaviour will depend upon where you look and your purposes in

doing so. One's choosingX over Y is caused by the making of a decision, it could also be caused by someone

obscuring option Z. Which of these causes gets called the cause of choosing X depends on one's viewpoint and

one's purpose in searching for causes.8 A dialectic account sees consentas the resultin an ongoing process. [The

author appears to deny that behavior has a causein the sense of a genuine choice. Instead, he seems to

imply that consentis merely an appearance of individual choice that is actually the mechanical result of an

ongoing process. If there is no individual causefor a particular act, then there is no individual responsibility

for that act. If there is no individual choice/consent,then the whole idea of religion is false. If there is no

individualism, there is no individual consent/choice, and we will not go to heaven or hell based on our acts and

choices in this life because we are merely machines without a real capacity to choose/consent to be good or evil.

Without individual choice there is no individual responsibility. ]

The consent of the happy slave and the consent of the brain-washed, can be seen as the result of a

dialectic process where the power structures constrain and influence the decisions of the individual to an extreme.

[The power structureitself is merely a collection of individual people. It is not a thing in itselfso

much as a kind of fiction that's useful for general discussions. Thepower structure

is the label we affix to all

the decisions we object to that are made by individuals who hold positions of power. Each of those individuals

are not components of a machine so much as individuals who consent or do not consent to exercise some of

their official powers in particular situations.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that consentis even an element of each decision in the power

structure. This presence of consent in the power structure is demonstrated by those instances when


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government is expected to act in a particular way, but chooses not to. Individuals in government have denied

their consent to be bound by the People's law (the Constitution) and instead consented to be bound by the laws

of the New World Order or some other secular power structure. Consent is always present.]

6.5

From this discussion it can be seen that individualism is falseor at least severely misleading. [I disagree.]

A non-reductionistic, dialectical, account of society, power and consent is a more powerful and much more

revealing way of looking at these issues. [I disagree.]Therefore the individualist consent theory can be seen to

rest on a false presupposition. [I disagree with the premises of this argument. I disagree with the conclusion.

The premises and conclusion sound like that of an atheist, satanist or Marxist.]

7.0 Conclusion

The consent theorists project fails because they do not realise the extent to which our decisions are

influenced (or caused) by power structures, and because their reductionisticpicture of the nature of society and

the individual is false. If I am correct, then the entire liberal project of finding a basis or justification for legitimate

political authority is untenable. The question then must be asked: Why do liberals attempt to derive authority in

this way?

[The liberals attempt to derive authority this way because they know from experience and history that

consent is real and must be generally achieved in order for a society to function smoothly and efficiently. Once a

significant percentage of the people withdraw their consent to be subject to a particular social-order/power-

structure, that society will at least destabilize and possibly disintegrate.

This reality is born out in the Declaration of Independencewhich declares in part, That whenever any

Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.

The reductionist approach is not false and finding a basis of justification for legitimate political

authority is not untenablebut absolutely necessary. It may be that a particular basisfor justification for

legitimate political authority is itself false. For example, much political authority was gained and exercised by

the events surrounding the attacks on Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Those events may have been portrayed in a false

light. Nevertheless, the public generally accepted the officialversion of those events and therefore consented

to allow the government to exercise new and expanded powers.


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If public consent to go to war was not required, why did government bother with 9/11? Why didn't the

power structuremerely order all of its component machinesget in line and start goose-stepping towards

Iraq? The power structurecannot move without the consent of the people.

The power structurewould like to rule by pure fiat and without regard for public consent. It may be

that those who comprise the power structurewould prefer that the people are caused to forget their right and

power of consent.

The author's conclusion implies that individual consent and the existence of the Laws of Nature and

Nature's Godare all untenablefictions. As such, that conclusion would serve the interests of the power

structure.

I do not intend to serve the current, earthly power structure. I therefore reject the author's conclusion.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beran, H., 1987, The Consent Theory of Political Obligation, Croom Helm.

Berlin, I., 1958, Two Concepts of Liberty, Oxford University Press.

Cohen, G. A., 1979, "Capitalism, Freedom and the Proletariat" in Ryan, A. (ed.), The Idea of Freedom,

Oxford University Press, Oxford.

----, 1988, History, Labour and Freedom, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Crosthwaite, J., 1987, "Feminist Criticisms of Liberalism", in Political Science, Vol 39(2).

Greenawalt, K., 1987, "Promissory Obligation: The Theme of Social Contract", reprinted in Raz (1990).

Herman, E., and Chomsky, N., 1988, Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon Books, New York.

Herzog, D., 1989, Happy Slaves, University of Chicago Press.

Hirschmann, N., 1989, "Freedom, Recognition, and Obligation: A Feminist Approach to Political Theory", in

American Political Science Review, Vol 83(4).

Horton, J., 1992, Political Obligation, Humanities Press International.

Lewontin, R., et al, 1984, Not In Our Genes, Pantheon, New York.

Lukes, S., 1973, Individualism, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

-----, 1974, Power: A Radical View, Macmillan Press.


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Pitkin, H., 1972, "Obligation and Consent", in Laslett, P., et al, 1972, Philosophy, Politics and Society, Fourth

Series, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Raz, J. (ed), 1990, Authority, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Simmons, A. J., 1979, Moral Principles and Political Obligations, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Wolff, R. P., 1976, In Defense of Anarchism, Harper & Row.

NOTES

1 Note also Greenawalt (1987, p 269): "social contract theory [including consent theory] is a reflection of a

liberal conception of human nature that emphasizes freedom and autonomy."

2 A number of authors have argued this. See Crosthwaite (1987), Hirschmann (1989), Lukes (1973). Many

Marxists regard reductionism and individualism as important components of bourgeoisideology, and they also

regard liberalism as a manifestation of bourgeois ideology in the political/social domain. See, eg Lewontin, et al

(1984), Cohen (1988).

3 Lewontin, et al, continue: "and there is a chain of causation that runs from the units to the whole." (ibid

p 6) The discussion of reductionism is in the context of biology and psychology, but (and this is part of their point)

could apply equally well to any part of bourgeoisintellectual studies. With consent theory a "hypothetical" chain of

causation runs from the individuals to society and the state (rather than a posited actual causation as in biological

determinism) making the reductionist label even more accurate.

4 Similar to the case of biological determinism, consent theory involves the reificationof certain

behaviours of individuals, ie the behaviours are treated as objects located in the biology of individuals. Also the

properties of the whole are also reified, such as authority. The fallacyin reification is in the assumption that if there

is a term for a property, that property exists, or that what is measured exists.

5 See Simmons (1979:71). Note also Greenawalt (1987) "neither the unanimous agreement of those

originally subject to the legal order nor the agreement of most of one's fellow citizens can obligate an individual

who has not agreed." (p 275)

6 The consent theorist could of course Out Smart the objection by claiming that in this hypothetical case

the happy slave has consented and the state is legitimate. They might add that, however, this hypothetical case is

wildly implausible and thus is not a serious problem.

7 There is another response that Beran seems to make that relies upon a conflation of unfree with

coerced. I regard this as highly implausible.

8 Compare the account of tuberculosis as caused by a bacillus, with the account of tuberculosis caused by


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the appalling conditions of rampant capitalism. (Lewontin, et al, 1984)

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