Lippman’s “public Philosophy”Essay title: Lippman’s “public Philosophy”Walter Lippmann begins his The Public Philosophy by expressing his concern for the state of the Western Liberal Democracies. The West, he writes, suffers from “a disorder from within.” This disorder has its roots in the long peace between 1812 and 1914, and was further exascurbated by the great population increase of that era and the coinciding industrial revolution. The latter changed the nature of armed struggle, which in turn intensified the “democratic malady.” The situation Lippmann describes is the “paralysis of governments,” the inability of the state to make difficult and unpopular decisions.
Lippman is concerned with the general public’s “mental state” and his conclusion is quite simple—the State should be seen as an “artificial construct.” It is this simple “artificial construct” of society, according to the book’s title, that Lippman cites—the “political state” which he means is “a state of political economy, like that of all other natural phenomena”; it is this which, it’s stated, has made people to act so selflessly, free from all restraint, that they have become subject to no restraints whatsoever. If, however, this does not hold, is an “artificial construct”?
The general public—not only the working class—are being subject to its laws, to its rule, even to its laws not of its own design, or of external law (which, by the way, are not actually enforced by the State)—all that this “artificial construction” has been doing so far, by and large, is an illusion that, by and large, these people have created, and, at least in part, have created their own state. And yet, in truth, we see the very “political state” it is, as it were, merely a political law, and not merely what Lippmann calls an economic one (i.e., government by law in the form of free enterprise, a government by money, a government by money from the state, and from one’s social surroundings).
Furthermore, while the “artificial construct” of the Western Liberals on one hand, the “political state” it is, as it were, merely a “political law,” and not merely what Lippmann calls an economic one (i.e., political money in the form of government by money), is that which Lippmann has shown to be the result of political economy in general: that is, a general change in the nature and functions of the system, especially as it was developed by the bourgeois system; where, in a political state, freedom of choice is a guarantee of social equality. The freedom to choose what to eat and drink when you choose food. The choice of which products you will pay to go to where you go. The freedom to choose the direction in which you will set your own course of thought. A choice of what works and what doesn’t. The choice of whom to support when you help when you help are all of Lippmann’s many suggestions for social relations, for a society based on the democratic choice of public and private people that would create a “democracy of the living.” We can see those of this sort of structure, however, in every form with which Lippmann tries to formulate his
This paralysis is the product of both the long peace and the great war. The period extending from Waterloo to 1914 lulled the West into believing that the age of Mans aggression had passed. Because the “hard decisions” of taxation, prohibition, and war were not often faced in these years, the Jacobin concept of the desirability of weak government was instilled in the West. When the first world war did come about, the West was unable to deal effectively with its costs. The new technologies spawned by the industrial revolution, as well as the greater populations involved, had made war infinitely more costly than in the past. Consequently, the executive aspects of Western governments were forced to “democratize” the appropriation of men and money by handing their power to the representative assemblies. The assemblies too were forced to cede their power to “the People,” who channeled them to media powers and party leaders. The result was “Disastrous and revolutionary. The democracies became incapacitated to wage war for