Revija za sociologiju, Vol. 20 No. 3-4, 1989.
Esej
Maximalization of Democracy
C. B. Macpherson
Sažetak
In this essay the author analyses the theory which justifies the liberal-democratic order, or (which is in contemporaneity the same thing to the author) the capitalist market-economy society. The main elements of this theory are two pretensions with corresponding demands: that these societies should (1) maximalize profits/benefits for all their members (and that they do it justly) and (2) that they should maximalize the potential for the use and development of individual powers. It follows that in (1) maximalization cannot logically be proved, and that (2) implies an ambiguous understanding of human powers: the descriptive, as referring to actually obtained power (including the power usurped from others, owing to the partial monopoly of ownership over means of production), and the ethical, referring to each individual's own potential. While demand (2) originated as a reaction to the utilitarianism of the older liberal period, in order to accommodate the justifiable theory with democratic conditions, in pretension (2) the mentioned ambiguity is not recognized owing to the utilitarian pretension (1) which is not abandoned, but only »supplemented«. The author, however, points out that human rights based upon the right of unlimited appropriation (including the powers of others) contradict the ethical pretension of the maximalization of human powers, and cannot be supplemented with it.
Furthermore, the author shows that the right of unlimited appropriation, as the principal right of man in liberal capitalism was indeed compulsory as a stimulus to the development of productive labour. However, it not only does not represent a derivative of a permanent human essence, but today it has become mostly superfluous. Namely, the definition of man as a being characterized by an unlimited strive for profit and pleasure is the postulate legitimizing a certain period of social development, and not a permanent trait of human essence.
Ključne riječi
Hrčak ID:
155430
URI
Datum izdavanja:
31.12.1989.
Posjeta: 717 *