In some scenarios, however, the perpetuation of serviceable subalternity underpins the existing social superstructure. Without them, society collapses, opening up the possibility of starting a world from scratch which includes only the elite chosen among those who were there before.ģ The principle of creating utopia after a requisite selective wipeout will be further discussed below. In Atlas Shrugged (Rand, 1957), the most creative scientists, artists and industrialists ‛stop the motor of the world’ by going on strike and retreating to a mountain hideaway where they set up an independent, self-sufficient economy. For Rand, existing reality advantages the weak, unproductive an unintelligent because they benefit from the achievements of those at the top while contributing nothing to them. In her most well-known work of fiction, Atlas Shrugged, described by Gore Vidal as ‘nearly perfect in its immorality’ (Vidal, 1961), Rand, novelist, playwright and political philosopher admired by figures as influential as Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006, depicts a dystopian world and the recipe for setting it to rights: a world ruled by the principle of ‛rational egoism’ (rational self-interest) in which the individual must exist for his or her own sake, rejecting the concept of self-sacrifice.
That dual semantic possibility becomes particularly captivating for the purposes of the discussion that follows of the establishment of more or less dictatorial rule by a few, as the path to social order, and as the only alternative to global anarchy and war.Ģ At the opposite end of the spectrum to Hobbes’s endorsement of governmental autocracy, but equally disturbing, lie a variety of mainly right-wing libertarian factions which encompass American and British neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism, neatly summed up in the person and works of Ayn Rand. An odd choice of terminology, given the term’s original and subsequent common usage, in the Bible and in shared mythology, as a force of destruction (usually a sea-monster or a serpent). For Hobbes, ‛Leviathan’ was another term for the community or the commonweal. Hobbes’s influence on political thought has endured since the seventeenth century, and is reflected not only in the works of subsequent philosophers such as John Locke and Immanuel Kant, but also in much of the utopian and dystopian literature to be discussed now: in particular the belief in the causal link between rational, moral and political decision-making and self-interest. The principle of separation of civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers is rejected in favour of absolute rule. Any abuses of power by this authority are to be accepted as the price of peace. The desirability of avoiding this leads to the acceptance of a clear need for the restraining agency of a social contract whereby the people give up some rights to a government or other authority thereafter responsible for preserving social order through the rule of law. ġ In Leviathan Hobbes sees man’s nature as tending to war, including civil war (Hobbes, 1998).
But do we know how to dismount? You see this as a very unstable world and a very dangerous world. The world in general, and the US in particular, is riding a very fine tiger. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea no commodious building no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force no knowledge of the face of the earth no account of time no arts no letters no society and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. And he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, nor grief, nor crying nor shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall pitch his tent among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be among them – their God. And I, John, saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, descending from God out of heaven, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the former heaven and the former earth were passed away and the sea was no more.