This is the ninth in a series of essays on the politics of care and economics of hope. The others are listed at the end of this essay. This essay also happens to come in video form.
As with the other essays, I acknowledge the input of my wife, Jacqueline, into this essay.
This is the audio version:
There is no Debate Ammunition for this video.
This is the transcript:
In the previous essay in this series, I suggested that society is not simply a collection of individuals. It is the network of relationships through which we become human, learn to cooperate and realise our potential. I also argued that societies create institutions because those relationships do not sustain themselves by accident. Trust has to be earned. Knowledge has to be passed on. Justice has to be maintained. Shared resources have to be managed. None of these things happens automatically.
That immediately raises another question. If society depends upon institutions, why do we have government?
That might sound like an odd question. Governments have existed for thousands of years. We are so accustomed to living with them that we rarely stop to ask what purpose they actually serve. Instead, political debate usually begins somewhere else. We argue about whether government should be larger or smaller. We argue about taxation, public spending, regulation and borrowing. We ask whether governments interfere too much or too little.
Important though those questions may be, I think they come too late. Before asking how government should behave, we first need to ask why government exists at all.
The answer is, I think, surprisingly simple.
There are some things that societies can only do together. Individuals can achieve remarkable things. Families can achieve more. Businesses, charities and voluntary organisations all make invaluable contributions to society. But none of them can, by themselves, create the legal framework within which everyone lives. None can issue a currency accepted throughout society. None can guarantee justice for all. None can protect shared resources. None can decide collectively how today's choices should take account of tomorrow's consequences.
For those tasks, societies create government.
Government is, therefore, not something standing outside society. Nor is it an unfortunate burden imposed upon otherwise free people. It is the most vital way in which society organises itself to pursue purposes that individuals acting alone cannot achieve.
That distinction matters. Much political debate assumes that there is an inevitable conflict between society and the state. Government is presented as though it were something external, forever threatening individual freedom. Sometimes that is true. Governments can, undoubtedly, become oppressive. History provides many examples. But that is not because government exists. It is because governments, or those who capture control of them, sometimes forget what they are for.
The question of what they are for is, then, the one that matters, and, based on what I have previously suggested in this series, the answer should be obvious. If society exists to create the conditions in which people can realise their potential, then government exists to help society achieve that purpose.
Economic growth is not its purpose. Balanced budgets are not its purpose. Satisfying financial markets is not its purpose. Those things may sometimes help government achieve its objectives, but they are never objectives in themselves. Government exists to serve society, and since society exists to help people realise their potential, that, in turn, must also be the purpose of government.
That is why I think the best way to understand government is to think of it as society's steward.
A steward is entrusted with responsibilities on behalf of others. A steward does not own what is being cared for. Nor is a steward free to neglect it for immediate advantage. Good stewardship requires looking after something of lasting value so that it continues to benefit those who depend upon it, both now and in the future.
That, I think, is exactly what government should do.
It should protect the conditions that allow society to flourish.
It should uphold justice because cooperation depends upon fairness.
It should invest in education because knowledge is one of society's greatest resources.
It should support healthcare because people cannot fulfil their potential if they are prevented from doing so by avoidable illness.
It should protect the natural environment because no society can flourish by destroying the living systems upon which it depends.
It should maintain confidence in the monetary system because modern economic life depends upon trust.
In other words, government should concern itself not simply with today's prosperity but with society's long-term wellbeing.
Once government is understood in that way, a number of consequences follow.
The first is that government must genuinely represent the people on whose behalf it acts. If power is routinely exercised by minorities against the wishes of majorities, stewardship has already failed because government has ceased to act for society as a whole. Electoral systems must deliver maximum chance of representation in that case.
The second is that government must remain close to the people whose lives it affects. Many decisions are best made locally because local people understand local circumstances better than distant administrations ever can. National government has indispensable responsibilities, but that is not an argument for unnecessary centralisation. Good stewardship depends upon knowledge, and much of that knowledge is local.
The third is that participation in government must be open to everyone. Democracy cannot work well if only those with wealth, leisure or unusual freedom have the opportunity to take part in it. Public service is work. It carries responsibilities. It should therefore be recognised and properly rewarded so that governing communities is open to people from every background.
The fourth is that government must always look beyond the present. Stewardship is impossible if today's gains are purchased at tomorrow's expense. Governments therefore have responsibilities not only to those who elect them but also to those who will inherit the consequences of the decisions they make. That is true of the natural environment, but it is equally true of education, public infrastructure, knowledge, democratic institutions and much else besides.
These are not separate political preferences. They all arise from the same idea. If government exists to act on behalf of society, then it must be organised in ways that continually draw it back towards the people it serves and the future for which it is responsible.
That leaves one final question.
If government is society's steward, what exactly is it expected to steward?
The answer to that question is one of the oldest ideas in accounting, but one of the most neglected ideas in modern economics.
It is the idea of capital, in its broadest sense. It is to that topic that I will turn next.
Other essays in this series
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Thanks to all for this article which clearly presents the functions/duties of a valid government.
Might it be the case that it, or something like it, presents us with a secure list of the outcomes of a genuinely democratic government?
Might it benefit (allegedly) democratic societies if “Deomcracies” were defined, assessed and guided by outcomes at least as much as by inputs?
Coincidentally, I’ve just been reading an article by US writer and academic Sarah Churchwell in the current edition of Prosect magazine on Thomas Paine and how his pamphlet Common Sense published in January 1776 argued Americans into independence.
One of the quotations from the pamphlet that she cites emphasises the distinction between government and society “Society is produced by our wants, and government by our weakness”. Society is what we create because we need and like each other. Government is what we create because not everyone can be trusted.
But the quotation that really leapt out at me was this:
“when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer”.
I have always liked my fellow East Anglian from just down the road, Thomas Paine, and I think he remains remarkably relevant.
The distinction between society and government is an important one. Society creates the relationships on which we depend. Government exists to provide the framework within which society can flourish, including dealing with those issues that society cannot resolve by voluntary action alone.
The second quotation is especially telling. Paine was reminding us that government derives its authority from us. If it uses the powers and resources we have entrusted to it against our interests, then we are entitled to question it.
That is why democracy matters. Government should never become an end in itself. It exists to serve society, not the other way round.
It is a lesson that many governments would do well to remember today.
I love my Kindle! Within 5 minutes of hearing of Thomas Paine I have ‘Common Sense’ sitting here ready to read, all included in our monthly Kindle Unlimited subscription.
In modern terms might we describe government as the operating system, providing and managing universally required ‘utilities’ (I deleted a list of them, never push a metaphor too far) which then provides the framework on which privately developed applications can run. That might be one that works for young brains with an understanding of which functions should sensibly be left up to the OS.
As an aside, My scatterbrain can’t help being reminded of a comment attributed to Keith Richards, though possibly even older….. Silence is the scaffolding on which musical notes are hung.
So are staves….
And always remembers that it’s the gaps in between, vertical and horizontal, that also matter.
I wonder if we should distinguish between government and governance. The basic argument that society can’t exist without some form of agreed structure is sound but the structure we currently have is not the only one. Societies existed for thousands of years without a central government and indeed the existence of states is relatively recent phenomenon. It could be argued that statehood is an ill that needs to be dismantled and even allowing for its existence there is a strong argument for decentralising state government and even upending the hierarchy of the centre over the regions and the regions over the population centres.
Like all proposals that seek to change the fundamentals of a situation it is difficult to imagine something radically different from our own experience but the exercise is a useful one even if the radical proposal is rejected as it enables to view our current situation with new eyes.
Very little to agree with, even factually, excepting the need for decentralisation. Sorry.