MODULE: (SS02) – THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

CHAPTER 5: GREAT POLITICAL THEORIES

A. differentiated great political theories established as alternative

standards of operations in a society and polity and explained the subtle
meanings underlying the thought.)
B. explained how the world operates in a highly differentiated
C. sovereignties of countries.

I will present four political theories only for

you to carry as you go through life. These are the
ideas on The Social Contract, Romanticism and
Idealism, Utilitarianism and Marxism. I hope
these concepts will make you more equipped in
facing deals and ordeals in the societies you
circulate now and in years ahead.

1. The Social Contract presents the reconciliation of the

freedom of the
individual with the authority of the state. It appears to be
like the
constitution of the land. In particular, it says.
Each of us puts his person and all his power
in common, under the supreme direction of
the general will and in our corporate
capacity; we receive each member as an

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indivisible part of the whole.

The contract presupposes alienation of each associate, together with all
his rights to the whole community. For, as one gives himself absolutely,
the conditions are the same for all; and this being so, no one has any
interest in making them burdensome to others. No one has anything
more to demand for if individuals retained certain rights, as there would
be no common superior to decide between them and the public, each,
being on one point, his own judge would ask to so on all, the state of
nature would thus continue and the association would necessary
become inoperative and tyrannical.
2. Lastly, each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody, and
as there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same rights
as he yields others over himself, he gains an equivalent for everything
he loses and an increase of force for the preservation of what he has. in
simple words, social contract is an agreement between the individual and
the society and or the government about upholding certain rights and
abiding on certain laws in order to ensure smooth relationship dynamics
of citizens in a city or a country.

3. Romanticism and Idealism theory is

a philosophical movement during the Age
of Enlightenment that emphasizes
emotional self-awareness as a necessary
precondition to improving society and
bettering the human condition. Some of
the main characteristics of Romantic
literature include a focus on the writer or
narrator’s emotions and inner world;

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celebration of nature, beauty, and

imagination; rejection of
industrialization, organized religion, rationalism, and social convention;
idealization of women, children, and rural life. Imagination, emotion and
freedom are the focal points of romanticism.
4. One key theme of the romantic period is revolution, democracy, and
republicanism. The essential political thinking of the period is liberty,
equality and brotherhood as a reaction against aristocratic social and
political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and of the scientific
rationalization of nature. While age of enlightenment or the age of
reason dominates intellectual discourse in Europe during 17th and
18th centuries, an emerging thought had convinced many that the
truest basis for political power was the consent of the governed.
5. By the evolution of time, concepts of democracy and republicanism
developed. Republic form of government is a state ruled by
representatives of the citizen body. Citizens do not govern the state
themselves but through representatives. Democracy is a form of
government in which all eligible citizens have an equal say in the
decisions that affect their lives. Democracy allows people to participate
equally— either directly or through elected representatives—in the
proposal, development, and creation of laws. Though they may not be
identical, there are areas they both share the same such as election, the
current economic system and a particular social structure. The Venn
diagram below presents such condition.

[Link] and the Transcendence. Many had become fascinated with the ideal
of sublime in physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual
greatness. Such greatness is beyond measure and sublimity is on the

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perception of the perceiver, mind and imagination. The briefest definition of

sublimity is the presence of exquisite and admirable quality of beauty. Edmund
Burke disputes such. He says there are sublime experiences that bring terror,
like seeing tsunami, or walking in the edge of a cliff etc.
7. Absorbed by the personal genius of man, it was believed that this man
got the inspiration from tutelary spirits teaching him to work in certain
set of acceptable and admirable behaviour. This concept of some
experiences of inspiration symbolizes the truth of external realm called
the transcendence. The power of the imagination, genius, and the
source of inspiration is real.
8. Quotes of Romanticism by William Wordsworth- the man who
introduced Romanticism.
a. Wisdom is near when we stoop than when we soar.
b. Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes
its origin from emotion, recollected in tranquillity.
c. Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
d. With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony and the deep
power of joy, we see into the life of things.
e. Getting and spending, we
lay waste of powers.
f. Fill your paper with the
breathing of your heart.
g. The best portion of good
man‘s life -his little,
nameless,
unremembered acts of
kindness and love

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9. Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that states that the best action is

the one that maximizes utility. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of
utilitarianism, described utility as the sum of all pleasure that results
from an action, minus the suffering of anyone involved in the action.
Jeremy Bentham (1748— 1832) Jeremy Bentham was an English
philosopher and political radical. He is primarily known today for his
moral philosophy, especially his principle of utilitarianism, which
evaluates actions based upon their consequences.

10.

Utilitarianism is one of the bestknown and most influential moral

Theories. Utilitarians believe that the purpose of morality is to make life better by increasing the
amount of good things (such as pleasure and happiness) in the world and decreasing the
amount of bad things (such as pain and unhappiness). The goal of utilitarian ethics is to
promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Jeremy Bentham, an English
philosopher, was the founder of utilitarianism; John Stuart Mill was its best-known defender.
11. Utilitarianism is based on the Greatest Happiness Principle, which states
that actions are considered moral when they promote utility and
immoral when they promote the reverse. Utility, itself, is, defined by Mill
as happiness with the absence of pain.
12. There are three principles that served as the basic axioms of
utilitarianism.
a. Pleasure or happiness Is the only thing that truly has intrinsic
value.
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b. Actions are right insofar as they promote happiness, wrong

insofar as they produce unhappiness.
c. Everyone’s Happiness Counts Equally.
13. Quotes on Utilitarianism

a. Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often, man forgets
the flowers at his feet.
b. The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.
c. It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people, which
is the measure of right and wrong.
d. Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be
the system of a regular government.
e. All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.
f. Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.
g. Nature has placed humankind under the governance of two
sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to
point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we
shall do.

14. Marxist social and political thought

encompasses the Marxist class
conflict and Marxian economics.
Together with Friedrich Engels, he
wrote The Communist Manifesto that
lays the theory of class struggle and
revolution. Marx presented the flaws
of capitalism in his book Das Kapital
and argued that capitalism shall

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naturally vanish because of the

chaotic nature of free market and surplus of labour.
15. Marx portrayed capitalist society as composing of the bourgeoisie and
the proletariat, i.e. the ones controlling the means of production and the
workers that transform raw commodities to valuable economic goods.
The bourgeoisie‘s power to control capital allows them to limit workers‘
ability to produce and obtain what they need to survive. Capitalism is
all about commodities bought and sold, reducing the value of labour as
another kind of commodity for sale, like cars, wine, cloth and the like
making labourers weak in the capitalist economic system.
16. One very influential concept introduced in Marxist political and
economic thought is the labour surplus theory. This measures the
difference between wages paid to the workers and the price of goods
sold, which the workers previously manufactured. For example, if a
worker who is making wall clocks is given a daily wage of $300 and his
productivity rate is 8 clocks per day, which clock is sold for $300 each
and that the market absorbs all 8 clocks daily, then the value of labour
of the worker is reduced to only one clock and the revenue from the
remaining clocks sold belongs to the capitalists. The
$2100 difference is called the surplus value of labour that is not enjoyed by
the workers.
17. To maintain their position of power and privilege, the bourgeoisie employ
social institutions as tools and weapons against the proletariat. The
government enforces the will of the bourgeoisie by physical coercion to
enforce the laws and private property rights to the means of production.
The media and academics, or intelligentsia, produce propaganda to
suppress awareness of class relations among the proletariat and
rationalize the capitalist system. Organized religion provides a similar

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function to convince the proletariat to accept and submit to their own

exploitation based on fictional divine sanction, which Marx called “the
opium of the masses.” The banking and financial system facilitates the
consolidation of capitalist ownership of the means of production,
ensnares the workers with predatory debt, and engineers regular
financial crises and recessions to ensure a sufficient supply of
unemployed labour in order to undermine workers‘ bargaining power.
(Investopedia)
18. Quotes of Karl Marx

a. Surround yourself with people who make you happy, people

who make you laugh, who help you when you‘re in need, people
who genuinely care. They are the ones worth keeping in your
life. Everyone else is just passing through.
b. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various
ways. The point, however, is to change it.
c. Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression
of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is
the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless
world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of
the people.
d. The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the
theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think,
love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the
greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust
will devour- your capital. The less you are, the more you have;
the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated
life-the greater is the store of your estranged being.

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e. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They
have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries unite!
f. I am nothing but I must be everything.
g. If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.
h. If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society
to me, connecting me with nature and man, is not money the
bond of all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it
not, therefore, also the universal agent of separation?
i. In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work
increases, the wage decreases

Summary

The Political Thoughts presented are Social Contract, Utilitarianism,

Romanticism and Marxist Ideal Society. Quotes from the forerunners of the
thought are takeaways as you choose the life of your own.
Global Governance and Interstate System
1. World Government is an idea
where every country unites
under one political authority,
but this has not happened yet.
Proponents reasoned that such
political organization will solve
problems on war, production of
weapon for mass destruction,
poverty and inequality as well as
environmental decay. The moe

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modern objective is to design

global institutions that move humanity world federalism or
cosmopolitan democracy. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
Opposing this move suggests that this is infeasible, undesirable and
totally unnecessary.
2. However, it is no longer uncommon to hear words like World Bank,
World Health Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Food
Programme etc. that give us the concept of some global polity. The World
Bank is an international organization designed to help fight poverty by
providing financing and research advice to development projects of the
poorer economies.
3. If global world sounds infeasible, global economy is far from different.
When governments control their own specific economies, big banks and
large companies fund these governments. In effect, these large financial
institutions and corporations dominate and control global economies
(Burrows). Less than one per cent of the companies 40% of the entire
business ownership network in the global economy. This organization
controls the financial flows going in and coming out the economies.
4. However, other factors certainly affect the movements in global
economies. If there is an increase in the price of oil due to some quantity
controls, essentially, the cost of production and shipping costs
increases. This eventually is translated as price hikes for goods bought
in from store shelves. The multiplier effect continues by driving off
purchasing power of earning individuals, which, if uncontrolled, leads
to increasing number of families under poverty line. The higher the
prices, the more likely it is to create larger disparities in incomes.
5. Economic instabilities will generate social problems. More poor people
will participate in many underground illegal activities like drug

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trafficking,
prostitution, and burglary. Police matters become one of the hit news in each
morning headlines and some dirty politicians may take advantage of the poor
by hiring them as internet trolls against their opponents. Another social could
come out from this trolling game. It could create social upheavals and collective
disruptions making the ordinary citizen and less informed individuals
confused.
6. Thus, in order to maintain social and economic order, countries try
to help one another through trade and international organizations
aiming at achieving a common goal of peace, harmony, economic growth
and technological advancements, social progress and cultural
development. The six international organizations we need to know
include The United Nations, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
the European Union (EU), World Trade Organization, the Group of
Twenty (G20) and International Criminal Court (ICC). Within our reach
is the Association of Southeast AsianNations.
7. The UN’s mission is to promote international peace and stability, human
rights and economic development. Specialized agencies under it are
UNICEF (United Nations for Children‘s Fund), UNESCO (United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the World Bank, and
the World Health Organization (WHO). (Six Essential International
Organizations You Need to Know)
8. NATO’s mission is to safeguard its member‘s freedom and security
through both political and military means. Members of NATO are
primarily countries in North America and Europe including Turkey. EU’s
mission is to help member countries cooperate on economic, political
and security matters. WTO, on the other hand, has a mission to manage
the rules of international trade and to ensure the fair and equitable

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treatment of all members via negotiations and trade disputes

settlement. The G20 convenes officials from the largest economies both
the wealthiest economies and developing to jointly address global
concerns and to coordinate economic policies.
Summary
Countries organize themselves into organizations and regions to achieve a
common goal of subsistence, growth, progress in peace and harmony.

Video Links:
[Link]
[Link]

Claudio, L and Abinales, P. (2018). The Contemporary World.

EDSA, South Triangle. Quezon City: C & E Publishing.

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