What exactly is... [Archive]

caramelpence

21st May 2011, 16:20

What exactly is Republicanism? and what is its relations to socialism?

I'm going to presume you mean Republicanism in the historic and philosophical sense rather than the right-wing of American party politics. Republicanism is a trend of political thought whose origins like in ancient Greece and Rome and although there are different interpretations of what it entails, it centrally embodies the view that collective self-government is a political ideal to which human beings should aspire, such that there is something inherently good and valuable about human beings coming together and making decisions about how to govern themselves as a community. With Aristotle, for example, you find the view that collective self-government is valuable because human beings can best realize their distinctive nature and obtain self-realization in a public context based around discourse and decision-making, so in his account, there is a close relationship between self-government and human flourishing, and man is a naturally political animal. That basic value of collective self-government gives rise to or is closely associated with a number of other concepts, such as the illegitimacy of arbitrary government of any kind, and the role of the rule of law in a good polity. There has been something of a revival of Republicanism in contemporary political theory both implicitly (e.g. Habermas' discourse ethics) and explicitly, in the form of discussions around how Republicanism can contribute towards out understanding of liberty and other political concepts and how it might be possible to integrate Republicanism and communitarian thought.

As for how Republicanism might relate to socialism, I'll let others answer in more detail, but there are historical relationships in that communism (not in the Marxian sense, rather, in the general sense of political forces that supported radical equality) grew out of the left wing of French Republicanism and you can also argue that there are theoretical and philosophical similarities insofar as socialists also tend to emphasize the value of collective life and democratic decision-making, rather than having atomistic or individualistic notions of freedom and the good life. You might say that both socialism and Republicanism embody "thick" concepts of the good.

thesadmafioso

21st May 2011, 17:28

Republicanism is a bit of a varied and indecisive term by itself, but in relation to most historical instances socialism it is essentially used to describe the nature of there governmental systems. For instance, The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was based upon a multitude of semi-autonomous republics, which maintained republican style governments in the sense that the people choose indirectly choose representatives to carry out their agenda in the state. That particular variation of republicanism is perfectly acceptable and can coexist with socialism easily, as it is one which allows for the election of governmental agents that would be in favor of advocating for the will of the proletariat.