Bokelskere.no

To prevent these scientific horrors , democracy is necessary
but not sufficient.

There must be also that kind of respect for the individual
that inspired the doctrine of the Rights of Man.

As an absolute theory this doctrine cannot be accepted.
As Bentham said: "Rights of man, nonsense;
imprescriptible rights of man, nonsense on stilts."

We must admit that there are gains to the community
so great that for their sake it becomes right
to inflict an injustice on an individual.

This may happen, to take an obvious example,
if a victorious enemy demands hostages
as the price of not destroying a city.

The city authorities (not of course the enemy)
cannot be blamed, in such circumstances,
if they deliver the required number of hostages.

In general, the "Rights of Man"
must be subject to the supreme consideration of
the general welfare.

But having admitted this we must go on to assert,
and to assert emphatically, that there are injuries which
it is hardly ever in the general interest
to inflict on innocent individuals.

The doctrine is important because the holders of
power, especially in an oligarchy, will be much too prone,
on each occasion, to think that
this is one of those cases
in which the doctrine should be ignored.

Totalitariansim has a theory as well as a practice.

As a practice, it means that a certain group, having
by one means or another seized the apparatus of power,
especially armaments and police,

proceed to exploit their advantageous position
to the utmost,
by regulating everything in the way that gives them
the maximum of control over others.

But as a theory it is something different:
it is the doctrine that the State, or the nation,
or the community is capable of a good
different from that of individuals,
and not consisting of anything that individuals
think or feel.
This doctrine was especially advocated by Hegel,

who glorified the State, and
thought that a community should be as organic as possible.
In an organic community,
he thought, excellence would reside in the whole.

An individual is an organism, and we do not think
that his separate parts have separate goods:
if he has a pain in his great toe it is he that suffers,
not specially the great toe.

So, in an organic society, good and evil will belong to
the whole rather than the parts.
This is the theoretical form of totalitarianism.

The difficulty about this theory is that it extends
illegitimately the analogy
between a social organism and a single person
as an organism.