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FM
Former Member

Power and the social contract

Posted By Staff Writer On February 19, 2014 @ 5:01 am In Daily,Features | No Comments

Perhaps with the intention of facilitating the call by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. David Granger, for the establishment of a social contract in Guyana, last week I participated in a symposium organised by the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) on the nature and possibilities of constructing such a contract in Guyana.

The GTUC envisaged an arrangement based upon the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 144 concerning Tripartite Consultations passed in 1976 to promote the implementation of international labour standards and encourage national consensus with regard to its work. The agreement is to be negotiated between the parties, but from the GTUC standpoint, the major objectives should be the realisation of a stable rate of exchange; the maintenance of a stable industrial climate; the restructuring of the economy; the reduction of social disparities through increased employment; national commitment to increased productivity; the reduction of unemployment levels; achieving a balance between prices and incomes; consolidation of the process of tripartite consultation, and continually reducing crime levels.

On the face of it, it is difficult to fault these kinds of cooperative arrangements consisting of the major social partners, but it is best to initially recognise that they only come into being and persist where governments of the day are confronted by major socio/economic problems and are very much part of their initiation. And this only ever occurs where the other social partners are sufficiently strong to severely obstruct the necessary changes and jeopardise the existence of the government itself.

future notesThus, as an insight to those set upon the establishment of this kind of arrangement, I began my presentation at the symposium by reference to one of the first explanations of the origins of social contracts provided, some 2400 years ago, in Plato’s Republic. It is also a story that is suggestive of the conditions that must prevail if such agreements are to be established and succeed. In what follows, the character Glaucon presents an account of justice that he wishes the wise Socrates to refute.

“They say that to do wrong is naturally good and to be wronged is bad, but the suffering of injury so far exceeds in badness the good of inflicting it that when they have done wrong to each other and suffered it, and have had a taste of both, those who are unable to avoid the latter and practice the former decide that it is profitable to come to an agreement with each other neither to inflict injury nor to suffer it. As a result they begin to make laws and covenants, and what the laws command they call lawful and just. This, they say, is the origin and essence of justice; it stands between the best and the worst, the best being to do wrong without paying the penalty and the worst to be wronged without the power of revenge. The just then is a mean between two extremes; it is welcomed and honoured because of men’s lack of power to do wrong. The man who has that power, the real man, would not make a compact with anyone not to inflict injury or suffer it. For him that would be madness. This then, Socrates, is the nature and origin of justice.”

In other words justice is not our preferred condition: it is an accommodation brought about because we do not have the power to prevent others from harming us as we do wrong to them. An implication is that if one was all powerful one would care nothing for laws and notions of justice: it is only the capacity of others to put a stop to us that prevents our marauding. Indeed, this position of Glaucon also indicates that successful free-riding (breaking the law or being unjust, if it is to your advantage and you can get away with it) is part and parcel of human behaviour and historical events have substantiated this position.

Emperors, popes, kings and all have only stopped their pillaging and come to heel when confronted by their competitors, and the democracy in which we take so much pride today only came into existence when the people themselves (e.g. the French and American revolutions) prevailed.

Even the ILO and its tripartite organisational structure consisting of government, employers and workers representatives came into existence in the context of widespread labour unrest in the developed world. Two years before its formation in 1919, the Bolsheviks had overthrown the Czar and grabbed power in Russia and similar workers’ revolutions appeared imminent. Indeed, many believed that the success of the Bolshevik adventure would stand or fall on the materialisation of such revolutions in the more developed countries. Socialism in one country, particularly such an underdeveloped one as Russia, was not considered a real possibility by many. Utopian socialists such as Robert Owen may have long recognised the need for an international labour organisation but the ILO was invented partly to dampen support for communism in Western Europe.

Perhaps the best known of the current social partnership agreements is that which exists in the Irish Republic. Here again, the grave socio/economic conditions that existed in that country in about 1987 forced the government to call upon the social partners to cooperate and  agree upon a programme to regenerate the economy and improve social equality. That and subsequent agreements have been credited with significantly contributing to the transformation of Irish society and the economy. Indeed, in terms of pages, the present Irish programme “Towards 2016: Ten-Year Framework Social Partnership Agreement 2006-2015” is some five times the size of the initial one.

In our region the best known successful effort at establishing a social partnership is to be found in Barbados and the story is similar. In the early 1990s that country was experiencing rapidly declining foreign exchange reserves, a worsening balance of payments position, dramatic rises in unemployment and a high fiscal deficit.

The government was in a quandary and so agreed in 1993 with the employers and trade union representatives to the establishment of a Prices and Incomes Protocol, which initiated social partnership agreements that still exist.

The kind of social partnership agreement that is now being proposed is much more limited in scope than the traditional hypothetical social contracts that based our political obligations in the brutishness of existence in a “state of nature.” However, it can only be successfully established and sustained in a transparent political environment and thus, the Glauconian notion that justice and right are rooted in power relations is as pertinent as ever for those seeking to establish and sustain social partnership agreements in Guyana.

henryjeffrey@yahoo.com

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I began my presentation at the symposium by reference to one of the first explanations of the origins of social contracts provided, some 2400 years ago, in Plato’s Republic. It is also a story that is suggestive of the conditions that must prevail if such agreements are to be established and succeed. In what follows, the character Glaucon presents an account of justice that he wishes the wise Socrates to refute.

FM
Originally Posted by KishanB:

I began my presentation at the symposium by reference to one of the first explanations of the origins of social contracts provided, some 2400 years ago, in Plato’s Republic. It is also a story that is suggestive of the conditions that must prevail if such agreements are to be established and succeed. In what follows, the character Glaucon presents an account of justice that he wishes the wise Socrates to refute.

In Guyana there is too much distrust and there is no condition for negotiations.  Civil society who ought to be the facilitator is COMPROMISED and I specifically mean the Private Sector Commission and the Bar Association.

FM
Originally Posted by KishanB:

I began my presentation at the symposium by reference to one of the first explanations of the origins of social contracts provided, some 2400 years ago, in Plato’s Republic. It is also a story that is suggestive of the conditions that must prevail if such agreements are to be established and succeed. In what follows, the character Glaucon presents an account of justice that he wishes the wise Socrates to refute.

Mr Jefferies is right that this idea of the social contract was seeded in the idea agreement tacit and explicit of a way to organize civil society. It begins with the idea of what would one do in a condition of absolute liberty and what has to be to accommodate civil society.  This view is is the reasoned moral positions. It does has its origin with The Greeks and not specifically the sophists Gloucon and Trasychamacus  but also  Antiphon , Hippias and Epicurus.

 

Mr Jefferies grounding the theory here in enlightened self interest to create formal systems. Gloucon insists one does not want retributive pain so one agrees to abide by an agreed system. This is however not the complete picture. Modern contractarians  believe in an evolutionary social scheme. Social actors did not decide the best practices rationally but it is natural selection and disproportional replication of good rules over bad one's  over time that give us our present social contract theory.

 

Just thought I should say that least mistake agreement to mean only explicit statements affirming some principle ground the process. This evolutionary view also protects the individual and avoids the utilitarian idea of the best for the most over the best for the individual as the individual sees it since numerous individuals over time would have affirmed a rule that legitimizes it. One does not have to be in a civil society to have formal rules. These pre exist civil society and the reason the individual is sovereign as  he has preexisting rights. It is the ground for Locke's property rights and ideas of freedom.

FM

Danyael and KishanB, please go and tell Jeffreys and Granger that their record in government is too damn dismal, abysmal, and criminal to be speaking like this. Giving us the talk is not enough.  Walk the talk baby.

Billy Ram Balgobin
Originally Posted by Billy Ram Balgobin:

Danyael and KishanB, please go and tell Jeffreys and Granger that their record in government is too damn dismal, abysmal, and criminal to be speaking like this. Giving us the talk is not enough.  Walk the talk baby.

Do that with the PPP first since they are in office and govern as autocrats with no respect for their obligations to tell those for whom they work how they do their work.

FM

I will name a few things the PPP gov't. did that can vindicate them from charges of being dictatorial:

 

1) Shortened their term in office by two years under the Hermandston accord.

2) Agreed to a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms an individual can serve as president.

3) Kept the unjust sugar levy on the backs of their supporters for twenty years just to please the opposition and their supporters

4) Give out lands for home construction to all Guyanese, including those of the PNC

5) Amerindians have won concessions over vast amount of land

6) Continue buy ads from SN and KN even though they are anti-gov't.

 

I can go on and on. Dictatorships don't do these things.

 

Billy Ram Balgobin
Originally Posted by Billy Ram Balgobin:

I will name a few things the PPP gov't. did that can vindicate them from charges of being dictatorial:

 

1) Shortened their term in office by two years under the Hermandston accord.

2) Agreed to a constitutional amendment to limit the number of terms an individual can serve as president.

3) Kept the unjust sugar levy on the backs of their supporters for twenty years just to please the opposition and their supporters

4) Give out lands for home construction to all Guyanese, including those of the PNC

5) Amerindians have won concessions over vast amount of land

6) Continue buy ads from SN and KN even though they are anti-gov't.

 

I can go on and on. Dictatorships don't do these things.

 

you ought to be ashamed to offer that as vindication for those crooks in office! Least you do not know, up to two years ago they functioned as a de facto dictatorship robbing us blind.

FM
Originally Posted by Billy Ram Balgobin:

Are there crooks in the opposition?

If I am looking at a man being chewed down on by a great white; do  you think at that moment I would concern myself with the fact there are great whites off the coast of south africa?

FM

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