Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T09:36:22.091Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Iron Law of Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Philip Carl Salzman
Philip Carl Salzman*
Affiliation:
McGill University, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montréal, QC, Canada H3A 2T7 [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Political philosophers have doubted the compatibility of various major values, such as equality and freedom. Ethnographic and historical evidence has indicated the presence of (1) economic equality and individual freedom in the absence of civil peace in segmentary societies based on self-help; (2) economic equality and civil peace in the absence of individual freedom in corporate societies; and (3) individual freedom and civil peace in the absence of economic equality in mercantile and capitalist societies. However, little if any evidence has documented all three — economic equality, individual freedom, civil peace — in stable coexistence. By way of delineating the relations between and among the values in question, I offer “The Iron Law of Politics,” which asserts that economic equality, individual freedom, and civil peace cannot all exist simultaneously in any society, although any two of the three can.

Keywords

sociocultural anthropologypoliticsequalityfreedom
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , September 2004 , pp. 20 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.Berlin, Isaiah, The Hedgehog and the Fox. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953; republished in Russian Thinkers, by Isaiah Berlin. London: Hogarth Press, 1978), p. 1.Google Scholar
2.Benedict, Ruth, Patterns of Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1935).Google Scholar
3.Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973).Google Scholar
4.Lévi-Strauss, Claude, The Savage Mind (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966).Google Scholar
5.Malinowki, Bronislaw, Crime and Custom in Savage Society (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1926).Google Scholar
6.Nadel, S. F., The Foundations of Social Anthropology (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1953).Google Scholar
7.Gluckman, Max, Custom and Conflict in Africa (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1959).Google Scholar
8.Salzman, Philip Carl, “Does complementary opposition exist?” American Anthropologist 80(1), 1978, pp. 53–70.Google Scholar
9.Salzman, Philip Carl, “Ideology and change in Middle Eastern tribal societies,” Man (N.S.) 13, 1978, pp. 618–637.Google Scholar
10.Salzman, Philip Carl, “Culture as enhabilmentis,” in The Structure of Folk Models, Holy, L. and Stuchlik, M., eds. (London: Academic Press, A.S.A. Monograph 20, 1981).Google Scholar
11.Salzman, Philip Carl, Black Tents of Baluchistan (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000).Google Scholar
12.The Levellers, “An Agreement of the People [1648],” in Equality, Johnston, David, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), p. 22.Google Scholar
13.Ibid, p. 23.Google Scholar
14.Ibid, p. 22.Google Scholar
15.Hayek, Friedrich A.(von Hayek), The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 85.Google Scholar
16.Babeuf, Francois-NoelMarechal, Sylvain, “The Manifest of Equality [c. 1790],” in Equality: Selected Readings, Pojman, L. P. and Westmoreland, R., eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 51.Google Scholar
17.Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (London: The Communist League, 1848).Google Scholar
18.Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1947), p. 7.Google Scholar
19.Ibid, p. 12.Google Scholar
20.Hayek, , pp. 11–12.Google Scholar
21.Berlin, Isaiah, Two Concepts of Liberty [1958], in Berlin, Isaiah, Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 7, 12.Google Scholar
22.Taylor, Charles, “What's wrong with negative liberty,” in The Idea of Freedom, Ryan, A., ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 176.Google Scholar
23.Ibid, p. 180.Google Scholar
24.Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940).Google Scholar
25.Colson, Elizabeth, The Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1962).Google Scholar
26.Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Sanusi of Cyrenaica (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949).Google Scholar
27.Peters, Emrys, The Bedouin of Cyrenaica, Goody, J. and Marx, E., eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar
28.Lewis, I. M., A Pastoral Democracy: A Study of Pastoralism and Politics among the Northern Somali of the Horn of Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1961).Google Scholar
29.Gellner, Ernest, Saints of the Atlas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).Google Scholar
30.Irons, William, The Yomut Turkmen (Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 1975; Anthropology Paper No. 58).Google Scholar
31.Lancaster, William, The Rwala Bedouin Today, second edition (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1997).Google Scholar
32.Salzman, Philip Carl, Black Tents of Baluchistan.Google Scholar
33.Salzman, Philip Carl, The Anthropology of Real Life (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1999), ch. 3.Google Scholar
34.Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill. (London: Andrew Crooke, 1651), presented asHobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, C.Macpherson, B., ed. (London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1968), “Chapter XIII: Of the natural condition of mankind as concerning their felicity and misery.”.Google Scholar
35.Babeuf, and Marechal, , pp. 50–51.Google Scholar
36.Tawney, R. H., Equality [1931], fourth edition (New York: Capricorn Books, 1952), p. 112.Google Scholar
37.Rawls, John, The Theory of Justice [197l], excerpted in Johnston, p. 126.Google Scholar
38.Rawls, John, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
39.Rawls, John in Johnston, , p. 127.Google Scholar
40.Hayek, , p. 87.Google Scholar
41.Ibid.Google Scholar
42.Ibid.Google Scholar
43.Lucas, J. R., “Against equality [1965],” in Pojman, and Westmoreland, , p. 111.Google Scholar
44.Fishkin, James S., “Liberty versus equal opportunity [1978],” in Pojman and Westmoreland, p. 149.Google Scholar
45.Ibid, p. 151.Google Scholar
46.Berlin, Isaiah, Four Essays on Liberty, pp. 167–169.Google Scholar
47.Lancaster, William, p. 137.Google Scholar
48.Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer.Google Scholar
49.Irons, William.Google Scholar
50.Salzman, Philip Carl, Black Tents of Baluchistan.Google Scholar
51.Barth, Fredrik, Principles of Social Organization in Southern Kurdistan (Oslo: Br⊘drene J⊘rgensen A/S, Universitetets Ethnografiske Museum Bulletin No. 7, 1953).Google Scholar
52.Lindholm, Charles, Generosity and Jealousy: The Swat Pakhtun of Northern Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).Google Scholar
53.Gellner, Ernest.Google Scholar
54.Barth, , p. 116.Google Scholar
55.Lindholm, Charles, The Islamic Middle East (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), p. 86and passim.Google Scholar
56.Wellhausen, , quoted inibid, pp. 85–86.Google Scholar
57.Pigliaru, Antonio, Il banditismo in Sardegna: La vendetta barbaricina [1959] (Milano: Giuffré editore, 1975).Google Scholar
58.Caltagirone, Benedetto, Animali perduti: Abigeato e scambio sociale in Barbagia (Cagliari: Celt editrice, 1989).Google Scholar
59.Salzman, Philip Carl, The Anthropology of Real Life, ch. 3.Google Scholar
60.Blok, Anton, The Mafia of a Sicilian village, 1860–1960 [1974] (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1988).Google Scholar
61.Hobbes, Thomas.Google Scholar
62.Lancaster, William, p. 67.Google Scholar
63.Ibid, pp. 67–68.Google Scholar
64.Ibid, p. 103.Google Scholar
65.Ibid, p. 136.Google Scholar
66.Ibid, pp. 73–77.Google Scholar
67.Ibid, p. 140.Google Scholar
68.Salzman, Philip Carl, Black Tents of Baluchistan.Google Scholar
69.Lindholm, Charles, The Islamic Middle East, pp. 20, 24.Google Scholar
70.Ibid, pp. 25–26.Google Scholar
71.Ibid, p. 27.Google Scholar
72.Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Sanusi of Cyrenaica.Google Scholar
73.Cole, Donald Powell, Nomads of the Nomads: The Al Murrah Bedouin of the Empty Quarter (Chicago, Aldine, 1975).Google Scholar
74.Irons, op cit.; see alsoIrons, William, “Why are the Yomut Not More Stratified?” in Pastoralists at the Periphery, Chang, C. and Koster, H. A., eds. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994).Google Scholar
75.Chatty, Dawn, Mobile Pastoralists: Development Planning and Social Change in Oman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).Google Scholar
76.Salzman, Philip Carl, Black Tents of Baluchistan, op cit.Google Scholar
77.Lewis, I. M., op cit., p. v.Google Scholar
78.Ibid, p. 1.Google Scholar
79.Ibid, p. 3.Google Scholar
80.Ibid, p. 196.Google Scholar
81.Ibid, p. 197.Google Scholar
82.Dyson-Hudson, Neville, Karimojong Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 84.Google Scholar
83.Ibid, pp. 84, 91.Google Scholar
84.Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer, p. 91.Google Scholar
85.Ibid, p. 20.Google Scholar
86.Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Nuer, p. 296.Google Scholar
87.Ibid, p. 210.Google Scholar
88.Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Kinship and Marriage among the Nuer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), p. 28.Google Scholar
89.Rethinking Pastoralism in Africa: Gender, Culture and the Myth of the Patriarchal Pastoralist, Hodgson, Dorothy L., ed. (Oxford: James Currey, 2000).Google Scholar
90.Lewis, I. M., Social Anthropology in Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 176.Google Scholar
91.Salzman, Philip Carl, The Anthropology of Real Life, ch. 3.Google Scholar
92.Pitt-Rivers, Julian, People of the Sierra [1954] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961).Google Scholar
93.Salzman, Philip Carl, The Anthropology of Real Life, pp. 56–59.Google Scholar
94.Wolf, Eric, “Types of Latin American peasantry,” American Anthropologist 51, 1955, pp. 452–471.Google Scholar
95.Ibid, p. 456.Google Scholar
96.Ibid, p. 458.Google Scholar
97.Ibid.Google Scholar
98.Ibid.Google Scholar
99.Ibid, p. 456.Google Scholar
100.Ibid, pp. 458–459.Google Scholar
101.Ibid, p. 460.Google Scholar
102.Ibid, p. 459.Google Scholar
103.Tawney, R. H., pp. 111–112.Google Scholar
104.Ibid, p. 118.Google Scholar
105.Ibid, p. 103.Google Scholar
106.Wolf, Eric, pp. 461–462.Google Scholar
107.Ibid, p. 465.Google Scholar
108.Ibid, p. 462.Google Scholar
109.Ibid, p. 466.Google Scholar
110.Ibid, p. 463.Google Scholar
111.Lindholm, Charles, pp. 30–32.Google Scholar
112.Ibid.Google Scholar
113.Ibid.Google Scholar
114.Reichs, Kathy, Deja Dead (New York: Scribners, 1997).Google Scholar
115.Reichs, Kathy, Death du Jour (New York: Scribners, 1999).Google Scholar
116.Reichs, Kathy, Deadly Decisions (New York: Scribners, 2000).Google Scholar
117.Reichs, Kathy, Grave Secrets (New York: Scribners, 2002).Google Scholar
118.Reichs, Kathy, Bare Bones (New York: Scribners, 2003).Google Scholar
119.Fishkin, , p. 155.Google Scholar
120.Ibid, p. 157.Google Scholar
121.Ibid, pp. 157–158.Google Scholar