Abstract
In the preceding discussion I have maintained that the British pluralists structured their political theory on a foundation of three pillars: a belief that liberty is a fundamental political value and is best preserved by a dispersion of power, a denial of state sovereignty, and some notion of the ‘real personality’ of groups. The present chapter is concerned with their theories of the state, and with their ideas about the proper relationship between the state, the group and the individual.
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Notes and References
See Figgis’s essay on Maitland, Acton and Creighton in ‘Three Cambridge Historians’, Churches, pp. 227–65.
D. Runciman, of Trinity College, Cambridge, examines this theme at length in an unpublished fellowship dissertation of 1992.
Sidgwick, Elements of Politics, pp. 574f.
The term ‘coerce’ is widely defined and includes such things as joining together to boycott certain goods (p. 578). Attempts to ban this would result in depriving many oppressed groups from taking effective action to protect themselves.
Sidgwick, Elements, p. 588.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, paragraphs 302f.
Hegel, ‘The German Constitution’, in T. M. Knox and Z. A. Pelczynski, eds, Hegel’s Political Writings, p. 158.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, paragraph 288.
Latham, ‘The Group Basis of Politics’, American Political Science Review, 46, 1952, p. 379.
Cole, ‘Conflicting Social Obligations’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 15, 1914–15, p. 142.
R. M. MacIver, The Modern State, p. 170n.
Rerum Novarum, section 38; in Five Great Encyclicals, p. 24. A. D. Lindsay adopted similar terminology.
Magid, English Political Pluralism, pp. 26–7.
B. Zylstra, From Pluralism to Collectivism, p. 192.
According to P. P. Craig, this distinction was ‘a characteristic trait of the pluralists’, Public Law and Democracy, p. 142.
This is the assumption, for example, in T. J. Gorringe, Discerning Spirit, pp. 49f., and in most ‘communitarians’.
Figgis, Churches, p. 103.
Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, p. 263.
Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, p. 253.
Figgis, ‘Erastianism’, in Ollard, Cross and Bond, eds, Dictionary of English Church History, p. 211.
Figgis, Churches, p. 251.
Figgis, Divine Right, p. 292.
Figgis, Churches, p. 90, and Antichrist, p. 259.
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, p. 203.
Hegel, ‘The German Constitution’, in T. M. Knox and Z. A. Pelczynski, eds, Hegel’s Political Writings, p. 155.
Figgis, Churches, pp. 252–3.
Lecture on Aquinas, Mirfield MSS, Notebook 2.
Figgis, Churches, p. 252.
Dicey, ‘The Combination Laws’, Harvard Law Review, 17, 1904, p. 514.
Figgis, Churches, p. 46.
Figgis, ‘The Church and the Secular Theory of the State’, Church Congress Report, 1905, p. 190. Reprinted below as Appendix A.
Creighton, The Church and the Nation, p. 72.
Figgis, Churches, p. 45.
Laski, Authority, pp. 27 and 122.
Laski, in Holmes-Laski Letters, p. 622.
Laski, ‘The Pluralistic State’, p. 566. See below Appendix C.
H.A. Deane, The Political Ideas of Harold J. Laski, p. 19.
Laski, Problem, p. 23.
Laski, Grammar, p. 84.
Cole, Chaos, p. 55.
In Self Government and in Labour, Cole wrote of the state as nothing more than an association of consumers; in Social Theory he regarded this as one of the features of the state, while later in the same year he claimed, in Guild Socialism Restated, to have ‘destroyed the idea that the State represents the consumer’ (p. 120).
Cole, ‘Conflicting Social Obligations’, p. 158.
Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, p. 58.
Russell, Principles, p. 72.
Russell, Democracy and Direct Action, p. 6.
Barker, ‘The Discredited State’, The Political Quarterly, February 1915, p. 101. In a note added to the article Barker claimed that the World War was demonstrating that loyalty to the state was still a powerful force.
Ulam, The Philosophical Foundations of English Socialism, p. 86.
Laski, Introduction to Contemporary Politics, p. 69.
Figgis, Churches, p. 92.
Follett, The New State, pp. 291 and 312.
Follett, ‘Community is a Process’, Philosophical Review, 28, 1919, p. 580.
Follett, The New State, p. 312.
Ulam, The Philosophical Foundations, p. 86.
David Nicholls, ‘Politics and Religion in Haiti’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 3, 1970, pp. 400f.;
also From Dessalines to Duvalier, pp. 221f.
Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice, pp. 297f;
and ‘Some Problems of Tropical Economy’, in Rita Hinden, ed., Fabian Colonial Essays, pp. 167f. I have considered social and cultural pluralism in more detail in Nicholls, Three Varieties of Pluralism, ch. 4.
See Vera Rubin, ed., Social and Cultural Pluralism in the Caribbean, and L. Kuper and M.G. Smith, eds, Pluralism in Africa. There is a useful bibliography in the latter book on pp. 491f.
Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, p. 316.
R, Bendix, in his English translation of G. Simmel, The Web of Group Affiliations.
David Nicholls, ‘East Indians and Black Power in Trinidad’, Race, 12, 1971, pp. 443f.; reprinted in Nicholls, Haiti in Caribbean Context: Ethnicity, Economy and Revolt.
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© 1994 David Nicholls
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Nicholls, D. (1994). The State, the Group and the Individual. In: The Pluralist State. St Antony's. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23598-8_5
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