When does disagreement become faction?

When does an argument among citizens become a threat to political peace? In the final conversation of this Hobbes series, Samuel Woodall and Jack Thomson turn to De Cive to examine public disagreement, rival claims to authority and the dangers Hobbes associates with faction. The discussion completes the arc from fear, through sovereignty, to the stability of a commonwealth.

Read alongside us:
Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, chapter 12, especially sections 1, 8 and 11–13: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Philosophicall_Rudiments_Concerning_Government_and_Society/Chapter_XII

Beyond the Text: https://beyondthetext.co.uk/

Transcript

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Welcome And The Faction Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back. To be on the text with me, Samuel Woodall. And me, Guy Thompson. And today we're looking for the final time at Thomas Hobbes. We're looking at when does disagreement become faction? Faction to Hobbes is something uh detestable. But at the same time, he has raised some points around how resistance can emerge within a state. So is faction simply organized disagreement, or does it threaten the existence of the political community? I think we probably all accept that disagreement is unavoidable. But the question is when disagreement acquires an organizational form capable of fundamentally challenging a commonwealth or a state, something not seen before in medieval society other than at times when there was pure anarchy. So let's take the opinion, I believe government is wrong, and then the opposition of I want the government to change its policy. Faction is our organized group possesses a superior claim to represent the political community. So rather than just having an opinion and a difference of opinion, faction is an established body of people saying that they believe a certain way is right. Now, for Hobbes, a faction is not simply a group with unpopular

Disagreement Versus Rival Authority

SPEAKER_00 1:20

opinions, it is a rival structure of interpretation, loyalty, and command. So we've looked at Leviathan and we've looked at Hobbes' upbringing, and in this session we'll be looking a little bit at De Kive. Um de Kive, uh his other primary work, uh, we're gonna focus in on chapter 12 of the internal causes trending to the dissolution of any government. The central passage of this chapter describes organizers making themselves the reporters and interpreters of other people's intentions. Factions' leaders do not merely gather pre-existing grievances, they tell people what isolated events mean. So they actually are dictating the narrative. They connect individuals who may not previously have understood themselves as members of the same cause. And the organizer of this faction is a political intermediary who interprets events, assigns motives, identifies allies and enemies, and turns dissatisfaction into a collective narrative. Now, Jack, from what we've looked at so far about Hobbes himself, Leviathan, and this sort of brief foray into Dekive, we can see that Hobbes wouldn't like this. An organized dissatisfaction with the state of things would be a threat to society, no?

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Yes. No, indeed. Um, this this is not good news for Hobbes. Um I mean, I thought so my my impression is that you know his foundational principle is is order. Um so there's no debate about what principle exactly this order should be found on. So so long as there is somebody who can determine how we will live together in whatever shape, the moment you have a competing, not a competing principle necessarily, but just simply a competing voice that is raised to have sufficient power to to to change the way things operate, you no longer have a common power uh which you depend on for a common law, and then you're not so far away from being back in the state of war.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Well, exactly, and he refers to this as a faction being a city within a city, a wall within the walls, uh separate state, a state that could be at war with the actual state of the sovereign.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Hmm, precisely. There's something very curious about how

De Cive And Narrative Control

SPEAKER_01 3:50

this this this very real possibility exposes something incomplete, I would say, about this project. How how the moment you have a competing sovereign the the laws are null and void in terms of their enduring significance. They have a purely utilitarian value. And there's a question of what this means for this project of trying to escape the state of war, is it uh ultimately a vain project? Um yeah, this is very interesting to me because it this is uh much um different, I think, to the classical conception where where the laws that are passed have a legitimacy which would transcend uh successive governments, even revolution, they uh referred to a principle uh that is independent of the sovereign. I think um a principle that is richer than than just natural law, can you say?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

No, I mean I think Hobbes is taking this from a very sort of medieval standpoint, and it would seem very alien to us today. And he and he c in the Kiva he comes up with quite a sort of analytical structure, and I will just walk us through what that is in terms of his anatomy of sedition, this old idea of sort of some organized group who oppose the prevailing government viewpoint, it's sedition, it's seditious activity. So he has a three-part structure. Doctrines and passions dispose people towards rebellion. Agitators organize and direct the discontented, factional action converts disposition into political capacity. Ideas are not sufficient causes themselves of rebellion. Political violence requires the organization, coordination and leadership that we've just discussed. So then when it comes to the people and the multitude, well, the multitude is a collection of subjects within the state. They all have separate wills. He's identified that. We've talked about the liberty that he thinks, as you said, this these kind of natural rights, like these things that you hand over somewhat to the sovereign, but ultimately everyone has their separate will. The people is unified as a person through its authorized representative, so the sovereign. So Hobbes deliberately's provocative claim is that in a monarchy the king is the people. So we've seen that in the depiction on the front of Leviathan. The king is the people, he makes up the people, while the subjects collectively remain the multitude. So the danger here in De Kive and the idea of faction arises when a group of subjects treats its numerical strength. So just a group, not all subjects, a group of the subjects, as authority to speak as the political people. Factional struggle is partly a struggle over ownership of the word people. And I think that's kind of something which he wouldn't necessarily

The Anatomy Of Sedition

SPEAKER_00 6:51

have thought when we were, you know, when we were discussing Leviathan. The people is the people, the people as a whole, country, basically. In his case, talking about England, the people are the people of England who submit to a sovereign, whether it be the king or to parliament, not the idea that there could potentially be rival opinions that would need to coexist alongside each other. Um, so how for him can that work? So there's four practical requirements. I'll get through these quick and then we can discuss these ideas because it's all very rigid in the way he lays it out. Numbers, a sufficiently large body of supporters, instruments, arms, money, provisions, and other usable resources, mutual trust, confidence that collaborators in a faction will act together, commanders, leadership capable of directing the other resources to a single end. Once all four of these are present, an agitator can set the organization in motion, and then the city within a city exists, Jack. Now, what what do we think about that? What do we think about how Hobbes would even try to respond to this kind of structure? How would a how would a sovereign respond to this structure? And why at this time, why why can faction not be healthy for a state if that's the case?

SPEAKER_01 8:06

It seems to me that uh any by any means necessary, the sovereign is within his right to to uh to stamp out this faction. Um because the sovereign maintains the peace and the faction threatens the peace at a metaphysical level, because the the very principle upon which that peace depends, uh common power uh undergoing a common law is being threatened. Um maybe uh a technical exception could be if the faction wanted to hold up the common law, the same common law, just wanted a change of leadership. But then I wonder what would be motivating the faction. Uh so that makes no sense. Uh so this I think it would be quite perceived as uh as nothing but dire by Hobbes. And um, I think he would have a no-tolerant approach to it.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree. Um grievance does not equal faction, greed plus shared doctrines create disposition, disposition plus organization creates the faction, faction plus resources and command creates a capacity for sedition. Rival armed factions create civil war. So this is the thing, as you're saying, even if it was that they wanted the status quo to be maintained under a different sovereign, that can still create civil war. And essentially that's what he was dealing with in the 1640s, which is that that initial civil war didn't really fundamentally want to radically change. You know, if you if you think about what comes later, the uh the Cromwellian forces are the ones who put down the radicals, the ones with actual different opinions to the status quo, take the diggers on not far from me in Surrey, um, who went to St. George's Hill, these kind of radical movements during the Civil War that wanted a fundamentally different society. The the Cromwellian forces, when they were in power, put down the diggers just as quickly as the Royalist forces would have done had they been threatened by the same thing. So perhaps Hobbes is reacting to the changing times and saying, well, yeah, um, perhaps it would be okay if if they want the same thing, but ultimately they want to change the leader. Perhaps the leader has directly threatened life, because we know that that's one of his principles

The People The Multitude The King

SPEAKER_00 10:30

in which there can be resistance to a sovereign if life is threatened. So these these these things are there. But I think when we're talking about language, um he also in the Kiva focuses on language, he focuses on rhetoric and its ability to mobilize. So he talks about two kinds of eloquence. Clear expression is grounded in definitions and reasoning and directed toward truth. Passionate rhetoric is designed to move an audience and is directed towards victory. So this idea of glory that we saw in Leviathan. Rhetoric mobilizes hope, fear, anger, and pity, all of these very emotive uh elements of our soul. Hobbes fears that language can magnify hopes, minimize dangers, and activate passions already present in an audience. So, how can organizers construct a faction then from this? They interpret the in the intentions of individuals, they identify people and places for meetings, they determine the questions and order of discussion, they decide who will speak and recruit powerful or popular supporters. Smaller private meetings control the law larger organization. In Hobbesian terms, a faction contains an inner faction, so you start to get this kind of multiplicity of division, and that can't be healthy. The inner group controls the agenda, narrative, speakers, and links to influential supporters. If unopposed, a faction may capture the commonwealth. If confronted by a faction of comparable power, the probable result is going to be civil war. So can Hobbes distinguish dangerous manipulation from legitimate political persuasion. Uh I i I think it's a a difficult thing for him.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Definitely. Um effectively, because at every level you end up having an image of the state of war without reference to common principle, that we're debating those. It it it seems that anything goes. Because we're back in the situation where I have a right to everything until I decide unequivocally who can tell me that I don't. Which it seems like a very when you when you when you try and read this this this uh anthropology into the fabric of of the politics, it starts to become very strained. And yet I I do see the sort of the consistency of this this principle that without the the order, without the unity, the unity

Sovereign Responses And Civil War Risks

SPEAKER_01 13:00

of power, um I cannot determine right from wrong. But then this this says more, I think, about the frailty of the power than it does the uh the the state of nature.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

And I mean, yeah. Would there be any room for faction in Hobbes's Hobbes' society?

SPEAKER_01 13:22

I I think you've already named the one exception which I I neglected to mention, which is that uh the the only thing you can read them through on this this this uh theory is is that it's evident the sovereign is threatening life in contradiction to his his basic uh role. Therefore, um he is to be removed.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

I think you were making an interesting point, Jack, when we've talked about this topic outside of the outside of these podcasts so far, in terms of that analogy of the body of water. I wonder if you've just wanted to maybe apply that here, because obviously freedom is determined by certain things for Hobbes, and faction is something that he doesn't anticipate arising because the freedom is determined by certain parameters that the state has created. So why would maybe faction not be a f not be something that freedom of choice should lead to for him?

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Yeah, it's this is difficult because people are familiar with this notion that liberty for Hobbes is the absence of opposition, and so you might make a connection there to uh the freedom to speak one's mind. So freedom from coercion, and you know, and that'll be the libertarian view. This is not where Hobbes' view leads. Uh it's quite peculiar. So in the 21st chapter of Leviason, he has some very interesting uh metaphysical remarks on the nature of liberty. So, first of all, he has to show that fear and liberty are consistent because his state is founded on the fear of death. I neglected to mention in the previous um podcast, it's also um not just fear of death, but desire for comfort and desire for for a purpose founded in hard work. Those are the other two he mentioned. But primarily fear of death. Um he had to show that fear and liberty are consistent, which is we you can make that claim fairly easily. Yeah, I'm I'm fearful, but I can sort of overcome my fear and do what

Rhetoric Inner Circles And Mobilisation

SPEAKER_01 15:30

I I I want. Uh I just it there is a question of how much it debilitates the will, but I think a few people would say absolutely, it depends on the fear, of course. Um then he moves on to liberty and necessity, and how are they consistent? What kind of necessity? I think he means the moral necessity, the imperative of a law. Um but he begins with this image, as in the water that hath not only liberty but a necessity of descending by the channel, so liequed in the action which men voluntarily do, which, because they proceed from their will, proceed from liberty, and yet because every act of man's will and every desire and inclination proceed from effectively a chain of causes, going back to the first cause, uh they proceed from necessity. Um this is a very strange um argument. He the this water and channel analogy seems to say that the liberty or the possibility, the potential of the water to flow its course depends on the necessity, those of the the reality of how the channel is formed. And the same seems to be true of human liberty, that for liberty to flourish is contingent on certain causes or certain reality already being in place. Now the metaphysics is a bit complex and messy, and one reading could be just simply that he's undermining himself trying to hold the order of necessity and causality together with liberty. But one can make at least this general point that clearly the constraints of the sovereign intends to enable a higher order of liberty, the freedom to live together, to have and raise a family in peace, to have commerce. And all of this is threatened by faction.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

It makes your it makes your the extent of your freedom more, I don't know, uh recognizable to uh uh not to be too sort of anachronistic and proleptic, but uh it's similar to I think I've mentioned it before, but Camus, when he said never will be so free than under the Nazis, in the sense that when you have a dictatorship, you realize the extent of your freedom because it literally is walled in by very, very strict boundaries. So the things that you can do are made clear to you by the bookends of the limitations that you have to discover where your freedom is. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

To survive.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Now, if a f if a faction is added to this, it kind of blows that out of the water, not to

Liberty Fear And The Water Channel

SPEAKER_00 18:10

extend the water energy too much, but um but sort of starts to disrupt that because where where where where does your freedom start and end? Can you just be free to do anything you like? If these organized factions are popping up here, there and everywhere, you know how how do I know what my actual functioning kind of liberties are within the state if a faction is telling me, oh well, you could have more freedoms with us or you could do more with us, that sort of thing. So I guess for Hobbes it would be seen as fundamentally threatening to that analogy that you've just described.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Indeed, indeed. Um and it would be unclear to what extent the freedoms currently possess will transfer. Um especially because there's not a sufficiently worked out series of rights beyond the natural rights. Uh they don't there may be somewhere in in Leviathan sort of a commentary on the rights that emerge in the context of the Commonwealth, but but be but because the mediator is just the sovereign, and uh there can only be an arbitrary connection between the two, I think. Unless you unfold this notion of peace.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Um but a faction would emerge. I mean, this was published in 1651 to Kiva. Hobbes would die twenty twenty-five years later, 79, um, and within nine years of his death, not just a faction, but a complete overhaul of the political regime uh would take place in England with the Glorious Revolution, a completely new foundation stone for which British democracy constitutionalism would be built upon. So

Glorious Revolution And Your Reply

SPEAKER_00 20:00

these things do happen and they do manage to happen in a relatively peaceful and relatively successful transition. So I guess the final question for you listeners, maybe you, Jack, DeMarlon, but also for our new reading club, because if you haven't heard, we have an asynchronous reading club that's operating online, which you can join, and there'll be a link to it in this podcast description. Was Hobbes right that organized political division ultimately endangers peace, or can party competition protect liberty by preventing any one authority from becoming unanswerable? That's a question that I'll leave with you. And you can get onto the forum and type your reply, and we'll be there to observe what you're commenting. So thank you for listening to our three-part series on Thomas Hobbes. We will be uh doing this new format going forward, so there'll be another three coming out next week. And until then, thank you, Jack. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Jack.