Dear Friends,
It seems to me, history is unambiguous, every moralist society has evolved into a legalist one, and then collapsed. This appears to be a natural law like the Pareto Distribution. Moreover, that collapse appears to be semi-permanent. The Mongol Empire rose overnight in virtue to conquer most of the known world at the time then collapsed in corruption just as fast, never to rise again. It’s like there are two phases, a moralist phase and a legalist phase of human ordering. In the moral phase, people leave their doors unlocked, because there is no need of locks. In the legalist phase, people have bars on their windows and doors, to no avail. What happens is that in the transition between moralist and legalist, people exchange their morals for laws. Then an immoral society arises that can’t be controlled.
History teaches us that empires and great cultures rise in virtue and fall in corruption. Not one has survived the ages. For all the honor we give the Athenian democracy, it lasted only a few generations. By the time Thrasymachus was arguing with Socrates, the phase shift had already happened. Socrates was arguing about a moralistic society that had transitioned to a legalist one. Even as Thrasymachus was arguing the system they found themselves in was inevitable because it was expedient. They were arguing past each other. Each was arguing in a different regime. The moralistic phase or regime that Socrates thought was self-evident no longer existed in that time and place. The days of not locking your doors in Athens had passed and Alcibiades was the result.
Rome began fully in the moralistic phase. So much so the rape of Lucretia by Tarquinius Superbus‘ son caused such an outrage that kings were sworn off forever. It took hundreds of years before Marius and Sulla obliterated the moralist culture and replaced it with a legalist one. Moralist societies require people to self-regulate. When people don’t, that moralist culture is replaced by a legalist one. Laws must take the place of morals… because people have rightly lost their trust. This is why Marius slaughtered a fair share of the Roman aristocracy, then Sulla returned the favor. They and the Republic had become too corrupt for anyone to self-control. So instead of accord they chose slaughter. This is the legalist system in action. People with no morals can’t be controlled, even with draconian laws.
History shows moralist societies evolve into legalist ones, but what causes a moral society to become a legalist one? An erosion of trust. In a moralist society there is trust of people and institutions. Laws are only needed to control outliers who are incapable of self-restraint. In any society, however, there will be a Pareto distribution of those who want power. In a strictly moralist society, however, there is no need of powerful men, so laws must be enacted. Initially, the law only controls the crazies. Slowly, laws replace morals, because a law is objective while morals are subjective. Eventually, the question switches from is this moral, to is this legal? Once that happens the phase has shifted from a moralist society to a legalist one. Law has fully replaced morality in such a system.
Bastiat regarded the system and society in which he lived and described it as the legalization of plunder. He was looking at a legalist system of extraction. In his moral mind taking from one to give to another, while keeping some for the effort, is an immoral act. No matter if an individual did it or a group. What is immoral is immoral to him. What he didn’t understand is that the system had transitioned to a legalist system where morals are replaced by laws. In many times and places atrocities have been legal, but in all times and places, they remain immoral. Many earnestly believe that law can solve our problems. In this they have vaunted company. Robespierre thought he was improving the lot of mankind by his legalism. In his mind he was a hero, because everything he did was legal.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
