I don't always hold onto bad books, but when I do, they're usually by Bertrand Russell. For the uninitiated, Russell (1872-1970) was a British philosopher known for, among other things, his essay "Why I am not a Christian." He also wrote a History of Western Philosophy which is universally acknowledged as one of the most biased treatments of the history of philosophy ever written. And that's pretty much it, as much as I'm concerned. I don't know too much more, other than he had an interesting theory about how we use proper names, which for some reason always gets brought up in metaphysics classes. But I never liked metaphysics, so I'm not going to talk about that.
The bad book I want to talk about today is Bertrand Russell's book Marriage and Morals. I have this book. I read it. I have deemed it bad. But I just cannot part with it. I actually have a very specific reason I hold onto this book, which I will get more into in Part II. It has to do with the fact that Marriage and Morals, much like the History of Western Philosophy, is extremely well written. Bertrand Russell, for all his faults, is an extremely clear writer; and for as much as I disagree with him on so many points, I appreciate the clarity of his thoughts and his willingness to give his opinion straightway, without obfuscation. There's no guessing where he stands.
And that brings me to the topic I want to talk about tonight. Chapter 15 of Marriage and Morals is entitled "The Family and the State." I have never found, and I bet you will never find, a clearer or more open defense and articulation of a one-world government and the abolition of the family. Let's take a look at the main argument he presents in this chapter.
Russell begins with a controversial, but not unreasonable, observation that much of the time the family is not the best social structure for raising a child. He observes that "bad parents cannot be relied upon to take as much care of their children as the general feeling of the community considers necessary. And not only bad parents, but such as are very poor, require the intervention of the State to secure their children from disaster." Moreover, the child, far from being cared for and fostered by the family, is often treated as property of the family. Russell notes the heavy resistance child labor laws faced on the grounds that such laws would, in the eyes of traditionalists, "weaken parental responsibility." In reality, child labor was a way parents would "drain their children of life in a slow agony of toil." The state-imposed obstacle to a parent's ability to put their children to work is, in Russell's view, a good thing.
Russell then discusses compulsory education, which he believes has, on the whole, been a good for society, even as it has meant removing the child from the tutelage of its parents. The family first lost its ability to profit from the child by exploiting the child's labor, and now they slowly lose the ability to bring up the child. And as far as Bertrand Russell is concerned, it is entirely an empirical matter to determine whether or not this benefits society. He believes it does benefit us. He asks us to consider whether school supplies healthy options for children of unhealthy families. He believes emphatically that it does. "[In school, children's] health is cared for, even if their parents are Christian Scientists. If they are mentally deficient, they are sent to special schools. If they are necessitous, they may be fed. Boots may be supplied if parents cannot afford them. If the children arrive at school showing signs of parental ill treatment, the parents are likely to suffer penal consequences."
Russell believes that this process of the State taking over the responsibilities of the parents is a good thing, especially for the poor. But it isn't just that he agrees that this is good. He thinks this is the direction all of society is moving. You too, YES YOU, believe that child labor laws are good. YOU are happy when the State removes children from drug addicted parents. YOU are happy to see people getting an education in reading, writing, and arithmetic, even if their parents are illiterate. Russell believes society as a whole is moving in this direction, because the empirical facts move us in this direction. When we stop to consider specific examples, our intuitions bear this out.
"It may, I think, be assumed that humanitarian sentiment towards children, which has caused past interventions of the State, will continue, and will cause more and more interventions. The fact that an immense percentage of children in the poor parts of London and still more in industrial cities of the north still suffer from rickets, for example, is one that calls for public intervention. The parents cannot deal with the evil, however much they may wish to do so, since it requires conditions of diet and fresh air and light which they are not equipped to provide. It is wasteful, as well as cruel, to allow children to be physically ruined during the first years of their lives, and as hygiene and diet come to be better understood, there will be an increasing demand that children should not be made to suffer unnecessary damage. It is true, of course, that there is a vehement political resistance to all such suggestions . . . Nevertheless, this resistance of the rich is continually being overcome, and the health of the poor in continually being improved."
At this point, Russell goes off on several related topics, such as the divide between rich and poor, and the movement towards women's rights and economic emancipation. He notes that it is the father's role, more than the mother's role, that is being taken over by the state. At one point he remarks that the father's role in the family is becoming "of no more importance than among cats and dogs." But all this is rather secondary to his main argument.
His argument picks back up with his distrust of nationalism. While he believes that the State is superior to the family in providing for the needs of children, the state itself has a nationalistic and militaristic agenda to use its children as instruments of its ideology, to fight its wars and die for it. Let's take a look at his argument.
"Above all, so long as the world remains divided into competing militaristic states, the substitution of public bodies for parents in education means an intensification of what is called patriotism, i.e., a willingness to indulge in mutual extermination without a moment's hesitation. Undoubtedly patriotism, so called, is the gravest danger to which civilization is at present exposed, and anything that increases its virulence is more to be dreaded than plague, petulance, and famine. At present, young people have a divided loyalty, on the one hand to their parents, on the other to the State. If it should happen that their sole loyalty were to the State, there is grave reason to fear that the world would become even more bloodthirsty than it is at present. I think, therefore, that so long as the problem of internationalism remains unsolved, the increasing share of the State in education and care of children has dangers so grave as to outweigh its undoubted advantages."
So what is the inevitable conclusion? His answer is, you guessed it, "an international government . . . capable of substituting law for force in disputes between nations." And this is how Russell draws the connection between the abolishment of the family and one-world governance. The state does a better job than the parents, but because states are militaristic, an international government is needed to prevent militarism. In this way "the substitution of the State for the father would be a gain to civilization if the State were international."
But Russell doesn't think he is just stating his opinion. Russell, as he was writing in 1929, believed the family was, as a matter of fact, already in decline. He believed that society was already heading towards the abolition of the family and the substitution of the State for the father. What Russell foresaw, or thought he foresaw, was the inevitability that the family would be abolished. He believed that it was necessary for society to quickly plow full speed ahead to create international governance before this happened.
Even if you disagree with Russell's ethical position, as I do, it is interesting to think about whether or not his predictions were true. Has society continued towards the abolition of the family? Have we become more militaristic as a result? Has internationalism, to the extent it has been tried, prevented militarism?
Part II
Why is all this important to me, and why do I keep this book in my library, even though I so strongly disagree with it? Well, there are two reasons. The first is simple and straightforward. If you are serious about your studies, you have to read and analyze things you disagree with just as much as you have to find the things you agree with. Russell's writing is so clear and articulate, while I often disagree with him, I never feel confused by his arguments or feel like he was being dishonest. His arguments are genuine, and they are, in their own way, convincing. So discussing his position is a very helpful way to force myself to articulate what I actually believe.
The second, and more important, reason I keep this book around is because so often today accusations of anti-family policy and one-world governance are often used as hyperbole, and just as often dismissed as hyperbole. As a general rule, these accusations of anti-family internationalism are often levied by the political right against the political left, and the left typically claps back by dismissing it as delusional thinking.
On a personal note, as I have studied politics and learned more political philosophy, I have, just as a matter of fact, become what today people would call more left leaning. (I don't think of myself as a leftist, but we can't choose our own political labels anymore these days.) I have a tendency to dismiss a lot of what comes out of right-wing America as farcical anymore. Heaven knows, I have not exactly been shy to note my disagreements, or flat out disgust, with the GOP. I say this because it is very important to the point I am about to make.
Whenever I hear these accusations coming out of right-wing America, talking about international government, the abolition of the family, indoctrination in public schools, etc. while I have a tendency to just want to dismiss it, I keep Bertrand Russell around to remind me that, no, actually there really are people on the left who want to abolish the family. There really are people who see one-world government as the solution to our ethical dilemmas. There really are people who articulate their desire to have fathers replaced by the State. These are positions that people have really fought for and argued for. So I cannot just dismiss these accusations as farces or political delusions. In some cases, there is truth behind these. And to remind me that there can be truth behind these accusations, I keep Bertrand Russell around.
None of this means I follow, say, Fox News down every single rabbit hole. None of this makes me like Candance Owens, or Charlie Kirk, or Ben Shapiro, or any other right-wing pendant who loves to throw these kinds of accusations around. What it does mean is that when any of these people makes an accusation, I remind myself that even if their accusation seems like a mischaracterization or misinterpretation, I need to look at it first. Why? Because Bertrand Russell! That's why.
As to why Bertrand Russell was wrong, there are several arguments I could make. One of these arguments Russell makes himself as an admitted drawback of State control over education. That drawback is, in short, bullying and the unwillingness of administration to tolerate those outside the norm. In his one-world government, he says, "the danger of too great uniformity and too severe a persecution of freaks would still exist." While that's a nice way of putting it, I guess! He admits his system has drawbacks. Now, he thinks the weight of evidence still favors his position. But there's no particular reason we should acquiesce to his position. The threat of imposed uniformity is, in fact, the theme of a great many dystopian movies and novels. You have to wonder just who these freaks are, whether or not you would be counted among them, and what their persecution looks like.
I think there are other reasons of course. My biggest one, and indeed my pet peeve, is the alienation of paternal affection. I've written about this theme before. Fathers are extremely important to children, and children are important to fathers. And the fact that Russell equates fatherhood with providing monies and offering schooling, both of which the state somehow does better, shows that he has a very narrow conception of fatherhood, as though paternal affection and care are things we need not be concerned with, or as though there were not a psychological need for fathers, or at least father figures.
But as I said, that is my pet peeve. Maybe at some point in the future I will actually write a post critiquing Bertrand Russell and articulating in more detail what my own position is. But not now.
Have a good night.
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