The General Semantics of Political Speech, part 1 (1987)

by esr@locke.ccil.org (Eric S. Raymond) 

>From postnews Sun Sep  6 00:42:14 1987
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.politics.misc,sci.lang,rec.arts.sf-lovers
Subject: The myth of "society's 'rights' and 'needs'": a semantic analysis
Date: 6 Sep 87 04:42:02 GMT
Organization: Thyrsus Enterprises, Malvern PA 19355

This is the first in what may become a series of analyses of unexamined terms
in contemporary politics via the tools of General Semantics. It is intended to
both contribute to some ongoing debates in the politics groups and serve as an
example of the methods and aims of General Semantics for people in sci.lang and
rec.arts.sf-lovers that have expressed an interest in them to the author. It
does not represent any 'official' position of the Institute for General
Semantics, nor of its founders, nor of the students of GS as a group.


In the last two centuries of political discourse, we have become more and more
accustomed to hearing arguments over the "needs of society", the "needs of
the people" the "needs of America". We argue over what society "needs" more; a
strong defence, more social programs, more investment in technology, more jobs,
a better input-export balance? There is a complementary debate over the
'rights' of society. Does society have a 'right' to lock up criminals? to
control pornography? to impose mandatory AIDS testing?

But what is this 'society' that we are imputing needs and rights to? Let's
look at the dictionary definition (Webster's New Universal Unabridged, Deluxe
2nd Edition, 1983):

society, n.; pl. societies, [Fr. socie'te'; L. "societas", from "socius", a
   companion.]
     1. partnership; participation; connection [Obs.]
     2. a group of animals or plants living together under the same environment
   and regarded as constituting a homogenous unit or entity; especially, a
   group of persons regarded as forming a single community.
     3. all people, collectively, regarded as constituting a community of
   related, interdependent individuals.
     4. the system or condition of living together as a community; as, a
   primitive "society".
     5. company or companionship; as, I do not seek his "society".
     6. one's friends or associates; as, for "society" he had two old aunts.
     7. any organized group of people joined together because of some interest
   in common; as, a medical "society".
     8. the members of the wealthy, fashionable class; as, all "society"
   attended the concert.
     9. The conduct, standards and attitudes of this class

One feels safe in assuming that the 'society' of political discourse is
intended to be society(2) or possibly society(3). But if this is so, how
can "society" have needs or rights?

Consider the need for food, or housing. If we say that "society is hungry"
or "society needs better housing" we utter nonsense. Individual *people* go
hungry; individual *people* live in slums. There may be large numbers of people
who share needs, but this is not the same as saying the *collection* of which
they are a part has needs.

That collection exists only as an abstract category, a verbal pigeonhole that
we use to organize our thoughts about *individual* cases of malnutrition and
cold-water tenement walkups. And, typically, that collection is only a part
(though it may be a distressingly large part) of the society under discussion.

Similarly, if we say "society has a right to be protected from crime", we
utter nonsense. Individuals may have a 'right' to be protected from murder;
property owners may have a 'right' to be protected from theft and arson; and
it may be that all individuals in a society(2) have these rights; but this is
not the same as saying that the abstract *collection* society(2) has such
rights.

But people who say

   A: "society needs (or has a right to) X"

for some X, will typically resist, rather strongly, having that corrected to

   B: "some subcollection Y of individuals in society(2) all need (or have
       a right to) X"

and, even if you push them into being specific about Y on one
occasion, they will generally return to "society needs X" as soon as you're
gone.

We can deduce from this linguistic habit one of two things. Either

1) it may be that the fact that Y in A is unspecified is critical to their
arguments.

or

2) There is some other connotation of the term "society" that is
being used by people who claim A that makes it different from B, and that
is vital to their message, and that they feel is understood by audiences.

To a General Semanticist, case 1 is an immediate red flag. GS pushes us to
look for places where our habitual use of language introduces subtle
falsehoods into logical argument. And the suppression of limits on universal
statements is one of the most dangerous habits (consider, for example, the
historical case in which "Society needs to kill those Jews that are traitors,"
became "Society needs to kill the Jews."

This kind of limit suppression gave us Dachau, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.
No clearer demonstration of the evil abetted by sloppy semantic habits could
be asked for. If case 1 is what is going on, A is a very, very dangerous
sort of falsehood indeed.

Let's therefore proceed to case 2.

The assumption that distinguishes A from B (that abstract collections can have
'needs' or 'rights') is a classic example of what's called a 'category error'.
Category errors produce sentences that are syntactically correct and may seem
in some sense to be meaningful, but which are actually just well-formed noise.
The classic example of such a sentence is the assertion "Green ideas sleep
furiously".

General Semantics teaches us that habitual use of category errors in
discourse always reflects a hidden agenda, an unadmitted (often unconscious)
set of connotative 'definitions' of terms that are more important than the
denotations we believe ourselves to be using.

Such connotations are the "hot buttons" of political discourse, the essential
tools of the propagandist, the demagogue and the tyrant. Because they are
implicit and unexamined, they manipulate rather than inform. They create
emotional climates of opinion rather than sustaining reasoned positions.

Why, then, might one speak of "the needs and rights of society"? Because there
are connotative definitions of `society' that political discourse operates from
which are not any of the nine given above. We'll call the first society(10).

     10. in some systems of morality and law, society(2) considered as a
  fictive corporate `person' with intrinsic needs and rights which may
  conflict with those of the individuals composing it.

This is the 'society' referenced in the perennial American debate on the
"rights of society" vs. "the rights of the individual". Is there in fact
such a `social person'? Perhaps. Can needs and rights of that 'social
person' replace or supersede needs and rights of those individuals
composing it?

Clearly not. If my neighbor is hungry, I cannot assuage that hunger by
feeding the `social person'. If that person feels like a helpless victim
of theft or threat of murder, he/she is not consoled by hearing someone
assert that `society' is successfully protecting its right to safe streets.

But the most dangerous consequence of "society" as fictive person is that
individuals that perform criminal acts may displace their responsibility
onto "society". Consider how often "I do this for the good of society"
rationalizes crimes ranging from back-room police beatings up to the planned
genocide of entire populations.

Now, those acquainted with the `social contract' theory of Locke, Hobbes and
Rousseau (on which modern consitutional democracy in America and elsewhere is
based) may argue that the 'rights' of society are sensibly those which the
parties to the social contract have chosen to delegate to its government, and
that its 'needs' are those they have chosen to meet through the agency of
that government.

If this is accepted, then "society" may in fact be able to feed the hungry
and protect potential victims from crime. But this theory tacitly sets up
another definition:

     11. (esp. in polities founded on a `social contract' theory) the
   government itself, considered as agent and enforcer of the social contract.

The semantic problem with society(11) is that it encourages a dangerous level
of what GS calls `ventriloquism'. Decisions are never made *by governments*;
'government' is a collective abstraction, and cannot 'decide' any more than
a green idea can sleep furiously.

Decisions are made by *people in government*. The ventriloquism happens when
said people are able to use society(11) to present their interests and their
decisions as, in fact, the interests and decisions of society(2). Please note
how this manipulation tactic depends on maintaining in its victims the related
category error that allows them to believe society(2) can *have* interests and
*make* decisions in itself, that are not actually the decisions and interests
of individual members.

These are very dangerous errors, and lead directly to the final and most
insidious usage of `society';

    12. The speaker, when seeking to identify his/her values and choices
  as the proper values and choices of society(2). 

The unexamined use of statements like A in political discourse encourages us
to confuse society(10,11,12) with society(2). This is both false-to-fact
and depersonalizing -- but, to certain people and classes of people, very
useful. That's why these definitions are not in the dictionary, nor
acknowledged by those who profit from the confusion.

To sum up:

   * "society" is a collective abstraction that can no more have needs and
     rights than green ideas can sleep furiously.

   * the assertions that "society needs X" or "has a right to X" depend for
     their apparent well-formedness on the confusion of connotative
     `definitions' of "society" (10, 11 and 12 above) with its denotations.

   * such assertions are false-to-fact, manipulative and dangerous, and should
     cause any person or ideology that depends on them to be regarded with
     the gravest and most continuing suspicion.