For a just state

 

The philosopher Immanuel Kant succinctly posed the dilemma of organising a just state, two centuries ago, in these terms:

“The problem of organising a state, however hard it may seem, can be solved, even for a race of devils, if only they are intelligent. The problem is, given a multitude of rational beings requiring universal laws for their preservation, but each of them is sincerely inclined to exempt himself from them, to establish a Constitution in such a way, although their private intentions conflict, they check each other, with the result that their public conduct is the same as if they had no such intentions.”

In Guyana there exist great suspicions in the people as to the motives of those who propose “solutions” to our national problems. Throughout our history institutions have been tinkered with, purportedly for the “good” of the people, but invariably it was later seen to have benefited either one person, or one group. Guyanese are understandably concerned about the “smartmen” who jockey for advantage on behalf of themselves or their group. Any initiative, or set of initiatives, that are offered to address Guyana’s political crisis will have to engender broad acceptance across the political, ethnic and other divisions in the people and especially amongst the politicians.

Kant proposed that the solution to the inevitable conflicts in organised human societies, lay in the design of institutions that should ensure the persons behaving in accordance with its rules, are behaving justly and morally. He proposed that institutions, as with all normative behaviour, would have to satisfy the “categorical imperative”, which in one popular formulation states: act in accordance to rules that you would wish applied to everyone as if they were universal laws.

Most commentators who followed him agreed with his stricture that institutions constituting a state must be organised in accordance with the principle of justice, but his criterion of the categorical imperative, proved nettlesome. John Rawls, the most influential of modern liberal political philosophers, came up with another formulation to guide the formation of social institutions nearly two centuries later, in 1971. It had the great virtue of simplicity.

In the opening line of his first section in his magnum opus A Theory of Justice, Rawls boldly declared that the principle of “justice” is the standard that would generate the broad acceptability for the establishment of any institution necessary to implement any initiative for enduring stability: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.”

Recognising that Guyana does not even reach Rawls’ definition of a society as “a cooperative venture for mutual advantage, it is typically marked by a conflict as well as by an identity of interests.” his definition of “justice” is yet very pertinent to our effort to construct a democratic state in Guyana: “…a way of assigning rights and duties in the basic institutions of society and they define the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation.” In Guyana we all have to appreciate that the existence of the state itself is for the furtherance of the societal good – the public interest. Ultimately we believe that all Guyanese are looking to be culturally authentic, politically secure and economically sound. In the furtherance of these “public goods”, the people have to promulgate a constitution through which the government directs the state through policies and programmes in consonance with the prime directives of the Constitution.

In modern democracies, under the liberal paradigm, equality of treatment and equality before the law of the citizens stands at the very top of the imperatives. We have proposed that under a federalist state institutions will be created to implement the policies of Ethnic Impact Statements, multiculturalism, federal form of government, Government of National Reconciliation, Catalytic Economic State, Affirmative Action etc, in the fulfilment of the national goals. However, because each individual citizen or group of citizens are situated differently (according to specific criteria) governmental policies and programmes will inevitably have a different impact on different citizens. The task of the Government is to ensure that their differential treatment is not arbitrary and capricious and irrational – and that they further some societal good.