(This is an archived extract from the book Patterns of Power: Edition 2)
It is impossible to completely satisfy everybody, but a society is more stable if it pursues a policy of inclusivity: i.e. if it can be seen to try to be inclusive, taking account of everyone’s needs. This means treating everyone equally and preventing its governance, as far as possible, from being completely unacceptable to anyone. There are three reasons why inclusiveness is important:
· In societies with people from many different cultures, which in practice means almost everywhere, a policy of inclusivity is helpful in building harmony; this is described in more detail later (6.7.4.5).
· This book’s search for acceptability in governance appears at first sight to be equivalent to the philosophy of Utilitarianism, which can be criticised as an unacceptable basis for governance[1] because it can sometimes sacrifice someone’s rights in order to benefit the majority.[2] A policy of inclusivity, by contrast, explicitly tries to protect everybody’s rights.
· People become disaffected if they feel that society has ignored them. They are then a threat to everyone else’s happiness and security.
Like acceptability, inclusiveness is unquantifiable; it is greater if more people find governance at least tolerable and it increases with cohesiveness, defined as people’s sense of belonging to the society.
© PatternsofPower.org, 2014
[1] One example of a contrary opinion was expressed by
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 14:
“It may be observed, however, that
once the principles of justice are thought of as arising from an original
agreement in a situation of equality, it is an open question whether the
principle of utility would be acknowledged. Offhand it hardly seems likely that
persons who view themselves as equals, entitled to press their claims upon one another,
would agree to a principle which may require lesser life prospects for some
simply for the sake of a greater sum of advantages enjoyed by others. Since
each desires to protect his interests, his capacity to advance his conception
of the good, no one has a reason to acquiesce in an enduring loss for himself
in order to bring about a greater net balance of satisfaction. In the absence
of strong and lasting benevolent impulses, a rational man would not accept a
basic structure merely because it maximized the algebraic sum of advantages
irrespective of its permanent effects on his own basic rights and interests.
Thus it seems that the principle of utility is incompatible with the conception
of social cooperation among equals for mutual advantage. It appears to be
inconsistent with the idea of reciprocity implicit in the notion of a
well-ordered society”.
Rawls further elaborates his objections in A Theory of Justice, Section
5, pp. 22-27 (pp. 19-24 PDF). A PDF copy of the book was available in April
2014 at http://economia.uniandes.edu.co/content/download/41151/360980/file/Rawls99.pdf.
[2] There is an important distinction to make between different kinds of utilitarianism:
‘Rule utilitarians’ hold that one should always abide by a set of rules that will tend to maximize utility. In general, lying produces more unhappiness than happiness, so it is bad; a rule utilitarian would therefore never lie, no matter what the circumstances – even to save someone’s life.
‘Act utilitarians’ hold that one should always do whatever will produce the most utility in the circumstances. There might be circumstances, though, where an act utilitarian would argue to increase the "greatest good of the greatest number" by sacrificing the rights of a small number of people.
‘Preference utilitarianism’, which defines the greatest good as that which has been chosen by the most people, can put minorities at a disadvantage.
None of these forms of utilitarianism can therefore safely act as a universal principle.