"Fight for what?"

Roger Scruton: Citizenship

By their nature, political crises force those involved to clarify what they believe in.

Fight for what? is an unavoidable question when the head of the Army says Britain needs a citizen army, and the mainstream media is full of conscription. It is a question that deserves a proper answer.

Roger Scruton's account of citizenship (below) is a sketch of what successful Western states have, and why citizens might believe in them. That said, it was published in 2007. Back then, people went about their daily lives under the impression that the government had their interests at heart. They thought it was promoting the security that made peaceful life possible, and the prosperity and opportunity in which they could pursue their life chances. In turn, their consent to these arrangements provided legitimacy to the government. Crazy, eh?

"Citizenship ... arises when the State and the individual are fully accountable to the other. It is a web of reciprocal rights and duties, upheld by a rule of law which stands higher than either party. Although the State enforces the law, it enforces it equally against itself and against the private citizen. The citizen has rights that the state is duty bound to uphold, and also duties that the State has a right to enforce. Because these rights and duties are defined and limited by the law, citizens have a clear conceptions of where their freedoms end. "

However, in important ways this is at odds with the dominant narrative. Then as now, the narrative is of an individualist, consumerist society, with national success in financial terms, held together by solely by law and political institutions. Cultural conservatives like Scruton say this is not sufficient. They see belonging, a shared identity, an inherited and continuing culture as more than appearances in a Machiavellian theatre of power. They see these Burkean concerns not as distractions from economic activity, but as human necessities, essential to individuals and societies. Sooner or later, governance without them will fail.

"The theory of the social contract begins in a thought experiment, in which a group of people gather together to decide their common future. But if they are in a position to decide their common future, it is because they already have one: because they recognise their mutual togetherness and reciprocal dependence, ... In short, the social contract requires a relation of membership, and one, moreover, which makes it plausible for the individual members to conceive of the relation between them in contractual terms."

Lance-Corporal Johnson reporting for duty.

A lot has changed since 2007. The UK government makes little attempt to hide its fealty to outside interests. It is a willing partner in destroying the Burkean cultural fabric, not least by importing lots of people who have no stake in the country, and no reciprocal dependence. It does not defend the benefits of citizenship for the population at large.

"Subjection is the relation between the State and the individual where the State need not account to the individual, where the rights and duties of the individual are undefined, or defined only partially and defeasibly, and when there is no rule of law that stands higher than the State that enforces it. Citizens are freer than subjects, not because there is more they can get away with, but because their freedoms are defined and upheld by the law. People who are subjects naturally aspire to be citizens, since a citizen can take steps to secure his property, family and business against marauders, and has effective sovereignty over his own life." 

Today's inescapable social engineering is intended to produce subjects, not citizens. As many people have said over the last few days, Why would you fight for that?

---

Conserving Nations: Citizenship. 

Never in the history of the world has there been so many migrants. And almost all of them are migrating from regions where nationality is weak or non-existent to the established Nation states of the West. They are not migrating because they have discovered some previously dormant feelings of love or loyalty towards the  nations in whose territory they seek a home. On the contrary, few of them identify their loyalties in terms of the nation where they settle. They are migrating in search of citizenship - which is the principle gift of national jurisdictions, and the origin of the peace, law, stability and prosperity that still prevail in the West. 

Citizenship is the relation that arises between the State and the individual when each is fully accountable to the other. It consists of a web of reciprocal rights and duties, upheld by a rule of law which stands higher than either party. Although the State enforces the law, it enforces it equally against itself and against the private citizen. The citizen has rights that the state is duty bound to uphold, and also duties that the State has a right to enforce. Because these rights and duties are defined  and limited by the law, citizens have a clear conceptions of where their freedoms end. Where citizens are appointed to administer the State, the result is a "republican" government. 
Subjection is the relation between the State and the individual where the State need not account to the individual, where the rights and duties of the individual are undefined, or defined only partially and defeasibly, and when there is no rule of law that stands higher than the State that enforces it. Citizens are freer than subjects, not because there is more they can  get away with, but because their freedoms are defined and upheld by the law. People who are subjects naturally aspire to be citizens, since a citizen can take steps to secure his property, family and business against marauders, and has effective sovereignty over his own life. That is why people migrate from states where they are subjects to states where they can be citizens. 

Freedom and security are not the only benefits of citizenship. There is an economic benefit too. Under a rule of law contracts can be freely engaged in and collectively enforced. Honesty becomes the rule in business dealings, and disputes are settled by courts of law rather than hired thugs. And because the principle of accountability runs through all institutions, corruption can be identified and penalised, even when it occurs in the highest levels of government.  

Marxists believe that law is the servant of economics, and "bourgeois legality" comes into being as a result of, and for the sake of "bourgeois means of production" (by which they mean the market economy). This way of thinking is so influential nowadays it is necessary to point out that it is the opposite of the truth. The market economy comes into being because the rule of law secures property rights and contractual freedoms, and forces people to account for their dishonesty, and for their financial misdeeds. That is another reason why people migrate to places where they can enjoy the benefits of citizenship. A society of citizens is one in which markets can flourish, and markets are the preconditions of prosperity. 

A society of citizens is a society in which strangers can trust one another, since everyone is bound by a common set of rules. This does not mean that there are no thieves or swindlers; it means that trust can grow between strangers, and does not depend on family connections, tribal loyalties or favours granted or earned. 

As a result of this, trust can grow over a wide area, and local baronetcies and fiefdoms can be broken down and overruled. In such circumstances, markets do not merely flourish: they spread and grow, to become co-extensive with the jurisdiction. Every citizen becomes linked to every other, by relations that are financial, legal and fiduciary, but which presuppose no personal tie. A society of citizens can a society of strangers, all enjoying sovereignty over their lives, and pursuing individual goals and satisfactions. Such are Western societies today. These are societies where you can form common cause with strangers, an which all of you, in those matters on which your common destiny depends, can with conviction say "we".

The existence of this kind of trust in a society of strangers should be seen for what it is: a rare achievement, whose pre-conditions are not easily fulfilled. If it is difficult for us to appreciate this fact, it is because trust between strangers creates the illusion of safety, encouraging people to think that because society begins in agreement, it ends in it too. Thus it has been common since the Renaissance for thinkers to propose some version of the "social contract" as the foundation of a society of citizens. Such a society comes into being, so Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and others in their several ways argue, because people come together and agree on the terms of the contract by which each of them will be bound. This idea resonates powerfully in the minds and hearts of citizens, because it makes the State itself into just another example of the kind of transaction by which they order their lives. It presupposes no source of political obligation other than the consent of the citizen, and conforms to the inherently skeptical nature of modern jurisdictions, which claim no authority beyond the rational endorsement of those who are bound by their laws.

The theory of the social contract begins in a thought experiment, in which a group of people gather together to decide their common future. But if they are in a position to decide their common future, it is because they already have one: because they recognise their mutual togetherness and reciprocal dependence, which makes it incumbent upon them to settle how they might be governed under a common jurisdiction in a common territory. In short, the social contract requires a relation of membership, and one, moreover, which makes it plausible for the individual members to concieve of the relation between them in contractual terms. Theorists of the social contract write as though it presupposes only the first person singular of free rational choice. In fact, it presupposes the first person plural, in which the burdens of belonging have already been assumed.