It is acknowledged, however, that self-government in this literal sense poses some almost insurmountable difficulties. Of these the most obvious, as Harrington observes, is that 'the whole body of the people' is 'too unwieldy a body to be assembled'.
Sir Thomas More had put forward one possible solution in his Utopia of 1516, at the time when the ideal of the civitas libera was first being seriously canvassed in England. A genuine res publica, More suggests, must take the constitutional form of a federated republic. One of the first things we learn about the newly discovered island of Utopia is that its citizens live in fifty-four self-governing cities that manage their own affairs by means of annually elected magistrates chosen from among themselves. Milton enthusiastically takes up the idea in his Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, in which he ends by proposing that 'every countie in the land' should become a kinde of subordinate Commonaltie'. The effect will be to enable the body of the people 'in all things of civil government' to have justice in thir own hands', so that they will have none then to blame but themselves, if it be not well administerd'.--Quentin Skinner (1998) Liberty Before Liberalism, 30-31
The other day, I kind of promised a post in which I disagree with Skinner. And since I know readers love polemics, I thought It warn you that this post is no polemic. The comment quoted above is an aside in Skinner's overall argument. But I like the aside. And it got me musing a bit about two issues.
First, Part I of Utopia is framed by a purportedly autobiographical introduction, where the narrator (More) is sent to Flanders as an ambassador by Henry VIII. And the first paragraph tells us the first stop is Bruges. Now, Bruges was a major city at the time. But I have always been puzzled about why the brief stop in Bruges is even mentioned because the action quickly moves on to Antwerp, where the conversation takes place in Peter Giles's garden.
Here's a suggestion: in 1464 Bruges was (see here) the site of what is now known as "The Estates General of 1464," which was an was the first assembly of the estates of the Burgundian Netherlands as wikipedia nicely puts it, now parts of France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Now, historically that's an important event because it was part of (not entirely successful) Burgundian state-building. In Belgium and Dutch history it's important because it is treated (not very prominently) as the origins of Dutch/Belgian parliamentary/representative democracy. (Of course, that takes some twisting and anachronistic interpreting.) But from our perspective what matters is that it is the first really serious modern attempt to bring together representatives of peoples that are formerly represented already on a provincial level in a federative structure.*
So, starting the intellectual journal of Utopia in Bruges is laden with symbolism to then contemporary readers. It is not only a cosmopolitan town of trade, it's also the site of momentous political innovation then less than a half century old, and still unfolding. Of course, Charles the Bold already dead when More's visit to Bruges is supposed to take place. And the streamlined Utopian federation is nothing like the messy affair of the reality of the Estates General of 1464.
Second, I noted a few weeks ago that Spinoza's Political Treatise has a clear plan of federation, in which sovereign states contract joint treaties of peace and so escape the mutual state of war (3.15-16,) Undoubtedly Spinoza is influenced by the political experiences of the then United Provinces, his admiration for the constitution of the Kingdom of Aragon (Political Treatise, 7.30), and his interpretation of the Hebrew State described in the Hebrew Bible. By 1677 this idea was not wholly novel, and there would have been multiple sources that could have inspired it.+
But, even so, (recall) at the start of the Political Treatise, Spinoza makes a point of alerting the reader that More's Utopia is in his sight in the very first paragraph. The allusion is not naturally taken as a compliment: "Whence it has come to pass that, instead of ethics, [philosophers have generally written satire, and that they have never conceived a theory of politics, which could be turned to use, but such as might be taken for a chimera, or might have been formed in Utopia, or in that golden age of the poets when, to be sure, there was least need of it." And as I have noted, Spinoza seems to create (or, perhaps, echo) a trope in which Utopia is ridiculed as useless at the start of an ambitious purportedly more realist reform tract.
But it doesn't follow from this that the mechanisms described in Utopia or the philosophy behind Utopia is rejected entirely. I have already noted that More anticipates Spinoza's (recall) stadial analysis of Mozes' legislation; Utopia anticipates Spinoza's approach to freedom of religion and civic religion; and in other respects here and, also, here]. Without denying the non-trivial differences, the both promote a work ethic in which the corrosive effects of inequality and luxury are held at bay through the use of cleverly designed mechanisms that use incentives to foreseeable ends. All I am suggesting here, echoing Skinner, is that there is a pre-history to thinking about federates states at a large scale in which More and Spinoza figure.+
*I am skipping over lots of complications because some of the provinces were technically part of Holy Roman empire, others the French king thought part of France, etc. The next such meeting was in Ghent 1477, where nation-forming was blocked and the supremacy of local jurisdiction established, but where a shared court and economic unity were promoted. One really fascinating feature of the 1477 event is that it recognized a multiplicity of official languages. The underlying position is federation in which the ruler has contractual relations with the independent entities.
+In the future, I return to explore some of the details of their federal structures more carefully.
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