Happiness, Democracy, and the Cooperative Movement

The Radical Utilitarianism of William Thompson

Mark J. Kaswan

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781438452043, 9781438452036
• eBook ISBN: 9781438452050
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Happiness is political. The way we think about happiness affects what we do, how we relate to other people and the world around us, our moral principles, and even our ideas about how society should be organized. Utilitarianism, a political theory based on hedonistic and individualistic ideas of happiness, has been dominated for more than two-hundred years by its founder, Jeremy Bentham. In Happiness, Democracy, and the Cooperative Movement, Mark J. Kaswan examines the work of William Thompson, a friend of Bentham's who nonetheless offers a very different utilitarian philosophy and political theory based on a different conception of happiness, but whose work has been largely overlooked. Kaswan reveals the importance of our ideas about happiness for our understanding of the basic principles and nature of democracy, its role in society and its character as a social institution. In what is the closest examination of Thompson's political theory to date, Kaswan moves from philosophy to theory to practice, starting with conceptions of happiness before moving to theories of utility, then to democratic theory, and finally to practice in the first detailed account of how Thompson's ideas laid the foundations for the cooperative movement, which is now the world's largest democratic social movement.

PART I

WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

1

The Two Faces of Happiness: A Brief History

Hedonic versus Eudaemonic Happiness

The argument presented in this book—its core argument—is that the differences between Bentham and Thompson rest on the fact that they are working with different conceptions of happiness. For Bentham, happiness is almost an ecstatic experience where the pleasure is substantial and there is no or little corresponding pain;¹ for Thompson, happiness is equivalent to well-being and is best understood as the condition of a person’s life. This difference is reflected in the contemporary literature on happiness,² which reveals that although there are a variety of ways of thinking about it, for the most part happiness can be understood to wear two faces. One of these, hedonism, looks toward pleasure or a person’s level of satisfaction with their current state, while the other, eudaemonism, looks toward well-being and the general conditions of life; one tends to be largely subjective, the other more objective.

These differences have a long history. After all, happiness is, without doubt, one of the oldest philosophical concepts in the Western tradition,³ and it has remained a subject of active inquiry at least since Socrates began stopping strangers on the streets of Athens to ask them about the purpose of life. Bentham may have popularized the idea that the principal object of government is the “greatest happiness of the greatest number,” but this can be seen as a repackaging of Plato, who argued that the task of the Guardians was nothing less than “the greatest possible happiness” for the city.⁴

The concept of happiness has changed substantially since the ancient Greeks, although, in fact, there were significant disagreements among the Greeks themselves. However, the Greeks largely agreed on three points: That happiness cannot be measured in the moment, but has to do with the general conditions of one’s life; that virtue is the mode of conduct most conducive to happiness; and that desire undermines happiness and must, therefore, be limited. These are all interrelated, the result of which is that individual happiness is tightly bound to the polis (or city-state, around which Greek life was organized). While happiness may be an individual matter in the sense that it requires a kind of mental discipline, the requirements of virtue mean that it must be other-regarding in important ways. And where the temporal frame is the lifespan, the conditions of life, including the conditions of life of the other members of the society within which one lives, are also crucial to happiness.⁵

This “political” character of happiness (political in the sense that it is associated with life in the polis, although over time the context changes from polis to village) becomes lost—“submerged” might be a better term—in the shift to modernity. Indeed, one of the major signposts of the shift from ancient to modern is in the way happiness becomes individualized, associated with specific sensations or experiences in a way that is largely missing from the ancients. Generally speaking, Greek philosophy did not celebrate the pursuit of pleasure understood as desire-fulfillment; in the modern era, it is taken as a basic premise. As with many other things, the shift can be connected to the rise of commercial society and, ultimately, capitalism, in the way that the fulfillment of desire becomes the primary engine of economic growth. But while the political character of happiness may have become obscured in this development, Jeremy Bentham’s work demonstrates its continuing political character as an underlying premise—a point that becomes clear in later chapters when Bentham’s political theory is contrasted with William Thompson’s counterhegemonic alternative.

The major focus in this section is on three related points, having to do with the relationship of happiness to pleasure and desire; the question of access, or what we might call the right to happiness; and its temporal frame. There is a distinctly historical element to this, as the groundwork for the debate is laid by the ancient Greeks and major shifts develop over time. Of the ancient Greek schools, I concentrate on the thought of Epicurus and the Epicureans here for two reasons: First, because they most clearly laid out the terms of the debate, and because the classical utilitarians (and, perhaps, their descendants in the social sciences) have been seen as following in the Epicurean tradition.⁶

Desire, Pleasure, and Happiness

Epicureanism is generally associated with hedonism, but there is more to it than that. As Rosenbaum puts it, Epicurus articulated “a set of constraints on human behavior, developed … for the purpose of creating social conditions in which people are best able to be happy.”⁷ How people relate to one another and the conditions in which their interactions occur are then seen as crucial for happiness. And while hedone (pleasure) is clearly at its center, it is, paradoxically, an ascetic sort of hedonism.⁸

The paradox exists because Epicurus recognized different sorts of pleasure, kinetic and katastematic. Kinetic pleasure is fleeting, unstable, and inherently insecure. Katastematic pleasure is static, stable, and secure. Kinetic pleasure is active and transient, experienced in the course of fulfilling a need or addressing a lack. Static pleasure is passive and constant, of a sort that is experienced in the absence of pain and that realizes its maximum when all pain has been removed. Kinetic pleasures are particular to a specific need or desire, while static pleasure is a general state and an end unto itself. This latter form, according to Annas, Epicurus refers to as “tranquility or ataraxia,” and it is this that he “identifies [as] our final end.”⁹

A related point has to do with the relationship between pleasure and pain, and the character of pleasure, particularly of the katastematic sort. In effect, pain establishes the limits for pleasure. “Pleasure,” as Epicurus puts it, “reaches its maximum limit at the removal of all sources of pain. … When pain arising from need has been removed, bodily pleasure cannot increase—it merely varies. But the limit of mental pleasure is reached after we reflect upon these bodily pleasures and the related mental distress prior to fulfillment.”¹⁰ The act of fulfilling a pain-causing need gives rise to kinetic pleasure, which is experienced directly and is limited to the action of relieving the pain. This sort of pleasure is limited in two ways: first, it only lasts as long as the action itself, and, second, certain ways of fulfilling the need may give rise to new pains (for example, the pain associated with overeating). Further, kinetic pleasure is particularized: it is associated not with the general condition of hunger but with the specific condition of being hungry, so the pleasure of eating is restricted to that particular instance of being hungry, involving elements not directly associated with the pain of hunger, such as the taste of the food or the conditions in which it is consumed. Things such as the desire for certain kinds of food or eating in certain kinds of settings can never, in fact, be satisfied in a stable way because once a given eating experience is complete, the desire is sure to return.

Katastematic pleasure, in contrast to kinetic pleasure, is an enduring condition that is best understood as the absence of a pain, and it has a mental element that is largely missing from kinetic pleasure. For example, katastematic pleasure comes from not only being fed, but being what in contemporary terms is referred to as “food secure”—in other words, not having anxiety about where one will get one’s next meal. The “pleasure” is characterized by the absence of pain—not only the pain of hunger but also the fear of hunger—but not by any specific positive feeling. While clearly related to a physical condition, it has more to do with a particular mental condition or state of mind (or, more accurately, the absence of a particular mental condition), making it a mental, not a physical sort of pleasure. What this means is that, despite the fact that Epicurus was clearly a materialist in that he held that everything in the universe, including souls and spiritual phenomena, could be explained through the movements of atoms, in its ethics Epicureanism may best be understood, paradoxically, as a profoundly antimaterialist philosophy, both in the sense that material goods are not the primary source of happiness, and that material (i.e., bodily) pleasures are seen as a lesser form.

The difference between kinetic and katastematic pleasure is also reflected in Epicurus’s ideas about desire. There are three different kinds of desire, he tells us, based on two distinctions: “Among desires some are natural and necessary, some natural but not necessary, and others neither natural nor necessary.”¹¹ Elsewhere, unnatural and unnecessary desires are referred to as “empty.”¹² An analysis of the distinctions between “natural” and “unnatural,” and “necessary” and “unnecessary” adds an additional dimension to the difference between kinetic and katastematic pleasure. It is natural to want food; the fulfillment of that desire is the pleasure of satiation, a static pleasure that, as discussed above, is limited by the removal of the associated pain, hunger. But while the hunger may give rise to a natural desire for food, it does not in itself give rise to a desire for a particular kind of food. The particular desire for certain kinds of food is what causes problems, as this involves a kinetic pleasure that not only fades away as soon as the meal is finished, but that is both unstable, in that it may change, and insatiable, as the desire can never be filled in any lasting way.¹³ A simple meal made from available ingredients may leave me satisfied, but a fine dinner of lobster leaves me with the desire to repeat the experience as soon as possible, perhaps next time on a bed of rice rather than pasta, and with a different sauce. And were the side vegetables satisfactory? What about dessert? And perhaps the setting could have had better lighting. The varieties are endless, leaving me with an ongoing, unfilled desire. This is the sort of desire that Epicurus considered “empty” and inherently problematic, to be avoided to the greatest extent possible.¹⁴ So, for Epicurus, desire is best understood as the primary source of pain, such that the best route to happiness is the overcoming of these empty desires.

For Epicureanism, then, it is wrong to associate happiness with the fulfillment of desires at all. Happiness based on katastematic pleasure does not arise from any particular activity, so the goal of an activity is neither the experience itself, nor even any particular consequence that arises out of the action. The purpose of any activity is the condition of ataraxia, feeling satisfied, at peace.¹⁵ Best suited for this are those activities that are considered virtuous. As Epicurus puts it, “The greatest virtue and the basis for all virtues is prudence … the art of practical wisdom. … It is not possible to live pleasurably unless one also lives prudently, honorably, and justly; nor is it possible to live prudently, honestly, and justly without living pleasurably. For the virtues are inseparable from a happy life, and living happily is inseparable from the virtues.”¹⁶ As he puts it elsewhere, “The happiest men are those who enjoy the condition of having nothing to fear from those who surround them. Such men live among one another most agreeably, having the firmest grounds for confidence in one another, enjoying the benefits of friendship in all their fullness.”¹⁷ The greatest value of virtue, then, is that it means that you have nothing to fear. Thus, virtue can be seen as instrumental: not good in itself, but simply the best kind of action because it is most likely to establish the conditions for the kind of pleasure most conducive to happiness.

This ancient, ascetic hedonism based on katastematic pleasure can be contrasted with the modern form of hedonism, which is based on kinetic pleasure. The central tenet of modern hedonism is desire fulfillment. The change occurred over centuries. For the early Church, the afterlife was the inversion of life on Earth: a life of hedonism (that is, desire-fulfillment) would be punished with eternal suffering in Hell, while a life of suffering would be rewarded with the infinite pleasures of Heaven.¹⁸ There could be no happiness on Earth. The happiness of Heaven, however, is characterized by infinite, everlasting pleasure—katastematic pleasure, clearly, as there would be no discomfort or pain. That said, the common use of terms such as “bliss” or “joyousness” seem to suggest that there would be kinetic pleasure, as well, but without the pain of desire. Heaven, indeed.

The reformation of desire is reflected in the work of Thomas Aquinas. Contrary to prior teachings, Aquinas argued that there were two types of happiness: the perfect, eternal happiness that could only be experienced in Heaven, and a lesser sort that could be enjoyed by people on Earth. The true object of desire for life on earth is the infinite pleasure of Heaven;¹⁹ one of the features of Heaven that makes its happiness perfect is that it “excludes every evil, and fulfills every desire.” He continues:

But in this life every evil cannot be excluded. For this present life is subject to many unavoidable evils; to ignorance on the part of the intellect; to inordinate affection on the part of the appetite, and to many penalties on the part of the body. … Likewise neither can the desire for good be satiated in this life. For m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: What Is Happiness?
• Part II: The Politics of Happiness
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Laws and Objects of the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, adopted 1844 (abridged)
• Appendix 2: International Co-operative Alliance Statement on the Co-operative Identity, adopted 1995
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover