Just Finished Reading: Political Hypocrisy – The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond by David Runciman (FP: 2008)

My first thought on receiving this book in the post was that I imagined it, given the subject matter, to be much longer than the 226 large format pages than it turned out to be. But that was my first mistake! Of course if it had been about the history of political hypocrisy – which would have essentially been the history of politics itself, it definitely would have been. Fortunately the subject matter was rather more constrained – views on hypocrisy (mostly of the political persuasion) from various authors over the last few hundred years and what we can learn from them today.

The one thing that came through loud and clear throughout the book was that hypocrisy and democratic politics are deeply interwoven. Dictatorships (and indeed Empires) have no need to be hypocritical about their motives, their means or their methods. With no electorate to appease and little care for international opinion they can do what they need to do without the need for window dressing, fake persuasion or playing to the gallery. They need to do something they go right on and do it. Democracies have a problem with such things as they are bound by niceties such as the law, public opinion and the need to get re-elected. In order to do that they need to be not wholly truthful about what they need to do and why they need to do it. The big question is this: Is that level of potential hypocrisy a bad thing or just something that we just need to live with? Indeed would we know what to do with an actual honest politician if such a thing exists (or even could exist). After all aren’t we all, at one level or another all hypocrites from time to time – haven’t we agreed that babies are far more attractive than they actually are? Haven’t we lied about our beliefs to fit in, avoid arguments or to protect ourselves? Aren’t politicians just doing on a larger stage what we all do every day on a smaller one? Or are some hypocrisies worse than others or is it a case that a public hypocrisy is bad whilst a private hypocrisy can be forgiven – at least more easily. Should we just cut politicians some slack for being human after all?

Here’s the rub of course. Is someone a hypocrite for pretending to be straight or a believer in their cultures religion when the alternative might well be a painful death? Now compare that with a politician who actively and knowingly deceives an electorate for their own or their parties gain by pretending to believe or be something they quite clearly are not and using that pretence to prosper. Are they simply both hypocrites and equally subject to condemnation or can we separate one from the other and rank them accordingly? That, according to the author of this intriguing and well thought out piece of political philosophy, is exactly what we need to determine with the help of some of the greatest political thinkers of the past 500 years.

I did actually struggle a bit through the early parts of this book, partially because my philosophical brain ‘muscles’ have been allowed to atrophy and partially because I’ve never been a fan of Thomas Hobbes. I was much more at home as the narrative moved on to the 18th century political commentator Bernard Mandeville and his Fable of the Bees. As we moved forward in time I found the thoughts of the instigators of the American Revolution most interesting as they dissected British hypocrisy whilst defending themselves against the same charge. I felt that I needed to know more of the thoughts of these long ignored (from my point of view) political thinkers. A section on Utilitarianism barely raised a ripple of comment and then we were on to the great hypocrites of our age – the Victorians. Here the author surprised me somewhat by throwing in the thought of an author rather than a political philosopher – in the guise of Anthony Trollope and his political novels of the age. This most certainly put Trollope on my future reading list. Jumping ahead again to the almost contemporary age we ended (almost) with the great George Orwell and his thoughts on the whole thing. Still pretty knew to Orwell – having only read 4 of his books so far – I need feel motivated to read more of them.

Whilst not coming to any conclusive answer to the evident problem of political hypocrisy I did feel that the author made a very good fist at defining the problem as well as defining exactly what type of hypocrisy we should be most vexed with. I think he was right that we should never expect our politicians in a democracy to be completely open and honest with us because, to be honest, democracy just doesn’t work that way. So trying to fix that particular problem – in effect trying to ‘fix’ politics, is simply a waste of time. We need to know where to draw the lines and be aware when politicians step (or sometimes leap) over them in order to hold them meaningfully to account. Overall a very interesting read and a must for anyone increasingly jaded by the actions of our so-called representatives.