Liberal Democracy

A political philosophy forum asked the question "How should society he organized, if at all?"

The last part of question is redundant because society needs organization. There would be no society if it wasn't organized.

It was during the Enlightenment that the question of how our society should be organized was first seriously posed. Today I think that question has been answered. Through the process of elimination the world has come to the realization that liberal democracy is the only alternative for organizing society in the modern world. The fact that it hasn't been fully implementation is another matter.

I don't think it is an accident that liberal democracy has percolated to the top.

Liberal democracy is the combination of two governing ideals. 'Liberal' comes from the idea of people being free to pursue their own self-interests. It is also associated with the free market system - capitalism. Democracy comes from the idea of the collective, that society should function as one and organize for the collective good.

It is easy to see how these two ideals may oppose each other and can be incompatible. However, this kind of opposition within organic, living systems is replete throughout the natural and physical world. Every system has its binary system in order to remain vital and reproductive. The human race has its male/female. A Day has day/night. The space we live in has up/down. Computing has the binary code of 1 and 0. The human brain has two hemispheres and electricity, the most famous binary system of all, has its two opposite poles of -/+. All those systems are alive and successful because of their bipolar nature. Everything that exists has two dimensions of itself. If this kind of makeup is essential for success in the natural, physical world why would it not also be true for human governance. The reason why we have evolved into a dualistic system of governance is because it is the only way, as nature has shown, to keep it alive and continuous.

A Russian philosopher by the name of Berdyaev, during the birth of the communist regime, foresaw that if you build a governing system based on a single theory it will inevitably end up in a dictatorship. As we see, he was right.

Communism and liberal democracy were the last of the governing rivals. The outcome of their rivalry determined how society should ultimately be organized. Today the ascendency of liberal democracy is filling the void left by the collapse of communism, a sign that there is no other alternative to what transpired.