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by N. R. D. Haslewood

"Humanism is unavoidably political because it demands that concrete progress towards universal justice, peace, and respect for human rights be made.

Immanuel Kant was an intellectual pioneer. Writing in 1795, he was one of the first to imagine a world in which universal peace was secured. He argued that states were, as moral persons, bound to act in accordance with rationally defined ethical codes of conduct. Such codes would include the establishment of a federation of democratic republics and this, in turn, would bring about a state of perpetual peace for all of humanity.

A century and a half later, Albert Einstein took the idea one step further. With the new danger of atomic weapons and the nascent lessons of World War II in mind, he wrote an open letter to the United Nations. In it, he demanded that permanent peace required states relinquish their claims to absolute national sovereignty and establish world governance. It was critical, he believed, that immediate reforms to the United Nations be made. People's consent was now required at a global level. A directly elected General Assembly should be placed at the helm of world affairs, signaling an end to the absolute rule of nations over the destiny of humankind.

Holding a Humanist position requires that we openly acknowledge and adopt Einstein's proposal. If we truly endorse the fundamental maxim of Humanism—that the immediate needs of all of humanity be placed before God, the state, money, or any other consideration—then I believe that such a conclusion is inevitable. Humanism is unavoidably political. To be Humanist is to move beyond a nationalist interpretation of the world and endorse global governance.

Humanism entails a fundamental shift in how we conceive of both ourselves and the world around us. We are people first. Everything else is secondary. We share fundamentally similar natures. We are not rational, self-seeking utility-maximizing individuals. We are empathic, social animals. We do not believe that material wealth leads to happiness. We take our purpose in life as the pursuit of fulfillment. We therefore believe the best form of society is that which establishes a framework wherein the pursuit of fulfillment is possible. We are not ethical because we fear punishment, either temporally or ecclesiastically. We are ethical because we live in freedom and care enough about others to ensure that they may pursue fulfillment also. Our worldview is necessarily global in scope and the well-being of all of mankind is the first premise of all of our considerations.

Humanism is unavoidably political because it demands that concrete progress towards universal justice, peace, and respect for human rights be made. Consequently, I wish to argue that holding a Humanist position requires that all committed Humanists make an effort to do three things: firstly, raise public consciousness regarding the necessity of global law and a world government to enforce it; secondly, demand that governments take practical steps towards establishing world peace now, and, thirdly, work towards altering the very structure of global politics itself by ending nations' absolute rule over the destiny of humanity.

Humanists understand that all that divides humanity exists solely within the human mind. As evidence-based thinkers, we are aware from such writers as Jared Diamond that "as recently as A.D. 1500, less than 20 percent of the world's land area was marked off by boundaries into states run by bureaucrats and governed by laws." We are also aware that the modern nation state has only existed since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. We are aware, therefore, that the current state of affairs is neither final nor inevitable. To Humanists, the ultimate goal of politics is to bring about a universal framework in which fulfillment is possible or, in Einstein's words, "The United Nations now and world Government eventually must serve one single goal—the guarantee of the security, tranquility, and the welfare of all mankind".

Is this hopeless romanticism? Immanuel Kant was fairly clear on this point, stating categorically in Perpetual Peace that "The idea of a law of world citizenship is no high-flown or exaggerated notion. It is ... indispensable for the maintenance of the public human rights and hence also of perpetual peace." Einstein was also highly lucid in his letter to the U.N. when explaining how and why our institutions must change:

Security is indivisible. It can be reached only when necessary guarantees of law and enforcement obtain everywhere, so that military security is no longer the problem of any single state. There is no compromise possible between preparation for war, on the one hand, and preparation of a world society based on law and order on the other.

The United Nations cannot be blamed for its failures. No international organization can be stronger than the constitutional powers given it, or than its component parts want it to be.

If every citizen realizes that the only guarantee for security and peace in this atomic age is the constant development of a supra-national government, then he will do everything in his power to strengthen the United Nations. The only real step toward world government is world Government itself.

Only with world government can global security be established. Only once the threat of war has been removed can it conceivably be in nations' own interests to reduce the size of their military forces and eventually disarm completely. Nation states are not, as Kant thought, moral persons, but are legal, bureaucratic institutions and thus inevitably act according to their design. We cannot expect them to behave responsibly to those they have no legal obligation towards—the rest of humanity—when they are explicitly required to act in their own narrowly defined national interests. Neither can we expect national leaders to act on behalf of humanity as a whole when their roles explicitly demand that they act on behalf of their citizens. To do so is not only unreasonable of us—it is self-delusory.

It is only with world government that universal justice can become more than the vague hope of well-wishing people. Only with world government can global law ever become more than mere words on paper. Law is not law unless it is supported with the power to enforce, and without global law universal justice will remain little more than an unrealistic aspiration.

Universal justice is now not only desirable but necessary. Wealth is an essential element of a framework for fulfillment for without means no one can pursue their ends. Despite this, one billion people live below the poverty line. The richest 20 percent of the world's population consume 76.6 percent of the world's resources. Twenty-two thousand children die each day because they are utterly destitute while a mere 497 individuals control a full 7 percent of the world's wealth. Corporations operate globally, abusing their unequal power over poor nations. Finally, as we all know, the leaders of powerful nations are able to fly in the face of global opinion and instigate aggressive unilateral wars in the knowledge that they will forever remain untouchable by international courts.

Making changes towards the establishment of world government presents an imposing challenge. The first step involves raising public consciousness: consciousness of why it is necessary, how it will benefit humanity, and what it will take to get there. Moving public consciousness beyond nationalism towards a global perspective, however, will not be easy. At present the link between the current lack of universal justice and the structural changes required before it is possible are barely acknowledged, let alone discussed. As the Royal Society of Arts mentions in its recent essay, Twenty-first Century Enlightenment, "the main impediment to cementing stronger global arrangements is nationalistic sentiment at home." Even John Rawls, taken by many to be one of the best thinkers of the twentieth century, is a prime exemplar of blatant national prejudice. Peter Singer expresses his surprise in One World: The Ethics of Globalization:

When I first read [A Theory of Justice], I was astonished that a book with that title, nearly 600 pages long, could utterly fail to discuss the injustice of the extremes of wealth and poverty that exist between different societies … In setting up his original choice, Rawls simply assumes that the people making the choice all belong to the same society and are choosing principles to achieve justice within their society ... If he accepted that to choose justly, people must also be ignorant of their citizenship, his theory would become a forceful argument for improving the prospects of the worst-off people in the world. But in the most influential work on justice written in twentieth-century America, this question never even arises.

Is this justifiable from a Humanist position? Clearly not. Global economic injustice must end. Global political injustice must end. I therefore believe that Humanists have a duty to become a force for practical change by pushing global redistribution onto the political agenda. Humanists also bear a responsibility for openly questioning unfounded assumptions such as Rawls', raising the awareness amongst the public of the need to move beyond nationalism and demand the establishment of meaningful universal law. As the Royal Society of Arts puts it, "The stock of global empathy upon which democratic leaders can draw has to grow if we are to make arrangements and reach agreements which put the long-term needs of the human race ahead of short-term national interests." Humanists should be at the head of this movement towards globalization by providing thought leadership and promoting a political agenda that demands global structural change.

Having said all this, however, we must be realistic in what we can achieve. We can be quite sure that we will not realize this vision of a peaceful world within our lifetimes. We can be clear in deciding, however, that this should not stop us moving towards our end goal. We can begin with changes we can make to the world we live in, looking at our situation today with an untainted eye and remembering that we must take the immediate needs of human beings as our starting block.

So what can be done now? A beginning would be to demand major structural changes in the United Nations, changes which increase the power of the world's people over nations while ensuring that global despotism remains impossible. To quote Einstein again:

First, the authority of the General Assembly must be increased so that the Security Council as well as all other bodies of the United Nations will be subordinated to it.

Second, the method of representation at the United Nations should be considerably modified … The moral authority of the United Nations would be considerably enhanced if the delegates were elected directly by the people. Were they responsible to an electorate, they would have much more freedom to follow their consciences.

Thirdly, we should demand that national governments follow Japan's example and make aggressive war illegal by enshrining the concept in formal constitutional law. Fourthly, we should demand an end to the need for structural national deficits. Following the work of Keynes, we should call for a global reserve currency and International Clearing Union to be established, so that each nation is required to settle their national trade balance accounts on an annual basis.

As will be immediately obvious, the arguments above form a mere sketch. But they do, I think, reinforce the point that political agendas can and must be added to the explicitly stated aims of all Humanist organizations. Humanism should accept that its prescriptions are inescapably political, global in scope, and should include the establishment and support of formalized political organizations. There should be global leadership. There should be financial backing. And once that is established, Humanist political organizations need to concentrate on refining their ideas and communicating their key messages to a global audience.

Those organizations should focus more on the developed world. The Royal Society of Arts points out in the same essay mentioned above that "only one in five people across the world have achieved the competencies necessary for what [Robert Kegan] termed a 'modernist' consciousness." These modern citizens live in diverse communities and recognize that the world is inevitably interdependent. They have realized their own innate capacity for empathy and, as a result of this, their concern for all human and other sentient beings has flourished.

We are those people. We in the West have a duty to lead the way forward, laying the foundations of the future world we wish to see come to fruition. We should, therefore, work towards making concrete, measurable changes to the world we live in, working towards the establishment of a perpetual, universal peace. We must, as Gandhi said, be the change we want to see in the world. This change should be political as well as conceptual.

N. R. D. Haslewood is an independent Humanist thinker and writer. He is the author of Nietzsche's Last Man, a short philosophical novel based on the struggle to find meaning in life within an ultimately meaningless universe. He has also published a number of articles, papers and academic studies.