religion & politics

Prepared as a chapter of the upcoming book: "Ethics and Politics: Human Dignity, Liberal Democracy, and the Future of Western Civilization"

Politics has become the illusion that ordinary citizens possess meaningful power to determine the affairs of their country. In reality, democracy increasingly resembles a hamster wheel: an endless cycle of elections, partisan conflict, and political spectacle that creates the appearance of popular sovereignty, while actual decisions are made behind the scenes of the executive mansion, far removed from public scrutiny and democratic accountability. We cast our votes with excitement, celebrate when the candidates or parties we support win, and believe that meaningful change is finally within reach. Yet, sooner or later, we face the harsh reality of disappointment and betrayal when those promises remain unfulfilled. Embarrassment, frustration, and eventually rage follow. Disillusioned, we turn to the other side of the political spectrum, hoping those we once opposed will deliver what others failed to achieve. But the outcome is often the same. The faces change, the rhetoric shifts, and the promises are repackaged, while the underlying system remains largely untouched. So the hamster wheel keeps turning.

Let me be clear: I am neither a communist, an anarchist, nor a socialist. I was born under communism and later lived through socialism. I have witnessed the failures and contradictions of systems that claim to pursue collective emancipation while subordinating individual freedom to the demands of the state. My criticism of contemporary democracy should not be mistaken for nostalgia for political systems that have repeatedly failed to deliver on their promises. In stark contrast to liberalism and libertarianism, with their emphasis on individual rights and personal freedom, communist totalitarianism subordinated the individual to the collective dogmas of state ideology. Under such a system, the individual ceases to exist as an autonomous moral and political agent and becomes an instrument of the state. Rights are no longer understood as inherent to human dignity but as privileges granted or withdrawn by those in power. The individual has no meaningful rights beyond playing the role assigned by the state, as in Hobbes's Leviathan.[1]

Yet this is precisely what makes the crisis of contemporary democracy so troubling. A political system founded upon individual liberty and popular sovereignty risks undermining those very principles when democratic participation becomes little more than a ritual of consent. Citizens retain the right to choose their representatives, but how meaningful is that choice when political campaigns cost exorbitant amounts of money and candidates depend heavily on wealthy donors and influential elites? What remains of democracy when the choice is formally ours, but the exercise of political power is increasingly shaped by the interests of those who finance it? This brings me to Kant's understanding of human dignity and his moral imperative that human beings must always be treated as ends in themselves, never merely as means to someone else's purposes.[2] But isn't this precisely what happens when voters become little more than instruments for securing political power? During elections, we are courted, promised a better future, and encouraged to believe our voices matter. Yet once the elections are over, we often wonder whether our participation served any purpose beyond bringing someone else into office.

If human dignity is to mean anything in political life, citizens cannot be reduced to votes, campaign donations, or instruments of partisan victory. They must be recognized as autonomous moral agents whose lives, freedoms, and well-being are the very reasons political institutions exist in the first place. Kant's idea of a kingdom of ends, a moral community in which rational beings are both subjects and authors of universal moral laws, offers an interesting perspective on this problem.[3]  What does it mean to be politically autonomous if our participation rarely extends beyond choosing between candidates whose campaigns are financed by powerful interests? And this raises an even deeper question: What kind of society are we building if the political system that claims to represent us increasingly treats us as means rather than ends? Shouldn't a democratic society be a place where human beings can flourish, exercise their freedom, develop their potential, and live with dignity? Aristotle understood the political community as existing not merely for survival, but for the sake of living well.[4] Yet how can we speak of human flourishing (eudaimonia) when political participation increasingly feels like an endless struggle over who gets to exercise power? This raises a question of whether it is possible to preserve democracy within a capitalist society unless we give capitalism a human face.  How do we improve the lives of struggling families who work tirelessly to provide for their children, pay their mortgages, and meet their basic obligations, yet find themselves confronted by the same existential dilemma year after year? They work, produce, consume, pay taxes, and participate in elections, but often have little time or opportunity to enjoy the very life they are working so hard to sustain. Are they genuinely flourishing, or merely surviving within a system that measures their worth primarily through their economic productivity?

This is where the question of human dignity becomes inseparable from the question of economic justice. If Kant insists that human beings must never be treated merely as means, should we not ask whether a society that reduces individuals to workers, consumers, taxpayers, and voters has lost sight of the human person? And if Aristotle understood the political community as existing for the sake of the good life, what does that say about a society in which so many families spend their lives struggling simply to maintain a decent standard of living? The challenge is not necessarily to abolish capitalism or replace liberal democracy with another grand ideological experiment. That would be detrimental for our society. It is to ask whether our political and economic institutions can be structured around human dignity, meaningful freedom, and the possibility of flourishing, rather than expecting human beings to organize their entire existence around the demands of those institutions.

Of course, this does not mean that capitalism necessarily reduces human beings to instruments of economic production. Friedman argues that economic freedom is both an end in itself and an indispensable means toward political freedom.[5] Private property, voluntary exchange, entrepreneurship, and competitive markets can protect individual autonomy by limiting the concentration of political power. Yet Friedman himself acknowledges an important limitation: "History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition."[6] This distinction is particularly important. Friedman recognizes that capitalist economic arrangements can coexist with political systems that deny individual freedom. He also reminds us that "The great threat to freedom is the concentration of power."[7]

Brittan offers another perspective worth considering. While defending economic liberalism and individual freedom, Brittan also recognizes the importance of addressing poverty and economic insecurity without abandoning the market economy.[8] This raises an important question: Can capitalism preserve its commitment to individual freedom while providing greater economic security for those who struggle to make ends meet, and provide a sufficient safety net? And should we not judge the success of our economic institutions not merely by their productivity or the wealth they generate, but also by the opportunities they provide for ordinary people to live with dignity? Yet this is precisely where I see a fundamental problem. If economic freedom is essential to political freedom, what happens when economic power becomes so concentrated that it begins to shape political decisions? What happens when ordinary families enjoy the formal freedom to participate in the market but spend most of their lives struggling to meet their basic obligations? Can we truly speak of meaningful freedom when individuals are legally autonomous but economically constrained? I do not believe that abandoning capitalism in favor of another collectivist experiment offers a solution. But neither should we assume that the existence of free markets automatically guarantees human dignity or flourishing. Perhaps the real challenge is to preserve economic freedom while ensuring that political and economic institutions serve human beings, rather than reducing human beings to instruments of political and economic power.

Perhaps one place to begin is with something as simple as time. Why should four weeks of paid annual vacation be considered an extraordinary privilege rather than a reasonable expectation in a prosperous capitalist society? And why should we continue to accept the five-day, forty-hour workweek as an almost unquestionable economic necessity? Could we not envision a four-day, thirty-two-hour workweek without reducing salaries, allowing working families more time to spend together, raise their children, rest, and participate in the life of their communities?

Recent research suggests that reducing working hours without reducing pay can improve employee well-being, reduce burnout, and increase job satisfaction.[9] These findings raise an important question: If technological advancement and economic growth have made us more productive, shouldn't at least some of those gains be reflected in the time we have available to live our lives? If we take Kant's understanding of human dignity seriously, we must recognize that human beings exist for more than economic production. And if Aristotle is correct that the political community exists for the sake of living well, then the opportunity to rest, spend time with one's children, cultivate relationships, and participate in community life should not be treated as secondary concerns. Four weeks of paid vacation and a four-day workweek would not solve the structural problems of capitalism or eliminate economic inequality. Their implementation would undoubtedly require adjustments, particularly in industries where continuous staffing is essential. But they could represent practical steps toward a society in which economic prosperity serves human flourishing rather than requiring human beings to organize their entire existence around economic productivity.

The question remains: If the system is broken, how do we fix it? Surely not by embracing the far-left romanticization of totalitarian ideologies or promises to "return the means of production to society." We have more than a century of historical experience demonstrating how attempts to impose such ideological visions have repeatedly ended in the suppression of individual freedom and the grim, utterly depressing erosion of human dignity. Perhaps the deeper question is whether we can restore the human person to the center of political life. Democracy should not exist merely to reproduce political power. It should serve the people whose dignity and freedom provide its very justification.
________________


Bibliography
Aristotle. Aristotle's Politics. 2nd ed. Translated by Carnes Lord. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Brittan, Samuel. Capitalism with a Human Face. Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar, 1995.
Fan, Wen, Juliet B. Schor, Orla Kelly, and Guolin Gu. "Work Time Reduction via a 4-Day Workweek Finds Improvements in Workers' Well-Being." Nature Human Behaviour 9 (2025): 2153–68. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02259-6.
Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. 40th anniversary ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Revised student edition. Edited by Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor. With an introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.


________________
[1] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, rev. student ed., ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), chap. 17. Hobbes's account of sovereign authority is invoked here as an analogy for concentrated state power, not as an identification of Hobbes's political philosophy with communism.
[2] Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, with an introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 4:429.
[3] Kant, Groundwork, 4:433–34. The application of Kant's kingdom of ends to democratic participation is an interpretive analogy.
[4] Aristotle, Aristotle's Politics, 2nd ed., trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 1.2, 1252b27–30; 3.9, 1280b39–1281a4.
[5] Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 40th anniversary ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 7–17.
[6] Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 10.
[7] Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, introduction.
[8] Samuel Brittan, Capitalism with a Human Face (Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar, 1995), especially the discussions of economic liberalism, basic income, and the welfare state.
[9] Wen Fan, Juliet B. Schor, Orla Kelly, and Guolin Gu, "Work Time Reduction via a 4-Day Workweek Finds Improvements in Workers' Well-Being," Nature Human Behaviour 9 (2025): 2153–68, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02259-6.