Political philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, liberty, justice and the enforcement of a legal code by authority. It is Ethics applied to a group of people, and discusses how a society should be set up and how one should act within a society. Individual rights (such as the right to life, liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness, free speech, self-defense, etc) state explicitly the requirements for a person to benefit rather than suffer from living in a society.
Political philosophy asks questions like: "What is a government?", "Why are governments needed?", "What makes a government legitimate?", "What rights and freedoms should a government protect?", "What duties do citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any?" and "When may a government be legitimately overthrown, if ever?"
So, in the beginning, political philosophy was not so much a matter of contemplation or discussion.
Demagoguerie
This was the first sort of political organization. If you did not agree with or obey Og Magog, he would pound you into dust. This same sort of politics can be seen in chimpanzee tribes where the alpha male gets to do anything he wants and gets to f#ck anyone he wants. Until he gets too old. Despite the stone age origin of this level of political organization, it persists to this day. Only now Og Magog has functionaries that perform the necessary enforcement measures.
Democracy
In this form of political organization, decisions are made by popular agreement, wherein one man has one vote, and everybody is equal. Something like this system has been rumored to have been in place in the city-states of Greece in classical times. I am sure that women and slaves and poor people never got to vote but nevertheless democracy has persisted as an ideal if not in practice. There might be a natural analogue of democracy, but if so, I’m not aware of it.
Libertarianism
Libertarianism is the idea that government that governs least governs best and that individuals (especially rich individuals) should be left to their own devices, now matter how selfish and deviant they become. Most Libertarians are college sophomores who were required to read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in some literature class. Most people get over it when they realize that their peers shun assholes. I was actually a Libertarian for a couple of weeks after I read Fountainhead in high school. But then I went back to smoking dope and forgot all about it. Male gorillas are good libertarians, living alone most of the time, except once a year when they get horny.
Communism
Communism is the idea that everyone should give what they are able and receive what they need. Workers should own the means of production. The Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, and China claim to be communist. But, as Yogi Berra said, in theory, things should work out in practice the way they do in theory, but in practice, they don’t, Workers owning the means of production devolved into the State owning the means of production, which meant that Communist party leaders owned everything.
My only experience I have with Communism is a paper I wrote about Marx for an economics class. I got a pretty bad grade on it, so I requested a meeting with the TA who had graded it. He claimed that it was a made-over paper from a philosophy class (I have never taken a philosophy class). This was the seventies, where somehow Marx was a philosopher. If you have ever tried to read Das Kapital, you will realize very soon that it is a badly translated, very boring economics textbook.
I could tell the TA was gay, so I borrowed some low cut, tight corduroy pants from my wife (back in the day, I would do this sort of shit without even thinking about it). Sure enough, he commented positively on the pants, and raised my grade.
The best example of communism in the natural world is a beehive, a hive mind where no-one is in control. It may seem that it all revolves around the queen, but it reality she is just another cog in the machine. She only gets to leave the hive once, in order to get impregnated, and spends the rest of her life popping out eggs.
Fascism
Fascism, briefly defined, is the fusion of the state with business. In practice, it includes a lot of nationalistic and racist trappings. These seem to be necessary to get the populace to go along Fascist regimes include most notably Hitler’s Germany, but also Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain, and one could argue, Putin’s Russia. Trump’s USA is about half-way there.
Trump merely took advantage of conditions already present. Fascism started here when Dwight Eisenhower died. Although a Republican, he famously warned about the dangers of the military-industrial complex.
It’s hard to find a natural correlate to fascism, but I’m going to offer the naked mole rat. It’s a mammal where only the upper crust gets to do nice things, like breed.
Socialism
Socialism is, in some ways, the hardest to define in a sentence or two. But let’s go with this: some societal functions are not well provided by organizations with a profit motive. In those cases, the state must step in to provide them.
In this country, we have public roads, public fire-fighting, public schools, public policing, public defense, Social Security. Other countries have gone further, notably and most importantly, public medical systems.
Are there socialist systems in the natural world? The best analogy I can think of is the leaf-cutter ants, which I have seen in Costa Rica. They cut leaves and then bear them back to their nest. One ant can carry many times it’s own weight. They don’t actually eat the leaves, but wait until they become infected with fungus. Special workers feed the fungus to their young.
So what does all this have to do with the Coronavirus?
First let’s look at China. It is nominally a communist society. They developed the first epicenter in Wuhan. Their first instinct was to lie about it. Must not make the state look bad. The first guy to warn about it was an opthmalogist, who later died. Some of the things China did after that, though, were really impressive. They put up purpose-built hospitals in ten days or so to harbor the afflicted. They shut movement and manufacturing all over the country. Their numbers seemed to have leveled off.
Still I don’t trust their numbers. Hubai’s numbers were messed with early on. And epicenters in other provinces somehow seemed to just fizzle out. Given the virus’s spread subsequently in other countiries, this is hard to believe.
The next country up is Korea. It is a capitalistic, somewhat democratic, very plutocratic society. One third of the population is named Kim, so you know they’re all closely related. They started testing immediately and comprehensively. They have bent the curve down. Their numbers are inherently more believable than China’s.
Russia seems to have few cases at all. Of course , nobody believes them. I’m not sure whether oligarchia is considered a political philosophy. I personally think that Putin is the new Og Magog.
Iran. It doesn’t seem to have a political philosophy that is recognizable in the 21st century. The mullahs are in charge, though many of them are surely dying. The numbers we are getting from Iran are probably understated, not so much because they are lying, but because they can’t keep up.
Italy is the western somewhat socialist-democracy now most afflicted by the virus. They are closing down everything. They are quite upfront about what they are experiencing. “Hellscape” is a commonly used term.
The USA now has over 3000 known cases, although we don’t really know because we don’t have enough test kits available. Why is that? Because the FDA wouldn’t approve the WHO test that everybody else uses, apparently because there was no U.S. manufacturer. This sounds like a fascist government to me. Who cares about the people? It’s the businesses we must protect.
I watched the latest coronavirus update from the White House. Trump talked for about five minutes, seemed to be out of breath. Looked pretty sick to me. His main message seemed to me that the Federal Reserve had cut the interest rate by 1 percent, to close to zero. He seems to think that this will amp the stock market tomorrow. And maybe it will. But as a biologist I can tell him that viruses don’t care about no steenkin’ itnterest rates, nor about the stock market.
I heard on the news, don’t know if this is reliable, but the U.K. (now part of the travel ban) has apparently decided just to let eveyrbody get sick, rather than undergo all the cancellations that everybody else is doing. The idea is that they’ll get through this faster, with only 3-4% dead. That seems to be the ultimate Libertarian move. Thank you, Boris.