The tyranny of good intentions

Do you think that politicians live outside of reality? That they are unable to perceive the difference between their intentions and the real results of their activities? That according to their vision, bad consequences cannot come from good intentions?

This is one of the central problems of modern politics. If political actors act with an absolute conviction of their moral superiority, they gradually lose the capacity for self-reflection. They reject corrective criticism, while the results of their policies are destructive. Frustration, polarization and radicalization are growing in society.

A "tyranny of good intentions" arises, but good intentions do not guarantee good results. Sometimes they can be more dangerous than cynicism because they protect themselves with moral self-assurance. In his famous lecture Politik als Beruf, Max Weber distinguished between the ethics of conviction (Gesinnungsethik) and the ethics of responsibility (Verantwortungsethik). A politician focused only on "right intentions" can ignore the real consequences of his actions. Weber argued that politics without responsibility for consequences leads to disasters.

Weber's lecture was created after World War I, during the collapse of Imperial Germany and the revolutionary crisis of 1919. Weber sought to answer the question of what it means to do politics as a profession—psychologically, morally, and institutionally. He describes the state as an organization that successfully claims a monopoly of legitimate physical violence in a certain territory. It does not mean that the state uses violence all the time, but only the state can legitimately decide on its use. This is the foundation of Weber's realist politics - politics is not primarily moral preaching, but work with power.

We can see politics as an effort to share power or influence the distribution of power. This is true between states, within parties, between social classes, in bureaucracy. The romantic understanding of politics, which is protected by morality (in the Czech concept, it is the so-called value policy) is meaningless. Weber distinguishes two types of politicians. Some live for politics, which is their mission, service and purpose of life. Others live from politics, where politics is a source of income, career and material existence for them. The latter is not automatically bad, and a modern state in politics also needs pragmatic technocrats. The danger arises when careerism and clientelism, often wrapped in lofty moralizing phrases, completely prevail over substantive responsibility.

Weber is not advocating cynical Machiavellianism. He argues that the ethics of belief and the ethics of responsibility must be kept in constant tension. We see this conflict between the ethics of belief and the ethics of responsibility in modern politics. A person tends to act according to absolute principles, with the conviction of the purity of his intentions. Slogans like "I speak the truth regardless of the consequences" or "The right thing must be done" sound pleasant and have great activation potential. The moral responsibility for the consequences is transferred to the world, history, society. But good intentions or apparent moral purity should not be enough for citizens. A politician must bear responsibility for the real consequences of his actions. They must consider likely effects, collateral damage, power realities, and also human irrationality. Moral principles are not useless. However, politics without responsibility for the consequences is dangerous.

Politicians often explain their activities to us as a search for the harmony of good and power, as a pursuit of "pure" politics. Their good intentions and morally radical attitudes should be directed towards this. Their attitude and moral qualities are said to guarantee a good result. That's not naivety, that's a dangerous lie. Politics realistically work with compromise, violence and responsibility for the lesser evil. A good person is not necessarily a good politician, and a good politician sometimes has to make morally problematic decisions.

Therefore, it should not be important for citizens what intentions a politician swears by, but what his personality is. Max Weber lists three key characteristics of a politician. And let's try to look at Czech politicians - Petr Pavel, Andrej Babiš, Petr Macinka or Vít Rakušan - whether they can show these qualities.

Passion: in a politician it should not be emotional hysteria, but commitment to a cause. Of course, this presupposes that the politician is able to formulate a coherent program, is anchored on the right-left scale and does not flit between partial solutions according to the current mood of the public and public opinion polls.

Sense of responsibility: a politician is not a coward and is characterized by the ability to bear the consequences of his decisions. With such a politician, we will not meet with opinion changes at the moment when his actions do not immediately meet with the enthusiasm of the audience.

Assessment of reality: a politician should not be characterized by high-flown speeches and gestures. He should not play the moral icon. It's all cheap. The biggest added values ​​of a quality politician are sobriety, distance and the ability to see the world realistically - without illusions. Weber warns against vanity and a sense of one's own historical mission. He calls it the narcissism of power. Such narcissists begin to love their own image instead of reality. They stop correcting their own mistakes and mistake moral posturing for responsibility. In the end, they destroy not only themselves, but also the state they were supposed to administer.

Raymond Aron has analyzed how ideology provides moral immunity. The politician's own camp is understood as the bearer of good, criticism is interpreted as reactionary or evil intent. Empirical failures are rationalized. Good intentions here do not lead to self-reflection, but on the contrary to its suppression.

Jonathan Haidt deals with the psychology of power and so-called moral superiority. It shows that moral intuitions arise before rationalizations. People first form a moral position and only then look for arguments. For politicians, this means that the stronger their sense of moral mission, the greater their tendency to interpret the disapproval of others as a moral failure of the adversary. This approach, which is widespread in our country, strongly supports polarization.

Modern politics combines the dangers of technocracy, moral superiority and administrative power. There is a detachment of the elites from the social experience of the majority of the population, when the elites believe that they act rationally and humanely, they have the "best intentions". However, the public experiences specific negative consequences of the activities of politicians. On the contrary, justified criticism is interpreted by elites as irrationality or extremism, resentment arises and radical forces gain a monopoly on the articulation of frustration.

The tyranny of good intentions thus becomes one of the main factors of the radicalization of society. Not because "good intentions" are bad in themselves, but because the moral self-assurance of politicians reduces their ability to correct them. This is followed by the delegitimization of oppositional views, which increases the symbolic humiliation of dissenting groups. The asymmetry between the experience of citizens and the language of elites leads to a loss of confidence in the organization of society and the validity of the social contract. Once a large part of society gets the feeling that the ruling classes are not only harming us, but also consider themselves morally superior, polarization accelerates sharply.

This historical pattern can be observed in the Jacobins, communist regimes or neoliberal technocracy. This is not a problem of one ideology. This is a general problem of the false moral certainty associated with power - the problem of not being able to distinguish between good intention, good result, legitimate criticism and moral deviance.

Therefore, let us remember well that good intentions are not enough in politics. Power, with rare exceptions, corrupts judgment. Let us not value moralizing figures, but politicians showing patience, discipline, resistance to illusions and, above all, responsibility.