Crawford Brough Macpherson (1911 - 1987) Canadian professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Considered together with Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan one of the most influential in the history of this University.
The Canadian Political Science Association issues an annual award in its honor for the best policy book written by a Canadian.
Macpherson's work can be studied to discuss whether the socialist and Marxist tradition can be applied in today's society against the postulates of Francis Fukuyama. Thought
The thought of Macpherson has something in common with Marcuse and Arendt, and especially with the first, since both can be defined as neo-Marxist, although Macpherson's is, rather, a humanist Marxism. Regarding his achievements, Macpherson proposes an extensive and detailed elaboration of the Marxist theory of ideology, applying it to the most significant political thinkers of the capitalist era, trying to extend this historical analysis and extrapolate it to the construction of its moral critique of society capitalist and his own vision of a better society.
Macpherson's thesis is that liberal democracy, of which the West is so proud, is but a profound error because of its historical and social roots linked to possessive individualism. In his work Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (1962), traces the emergence and development of the lines of this possessive individualism in the framework of political philosophy of the seventeenth century (Hobbes and Locke). In particular, this possessive individualism is a conception of man to which corresponds a certain kind of society, called by Macpherson "possessive market society".
It was in the eighteenth century when this philosophy, which Macpherson calls possessive individualism, was consolidated, especially thanks to the work of two great liberal thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume and Adam Smith. With these two authors, this possessive individualism becomes utilitarian, which will remain so until the nineteenth century.
In this century, the liberalism of which possessive individualism was part began to transmute into liberal democracy. Macpherson's discussion of this development is mainly found in his work Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (1977), which can also be found in certain key essays of his Democratic Theory (1973). He perceives that in the history of thought two alternative approaches of the "human essence" have been developed: that of man as a being "essentially consumer of services", and that of man essentially "as maker and creator". In this sense, the theory that justifies the theory of liberal democracy aims to do justice to both conceptions, creating a "fragile commitment".
Macpherson, like Marcuse and Arendt, criticizes the "consumerist" ethos of advanced contemporary capitalism. Now, what adds to these criticisms is their objection that modern capitalism (liberal democracy) fails to maximize individual utilities (powers). For him, the market does not suppose a fair exchange of powers, since the property of "means of work" is monopolized by a minority. The problem of modern liberal democracy is that it rests in a possessive market society and to that extent it has never been able to escape the possessive individualistic ethos (this is seen in the theorists of modern democracy like Jeremy Bentham, James Mill and John Stuart Mill) .
Macpherson proposes as an alternative to private property, common property, and appeals to the "socialist model" as a model in which "no network of transfer of powers" is necessary. books Bibliography
"The political philosophy of the twentieth century", Michael H. Lessnoff (1999); Editorial Akal, Nuestro Tiempo, 2001.
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