An ethnic German, Paul Holbach (1723–1789) was one of the classic political ideologues of the bourgeois class in the 18th century. His ideas were part of the revolutionary views of the bourgeoisie at that time, which were directed mainly against idealism, religious obscurantism, the feudal system of economic exploitation, and political absolutism. Both Holbach and other enlighteners throughout Europe at that time left open the space for the people’s right to revolution, i.e., armed change of the system based on the political formula of popular sovereignty.

The overthrow of the feudal system dating back to the early Middle Ages and its replacement by a new system of civil society and capitalist economy had global significance because it showed other countries both in and outside Europe a model for later revolutionary changes. French revolutionary political philosophy was a source for all subsequent generations of European countries.

Paul Holbach was an ethnic German but settled in Paris (France), where he became a central figure among the materialist philosophers who gathered in salons and exchanged their views on various social issues, including politics. Holbach was well acquainted with all previous philosophy. In his works, he accepts and further elaborates materialist thought, connecting it with the study of natural sciences. Thus, he achieved a philosophical synthesis of the French materialist understanding of nature with the English sensualist theory of knowledge. Holbach’s main philosophical work is The System of Nature. He also wrote Natural Politics, Christianity Unveiled, and The Social System. He also collaborated on the publication of the French Encyclopedia.

He believed, like all other enlighteners and encyclopedists, that in order to remove any supernatural forces from nature, it was necessary, first of all, to oppose a religion based on idealism and belief in proven scientific truth, which was the basis of materialist philosophy. Holbach proceeds from the fact that nature is the cause of everything. Nature exists in itself; it will exist and act forever, and nature is its own cause. The movement of nature is a necessary consequence of its necessary existence. Holbach’s materialist monism interpreted matter as everything that in any way affects our senses. He rejected the external impulse that sets matter in motion and expressed the idea of ??the self-motion of matter. He understood movement as displacement, i.e., in the spirit of metaphysical materialism.

With these views, Holbach set out to address the issue of man, who is a product of nature, lives in nature, and is subject to the laws of nature. Man can never free himself from nature and cannot even go beyond nature in his thoughts. Like all materialists, Holbach recognizes sensitivity as one of the characteristics of mobile and specially organized matter. Thinking is the result of highly organized matter. Reason is an ability inherent in organized beings, i.e., beings that are composed in a certain way. Holbach believed that thinking is achieved through feeling and perception. In this way, external reality is reflected, which at the same time encourages man to action, through which he becomes capable of changing himself as well as his social environment.

Holbach’s socio-political philosophy

After philosophical reflections on the nature of man and his characteristics, Holbach moved on to the development of ethical, social, and political views. All people in the world are composed of various racial characteristics and differ in biological and physical makeup. These racial-biological differences are the basis of inequality among people, and the foundations of society and morality, from which the social, moral, and stratification (class) order in the human community arises.

Holbach claims that inequality among people is not harmful to them but beneficial. He explains class stratification by different temperaments and abilities. Food, climate, and air affect the structure of the organism and determine its inclinations. Temperament depends on upbringing and lifestyle. Therefore, social and state institutions of various natures largely build a person. Of all social and state institutions, the most important for the formation of people’s character is the law (lex), which should reflect the general will of society and the preservation of the general interest.

Reason points people to the right path and happiness; teaches people to value other people. Reason also teaches a person to distinguish good from evil. Holbach argued that for personal happiness, the help of other people was necessary. The desire for happiness is the true interest of each individual, but happiness can only be achieved in society, i.e., with the help of others.

For Holbach, society is a whole consisting of a multitude of families and individuals who unite to satisfy mutual needs as much as possible, ensure mutual assistance, and the possibility of peaceful use of the goods given to man by nature and human labour. Accordingly, Holbach concludes that the basic duty of politics, i.e., political action and institutions, is to preserve the social community and remove everything that hinders its sociability, i.e., interpersonal cooperation.

People unite for the sake of a common life in which individual interests can be preserved and realized, i.e., in a common political organization called the state. Therefore, people conclude a tacit and informal  or formal contract on the basis of which they commit themselves to mutual services, cooperation, and assistance, all for the sake of individual benefit but in principle without violating the interests and benefits of other members of the community.

However, since man, by his biological nature, is inclined to satisfy his passions without regard for the interests of his environment, this “state contract”, as defined by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) in his cult work Leviathan, is a necessary force to which all citizens of the political community had to submit. In such a political community, nothing could be demanded from other members that would not be beneficial to every individual of the same community. This force that regulates mutual relations in the state is the law (lex). The (good, generally beneficial) law expresses the general will of the social community as well as the preservation of the common interest for which the state exists.

To realize this general will, it was necessary to build a special political body that would deal with laws - a parliament or a national assembly. This raised the question of sovereignty, the right of legislation, and representative forms of power. Holbach established the principle of popular sovereignty (democracy), a representative and responsible authority (parliament, government) that can be overthrown from power if it violates the principles of natural and rational law enshrined in the social contract. Rulers, i.e., authorities, must be servants of the people, not their masters. For Holbach, the right to rule, i.e., authority, is possessed only by those who are able to bring happiness to all individuals and the social community in general. Otherwise, the authority is considered to be usurpatory, undemocratic.

Historically, according to Holbach and all Enlightenment encyclopedists, the masses did not know the origin of power and obeyed it because they believed in the medieval-feudal-church teachings that power comes directly from God. Accordingly, it could not be changed by any coups or revolutions. Enlightenment people believed that ignorance (scientific) was the source of all the misfortunes of the human race, but that (scientific) enlightenment was capable of curing this social disease. For Holbach, the natural essence of man is his egoism, i.e., pursuit of his own benefit. Reason, however, directs him to seek a common life with other human beings. Sociability, i.e., life in an institutionalized community, is the result of man’s rational nature.

Holbach’s political philosophy of the social contract and rule of human political community

Holbach rejects the teachings of the philosophers of the so-called “natural law” because it denies the reality of the so-called “state of nature”. For him, the state is created by a social contract, i.e., a set of explicit or implicit agreements based on which people form a political society. This social contract is made up of the laws of common life, and these laws have the obligation to ensure the general interest of the community and the individual interests of each person or group within the same political community. These general interests are threefold: 1) freedom, 2) private property, and 3) personal security.

Holbach believes that good laws are those that equalize all members of society (same rights, duties, and obligations) to the detriment of natural differences. Other people must be given everything that we intend to receive from them, and the rights of others should be respected. The social community, or rather the state, must be organized on the principle of justice, since a society that is not based on this principle is a society of oppressors and slaves. Justice, in turn, requires the possession of humanity, i.e., philanthropy, compassion, and virtue. All these virtues originate from the social contract and constitute the natural rights of man.

Holbach saw in politics the only source of happiness and unhappiness. Man brings with him the need for self-preservation and pursuit of happiness. Society is obliged to help man achieve happiness. Bad government, bad education, bad ideas, and bad institutions cause people unhappiness. Historically, over time, the principles of freedom, security, and justice have disappeared and people have turned into a mass of slaves and the rulers into earthly gods. The human race, due to ignorance of its own nature, has become enslaved and has become a victim of bad governments.

For Holbach, the misfortune of the human race lies in the fact that the people are unenlightened and full of delusions. General popular delusions and ignorance are the causes of the heavy chains that secular tyrants and the church have forged for the people. Thus, politics turned into pure banditry. State laws expressed the desires and needs of the ruling classes, i.e., the nobility and the clergy. Thus, freedom, justice, security, and charity disappeared and politics exploited the property of the people by force and various malicious arts.

Holbach noted French absolutism before the bourgeois revolution of 1789, which involved a small group of robbers and bandits in power. Legislation secured the interests of the aristocratic oligarchy. The king and his court camarilla exploited the people. The court camarilla’s attention was directed to endless wars and search for material means to satisfy its greed.

Knowing the French social system in its political and economic aspects, Holbach predicted its collapse – a revolution would overthrow it. He demanded that the people organize a new government on the principles of the common good, mutual obligations, as provided for by the social contract. Holbach did not openly call for revolution, but was an advocate of reason and enlightenment as a means of improving people’s lives and the state of society. He was against the great inequality in the distribution of wealth in a society, and by the majority, he meant small and medium-sized individual owners. He demanded that the majority be formed by approximately equalizing ownership, so that the majority would be employed in useful work and enjoy prosperity, and avoid social unrest. He argued that there is no homeland for one who has nothing, and sought to settle accounts with the luxury of the feudal class.

As for the political form of government, monarchy (rule of one) was the first form of government that emerged on the model of patriarchal rule in society. He was a bitter enemy of despotism, but also feared the masses led by passion rather than reason; therefore the masses had to be “held in check” by enlightenment. Government had to be formed in such a way that it would work to ensure the happiness of the majority in society, and this could only be achieved if each member of society (citizen) had, within the limits of the law, the freedom that would allow them to achieve their happiness without harming other members of the same community. He believed that people in a democracy had no concept of freedom. From freedom comes justice; it was necessary to preserve the uniqueness and private property of citizens of a political community. Taxes should only be imposed with the agreement of taxpayers, the distribution of taxes must meet the requirements of justice, and the government must give an account of how it used the money from taxes. The practice of spending money from public taxes on the luxury of the court and the court camarilla should be most decisively opposed.

Holbach essentially advocated constitutional monarchy, as existed in Great Britain at that time, with limited royal power, in contrast to the then-French model based on absolute royal power. He believed a constitutional monarchy was organized in a way that ensured its citizens their natural and inalienable rights. However, He argued that it is impossible to give a universal political system because each optimal political system in specific cases depends on several factors (morality, temperament, tradition, climate, anthropological characteristics, historical tradition...).

Finally, Holbach advocates complete freedom of thought, of speech. He was against religious errors, and the ideological tyranny of the church that hindered the true spiritual life of man. Every religious idea is incompatible with nature and reason.

Final notes

Holbach’s political philosophy aimed at the destruction of the feudal system, the liquidation of absolutist arbitrariness as well as the tyranny of the church’s ideological obscurantism. He saw man as a natural being, and called on all people to return to nature, to enjoy the good that nature has given  and make the same possible for others in their environment. Man cannot be happy if he lives in isolation, but only in a social and/or political community. All imperfections in people and human institutions are products of the delusions of reason. The social and political liberation of humanity depends exclusively on the liberation of reason from all prejudices.