IN THE STATUTE OF THE JUST
poem with elucidation

ELUCIDATION

The above poem In the statute of the just is, with its parallel version in Cette Langue (Dans le statut des justes) at its side, a poem about the three political monopolisms which may be called informally "the one-family", "the one-religion" and "the one-party states" (a loathsome trias politica). In the Model of Neutral-Inclusivity they are mentioned all three in Thought-related but not denominational (F.2.5.1). This is a more technical section, but they also occur together in The freedom not to support polarity or exclusivity (F.4.4.3) under their formal names:

Neutral-inclusivity has to be attained or furthered in the first place by making use of our ... right to noncollaboration and noncooperation. [As regards political systems] this implies before all noncooperation with ... party-political totalitarianism, state religionism and monarchism.

What these political evils have in common is that one particular person or group takes and occupies much more of the state's property than is their fair share. Party-political totalitarians admit no other party (or group of parties) than their own to the political arena which is more or less 'democratic' (assuming that it is not completely authoritarian). Their party holds a purely political monopoly. State religionists (attempt to) foist the words, rules and symbols of their own religion (or group of religions) upon the whole of society, and in this way they claim implicitly a denomenational monopoly for their religion (or group of religions). Nonetheless, in many cases there is no official state religion. Monarchists abuse the resources of the state to privilege one particular family (or group of families), and claim a familial sosietal monopoly for that family, preferably explicitly in a constitution. In monarchies, monarchism and religionism usually (or always) go together.

While all these individuals and groups rob the state from a part, if not everything, that morally does not belong to them exclusively, they 'steal' the state from the others who have different political persuasions (or none), different denominational convictions (or none) and/or are not members of a/the select family. The poem focuses on justice in society's political inclusiveness, the ideal flouted by these state monopolists. Its critical denunciation of three antithetical exclusivist political systems should also be a sign for the thieves of state themselves to reconsider their privileged, but unjustified, position in human society.

The poem In the statute of the just consists of three stanzas, each dealing with its own type of political monopolism. Each of these stanzas counts eight lines, and the first two, the fourth and the last two lines of the stanzas are exactly the same. Even the remaining lines start with the same word or words: the third line with in order to, the fifth with regardless of and the sixth with where. The first two lines tell us what a state does not control and what it does not relate in, followed by an invalid reason in the third line. Indirectly, it implies that the state is a social institution that does control a territory consisting of one, two or a few contiguous areas, and that it does communicate in one, two or a few official languages. The territory is an indispensable theoretical part of the definition of the (real) state, and the language(s) an indispensable practical part of what a state needs in order to function as an organization created by persons and (to be) recognized by persons. Given these minimum requirements of a state, one may read the beginning of the first stanza as "The raison d'etre of a state is not a king or queen and his or her relatives". The beginning of the second stanza may be read as "The raison d'etre of a state is not to grant special rights or advantages to any person or group because of their private convictions", the convictions being (denominational) ones which a private citizen may have, but which the state as a common institution need not and must not have. The beginning of the third stanza may be read as "The raison d'etre of a state is not to meet the strong desires of one political party to the exclusion of all other parties or political persuasions". These two sentences of three lines in each stanza should make it clear from the beginning that the poem is a well-principled critique of one-family, one-religion and one-party states.

After telling us in the first sentence (the 1st to 3rd lines) of each stanza what the state is not supposed to be or do, the second sentence (the 4th to 6th lines) tell us what it is supposed to be or do with respect to the specific issue of the stanza. It is, generally speaking, that the state must not discriminate on the basis of blood relationship or marriage, on the basis of a naturalist or supernaturalist worldview, or on the basis of political persuasions. In other words, the state must refrain from subjecting its citizens to marital, familial, worldview-related and politics-related ideological exclusivisms, whether in the shape of (aggrandizemental) exclusivity or of (abnegational) exclusion. In the part of the sentence after the semicolon a few more concrete examples are used: where there is no nepotism —monarchism is a brand of institutionalized nepotism, a manifestation of aggrandizemental familial exclusivism—; where the actions connected with a worldview remain within the bounds of a person's or group's private sphere, and no rules or symbols are imposed on others in both the private and the public spheres; where people can follow their 'fair' way, free from party-political dictatorship, and so long as that way is fair in that it leaves the same sort of freedom and equality for others.

The third and last sentence (the 7th and 8th lines) of every stanza is completely the same. It starts with the reference to a 'statute of the just'. At the time of creating the poem there is/was no such thing declared officially and adopted by a worldwide community of just people, which outlaws/outlawed all three monopolisms of the poem. And yet, we may be confident that there is a great number of people who reject at least one of them as a travesty of justice. Even if only one, this in itself should be reason enough to make them wonder why the other two are not acceptable either. Once people (start to) realize that each of these political monopolisms is a theft of state, the just will not be willing to associate themselves with any of the three anymore, for the state they aspire after will not be a state robbed or corrupted by exclusivists, let alone stolen by them. In other words, the state they aspire after will be 'an unstolen state'; in a more poetic order of words, a state unstolen. (There is a half-sophisticated alliteration in both phrases with |ST| as the stave. For rough-and-ready, half-sophisticated and fully sophisticated alliterations, see the Vocabulary of Alliteration. Altho the poem is written in 'free' verse as far as metrical feet are concerned, the latter variant is to be preferred because of its succession of syllables with primary stress and syllables with no or secondary stress, which gives an especially forceful rhythm to the phrase.)