Theocracy, The Fourth Commonwealth, and The Ideal Common Wealth

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes lists three types of common wealth: aristocracy, democracy and monarchy. The commonwealth is a political community, with a sovereign as the soul to administer litigious and non-litigious affairs, such as faith. This definition uncannily implies a theocratic organisation, whereby religious theology takes precedence over civil law. In this system, God is determined as the sovereign of the state, the clergy are the administrators of the divine commands and serve as a proxy to the invisible sovereign . This is found within Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Velayat-e-Faqih, government ruled by a jurist. This essay examines the ideal commonwealth advocated by Hobbes in Leviathan and Khomeini in Velayat-e-Faqih. To do this, it utilises Comparative Political Thought (CPT) to reference the spatio-temporal essence that cultivated the works above. In doing so, this essay illustrates the similarities of Khomeini and Hobbes’s argument for an authoritarian sovereign. Whilst both Khomeini and Hobbes assert that the centralisation of authority promotes morality and avoids the state of nature, this essay asserts that both texts make the case for a theocracy as the necessary commonwealth in safeguarding against moral decadence.

Firstly, this essay explores the space and time of both texts to bring to light their respective justifications for an authoritarian sovereign. This essay utilises their ‘place of origination ’ in asserting theocracy as the fourth commonwealth. This means examining Hobbes’s Leviathan in the context of the English Civil War and comparing that to Khomeini’s Velayat-e-Faqih in context of the Pahlavi regime. Secondly, this essay will compare Hobbes’s State of Nature to Khomeini’s rejection of Westernisation. Thirdly, it will examine Hobbes’s justification for monarchy as the ideal commonwealth with Khomeini’s rule by jurist. Finally, this essay will argue that Hobbes’s ontology of morality is the sine qua non for the establishment of a theocracy. The justification of a theocracy as the fourth commonwealth comes as a logical consequence to Hobbes’s Leviathan through comparison with Khomeini’s justification of the Velayat-e-Faqih. This essay asserts that a theocracy is the Hobbesian ideal type of commonwealth.

Firstly, by comparing the spatio-temporal nature of both works, this essay asserts that theocracy as a commonwealth is axiomatic in the origin of Leviathan. Born during the Spanish Armada, Thomas Hobbes observed political disintegration throughout his life, so much so, that fear became a subconscious and latent element of his writings. This is particularly evident in Leviathan where he writes that he was ‘occasioned by the disorders of the present time ’. Leviathan was written was during the English Civil War in the 17th century, which encompassed the overthrow of King Charles I by parliamentarians and great sectarian violence. Hobbes feared persecution in England as a Royalist and chose exile in Paris. The purpose of the Leviathan was to delineate solutions to prevent factionalism, violence and disorder that arises from an absence of one centralised authority.

Similarly, Khomeini experienced exile from his homeland, Iran, having been arrested for his objection against the White Revolution of 1963 by the Pahlavi regime. Labelled ‘White’ to symbolise a peaceful socio-economic reform and ‘intended to be bloodless ’, but it fabricated a decade of turbulence and bloodshed. The goal of modernisation and land reform brought dissent amongst landowners and amongst the ulema (clergy), who found the reforms to be symbiotic with Westernisation and a threat to Islamic values . This was evident in Mohammad Reza Shah’s linguistic adoption that the ulema felt ‘more appropriate to Europe than to Iran .’ Therefore, the Ulema considered it as the beginning of a cultural and religious attack on Iran by the West through the Shah.

After this neo-colonial threat to cultural and religious values, Khomeini gave a series of lectures criticising the violent actions of the Shah against students who protested the White Revolution. This led to his imprisonment on multiple occasions for voicing his critique. Finally, after several arrests, he was sentenced to exile in 1964. In 1970, Khomeini published Velayat-e-Faqih, which was covertly distributed into Iran before the revolt. Several factors influenced the reactionary stance amongst the ulema and Khomeini. Along with the distress caused by Westernisation and the fear of cultural assimilation, the brutality of the SAVAK (Shah’s secret police) made matters worse as many were ‘in jail for criticising the regime…and many others had been physically attacked .’

Emile Durkheim’s theory of anomie posits that modernisation begets a state of normlessness where authority is delegitimised due to distrust. This is accompanied by citizens experiencing ‘social disintegration ’ which ‘unleashes currents of depression and disillusionment.’ In Durkheimian theory, religion was transformed through modernity. It moved from ‘a notion of the transcendent God’ to the ‘collectively empowered sentiments and ideals’ that gave dissenters support and an unwavering trajectory. This accounts for the ‘collective effervescence’ of citizens with Khomeini’s advocacy of Islamic government.