One of the difficulties of dealing with matters in much of the Middle East and Third World in general is the brittleness of the governments there.
This is raised in the questions raised by Chris Bertram a few days ago, in his commentary on the Thomas Pogge article (pdf file) on the legitimacy of authoritarian governments in resource-dependent countries. Bertram and Pogge start by pointing out that political power in a place like Nigeria is the path to wealth by Western standards for the individuals in power. They take this further, to suggest that the West is immiserating the populations of these countries by accepting the legitimacy of, and trading with, the kleptocrats.
And it is certainly the case that many of our problems in the Arab world are the result of our desire to have compliant trading partners as we have in Saudi Arabia whose interests may not intersect well with their population. The anger of the population, logically directed at their rulers, then is redirected by the rulers and cultural institutions that they explicitly support first at Israel and the United States, and then secondarily at modernity in general.
Having mounted this tiger, there is no safe way for these governments to dismount.
I dont know how to respond to Bertram on the issue of legitimate ownership and who should get to determine it; the sad reality is that for most of human history, the definition of property was what I could keep others from taking. They arent wrong about presenting the problem, but were short of the kind of enlightenment as well as the kind of Enlightenment that would enable justice to be done.
There are a whole slug of problems to be addressed here; Ill start with the straightforward one.
We somehow continue to expect that cultures which have been in place for hundreds or thousands of years will suddenly, on contact with us, dissolve and allow their members to simply join ours.
Now the reality is that Western, market-based culture is corrosive of traditional cultures. But it itself has a cultural base; Ill make the Weberian argument that can be seen in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and suggests that capitalism, and the self-restraint necessary for a culture to succeed in capitalism, is different than the unselfrestrained accumulativeness in more backward societies. Weber said:
The universal reign of absolute unscrupulousness in the pursuit of selfish interests by the making of money has been a specific characteristic of precisely those countries whose bourgeois-capitalistic development, measured according to Occidental standards, has re-mained backward.
Now Ill skip over the (very big) issue of whether or not we should attempt to make other countries and other cultures look like us. But I will suggest that we keep operating with the expectation that they will, and that maybe, just maybe, that is going to be much harder than we think.
Date: 10/17/2002 00:00:00 AM
Darren:I’m not suggesting that it’s been deliberate on our part…I just think it’s the nature of our culture.And I disagree that economic systems evolve toward free-market capitalism; the point I didn’t make clearly is that successful capitalism and liberal democracy (like we and Western Europe have) needs certain cultural underpinnings (that was Weber’s point), and that those underpinnings are missing in the kleptocratic states.A.L.
Date: 10/17/2002 00:00:00 AM
Hmmm. Well, the only thing I can legitimately claim expertise on is… well, geek stuff, but my two cents worth (adjusted for inflation) would be that, as I understand it, economic systems have, when allowed to do so, evolve towards free market capitalism, and a free market, for the most part, seems to enable and maintain a roughly democratic form of government. I could draw all the connections I kind of vaguely understand, but it would be a ten thousand word graduate thesis and still be woolly headed, because I haven’t taken any classes in this, I just believe it’s true based on my life experiences.It seems to me that virtually every other form of economy other than free market capitalism requires one to put more energy into maintaining it than one gets out… in other words, one is fighting inertia and basic entropy. Trade naturally seeks a level of least restraint, and everybody wants to be able to play. When anyone insists on cornering all the capital (be they a royal family, a religious oligarchy, or near as dammit monopoly like, say, Time Warner) they are fighting against the heat curve. Which isn’t to say they can’t do it; money, when you get enough of it together in one place at one time, has enormous political inertia of its own. However, all such economies require, basically, a totalitarian form of government, because if you don’t force the people at gunpoint to accept trade restrictions and barricaded markets, they won’t. A free people will naturally produce goods&services and charge whatever the hell the market will bear for them, and when anyone can do that, there is also a decent shot at stuff like freedom of expression.So I’m not sure the U.S. is really guilty so much of trying to turn everyone else into us, as we are simply trying to, occasionally, let certain people (where we don’t make more money off them otherwise) vote for what they want. A lot of times, though, when people actually do get to vote for what they want, they vote for free markets. Of course, we don’t currently have a free market either, so if we were going around trying to turn other nations into little Americas, then they’d all have to have Time Warner cable hook ups… Global freedom, at $39.99 a month. Well… I suppose it’s better than some of the alternatives…
Probably what I was trying to say is that liberal democracy and a free market tend to form a mutually supportive synergy. And I do think social forms evolve towards greater freedom; it takes more energy to maintain a totalitarian state (economic or political) than it does to let people do what they want. Slavery would eventually have faded away even without the Civil War, as slaveowners learned it was cheaper to let all us scummy labor folk buy our own food and pay our own rent than it was to provide it for us.
However, I rarely know what I’m talking about, so…
I think you’re right on the first point, and I wish you to be right on the second, but I’m doubtful…
I’d be curious on your counterargument, mostly because you’re generally pretty lucid and well informed. Do you feel that a totalitarianism is a more ‘natural’ form of human social contract, and one that human societies tend to evolve towards automatically? If so, it would seem you must believe liberal democracy to be a fairly artificial form (admitted, most governments beyond the tribal are artificial forms, but, well, a MORE artifical form) and one that requires more energy to maintain than a dictatorship.
I myself just feel that the U.S., for one example, would long ago have become far more totalitarian than it is (and we flirt with it every generation or so; we’re doing it now) except that it’s such a colossal effort to enslave a free people… not because we resist (Americans are lazy) but just because we’re inert and refuse to be moved in that direction. (Natural petulance about ‘entitlements’ has also largely kept us free; once an American voter has something, anything, regardless of whether we want it or ever use it, we will scream bloody murder if someone tries to take it away).
I personally really doubt many of the mainstream here in the U.S. would take to the streets with guns if Dubya declared martial law tomorrow and posted Homeland Security troops on every corner… it’s too much work. Yet, by the same token, I doubt Dubya could find enough Americans willing to do the amount of work necessary to maintain a police state. It seems to me that creating a working dictatorship that would function coast to coast in America would require more capital and energy than could be invested, and that’s what keeps us free… the fact that a free society is fairly low on the social heat curve. Repressive, control freak central authority just takes too much energy to set up and maintain, especially in a society where everyone wants more cable channels.
But, as always, I could be wrong. Only on Silver Age superhero comics, BUFFY, and the first season of NYPD BLUE do I claim any sort of expertise at all…