| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Robert Henderson" |
| Date: |
25 Feb 2005 11:49:41 AM |
| Object: |
Blind obedience to the law is the dictator's friend |
Note; Worth another airing in these neo_Fascist authoritarian times. RH
Blind obedience to the law is the dictator's friend
Robert Henderson
The government of 18th century England has been described
as "aristocracy tempered by rioting." There is something
of that in any society, for all who exercise power become
corrupted in some degree by the identification of their
interest with the common good. Even in a place as
politically placid as modern Britain, rioting has played its
part in fundamental change, the last time being in 1990 when
the Thatcher Government was finally frightened into dropping
a tax in which Margaret Thatcher had invested a great deal
of her personal prestige - the Community Charge, popularly
known as the Poll Tax - by a serious riot in Trafalgar
Square in central London.
That is the reality of politics. Democratic theory is
rather at odds with the reality. "The law must be obeyed" and
"violence is always wrong" are two of the most chanted
modern political mantras in those states which seriously
pretend to democracy. Not bad chants as political dicta
go, for the law is the skeleton upon which society rests and
violence can become an endemic social disease with a
ghastly ease. Yet the logic of an absolute bar on
disobeying the law or engaging in violence for political
ends is that an elite may behave as badly or
dangerously as they want without fear of punishment.
Suppose, for example, the House of Commons passed a law
which extended the life of a Parliament to 50 years - this
the Commons could do quite legitimately, because there is no
constitutional restraint on Parliament on the Acts it may
pass. Would we simply accept such a gross political
abuse because it had been achieved legally, that it was
done within the form of democratic procedure? The sane
answer has to be no. But if we do not accept it, how do we
act against those who abuse power without provoking something
approaching anarchy or simply replacing one abuse of power
with another?
The general answer can be found by addressing another
question, namely what is such extra-democratic action
(which includes everything from passive resistance to full
blooded civil war) a substitute for? The answer is that it
replaces the formal democratic political process and
becomes legitimate where a society is so ordered
that there is no formal democratic process, where meaningful
participation in a formal democratic process is denied
by those in power, either overtly or covertly, or when
the behaviour of the ruling elite constitutes treason.
That is all very well as a general description of the
circumstances in which extra-democratic action should be
taken, but how in practice do we determine both when such
action is legitimate and the extent to which it is
legitimate in any particular situation?
When is it reasonable to disobey the law?
When the law is made by made without democratic authority,
when the law is not equally applied, when the law in
principle disadvantages one man but not another, when the law
amounts to treason. When, in short, the law is incompatible
with a free, self-governing society.
What are the political requirements for such a society? I
suggest these: first there must be free expression, for a
free society must be democratic and a democratic society
cannot outlaw any aspect of life from debate and be called
either free or democratic. The mass media must be both free
of government control and give opportunities for the
expression of a wide range of political opinion, for
example through the same sort of laws which are designed to
ensure "balance" during general elections and a statutory
"right of reply". All adults must have the vote and
meaningful opportunity to engage in mainstream political
activity. Political parties and individual candidates must be
allowed to operate freely and not only at the discretion of
the state. The state must not place obstacles, such as
deposits, in the way of candidates for election which
disadvantage individuals and smaller or new parties. The
state must not use force against its people which is
disproportionate nor have a monopoly of force. To that end
the people should be allowed weapons and no weapon
forbidden to the people should be used against them by the
forces of the state.
That is the ideal. The important thing is not perhaps that
all these goods are met in full measure in any society,
although in principle all could be given the force of law,
but that sufficient of them are observed to make democratic
participation and control of the elite to be such that
extra-democratic action is not required. Of course, there can
be no absolute standard by which that may be judged.
Ultimately the moral decision as to when political
circumstances are such that they fail to allow proper control
of the elite by the masses is a personal one for each
individual.
Proportionality
Extra-democratic action should be proportionate to the
political circumstances and the ill to be cured and as
moderate as is compatible with effect. Faced with an
unambiguous, brutal and efficient dictator, the masses are
left with little alternative but extreme violence such as
assassination, because other and lesser forms of protest are
effectively denied.
That is not the case in societies which have at least the
form of representative democracies. In such societies other
forms of political disobedience, including non-violent
methods, can be effective and violence is inappropriate as
anything but a final resort, when all else has failed and the
damage being done by those in power is considerable.
In practice, governments in states which have both the form
of representative democracies and some of the content are
peculiarly vulnerable to non-violent resistance, provided it
is truly widespread or arises from a strike in a vital
industry. Such governments are bound by the pretence at least
that they are not dictatorships. Thus strong-arm measures
which are the common currency of the dictator cannot be used
with impunity because they are publicly observed and sooner
or later elections must be held.
But if non-violent protest may be effective in an ostensible
democracy, it often in practice needs a focusing act of
violence or the threat of violence to bring those with power
to a decision to change their policy or behaviour. Thus it
was with the Poll Tax. A serious riot against the Tax was
needed. It took place in the most famous modern London site
for demonstrations, Trafalgar Square. Within a few months the
Tax was dropped.
Generally, the more broadly power is spread in a political
system, the wider the range of extra-democratic
action available and the less extreme it need be.
When is violence justified?
This is the most difficult of questions. In an outright
dictatorship the answer is morally unambiguous; it is simply
justified because there is no meaningful opportunity for any
lesser action.
There is one instance where violence is unequivocally
justified in a formal democracy, namely where the political
elite as a class engages in behaviour which is objectively
treasonable. It is justified because such a matter becomes a
question of self-defence.
Treason is a slippery word, yet it clearly has an
objective meaning. In a dynastic context it is betrayal of
the sovereign. In a democratic context it is the betrayal of
the population to an external power for the general
population has become the sovereign.
Of what does treason consist? Generally it must be the
conscious decision by those in power to act in a way which
will weaken the integrity of the nation. To give up
sovereignty is by definition to weaken the integrity of a
nation.
Two examples from Britain are the miners' strike in the 1980s
and the Poll Tax instigated by Margaret Thatcher. The Miners'
strike came close to success but more importantly it caused
the British state to take action against miners and their
supporters which were essentially those of the police state.
The Poll Tax collapsed both because hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions, refused to pay the tax. The courts could
not cope with the consequent numbers served with summons' for
non-payment. Yet that alone did not bring about the end of
the Poll Tax.
Proportionality of violence
Violence should be minimised for moral reasons, but
selective violence is also arguably the most effective.
Elites do not care about violence perpetrated on the masses
unless the violence threatens to provoke public unrest
which the elite is not confident of controlling. What they
really care about is violence directed at the elite. A
good example of this mentality concerns the IRA and
successive British governments in the years 1969-1984.
The IRA practice of public bombing continued for 15 years
after 1969 without gaining anything from British
governments of any political colour. The IRA then
attempted to kill Margaret Thatcher and members of her
cabinet in the Brighton bombing of 1984 during the Tory
Party conference. Within 18 months the Anglo-Irish
Agreement, which granted a foreign power legal rights in
Northern Ireland, had been developed and signed by Margaret
Thatcher and the Irish Prime Minister.
The restriction of violence to those in the elite has
another great advantage, the mass of the population will
not feel threatened. This means that they are less likely
to become viscerally antagonistic to the perpetrator of the
violence. Moreover, if the ends of the perpetrator of
violence are reasonable, then the mass of the population will
probably support them tacitly or at least not violently
oppose them.
Hence for both moral and practical reasons violence should
always be kept to a minimum and directed at the elite,
especially those who wield political power.
A lesson from the past
In the twelfth century there was developed the doctrine of
rightful tyranicide. It has lessons for us. The first and
probably the most famous of its proponents was John of
Salisbury ("He who usurps the sword is worthy to die by the
sword.") John's world is seemingly far removed from ours
in custom as well as years, yet it has striking political
similarities with our own, for the power of European rulers
was very far from absolute. Mediaeval monarchs were
commonly confronted with parliaments resisting taxation,
fractious towns and ambitious nobles. In many ways the
late Middle Ages was more democratic, in the sense of power
being shared, than any subsequent time before the nineteenth
century. The consequence of this was a need to define the
relationship between ruler and ruled in a way which had not
been done since the ancient world struggled with the problem.
For John the distinction was between power legitimately and
illegitimately exercised. In his work Policraticus he puts it
thus:
"Between a tyrant and a prince there is this single or
chief difference, that the latter obeys the law and rules
the people by its dictates, accounting himself as but
their servant. It is by virtue of the law that he makes
good his claim to the foremost and chief place in the
management of the affairs of the commonwealth."
(Policraticus Bk. IV. ch. i; Dickinson's trans. p. 3.)
In our world, formal kingship with political power is a
rarity, yet we have what are, in effect, elected monarchs
in our presidents and prime ministers and an abundant and
never ending supply of unelected tyrants. Even in the best
of the "liberal democracies" power is remote from the
masses. Moreover, the signs are not encouraging for the
future.
Have we reached the stage where such action is legitimate in
Britain? Well, it is for each man to judge that himself, but
we can test what actually is happening against the criteria I
have already given for judging the democratic validity of the
formal political system.
Recent developments in Britain are symptomatic of what is
happening throughout the West. Our elite is gradually
squeezing out of our political system such democratic
control as has being grudging conceded over the past two
centuries. We have only two parties with a realistic chance
of forming a government. Increasingly they offer no more
than variations on the same theme. The only real choice a
British voter has on almost all important areas of policy
is between having more or less of the same general fare.
Worse, much of that fare is self-evidently designed to remove
more and more power from the political institutions we have.
Indeed, in large part the similarity between both the throe
and practice of British parties and governments is the
result of the wilful giving up of sovereignty through our
membership of the European Union (EU) and various
organisations such as the UN and WTO with their concomitant
treaty obligations.
But the situation is even bleaker than a bald description of
the policy vacuum suggests, for what a party or politician
says at any one point is next to meaningless. There is in
practice no means of holding a party or a politician to a
declared policy, because the only choice is to elect another
party which will in all probability do much the same once
they are in power. Not only that, but politicians of all
parties frequently refuse to give a clear and unambiguous
statement on anything, which allows them to weasel word their
way to a new position when they think it necessary.
Because of this ideological coming together of the major
parties and the draining of power from Westminster to
supranational bodies and interests, there is a growing need
to suppress dissent. Where there is no real electoral choice
on policy, substantial minorities are effectively
disenfranchised. To that obvious disenfranchisement may be
added the persistent failure of the British media to
honestly report and debate many issues. Not one British
national newspaper has as its editorial policy the withdrawal
of Britain from the EU. Questions of race and immigration
are, as a matter of course, only discussed within the narrow
parameters decided by the liberal bigot elite, namely those
with almost invariably represent the immigrant as a victim of
circumstances and the native population as the source of all
racial evil. Those who wish to put forward views seriously
unpalatable to the liberal bigot elite are rigorously
excluded from the media and from the mainstream political
parties.
Because of the increasingly hermetically sealed nature of the
British elite (in which I include mainstream politicians, the
mass media and senior public servants, academics and the
controllers of large private corporations,
The Blair government has taken up the example of Margaret
Thatcher and her successor, who showed both a cavalier
disregard for the law on occasion (most notably during the
miners' strike) and began the process of attacking those
features of the legal system which had long offered a
safeguard to the individual such as the absolute right to
silence. In four short years we have had the Anti-Terrorism
Act (which allows the Government in practice to define any
individual or group as terrorist if they engage in public
protest), The Regulation of Investigative Powers Act (which
amongst others things allows the State to electronically spy
on people without a warrant), and such promised authoritarian
delicacies as the abridgement of the right to jury trial. All
the pieces of the police state jigsaw are already in place or
shortly will be.
The increasingly authoritarian nature of Blair's government
was shown during the lead up to the recent May Day protest
in London and the treatment of the demonstrators themselves.
For weeks prior to the demonstration there was a truly
shameful collusion between politicians, police and the media
to intimidate the protesters for weeks before they arrived.
Scare story after scare story was fed by the Government and
the police to the media who happily printed it as though it
was hard fact. If one believed the propaganda - for that was
what it was - on 1 May 2001 the centre of London was to be
raised in a manner akin to Alaric's sack of Rome. The police
issued "warnings" to the protesters which could only be
interpreted as threats of violent action against them.
Come May Day some 6000 demonstrators appeared. At least we
were told they were all demonstrators. In fact many may not
have been anything more than innocent bystanders. The
protesters/innocent bystanders were imprisoned - there is no
other word for it - before any public order offences had
occurred, for more than six hours by the police who trapped
them in a restricted area in the West End of London and
prevented them leaving. It was pre-emptive policing, in
itself a sinister thing, almost certainly amounting to false
imprisonment.
Many will not approve of these particular protesters, but
what of protesters of whom the approve? Will the great mass
of people be cheering if they are oppressed and silenced? As
the Leveller, John Lilburne never tired of saying by way of
exhortation to others, "What they do to me today, they may do
to any man tomorrow." Every time the state is allowed to
extend the limits of its oppressive behaviour that sets the
benchmark for the future. Freedom is gradually eroded.
The question which John of Salisbury addressed in the
thirteenth century is an eternal question, the central
problem of politics in fact, namely how shall those who
wield power be prevented from abusing the mass of those they
govern? The only rational answer when formal democratic
methods fail is action which goes beyond the normal
democratic structures and habits, because the alternative is
simply the acceptance of what is, no matter how oppressive
that reality is or may become.
But it cannot be said too often or too emphatically that the
dangers of such action are great. If such action is not to be
merely the prelude to anarchy or the assumption of power by
another group of oppressors, it must be taken within a
moral context. It is to be a means to an end, not an end in
itself. That end must have a clear and limited moral
purpose if lawbreaking or violence are to have any
foreseeable limit. The end must be to create or restore
those structures which are necessary to a free and democratic
society, nothing more or less than that.
--
Robert Henderson
philip@anywhere.demon.co.uk
Blair Scandal web site at http://www.geocities.com/blairscandal/
Personal web site at http://www.anywhere.demon.co.uk
.
|
|
| User: "light" |
|
| Title: Re: Blind obedience to the law is the dictator's friend |
26 Feb 2005 10:59:47 AM |
|
|
Robert Henderson wrote:
Note; Worth another airing in these neo_Fascist authoritarian times. RH
Blind obedience to the law is the dictator's friend
Robert Henderson
The government of 18th century England has been described
as "aristocracy tempered by rioting."
Notalot's changed then - just more efficient/well-equiped oppression
upping the ante.
[snip]
Excellent article except last paragraph - by uploading to usenet, have
you placed this in the public domain?
The only rational answer when formal democratic
methods fail is action which goes beyond the normal
democratic structures and habits, because the alternative is
simply the acceptance of what is, no matter how oppressive
that reality is or may become.
Rational? No, I don't think so - such argument could equally be applied
by any power-seeking cabal - e.g. Neocons and other fanatics
But it cannot be said too often or too emphatically that the
dangers of such action are great. If such action is not to be
merely the prelude to anarchy or the assumption of power by
another group of oppressors, it must be taken within a
moral context.
Ah yes, the moral context...
It is to be a means to an end, not an end in
itself. That end must have a clear and limited moral
purpose if lawbreaking or violence are to have any
foreseeable limit. The end must be to create or restore
those structures which are necessary to a free and democratic
society, nothing more or less than that.
This is where you depart from the practicalities of human nature - at
our present overall state of evolution this is just not feasible unless
everyone ditches fear of the unknown and all other fear-based
'attributes' such as greed...
Democracy has been thrown away by overly materially comfortable masses
and cynical, immoral leadership based on greed - ain't no way forward
but down based on the results so far.
Violence is useless and further destabilising, as the likes of secret
services know only too well (vis the demise of: Hariri, Allende,
Wellstone ad inf)
The only way we can possibly extricate ourselves is by total honesty of
government, govt based on the concept of service not control, total
openness of all institutions, enterprise based on cooperation not
competition and above all, intrinsic love of all humanity based on the
assumption that we are all the same inside.
Pie in the sky? Yep and that's why we're headed for another dark age -
our fault, our dreams are not big enough nor based on love rather than
fear...
l
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
