Preventing New Tyranny From Arising
After the Fall of a Despotic Regime

Edward J. Dodson

[A letter printed in The Welcomat, 9 December, 1987, submitted as a follow-up to comments made by the editor, Dan Rottenberg, to an article by Michael Curtis on the need for land reform in Nicaragua]

Based on your notebook comments, the title given to Mike Curtis's article on Nicaragua and land reform (Dec. 2) should have ended with a question mark.

Although I too subscribe to the belief that the 'earth Is the birthright of all mankind,' my sense of history suggests that all governments have an inherent tendency to become tyrannical if the governors are not continuously pressured by concerned citizen groups to prevent the co-opting of the state's security forces. Henry George understood this as a historical tendency, and was as a result very skeptical of giving to the centralized government any powers beyond that of national defense and of protecting "equality of opportunity" (which he equated to the protection of one's "liberty").

As I have previously written, the "liberal-conservative" debate In this country is little more than an argument over how fast to proceed to reduce individual liberty and move toward de facto state-socialism. Nevertheless, the real world problems of extreme political oppression and poverty cannot be incrementally resolved; this is a strategy appropriate only to those societies in which there already exists a high degree of protection lot liberty.

Until very recently, there was almost no citizen group pressure at the international level capable of affecting the patterns of oppression by tyrannical regimes. At least now there are such organizations (Amnesty International and Green Peace, for example) that adopt universal principles of justice (as they see such principles) in order to bring pressure on individual governments.

The one great problem with even these noble efforts is the amount of time required to move a society incrementally from tyranny and "sanctioned inequality" to a position of meaningful "equality of opportunity."

The real question raised by Mike Curtis is whether human rights and liberty are best served by attempting to pressure regimes such as that of Somoza in Nicaragua (or any oligopolistic state) to open their society politically to greater participation, or - either by isolating that government or providing active support to insurgents - to replace the oligopoly with a governing group that has broad support.

Our experience of living in a society that has protected (to a reasonable degree) civil liberties and provided acceptable living standards for the majority of its citizens, has caused us to react with abhorrence to revolutionary governments that use suppression of civil liberties to achieve a greater distribution of wealth and public services.

Here again, there is strong historical evidence that such regimes are merely a tyrannical state guised in another form. The long periods of tyranny and oppression that existed in the Soviet Union and China raise legitimate reasons for doubting the intentions of any revolutionary group that has strong Marxist-Leninist-Maoist elements within its leadership.

The world is not that black and white, however. Although many oppressed people would, if permitted, seek admittance to the United States or other social-democracies, the same people when assuming leadership roles in groups opposing existing regimes do not believe their own societies can move from where they are to a social-democracy without undergoing a forceable removal of the existing system. This is the case despite the fact that many of the most tyrannical societies have adopted written constitutions very similar in intent to that of the United States.

Whether or not we should encourage any specific effort depends I suggest less on the nature of the rhetoric of the leaders and more on the actions they take to provide for the basic survival needs of the citizens. Political liberty and economic well-being are characteristics of societies secure in their self-image; if there is a short-run choice between two governments, one that provides neither liberty nor well-being and one that promises at least some well-being initially and some liberty later, which one would you choose to live under?

Are there risks that these revolutionary states will become as tyrannical as those they replace? Yes. And, because we know this to be the case, human rights issues must be an Integral part of any support provided. Further, the non-government citizen groups must apply constant moral pressure in these areas.

Two primary examples where our foreign policy decisions contributed to a worsening of tyranny are found In Iran and Cambodia, where our involvement over a very long period of time was based largely on U.S.-Soviet macropolitical confrontations.

Both the Moslem fundamentalists and the Khmer Rouge share the commonality of fanatical, though distinct, anti-Western Ideologies. Neither had any concern for individual human rights but were driven by the desire to rid their societies of outside influence and were willing to use whatever measures were required to do so.

The Cambodian nightmare has subsided, replaced by a lesser tyranny. The fundamentalist regime in Iran may eventually crumble under the weight of its own oppression; however, the anti-Western fanaticism seems to be sustaining the regime despite conditions of terrible deprivation and human sacrifice.

Most of those who might have presented a social-democratic opposition in Iran to the fundamentalists have departed or have been "eliminated."

When resistance has again grown, as it Iievitably will, what should be our stance toward that group if its leadership espouses Marxism? I would say we first watch, and if its actions suggest a real concern for well-being, we offer support conditioned upon demonstrated protections of political liberty.

In short, there is no room anymore for automatic, knee-jerk reactions to ideological rhetoric; actions do speak louder than words in the realm of human rights.

Which brings me to a final, critical observation (one which Mike Curtis makes as well, although taking an advocacy position I suspect reflects his assessment of the sincerity of the Sandlnista-led government rather than a generalized observation) - namely, that the fundamental reason why there are so many people starving and living in abject misery is because the ownership and access to nature (our birthright as equal members of our species) is everywhere monopolized.

Monopoly in the industrialized West is why so much redistribution is required to provide a "safely net" for so many. Monopoly in the third world, where the oligopolies could care less about the needs of others and where redistribution is almost all rhetoric, leads to the most severe social problems one can imagine.

We need to remember that the United States began its history as a nation with tremendous advantages:

• A largely homogeneous population that grew slowly and had virtually universal access to landownershlp, either for farming or conducting commercial activities.
• A heritage of participatory government that greatly expanded during the first century of colonial rule by England. Historians see this period of "salutary neglect" as crucial to the rise of Individualism as a primary force in our history.
• A largely empty continent that - when the native tribes were pushed back, eliminated or absorbed - provided relatively good opportunity for the newcomer and new generations of "native Americans."

Whereas in North America chattel slavery was a circumstance of a small minority, in most of those societies subjected to colonial rule the reverse was true. Spain and Portugal operated their empires on the basis of slave labor, and the system of colonial government, that is government by violent act, remained the legacy of post-colonial independence. Even where the original intent of revolutionaries was to expand both liberty and well-being, the absence of a participatory infrastructure virtually guaranteed a quick return to oligarchy and military dictatorship.

It is interesting to note that only in Costa Rica, where the native tribes were never subdued and a colonial regime did not hold power, have the people been able to establish a society that reasonably protects liberty and well-being.

The dejure or legitimate state does have a powerful role to play, but this role can only be accomplished after its citizens have identified just socio-political arrangements and then made sure the written constitution and all laws and legislative enactments derived therefrom meet the test of justice. And what the individual requires is a protection of "liberty," while all citizens together require the protection from others taking acts of "license" that infringe upon liberty.

Liberty thus equates with rights: license equates with privilege. In the same way the granting of a monopoly license to use of a particular airwave is a privilege, so is the granting of titles to particular plots of land. Both are provided by nature at a zero production cost; that is, without the expenditure of labor to create or produce them.

So, then, the value of these licenses and titles is a function of the sanctioning and protection provided by society as a whole through the vehicle of the State.

Labor (including capital, which is nothing more than stored labor) is the only way property in the form of production comes into being unless one exchanges his or her existing property for that of another. Arrangements that allow an individual to acquire the property of another in return for a license to use (that only society as a whole legitimately has the right to provide) are Inherently unjust from the standpoint of human rights principles.

I grant that the state comes into being because of a social contract. And regardless of how high is the consent of the governed in the formation of the contract, some coercion will be involved because one aspect of human nature is a repeated tendency to create circumstances of privilege for oneself.

The basis for privilege associated with private accumulation of the economic value attached to nature has been an element of our socio-political arrangements from the time of the first colonial characters. So was chattel slavery. One injustice has been removed; the other still demands addressing.

That is, if one desires to see change that will allow both liberty and well-being to function within an environment of equality of opportunity.