I'm going to start by trying to pick up on a thread of comments where Thomas D. and I were discussing Mexico and some historical analogs. I will lightly edit these comments for length and content; you can see the originals if you like in the original thread, but please respond here instead of there to ease the discussion.
As we enter the discussion, we were discussing a list of massacres in Mexico. It was part of a longer exchange on whether it is true that government is always the biggest threat; I think it always is potentially, and therefore should be restrained even when there are other key threats. Thomas was unsure about this and fielded spirited rebuttals.
Grim: When we see actual genocides and democides worldwide, it is not criminal organizations but governments that carry them out. As I've said before, in the bloody 20th century your own government was more likely to kill you than its enemies. The Nazis killed more Germans (and German nationals who didn't qualify as 'German enough') than even the Soviets did; the Soviets starved more of their own citizens than even the Nazis killed. The Japanese militarist government did horrible things to the Chinese people, but not nearly so many Chinese died in all of the horrors of the Japanese occupation as died in Mao's "Great Leap Forward."
There are some limit cases where we can debate whether the organization is a sort-of government, as you noted before. The Rwandan militias were sort of government, sort of a riot that the government allowed to go on rampages. Hamas is a currently relevant example; they are in some sense both a government and a terrorist organization that engages in criminal activity (but, to be honest, so does everyone's government -- the United States was tied up in some of those Mexican military murders, and even in some of the cartel ones...).A criminal organization is organized for the purpose of crime, which is to say money and power; a government is organized for the same purpose, except that they also claim the power to define what counts as crime. Sometimes they might slip one into the other, but government has by its nature more potential to harm, which is why the worst actual harms come from them.
By the way, not on the list of Mexican massacres is the largest massacre in American history: the Goliad massacre by Santa Anna's forces. More than four hundred prisoners were executed by what claimed, at that time, to be their government; it shows up on our list instead because of one of those successful revolutions you were mentioning.
Thomas Doubting: Your point about the 20th century democides and genocides is well-taken, but let me point out the private violence that brought much of that about. The Soviet Union and China were both the result of successful Marxist revolutions. The Nazis and Italian fascists had their private armies, the SA & SS and the Blackshirts, who helped them attain political power. The Japanese militarists were assisted by young men who assassinated successful businessmen for promoting capitalism and any politician who openly advocated for democracy. In all of these cases, these nations were pushed toward totalitarianism and militarism by private violence.In addition, the new governments of the USSR, China, and Nazi Germany came about in part as political movements focused on internal enemies by private powers, which, once they could, took on the mantle of government to continue their pursuit of their internal enemies. It is no wonder such governments killed so many of their own. Given the strong-man totalitarianism, these governments acted much like the private organizations of individual men: Stalin, Mao, Hitler. I don't know if their examples can be generalized to all governments.Grim: Likewise, your point about the private armies striving for control of the government -- the Nazis versus the Communists in Germany is a good example -- demonstrates that they themselves understood the value of coming to control it instead of being a private army. Coupled with the further proof of the additional harm such forces were able to accomplish after winning control of the government, I think it is a compelling argument for my position.
Before digging in to the argument, I would like to add that I had made the point that the people themselves are often the most powerful component. The fact that there have been successful revolutions shows that there are times and places where the people are the most powerful player on the board.
ReplyDeleteI think this is further supported by the great efforts many governments go to in order to control what the people can know, think, and say. They fear the people, or it would not matter.
I think you may be conflating 'most powerful' and 'most dangerous.' The government is always the most potentially dangerous force; the people taking power by revolution to overthrow a government is a demonstration of greater power, but not greater danger.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a danger because the people should do that when they decide it is merited; all governments are rightly subject to revolution when they merit it in the eyes of the people (the terms of which are spelled out permanently in the Declaration of Independence).
That isn't clear to me. It would seem, if I understand your point, that when a government does what it should, it isn't dangerous. However, the fact that the government may do what it shouldn't makes it potentially dangerous.
ReplyDeleteBy that reasoning, though, the people can also be dangerous. For example, some revolutions may be unjustified. Riots also are a case of unjustified violence by the people. Organized crime, too.
No, I think the government is very dangerous even when it is doing what it ought to do. It can never be left unwatched because of the perils it poses should it go wrong. Even when it is not actually endangering people, it is potentially doing so.
ReplyDeleteThe people, by contrast, are sovereign. To say that they are dangerous to the government is to invert the relationship between them: the government is rightly in their power to alter or to abolish as they find it out of line. That isn't a danger to the government, it is a correction of it.
Sometimes people do it badly, but they have a right to do it. The Russian Revolution that produced the Soviet Union was badly handled, but it wasn't because the people were wrong to throw off the Czars. It's because the next government proved to be at least as actually dangerous to them and their rights as the one they had thrown off. When that happens, the answer is another revolution: peacefully or not, for the people to alter or to abolish the Soviet Union.
To say that they are dangerous to the government is to invert the relationship between them
ReplyDeleteTo be clear, an unjust revolution is dangerous to the people. One group of the people form a private army to overthrow the government, but they are doing so unjustly. They will almost certainly cause great damage to the part of the people who are not engaged in their revolution or who may resist their injustices.
Regardless of the right of revolution, part or all of the people may be wicked and may be very invested in oppressing their neighbors. Much of organized crime works that way through extortion. As justifiable as the French Revolution was, I've read that it soon turned into neighbors settling old scores; plenty of peasants died in the bloodbath that followed the elimination of crown and nobility.
Neither "the government" nor "the people" are singular objects. The government can fight itself; the people can fight each other. Any concentration of power, public or private, is a potential danger.
To maintain the language of the Declaration of Independence, you have to maintain the categories. Groups of people can fight each other -- as indeed they did in the Revolution, where many supported the British remaining the government and fought quite brutally in some places to try to keep it so. If you want to sophisticate the discussion by creating those divisions, you end up doing history instead of philosophy: now we're discussing the Revolutionary War and not when revolution, in general, is legitimate and valid.
ReplyDeleteBoth history and philosophy have their uses; I have a MA in history as well as my doctorate in philosophy. However, you have to decide between them in an activity. In a way, they are diametrically opposed because history favors the particular and exact, philosophy seeks the universal and logical (logical objects being an abstraction of reality by nature, as we have often discussed).
So I don't really accept that revolutions by the people, if it's a large enough group of the people to make a revolution good, could be illegitimate. It won't of course be everyone; and in fact they often do come out badly. But to take the other example you were discussing, in the Weimar Republic there were two private armies striving both against each other and trying to take the power of the formal government (in order to make themselves more powerful and more dangerous). Neither a Marxist revolution nor a Nazi revolution was desirable; but neither was it wrong to overthrow the Weimar Republic, which deserved it quite richly.
Sometimes in life there aren't good options, and you just have to do the best you can.