HoltesThoughts

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Authoritarians and Totalitarians Reviewing Altemeyer's book

Value of Reading Altemeyer and Arendt

If you are going to read The Authoritarians by Altemeyer then you you may as well skp to reading it before reading this post. But if you are time pressed, you might want to skim this article. I've tried to summarize a few basic points.

Key point is:

"ultimately, in a democracy, a wannabe tyrant is just a comical figure on a soapbox unless a huge wave of supporters lifts him to high office. That’s how Adolf Hitler destroyed the Weimar Republic and became the Fuhrer. So we need to understand the people out there doing the wave. Ultimately the problem lay in the followers."

The Cons get away with what they do because there are so many Authoritarian Followers willing to lift them up.

When we discussed yesterday's blog The Dictator behind/in front of the mob" Bob Altemeyer's name came up.

Bob Altemeyer shared a book called The authoritarians "The Authoritarians" several years ago.

I recommend people read it. And I remember reading it and taking the test it recommends. It describes the authoritarian mindset and follows on years of work by social scientists to study authoritarian behavior starting with folks trying to understand Hitler and his minions. Altemeyer focuses on Authoritarianism, which is one of the attributes that produces tyranny. Totalitarianism is produced by conditions of tyranny, authoritarianism and a level of ruthlessness and ideological absolutism that take authoritarian tyranny to new levels of total control. Totalitarian ideology can be left or right, but the people involved share certain traits. Authoritarianism is by it's nature "right wing" in attitude. Communist countries could be right wing despite holding left wing ideology because the authorities had become communist. This authoritarianism of leadership and followers combined with the tools needed to make it total authority produce totalitarianism.

Part of a constellation of literature on Authoritarianism

A lot of this follows more literature based studies such as those by Hannah Arendt who wrote "The Origins of Totalitarianism" years ago and experimental data gathered by a number of researchers including Sidanious and Pratt and McFarland. I have a physical copy of "The Origins of Totalitarianism" that my wife bought years ago and that I started reading more than 9 years ago and have referred to periodically since. Hannah Arendt's work was the more universal because she pretty much explains how the authoritarian mindset produces totalitarian governments. But tonight I'm reviewing Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians"

Right Wing behavior is predictable

Altemeyer explains how that can be in his book:

"Psychologically these followers have personalities featuring:

1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society;

2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities;

3) and a high level of conventionalism."

"Because the submission occurs to traditional authority, I call these followers rightwing authoritarians. I’m using the word “right” in one of its earliest meanings, for in Old English “riht”(pronounced “writ”) as an adjective meant lawful, proper, correct, doing what the authorities said. (And when someone did the lawful thing back then, maybe the authorities said, with a John Wayne drawl, “You got that riht, pilgrim!”)" [Altemeyer]

So the authoritarian mindset is the same whatever the political system. It reifies (valuates) authority, and deprecates even the potential for error of legitimate authority. It is also resistant to changes in authority that challenge the established authority. It also has testable attributes and he found high "RWA" test scores in the USA among both Right Wing believers and Christian fundamentalists.

And they also found that they tended to be "in the closet about the beliefs they were most adamant about. Their assertions of faith were in spite of doubts about that faith. He writes:

"I have then, at a later date, asked my students to let their Hidden Observers answer a question about the existence of God. “Does this person (that is, you) have doubts that (s)he was created by an Almighty God who will judge each person and take some into heaven for eternity while casting others into hell forever?” A third of the high RWA students checked off an alternative that read, “Yes, (s)he has secret doubts which (s)he has kept strictly to herself/himself that this is really true.” Another twenty percent said they had such doubts, but at least one other person knew about them. That adds up to most of the highly authoritarian students." [Altemeyer page 139]

As I've observed myself over time based on anecdote and personal encounters. Authoritarian views are asserted in spite of secret doubts, evidence to the contrary, or even personal experience. The conservative mindset won't even change their minds on most subjects at all unless they have a personal transformative experience (such as a son or daughter coming out of the closet for gay rights). And many of them are closet cases, repressing their own thoughts about God, sexual subjects, or other things they've accepted on authority. As Altemeyer notes, they one sided search for justifications for what they accepted on authority don't produce a satisfactory argument even for themselves and:

"The doubts remain, but are enormously covered up." [p 139]

Hence my calling them "closet cases." Essentially they keep their faith at the expense of fearing that they themselves are secretly liars.

Since his study there have been other studies that have linked authoritarianism to trauma, fear, and resulting anger. Hence the behavior he describes:

highly submissive to established authority,

aggressive in the name of that authority,

and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide.

And he also presented a list of RWA associated traits later in his book (chapter 3) that are produced by drawing beliefs from authority:

1. Illogical Thinking, which makes sense if you are told to believe 2 + 2 = 5 if your authority figure says it is.

2. Highly Compartmentalized Minds, this too could be a reaction to trauma and cognitive dissonance.

3. Double Standards -- which comes from having to rationalize real world decisions.

4. Hypocrisy

5. Blindness To Themselves

6. A Profound Ethnocentrism [chapter 3]

7. Dogmatism: The Authoritarian’s Last Ditch Defense

People are submissive when they are afraid. Hence it's no surprise that he notes the reaction to Gays and blacks among people with high RWA scores:

"It reminds me of the reaction of many high RWAs when homosexuals began to come out: “Don’t these people know they’re supposed to be ashamed of what they are?” That in turn reminded me of the reaction of many White supremists to the civil rights movement: “Don’t these n------ know they’re inferior and should never be treated as our equals?”"

Is probably an expression of that fear. In the Buddhist 3000 World theory developed over 1000 years ago this kind of behavior was identified with the "world of animality" which was often described as an actual place. It's also a combination of shaming behavior and feeling shamed about what is not conventional.

Recent studies show this is wired behavior: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-conservative-brains-are-wired-differently-and-what-means-our-politics

Right Wing Authoritarian Dominators

But what is scary are the Right Wing Authoritarian "dominators". The traits involved map to sociopathy. People leading (or trying to lead) authoritarian movements tend to score high on Social Dominance tests as well as the RWA test. For example Altemeyer notes that folks with High Social Dominance Scores and High RWA scores would likely agree with the following three statements:

"This country would be better off if we cared less about how equal all people are.

Some groups of people are simply not the equals of others.

Some people are just more worthy than others.

...coming out foursquare against equality. In turn, [they would] disagree with:

If people were treated more equally, we would have fewer problems in this country.

We should try to treat one another as equals as much as possible.

Increased social equality."

So if you add "social dominance" traits, essentially the desire to be a "wolf among the sheep", a "king", to have power and wealth, coupled with the kind of ruthlessness needed to produce such dominance. People with high "Social Dominance" plus high CSA scores tend to be the ones who become the Authoritarian leaders.

"Felicia Pratto of the University of Connecticut and Jim Sidanius at UCLA presented the test in 1994 as a measure of belief in social inequality. Whereupon Sam McFarland at the University of Western Kentucky used their scale and twenty-one others in a magnificent “pitting experiment”aimed at finding the best predictors of prejudice. He discovered that only two of the 22 tests he threw “into the pit” to fight it out could predict prejudice at all well: the Social Dominance Orientation scale, and the RWA scale." [Altemeyer]

So social prejudice goes with Authoritarian traits and tends to be strongest among those with strong social dominance scores.

Altemeyer was able to repeat McFarland's test and replicate the results:

"Generally, the Social Dominance scale predicted such unfairness better than the RWA scale did"

Indeed he showed how the tests were identifying clumps of behavior. Those with high Social Dominance & RWA scores tended to be more prejudiced and authoritarian leaders. Those with low social dominance scores but high RWA scores tended to become the followers:

"That’s why the two tests could predict so much together: each was identifying a different clump of prejudiced persons--sort of like, “You round up the folks in the white sheets over there, and I’ll get the pious bigots over here.” So it looks like most really prejudiced people come in just two flavors: social dominators and high RWAs. Since dominators long to control others and be authoritarian dictators, and high RWAs yearn to follow such leaders, most social prejudice was therefore connected to authoritarianism" [Altemeyer]

And he notes that their political social views are usually compatible:

"Social dominators and high RWAs have several other things in common besides prejudice. They both tend to have conservative economic philosophies--although this happens much more often among the dominators than it does among the “social conservatives”--and they both favor right-wing political parties. If a dominator and a follower meet for the first time in a coffee shop and chat about African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Jews, Arabs, homosexuals, women’s rights, free enterprise, unions leaders, government waste, rampant socialism, the United Nations, and which political party to support in the next election, they are apt to find themselves in pleasant, virtual non-stop agreement." [Altemeyer]

But Altemeyer notes huge differences in:

(1) "their desire for power,

(2) their religiousness,

(3) the roots of their aggression, and

(4) their thinking processes"

Desire for Power

The Will for Power is in the Social Dominators not their followers: "Social dominators in each of two studies I ran wanted to have much more than most people did. Authoritarian followers did not." So much so that some investigators called the tests "power mad" tests:

"But social dominators will run to take their chances on that slippery slope. They thrill to power in and of itself. They want to control others, period." [p 163-164]

And he concludes:

"High scorers are inclined to be intimidating, ruthless, and vengeful They scorn such noble acts as helping others, and being kind, charitable, and forgiving. Instead they would rather be feared than loved, and be viewed as mean, pitiless, and vengeful. They love power, including the power to hurt in their drive to the top. Authoritarian followers do not feel this way because they seldom have such a drive to start with"

In short the Social Dominators are wannabe tyrants. Whatever they may tell the general audience. This is how they score on tests when they think no one is looking. He also presents a list of attributes:

High demand for followers to be loyal, little loyalty to followers.

Little empathy

Roots of Aggression

RWA Followers act out of misguided loyalty:

"high RWAs are especially likely to aggress when they feel established authority approves of the aggression, when they are afraid, and because they are self-righteous. Since the Bible condemns homosexuality in several places, and “giving” rights to homosexuals seems to right-wing authoritarians yet another nail in the coffin of moral society, aggression against homosexuals is aroused and blessed. Similarly high RWAs are more likely than social dominators to impose stiff sentences in the Trials situation, and more likely to help the government persecute radicals when it’s time to round up a “posse.”"

And of course their social dominant leaders aggress for different reasons:

"unlike high RWAs who fear an explosion of lawlessness, they already live in the jungle that authoritarian followers fear is coming, and they’re going to do the eating. They do not ask themselves, when they meet someone, “Is there any reason why I should try to control this person?” so much as they ask, “Is there any reason why I should not try to gain the upper hand."

To the Social Dominators:

"Dominance is the first order of business with them in a relationship, like dogs encountering each other in a school yard, and vulnerable minorities provide easy targets for exerting power, for being mean, for domination. It’s an open question whether the aggression mainly serves a desire to dominate, or if the domination mainly serves a desire to hurt others. But either way in the dog-eat dog world of the social dominator, they’re out to claw their way to the top."

Thus you get the incongruity of leaders who wage war against Darwin's teachings while preaching social darwinism. For dominant types, basically alphas, what really matters is the social hierarchy and everything (& everyone) else is a tool needed to claw one's way to wealth, fortune, fame and power. And so they aggress when they feel challenged.

Religion

His research confirms what many of us observe anecdotally:

"High RWAs, we know, strongly tend to be religious fundamentalists. Social dominators do not. In fact, like most people in my samples, most dominators only go to church for marrying and burying. This would be “Three strikes and ye’re out” as far as the religiously ethnocentric high RWAs are concerned except for one thing. Dominators can easily pretend to be religious, saying the right words and claiming a deep personal belief and, as we saw in chapter 3, gullible right-wing authoritarians will go out on almost any limb, walk almost any plank to believe them."

He even created a scale for them:

"So some non-religious dominators, as part of the act, do go to church regularly, for manipulative reasons. This amounts to lying, but I hope you don’t think social dominators would never, ever, ever, tell a lie. Here are the items from another measure I’ve concocted, called the Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty (“Exploitive- MAD”) scale. Again, high social dominators’ responses, compared with others, really open your eyes."

Which explains why so many RW leaders are Ayn Rand followers (who was an atheist) and try to reconcile the two.

Sociopathy

The

Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty Scale

actually measures sociopathy. And they score high in hostile and sociopathic traits as well. In anonymous testing they admit they are ruthless:

"Social dominators thus admit, anonymously, to striving to manipulate others, and to being dishonest, two-faced, treacherous, and amoral. It’s as if someone took the Scout Law (“A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, ...”) and turned it completely upside down: “A ‘winner’ is deceitful, manipulative, unfair, base, conniving, ...”"

And these studies bear out why I call the "Social Dominator" so-called conservatives "Cons" because:

"followers may feel admiration bordering on adoration of their leaders, we should not be surprised if the leaders feel a certain contempt for their followers. They are the suckers, the “marks,” the fools social dominators find so easy to manipulate."

Cons... and we are the “marks”

The RWA followers may fear the Zombie Apocalypse or the end times. But the Cons don't:

"Dominators aren’t usually afraid that civilization might collapse and lawlessness ensue. Laws, they think, are not something you should necessarily obey in the first place, so much as things you should not get caught disobeying. And as for self-righteousness, it’s pretty irrelevant to people as amoral as most social dominators tend to be. They may speak of the righteousness of their cause, but that’s usually just to assure and motivate their followers. Might makes right for social dominators."

A few years ago the Dominionists were advancing the theory that Con leadership could engage in lawless acts on the example of King David. For them King David's misdeeds showed that a person "doing God's work" could literally get away with murder. But the exegesis is just a balloon floated because most Cons walk a fine line between their own secret amoral and immoral beliefs and what they preach to the RWA followers. They aren't crazy or stupid (most of them) but just incredibly ruthless:

"Persons who score highly on the Social Dominance scale do not usually have all the nooks and crannies, contradictions and lost files in their mental life that we find in high RWAs. Most of them do not show weak reasoning abilities, highly compartmentalized thinking, and certainly not a tendency to trust people who tell them what they want to hear. They’ve got their head together. Nor are most of them dogmatic or particularly zealous about any cause or philosophy. You have to believe in something to be dogmatic and zealous, and what social dominators apparently believe in most is not some creed or cause, but gaining power by any means fair or foul."

High Functioning Sociopaths

Just high functioning sociopaths:

"They are quite capable of saying whatever will get them ahead. After all, they hold that there’s no such thing as “right” and “wrong.” It all boils down to what you can get away with. And one of the most useful skills a person should develop, they say, is how to look someone straight in the eye and lie convincingly."

And if they thought the way to power was to appear to be liberal. I suspect many of them would preach liberal beliefs on the pulpit. They just have latched onto folks they know can be manipulated easily.

And they give reasons for their belief in inequality that are familiar to all of us:

"What reasons do dominators give for giving equality short-shrift? Well, they say, ultimately complete equality is a pipe dream. Natural forces inevitably govern the worth of the individual. And people should have to earn their places in society, not get any free rides. All that society is obliged to do, if fairness is an issue, is provide a level playing field. The poor can pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they really want to. Lots of people have, haven’t they?"

What creates Cons

And what makes social dominators a bit worrisome is that their public act is just an act. At least most of their followers learned their beliefs from Mom and Dad. But what makes them that way is that society rewards them for acting that way:

"future dominator was rewarded earlier in life when he cheated, took advantage of others, made people afraid of him, overpowered others, got away with doing something wrong, or beat somebody to the punch. All of these actions may in turn have been predicated by a “tooth and claw” outlook that he learned from (say) his parents. Or that outlook may just serve as a rationalization for being amoral, unsympathetic, and exploitive because acting this way often pays off. Psychologists talk about the “Law of Effect,” which says you learn to do what works. Being unscrupulous works for social dominators."

But he doesn't believe they learn this from their parents consistently as he saw "little correlation" between parents scores and those of their children. These traits emerge. And the book concludes by talking about "Double Highs" -- folks who scored high on both the RWA test and the Social Dominance test. These were the "worst of the Lot."

He quotes Jimmy Carter:

"Ex-president Jimmy Carter, in describing the fundamentalist movements that have taken control of the Republican Party, recently wrote, “Almost invariably, fundamentalist movements are led by authoritarian males who consider themselves to be superior to others and, within religious groups, have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers.”"

And the author concludes his book with a list of warnings and remedies. Because these two kinds of authoritarians are not going away with Obama's Presidency, but are on the warpath and are now in both houses of congress. The social dominators can pretend to be "moderates" gravitate as much to business governorships as to legislative and executive government. And seem to have the upper hand right now. I'd suggest anyone who has waded through my summary should now go on and read Altemeyer's book:

The Authoritarians by Altemeyer

The Dictator behind/in front of the mob

Rhetorical Traps

If you use the arguments of your enemy you risk falling into their rhetorical traps. If you fail to recognize what your enemy is you fall into the same thinking that makes your enemy your enemy. This is because we humans are tricky people who use language in a tricky manner.

Locke talked of the importance of the collective

blog Entry

The battle between "rugged individualism" versus "collectivism" is a kind of false choice battle that has been raging in this country for a little over a century. I know it has antecedents in the 19th century because shaming folks (especially men) that they should be tough guys and never take collective action has been a tool of management and suppression for a long time. Even so some of the terminology used now wasn't used 150 years ago and even in earlier forms the arguments were absurdist, deprecatory and demeaning. In the 20th century progressive writers had to fight the natural prejudice against the "dole" and this notion that people should pull themselves up by non-existent boot-straps or it's their own fault if they should starve. Yesterday I made the claim that John Locke and Henry George didn't use the word "collectivist" in their arguments. So this morning I did a search on the word "collective" in John Locke's Twin Treatises and to my initial horror I found the word collective. But then I read what he said and it has nothing to do with how modern writers use him:

Summary:

John Locke refers to the necessity of action from the "collective" in terms of restoration of commonwealth in the face of arbitrary power:

94 cont..."could never be safe, nor at rest, nor think themselves in civil society, till the legislative was so placed in collective bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you please,"

There is nothing in Locke's argumentation to justify the RW arguments.

Details On Chapter VII Of Political or Civil Society

In Chapter VII of John Locke's "Twin Treatises on Government" (which I have multiple concordant copies on my hard drives & backups) Chapter VII is a long discourse on civil society that opens:

77. God, having made man such a creature that, in His own judgment, it was not good for him to be alone, put him under strong obligations of necessity, convenience, and inclination, to drive him into society

It's not good for us to be alone. We need a society of others. And Locke opens his argument by talking about this and marriage. marriage in his originalist argumentation was the "first society" and 78 "Conjugal society" "is a compact between man and woman" [or updated for our own times Man and Man or woman and man :-)]. He ties that conjunction to the "continuation of the species", and he then goes on to explain that though society and men may wish it (this was after all the period before Women's liberation) the bond between husband and wife is not absolute (patriarchal) monarchy.

82 "the wife has, in many cases, a liberty to separate from him where natural right or their contract allows it, whether that contract be made by themselves in the state of Nature or by the customs or laws of the country they live in"

He then switches the topic to the "master servant" relationship first noting that there are two kinds of servant, and in one the servant is

85 "a free man makes himself a servant to another by selling him for a certain time the service he undertakes to do in exchange for wages he is to receive;"

And then talking of slavery, which he ties to war:

"being captives taken in a just war are, by the right of Nature, subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary power of their masters. These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives and, with it, their liberties, and lost their estates, and being in the state of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as any part of civil society"

At the time of Locke's writing the institution of permanent black slavery hadn't been instituted, and so slavery was still the consequence of being on the wrong side of war. But that is out of the scope of this post. And he brings it up as a segue into this next topic because the slaves become part of the "little commonwealth" that is the family.

He brings it up to refute the notion that the family is the model on which general society should be ordered because he's still arguing against Sir Roger Filmer who was arguing that commonwealth is like a family with the King as an absolute father monarch. He goes on to explain that communities are created to protect the property (life, liberty, personal things as well as homes and land) he has giving up power:

87 "into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by it. And thus all private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire"

For mutual protection. Concluding:

88. "And thus the commonwealth comes by a power to set down what punishment shall belong to the several transgressions they think worthy of it"

He then continues his transition from discussing the laws in the "state of nature" behind society to explaining how folks act when they are part of a collective group, a "civil society" and how they create a commonwealth:

89. "Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into one society as to quit every one his executive power of the law of Nature, and to resign it to the public, there and there only is a political or civil society. And this is done wherever any number of men, in the state of Nature, enter into society to make one people one body politic..."

"setting up a judge ...to determine all the controversies and redress the injuries that may happen to any member of the commonwealth"

And he notes that where no fair judiciary exists men are still in the state of nature. He uses all that to setup 90 the argument that "absolute monarchy" "is inconsistent with civil society." For

90 "For the end of civil society being to avoid and remedy those inconveniences of the state of Nature which necessarily follow from every man’s being judge in his own case, by setting up a known authority to which every one of that society may appeal upon any injury received, or controversy that may arise, and which every one of the society ought to obey."

The process terms a civil society depends on separating judge, jury and executioner functions and by having known standards by which to judge the fairness of adjudications so that they will be acceptable to all and can be obeyed. For tyranny lies in persons who have authority but are still in a "state of nature" and not part of a commonwealth.

91 "have all, both legislative and executive, power in himself alone, there is no judge to be found, no appeal lies open to any one"

A tyrant has all the powers of legislative, executive and judicial in his own person and thus may judge cases arbitrarily and this is incompatible with commonwealth principles [See my post on earlier chapters Commonwealth According to Locke] And Locke notes how at least in a State of Nature a person can defend themselves. But in absolute monarchy he

91 "is denied liberty to judge of, or defend his right, and so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniencies that a man can fear from one, who being in the unrestrained state of Nature, is yet corrupted with flattery and armed with power."

Locke notes:

92. For he that thinks absolute power purifies men’s blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary.

And goes on to illustrate the horrors of absolute monarchs and aristocrats. He points out the insecurity of an absolutist security state and the danger of even criticizing it.

93 "For if it be asked what security, what fence is there in such a state against the violence and oppression of this absolute ruler, the very question can scarce be borne. They are ready to tell you that it deserves death only to ask after safety."

Locke had had personal experience with the arbitrary power of states that eschew the principles of commonwealth. He had been forced to go into exile. So when Locke brings up the word Collective it is as part of the antidote to tyranny. Not this newspeak that labels "collective action" as another form of tyranny. On the contrary he notes, talking about tyrants [Government small enough to drown in a bathtub] and how people who find themselves in an authoritarian society where individuals have no appeal against arbitrary power:

94. "...whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people’s understandings, it never hinders men from feeling; and when they perceive that any man,...is out of the bounds of the civil society ... and that they have no appeal, on earth, against any harm they may receive from him, they are apt to think themselves in the state of Nature"

And he talks about how this comes about due to the drift that occurs when virtuous and excellent men are given authority and then::

94 "when time giving authority, and, as some men would persuade us, sacredness to customs, which the negligent and unforeseeing innocence of the first ages began, had brought in successors of another stamp, the people finding their properties not secure under the government as then it was."

Civil Society which "(has no other end but the preservation of property),

94 cont..."could never be safe, nor at rest, nor think themselves in civil society, till the legislative was so placed in collective bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you please,"

So when John Locke refers to the collective, he's referring to the restoration of representative power, to the restoration of rule of law. There is nothing deprecating or tyrannical in his reference. He's talking about a basic right of representation, rule of law and against the tyranny of individual power. He's also talking about the property rights of commoners and ordinary people against the claims of noblemen and others who assert properties in their power to own the rents of those commoners.

94 cont..."by which means every single person became subject equally with other the meanest men, to those laws, which he himself, as part of the legislative, had established; nor could any one, by his own authority, avoid the force of the law, when once made, nor by any pretence of superiority plead exemption, thereby to license his own, or the miscarriages of any of his dependants. No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it."

On the contrary, Locke and his disciple Henry George are arguing against the arbitrary rights of aristocracy and for civil society and the right of ordinary people to form collective institutions to protect those rights. Yes, we band to together not to impose some kind of committee tyranny, but to protect our individual rule from arbitrary power of persons acting as if still:.

"For if any man may do what he thinks fit and there be no appeal on earth for redress or security against any harm he shall do, I ask whether he be not perfectly still in the state of Nature, and so can be no part or member of that civil society, unless any one will say the state of Nature and civil society are one and the same thing, which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of anarchy as to affirm."

And Locke affirms the idiocy of anarchal arguments in this passage too. I know this is a long exegesis, but I wanted to guide people through the passages and logic for the sake of those who don't have time to work through Locke's extended reasoning.

Laughing Out Loud!

Now I'm sure that the word collective is used differently by Henry George and the founders because the founders of our country were more afraid of parliament than of tyrannical Kings. They feared direct democracy and mob rule. They did not fear representation. They just felt that they were being denied representation as colonists. In any case the argument represents the Burkean fears stoked by the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, combined with arguments inherited from the royalists that Locke and other enlightened philosophers were at odds with. At any rate I was planning my annual Dickens Sermon but I first wanted to do this bit.

Most references in this post were either to other posts or: John Locke's 2 Treatises on Government.
For more on this subject:: http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/09/commonwealth-according-to-locke.html; and:; http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/12/common-property-and-commons.html

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Common Property and the Commons

Dan Sullivan writes a fairly decent article on the commons based on Henry George which is worth reading critically. Here's the URL. Please read it. He's fine as long as he sticks to exposing Henry George's ideas. But he continually tries to fit them into the 20th century libertarian box which distorts them and also degrades their importance.

http://geolib.com/sullivan.dan/commonrights.html

Summary

Dan Sullivan writes:

"One of the great tragedies of socialism has been the confounding of common rights (natural rights common to each individual) with collective rights (those that have been delegated to the community or its government). Common rights are inalienable, individual rights -- the very opposite of collective rights. Classical liberalism was based on the idea of common rights."

But the problem with this formulation is that this "tragedy of socialism" is also an error of Libertarianism. The reason is that common rights are inalienable, individual rights; but they require collective effort to produce, guarantee and sustain. This seems like a minor quibble until you think about it. But both Libertarians and Socialists are involved in creating a false choice for the rest of us. And that is the focus of this post.

The Right to Free Speech...

Dan starts the article talking about Free Speech. Rightfully concluding:

“The legitimate role of government being to protect these rights, government acts rightfully when it insures that all may speak,..." [commonrights.html]

All may speak because the right to free speech is a common right because it is an inalienable right. It is wrong to suppress speech. Free Speech is inalienable because it is necessary to the function and survival of a commonwealth as a place that protects the rights and meets the needs of it's inhabitants.

So far so good, but then he confuses the concept when he says:

...“but [government] acts wrongfully when it decides, or lets the majority decide, who may speak or what may be said. In doing so, it subverts a common right into a collective right, effectively destroying the rights of those individuals who are excluded.”

This reduces an inalienable right into an absurdist argument about collective versus an individual rights. An inalienable right is a common right. A common right is both an individual right and a collective one. The collective of US have to protect that right. Rights are not "socialist" or "collective" they are inalienable.

....is Inalienable

The point is that an inalienable right is inalienable because when alienated it causes suffering, harm, dysfunction, confusion and blocks good communication and process. Rights like free speech exist for a reason. If you don't let me speak then you might not hear a legitimate criticism or learn something. Also if you don't let me speak and I don't let you speak, I might not hear you when you try to correct my error. We are time-space locked in this world so only one person can speak at a time. So reasonable limits on how much one person can dominate the speech of a forum are sometimes necessary so that one person might not dominate or bully that forum. A forum is a collective affair. How it is governed is the issue. Whether we have well constituted governments that protect individual rights and meet individual needs is always the issue. An inalienable right can be denied and infringed, but it remains a right no matter whether a person, or group, tries to block someone from talking on a forum or merely drags them off. Ultimately freedom of speech is necessary to the sane function of society. Denying it is oppression.

Reductio Ad Absurdum

Thus Dan needlessly reduces the concept of common rights to a socialist versus libertarian argument. In the process he hijacks, subverts and rebrands Henry George's ideas as merely another exposition of libertarianism. Not much different from Ayn Rand or the Austrian School, except that none of it makes sense. Henry George is thoroughly American and he wasn't a Libertarian. He was a pragmatic follower of the concepts of the enlightenment as expostulated by John Locke and other luminaries.

The "People" is a collective construct, so is the commons

The "people" construct is designed to protect the individuals within that construct. "The people" is collective by it's very nature. It is because we are individuals that we band together to protect our individual properties, which include our rights. The rights themselves are inalienable but since they are time-space locked they are not absolute. My right to free speech has to be negotiated with your right to free speech. You can suppress my speech by say blocking my facebook account, but that simply illustrates the importance of free speech as you have now denied, alienated, infringed on my individual right. The reason I have a right to free speech is that when you deny my right to free speech, you not only risk someone else denying your right to free speech, but you also risk me not being able to save you from your own mistakes. Don't listen to me and I can't warn you that a rift just opened up in the direction you are running. Reducing this argument to the absurdist "collective" versus ??? fight is designed to channel Georgism into Libertarian channels.

Common Property Ownership vs. Collective Property Ownership

Dan distorts other Georgist/Lockean ideas in a similar manner. To me "a commons" and "a common property" are tautologies. But Dan tries to conflate the proper government of a common property with it's commons nature. which has specific meaning to him. But "common government of property" is versus private government of property and both can be arbitrary or troublesome. Dan writes:

“A parallel confusion exists between common property and collective property, and the classical liberal concept of common property has been all but obliterated.”[commonrights.html]

The confusion exists because Dan is confused. There is no such thing as a collective land property. All property is either part of the commons or fenced off into private property. A "collective" property is common property managed by some collective government. But when the King owns a commons it is still a common property. A commons can be managed well as a commons, or it can be badly managed. If it is managed as a common property then one can apply concepts that were developed over a long period to managing that commons rationally. The odds of managing a property wisely are improved if one manages it according to such principles. If it is managed poorly it will be treated arbitrarily by it's governors. That occurs whether it is managed by a mob, by a bureaucracy, or by private owners. The management of a commons is it's government. Managing a commons as a common property is a way of governing that property. Over the years the concepts involved in common property have been subverted. And Dan is right to point that out. But in his argument he confuses the thing "the commons" with it's government, and he doesn't clear up the confusion he identifies but instead adds to it. You can see that in the next passage:

"An open park perhaps comes closest to the idea of common property, for anyone has an equal right of access to the park. However, restrictions on what one may do in a park, to the degree that they are arbitrary, render the park a collective property.”[commonrights.html]

If Arbitrary Government is the definition of a collective well I've been misreading my dictionaries. No the point of having a park is that a trustee and the people in trust manage a park for the sake of the general welfare of the commoners who must use that park. A park can be badly governed or well governed, but it is either governed or ungoverned. If it is ungoverned then the people using that park govern that part of it they enter. A park that is ungoverned by anyone comes closest to helping us understand the meaning of the term commons. For John Locke the term was his weapon against Kings. In his Twin Treatises on Government he combats the King with his exegesis on Adam and later on Saul and David:

“§24. In opposition, therefore, to our author’s doctrine, that “Adam was monarch of the whole world,” founded on this place, I shall show”
1. “That by this grant, Gen. i. 28, God gave no immediate power to Adam over men, over his children, over those of his own species; and so he was not made ruler, or monarch, by this charter.” [http://www.archive.org/stream/twotreatisesofg00lockuoft/twotreatisesofg00lockuoft_djvu.txt"]

Locke was responding to claims that the world, or specifically Britain, was rightfully privately owned by the monarch (and the British Aristocracy) when he made this statement.

Locke was arguing for the fact that the whole earth is a commons:

2. “That by this grant God gave him not private dominion over the inferior creatures, but right in common with all mankind; so neither was he monarch upon the account of the property here given him.”

Locke goes on to define the concept of common property. He expands on the above in 99:

“§99. Whatever God gave by the words of this grant Gen. i. 28, it was not to Adam in particular, exclusive of all other men: whatever dominion he had thereby, it was not a private dominion, but a dominion in common with the rest of mankind. That this donation was not made in particular to Adam, appears evidently from the words of the text, it being made to more than one; for it was spoken in the plural number, God blessed them, and said unto them, have dominion.”[ Twin Treatises John Locke]

Locke was asserting that the world is a common property of us Humans using exegesis and reason. So when he asserts that a government maintenance building is a "collective property" he is but misrepresenting the concept itself. The building is a property established by the government and run by the government for some purpose.

“A government maintenance building, on the other hand, is truly a collective property. Nobody is granted a right to trespass except on government-sanctioned business. This is another distinction blurred by socialists, who refer to "common property," but who propose to put that property under the control of governments, collectives, and majorities.” [commonrights.html]

In my time, most of the time I can visit my government maintenance property freely. But it's not treated as a commons because it is property in use for a specific purpose of the government. It might be part of a commons. There is a stream behind the one in my area that if I were a little one I could float boats down. Both Forests and maintenance properties are part of the commons but they are governed differently.

The reason we had a concept of "common property" was to rationally manage the commons. A property can be privately owned, collectively owned, and still be a commons. So the right way to manage a commons is to run it as a common property. This isn't a matter of "collective versus tyrannical" in both cases you end up with a dictator keeping some people from having a right to own property. An open park is a commons and should be operated as a common property for reasons of principle. No matter who has the title. Mr. Sullivan even gets the history of the commons wrong:

“Prior to the degeneration of common-law communities into feudalism, land other than royal estates (government property) was held, not collectively, but "in common." This meant that any person had a right to take up land and use it, and in so doing, hold it in his exclusive possession for as long as he continued using it. The limit to this right was that he could not hold land out of use, nor take up so much as to deprive others their own right to similarly take up land. "Lords" (literally "great people") were given responsibility to serve as land stewards, and to settle disputes over access to land. (The royal family name "Stuart" is an early spelling of "steward.")”[commonrights.html]

Origins of the Commons

The above is slightly off. Common-law communities were always under the dominion of a King and the lords of the dark ages and middle ages were either his fiefs, or tried to make themselves co-equal with their king. Common law was a German (and maybe Celtic) inheritance that involved tradition law and judges who interpreted traditional law using "common sense." Unclaimed land belonged to the King (or was fought over by multiple Kings or lords) and the folks who lived there created common law to govern those properties with the cooperation of "ordinary magistrates" who were often members of the aristocracy or clergy but was an innovation of the Anglo-Saxons that enabled common law to function without becoming despotic law. In England the best way to govern commons was to hold them in common. This represented best practices in Europe where the alternative in most countries was between despotic ownership of property and an anarchic ownership that usually destroyed the property. As the Sierra club article notes in it's refutation of Gareth Hardins BS about the "tragedy of the commons":

“For this widely cited oversimplification, Hardin offered no evidence. In fact, many historic commons were better managed than their privatized successors. Native Americans used the commons of the Great Plains for millennia; private farming nearly blew it away in a generation. The English countryside commons of the 17th century harvested, sustainably, a huge variety of resources. Its replacement, the enclosed sheep pasture, was plagued by overgrazing. The English commons was not privatized because commons management had failed, but because landlords wanted to monopolize it for their own gain—and enclosure accomplished their goal.”[http://www.progress.org/tpr/sierra-clubs-director-on-reclaiming-the-commons/]

The Rights of the Collective derive from the rights of the Individual & Vice Versa

His Master Henry George and Locke could clear Mr. Sullivan's confusions if he'd just stop trying to fit George's round and clear ideas into the square peg of libertarianism and just be true to his and Locke's vision:

Derives the right of common property from the fact that we people have property in ourselves:

26. “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a “property” in his own “person.” This nobody has any right to but himself.” [commonrights.html]

Henry George Comments:

“Locke was not in error. The right of property in things produced by labor—and this is the only true right of property—springs directly from the right of the individual to himself, or as Locke expresses it, from his "property in his own person."[http://www.grundskyld.dk/23-Perplex-Ch4.html]

And Henry is segueing off of this passage from John Locke which continues:

“The “labour” of his body and the “work” of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this “labour” being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.” [commonrights.html]

All rights derive from individual rights. And we form communities and civilizations to protect ourselves and our rights because those rights in turn flow from our need to survive, to thrive, to pursue a livelihood and happiness.

So land is an individual right and is common because it is an individual right. Henry George is in the Lockean tradition:

“It is as clear and has as fully the sanction of equity in any savage state as in the most elaborate civilization. Labor can, of course, produce nothing without land; but the right to the use of land is a primary individual right, not springing from society, or depending on the consent of society, either expressed or implied, but inhering in the individual, and resulting from his presence in the world.” [http://www.grundskyld.dk/23-Perplex-Ch4.html]

If the world were empty of people save one, that person would own all the world. But when the world is full of people we have to share:

“Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death. Society itself has no original right to the use of land. What right it has with regard to the use of land is simply that which is derived from and is necessary to the determination of the rights of the individuals who compose it. That is to say, the function of society with regard to the use of land only begins where individual rights clash, and is to secure equality between these clashing right of individuals.” [http://www.grundskyld.dk/23-Perplex-Ch4.html]

The commons exist to adjudicate individual rights where something cannot be safely divided up.

“What Locke meant, or at least the expression that will give full and practical form to his idea, is simply this: That the equal right to life involves the equal right to the use of natural materials; that, consequently, any one has a right to the use of such natural opportunities as may not be wanted by any one else; and that the result of his labor, so expended, does of right become his individual property against all the world. For, where one man wants to use a natural opportunity that no one else wants to use, he has a right to do so, which springs from and is attested by the fact of his existence. This is an absolute, unlimited right, so long and in so far as no one else wants to use the same natural opportunity. Then, but not till then, it becomes limited by the similar rights of others. Thus no question of the right of any one to use any natural opportunity can arise until more than one man wants to use the same natural opportunity. It is only then that any question of this right, any need for the action of society in the adjustment of equal rights to land, can come up.” [http://www.grundskyld.dk/23-Perplex-Ch4.html]

We have to share our toys. That is the essence of commonwealth. And that right is founded in labor.

“Thus, instead of there being no right of property until society has so far developed that all land has been properly appraised and rented for terms of years, an absolute right of property in the things produced by labor exists from the beginning—is coeval with the existence of man.” [http://www.grundskyld.dk/23-Perplex-Ch4.html]

Thus we have commons and commonwealths for the sake of all of us together.

“In the right of each man to himself, and his right to use the world, lies the sure basis of the right of property. This Locke saw—just as the first man must have seen it. But Mr. Spencer, confused by a careless substitution of terms, has lost his grasp on the right of property and has never since recovered it.” [http://www.grundskyld.dk/23-Perplex-Ch4.html]

Extrapolating from General Principle

All land property and interconnected properties such as communications, transportation and power transport are also by their nature commons. Commons is an identity not merely a construct. And while modern infrastructure didn't exist when the concept of the commons was developed. System theory is as much the product of common sense as the concepts that went into Common property ownership of lakes, rivers, forests and mountains, and they are analogous. The property constructs are the elements divided into nodes, connections, fenced off sub-divisions and private holdings. The commons is the parts that cannot be divided or that must be managed by collaboration. When a commons is divided and fenced it loses it's property as a connected, interlocked, resource available to all as they need. Essentially what makes a commons a commons is that it has many dependent elements. A forest is a commons and so is an electrical system. And for the same reasons that land is.

But that is a topic for another blog post. This one was just explaining why Sullivan's post is very good, but very misleading. The collective is a term invented in the late 20th century to setup a strawman argument pitting group behavior against individual behavior. The opposite of collective government is aristocratic/monarchal government. A Mixed Government republic seeks to use principles of democracy, republicanism, Federalism and commonwealth to govern justly under rule of law.

Stronger Together in Commonwealth

But we also are stronger together in commonwealth. We don't just band together because otherwise we'd own the whole thing. But also because we are better off together. Locke Also says:

“21. The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it. Freedom, then, is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us: “A liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws”; but freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it. A liberty to follow my own will in all things where that rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of Nature.” [ Twin Treatises John Locke]

A commonwealth is neither a "collective" (whatever that is) nor an aristocratic construct, but as Locke describes it.

Burning Bush -- The Cage

This poem like all the burning Bush poems; comes to me in that moment between asleep or awake; When the voices in my soul are clear, but fading; When I see the divine sometimes clearly, always late.; The depth and magistery of the vision; Always fading away while darkness yet reigns; and still comes the day.; And the warnings fade; But the dread remains.; But more often the darkness is hovering near and dearly.; And part of me answers in trepidation.; I understand the Fear of the Lord of Creation.; For in those moments I understand; the mortal danger of my own annihilation.; There ain't no burning Bush; No beckoning pillar of fire; That will save us from ourselves; Or pull us from the mire.; We are mortally responsible; For everything we do; From our thoughts, words and actions; comes everything we rue.; It seems scientific; The monstrous things we do; We put people in steel cages.; We stick probes and things in their heads; The robes are clean and white; The science is dry and peer reviewed; But when you torture someone; you have to live with images of hands chewed right thru; Needles in the head; Some hurt and tortured instead; Animals caged and fed; Lab rats, alive but really dead.; Yes, I know the object above to all below.; Testing on animals is supposed to save human lives.; They tortured the living to save the future.; But the ashes of the past; Are fiery dry dust in our mouths now.; Refrain -- There ain't no burning Bush; It looks so scientific, so clean and brave.; To lock up persons and turn them into animals.; The gowns may look the same; But the torturers of hell on earth; Operate Cages for human beings.; Splayed up against walls; They give their reasons, but it's all a lie.; Torturing persons to make them cry.; Exercising power as if that power can hide one's own mortality.; Not even human; Not even scientific; Just depravity laid on thick; They claimed exigency but it all was just sick.; And in the end both torturer and tortured both will die; in screams of agony.; Germany, China, Indonesia; The ancient trade goes on.; Take, beat, degrade, destroy.; an ancient trade, gainful employ.; But the tortured scream; inside their tormentors head.; Better a trial, more merciful instead.; Then what awaits them at the end.; A former colonel in Argentina asked for a pension;; He said "I can't sleep at night"; "for the voices of all the people I interrogated"; "for the screams I still hear in the half light; Screams even I hear in my dreams.; For all of us are connected, whether we like it or not.; Our conscious may seem clear, but our dreams are not.; We may think we go unpunished to the end.; but we don't.; And Penance, Teshuvah, absolution; We seek, and seeking, it's no joke where we are heading.; We either turn away or we perish.; And we took ourselves there, either way.; This is but a snippet of a much longer nightmare.; There ain't no burning Bush...; ... but there is a beckoning pillar of fire; Do we really want to go there?
Another Holte who can write poetery:: http://poetrypoem.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?poemnumber=429674&sitename=ziaholte&poemoffset=0&displaypoem=t&item=poetry
Further Reading: Not enough Torture?; Three Simple Truths

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Time for a Christmas Truce

In 1914 there was a bottom up Christmas Truce between the warring sides on the French Front between the German and British Armies. The war was the work of ambitious Felonious descendents of inbred royalty but it was fought by good people under instructions from ambitious and war-mongering officers and general staffs. Thus to the officers a bottom up truce was a seditious and treasonous thing. After two days of this revelry they were ready to shoot anyone who didn't get back to fighting and killing. But the folks in the trenches had no particular reason to hate each other except their respective propaganda machines told them to. Thus the Christmas Truce was a precious thing and is still remembered in a bittersweet manner among the children of those who participated in it.

The point is that salvation is talking to us all the time. And so are the fetid breezes of darkness. A literal Jesus may not walk among us all the time. But the spirit of salvation blows like a breeze, usually chased by darker spirits. We choose which ones we listen to; the evil inclination and lies from the ambitious and warlike, or our better lights.

Anyway, we buried two policemen the other day. All were torn and anguished by their murders. A foolish man, burning with hate and hopelessness murdered two random policemen while they were sitting in their patrol cars. He, an african-American, picked for his targets Asian-American; Wenjian Liu and Hispanic-American ancestry; Rafael Ramos, citizens. He didn't pick them for any deed they themselves had actually done but as a means to "suicide by murder" for himself and a last burst of rage and hatred before death. And we buried them this week not long in the aftermath of police killings of unarmed men around the country which had sparked demonstrations, also around the country.

We need a Christmas Truce. Not sure we'll get one. The Right Wing Press has been vilifying Al Sharpton, Jackson and New York Cities own Mayor De Blasio over this killing Instead when he attended the funerals for Ramos and Liu the officers turned their backs on him. Blaming Di Blasio for the murders of their officers. Fox News put out scurrilous reports blaming protesters for those deaths. And the Police seem to be closing ranks and preparing to escalate their war on more than half the citizenry of this country. We need a Christmas Truce. Not sure we'll get one.

Personally, if I were Di Blasio I'd tell the subversive officers to either come meet me and talk to me or face disciplinary action. I don't see how any city can tolerate subversion and law breaking by it's police force. The police should remember they are there to serve and protect all the citizens of their city and not act like a standing army occupation force. If they are upset with the Mayor, they should talk to him and listen to him. They supposedly work for the people of their cities. And if it were me as mayor I'd be figuring out how to fire Lynch and the other inciters. But that is me. There is a need for a Christmas Truce but I don't think we'll get one.

The point is that the Police should be listening to the protesters songs. They are singing the same tunes.

On the other hand, the issue is that Police need to remember that 99% of the citizens they deal with are good people, and that is true even about the criminals, the momentarily unhappy, or troublesome folks they catch on a bad day. They should not be asking us to accept that they have impunity or immunity. The Police need to surrender the argument that somehow they have the right to summarily execute citizens or that New York's "Mayor instead should have been encouraging parents to teach their children 'to comply with police officers, even if they feel it's unjust.'" Yes we live in a police state where we probably should comply with police orders even when they are unjust or illegal. But that doesn't mean that police have the right to ignore the law or behave unjustly. Though they seem to think they do. I fear a coup.

The Burning Bush

There ain't no burning Bush

No beckoning pillar of fire

No visible alien God

going to raise us from our mire.

We are responsible instead

For everything we do

From our thoughts words and actions

comes deeds we can take pride in or rue.

Yet, among us winds do blow

some gentle and loving

some fetid and fell,

that rot and swell

Salvation walks among us

Quietly telling us what we should do

And where he goes the king of lies follows

blocking our understanding too.

Whether lies or truth we hear

is up to us my dears

So let us listen to our better voice

Because in the end it's still our choice.

A Christmas Truce

I hear echoes of Christmas Songs

Sung on the battlefield one day

when a truce in fighting happened

broken by the forces of authority.

They crossed the lines to dance and sing

And dared prosecution for treachery to do the right thing.

To their Hellish Masters and the king

It was seditious to laugh and sing.

They were supposed to fight and die

for the lord of ambition and flies.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/30579263

http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/christmas-truce-of-1914

Christopher H. Holte

Note, this is two stanzas in a longer poem composed of stanzas I've written since the 70's