TGIF: Condemning Tyranny Abroad and War

Can foreign-policy noninterventionists publicly criticize foreign tyrannies without giving credence to the war party? Yes -- if they try. At least I hope so. Being a noninterventionist does not require agnosticism about, much less approval of, despotic regimes.

U.S. war, of course, threatens the liberty and lives of Americans, not to mention foreigners. That's why Randolph Bourne wrote, "War is the health of the state." When private individuals condemn tyranny abroad and U.S. war against it, they are pursuing the same cause.

That many people who denounce tyranny in Russia, China, and elsewhere are enthusiasts for U.S.-led war (or proxy war) is no reason to assume that every American opponent of foreign tyranny also favors war. Principled noninterventionism must not appear to whitewash despicable regimes for the sake of damping war fever (or any other reason). For one thing, that would imply that war against acknowledged tyrannies would be good -- which it would not. Noninterventionism stands on its own merits, whatever the nature of the state's imagined threat du jour.

So one can oppose the U.S. war party while denouncing, among others, the regimes of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. The oppression of their domestic populations, China's threat to Taiwan and Hong Kong, and Russia's war on Ukraine should not be played down because the war party also denounces them. That U.S. policymakers have made things worse through economic sanctions and other provocations -- like the expansion of NATO and the instigation of coups -- is no excuse for giving those atrocious regimes a pass. Bad regimes don't become good because American politicians also do wrong. 

What prompts these thoughts is a man named Jimmy Lai, who just won the Cato Institute's Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. Lai, a 75-year-old Hong Kong businessman-turned-pro-liberty-publisher/activist, is in prison and faces more charges, having been oppressed by the Chinese government for his pro-freedom activities. Lai is the most famous example of China's attempt to crush the individual, but he's far from the only one.

His story is inspiring as well as heartbreaking. (See the movie "The Hong Konger: Jimmy Lai's Extraordinary Struggle for Freedom.") Born poor in China in 1947, he escaped to Hong Kong before he was a teenager. He worked in a factory and eventually started his own apparel manufacturer and retail chain, Giordano, which has been a huge success.

While until 1997 Hong Kong was been a British colony without democratic institutions, it largely had a free market and other classical liberal features. Milton Friedman celebrated its essentially laissez-faire market system in his television series, Free to Choose. Because of this freedom, which included the rule of law as well as freedom of speech and press, Hong Kong it went from very poor after World War II to very rich in short order. Bear in mind that Hong Kong has no resources: even drinking water has to be imported. But it had enterprising free people, and markets, including free trade with the world.

A better demonstration of the market in action is hard to imagine. But Hong Kong's future had a dark cloud over it: the Chinese communist government.

In 1997 the British relinquished control of Hong Kong to China under the terms of the 99-year lease Great Britain and China had signed. As part of the turnover, the Chinese communist government agreed to respect Hong Kong's autonomy for 50 years, but many doubted that the Chinese government would leave Hong Kong alone before or after 2047. It didn't keep hands off for long.

That government offered an ominous preview of the future on mainland China eight years before the British turned over Hong Kong: the horrific violence against pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989. This was a decade after had China significantly liberalized economic, but not political, activity. One-party rule prevailed, and dissent was not tolerated.

As a result of the violence, according to the Cato announcement, "Lai founded Next Media (which became Next Digital in 2015) and launched Next magazine. Next became the top news magazine in Hong Kong for over 30 years." Among other claims to fame, "it was also known for its strong advocacy of free markets, lower regulation, and economic choice in all matters."

Lai's promotion of freedom, which he says was inspired by F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, started to get him in trouble. "Following a column in the magazine in 1994, in which Lai told then Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng to 'drop dead,' China began to force the closures of branches of Giordano on the mainland. Lai sold his share of that company and in 1995 launched Apple Daily, which was a combination of tabloid journalism, democracy advocacy, and a loud and clear free-market message."

That newspaper became a much-read paper, which the Chinese government would eventually shut down as it tightened the screws on Lai.

In 2014 Lai's participation in pro-democracy demonstrations got him arrested. He further irritated China's rulers five years later when on a  visit to the United States he met with high-profile government officials. Perhaps he should have skipped that part of the trip. Past U.S. government meddling in many countries has made it too easy for repressive governments to smear dissidents as foreign agents.

Cato continues:

His clashes with authorities intensified sharply in 2019, especially after the July 2020 enactment of a sweeping Chinese national security law that is now expanding mainland China’s suppression of the Hong Kong people.

Lai was arrested on February 28, 2020, and again on April 18 for alleged participation in unlawful demonstrations the previous year. Police arrested him again on August 10, 2020, for alleged collusion with foreign powers. He was arrested again and denied bail on December 3 after being charged with fraud. He was formally charged under China’s national security law on December 11.

Libertarians know how so-called national security laws can empower any government to get away with all manner of repression.

Lai was granted bail on highly restrictive terms on December 23, only to have bail revoked on December 31. Subsequent applications for bail under the national security law were denied on the grounds that he might commit further offenses. Lai was arrested again on February 17, 2021, while already in prison for allegedly helping 12 fugitives in their failed attempt to escape Hong Kong for Taiwan.

The Chinese government threw nearly everything it had at him, but all reports say that it has not broken his spirit.

On April 16, 2021, Lai was sentenced to 14 months in prison for the alleged organization of, and participation in, two unauthorized marches in 2019. In December 2022, Lai was sentenced to five years in prison for a lease violation that was then elevated to a fraud charge and subsequently investigated by China’s national security police, prosecuted by a national security prosecutor, and tried by a national security judge. A conviction in the ongoing national security case, scheduled for trial in September 2023, could result in a sentence of life in prison. [Emphasis added.]

Lai could have left Hong Kong when his troubles began, as some of his associates had done. He chose to stay and fight for the freedom of Hong Kong. That takes courage few people have.

Unpleasant Times

If Ludwig von Mises were alive today he would be viewing our current predicament with alarm but not surprise. He lived through something similar about a century ago.

In response to inexcusable police brutality, some outraged people who've taken to the streets have crossed the sacred line between peaceful protest and violence. Recent months have brought vandalism, arson, and injury in Kenosha, WI, and Portland, OR, and now intimidation of innocent bystanders in Portland and Washington, D.C. Now comes the ominous response.

This escalation by people who pose as friends of social justice (I don't doubt the sincerity of the nonviolent others in the streets) is both immoral and dangerous, both in its own right and also because it feeds those, like Trump, who might like nothing better than to bash a few heads before election day. Those among the protesters who perpetrate street violence are playing with fire, and they well know it, hoping that the state's reaction will serve their cause. But they are wrong. Whatever their cause, unless it's violence for its own sake, the result will be a strengthening of the worst aspects of the state--with the support of most people in the country.

Mises would have recognized what is going on because he'd seen it before. Have a look at chapter 10 of his book Liberalism, "The Argument of Fascism," for his observations in 1927 on what had taken place in Italy from about 1919 to 1922, when Mussolini took power and established a one-party dictatorship. That something even remotely similar to those events is now happening in America would have horrified and saddened him.

In that chapter Mises discussed the extended violent confrontation between communists/socialists and fascists in the streets of Italy. As the foremost champion of peace, freedom, and social cooperation (including economic exchange) of his day, Mises was horrified by the events. He noted that previously the antiliberal Italian right-wing nevertheless had reluctantly paid some slight homage to liberalism and its restraints on power, which it despised, because it was so central to Western civilization. But when the Italian Socialist Party began to achieve political success and make Bolshevik-type demands for fundamental social change, and when communists and socialist--emboldened by the state terror and mass murder in Russia--violently clashed in the streets with the right-wing "black shirts," Mussolini's budding fascist movement found their excuse to do what they had wanted to do all along: abandon token deference to liberalism, which it condemned as pacifist and weak, and embrace the so-called glory of violence without restraint. Mises wrote:

One must not fail to recognize that the conversion of the Rightist parties to the tactics of Fascism shows that the battle against liberalism has resulted in successes that, only a short time ago, would have been considered completely unthinkable. Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist, because it is far from practicing the senseless and unrestrained destructionism that has stamped the Communists as the arch-enemies of civilization. Still others, in full knowledge of the evil that Fascist economic policy brings with it, view Fascism, in comparison with Bolshevism and Sovietism, as at least the lesser evil. [Emphasis added.]

Then Mises added, just so there would be no mistaking his meaning: "For the majority of its public and secret supporters and admirers, however, [Fascism's] appeal consists precisely in the violence of its methods." Fascism was antiliberal in every respect, Mises noted, including its nationalist and militarist foreign policy, which "cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization."

Mises pointed out that liberalism was not opposed to the use of violence when it was necessary to thwart violence. But again, to make sure he was understood, he quickly added:

What distinguishes liberal from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power. The great danger threatening domestic policy from the side of Fascism lies in its complete faith in the decisive power of violence.

For Mises, the use of violence for the propagation of ideas was both wrong and counterproductive. Stifling the ideas of opponents gives them a credibility they might not otherwise earn: "Resort to naked force—that is, without justification in terms of intellectual arguments accepted by public opinion—merely gains new friends for those whom one is thereby trying to combat. In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails."

He continued:

Fascism can triumph today because universal indignation at the infamies committed by the socialists and communists has obtained for it the sympathies of wide circles. But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program will once again exercise its power of attraction on the masses. For Fascism does nothing to combat it except to suppress socialist ideas and to persecute the people who spread them. If it wanted really to combat socialism, it would have to oppose it with ideas. There is, however, only one idea that can be effectively opposed to socialism, viz., that of liberalism.

I will next reproduce the controversial conclusion to Mises's chapter; if I don't, someone else will:

It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.

No liberal--libertarian, that is to say--can read this with joy, but it would be unfair to interpret Mises, as some have tried, as harboring even a speck of illiberal sentiment. (See his 1944 book Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War for his view of, among others, Nazi Germany. Mises, whose heritage was Jewish, had to flee Austria and then Europe altogether because of Hitler.) Look at things from Mises's vantage point: he saw horrendous violent clashes in the streets and the looming threat of a Bolshevik state in western Europe draped in the garb of universalism and egalitarianism. (In contrast, militant Italian nationalism hardly had universal appeal.) Liberalism, unfortunately, was not on the agenda. So he had to decide which was the greater threat to Western civilization--which side if triumphant would have a smaller chance of surviving beyond the short run. Let's not forget who was on the socialist side: people who were inspired by Lenin and Trotsky, architects of the 20th century's first one-party terror state. So who can say Mises was wrong? I can't.

Of course we're not living in analogous circumstances. Notwithstanding increasing hyperbole from both wings of the establishment, we don't face a choice between Bolshevism and fascism, although I am aware of Trump's authoritarian disposition and Biden's devotion to the all-service state. Still, it's too close for comfort. We now are now seeing violent street confrontations--and the potential for bystander casualties--between two sides each with a predilection for violence, even if neither one has a fleshed-out program. (Apparently, the clashes are an all-white affair.) If things get further out of hand, the public will likely and reasonably demand a restoration of order, and many in power will be only too happy to comply--and then some. What will come next?

I don't want to exaggerate--the worst incidents have been confined to a few cities--but I fear for the future.

Good Sense about Property

I highly recommend Less Antman's essay on property here. A teaser:

I believe that property is a problem solver, a useful tool for achieving social peace and economic efficiency that benefits society enormously. However, it is a useful social convention, not a an absolute right derivable from self-ownership: there is no reason that a person born in the year 2100 should have fewer rights than a person born in the year 2000, but if all the world becomes private property, and property owners can establish all the rules for their property, then every person born after that date will be born a slave, and self-ownership will become a joke....

All anarchy requires is that we accept the idea that other people are not our property. With that alone, we’ll create whatever order and organization is needed in an environment of mutual respect. When we have disputes we can’t resolve, we’ll create tools for resolving them. History tells us that private property is one of those tools, but we shouldn’t raise it to the level of a fetish that overrides our common sense and our humanity.

"Capitalism" versus Communism

Stephen Kinzer provides a good reason not to use "capitalism" to mean "free market":

Visiting unhappy Cuba is especially thought-provoking for anyone familiar with its unhappy neighbours. Cubans live difficult lives and have much to complain about. So do Jamaicans, Dominicans, Haitians, Guatemalans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, and others in the Caribbean basin who live under capitalist governments. Who is worse off? Does an ordinary person live better in Cuba or in a nearby capitalist country?

I take it Kinzer defines "capitalism" as "not Cuban-style Marxist state socialism."

HT: Jacob Hornberger

Two Decades Since the Fall

From "Perspective," The Freeman, November 2009:

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall effectively ceased to exist. Remember the sequence: Communist Hungary started letting people pass into Austria and to freedom. Captives of the Soviet bloc left in droves. East Germans, too—thousands of them. The Hungarian government tried to stanch the flow, but the dam had been breached. With one dictator having resigned, a panicky East German regime began making concessions, hoping to mollify the people. They would not be placated. Thousands—and in one case, a million—took to the streets, shouting, “We want out!” Things were getting out of hand. So, on November 9, the government fumblingly announced it would lift travel restrictions to West Berlin and West Germany. It was all over but the demolition.

I don’t know why it seems so much longer ago that we saw those inspiring celebrations, when East Berliners, joined by their countrymen from the western side, danced on the wall while others whacked at it with axes and sledge hammers. The crowds, the singing, the joyful cries of “Freedom!”, the sections of wall toppling—I remember watching the scenes on television with my then-six-year-old, Jennifer. If you can watch them on YouTube today without tearing up, I don’t know what to say.

It’s hard to believe that today’s 19-year-olds were born into a world without a Berlin Wall and 17-year-olds were born into a world without the Soviet Union. When my generation was growing up, the Iron Curtain and USSR seemed like permanent fixtures of life.

Yes, we really did have air-raid drills in school. (Looking back, I can see they were insidious, ridiculous propaganda stunts.) Some of us wished, at most, for what was called peaceful coexistence. Others thought “we” could roll “them” back. War—which a few, amazingly, actually welcomed—would have been catastrophic beyond imagination. We dared not hope for a bloodless dissolution of totalitarianism. Yet that, more or less, is what we got.

Those of us who believe in full individual liberty have been dismayed to learn that revulsion with dictatorship does not equate to a wholehearted embrace of freedom. None of the former Soviet-bloc countries has thoroughly foresworn state-capitalist welfarism, and some have traveled only a short distance along the road from serfdom. Central planning is dead as an ideal, but the regulatory state lives, as does what Thomas Szasz calls the Therapeutic State. This is disappointing, but it would be difficult for a resident of the United States to criticize others for failing to resist overbearing government. The longing for security, combined with the absurd notion that only ignorant and force-wielding bureaucrats can provide it, dies hard.

The fall of the Iron Curtain has been heralded as the failure of socialism, but this is a more complicated matter. Strictly speaking, there has been much less socialism in the world than it might appear since Lenin gave it up for the New Economic Policy in 1921. Remember, Marx envisioned the abolition of the market, including money and exchange. The economy was to be centrally planned—literally. But when the Bolsheviks tried it, they ended up, as Trotsky said, “staring into the abyss.” Lenin was savvy enough to back away from oblivion and reintroduce aspects of the market, including a gold ruble. What followed for the next seven decades was a heavily bureaucratized, de facto quasi-market economy, existing in a world of prices in which The Plan was adjusted ex post to reflect reality and black-market “corruption” kept things going. Ludwig von Mises could not have been surprised.

Such an economy was doomed to fail, but perhaps with a little less intervention and a dollop of political freedom, it might have muddled through a bit longer. The market can put up with a lot of harassment, which means people can resourcefully get around a lot of government obstacles when they want to. Look at the U.S. economy.