Corey Robin gives us a pretty damning portrait of Friedrich von Hayek’s support for Augusto Pinochet’s notorious regime, looking closely at a piece in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology—”Preventing the ‘Abuses’ of Democracy: Hayek, the ‘Military Usurper’ and Transitional Dictatorship in Chile?” by Andrew Farrant, Edward McPhail, and Sebastian Berger:
Farrant et al demonstrate that Hayek’s support of Pinochet was not contingent or begrudging—an alliance of convenience due to Pinochet’s embrace of free market economics—but was rather the product of two longstanding ideas and commitments.
First, a belief that welfare/socialist states of modern democracies have a tendency toward totalitarianism. This has been the subject of some debate over at Crooked Timber, but Farrant et al show just how consistently Hayek held this belief throughout his career ….
Second, a belief in the virtues of temporary dictatorships as a means of saving these totalitarian-bound democracies from themselves ….
As Farrant et al note, Hayek’s faith in the stewardship of good dictators flies in the face of his own warnings against trusting in the good intentions of government bureaucrats—not to mention his admonitions against an earlier generation of liberals and leftists, who were prepared to accept the allegedly temporary dictatorship of the Bolsheviks as a way station to the future.
Robin then takes things one or two steps farther, connecting Hayek and Carl Schmitt:
[I]t seems to me, in the course of defending Pinochet and Salazar—and the whole idea of temporary dictatorship— Hayek was prepared to entertain an even deeper betrayal of his own stated beliefs. As he said to Sallas in 1981, when any “government is in a situation of rupture, and there are no recognized rules, rules have to be created.” That is what a dictator does: create the rules of social and political life. (Again, Hayek is not referring to a situation of civil war or anarchy; he’s talking about a social democracy in which the government pursues “the mirage of social justice” through administrative and increasingly discretionary means.)
Yet Hayek is famous—arguably most famous—for his notion that the rules of social order are neither known nor made; they are tacit and inherited ….
How one squares Hayek’s praise of dictatorship with his conception of a spontaneous order, I’m not yet sure. But with his vision of an unmoved mover knowingly and forcibly creating rules, by design, from a lawless firmament (not to mention his conception of democratic drift), Hayek puts himself within the orbit of Carl Schmitt, with whom he maintained a running dialogue, and who famously described the moment when a new order is brought into being—a new order of rules and routines—as a “an absolute decision created out of nothingness,” as the moment when “the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism [the democratic state] that has become torpid by repetition.”
Robin’s complete blog post is here; it will be interesting to keep an eye on the comments there to see if Hayekians find a way to rally to his defense.
Just a quick thought: Ugh, Hayek.
“Never again” is apparently quite specific. It means we’ll never let Germans systematically exterminate six million Jews. And we’ll never let Rwandan Hutu militias murder eight hundred thousands Tutsis and moderate Hutus again. With other cases, we’ll have to wait and see.
At bottom, this question about Kony and our inability to figure out whether we should get involved or not speaks to one of the central problems that has always faced the creation of a robust international human rights regime, especially for those who really do want to help others but without seeming like thoughtless bullies: Do we want human rights that are actually enforceable, that actually mean something? If so, how do we propose to make them enforceable if not by actually going and arresting human rights abusers?
I don’t mean to suggest that this is an easy question to answer, as I think that every one of these situations will lead to problems (both foreseen and unforeseen) and casualties. Nonetheless, I think it’s a question that we absolutely must start thinking about pretty seriously. If we honestly care about the suffering of others, what are we going to do about it?
”According to a criminal complaint filed Monday against Annie George, 39, the servant entered the U.S. on a non immigrant visa in 1998 to work for the family of a United Nations employee. She began working for the Georges in late-2005 after being offered about $1000 per month, a substantial pay increase.
In reality, “V.M” received sporadic minimal payments from the Georges. A U.S. District Court complaint estimates that the servant received about $29,000 over the five-and-a-half years she worked for the family. A U.S. Department of Labor investigation determined that the woman was “lawfully entitled” to a minimum of “approximately $206,000 for the entire approximate six years of V.M.’s work.”
The servant told federal agents that she received no personal or sick time while employed by the Georges, nor was she afforded any dental or medical treatment. She had to sleep in a closet in a bedroom shared by the family’s three daughters, the complaint alleges, because “Annie George required that V.M. be near the children at night.”
I can see how there must not have been any room for this woman to sleep in a decent place.
Sign the petition to Support Domestic Workers [Change.Org]
Support for the California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights is important because of children like Maria, a 14 year old girl eldest of 4, whose mom is a domestic worker. Maria’s mom comes home with back pain, neck pain and hungry. Her employer does not like to see her sit down, and she doesn’t have time to eat during her 10 hour shift. Maria’s mother is never paid overtime, even when she is asked to spend the night. Maria’s mom doesn’t want to leave this job because she cares about the children she is taking care of. But her knees are getting worse and she doesn’t know what she will do when she can no longer stand the pain.
For more resources, visit domesticworkers.org
“I’m proud of the work I do, and I think it should be respected.” Allison, domestic worker from New York.
Also keep an eye out for more info on domestic workers campaign events that I’ll be participating at in the Bay Area, of course you’re all invited to come to these events.
I wrote this piece on my MacBook Air and I proofread it on my iPad, devices which are dear to me and which power much of my work and recreation. Like many happy Apple customers, though, I’ve been forced to consider the very unhappy conditions under which these gadgets – and others like them – are produced. How should those of us who love and depend upon our electronics feel about the suffering of the factory workers who are laboring and even dying for us?
While information about worker suicides and unsafe conditions has been making the rounds for some time, the latest and loudest critique began with a recent stirring piece in the New York Times on the operations of Foxconn, the manufacturing partner that operates electronics factories in China. Foxconn seemingly holds the health and safety of workers in outright contempt:
Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.
In addition, there have been numerous reports of injuries arising from the use of harmful chemicals and from explosions in some of the factories. And, of course, there have been several instances of worker suicides, which have rightfully drawn a great deal of attention.
On the one hand, these terrible conditions gnaw at us because we know it’s our demand for high-tech products at low prices that drives corporations to pay workers less and spend less on safety, not to mention move their manufacturing into countries with little to no regulation. On the other hand, workers freely choose to take these jobs; in fact, Foxconn regularly turns away fully informed job seekers since the pay and the conditions they offer are better than many other options available, particularly for young rural workers. Without the demand and thus the factories, many of the people who are being exploited would be struggling to feed their families and would end up exploited in some other way. Indeed, this is the position on sweatshops taken by Nicholas Kristof and by Paul Krugman.
With those two poles of the debate in mind, I still feel comfortable asserting that the exploitation of poor workers is a moral wrong. We ought to prevent others from exploiting disadvantaged people. In order to end the exploitation, neither market forces nor an organized boycott will suffice. We need government regulation requiring sufficient wages and safe conditions. Regulation will almost surely lead to higher prices, but it’s time we priced human dignity into the feature checklists of our immorally inexpensive electronics.
Go read the full piece by Dr. Ari Kohen. It’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time. h/t: manicchill
