Dispatch #67: Liberty-Who is she? When she’s at home? Part 1

In this dispatch we explore the state-society relationship & how liberty emerges as a result of this interaction. We dive into the main themes of the book 'The Narrow Corridor' by Acemoglu & Robinson

What connects Thomas Hobbes, Friedrich Hayek, and the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland?

It’s the idea of liberty.

Read this post to uncover the connection.

Let me begin with two disclaimers. Firstly, the title of this post is inspired by Arundhati Roy’s essay ‘Democracy: Who is she when she’s at home?’ Secondly, this post is based on broad themes covered by Acemoglu and Robinson’s book ‘The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies and the Fate of Liberty’. We will call the author duo AR henceforth. 

The book is remarkable for two reasons. Firstly, this is one of the finest expositions of liberty and the conditions under which liberty thrives in any society. Secondly, the book covers state-society interactions in a very nuanced manner. 

The authors have followed John Locke’s definition of liberty. Locke, in one of the most powerful defences of individual liberty, argued that people have liberty when they have a ‘state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man’. 

The central thesis of the book is quite straightforward- Liberty in any society thrives as a result of state-society interaction and how both control and keep each other in ‘shackles’. There are countries where the state is strong and the society is weak. They are called Despotic Leviathan. Then there are countries where the state is weak and the society is strong. They are called Absent Leviathans. Between these two extremes lie Shackled Leviathan where the state and the society are equally strong and keep each other in control. In Shackled Leviathan society is mobilised and keeps a check on the state so that it doesn’t encroach on liberty. Similarly, the state is strong enough to control unrest, enforce contracts, create laws, and deliver public services to everyone without showing any bias towards a dominant section of society. It is in the Shackled Leviathan that a narrow corridor of liberty emerges and flourishes.

Source: Cambridge University Press

 Economist Friedrich Hayek was always worried about giving too much power to the state. For him, such a country would become Despotic Leviathan. But as AR’s thesis of the narrow corridor of liberty suggests, Hayek’s worry was misplaced.

AR explain:

Hayek’s pessimism was misplaced. Because squeezed between the absence of functional state institutions and the despotism of their dominance over society, there is a narrow corridor where society actively balances the state, monitors its powers, disagrees with it and contests it when necessary, and sometimes even cooperates with it. It is in this corridor that the deepest forms of state capacity develop because it is here that society can trust the state and share information and responsibility with it, and it is also in this corridor that society’s active participation in politics can grow together with the state’s power and capacity. This is what happened in most of the West after World War 2 and why Hayek’s fears of unadulterated state despotism did not come to pass. But the corridor is narrow and why life in it is treacherous and requires hard work from citizens who need to remain vigilant, organised, and politically active.

Now let’s straight away dive into the main arguments.

The book begins with the story of Gilgamesh. 

The epic of Gilgamesh is from ancient Mesopotamian mythology. The story is more than 4000 years old. Gilgamesh was the king of the Sumerian city-state Uruk, a city that was situated somewhere near modern Iraq, near the Euphrates river. The city had a vibrant commercial and public life. But there was a catch. Gilgamesh was a tyrant. He was a despot and would brutally crush any form of dissent. The people of Uruk prayed to Anu, the god of the sky and chief Sumerian deity to relieve them from Gilgamesh’s oppression. Anu asked Aruru, the goddess of creation, to create a double of Gilgamesh who is as strong as him and who can counter him and put a lid on his tyranny. As a result, Enkidu was created who was like Gilgamesh’s doppelganger and had equivalent power. People thought that ultimately liberty and freedom would prevail in Uruk. Both of them fought, but Gilgamesh prevailed. He later joined hands with Enkidu and colluded to ‘kill the monster Humbaba, the guardian of the great cedar forest of Lebanon. When the god sent the Bull of Heaven to punish them, they combined forces to kill it. The prospect of liberty vanished along with checks and balances.’

The book begins with this example to draw our attention to the limitations of the checks and balances that we think the Constitution can bring to stop the state before it becomes oppressive. Like Enkidu, constitutional constraints are necessary but not sufficient for liberty to thrive in any society. AR calls this the ‘Gilgamesh Problem’.

They further explain:

Anu came up with a solution to what we’ll call the Gilgamesh Problem controlling the authority and the power of a state so that you got the good things and not the bad. Anu’s was the doppelganger solution, similar to what people today call checks and balances. Gilgamesh’s double would contain him. James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the US system of government would have sympathized. He would argue 4000 years later that constitutions must be designed so that ‘ambition must be made to counteract ambition’. Unfortunately, checks and balances parachuted from above don’t work in general and they didn’t in Uruk. Soon Gilgamesh and Enkidu started to conspire. They embraced and kissed. They held hands like brothers. They walked side by side. They became true friends. The prospect for liberty vanished along with checks and balances.

If checks and balances could not ensure liberty, then what would? 

According to AR, it’s the society that needs to control the state and hold it accountable for providing liberty. A mobilised society is necessary to put shackles on the state before it misuses its power and becomes a Gilgamesh.

AR add:

Liberty needs the state and laws. But it is not given by the state or the elites controlling it. It is taken by regular people, by society. Society needs to control the state so that it protects and promotes people’s liberty rather than quashing it as Assad did in Syria in 2011. Liberty needs a mobilised society that participates in politics, protests when it’s necessary, and votes the government out of power when it can.

Hobbesian View

Most part of human existence on this planet has coincided with stateless societies. The emergence of the state is quite a new phenomenon when looked at from a historical perspective spanning more than 200,000 years. To our ancestors, from this age, Hobbes’s 17th-century advice to ‘submit their wills’ to an all-powerful state, a Leviathan, would have come up as laughable and an alien concept. Anarchy was the salient feature of stateless societies. Hobbes conceptualized this as a ‘state of nature’ where self-preservation and dominance over others was the norm. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articulates this very well:

Hobbes invites us to consider what life would be like in a state of nature, that is, a condition without government. Perhaps we would imagine that people might fare best in such a state, where each decides for herself how to act, and is judge, jury, and executioner in her own case whenever disputes arise—and that at any rate, this state is the appropriate baseline against which to judge the justifiability of political arrangements. Hobbes terms this situation “the condition of mere nature”, a state of perfectly private judgment, in which there is no agency with recognized authority to arbitrate disputes and effective power to enforce its decisions.

Hobbes’s solution to the problem of a perpetual state of anarchy in the state of nature was a common power or a centralised authority that would be ‘able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners, and the injuries of one another, and thereby to secure them’. This common power was called the Leviathan. 

AR add:

Naturally, people would look for a way out of anarchy, a way to impose ‘restraint upon themselves’ and get ‘themselves out from the miserable condition of Warre, which is necessarily consequent to the natural passions of men. Hobbes had already anticipated how this could happen when he introduced the notion of Warre since he observed that Warre emerges when ‘men live without a common power to keep them all in awe’. Hobbes dubbed this common power the great Leviathan.

So, in moments of lawlessness, oppression, and insecurity, people turn to this centralised authority for protection. 

Hobbes also articulated the ways in which society gets a Leviathan:

1. Commonwealth by the institution: When men delegate power and authority to the centralised authority and ‘submit their Wills’.

2. Commonwealth by acquisition: When the authority will ‘subdueth his enemies to his will’. This is done by the sheer power of force. 

Both these routes help in keeping the dystopic vision of ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’ at bay. 

But was Hobbes completely accurate when it comes to the power of Leviathan?

What are the chances of this centralised authority not becoming another Gilgamesh?

What is stopping it from inflicting unspeakable oppression on its own people?

‘Janus-faced Leviathan’ is how AR describe this situation.

On this, they weigh in by adding:

The Leviathan is Janus faced. One face resembles what Hobbes imagined: it prevents Warre, it protects its subjects, it resolves conflicts fairly, it provides public services, amenities, and economic opportunities, and it lays the foundations for economic prosperity. The other is despotic and fearsome: it silences it, citizens, and it is impervious to their wishes. It dominates them, it imprisons them, maims them, and murders them. It steals the fruits of their labour or helps others do so.

Germany under the Third Reich and China under the Communist Party are some examples.

AR call such societies Despotic Leviathan. Oppression and violence is the defining characteristic of Despotic Leviathan. It does act as a centralised authority but it also represses its citizens. Very similar to the Gilgamesh problem that we encountered above. 

On the other extreme, we have stateless societies or Absent Leviathan. There are a number of stateless societies that are able to control violence and have flourishing commerce. The absence of violence would have naturally led to prosperity. 

But what explains this paradox? And was Hobbes wrong when he concluded that stateless societies are always marred by a perpetual cycle of lawlessness and violence?

We will explore this in the next dispatch.