Ludwig von Mises and moral relativism

About a century ago, most economists had already understood that the theory that explains the value of economic goods (the value of railways, oil, wood, or computer games) cannot be based on the amount of labor invested in making them.

First of all, there is the objection that comes from the usual experience most of us have of having worked many hours on some useless piece of trash of no value at all. To avoid this objection the labor theory of value must be supported with some props that deviate it from its simple formulation. But there are more objections, and more props have to be added, until we realize that the theory does not help to explain anything, and only those who have invested many useless academic years in defending it would insist in adding more props, ad-hoc limitations, and caveats to salvage it. In many respects, their efforts can be compared to those of Ptolemy astronomers, who tried to shield their cherished theory from the criticism of Copernicus by adding more celestial spheres and epicycles to explain away the facts that contradicted it.

Karl Marx was the last of those Ptolemy economists. He still adhered to the old theory he had learned from classic English economists and never realized that, by the end of his life, younger generations of economists were making their own Copernican revolution. Theirs is called sometimes "the marginalist revolution", though that name points out to only one of their innovations.

These newer generations of economists argued that the value of goods cannot be deduced from any of their physical characteristics, or from labor invested in them, but from the utility they provide to a particular man, in specific circumstances, at a determined time. That change of perspective, from the goods themselves to the individuals, allowed the new economists to see what was wrong in many questions that had puzzled people for centuries. For instance, they realized that it was misleading to ask why is it that gold is more valuable than water when it is clear that we can survive without gold, but not without water. They said: don’t argue in the abstract, don’t ponder about the goods in themselves; instead, consider individual circumstances in full context, without leaving out time, place, and resources, and you will see that for men with plenty of water at their disposal (as most of us are), another glass of water may have very little value. In those circumstances, gold may reasonably have more value than water.

Moreover, they said that we have to consider each man’s own valuation of that good, not our own. Not value as seen by an economist, a philanthropist, or a central planner, but by each man and woman that decides that some good is useful to them. Of course, we might see no value in many of the goods that crowds of people buy eagerly. But then it is nevertheless certain that such trash will sell for a good price. That is what counts for the economist.

I won’t dwell more deeply on these new economic theories (that is, “new” more than a century ago), which form today the basics of economics. For those who want to learn more about them, I recommend the books of Carl Menger, Eugene Böhm-Bawerk, and Ludwig von Mises (in my view, Menger and Böhm-Bawerk are still today the clearest expositors of that conceptual revolution). What I want to point out is that these new views, by focusing on each man’s valuation –and not on a supposedly objective value determined by some expert- made them friends of free markets and led them to discover new objections to central planning. Indeed, the Austrian von Mises and the Norwegian Trigve pushed these ideas to their logical consequence, and showed that without the price system that results from individual’s free choices, central planners have no way of making economic calculations. They can play with statistics, with tons and kilowatts, but they cannot make calculations with them. You need a unit. You cannot multiply numbers of kilowatts by numbers of penicillin doses, and substract hours of packaging work. Only prices provide a way to do it. An entrepreneur takes into account the prices of raw materials, wages, etc. But planners fix all prices, so prices provide no data to them.

Another Austrian, Friederich von Hayek, explained that market prices work as signals that provide people with information about each other’s needs and valuations. When planners try to replace the market with their decrees, they cut out these channels of information. Of course, some entrepreneurs may be stupid and fail to pay attention to prices (at their peril). Some may fail to hear the signals prices convey. But without a market, planners have no way of getting such information, they have no signals. Certainly they can put prices to goods as they please, but then they will always hear their own echo.

In this way, the change a new generation of economists thought necessary in one of the most basic economic concepts –the concept of value-, led them to appreciate the importance of free markets. That put them at odds with the tendencies that prevailed among politicians and the public (and indeed, among most of their colleagues) during the last decades of the XIX and the beginning of the XX centuries. By that time, most people were being converted to the ideal of central planning.

On the other hand, that same change in the concept of value seemed to place these economists closer to a tendency that was becoming popular among the intellectual elites. That was moral relativism, or perhaps we could say, moral irrationalism.

Against the wisdom of all previous ages, philosophers had started to argue that moral principles have no rational basis. They taught that all moral choices are ultimately irrational. Slowly permeating to the public at large, that new view led to horrible consequences. People started to get used to the notion that the essence of politics was struggle, and not rational debate. It was significant that new parties started to call their followers “militants”.

I think that the first of those two intellectual links, the one with free markets, is correct and logical (the expression “free market” is, of course, a redundancy, like “free exchange of ideas”). But I think that the second link, the one with moral irrationalism, is wrong because it does not really derive from the new ideas about value introduced by economists. Unfortunately some among them, most notably Mises, seem to believe the contrary.

Subjective economic value and a non sequitur

The expression “subjective value”, so much in use in economic theory, is very apt to lead to confusion. It would be better to call it “individual value”, or “personal value”. Certainly “subjective” value is opposed to “objective” value such as labor-value. But this is only because “labor” value is not linked to any person’s values, neither rational and sound nor irrational and stupid. It was a value deduced from hours of work. That was a mistake corrected by the conceptual revolution in economic thought that took place at the end of the XIX century. But from that –which was right- some have thought it necessary to derive another conclusion: that we cannot distinguish between sound and stupid preferences. That was wrong, a non sequitur, i.e. a conclusion that does not follow from the premises.

Of course, one might try other arguments in order to show that values are irrational, and that they cannot be defended and rejected by objective reasons. But then one should look for arguments elsewhere: modern economic theory provides no basis for it.

It is easy to understand why even foolish economic decisions count for the science of economics; there is no need to justify that with moral relativism and to deny that indeed people often make very stupid economic decisions. Of course, the entrepreneur must take prices as they are. He may rightly deplore the fact that in some neighborhoods men buy more gin than tea, but he cannot ignore it. The economist is in the same position: no matter how much he abhors videogames, there still will be prices paid for them. Neither the entrepreneur nor the economist can force you not to pay for them. However, that doesn’t mean that they can’t try to convince you.

It is not relativism but true morals that determine that my preferences cannot replace yours. Your choices or my choices may be foolish, and sometimes they are plainly foolish. There is no impediment to acknowledge that. What is wrong, but has been attempted many times, is to force us not to be fools. If we are adults and do not violate the law, then we are free to make our foolish choices. Again, this does not mean that other people can never be certain that we are wrong (as if it were an epistemological impossibility) or that other people must refrain from saying that we are wrong (as a matter of political correctness). Or that each of us can objectively realize that we have made mistakes in our choice of ends.

That a man examines objectively his own actions poses no problems. They begin when he does the same with the actions of others. However, this shows that the problem is moral and political, not epistemological. Of course, when it comes to other people’s decisions, constitutional experience and a long tradition of political thought tell us that we must be very careful. And apart from that, just from the economic point of view, even plain prudence tells one that one often lacks the information -and the wisdom, and the creativity,…and the luck- that one would need if one wanted to replace others in making their personal decisions. Hayek stressed that point. But prudence and relativism are different.

Unfortunately, though he was a great economist and made fundamental contributions to his science, Ludwig von Mises seems to have thought that he had to complement his magnificent economic lessons with moral relativism. He wrote in his rightly celebrated book Human Action, page 721:

“…it is obvious that the appeal to justice in a debate concerning the drafting of new laws is an instance of circular reasoning. Delege ferenda there is no such thing as justice. The notion of justice can logically only be resorted to de lege lata. It makes sense only when approving or disapproving concrete conduct from the point of view of the valid laws of the country…There is no such thing as an absolute notion of justice not referring to a definite system of social organization. It is not justice that determines the decision in favor of a definite social system. It is, on the contrary, the social system which determines what should be deemed right and what wrong”.

The latin expressions he used mean: de lege ferenda = evaluating whether a proposed law is good or bad; de lege lata = evaluating human action according to already enacted laws (without judging whether the law is good or bad). But I think that even without these translations Mises thought is clear: total moral relativism.

Earlier in the same book he had written (page 19):

“Human action is necessarily always rational. The term rational action is therefore pleonastic and must be rejected as such. When applied to the ultimate ends of action, the terms rational and irrational are inappropriate and meaningless. The ultimate end of action is always the satisfaction of some desires of the acting man. Since nobody is in a position to substitute his own value judgments for those of the acting individual, it is vain to pass judgment on other people’s aims and volitions. The critic either tells us what he believes he would aim at if he were in the place of his fellow, or, in dictatorial arrogance blithely disposing of his fellow’s will and aspiration, declares what condition of this other man would better suit himself, the critic.”

But then, how does Mises justify his books –and they are very good indeed- against interventionism and Marxism? He says that he just points out at contradictions between the ends that interventionists and Marxists pursue and the actions they take. He explains that he doesn’t question the ends themselves. But even this justification fails, because he has told us that human action is always rational by definition. Perhaps Mises would say that though he never objects to ends, he might uncover contradictions between declared purposes and the purposes that reveal themselves in actions. For instance, he might discover that if the goal is to annihilate a racial minority at the lowest cost, then it is contradictory to use bullets instead of gas. But then, what is the point of being so testy about that? If I cannot judge, why not leave brutes alone with their bullets versus gas choices, and their regulation versus deregulation preferences?

Confusing the moral with the epistemological

Of course we can pass judgment on other people’s actions. Even relativists do it, if only surreptitiously. Of course we can say that a child is wrong in eating too many sweets and making himself sick. And we can say that a grown-up man is doing even worse if he makes himself sick by drinking too much. There is no epistemological barrier that forbids us to realize that.

It is morals and not epistemology that tells us that we should not force a grown up man to be good and reasonable. There is a long experience and many excellent books that explain why it is so, starting with Humboldt’s The limits of State Action. Of course, I won’t try to sum up these books here.

Mises confusion is very unfortunate because it misleads people into thinking that modern economic theory supports moral relativism. I live in Argentina where easy indifference and nihilism are the marks of politics, and even of social life. In this my land, governments find it easy to take away from us liberties and rights that other peoples have surrendered only at the point of a gun. But most Argentines just yawn and repeat that nobody can be sure about what is right and what is wrong. If that is the present of a nation that once was among the most promising in the world, we’d better think again about the basis and the consequences of moral relativism.

Moral relativism is no safeguard against tyrants

The confusion between what we can know and say about morals and what we can impose on other people is very dangerous. Some may conclude, as apparently did Mises, that if we must not impose our convictions on other men, it is only because we have no rational basis for judging their actions. However, from the same confusion others will deduce that, as indeed we may pass judgment on other people, the only objection against directing their actions disappears. Both are wrong. Western civilization learned to distinguish these two questions long ago, and we shouldn’t forget it.

In any case, we shouldn’t assume that relativism is a safeguard against tyrants and busybodies. At the end of the day, all that relativism tells us is that there is no rational basis for moral convictions. It doesn’t deny that people make choices and have preferences. Then, if there are no rational arguments for one or the other, we must look for other means: power struggle by treats and threats.

I have a limited experience with politicians, functionaries, judges, and people in positions of power. But that experience tells me that those who see no role for reason in morals are seldom inclined to allow a free debate about ideas and choices. They say: what basis can that man have for opposing my will? Surely, not reason. When he counters my plans with “objective” arguments he is only trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I know very well that everything is just about national or class interests that can never be called just or unjust. I have read it in the back covers of many famous books.

Jane Austen and the Pirate's Queen

It is a pity that Jane Austen's legacy should be lost in the contemplation ―or in the criticism― of crinoline, bonnets, and old country houses. Those who think that they can sum up Northanger Abbey by saying that it is about a young woman's fancies should feel comfortable in saying that Crime and Punishment is about a young student's fancies. If Mansfield Park is a comment on the marrying schemes of the middle class, then King Lear is a reflection on the hereditary schemes of the upper class. Now, why is that anyone would blush after saying such nonsense about Dostoevsky and Shakespeare, but most feel confident that, in reducing Jane Austen to a painter of provincial manners, they have said something remarkable about her?

There is no harm in admiring bonnets and old country houses; and, if there is any harm in despising them, that doesn’t concern me now. We must realise, though, that we need Jane Austen for a different reason. I dare say she might even be important to contemporary politics. At the end of the day, wrote George Orwell, the most precious thing, whose presence stops hellish dictatorships in their tracks, and whose absence paves the way to them, is common decency. That is the quality one finds in Jane Austen.

It has been said, with partial truth, that people may be able to admire and understand art, such as excellent poetry and inspired music, without seeing anything objectionable in concentration camps, except perhaps the bad smell and the disagreeable noises. This was the case, as Richard Evans tells us in his book about The coming of the Third Reich, of many of those who eagerly supported the Nazi dictatorship. Hitler himself often made references to Goethe and Schiller, and Goering admired art even to the point of struggling to appropriate for himself da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine” –which had been stolen in Poland. Long before that, the Borgias had recompensed generously the skill of painters, but also that of murderers. In short, proper appreciation of the various arts is compatible with cruelty.

And yet, would that apply to anyone who truly understands the beauty that is to be found in Jane Austen's novels? Would anyone who has come to understand Emma's feelings after offending a poor old woman still remain insensible to the cruelties inflicted upon other defenceless victims? Certainly, one may follow Siegfried’s adventures without caring a straw about the sufferings of political dissidents. One may be inspired by a poem, and still remain the skilful manager of a concentration camp. But this is not possible with Jane Austen's novels ―unless, of course, one only sees old fashioned crinoline and bonnets in them.

It might be pointed out that one seldom finds questions of life and death in Jane Austen's novels. Certainly, the problems her heroines must face are more subtle than alarming. Neither Fanny Price nor Elinor Dashwood has to deal with dragons and pirates. But this is precisely one of the many qualities that make Jane Austen's stories so valuable to us. We don't have to deal with dragons and pirates either, but we too must face subtle moral questions, often made more difficult because they come to our attention only when they have become alarming.

Jane Austen still matters, and you can guess that when reading a headline in the London Times (2/17/2007) that tells us that British “Teachers fight for their right to keep Austen out of class” (unfortunately, The Times can be read only by subscription, anyway I include the links). Or when we find in the same newspaper (8/19/2010) that a journalist thinks it necessary to inform us that Austen knew nothing about proper punctuation, sneers at her novels, and warns Austen readers -who might have been deluded by her- that most men are not like the noble and honest Mr Darcy. Another writer in the London Times (3/22/2009) describes Austen’s success with words such as "cult" and "mania", and tells us that she conquered the world because of  "the belief that a liking for Austen is an infallible 'test' of your taste, intellect and general fitness for decent company was already well established in the 1880s, and is still potent today". Apart from being irrelevant for a deeper evaluation of her body of work, the very fact that so many judges of taste think it proper to attack Jane Austen proves that the pressure that a social test might put on people is no longer –if it ever was- the explanation of her popularity.

Insisting with the attack, in an article published in the London Times (3/12/2007), Celia Brayfield accused Jane Austen of building a gilded cage for the posterity of women writers. According to the article, Jane Austen limited her interests to the fancies of young women and paid no attention to the political and military struggles of her time; she never looked out of the window, she never read molecular theory, and she refused to join the philosophical fight to the death between reason and romanticism. Worst of all, it never entered into Jane Austen's mind that at the other end of the world, a woman called Chen I Sao could command thousands of pirates. A pirate’s queen would be a better character for a film, we are told, than any of the delicate creatures described by Jane Austen.

Brayfield’s criticism shows that the long struggle between sense and sensibility still goes on, and that sense is often defeated. For a start, it doesn’t seem fair to make a case against Jane Austen by mixing what she wrote and what film-makers have done with that material. It makes no sense to form our opinion about Jane Austen’s novels by blaming her for what, centuries later, film makers do. Besides, these are different genera and it may well be that some of the best that is to be found in novels cannot be put into films: this is just one of the many instances in which a few words say much more than a thousand images.

Moreover, there is no doubt that Jane Austen was interested in the struggle between sense and romanticism, and that she wrote about it in many of her books. So Brayfield's reproach, I guess, is rather that Jane Austen refused to enlist herself as another promoter of romanticism ―which on the whole was the winning party in the struggle.

While she looks Jane Austen’s novels with disdain, Celia Brayfield tells us that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a book that engages far more actively with its world and continues to express our anxieties about the advancement of science. Jane Austen, instead, would have felt that it was unwise to excite those anxieties, and would have thought that it was morally dubious to enjoy and to disdain ―at the same time― the advances of science. More advances in science, and not less, could have made Jane Austen's precious life longer than the 41 years she lived. And so it is for millions of men, women, and children. It may be true that Frankenstein became the keystone of the fantasy genre, but it also made a moral contradiction look comfortable, and even enlightened.

Now that Jane Austen has been described a thousand times as the painter of provincial manners, it is difficult to say why she was so highly esteemed by one of the most influential thinkers of the Victorian era, Lord Macaulay. To mention just another name (though Macaulay’s name should be enough) it is said that Disraeli read Pride and Prejudice 17 times. It would seem that they saw more than crinoline and bonnets in her novels.

But, who were the women Jane Austen presented to her readers? They were thinking persons who cultivated their sensibility without forgetting sense. Moreover, the readers were supposed to admire them precisely for that. This was a silent revolution that had started before Jane Austen, but one she advanced and perfected. Now turn to the women we see paraded by the mass media in our enlightened age. In numbers, bimbos prevail. And when we turn to those women who are supposed to be models of sense and sensibility, we realise that we know very little about them: almost nothing about their inner life, and very little about their doubts, their mistakes, and their personal victories.

Of course, I don’t mean that we lack women that unite sense and sensibility: there are millions of them. What I mean is that the media doesn’t seem to be interested in their lives. Jane Austen, instead, dedicated her novels to telling their stories, and made them popular. She wrote about the women she knew, who were neither extremely rich nor extremely poor. Besides, in her time, the idea that a rich man’s gain and a poor man’s ruin are just two sides of the same coin had not still reached the status of a dogma. While Jane Austen never laid down plans for the improvement of the condition of the poor, she may have improved the habits of the nation as a whole, which after all might turn out being compatible goals.

Jane Austen has led millions to love her heroines. But she understood, and still tells us through imaginary examples, that blindness isn’t a requisite for tenderness. Through her novels, we may understand why blind sensibility often leads to the worst of the various forms of cruelty: that which is hidden under the cover of fashionable words and lofty intentions ―a cruelty that ceases to be casual and becomes systematic, even a duty. Many would call it a romantic and highly inspired sort of cruelty. We still have to deal with it in many parts of the world.

A pirate's queen is a dashing character, and that is all that may matter to the writer of a romantic novel or to the director of a film. It is irrelevant whether pirates hacked people to death, sunk ships, and set fire to villages: that would be relegated to the dull territory of sense, and the mean interests of prudence. It is true that Jane Austen ignored pirate queens and gave preference to girls who lived regular lives among relatives and friends, most of them law-abiding people. But, again, this was the best material for novels intended for readers living in complex and highly civilized countries, people who no longer lived in fear that pirates would desolate their villages, but who had not yet forgotten what that fear was.

It may be true that Jane Austen neglected the study of molecular theory ―and I can’t say how much our contemporary novelists know about quantum mechanics. On the other hand, they do look out of the window, though it often means a virtual window on a computer screen. No doubt many contemporary novelists would write a book about a pirate's queen –though it is almost sure that today she would have been advised to call herself the leader of a people's liberation army. A contemporary writer would ask his or her agent to arrange a trip to the area in trouble, would take a plane, would enjoy being toured by the pirates PR staff, would see what he or she must see, take photos, would have a charming meeting with the leader, take a plane back home, have a look at the material his or her secretary has been collecting, and then write a book brimming with shocking realism. Jane Austen never did that ―there were no planes in her time. Besides, she was wise enough to write about matters and characters she really knew. But I think that there was a second motive for her choices, perhaps even more decisive than the advantages of true and intimate knowledge. Jane Austen knew that the silent battles won by her heroines were much more important for the happiness of any nation than the striking victories of a pirate's queen.

I have searched on the Web and found that, unlike Jane Austen, Cheng I Sao managed to live to an old age. After being driven out of the business by competing pirates, she got a pardon from the government, and settled as the manager of a brothel and a gambling house ―which wasn’t particularly romantic.

George Orwell and the Rule of Law: you don't shoot at a man who is running with his trousers down

Almost all countries claim to be democracies; some back up that claim with free elections, others with public parades in praise of the beloved leader of the nation. The rule of law, by contrast, is an advantage that only a few countries can even claim to enjoy. It is definitely a good in short supply. 

In a former article, I have tried to show that George Orwell is still the best in explaining why it is so. Any country can hire a number of law scholars and ask them to produce a good copy of the most advanced laws and constitutions they find in the world. In Argentina, we have tried American constitutional clauses, articles from the French civil code, Italian forms of trial, and German penal theories, but all this relates more to intellectual fashions than to people’s lives. The rule of law has nothing to do with those changing fashions; instead it requires a certain frame of mind in the whole population.

In his book 1984, Orwell described how hell on Earth might look like; unfortunately people forget that he also described the attitudes that would prevent it from becoming true. He did that in the articles he wrote about the people he knew best: the English people. One of the things English people lack is a world-view, Orwell said. Instead, they have (or had: being a foreigner, I am not sure) a code of behaviour. Respect for that code forms the only possible ground where the rule of law may survive and prosper.

As we read in 1984, there are no well-defined crimes against world-views, only actions that advance or hinder the final victory of the party and its leader; and that is why intentions do not count. This is no fiction: we can see that taking place today, for a natural result of this twisted way of reasoning is that a child may be objectively guilty, and so it may be right to plant a bomb in a school. All actions are seen as objectively good and objectively bad –‘objectivity’ meaning here: useful in order to win. 

For the same reason, there is no objective decency, no pride in generosity and uprightness, and you may well sneer at them. Comfortingly, this is called ‘realism’. ‘Its growth’ –wrote Orwell in Raffles and Miss Blandish– ‘has been the great feature of the intellectual history of our own age’. Against realism, most English people remained attached to their outmoded codes of behaviour. The crucial words, said Orwell, were ‘not done’: there are a number of things one will not do, some limits one will respect. And I may add that this was not based on any socio-economic-psychological-semiotic theory. One simply adhered to the rules because that was the right thing to do.

Orwell said that English people followed a moral code as if they were sleep-walking, and more by instinct than anything else. In The English People, he wrote, ‘The masses still more or less assume that “against the law” is a synonym for “wrong”. It is known that the criminal law is harsh and full of anomalies and that litigation is so expensive as always to favour the rich against the poor: but there is a general feeling that the law, such as it is, will be scrupulously administered...An Englishman does not believe in his bones, as a Spanish or Italian peasant does, that the law is simply a racket’. I am not sure what Spanish and Italian peasants would say today, but I know that most Argentines would think that an unfair legal system should not be scrupulously administered. Disloyalty to the existing law may mean loyalty to a new and better one that is yet to come. Certainly, the trouble with this lofty approach is that the better law is not actually a law, or a code of behaviour, but a world-view. Circumvention of existing laws is then justified, even made commendable, on the grounds of vague and contradictory wishes, which could never really become a new and better law.

In Raffles and Miss Blandish, Orwell contrasted Raffles, the old-fashioned thief, with the gangsters in J.H. Chase’s novel No Orchids for Miss Blandish. We see that Orwell prefers Raffles for his attachment to his country and his respect for a code of honour. Instead, the characters in J.H. Chase’s novel are all equally brutal, even sadistic. Both the gangsters and the police are there just for the money; no nonsense about patriotism and inviolable codes. Orwell remarks: ‘The Raffles stories, written from the angle of the criminal, are much less anti-social than many modern stories written from the angle of the detective’. I must add that, with a few exceptions, this has remained a characteristic of the genre ever since. Nevertheless, Orwell admits that the line Raffles draws ‘between good and evil is as senseless as a Polynesian taboo, but at least, like the taboo, it has the advantage that everyone accepts it.’ I would not go as far as Orwell, and would rather say that most of Raffles’s code makes sense. Not abusing hospitality, a rule that Orwell describes as part of Raffles’s code, does indeed make sense in Polynesia as well as in England.

Orwell’s remark, however, points to something important. It is always easy to spot incongruities in any existing code of behaviour. Every existing legal system owes much to history and even to chance. Moreover, anyone can easily imagine a situation -however unlikely- in which the most sensible of rules would seem unfair. Modern philosophers are very fond of doing it, and so they discuss –as professor Ronald Dworkin does- what sort of insurance one would try to get before one is born if insurance were available against the possibility of being born a reckless person, or clumsy, or stupid. When one gets used to those intellectual exercises, it is easy to feel that one can pass swift judgement on existing rules, as a saint would do while looking from the summit of Mount Everest to the world beneath. 

Many people in Argentina adopt that view and say: all codes of behaviour are equally wrong, all have flaws –the rest is vanity. Certainly, one loses a considerable part of that varnish of sainthood if one descends from high regions of hot air and goes into details, acknowledging that some codes are worse than others, and that most codes are better than none. 

Orwell provides us with an anecdote that shows how a code that is followed by instinct may seem absurd. In Looking back on the Spanish war he writes that one day he and another Republican soldier went to snipe at their enemies, who had their trenches at some distance from them. When they were close enough to fire, they saw that the enemy was being attacked by Republican planes. The enemy was in confusion, and suddenly Orwell saw a soldier running along the top of the parapet, half dressed and holding up his trousers with both hands. Orwell refrained from shooting at him. 

Both before and after describing the incident, he says that he thought that there was not much meaning in his scruples against shooting the man. Perhaps –I would add– he though that the rules he was instinctively following did not make more sense than a taboo. You will be ready to kill the man in the next battle, so why not shoot at him while he is running with his hands on his trousers? This sounds logical, but awful, and it is a line of argument that can be used against every moral scruple. This boy will be a soldier in a few years, and then you will be trying to kill him; so, why not kill him now? Scruples are always open to attack, and one often tends to deny that they make any difference –that is, till scruples are lost because then one sees the difference.

George Orwell and the Rule of Law: the power of illusions

George Orwell never wrote about legal technicalities, but he did something much more important: he described the attitudes once prevalent among English people that made it possible for them to be ruled by laws and not by men. For some reason, they chose to depend on laws –even bad laws– and not on the benevolence of clerks, the inspiration of judges, and the whims of party leaders. Orwell described the mental atmosphere that made that choice possible and made it work. If he helps us to understand it, his remarks might prove to be more valuable than a whole library of law books.

I was born and have lived all my life in Argentina, a country where law is feeble, where people seem to find it better to be swept from place to place by powerful men (or women) than to be ruled by fixed laws. We have good laws, or at least they are not worse than those of other countries. Our Constitution was largely copied from that of the US, as our founding fathers proudly admitted. But one cannot just copy rules, one must then abide to them, and that has proven to be the difficult part.

Many countries –perhaps most countries in the world– suffer the same problem. Nevertheless, apart from some self-ashamed mumbling about national traits, we know and say very little about the attitudes that make the difference. And we must not delude ourselves thinking that this is merely a matter of removing a corrupt upper class because the new one would be the same, or worse: the roots go down to ordinary people. We need to understand why law is respected in a few countries and neglected in most others. That might be more valuable for people’s happiness than the discovery of a new gold mine, even better than a hundred new oil wells.

Orwell had a gift and a passion for describing the habits of his own people: the English people. Unfortunately, Orwell is remembered mainly as the author of Animal Farm and 1984. Of course, these are fascinating books, but one is a fable and the other a novel about a possible future that never came true –at least not in England. This may lead people to forget that Orwell wrote much and well about his own time and about real events. Sprinkled here and there in his many essays and articles, we have Orwell's invaluable remarks about the attitudes that made England what it was in his time, and probably most of what it still is today. As Orwell himself, I have written ‘English attitudes’ and not ‘British attitudes’, but this is not essential to our issue.

English attitudes towards law

The rule of law has crept in many places, but it first bloomed in England. Even foreigners acknowledged it, among others Montesquieu and Voltaire –that was long before French intellectuals had been taught to sneer at bourgeois liberties. In his essay England your England, Orwell said that an all-important English trait was the respect for constitutionalism and legality, the belief in ‘the law’ as something above the State and above the individual, ‘something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible’. In England, wrote Orwell, such concepts as justice, liberty, and objective truth are still believed in.

To this, many people –among them many English people– would object that those beliefs are silly and misguided, that English law is full of incongruities, and that those high words about liberty and justice are just a cover for prejudices. Some would add: at the end of the day English notions of justice are no better than those of the Nazis and terrorists. The only difference between Churchill and Hitler –so goes a common view– is that Churchill hid his power-grabbing strategy behind a mist of morality, while Hitler preferred ruthless sincerity. But Orwell answers: justice, and liberty, and objective truth ‘may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions. The belief in them influences conduct, national life is different because of them’. Against those who remain sneering, Orwell did not try academic arguments; he said simply: ‘In proof of which, look about you. Where are the rubber truncheons, where is the castor oil?’ Justice was tougher in Orwell's time, but we can understand his argument: 'the hanging judge, that evil old man in scarlet robe and horsehair wig, whom nothing short of dynamite will ever teach what century he is living in, but who will at any rate interpret the law according to the books and will in no circumstances take a money bribe, is one of the symbolic figures of England'.

Now we come to a crucial remark: Orwell writes, ‘It is not that the English people imagine the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this…’. Most people in most countries will immediately follow the implications that the English refuse to accept: if we feel that law is unfair, if a rich man is acquitted when we feel that he should have been punished, then we do not owe obedience to law, and we may well disregard it. Those who reason in this way –a large number in my country and probably in most countries in the world– do not reject the possibility that some day in the future they might respect a new political arrangement, one that is flawless, one that makes mistakes impossible. But till that day comes, one is entitled to evade taxes, pay and take bribes, and bully those who look easy targets. If law is imperfect, it is no law at all.

The ratchet system

Half a loaf is no bread: this is a way of reasoning that Orwell never accepted, and with him, most English people. They accepted improvements and reforms that were far from perfect, and then tried to build something better on top of them, and then something even better, and so on. I would call it, the ratchet system: you advance but always keeping all that you already have of what is right and good. Edmund Burke compared it with an account that grows with new interest but always keeping the capital already gained. 
Comparing rights with an account and progress with capital, how shocking! That is why Hitler called the English “shopkeepers” as opposed to his German heros, always ready to kill and die for the good of the community. Even Orwell thought that Hitler had a point: he said that a planned economy on the lines of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia was necessary in order to win the war (his article: Shopkeepers at war). However the shopkeepers were able, not only to build the Spitfire, but to defeat the Arian heroes.

Many people –perhaps most people– still reject the ratchet system. I once heard an Argentine man who refused to go and tell the truth in court, not out of fear, but because –as he explained– he thought that trials may end up being unfair anyway. He was afraid that by telling the truth he would look self-righteous –or worse, naïve. Unless a leader takes charge and roots out all the underlying causes of injustice, there is no point in doing right: it is mere illusion –or worse, hypocrisy. You might tell the truth in court (or a lie) as a special favour to a friend or a relative, maybe returning a similar favour you received or expect to receive, but not because of the simplistic notion that one must tell the truth. It is simplistic as well to criticise those who block wheelchair ramps with their cars –a familiar sight where I live. One must take into account that there must be scores of worse faults –even cases of corruption– that will never be exposed. It is simplistic, indeed hypocritical, to argue against a whole array of things: from petty corruption to politically motivated court rulings. This is the way in which people in hundreds of countries manage to accommodate a haughty moral posture together with absolute passivity towards injustice –sometimes mingled with obvious relish in it.

English people, at least in Orwell's time, lacked that gusto for convoluted justifications. They would not think that you have to pass judgement on the whole judicial system first, and then decide whether you will bother to tell the truth in court. English people, wrote Orwell, ‘have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic “world-view”’. Instead, they are very capable of acting ‘upon a species of instinct, really a code of conduct which is understood by almost everyone, though never formulated’. Of course, we are bound to meet the old Marxist retort: this is a worldview just as any other. No it is not, and the difference is that law and moral codes are limited. Moral codes set limits; worldviews are boundless. We owe justice to our enemies –maybe stern justice–, but no rule commands us to be unfair. Incidentally, this does not mean that you must love the enemies of your country: this would be reverse-nationalism, as Orwell called it.

Nor are you required to pretend that a lie told by your party is better than a truth told by the opposite party. The historian Lord Macaulay was a Whig, but he must have felt that he was right in dedicating a poem to all that was noble –though misguided– in the Jacobites. World-views scorn all this as hypocritical; ruthless sincerity is better. Instead of the gentleman, the ruthless-man must be admired. The word ‘ruthless’ appears again and again in Hitler’s speeches and in his book Mein Kampf  –it must have been part of what people found attractive in him. In Argentina, General Perón’s motto ‘to the enemy, not even justice’ underpins all our recent history. More than that, I think it sums up all that was wrong in many countries in the past century. Today the names and the places have changed, but that dreadful notion remains as powerful as it was then.

Note: this is the first of a series of articles on George Orwell’s remarks concerning English attitudes and the rule of law. All of them will be published soon in this blog.