Greg Ransom
Please makes
a donation
PayPal / Amazon
This blog is brought
to you by its readers
Ransom Papers
Let me cut directly to the section of these interviews which has been used by Hayek-haters in academia as a means for black-balling a life-time of work in several disciplines:
Q: Another sentence of Reagan's struck my attention: "If we look to the answer as to why, for so many years, we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here, in this land, we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before." In other words, they had a system of liberty, and not an oppressive government. Why is it so difficult to achieve this sort of government in Latin America?UPDATE: On the topic of liberty and state control in Latin America, see now Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Liberty for Latin America : How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression Posted by Greg RansomH: The difference lies in its having another tradition. The United States takes its tradition from England. In the 18th and 19th centuries especially, this was a tradition of liberty. On the other hand the tradition in South America, for example, is rooted basically in the French Revolution. This tradition lies not in the classical line of liberty, but in maximum government power. I believe that South America has been overly influenced by the totalitarian type of ideologies. And I regret to say that this includes a famous Englishman, the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, who effectively believed in the deliberate organization of everything. This is obviously very far from the liberal English tradition of the Whigs. So the answer is that the United States remained faithful to the old English tradition even when England partly forsook it. In South America, on the other hand, people sought to imitate the French democratic tradition, that of the French Revolution, which meant giving maximum powers to government.
Q:What opinion, in your view, should we have of dictatorships?
H: Well, I would say that, as long-term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period. At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power. As you will understand, it is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for South America – is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government. And during this transition it may be necessary to maintain certain dictatorial powers, not as something permanent, but as a temporary arrangement.
Q: Apart from Chile, can you mention other cases of transitional dictatorial governments?
H: Well, in England, Cromwell played a transitional role between absolute royal power and the limited powers of the constitutional monarchies. In Portugal, the dictator Oliveira Salazar also started on the right path here, but he failed. He tried, but did not succeed. Then after the war, Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhardt held initially almost dictatorial powers, using them to establish a liberal government in the shortest possible space of time. The situation called for the presence of two very strong men to achieve this task. And the two of them very successfully accomplished this stage towards the establishment of a democratic government. If you permit I would like to make a brief comment in this sense on Argentina.
Q: Why not?
H: I felt very disenchanted right from my first visit there, shortly after Peron's fall. At that time I talked with many officers from the Military School. They were highly intelligent persons. Politically brilliant, I would say among the most brilliant politicians in their country. For me it was a pity they did not make better use of this intelligence. I would have hoped they could have laid the foundations for a stable democratic government. And yet they did not. I do not know why they failed, in fact, but my impression is that they had the political ability and the intelligence to do so.
Q: Which means that you would propose stronger, dictatorial governments, during transitional periods ...
H: When a government is in a situation of rupture, and there are no recognized rules, rules have to be created in order to say what can be done and what cannot. In such circumstances it is practically inevitable for someone to have almost absolute powers. Absolute powers that need to be used precisely in order to avoid and limit any absolute power in the future. It may seem a contradiction that it is I of all people who am saying this, I who plead for limiting government's powers in people's lives and maintain that many of our problems are due, precisely, to too much government. However, when I refer to this dictatorial power, I am talking of a transitional period, solely. As a means of establishing a stable democracy and liberty, clean of impurities. This is the only way I can justify it - and recommend it.
