Infrastructures of evil

Politicians, generals, corporate directors, and ordinary men and women had a direct relationship to the evils of the twentieth century. Individuals, soldiers, CEOs, and government administrators did various things that we can now recognize as fundamentally evil. So we might be tempted to summarize the evils of the past as "large numbers of people doing inexcusable things to other people". 

However, this formula is entirely insufficient. It is true that the great evils of the twentieth century were committed by individuals, but the evils they committed could not have been carried out without the workings of the large social systems that motivated them, organized them, and mobilized them. Armies, states, intelligence services, corporations, government agencies -- all of these were part of the social and causal processes involved in the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Gulag, the Armenian genocide, and the rape of Nanking. Moreover, these vast collective evils could not have occurred in the absence of supporting institutions and organizations. A Hitler or a Stalin ranting on a soapbox may be able to inspire a crowd of listeners to commit mayhem and pogroms through artful charisma, and violence may spread beyond the earshot of the original spark. (The Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921 had some of this character.) But these kinds of collective violence are inherently episodic and limited -- unlike the systematic, sustained, and determined murder of eastern European Jews by the Nazi state, or the despoliation and starvation of Ukrainian peasants by the Soviet state in 1932. It is all but axiomatic that largescale and sustained evil requires a strong institutional infrastructure.

It is true that individuals are the actors in history. And therefore it is true as well that we need the research of social psychologists -- perhaps even new kinds of social psychology -- to understand how ordinary people could come to commit mass murder against their neighbors and fellow human beings. This is one reason why the works of Christopher Browning in Ordinary Men and Jan Gross in Neighbors are so important: these historians throw the spotlight on the actions of "ordinary" participants in evil. But the lessons we learn from these studies are in one sense a dead end, if we are interested in making genocide impossible in the future: they demonstrate chiefly that "ordinary men and women" can be brought to commit atrocities against fellow human beings. This is a dead end in a specific sense: we might despair of ever changing this fact about human capacity for atrocious violence.

But this point invites us to broaden the lens a bit and ask about the institutional settings within which such evils are likely or unlikely to occur. What makes individuals more prone to act in an evil way against other persons? What kinds of "institutions of consciousness-shaping" prepare men and women for acts of murderous hate? How does propaganda -- state-originated or Fox News -- work to cultivate the inner worlds of individuals in such a way as to lead them to hate, despise, and fear other individuals? How are anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry, racism, or anti-LGBTQ bigotry transmitted into the consciousness and thoughts of individuals in a society? How did radio broadcasts influence massacre in Rwanda (link)? And crucially -- whose work is being carried out through those propaganda institutions? Who benefits from the cultivation of hate in a population?

A second important group of questions concerns how the diffuse antagonisms and hatreds of separate individuals get marshaled into effective collective action. What transforms a hateful population into a hate group capable of collective action? What are the local and regional informal social organizations through which the latent hate and antagonisms of certain individuals are brought together for plans of action -- through neo-Nazi organizations in Europe, White Supremacist organizations in the US, right-wing extremist populist organizations throughout the world? How does Hindu nationalism become a disciplined force for violent action in India? The insurrection in the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 was not spontaneous; so how was it organized and mobilized?

We can also ask whether there are informal social organizations that can have the effect of reducing hate and antagonism -- organizations that work within civil society and within specific communities to establish a basis of trust and mutual acceptance across racial, religious, or gender lines. Both sets of questions are very familiar within the literature of social contention, including McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly's Dynamics of Contention and McAdam's Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency.

But we also must recognize that the most massive evils of the twentieth century were not self-organized riots, pogroms, or uprisings. Rather, they were the result of determined and documented state actions, carried out by intricate bureaucracies of murder and enslavement. So, for example, it is critical to understand the role that the NKVD played within the Soviet state in carrying out the Terror of the 1930s, the starvation campaign of the 1930s, and the deployment of the labor camps of the Gulag. How did the bureaucracy of murder and enslavement work in the Soviet state? Likewise, how were the policy decisions of the Wannsee Conference of 1942 carried out? (Adolph Eichmann served as recording secretary of the meeting; link.) How was the plan of mass murder transformed into Aktions, camps, alliances with collaborators, new mass killing techniques, railroad schedules, and deceptions? It seems evident that totalitarian states are well prepared to orchestrate evil on a mass scale.

Here again -- are there political institutions that can make evil less likely? What are some of the political and legal arrangements that make mass murder and atrocity more difficult to carry out by a determined dictator? Timothy Snyder emphasizes in Black Earth that the Final Solution depended on "smashed states" and the destruction of the rule of law. Is this a clue for the future of humanity: that it is of the greatest importance to establish and defend the rule of law? 

These considerations suggest that intensive research in the social sciences is still needed to lay bare the workings of the organizations, agencies, and states of regimes that committed atrocious plans and actions. Political scientists, organizational theorists, and sociologists need to help us understand better the way in which many states in the twentieth century attempted and succeeded in committing atrocious and inexcusable actions against their neighbors and their own peoples. And can stronger national and international structures be designed that serve as real impediments to evil actions in the future?

These various questions about social and political institutions and their role within the "infrastructure of evil" are crucial if we are to envision a future in which evils like the Holodomor, the Gulag, or the Holocaust will not recur. The crucial point is the role of a secure and enforceable rule of law, embodying the rights of all individuals. If China had a secure system of individual rights and rule of law, would one million Uyghurs be in "re-education" camps today? If courageous Chinese lawyers and independent judges were able to compel the Chinese government to cease its actions against the Uyghurs, would this contemporary evil have ever come about? So we might say: to ensure that great evil does not recur in our futures, we need to strive courageously to maintain the institutions of law and constitution that constrain even the most awful would-be tyrants.

Can Nietzsche support a decent political philosophy?

Nietzsche's anti-moralism is a key theme in his philosophy and civilizational criticism. He regarded traditional European morality as "herd morality", the deplorable consequence of Christian values of subordination and ressentiment. It is hard enough to find in Beyond Good and Evil or Genealogy of Morals a basis for criticizing even the most grotesque examples of interpersonal brutality and violence, and Nietzsche is contemptuous of the values of kindness and compassion. And it is virtually impossible to find an explicit consideration of the question, are there moral limitations on the behavior of states? To put the point simply: does Nietzsche have the philosophical stuff to condemn the Holocaust or the Holodomor?

How would Nietzsche respond if he were time-transported to the MSNBC studio and interviewed by Rachel Maddow? The session might begin along these lines: "Mr. Nietzsche, welcome to the program. I'd like to ask you the most pressing question today: The armed forces of the Russian Federation are torturing, raping, and murdering civilians in Ukraine today in an effort to defeat Ukraine in its war of aggression. Can you condemn these acts as war crimes and atrocities against the innocent, given your statements about "morality" and the "will to power" in your celebrated work, Beyond Good and Evil?"

It would of course be very interesting to have this conversation with Nietzsche. But today all we have are his texts and letters, and they are unpromising in this context. Given his pervasive anti-moralism, any contemporary reader of Nietzsche is forced to ask: can Nietzsche have a political philosophy?

Two discussions of this question have been noteworthy in the past decade or so. Tamsin Shaw's 2007 monograph Nietzsche's Political Skepticism provides an extended argument about why it is philosophically difficult for Nietzsche to offer a political philosophy. And the essays in Barry Stocker and Manuel Knoll's edited volume Nietzsche as Political Philosopher are insightful as well.

The painful pill presented by Nietzsche's writings to anyone who loves liberal democracy is that Nietzsche's attack on humanistic morality suggests ugly possibilities: the acceptance of totalitarianism and dictatorship, the unfettered use of state power to oppress the citizens of the state, and moral indifference to aggressive war by a powerful state against a weak state. If citizens do not have morally defensible rights against each other and the state; if there are not morally compelling reasons for believing in and entrenching the equality of all citizens; and if there are no morally compelling principles regulating the use of the instruments of war by a state against another state or people -- then there is no basis for criticizing the Gulag, genocide, and brutal aggressive war. So we seem to step directly from Nietzsche to Putinism.

Rolf Zimmermann's essay "The 'Will to Power'", included in the Stocker and Knoll volume, addresses this issue directly, with a conclusion that may surprise the reader. Zimmermann argues that Nietzsche's framework is compatible with both a liberal state and an authoritarian state. It all depends on what we want (that is, what set of primary values about ourselves and our interactions with others we have adopted, as a nation).

Political implications, on the collective level, can be discussed with regard to two conceptions that may be explicated in the sense of a liberal and an authoritarian ideal type. At the same time, we must face the problem as to whether Nietzsche’s anti-egalitarianism could be consistently integrated into a constitutional democracy of whatever kind. (Zimmerman in Stocker and Knoll 39)

Zimmermann offers a very interesting Nietzschean interpretation of the atrocious regimes of the twentieth century. His basic view is that Nietzsche insists on historicizing "civilizational" systems of values (and takes satisfaction in finding disagreeable features of their genealogies). So Zimmermann's view is not that the totalitarian ideologies of Hitler or Stalin were inspired by Nietzsche's philosophy or his moral nihilism, but rather they are comprehensible as the emergence of new moral-value frameworks following the demise of traditional Christian morality.

My own perspective, however, is quite different. I propose, first of all, to read the radical movements of the 20th century, especially Bolshevism and National Socialism (NS), in terms of their own new moralities that gained force in actual history in order to build socio-political formations. In doing so, these movements verified in a systematically relevant way Nietzsche’s paradigm of moral philosophy that is defined by insight into the appearance of divergent moralities in history conflicting with each other – divergent “wills to power”. This very insight of Nietzsche can be vindicated quite independently of critical objections to his moral-political philosophy in detail. In systematic terms, therefore, it is much more relevant to interpret developments of actual history within a conceptual frame set forth by Nietzsche in an arguable general sense, instead of searching for “influences” of Nietzsche on actual history dozens of years after his lifetime. (Zimmermann in Stocker and Knoll 48-49)

Zimmermann makes a very interesting point here: that the horrific regimes of the twentieth century can be interpreted within a Nietzschean "civilizational" framework, but not as an expression of Nietzschean values or anti-values.

Now, given the comparative descriptions of egalitarian universalism, Nazi-morality and Bolshevist-morality, we come to see the moral history of the 20th century clearly in Nietzschean terms, namely as a history of divergent moralities in conflict with each other, a history of divergent “wills to power” realizing themselves in socio-political forms without precedence, and thereby showing the value-forming capacity of man in disastrous results. (Zimmermann in Stocker and Knoll 55)

Most critically, Zimmermann believes it is consistent with Nietzsche's philosophical ideas to defend a liberal-egalitarian-constitutional theory of the state, along the lines described by JS Mill in On Liberty. But, crucially, "we would have to speak of egalitarian universalism equally as a historical phenomenon, in short as 'historical universalism', specifically related to the history of human rights since the 18th century" (55). Or in other words: real human beings and groups would have to struggle to secure and establish these values as the foundation of their polities.

This conclusion brings us to the central argument offered by Tamsin Shaw. Shaw believes that Nietzsche is profoundly doubtful of the ability of a nation to coalesce around a liberal-democratic consensus. Shaw too has a contribution in the Stocker and Knoll volume, comparing Nietzsche and Weber. But her central ideas on a possible political morality in Nietzsche's thought are conveyed in Nietzsche's Political Skepticism.

Shaw puts the weight of her argument on two points that she believes Nietzsche would accept: that a modern state requires a fairly high degree of "moral" consensus among its citizens about the actions and requirements of the state, and that modern society is largely incapable of arriving at such a consensus. Instead, the coercive power of the state is used to create a moral and normative consensus, through indoctrination, propaganda, education, and public festivals. This amounts to two core premises:

One concerns the nature of modern states and in particular the fact that their ability to rule a society requires convergence, in that society, on some shared normative beliefs. The other concerns the inability of secular societies to generate the required convergence through noncoercive means. (kl 131)

When religious institutions and beliefs had a powerful grip on the people of a nation, the values inculcated by those institutions provided an independent source of consensus which put some constraints on the nature and actions of the state. But with the collapse of religious identities (the death of God), there was no longer a point of convergence that could provide a basis for consensus. This leaves an open field for the coercive state to establish its own ideological institutions -- whether those of Hitler, Stalin, or Orbán. And, according to Shaw, this makes the normative foundations of a liberal democracy all but impossible:

So legitimacy in this sense requires that political institutions conform to the accepted norms of those over whom they rule, and that acceptance of these norms be uncoerced, at least by the political institutions that they purport to legitimate. But although this weak notion seems helpfully unambitious in demanding conformity to the professed normative beliefs of a population, rather than to the right norms, it presupposes precisely the kind of uncoerced convergence that Nietzsche thinks secularism is making increasingly unlikely. (kl 209)

She refers to this as "political skepticism", and she believes it is ineliminable from Nietzsche's thought.

Nietzsche’s political skepticism, then, consists in the view that we simply cannot reconcile our need for normative authority with our need for political authority. Given [Nietzsche's] own historical situation, as we shall see, he was vividly aware of the fragility of any apparent compromise between these demands. He does, in the later writings, occasionally seem inclined to give up on one or the other. But the real challenge that his skepticism presents to modern politics is somehow to find a way of not giving up on either. (kl 284)

This point is philosophically interesting. But more importantly, it is highly relevant to the politics of liberal democracies today. Anti-liberal, hate-based populists are gaining the narrative upper-hand, and there appears to be a steep decline in support for the traditional civic values of liberal democracy: rule of law, constitutional protections of rights, equality of all citizens. Further, this decline seems to coincide with rising support for authoritarian parties and candidates. There are numerous mechanisms that help to explain the rise of authoritarian and racist political values -- the solid hold that right-wing cable networks have on the "base", the targeted messaging of messages of hatred and distrust by social media platforms, and the increasing boldness of fascist-sounding elected officials. But maintaining strong and nearly universal support for the values of a liberal democracy is increasingly challenging.

Perhaps we need a modern-day Nietzsche to de-mystify the rantings of the far-right, and to help western democracies regain their sane and decent commitment to peace, equality, and freedom.

Here are several prior posts that address the threats to maintaining a democratic consensus (link, link, link, link).

Classification of political systems and theories

Graph of political systems (click image for full resolution)

It is possible to analyze much of the history of modern political philosophy -- political theory since Hobbes and Locke -- in terms of answers to a few primary questions. (This post expands upon a discussion of the "topology" of the space of political theories; link.) The answers to these primary questions can in principle generate a tree-structure of variants of political theories and systems. This is depicted in the graphic above, derived from these primary questions. 

1. Is a system of coercive law required for a peaceful human society?

Hobbes has a decisive answer to this question, based on his analysis of the state of nature. But it is also possible to make a case for a human community based on free cooperation among equals (anarchism).

2. Must a legitimate state provide strict protections of individual rights and liberties? (constitution)

Locke and Jefferson argued for the necessity of establishing protections of central rights and liberties that were essentially protected from legislation by the sovereign state -- a constitution.

a. Are there distinct limits to the exercise and purpose of state power? (constitutionality)

b. Do these limits create constraints on the kinds of legislation that can be adopted by a majority of citizens for the whole of society?

The most common view of the content of a governing constitution for a legitimate state is the idea that it should embody the moral facts of liberty and equality for all citizens. But what does liberty involve? And what kinds of equality must be protected? Here are a few possible answers to the latter question.

a. Equality of worth and treatment
b. Civil and legal equality
c. Equality in opportunities to fulfill human capacities and plans

3. Is majority rule morally mandatory in a just state? (democracy) 

Is democracy required in a legitimate state, given the moral realities of human beings in association with each other? Is majority rule morally superior to other possible political decision rules -- dictatorship, oligarchy, random assignment of citizens to positions in government, ....?

What moral principles are involved in defending the idea that a majority is entitled to impose its will on a minority with respect to various issues of public policy?

4. Are there moral reasons for concluding that a just state must embody programs to ensure the basic needs of all citizens -- health, education, old age, decent housing, adequate nutrition? (public good)

a. Does the moral equality of all citizens create a broad social requirement that all citizens should be in a position to realize their human capacities and freedoms?

b. Do all members of society have obligations of concern for each other?

c. Is a society with extensive welfare provisions more politically stable and cohesive than one without those provisions?

d. Is a society with extensive welfare provisions more economically efficient and progressive than one without those provisions?

5. Do groups, nations, religious communities, classes, or races have independent moral value, over and above the value of the individuals who compose the population? (community)

a. Do citizens owe something to their fellow citizens (beyond not violating their constitutional rights)?
b. Should the state encourage or incentivize involvement in voluntary civil associations?
c. Can / should important collective tasks be left to the authority and competence of community associations?

The graph provided at the top of the post represents a tree diagram of kinds of political theories, depending on the YES/NO answers that a give theory provides to these questions.

If we conclude with Hobbes that a sovereign state is needed in order to secure public order and security in a society of independent and free individuals, then we are committed to the idea of a coercive state and system of law. If we reject that position, then we end with anarchism. (See Robert Paul Wolff's brilliant In Defense of Anarchism for coherent arguments along these lines.) As a next step, we ask whether there are moral limits on the scope of the state. Does a legitimate state require a constitution guaranteeing the rights, liberties, and equality of citizens? If yes, should the constitutional order be governed by majority rule (within the constraints of the constitutional protections)? if yes, then we get liberal democracy. 

We can next ask the question about the need for state-funded programs to ensure the basic needs of all citizens and protecting against life's unfortunate contingencies (illness, unemployment, disability, old age). If yes, we get social democracy (or the welfare state). If no, we get the classic laissez-faire constitutional democracy, the minimal state. 

Taking the anti-democratic route through the tree, we get various forms of authoritarianism and illiberal democracy; and depending on the answer to the question of redistribution for public wellbeing, we get fascism, populist authoritarianism, oligarchy, and populism.

The question of the moral importance of community is to some extent separate from this series of distinctions. But it can be related to a number of the outcomes in the diagram -- on both the conservative and the progressive side of the spectrum. Philosophers defending anarchism have argued for the ability of a community of equals to find cooperative ways of handling its social life. Republicanism attributes independent value to the whole, over and above the value of the individual citizens. Populism in its various versions highlights the primacy of specific groups (racial, ethnic, national, gender, ...). And communism puts the future of society as a whole ahead of the importance of individuals in society. 

One consistent set of political values leads us through this tree to a particular solution: the favored political system should be a constitutional social democracy. If we favor individual freedom, human equality, democracy, and social wellbeing, then what John Rawls refers to as a "property-owning democracy" (link) is the best solution. This system can be spelled out simply:

a. Constitutional guarantees of full and equal rights and liberties as citizens

b. Economic life is carried out in a market economy regulated to ensure fair equality of opportunity.

c. Taxation to ensure inequalities of wealth do not create inequalities of dignity and fulfillment of capacities

d. Public provision (tax-financed) of reasonably high level of basic needs -- food, shelter, education, healthcare

This amounts to Rawls's two principles of justice and his argument for a property-owning democracy (Rawls, Justice as Fairness). The liberty principle ensures the first point and the difference principle ensures the second point. The constraints involved in the idea of a property-owning democracy provide a solution to the apparent tension between liberty and equality.

A normative aspect to power

It sometimes seems as though there is a normative dimension to our concept of power. What if we defined "power" in these terms: an agent exercises power when he/she undertakes to compel individuals or groups to act in ways they prefer not to act, against their interests and without the justification of a legitimate state underwriting the compulsion. Notice that the last qualification entails that the exercise of power is by definition "illegitimate"; legitimate authority compels behavior but does not exercise power. So on this definition, there is a behavioral element and a normative element in the proposition that "A exercises power over B": A compels behavior by B and A does not have a legitimate political or moral right to do so.

This might appear to be largely a semantic question: what do we mean by "power"? Is the exercise of the enforcement of law within a procedurally and substantively just polity an exercise of "power"? Or is it rather the exercise of rightful authority?

Certainly it is correct to observe that the behavioral aspect of involuntary compulsion is present in both types of cases. The criminal who is imprisoned for his crimes is treated coercively, in that he is confined against his will; so the state has the ability to "compel individuals to act contrary to their will". If we took the element of compulsion and coercion as uniquely central, then both the lawful state and the extortion gang are exercising power -- over criminals and innocent citizens respectively. If, on the other hand, we think that coercively backed authority is something different from "power", then a democratically established legal authority cannot be said to be exercising power over its citizens (though it may do so over its international adversaries).

If we go down this road in analyzing power, then there is a close relationship between power, social justice, and democracy.

How would we decide this question? And does it have any importance for the purposes of social and political explanation, or for the design of social policies?