9.2.1   Threats to Freedom

(This is an archived page, from the Patterns of Power Edition 3 book.  Current versions are at book contents).

People need to be vigilant, to prevent their governance from becoming a means of oppressing people.  Some leaders abuse their power for their own benefit.  All forms of domination have the potential for injustice:

·      In the feudal system, many aristocrats abused their entrenched privileges.  A modern equivalent could be seen in corrupt regimes like that in Tunisia in 2010, for example.[1]

·      Some forms of governance, which were composed solely of men, used their power to the extreme disadvantage of women; the Taliban’s version of Shariah law in Afghanistan was an example of this.[2]

·      Early capitalism led to the ruthless exploitation of workers, and Karl Marx’s response to that problem was to advocate communist revolutions.  Exploitation still exists, as in the 'sweatshops' in some developing countries for example.[3]

·      A State with too much central power can slide into totalitarian oppression, as described by Friedrich Hayek in his book The Road to Serfdom.  He quoted Leon Trotsky’s criticism of Lenin’s Russia:

“In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation.  The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.” [4]

·      There is a correlation between resource wealth and oppression by authoritarian governments.  Thomas Friedman pointed this out, in the case of oil wealth, in an article entitled The First Law of Petropolitics:

“Oil-backed regimes that do not have to tax their people in order to survive, because they can simply drill an oil well, also do not have to listen to their people or represent their wishes.”

The countries he cited were Azerbaijan, Angola, Chad, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela; he could also have mentioned Iraq if Saddam Hussein’s regime had still been in power. 

·      Governments can be corrupt (7.2.5), in what is sometimes referred to as a 'kleptocracy'.  Among the very many examples which could be quoted, the corruption in Ukraine and Turkey has recently been a cause of public anger.[5]

·      Wealthy individuals and corporations can dominate a political system, to further enrich themselves in what can become a self-perpetuating plutocracy (6.4.5).  In a meritocracy, those who rise to the top feel that there is some justification for their vast wealth – but their descendants cannot make the same claim and other people can see inherited wealth as unfair.

There are several examples of each of these abuses of power around the world; they are situations where a “Form of Government becomes destructive” and “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”, in the words of the American Declaration of Independence (9.2).

In a properly functioning democracy, leaders who abuse their power would be replaced at the next election – but in the absence of a credible opposition, or in an authoritarian system, there is a risk of social instability or even revolution.