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Why modern Iran reminds me of Prussia in the early 1860’s

In the early 1860’s the majority of the Prussian parliament refused to accept new taxes (to finance higher military spending) without parliamentary control of the government.

If the liberals in the parliament had been libertarian they would have opposed the new taxes whether or not the government was subject to the control of parliament (the extra military spending was certainly not needed – Prussia was not being threatened with invasion by anyone), but at least they opposed the tax increase.

The Prussian chief minister Otto Von Bismark collected the new taxes in defiance of the Prussian parliament. The liberals made speeches, they conducted votes, they signed petitions – and Bismark ignored them. The Prussian minister understood that government rests on force (‘blood and iron’) not opinion. If the liberals could not defeat the government in battle their opinions were not relevant.

Why does this bit of old history put me in mind of modern Iran? Well in Iran there is a parliament whose votes are often ignored by the unelected ‘Supreme Leader’ and ‘Council of Guardians’. And now the Leader and Council are trying to stop many people (including sitting members of the institution) even standing for election to the parliament. What do the parliamentarians do? Well they make speeches, conduct votes, sign petitions – and indeed ‘resign’ (your enemies are trying to kick you out of something, so you resign your membership of it and this is supposed to hurt your enemies?).

David Hume may not have invented the idea that all government rests on opinion rather than force, but he certainly spread the notion (whether he really believed in it or not is another matter) and like many of the other ideas he spread (whether or not he believed in them) the idea is false.

It is false for kings as well as parliamentarians. Louis XVI studied Hume’s History of England and absorbed the notion that Charles I did not die because he lost the Civil War (as ‘ignorant people’ believed), but because he used force – and thus left himself open to force. So Louis XVI did not fight (and ordered others, such as the Swiss Guard, not to fight) – the revolutionaries killed him anyway.

Just as the ‘I’ does exist and is not just a stream of sensations (who is having the sensations?), and just as the physical universe is not just ideas in the mind (yes the very mind whose existence Hume, at times, tried to cast doubt upon), and just as ‘simple’ people are correct in thinking that determinism and moral responsibility are radically incompatible (whatever ‘compatible-ism’ may say), so some governments rest on force not opinion.

If the liberals in Prussia in the early 1860’s wanted to have parliamentary rule they would have had to have been able to use force well enough to defeat their enemies. And if the parliamentarians (and their supporters) wish to have parliamentary rule in Iran they must be able to the same.

Perhaps I am wrong and, in this case, it is a matter of ‘opinion’ – perhaps the parliamentarians simply do not wish to use violence against the Supreme Leader and the Council of Guardians (in which case they should shut up and go home – as violence is the only language their foes understand), but I suspect that the real ‘opinion’ that matters here is the judgement of relative military force. In which case the parliamentarians (and their supporters) better get themselves stronger forces.

12 comments to Why modern Iran reminds me of Prussia in the early 1860’s

  • Julian Morrison

    The idea “government rests on opinion rather than force” is NOT false – because nobody carries out force without first choosing to, nor can a minority hang onto their force-wielding abilities without sufficient public backing so they are fed, supplied, and not sniped/knifed/poisoned etc.

    If the parliamentarians are getting nowhere in Iran, it’s probably because they don’t control a large enough bloc of public opinion.

  • Doug Collins

    Force certainly explains a lot, but it won’t explain everything.

    For example, I think the Soviet Union fell mainly from economic causes. When the people of a country quit working any more than they absolutely have to, the system is doomed to fall sooner or later. Reagan may have sped things up and Yeltsin may have kept them moving when he climbed on that tank – but as long as the average Soviet citizen was resigned to drinking himself to death, the system was going to become history.

  • Paul Marks

    Well first to Mr Morrison.

    Yes – quite so. Someone has to first CHOOSE to defeat his foes in battle before he can do so (unless something odd is going on – say his rifle goes off by accident and they all panic and run away). However, this is not what is normally meant by “public opinion” (I apologise if I was not clear in what I was writing about).

    As for the parliamentarians needing a bigger slice of public opinion. No, what they actually need is lots of firepower and skill-at-arms.

    Now if one must deal in “opinion” – moving the opinion of key sections of the armed forces might be useful to them. Assuming (of course) that the parlimentarians have made the choice to fight – in this Mr Morrison is quite right, if people do not CHOOSE to fight it is a waste of time to consider them further.

    Mr Collins is also correct – the Soviet Union followed a basically socialist line (with a bit of private ownership and trading round the edge – such as the private plots that some peasants had), and as such it was never going to match the half free societies of the west (in spite of its vastly greater natural resources).

    As for actual collapse though – well that is a difficult one, the Soviets had prices for capital goods to copy (the prices privately owned capital goods were traded for in the half free west) and whilst such prices would not have been exactly right for their situation they were good enough for the Soviets to get by (at least for a few decades).

    I simply do not know whether (without Ronald Reagan) the Soviets would have actually collapsed any time soon – I like to think they would, but I do not know.

    As for Iran (and Islamic fundamentalist rule in general). Why should that collapse?

    True it is evil (the treatment of women and so on), and ture it is not a free market (restrictions on lending money for interest, special taxes, and so on). But things do not vanish just they are evil – and the West is not made up of free market societies either.

    Western nations tend to have governments taking between a third and a half of output in taxes and borrowing, they have vast webs of rules and reguations, and they have absurd fiat money and politically dependent fractional reserve financial systems.

    I see no reason to ASSUME that the West will beat radical Islam in the long term.

  • Jacob

    Juliam Morrison:
    “…nor can a minority hang onto their force-wielding abilities without sufficient public backing so they are fed, supplied, and not sniped/knifed/poisoned etc.

    If the parliamentarians are getting nowhere in Iran, it’s probably because they don’t control a large enough block of publick opinion”

    Totally and absolutely false.

    Troughout the whole history of mankind, a minority (mostly a small one) ruled over a great majority, by force, brute force alone. That is true from ancient Egypt up to the Soviet Union. The group or gang which manages to effectively control the army imposes it’s will on the rest of the population and force them, usually by use of terror, to support economically the rulers.

  • Andy Danger

    Paul, thank you for putting your finger on a thought that’s been hanging half-formed at the back of my brain for a couple of weeks now. I really want to believe that Iran is on the verge of revolution, but I’ve seen nothing from the reformists to indicate that they actually have the means. Until they have the sympathy of the military, and barring any outside interference from the US, I don’t think they have much of a chance in the near future. We need look no further than North Korea to see a regime which rules with an iron fist through the military when at least 95% of the public must loathe it.

    However, I think you’re too hard on Hume — as Doug points out, the divide between public opinion and force is not as clear-cut as you purport it to be. If there is not adequate support/funding to keep the force propped up, the regime will collapse (a fate North Korea seems to gradually be heading toward).

    Also — and I hesitate to drag this off-topic, but I can’t resist — you say that “determinism and moral responsibility are radically incompatible.” Does this mean you deny determinism? (Think hard before answering. ;))

  • T. J. Madison

    A few strong willed people equipped with the proper weapons can intimidate the herd of sheep that is most of humanity. It is simply a matter of sufficient ruthlessness. A little deception helps too.

  • Guy Herbert

    It isn’t a matter solely of force.

    Governments maintain their power by obtaining consent, by making it too much trouble to oppose just as much as by making it dangerous to do so, and by providing a firmer, more focussed organisation for their supporters than their oponents. Their task is made easier by the fact that a substantial chunk of the population everywhere is instinctively conservative and will support the established order whatever it happens to be at the time.

    That’s why revolutions frequently occur as a response to attempts at reform: the old system weakens itself and an unexpected enemy harnesses the young radicals and the reactionaries distressed by moderate change to the same scythed chariot. Bismarck and the Iranian mullahs were indeed playing the same game, as is Blair.

  • The importance of opinion and speeches is a bit understated in this item. The truth is that the allegiance of armed forces is up for grabs in a civil war and the speeches and nonviolent actions are important to the calculus of violence because it is swaying an unknown number of armed and militarily trained men away from the mullahs.

    The effect of such actions is discernible in Iran’s military table of organization where for some time now, the hard line forces have been relying on foreign troops to do their dirty work and less and less on the regular army. It would also be discernible in treason trials and officer removals in Iranian armed forces, of which there have been plenty.

    So, directly, is speech effective against guns? It is not. But speech can be effective in turning the guns around and the correlation of forces can shift without the wider world being aware of it, leading to the peaceful transfer of power without actual violence.

  • steph

    The last few posters, especialy TM Lutas are spot on. All government rests of concent in the sense of the aquiesence of the population. This is as true of the old Soviet Union as any place. If the population had ever chosen to resist the KGB by killing agents sent into their buildings the regiem would have fallen much sooner. The fact that a large persentage of the Urban population was on the KGB pay role indicates that the government had the necicary aquiesence. The Soviet Union fell when no gave much of a dam about the system, with the exception of the party eliete and they realized that only reform could make the system work. A similar situation is occuring in Iran. Those who truely supported the regiem mostly died in the Iran Iraq war. What is left is the habitual aquiesence. The old guard Mullahs realized they needed some reform, remember that the revolution started as a quasi democratic – leftist – religious revolution with the mullahs coming out on top. However being more idiologicaly aware than there counterparts in the old Soviet Union, the Mullahs are unwilling to make fundimental reforms. Thus the liberalizing elliments have taken to the streets. The opinion of the armed forces will in the end be the decisive elliment, but only once the habit of aquiesence is broken.

  • Paul Marks

    Well I did write a reply for Mr Danger (on determinism and other matters – but I can not get it to him). I would be happy to send it to him if he wished me to do so.

    Steph – no doubt much of what you say is true. However, there were decades of resistance to Soviet Power (with much courage). And I am not just thinking of the resistance in the Ukraine and the Baltic Nations. Russians also faught.

    I dought that the Soviets (for all their brain washing) ever had majority support for Marxism within their Empire.

    We must be careful not to blame the victims.

  • Antoine Clarke

    Sure ‘determinism’ is baloney.

    As that great libertarian the Reverend Jesse Jackson once put it:

    It ain’t your fault if you get knocked down by the system, but it is your fault if you do not get up again!

    [I am quoting from memory, so it probably was worded better than that]

  • Bíró Zoltán

    Comment deleted: spam is not tolerated