Liberal Vision

Beep, Beep

I recall watching a cold war documentary about 15 years ago, where one of the Soviet survivors recalled Russian pride in 1957 when the launch of Sputnik 1 edged the USSR over the USA in development of Space technology. On that day he said he wandered around town cheerfully saying “Beep, beep” to anyone who would listen and yet avoided being sent to Siberia.

In the US the event precipitated the Sputnik Crisis, a series of policy responses that led to the formation of NASA, millions in investment in education, and the most earnest period of the Space Race, eventually ‘won’ by America when they put the first man on the moon in 1969. That and the effective bankruptcy of the Soviet state.

President Obama, has used this allegory in his State of the Union address to consider the USA’s relative disadvantage to India and China in many areas of technology. Like the Space Race, this is apparently a contest the world hegemon can win by outspending their rivals. Beep, beep.

The President perhaps should review the Space Race more critically. Sputnik 1 for example burnt up in orbit after 3 months. It was a Russian Millennium Dome.

The Space Race itself whilst producing many spin off innovations such as dried fruit and no-fog ski goggles, was principally about national pride. It simulated heavy investment in science programmes in schools but it is unclear today why 1,200 US high schools need their own planetarium.

The Space Race was also a narrow field. There were clear milestones and achievements where somebody could be first. It is unclear what ‘winning’ against India and China actually looks like, in which fields this is at all likely, or what it has to do with the infrastructure investment programmes launched in the same speech.

The big news in Space today is that private companies think they can deliver what governments used to do better, faster and cheaper, with fewer explosions.

It is also the case that the changing fortunes of the world’s most populous countries is largely a matter of history and trade economics. With low standards of living and cheap education systems, India and China currently have comparative advantage across a wide range of goods and services. As that advantage drives up growth and living standards faster than the rest of the world, costs will rise and the advantage will erode.

In 50 years for example we may well be discussing South Africa’s rapid development as a threat to Chinese leadership. Only 20 years ago Japan were the new kids in town who were going to end up owning California (still for sale). The economics of cost inflation and inflexibility caught up with them and they’ve been in a rut for most of the last two decades, despite large technology and R&D advantages that persist today.

It is not at all clear then that the US or any other power can seek to address those changes through policy and spending, or why it matters. 

In fact by making it a race rooted in the 1950s Obama I think misses a trick about how the world has changed. The Space Race could happen, in no small part, due to the geopolitics of fear and threat between two superpowers. Chinese growth conversely has happened, in no small part, due to the removal of that threat and opening up of world economies.

Innovation today involves global collaboration and information sharing that would have been called espionage in the 1950s. For Amercians to ‘win’, in the sense of seeing their opportunities and living standards rise, the more R&D that can happen where it is most cost effective the better. At the moment that is India and China, not Indiana and Chattanooga.

In a liberalised, globalised world, a new type of battery developed in Mumbai can create jobs in Memphis, technology nationalism becomes less important.

In the UK for example we bemoan our inability to take great British ideas such as the computer and jet engine to market, but we have still benefitted massively from American exploitation of both. We struggle with the notion that despite having the best wind and tidal resources in Europe, most of the gear is better made in Germany.

What America needs then is less another ‘Sputnik moment’ and more self-confidence in their ability to work within an open world of many winners. Being the first flag in the moondust isn’t much of a win if all you leave behind is a flag and dust.

Anti-war what it is good for?

Sadly, only for making partisan political points it seems. A theme of foreign policy debates recently has been: ‘where did the anti-war movement go?’. The protests and venom aimed at George W. Bush’s foreign policy have all but nearly disappeared. The anti-war movement was political motivated, however, just because an action is politically motivated doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong. ReasonTV makes an interesting point:

Obama “has told us conscious lies” about Iraq…

If you have a spare 10-20 minutes – then I strongly recommend the thoughts from the man behind the last big leak:

What interesting to note is that Daniel Ellsberg’s behaviour can hardly be said to have brought the American hegemon to her knees. Ultimately he didn’t put US civilians at risk and he didn’t put US troops at risk. In fact, what he did contributed to the end of the Vietnam war. I’d say that’s a win on the side of the people.

All that liberals have to look out for now is whether the authorities treat Assange any differently than any other alleged rapist.

American Professor starts “Coffee Party” movement

Ok, he hasn’t actually started a “Coffee Party” movement, but he has written a blog post.

In his hypothetical half-serious 10-point manifesto, the excellent Bill Easterly proposes a tolerant, liberal agenda.

Among their policies and ideals, the Coffee Party…

• …”likes free trade”
• …recognises “tax-bloated government”
• …proposes “ending the War on Drugs”
• …”hates xenophobia towards immigrants”, specifically when “aimed at particular trading partners, falsely blamed for our economic woes.”
• …believes that “ALL ‘are by nature equally free and independent,’ and have ‘inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ men and women, blacks and whites, gays and straights, immigrants and natives, Christians and Muslims, citizens and foreigners, rich and poor.”

Surely this is something the LDs should support and emulate. Or at least it would be if it actually existed.

A Liberal Literary Hero: Mario Vargas Llosa wins the Nobel Prize for Literature

Liberal Vision has already celebrated the award of the Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, and now we celebrate the award of the literature prize to the liberal Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, whose great literary achievements have been accompanied by major contributions to  politics, and to political commentary in the Americas and in Spain.  For an overview of his literary achievements go to William Boyd at The Guardian and Marie Arana at The Washington Post.  Neither do justice to Llosa’s political views though, respectively describing Llosa as ‘libertarian right’ and ‘neo-liberal’.  Llosa defines himself as a liberal and criticises the use of the term ‘neo-liberal’.  While ‘libertarian right’ is a less intrinsically insulting term than neo-liberal, why should we call an advocate of progress in general, of secularism, gay marriage, and abortion rights, ‘right-wing’?

Llosa, who has Spanish citizenship, withdrew support from the centre-right Popular Party in Spain in 2007, to support the formation of Union, Progress and Democracy, which drew some of its leaders and activists from the Spanish left.  In any case, Llosa himself has ever adopted a right-wing identity, and that should be respected.  He clearly thinks of liberalism in the sense understood by classical liberals and libertarians, referring approvingly to Adam Smith, Tocqueville, and Mises.

Llosa began as a Communist in politics, but publicly turned against Latin America’s Communist icons Castro and Guevara, after persecution of the Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in the early seventies.  In the eighties Llosa became a public advocate of liberal political and economic ideas, culminating in his 1990 campaign for the Presidency of Peru, against the forces of left populism, Marxism, and the emergent authoritarianism of Alberto Fujimori.   Unfortunately Fujimori became President, but Llosa has continued to contribute to public life in Peru.  His resignation, a few weeks ago, from a commission overseeing a museum to commemorate a dirty war against he insurrectionary left, forced the government to drop a law to grant effective amnesty for human rights abuses of that time.

Llosa’s turn from Marxism to liberalism has earned him extraordinary enmity from leftist literati and intelligentsia, who are determined to smear him as supporting right-wing dictatorship and violent United States interventions in Latin America; and as a chauvinistic despiser of indigenous peoples in Latin America.   Llosa’s political writings and his literary creations clearly contradict such claims.  His novel The Feast of the Goat (2000) is a condemnatory portrayal of the right-wing dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.  The novel many consider his best, The War of the End of the World (1981), shows the horror of cruelty and fanaticism from all sources, referring to real events in nineteenth century Brazil.

Not only has Mario Vargas Llosa made a major contribution to liberal thought and culture, his son Alvaro Vargas Llosa is a very notable liberal writer on economics and politics, particularly with regard to Latin America.  More information can be found at The Independent Institute, where his journalistic articles are regularly posted.

Sadly only a small proportion of Mario Vargas Llosa’s political commentary is presently available in English.  There are some quotations below taken from items available online.  Names of  items, with links, are listed below, followed by items discussing Llosa on leading liberal websites.

‘Liberty, I believe, is the greatest contribution of the culture that created the sovereign individual, the owner of rights that other individuals and the state must respect at all times.   The culture that gives liberty an unprecedented and primary role in all realms of life has attained its leading role in science and technology, and has produced an abundance of wealth’ (‘The Children of Columbus’)

‘Globalisation opens up a first-class opportunity for the democratic countries of the world—and especially for the advanced democracies of America and Europe—to contribute to expanding tolerance, pluralism, legality, and liberty’ (‘Global Village or Global Pillage?’)

‘The idea of a world united around a culture of liberty is not a utopia but a beautiful and achievable reality that justifies our efforts’  (‘Liberalism in the New Millennium’)

‘Thus, the liberal I aspire to be considers freedom a core value. Thanks to this freedom, humanity has been able to journey from the primitive cave to the stars and the information revolution, to progress from forms of collectivist and despotic association to representative democracy. The foundations of liberty are private property and the rule of law; this system guarantees the fewest possible forms of injustice, produces the greatest material and cultural progress, most effectively stems violence and provides the greatest respect for human rights. According to this concept of liberalism, freedom is a single, unified concept. Political and economic liberties are as inseparable as the two sides of a medal.’ (‘Confessions of a Liberal’)

Links and Texts on Llosa:

• Mario Vargas Llosa (1995) Reason, ‘The Children of Columbus: From Violent Conquest to Common Culture’, LINK
• Mario Vargas Llosa (2001) Reason, ‘Global Village or Global Pillage? Why we must create a universal culture of liberty’, LINK
• A slightly different version of the above can also be found online
  ‘Liberalism in the New Millennium’ in ‘Global Fortune: The stumble and rise of world capitalism’, edited by Ian Vasquez, Cato Institute 2000.
• Mario Vargas Llosa (2005) American Enterprise Institute, ‘Confessions of a Liberal’, LINK
• Michael Valdez Moses, ‘Viva Mario’, Reason, LINK
• Nick Gillespie, ‘Mario Vargas Llosa Wins Nobel Prize in Literature  Reason, LINK
• Ian Vasquez on LLosa’s Nobel Prize, Cato@Liberty, LINK
• David Boaz ‘The Politics of Mario Vargas Llosa’, Cato@Liberty, LINK
• Ian Vasquez (2009) on Llosa’s view of Venezuela under Chavez. Cato@Liberty, LINK