LETTERS
On Chile Editor: Stanley Plastrik's generally excellent article on the Chilean tragedy, in your Winter 1974 issue, characterized Unidad Popular's vote of 43 percent in the 1973 legislative...
...2) I discussed amnesty in an interview, transcribed in When Can 1 Come Home?, without sufficently demonstrating that one can consistently support, as I do, the duty to punish, the right to grant amnesty, and the non-exercise of that right...
...Had they, I should favor pardons...
...Damico advocates deserves serious consideration, even if some of his argumuents do not...
...Non sequitur...
...I think it is a good first attempt at injecting a different mode of thought into the debate concerning the character of conservatism...
...Most of Mr...
...but, unlike ordinary crime, it is political and public...
...Rights and obligations always are qualified by others...
...Thus the only important action for which Allende could claim national consensus was the action whose ultimate consequences undid all the social accomplishments of his term...
...2) the right of the government to grant amnesties...
...I feel certain that this confuses revolution with civil disobedience— persuasive, coercive, or otherwise...
...Countering this would be the increase in the cost of oil imports, but this is insignificant in Chile, the only substantial coal producer in Latin America...
...But the application to those accused of violating laws is always a judicial process...
...Damico chides me for "translating the political dispute over opposition to the Vietnam war into a judicial question of legal right and wrong...
...Nowhere does van den Haag acknowledge that the exiles were disobeying a severely compromised government...
...On this point, I will only say that his retributionist argument that punish...
...Joseph Epstein's fine review of "The First Twenty Years" was seriously marred for me by his glib reference to the early days of DISSENT which, "from the standpoint of design was very far from eye-catching—fit more for the kitchen than for the coffee table...
...On Chile Editor: Stanley Plastrik's generally excellent article on the Chilean tragedy, in your Winter 1974 issue, characterized Unidad Popular's vote of 43 percent in the 1973 legislative elections as its peak...
...The making of laws is, of course, a political process...
...Presuming that they are not just "mixedup kids," the answer is that their acts are those of conscientious refusal, e.g., disobedience of a direct legal injunction addressed to the individual...
...Under these circumstances the 43 percent result showed that a much broader stratum of workers besides the slum dwellers was still voting for the Left coalition, no longer partly for short-term economic reasons, but strictly out of identification with the first regime that really represented them...
...Stubborn as was the loyalty to the regime of this 43 percent of the voters, they obviously could not stand up against the army, backed by the middleclass organizations and the U.S...
...The enormous resulting loss of foreign exchange was the precipitating factor in Chile's economic crisis...
...Damico advocates...
...An odd way of saying there should be no law...
...It is, finally, not necessary to agree with the exiles' politics...
...I cannot see how granting them amnesty would increase respect for the democratic processes they exempted themselves from...
...SAUL MENDELSON 0 Chicago Amnesty Editor: "In Defense of Amnesty" [Winter 1974 issue], Mr...
...ERNEST VAN DEN HAAG New York ALFONSO J. DAMICO replies: It would be interesting but probably inconclusive to argue further with Mr...
...3) the advisability of exercising that right in favor of resisters and deserters in the Vietnam conflict...
...van den Haag about why we punish people...
...What Mr...
...And now, another ironic aspect of the situation...
...During that first year, the real wages of the majority of the population increased substantially, though partly as a result of methods that later contributed to the inflation...
...Neither can be legal...
...All that amnesty requires is that we admit that their convictions and doubts about the war were neither frivolous nor were they honored without paying a price...
...Threats are (negative) promises and pacta sunt servanda—promises must be kept, if only to remain credible...
...The offenders escaped or deserted because they oppose a war the country was fighting which they thought unjust—because they gave priority to their political judgment over the decisions of the government, the legitimate authority...
...The irony of this aspect of the Chilean tragedy lies in the fact that nationalization was voted unanimously by the National Assembly in which the Left coalition was a minority...
...Happy birthday...
...No one knows the exact figure, but I think 10,000-20,000 is a generous estimate...
...These are worthwhile purposes...
...If they are not, laws become options, and the government would have cheated those who did believe that legal threats were serious, who obeyed the law to their disadvantage, having been deceived into believing that they had no choice, that laws would be enforced...
...Damico speaks of 75,000-125,000 exiles...
...However, in explaining the factors contributing to the country's economic dislocation and thereby creating the basis for the military takeover, Plastrik omits one very important factor—the nationalization of the copper mining industry...
...Traditional theories of civil disobedience have made it difficult to defend such political offenses by biasing opinion against resistance that evades the legal punishment...
...But they either intended to impose their political views or to avoid a legal duty for personal reasons...
...Damico's errors could have been avoided had he kept apart these areas...
...if there is to be law, violation of it must be punished...
...van den Haag had chosen to say something about Locke's teaching that as more and more citizens become estranged from the government the presumption is no longer on the side of the state's officers...
...It is this refusal by the critics of amnesty to consider the political context within which the exiles' resistance occurred which keeps them from seeing that the case for amnesty does overturn the presumption in favor of punishment...
...They might be sentenced to undertake some public service in place of the military service they refused...
...The law permits conscientious objection (which need not be religious) but prohibits desertion and refusal to serve by those not recognized as objectors...
...At the very least, we must recognize that the sorry record of political lying and the barbaric prosecution of the Vietnam War are things that count in "adjudicating" the political dispute between the exiles and the government...
...ment is necessary so as to restore a position of equality between the exiles and those "who obeyed 462 LETTERS the law to their disadvantage" harshly pretends that draft resistance and desertion, like burglary and embezzlement, yield significant but illicit gain...
...This is precisely the program under which the Venezuelan oil industry is operating today, although the government is now considering an earlier date for reversion of oil properties to the government than the 1983 date in the present law...
...I only intended the example to meet the objections of those who argue that we cannot tolerate behavior that increases the burdens of others (e.g., the chances of military service) and to suggest that we are capable of dealing with particular cases without undermining the generality of the rule of law...
...Would amnesty achieve them...
...Those who did serve would bitterly resent the middle-class kids who got away with it—even if they are well-meaning kids...
...Another minor point evidently needing clarification is my assertion that the exemption of religious conscientious objectors demonstrates the society has and can again treat men partially rather than impartially...
...3) Let me correct some further misapprehensions before explaining why I oppose granting the particular amnesty Mr...
...No one, with the possible exception of the anarchist, would want to deny that once the rule of law is embraced as a good, there is a presumption in favor of punishing those who break the law...
...The major achievement of Allende's immediate predecessor, Frei, was the "Chileanization" of the copper industry, under which the state became 51 percent owner of the mines, with the companies being forced to adhere to a schedule of investment for expansion, under pain of expropriation otherwise...
...If this means, as Mr...
...I distinguish persuasive civil disobedience, an attempt to persuade society to change laws or policies by symbolic resistance and acceptance of penalities, from coercive civil disobedience, which tries to impose the views of the disobedient minority on the majority and thus implies the partial or total overthrow of democratic legitimacy...
...If this program had been continued by Allende, he could have, as the next step, secured legislation setting an actual date for nationalization some years hence, in the meantime requiring maintenance and expansion of production and steps in Chileanization of all levels of personnel...
...Pitkin reluctantly but graciously agreed...
...Whenever someone violates the law in the course of a "political dispute" his violation, not the dispute, becomes "a judicial question"—just as it does if a husband, in the course of a "marital dispute," violates the law...
...As I indicated in my Political Violence &' Civil Disobedience (Harper Torchbooks, 1972), which Damico quotes, I do not think that the law should always be obeyed, let alone that "disobedience is an attack on democracy...
...The unfortunate legacy of Socrates' example is that it focuses our attention upon the "sincerity" of the disobedient's motives...
...Neither justice, nor politics, nor the defendants, require prison terms now...
...Such refusal is, indeed, personal...
...Workers and democrats in Chile will have to wage their struggle in the context of an economic situation favorable to their torturers...
...If punishment, including alternative service, is being defended to provide gratification for those who obeyed the law, the answer is that the exiles have already paid a price...
...The dispute may be marital, but the adjudication of his violation becomes "a judicial question...
...These were (and are usually) exempted...
...As someone who had the pleasure of listening to Professor Oakeshott at the L.S.E., I was always amazed at the subtlety of his thought and the systematic quality of his insight...
...Coercive, unlike persuasive, civil disobedience is justifiable only in such extreme instances as justify the impairment or abolition of democracy...
...But even here I am still not sure that I understand what he means by "coercive" civil disobedience...
...Damico protests, "that the law supporting the government's politics must automatically take precedence over the politics of the government's opponents," this is the nature of the animal...
...Shades of Chardin...
...It is time, in any case, to stop making entries in van den Haag's calculus of grievances and satisfactions...
...Thus, the exiles are not "punished simply for their political position" as he asserts, but for violating the law— whatever their motives which, I grant, were often political, more often mixed, or mixed up...
...Amnesty would hardly justify lawlessness...
...Those who fled did not engage in persuasion...
...Governments have traditionally tempered justice with mercy (justitia dulcore misericordiae temperata is the phrase) by pardoning individuals or granting amnesties...
...firms was overwhelming...
...Hence the state must do what the law threatens—punish violations...
...Damico opposes my views on at least three matters...
...either can be morally justified under different but always stringent conditions...
...the obligation to punish is no exception...
...Such a discussion was present in the original manuscript, but because of the length of the essay (one of the two or three longest we've ever published) we had to suggest that the section be cut...
...What it might do is register a public belief that whenever possible— which is most of the time—tl^e government should avoid pursuing policies in stch a way that political differences become political wars...
...Clearly the political appeal of expropriation of the great U.S...
...But if the exiles are not civil disobedients, what are they...
...The law threatens to punish violators, and the state has the obligation to enforce it...
...Actually, a year after the 1970 election of Allende, Unidad Popular obtained 49 percent in nationwide municipal elections...
...Thus, the obligation to always punish violators arises from the need to keep faith with nonviolators, and to keep the laws credible, from the sworn duty of government officials to do justice by enforcing the law...
...In this connection, I wish Mr...
...By worrying about the conscientiousness of the exiles' behavior, van den Haag and others can avoid considering the substantive events that occasioned the resistance...
...However, by 1973 all but the inhabitants of the poblaciones had suffered a substantial decline in living levels...
...But amnesty would smack of retroactive justification of unadmitted law violations...
...He suggests amnesty would heal the wounds of conflict, bring more unity and more respect for democratic institutions, and is the best way to help decent kids to return to the home they fled...
...HOWARD ASTER Hamilton, Ontario Editorial Note: Hanna Pitkin is not to be faulted for the absence of a discussion of Experience and Its Modes...
...I don't think so...
...Why the original DISSENT cover design had a quality of the hand which, like it or not, was in every sense far more in keeping with the values and purpose of the magazine than the present tubular machine esthetic of the '30s, fit, I dare say, only for the coffee tables of those whose mechanized kitchens never achieved an independent identity...
...I simply do not know how an argument for amnesty—a legal measure—can be construed as an "odd way" of rejecting all law...
...It would be divisive and erosive of lawful democratic processes, not least because the arguments advanced for it justify the offenses for which amnesty is to be granted...
...It is far from clear that they exempted themselves from "lawful democratic processes...
...Damico finds that "religious conscientious objectors" received differential treatment and he argues that, therefore, war resisters should...
...I apologize if my failure misled Damico into believing that I think amnesties should never be granted...
...Amnesty sometimes reduces conflict (e.g., after a civil war), but here it would not...
...Other ideas leave me perplexed...
...During the last year of the Allende regime copper prices rose substantially, as they are continuing to rise, like those of all other metals, on the world market...
...It would be most helpful for someone to continue the exploration of Oakeshottianism and to explore it in its earliest statement in this 1933 work...
...He seems to mean the coercive imposition of a minority view upon the majority, involving finally the overthrow of democracy...
...The offenders were not, in the main, pacifists opposed to all wars...
...In addition there was a modest rise in Chile's copper production in 1973...
...Amnesty means forgoing (literally forgetting) justice in favor of charity, and I see nothing wrong with doing so— at times...
...It is a strange doctrine that has little to do with the exiles...
...wherefore I shall consider separately: (1) the duty of the government to punish lawbreakers...
...In the present period which is experiencing a great revival of "handicraft," I suggest that the present design of DISSENT is sadly reactionary compared to the level of the magazine's contents, which continues to be responsive to "current" events...
...Professor Oakeshott has had a profound impact upon the development of political theory and especially the reassertion of the conservative point of view in Britain...
...The article by Professor Pitkin is, however, deficient in one obvious manner...
...Meeting that obligation may also have the desirable effect of deterring other 461 people from violations, but the obligation is independent of it...
...I do not think that I blurred the obvious distinction between the existing legal recognition of some forms of conscientious objection and the proposed legal recognition of the exiles' objection to the Vietnam war...
...The great "socialist" impressionist old Pere Pissaro, not to mention Cezanne's table-top rising up in revolt at such a visual sell-out...
...It is in this work that Oakeshott develops the distinction between the practical and the philosophical modes of thought, experience, and discourse...
...Damico asks that I "show that the state is under some form of obligation to punish a violation of the law...
...I favor leniency for those who want to return and plead guilty to what they were guilty of...
...Conservatism, the doctrine which Professor Pitkin explores, must be understood as emerging from this prior distinction of experience into these modes...
...I may be wrong on all three, but for independent reasons...
...I thought I had, but will again...
...Punishment need not automatically follow, but the presumption must be overcome...
...1) Mr...
...The politics of the opponents certainly cannot take precedence over the law...
...Considering the distress and suffering of life in exile, there is something unreal about comparing the exiles' advantages with the disadvantages of the law-abiding or, more exactly, those who served in Vietnam...
...Over and above all the damage done to Chile by the financial machinations of the U.S., the fact remains that nationalization caused a severe drop in copper production, partly because of the departure of managers and engineers, partly because of lengthy strike struggles of the miners against the government...
...The most neglected and in many ways the most critical statement of Oakeshottianism is found in his work Experience and Its Modes, written in 1933...
...Indeed, it is true to say that the "Oakeshottian School" of political thought has emerged in Britain in the past 20 years...
...Damico seems to say that since we do not punish those who take what is lawfully theirs, we should not punish those who take unlawfully what is not theirs...
...JOCELYN BRODIE Keene, N. H. LETTERS 463 On Oakeshott Editor: Hanna Pitkin's article in the Fall 1973 issue, entitled "Oakeshott and the Denial of Politics," was a most thoughtful and intelligent exposition of some of the ideas contained in the works of Michael Oakeshott...
...Prof...
...1 Anniversary Note Editor: Please consider this a mere footnote, that is to say, a chip off the old kitchen table esthetic of the original DISSENT design...
...The military dictatorship will now benefit from the first largescale reversal of trade terms in favor of the developing countries in over 20 years...
...What van den Haag does instead is to focus upon the character or nature of the exiles...
Vol. 21 • July 1974 • No. 3
