The Totalitarian Dream of a World Without Risk

by Lee McCracken

During the 20^th century much of the growth of the state was fueled by a Marxism-inspired vision of a world of economic and social equality. Even liberals who explicitly disavowed Marxism were often sympathetic to the cause of equality. In fact, one could almost define modern liberalism as the belief that society can be reconstructed along more egalitarian lines by means of government power.  

These days we don’t hear nearly as much talk about equality. Marxism has generally been discredited in all but a few dwindling circles. And yet, the state continues to grow, even under an allegedly “conservative” president and Congress. How do we account for the fact that, despite the demise of communism and the discarding of the wilder fantasies of liberalism and social democracy, the state continues to grow? What explains the complacency of the public in the face of a government as large and intrusive as ever?  

I think part of the problem is that the drive for equality has been replaced in many quarters by an obsession with the avoidance of risk. In a recent article for the London Spectator, Paul Robinson discusses the motives behind the move toward war with Iraq and wonders why a small country with an ineffective and demoralized military could come to be seen as such a threat to the most powerful nations in the world.  

“We live in an increasingly risk-averse culture, but have lost the ability to distinguish between those risks bearing a real but tiny degree of significance and those which are utterly insignificant. (One might easily draw parallels here with many aspects of civilian life, such as the obsession with safety on railways, etc.) We live in the most secure, comfortable environment in history and yet we are awash in a rising tide of paranoia. To defend our wealth and privilege, we feel entitled to inflict death and destruction on others to protect ourselves against the merest risk of a risk.”  

Avoiding risk is a natural instinct, of course. Hardly anyone courts risk for its own sake. That’s why we have insurance companies to help us plan for life’s unforeseeable twists and turns. But the desire to avoid risk at all costs can become an obsession—even the obsession of an entire society. The Great Depression was a traumatic experience for American society, and out of that experience came Franklin Roosevelt with his “Four Freedoms.” The first two, freedom of speech and freedom of worship, have unimpeachable libertarian pedigrees. But the last two--freedom from want and freedom from fear—marked a significant new development in what people expect from their government. Protection from the uncertainties of life has come to be seen as a major, if not the chief, duty of government. Take just a few examples of government interventions intended to eliminate risk from human life:  

• ·        The economy: We’ve long been moving from a true free-market economy, with its risks and uncertainties, to a form of managerial corporatism that tries to assure a steady flow of material goods to consumers while socializing the risks of doing business. As numerous free-market economists have argued, this is more likely to reduce economic growth and provoke more frequent economic crises.

• ·        Foreign policy: More and more explicitly the U.S. has adopted a policy of “global hegemony,” that attempts to prevent any “rogue” nations or budding superpowers from challenging the military supremacy of the U.S. and its allies. Ironically, this seems to have resulted in “blowback” that makes American citizens less safe than they would’ve been if we’d simply minded our own business.

• ·        Crime and punishment: We’ve been instating more and more draconian punishments (such as “three strikes” laws) to try and curb the rising tide of crime, including crusades against nonviolent “crimes” such as the War on Drugs, the failure of which has become increasingly evident.

• ·        Privacy and civil liberties: In response to the attacks of 9/11, Americans seem more willing than ever to exchange much of their personal freedom for the (illusory) assurance that this will prevent terrorists from inflicting more death and mayhem on us.

• ·        The safety and health police: There is mounting social pressure for the government to prevent us from doing anything that might be unsafe and/or unhealthy. Lawsuits against tobacco companies, gun manufacturers and fast food producers are only the tip of the iceberg, given the deep pockets out there waiting to be looted. Of course, while enriching a few lucky dopes and trial lawyers, this costs the rest of us both wealth and freedom.

Not only has increased government intervention in our lives failed to create a risk-free world, in many cases it has only exacerbated the problem. The thought that government will look after them has made too many people willing to give up on looking after themselves. People are tempted to use government to shift the costs of their own actions onto others, resulting in an increasingly irresponsible populace, and a riskier world. If someone else is picking up the tab, why not order the steak? When people are forced to bear the costs of their own behavior themselves, they tend to make more rational choices, which actually does result in a less risky world. The attempt to use government to stamp out risk is like dousing a fire with oil.

But the strongest argument against the omnipotent Nanny State is that it leads logically to totalitarianism. The only way to completely eliminate risk would be total control of every aspect of life. After all, virtually anything we do in any area of our lives could involve some potential risk, either to ourselves or to others. Eliminating all such risk would require surveillance and regulation beyond the dreams of all the tyrants in history. After all, this kind of control is for our own good. As C. S. Lewis once put it:

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

A tyranny of safety and security would bring human progress to a virtual standstill. Progress, whether commercial, technological, social or intellectual, requires people who are willing to take risks and bear the costs of those risks. No one, especially not a lumbering state bureaucracy, can dispel uncertainty from life. To try to would be to give up on the open society and exchange it for a prison.

Of course, no one is going to come right out and say that they want to eliminate all risk from the world. That would make them look pretty foolish. But, then again, not many welfare-liberals claim to be for absolute equality in all respects. The problem is that avoidance of all risk operates almost subconsciously as a hidden assumption in so many different aspects of government policy. After all, who could object to making the world just a little bit safer? And taken individually, these restrictions in the name of safety often don’t seem too objectionable. The cumulative danger, though, is a kind of “creeping” totalitarianism that will suffocate us like a heavy blanket rather than a jackboot in the face.

Even if a world without risk was a live possibility, rather than a utopian dream, achieving it would require stamping out human spontaneity and creativity. This would probably look a lot more like the passionless managerial dystopia of Huxley’s Brave New World than the Stalinist terror of 1984. It’s been said that those who would choose security over freedom deserve neither, but it seems more likely that those who choose security over freedom won’t get either.