Nicolas Maduro now rules a land of chronic hunger, horrific crime, terrible fear, and mass exodus. How does he maintain his dictatorship? With a pact of steel between his ruling party, the military, the secret police, and on-site foreign allies – especially Cubans. You would have to be mad to think that Maduro’s doing all this for the good of his people, or the good of the world. His only credible motivation is power-lust gone wild. Maduro is a pervert for power.
He’ll never admit this, of course. He still claims he’s doing it all for the people and the higher good. Here’s Maduro in an interview this February:
Venezuela is a country with dignity. We are patriots, revolutionaries. We have an ideology, that of Simon Bolivar. Our movement came from the depths from the Venezuelan people. We’ve been governing democratically for 20 years. Everything that we are, everything that we have, we have because of the popular vote.
Which raises a deeper question. Namely: Deep in his soul, when did Maduro stray from the path of decency?
For Maduro’s former fans, it’s tempting to sigh, “Power corrupts.” Power turns a good man bad. He – like his mentor Chavez – started out as an idealist. Yet ironically, he ended up a tyrant.
On reflection, however, this “ironic” account is absurd. Think about the nicest, sweetest person you personally know. Can you seriously imagine that this person, given power, would forge a brutal police state, destroy the economy, and cling to power with fire and blood? I can’t.
Indeed, think about the average person you know. You can probably imagine that this person would go along with great evil out of cowardice. Still, would the average person you know take the initiative to commit these horrors? That doesn’t make sense to me.
The lesson: Maduro was never an idealist. Indeed, he was never an average person. The average person in his shoes would have done far less evil, and relinquished power long ago. What Maduro has done reveals what Maduro has always been: insatiably hungry for power.
So what? Well, while this is all clear in hindsight, Maduro used to have millions of fans all around the world. Millions of fans who took his rhetoric at face value. Millions of fans who thought he was a noble man. And these fans would have called me paranoid and unfair for calling their idol a power-luster.
The fans’ error would have been understandable if Maduro were the first politician to start with idealistic rhetoric and end in savagery. In fact, however, history provides countless examples of this pattern. Which means two things.
First, while extreme power-lusters are a small fraction of humanity, they are a large fraction of successful politicians.
Second, regular human beings are awful at the detection of extreme power-lusters. When humans hear flowery words, their impulse is to take them at face value, instead of reminding themselves, “That’s just what a power-luster would say – and politics is packed with power-lusters.”
You could object, “Well, popular gullibility is for the best. If the man in the street assessed politicians realistically, political progress would be almost impossible.” The tempting reply is, “Yes, but political disaster would be almost impossible too.”
This reply, however, gives gullibility too much credit. Imagine a world where people were ever-mindful of politicians’ proclivity for power-lust. What would happen? Politicians would compete for popularity by promising and doing things that power-lusters hate to do. Things like: Respecting individual freedom, welcoming dissent, defining crime narrowly, heeding international criticism, avoiding even the appearance of demagoguery, and yes – shrinking government and cutting regulation. And given the documented dangers of politicians’ power-lust, that is just what anyone who cares about human welfare should be hoping for.
READER COMMENTS
Ghost
May 1 2019 at 11:13am
Consider the dynamics of the situation in a different way. A leader (generic leader – this may not apply to Maduro) starts out with a fair degree of ego (necessary job qualification) and a genuine belief that some sweeping rules are necessary for the greater good.
The imposition of these rules probably doesn’t work, and at minimum has unforeseen consequences and makes enemies. More rules are required, and the process escalates.
At some point the dictator does come to understand that his policies have not worked, and at least his former self would genuinely like to step aside. But he has created so many bitter, violent enemies that this is no longer possible without condemning himself and his family to death. Stopping being the dictator is not like shutting a grocery store. He carries on in power, probably with bitter denunciation of the enemies of the people who are frustrating his goals. But the real motivation is not lust for power, but fear of the consequences of giving it up.
Mark Bahner
May 1 2019 at 10:39pm
Absolutely. The two most likely immediate destinations for Maduro if he loses power are a prison cell and/or a morgue.
Roger Sweeny
May 5 2019 at 11:55am
Which is why somebody suggested that abdicating dictators should be assured a rich and long life after abdication, even though karma says they don’t deserve it. It may have been Tom Schelling; the idea is certainly Schellingesque.
I had thought something similar was done when Gaddafi gave up his nuclear weapons in 2003. “Don’t worry; we won’t do anything to harm you if you keep your nose clean.” Then, in 2011, the U.S. basically okayed a successful coup against him. I’m sure that has decreased the willingness of other leaders to give up their nukes (and increased their willingness to acquire them in the first place).
Fazal Majid
May 1 2019 at 12:02pm
Perhaps we should bring back one of the key institutions of Athenian democracy: ostracism followed by exile.
Floccina
May 1 2019 at 2:58pm
I think similarly of Bernie Sanders. He seemed to once believe in socialism now he just seems like a confidence man.
Mark Z
May 1 2019 at 7:36pm
I don’t think it necessarily is mere lust for power. I think some terrible, brutal leaders are actually very conscientious (this is not to say empathetic) people. They see sin all around them. In every price they see as too high or wage they see as too low, they see mortal sin in the manager, the owner, the investor; in every luxury, they see sin in the person enjoying it rather than distributing their wealth among the poor. In seeing sin everywhere, they see the generous allotment of punishment not only as permissible, but necessary. For Mao, the horror of revolution wasn’t a necessary evil, but a just punishment upon the wicked. Maduro may simply believe that his revolution is so morally necessary that those who stand in its way in any respect deserve what they get.
Floccina
May 2 2019 at 12:12pm
Excellent answer but take Bernie, he probably once thought like that, but surely he now knows we are all sinners the rich AND THE POOR, and the government worker who slacks off, and there are not only incentive problem but information problems, but since he is were he is he might as well go for POTUS.
MarkW
May 2 2019 at 9:27pm
They see sin all around them. In every price they see as too high or wage they see as too low, they see mortal sin in the manager, the owner, the investor; in every luxury, they see sin in the person enjoying it rather than distributing their wealth among the poor.
No. I mean this might be plausible if you were unfamiliar the fact that virtually every dictator in history enriches his family & cronies and lives a life of personal extravagance and luxury. In the case of Maduro (and Chavez) in Venezuela, here’s just one account googled at random. So no, the idea that an upright but tragically misguided Maduro is morally offended when he sees money being spent on opulence rather than on the poor — that doesn’t even begin to pass the giggle test.
MarkW
May 3 2019 at 8:12am
They see sin all around them. In every price they see as too high or wage they see as too low, they see mortal sin in the manager, the owner, the investor; in every luxury, they see sin in the person enjoying it
Off the top of my head, about the only historical dictator I can think of that this might apply to is Oliver Cromwell. Otherwise, the near-universal pattern is dictators enriching themselves, their families & cronies and living a life of luxury. And this definitely applies to Maduro and Chavez before him. A minimal amount of googling will reveal this, including an article in the Guardian titled “Maduro’s Turkish feast sparks outrage as Venezuelans go hungry”. When even the Guardian won’t vouch for a self-proclaimed socialist it’s long past time to stop giving the benefit of the doubt for good intentions.
Nathan Benedict
May 1 2019 at 9:04pm
I think Brian underestimates the power of cognitive dissonance. Imagine you’re Maduro–a dyed-in-the-wool central planner. You think you can manage Venezuela’s economy and greatly improve the lives of your citizens. You get into power and start pulling levers and flipping switches, but the economy starts getting worse, not better. It can’t be that central planning doesn’t work–you know better than that. It must be sabotage by counter-revolutionaries, currency speculators, foreign operatives, etc. You need to purge the evildoers for the benefit of everyone else. It’s sad, but a necessary evil. Like excising a cancer. So the crackdowns begin–you amp up the secret police, detain political opponents without trial, clamp down on opposition newspapers. Unfortunate, but necessary. And temporary! Once the socialist machine is up and running, you won’t have to be evil anymore. But then the economy just keeps getting worse. So you need to double down. You don’t understand why all your brilliant ideas aren’t working. You’re like a medieval doctor who doesn’t understand why more bleedings aren’t making the patient better.
I’m not saying this is necessarily the case with Maduro–maybe he was evil and power-hungry from the start. But I don’t think that’s the only conclusion we can draw from the evil acts of despots.
Fred
May 2 2019 at 12:15pm
In no way do I wish to defend the regime in Venezuela, but let us not miss the opportunity to do nothing for a change. US interventions to give far away countries better governments have a very mixed scorecard.
Phil H
May 3 2019 at 5:20am
“Politicians would compete for popularity by promising and doing things that power-lusters hate to do. Things like: Respecting individual freedom, welcoming dissent, defining crime narrowly, heeding international criticism, avoiding even the appearance of demagoguery, and yes – shrinking government and cutting regulation.”
This is quite helpful. It helps me to understand why I react so strongly against the “anti-PC” rhetoric. Because all of that is what political correctness is about, and those who disagree with it so often want to be loosed from PC’s bonds so that they can engage in some demagoguery, disrespect, and dismissal of dissent.
I have to agree with Caplan: it’s very hard to imagine how Maduro might end up doing what he’s doing unless in character he is just like Trump. The fact that Trump can win the popular vote (and Duterte in the Philippines, and various others) suggests to me that the procedural part of politics – party systems and the much-maligned electoral college – are actually more important than they’re given credit for.
JK Brown
May 3 2019 at 1:06pm
Character is revealed by how you act when their is little risk of accountability. It is not impossible that Maduro would have been a ruthless but benign competitor if he had not found his way into Chavez’s circle. But once there, in the power struggles, he found few limits on his actions. After gaining dominating power, even fewer limitations were in his way.
We could surmise Stalin similarly. He had the character that ran rampant when unleashed due to assumption of power, conditioned by the struggles against equally character-suspect inner circle competitors. But few gain sufficient power to moderate their savagery without inviting coups from competitors.
We see this savagery in socialist governments due to the concentration of power. It is limited to more petty levels in places like the United Kingdom due to the dispersion of power and the expected intolerance of the populace to a military dominance in institutions. Of course, having been disarmed the British no longer present a credible threat to murderous power-seeker taking power if the army permits it.
Joe Munson
May 3 2019 at 7:41pm
IMHO To the extent that leaders have good intentions, they are usually consequentialists egotistical people who think if they personally don’t take the reins of power (and do what “needs to be done” to do it, then the next guy will take the reins of power and be even worse.
This seems to be a plausibly true story in the case of some political leaders, but especially in the case of Africa, there are tons of leaders that seem to take pleasure in being murderous dicks.
Then again, when it comes to a few dictators, the lesser evil has to be me the story seems more plausible.
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