Foreword
After a strange version of my book WikiLeaks’ Unforgivable Liberalism was first published, the publisher subsequently insisted in cosmetic changes, which for obscure reasons took forever, before it finally was republished. Under that time, one of my relatives died when I visited his family, another died closely thereafter. I dedicate this article to one of these gentlemen
To Hernan Concha Osa, when he was young.
I had many disagreements with him, but admired him for his courage and principled defence of dignity and common decency. He belonged to a rare breed that seem exotic nowadays, perhaps because they are at the brink of extinction. He was a Christian Democrat with a spine, who had a decisive role in the election of the Chilean Socialist president Salvador Allende. He gave Allende his support because he felt that it was the right thing to do, because it was what the people of Chile wanted at the time. He paid a high price for that decision – harassment, torture and imprisonment at the concentration camps haunted him for the rest of his days. He was one of the few of my relatives who expressed real appreciation for my work. He was eager to read my book before he sadly passed away. I am sure he would have liked this one.
I always work alone, but I am grateful for any or support comments. Feel free to contact me at [email protected]
Manuel Echeverría
2020-03-24
Abstract
This paper shows how a population can be enslaved while maintaining the perception of freedom. It establishes that three Principles of Democracy-Adapted Power (PDAP) are enough to explain how such enslavement is carried out, and pins down a corresponding group of organizations adapted to make such endeavor viable. Then it is investigated if these principles qualify as a conspiracy theory. In order to do so, a critique of a recent philosophical discussion about secrecy and conspiracy is deemed necessary. I show that the PDAP do not qualify as a conspiracy theory but rather explain how formidable conspiracies can come about, and indeed are expected to emerge. Several properties of conspiracies are established from a coherent theoretical framework. I show that the concepts of secrecy and conspiracy developed by Dentith and Orr are unfit to carry out a coherent discussion on the subject. The Cambridge Conspiracy is a hypothetical example which underscores why. It also shows how a Democracy-Adapted Organization exerts its subtle influence.
Introduction
The philosophical discussion about conspiracy theories moved beyond Popper’s dismissive view as a consequence of Pidgen’s (1995) methodical dismantling of the famous philosopher’s arguments. Pidgen showed that Popper’s presumably general critique of conspiracy theories, in fact was based on a corny conception of what a conspiracy theory is, and a gross understatement of the influence of secret plots throughout the history of humankind. As a good Philosopher, Pidgen also managed to show that central tenets of Poppers philosophy by no means were incompatible with a concise and analytically uncontroversial definition. Pidgen made the important point that a conspiracy theory is just a theory about at least one conspiracy, where a conspiracy simply is a secret plan pursued by a group to influence events by covert action.
Ultimately Pidgen (2007, in press) successfully argues, from a natural set of assumptions, that if you are not a conspiracy theorist, then you are an idiot. The research agenda to treat conspiracy theories as any other theory is an elegant solution to mountains of confusion regarding these theories. From there, the toolkits of science and philosophy can be applied to address issues such as hypothesis testing and the nature of evidence in contexts of strategic interaction through covert means. The ethical dimension of this agenda highlights conspiracies from powerful groups who claim innocence, such as state terrorism of affluent democracies against its own citizens or those of the underdeveloped world.
Unfortunately, I think these virtues have been compromised lately by confusion and trivialization of the subject. Although it may seem superficial to point out, the insistence on the label conspiracy theory seems to have diverted attention to a seemingly unintended focus on definitions bordering shallow semantics. Although Pidgen did bother to loosely define what a conspiracy and conspiracy theory is, it is by no means evident that his focus was to craft a once-and- for-all official definition. He did however elaborate on the relationship to other philosophical concepts and the nature of society. There is no tension here when the focus concerns relationships or valid statements about terms, rather than elaborated definitions about what these terms are (See e.g. Kac & Ulam, 1992).
It is perfectly reasonable to subscribe to all valid arguments of the Philosophers in the field (figuratively speaking), and still use the term conspiracy theory as a derogatory. I am simply not convinced it is tactically wise to reclaim the term as prominent philosophers of the subject recommend. Moreover, their preference seems to have caused the language to become strained at times. An example that captures these issues, is when Dentith (2018) states that there ‘is no need to take any stipulation that conspiracy theories are necessarily false’. However, a conspiracy theory could be partially defined as: If a theory about a conspiracy is not false, then it is not a conspiracy theory.
This is equivalent to: If it is a conspiracy theory, then the theory about conspiracy is false. Which corresponds to the usual encyclopaedia notion of the term, and there is nothing which forces the user of such necessary condition to act upon the theory with prejudice. Whether the theory is false or not is an open question which is to be decided with due diligence, exactly as these philosophers otherwise propose.
Principles of Democracy-Adapted Power
I argue, in line with a vibrant, long-standing tradition, that information, organization and power are intimately linked. This line of thought has been advanced for centuries by the likes of Foucault, Bentham and Sun Tzu. Well-functioning democracies are important objects of study in this regard because power must adapt to the rule of law and publicly acclaimed norms of individual freedom and transparency. It is in presumably free societies that the machinery of power is taken to its limits.
I suggest that three principles are enough to understand a significant set of powerful strategies, which are adapted to operate in democracies while remaining unseen. From these it becomes apparent that it is feasible to enslave a mass of people in a free society with impunity, and keep such state of affairs hidden. I then derive a group of democracy-adapted organizations which can sustain large-scale covert oppression in a formally free society, and like the strategies themselves, remain unseen. I conclude that it is in theory conceivable to have conspiracies which span civil society, public institutions, the business community etc. but where the state of affairs have the appearance of a free society. Moreover, it is not only feasible with large-scale conspiracies, the incentives seem to push thing in that direction. The principles of democracy-adapted power are:
(i) Agents have no incentives to confess their manoeuvre
(ii) The manoeuvre must be invisible to third parties
(iii) No incentives for a target to make the manoeuvre public.
The conditions should be regarded as an ideal case, and (ii) can also be understood in terms of incentives. The manoeuvre may be a set of strategies, may obey all the conditions, and in particular be an offence. If these principles are the object of rigorous reasoning, then it may be prudent to e.g. specify if credible witness statements should be emphasised in (iii), incentives and unknown strategies, timing, etc. It is also understood that such considerations may lead to technical digressions without new insights.
Offences can be meaningfully understood in a SS-scheme obeying the principles, where a first set of strategies (S1), aims to weaken a victim, e.g. by isolation – which makes it easier to contain and control. Offenders may then proceed by dealing a crushing blow (S2). In many settings, the character of S1 can be thought of as more gradual and long-term in comparison to S2, which is more of a shock. It is for purpose of exposition also instructive to think of a set of meta-strategies (S3) which are used to reinforce the analogy of (iii) – but for all sequences of strategies, not just a particular, in order to keep things secret. There is a rather natural order in time between S1, S2, and S3, but it is not a strict requirement.
One important set of attacks in accordance with these principles, is the ones which satisfy (iii) by making the victim appear as mentally ill if the victim attempts to go public, and thus obstructing credible witness statements of the offences. This particular flair of the SS framework basically summarizes the attacks on whistleblowers in the literature, and work-place harassment as characterized by O’Day (1974).
Extension of the reasoning to institutions is a natural step, as it would make no sense to carry out such attacks without proper support from an organization which fails to conceal the perpetrators. The management of information about individuals, actions, technology, ‘capital’, and of course about the organization itself is essential. However, a straightforward way to conceive a democracy-adapted organization is to realize that strategies of democracy-adapted power may be used on the members of the organization, and simultaneously function as collateral when performed, and thus function as means of extortion to ensure loyalty of its members. As information is a source of power, inequality of information corresponds to a hierarchy of power, although a realization of such is not predetermined. Even though thinking of the principles (i)-(iii) in terms of offences is instructive to understand the organization (See Echeverría, 2020), the strategies may involve punishment and rewards, e.g. in terms of redistribution of resources and opportunities.
In short, if strategies fulfilling (i)-(iii) are used on its members then:
(iv) Members will have no incentives to reveal the organization
(v) The organization will be invisible to third parties
(vi) The targets will have no incentives to identify the organization
Ideally, the democracy-adapted organization is efficient. Although the mapping from (i)-(iii) to (iv)-(vi) essentially closes the system, it is instructive to consult a more or less well-known list of phenomena from disparate fields to conceive what an efficient organization means instead of particular examples. The usual suspects are: Natural selection/adaptation, economies of scale, learning by doing, ‘optimization’ & knowledge (e.g. refinements on signalling & knowledge about targets); the management of information, risk, externalities, rewards and costs; specialization or division of labour, network structure, gradual processes and rent-like effects. With that said, additional remarks on the implications (iv)-(vi) are in place.
(iv): In addition of rewards associated with the organization, members are also deterred from revealing as a consequence of threats satisfying (i) (iii). Besides, if information is properly administered, the members themselves may have a hard time to explain what they have done wrong, even if they tried (division of labour, refinements in signalling).
(v): The organization will succeed to remain concealed from third parties if their operations satisfy (i)-(iii).
(vi): Victims will in many instances not even be aware of coordinated attacks against them, e.g. because the members may barely be aware of it due to proper design and information management.
The macro perspective is concerned with large numbers and probabilities over time. Strategies at this level may remain undetected as the outcomes can be rationalized as the normal progression of things, much like making an assault appear as an accident at the micro level (e.g. fomentation of unrest and corruption). Network structure closes distances and facilitates global reach. Focus on key individuals increases efficiency. Improvements in signalling reduces unnecessary noise made for each threat, and how the threat is transmitted through social networks. Administration of the masses can be achieved through minor adjustments, especially via the means of communication, and financial services. Even small biases in opportunities and cues of what is desired can have long-term effects by affecting the growth rate of certain profiles in strategic institutions through adaptation and crowding out. This will in turn alter perceptions about the organization among the stock of incumbents.
What else speaks for the existence of a democracy-adapted organization? There are strong incentives to start one. If a set of individuals think that a rivalling set is organized in this manner, then they will have to adapt in order to avoid being outcompeted. If a set of individuals thinks that nobody else is doing it, then there are huge incentives to be first and expand. Due to the economies of scale involved, the benefits of division of labour and network structure, monopolistic competition appears to be a plausible scenario. It is also reasonable to conjecture, that not only will the conflicts played out between rivalling organizations obeying these principles be hard to detect. It may be virtually impossible for lower-ranking members of these organizations to realize that their side has lost, and that their organization has been taken over by another clique, e.g. through domination of the top command by means of democracy-adapted power. As information is a source of power in such organization, there are huge incentives to constantly look out for more in order to expand. Conflict is driven by the information inequalities which condition the prospect of sizeable loots and power over people while remaining unseen.
Moreover, it seems possible to start an organization with little more than will and an initial set stock of informational capital, which of course by no means needs to correspond to a harmonic and benign primitive accumulation.
Are the PDAP a Conspiracy Theory?
How the principles of democracy-adapted power relates to the literature of conspiracy theories is interesting for several reasons.
- To settle if PDAP qualify as a conspiracy theory, and what the implications are.
- How the theory fits in the philosophical discussion about conspiracies in order to advance the discussion
- Operations fulfilling (i)-(iii) may e.g. seek to brand a victim as a conspiracy theorist and conceal itself by marginalizing the discussion.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica (1994), a conspiracy theory is:
An attempt to explain harmful or tragic events as the result of the actions of a small, powerful group. Such explanations reject the accepted narrative surrounding those events; indeed, the official version may be seen as further proof of the conspiracy.
The Encyclopaedia emphasizes that conspiracy theories typically are erroneous, and based on misunderstandings attributable to cognitive biases and hardships, such as wars. There is however a paragraph where the Encyclopaedia points out that ‘that governments do at least occasionally conspire against their own citizens’.
The PDAP are not a conspiracy theory in the aforementioned sense. The conditions (i)-(iii) can be combined and refer to things which range from an ordinary robbery to a global conspiracy when all three hold. The principles are a framework which establishes that big conspiracies are viable and even reasonable to expect. Such take on conspiracies is line with perhaps the foremost philosopher in the field, Pidgen (2007), who asserts that not only important historical events, but also giants in the history of philosophy such as Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, underscore the importance of conspiracies in society. Particular conspiracies which satisfy (i)-(iii) can in principle be detected due to e.g. errors or be estimated as plausible through deduction. I have given various examples of such cases elsewhere (Echeverría, 2019).
There is a conspicuous contrast between the rather negative view of conspiracy theories and the definition of a conspiracy in the Encyclopaedia. The Anglo-American law has maintained a rather fierce stance against conspiracies, presumably because they are seen as particularly vicious form of organization which ought to be contained. A reason for this may be that the former contemplates democratic states conspiring against its own population, whereas the latter has rival criminal groups in mind. The Encyclopaedia states that:
Conspiracies are an especial threat to society because of the greater power that lies in numbers and the pooling of talents. It is also said that the formation of a group impedes detection, because evidence of the conspiracy is limited to the conspirators themselves, whose reluctance to testify in court increases with the size of the group. Finally, it is speculated that the very act of agreement crystallizes and hardens the purposes of persons who alone might be less resolute.
This is almost completely in line with the discussion of the principles in relation to an organization. A sketchy notion of division of labour and economies of scale is apparent, although narrowly focused on legal categories, and diverts attention to avoidance of detection vis-à-vis the state in terms of evidence. To counter this, the Anglo-American tradition has adapted by making conspiracy ‘the most amorphous area in Anglo-American criminal law. Its terms are vaguer and more elastic than any conception of conspiracy to be found in the continental European codes’. Conspirators have historically been punished for conspiring, in excess to other crimes, without limited liability. One could be counted as a conspirator without knowing the identity of other plotters.
This body of law has been crafted with an understanding of the importance of proper information management in hostile environments, much like Bentham or Sun Tzu. However, the Encyclopaedia’s theories do not explain how organizations may remain undetected when operating vis-à-vis the public in general.
Critique
Due to the intersection in research domain and the similarities at a superficial level with my theories, it is necessary to evaluate Dentith and Orr’s (2017/2018) article on the relationship between secrecy and conspiracy. Their point of departure is a definition of (keeping) a secret, and definitions related to conspiracy. In conclusion, their definitions are unfit to discuss the subject. Moreover, their observations about the organization of conspiracies do not amount to a theory, nor do they reach beyond what is to be found in an Encyclopaedia. Dentith and Orr (2017/ 2018) begin with a definition of keeping a secret in the following manner :
(1)
S1 keeps (p) secret from S2 iff S1 believes S2 does not know (p), and S1 intends to keep S2 from becoming aware of (p)
To begin with, it is according to this definition not possible for a person to keep something secret from another (for instance a plan), if the person who intends to keep it, believes that the person who it should be kept from knowing knows. This may be interpreted as a severe limitation on the risk profile of the actors in mind, and thus immediately disqualifying the definition from owning the virtue of generality. More importantly for the intellectual artisans and labourers, it works against secrets as the implied profile is consistent with risk-loving individuals. This would be a good thing if it was the point of departure of an involved thought experiment or in relation to data. However, such theoretical reflections are absent.
Furthermore, the reliance on intentions in the definition makes it less useful when applied to organizations, which presumably is the big thing of their article. To see this, note that one does not keep a secret unintentionally according to the definition. This is not a marginal remark as the authors proceed to define the act of conspiring as the joint effort to keep a secret. Therefore, it follows that all of those involved in this act also have an intention to keep a secret as they make an effort to keep it from someone.
Minimal reflexions on the nature of conspiracies and organization suffices to prove important points, which also dismantle the claims of Dentith & Orr. For purpose of exposition, assume each member, mi, may possess a bit of information pi which is a subset of the plan P. A person i may keep pi from another person j, without knowing that it is a subset of P, and thus fails to grasp the existence of a conspiracy but still aid its cause, fulfilling all the criteria of keeping a secret in a joint effort. Is this person then not a member of the conspiracy C? Already at this stage it seems rather clear that questions in that direction are just a matter of preferred convention.
Nevertheless, if it is assumed that all mi know the existence of P, then according to the definition a person may still fail to be part of the conspiracy because i may fail to keep pi from j, not because pi is revealed to j, but merely because i happens to suspect that j knows it – even if that belief is false! Especially, if pi=P, then one of the top insiders fails to keep the secret for this reason, although it is never leaked, and thus fails to be part of the conspiracy for idiosyncratic philosophical reasons, even in the event that i happens to be the mastermind behind the plot. To be a bit more precise, assume there are key bits of info p* which are enough to deduce the whole plan P. Another version is that one could know p* & thus grasp the overarching conspiracy P’ without needing or having to deduce/know all other bits of info which make up P for instance. For purpose of exposition, assume that someone can know the existence of an overarching conspiracy P’ but is only sure about his own bit of info pi.
For instance, you know you are part of a joint effort to construct a new kind of computer but you only have the blueprint to a particular part of it, which you may or may not understand. You may recognize at least part of the other members. It is arguably reasonable to assume that a member of a conspiracy knows P’ in addition to pi. But then if two members of the conspiracy meet (mi, mj ∈ C), then they would fail to keep their respective secrets from each other (pi & pj) if they believe that they are members, although they remain strictly silent and work to keep each other from knowing their respective secret. Therefore they are not members, which is a contradiction (mi, mj ∉ C & mi, mj ∈ C).
If it is possible to be a member without knowing P’, then one could be member without having the intention to keep the overarching conspiracy secret, and thus not strictly speaking part of the overarching conspiracy, and so forth.
Clearly, it is difficult to reconcile their definition of keeping a secret with slightly more rigorous concepts in the context of an organization. Attempts to come to the authors rescue, further underscores the futility of their approach. For instance, changing the operator from and to or in (1), leads to Dentith’s example about a ‘conspiracy’ to arrange a surprise party, as the definition then would be reduced to a simple wish list – or perhaps even a plan brainstormed by the birthday conspirators. This is the case because the conjunction would remain conceptually deranged, as shown above, and a simple list of disjoint requirements remain as the last pillars of a ruined definition. Still, even without granting mutual support to any substantial concept, they collapse. The fragments become p1: S1 believes S2 does not know (p), which obviously is not sufficient. Or p2: S1 intends to keep S2 from becoming aware of (p), which still is subject to the critique above, and quite trivial considering it is a peer-reviewed paper on a philosophical discussion. The crucial points made in their paper are an artefact of bad definitions. Because the definition of secrecy falls apart on its own, it seems ludicrous to employ it to explore the characteristics of other concepts.
The most ‘robust’ case is when the conspirators know the plan. However, in addition of the criticism so far, their reasoning does not deal with the obvious problems with misunderstandings, and different mental conceptions of the same plan. One could understand the plan to steal an object, the other to rescue it, the third to distribute the object to those who are already rich etc. Which version counts as the valid one to ascribe intent or motive? What if someone does not know about the one-and-only original plan but still intends to act in perfect accordance to it by chance? All of these scenarios can be given more or less interesting answers. More importantly, they raise serious concerns about fixation with vague definitions around scattered concepts. Their discussion does not give the impression of a systematic whole assembled by parts that were carefully crafted by the authors. It seems that the authors even may have touched some of these topics without conclusions beyond semantics [1].
The authors then move on to the question of what a conspiracy is. They state the obvious that a cover up may be part of a conspiracy. Then they make the following observations: A conspiracy’s size is not decisive for it to be secret if the organizational form is correct, if the plan is divided into pieces, and those on top are assumed to have control over the operation, and are aware of their own power. All valid observations that have been discussed for centuries, most of them found in the Encyclopaedia (1994). The whole point with Bentham’s Panopticon and Foucault’s philosophy around it, is exactly how power may remain secret efficiently, to the extent that the ‘conspiracy against the public’ becomes routine, and its subjects internalize its logic in a limiting case. The question is not whether control of information and actions is decisive – Foucault’s vision deals with whole societies, rather it is how to pull it off, and the implications of such endeavour. Foucault even wrote a genesis narrative about how discipline spread throughout modern society from hierarchical institutions in which the intersection of discipline and efficiency was salient, such as the military and mental institutions.
The only clues in this regard is a distinction between so-called Monolithic and Diverse conspiracies. The former is said to be governed by conspirators at the top, while the latter has to manage several organizational structures. An additional claim is that Monolithic conspiracies have a hierarchy, where members work under ‘shared governance’. The term governance is merely a buzz-word in some contexts, and requires a specialist paper to deal with.
Dentith and Orr manage to rule out theories about conspiracy with the same prejudice that Dentith has built a career condemning. This irony comes about when they claim that a theory, which assumes a plot involving actors from different firms, agencies and professions – could be ruled out – presumably because it would qualify as a Diverse plot employing ‘a variety of conspirators’, with ‘no shared governance’. The conspiracies in question are the so-called ‘Controlled Demolition’ hypotheses, i.e. 9/11 inside-job conspiracies assuming a ‘diverse set of actors’ destroyed the Twin Towers. The authors claim that a related example even would have required an omnipotent entity like the NWO or Illuminati.
It is perfectly reasonable to have plenty of objections against the existence of such a draconic plot. However, that is beside the point. The reason is simply because the terms Monolithic and Diverse conspiracies are little more than labels. What the authors do in this case, is to connect a ‘diverse set of actors’ with a Diverse plot, which is vaguely defined to be an organizational structure, which is at odds with successful secret plots. Therefore, they are just inclined to rule out a set of theories virtually by definition.
I do not believe in these 9/11 theories either, but I know that the distinction of Dentith and Orr is quite arbitrary, and thus their rejection. Even if you agree that very powerful entities are required – how on earth would their reasoning stop you from believing in such all-mighty entities? On the other hand – Why should you believe in such entities according to their arguments? Actually, none of these questions are given a satisfactory. In the end, they admit that they just believe that one of their labels should be associated with a higher likelihood of a successful plot. Thus, it seems like a good idea to study how people conspire. To figure out the incentive schemes associated with different kinds of plots. How such social constructs maintain incentives to conspire over time. Such understanding would advance knowledge in pure theory, and empirically. Philosophy and thought experiments would arguably remain relevant due the nature of the relationship between conspiracies, data, theory, and society.
Their last subtle requirement about self-awareness among the top conspirators is like approximating π to 4 but insist on being correct about the decimals at this level of intellectual rigour. I could go on, but I think it is sufficient to state that it is by no means obvious from their article alone why Dentith and Orr’s definition of secrecy is useful to scholars in general, Cambridge philosophers in particular. Whatever merits it may have appears to be a well-kept secret. However, considering that the definition of a conspiracy that the authors settle with is:
the act of two or more people working together towards some goal, and typically choosing to keep their activities a secret from at least one other person.
It is indeed intriguing that the authors seem to admit that their paper was the result of a conspiracy, assuming that it was a joint effort towards some goal. However, it is possible to object as at least one of them may have believed that someone they tried to keep their knowledge from already knew it.