Coercion is the practice of compelling a person to act by employing threat of force. Often, it involves the use of actual force in order to make the threat credible, but it is the threat of (further) force which brings about the cooperation of the person being coerced. The term usually has a pejorative connotation, implying that such threat or force is unethical. It is directly related to appeal to the stick (a form of argument in logic). A threat is an unwanted (deliberate or accidental) event that may result in harm to an asset. ... Credibility is the believability of a statement, action, or source, and the ability of the observer to believe the above. ... Co-operation refers to the practice of people or greater entities working in common with commonly agreed-upon goals and possibly methods, instead of working separately in competition. ... A word or phrase is pejorative or derogatory (sometimes misspelled perjorative) if it expresses contempt or disapproval; dyslogistic (noun: dyslogism) is used synonymously (antonyms: meliorative, eulogistic, noun eulogism). ... Ethics is a general term for what is often described as the science (study) of morality. In philosophy, ethical behavior is that which is good or right. ... Argumentum ad baculum (Latin: argument to the cudgel or appeal to the stick), also known as appeal to force, is said by some to be a United States who opposed the Vietnam War were told that they should not hold such a view, because they would face discrimination from potential... Argument may refer to: (in logic) a logical argument, that is, an attempt to prove a demonstration of the half-truth of a conclusion based on the truth of a set of premises (in mathematics) at least three different things: a parameter or independent variable that is the input to... Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος (logos), originally meaning the word, or what is spoken, but coming to mean thought or reason) is most often said to be the study of arguments, although the exact definition of logic is a matter of controversy amongst philosophers (see below). ...

Overview

Any person’s set of feasible choices is obtained from the combination of two elements: the ‘’initial endowment’’ (the perceived initial state of the world, which the chosen actions are going to affect) and the ‘’transformation rules’’ (which state how any chosen action will change the initial endowment, according to the person’s perception).

It follows that coercion could in principle take place by purposely manipulating either the transformation rules or the initial endowment (or both). In practice, however, the detailed choice reaction of a victim to a change in initial endowment is generally unpredictable. Hence effective coercion can only be carried out through manipulation of the transformation rules. This is done by the credible ‘’threat’’ of some injury, conditional on the victim’s choice. Often, it involves the actual inflicting of injury in order to make the threat credible, but it is the threat of (further) injury which brings about the change in transformation rules. Credibility is the believability of a statement, action, or source, and the ability of the observer to believe the above. ...

Coercion does not remove entirely the victim’s ability to choose, nor does it necessarily affect his or her ranking of potential alternatives. As Roman jurists used to say, ‘’coactus volui, tamen volui’’ (I willed under coercion, but still I willed). In the terminology of rational choice theory, coercion does not remove a person’s objective function, but only affects the constraints under which such function is maximised. Yet, the purpose of coercion is to substitute one’s aims to those of the victim. For this reason, many social philosophers have considered coercion as the polar opposite to freedom. Rational choice theory is a way of looking at deliberations between a number of potential courses of action, in which rationality of one form or another is used either to decide which course of action would be the best to take, or to predict which course of action actually will... Optimization is a branch of mathematics which is concerned with finding maxima and minima of real-valued functions. ... A constraint is a limitation of possibilities. ... Statue of Liberty - Liberty is one meaning of freedom. For proper-noun uses of Freedom, see Freedom (disambiguation). ...

One must however distinguish various forms of coercion: first on the basis of the ‘’kind of injury’’ threatened, secondly according to its ‘’aims’’ and ‘’scope’’, and finally according to its ‘’effects’’, from which its legal, social, and ethical implications mostly depend.

Means

Looking at the content of the threat, one can distinguish between physical, psychological and economic coercion.

Physical coercion

Physical coercion is the most commonly considered form, where the content of the conditional threat is the use of force against the person, the dear ones or the property of the victim, An oft-used example is "putting a gun to someone's head" to compel action.

However, there also are non-physical forms of coercion, where the threatened injury does not immediately imply the use of force.

Psychological coercion

In psychological coercion the threatened injury regards the victim’s relationships with other people. The most obvious example is ‘’blackmail’’, where the threat consists of the dissemination of damaging information. But many other cases are possible, including purposeful threats of rejection from or disapproval by a peers group, or even mere anger or displeasure by a loved one.

Psychological coercion – along with the other varieties - was extensively and systematically used by the government of the People’s Republic of China during the “Thought Reform” campaign of 1951-1952. The process – carried out partly at “revolutionary universities” and partly within prisons – was investigated and reported upon by Robert Jay Lifton, then Research Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University: see Lifton (1961). The techniques used by the Chinese authorities included standard group psychotherapy, aimed at forcing the victims (who were generally intellectuals) to produce detailed and sincere ideological “confessions”. For instance, a professor of Formal Logic called Chin Yueh-lin – who was then regarded as China’s leading authority on his subject – was induced to write: “The new philosophy [of Marxism-Leninism], being scientific, is the supreme truth”. [Lifton (1961) p. 545]. People on the stairs to the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago In general, the English word people refers to a specific group of humans, or to persons in a general sense. ... 1951 was a common year starting on Monday; see its calendar. ... 1952 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Robert Jay Lifton (born May 16, 1926) is a prominent American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence. ... Group therapy is a form of psychotherapy during which one or several therapists treat a small group of clients together as a group. ... Vladimir Lenin in 1920 Leninism is a political and economic theory which builds upon Marxism; it is a branch of Marxism (and it has been the dominant branch of Marxism in the world since the 1920s). ...

Usage

Some people speak of cultural coercion when the fear of falling out with the group may force people into wearing a certain style of dress, publicly reciting a creed or a pledge of allegiance they find morally reprehensible, starting to smoke when they'd rather not, etc. Within the definitional framework adopted here, all such things amount to (psychological) coercion if and only if the fear of falling out with the group is the result of ‘’purposeful’’ threats by someone. See Peer pressure, Sociology of religion, Pledge of Allegiance. A creed is a statement of belief—usually religious belief—or faith. ... Peer pressure comprises a set of group dynamics whereby a group in which one feels comfortable may override personal habits, individual moral inhibitions or idiosyncratic desires to impose a group norm of attitudes and/or behaviors. ... The sociology of religion is – among other elements – the study of the practices, social structures, historical backgrounds, development, universal themes, and roles of religion in society. ... Dorothea Lange photograph of Japanese-American students reciting the Pledge of Allegiance The Pledge of Allegiance is a promise or oath of allegiance to the United States, and to its national flag. ...

Some people include deception in their definition of (psychological) coercion. Yet deception does not generally involve ‘’any’’ threat at all, as it works by creating a mere ‘’false perception’’ by the victim of his or her ‘’given’’ transformation rules. Although its effects may sometimes be very similar to those of a conditional threat, it may hence be useful to treat deception as separate phenomenon. Deception is providing intentionally misleading information to others. ...

Economic coercion

If I am the owner of the only water supply you can use, then my threat to refuse to supply you is a death threat. Yet it only involves my refusal to enter into a contract, without any use of force whatever. This kind of coercion, which can be very powerful indeed, is called ‘’economic coercion’’. A contract is any legally-enforceable promise or set of promises made by one party to another and, as such, reflects the policies represented by freedom of contract. ...

As it is obvious from the above example, economic coercion requires market power. My refusal to deal with you would be irrelevant if you had access to many other independent sources of supply. But I can turn my conditional refusal into an important threat only because my pure monopoly power is in the market for an ‘’essential’’ good ‘’with no substitutes’’. In economics, market power (sometimes called monopoly power) is a market failure which occurs when one or more of the participants has the ability to influence the price or other outcomes in some general or specialized market. ... The supply and demand model describes how prices vary as a result of a balance between product availability at each price (supply) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand). ... A market is a mechanism which allows people to trade, normally governed by the theory of supply and demand, so allocating resources through a price mechanism and bid and ask matching so that those willing to pay a price for something meet those willing to sell for it. ...

An analogous result can also be obtained through pure monopsony power, which is the situation in which I am the only potential buyer of whatever you have to sell. To reverse the above example, suppose that there are numerous independent suppliers of water, who sell it at a competitive market price. But suppose also that you only have potatoes to sell, to get the money for your water, and that I am the only potato buyer you can deal with. Then my simple conditional refusal to buy your potatoes would be a death threat to you, just as before. In economics, a monopsony is a market with only one buyer in the market, often an input market. ...

The idea that market power may imply a power of coercion has been underlined by some social philosophers. It shows that in some cases the social effects of market power may go far beyond those on economic distribution and efficiency. However, it is also important to remember that the intense market power required to produce economic coercion is very rarely found in market economies. Indeed, the maximum degree of market power – and hence potential economic coercion - is attained in those centrally planned economies where the supply of all or most means of production is tightly controlled by some very small group This page deals with mathematical distributions. ... Efficiency is the capability of acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort. ... // General Means of production generally refers to productive assets which are inputs in a production process. ...

Aims

The aims of coercion can vary widely from totally ‘’selfish’’ to totally ‘’altruistic’’ ones: from attempts to gain personal wealth and power at the expense of others to efforts aimed at saving other people’s souls.

Predatory coercion

The purely selfish kinds of coercion are a form of predatory behaviour by the coercing party, whose aim is to narrow down the scope of other people’s actions so as to make them instrumental to its own personal interests. According to many social philosophers, this sort of predatory behaviour would become the prevailing one under conditions of social anarchy. Anarchy (New Latin anarchia) is a term that has several usages. ...

Pedagogic and thought coercion

At the other extreme of the spectrum one finds attempts to use coercion altruistically, as a pedagogical device to improve – in some supposedly objective sense – the way other people ‘’think’’, with particular regard to their basic attitudes and values. Pedagogic coercion may be applied within a strictly educational context, and it is then mostly directed towards children. In this article, however, attention will focus on ‘’thought coercion’’, i.e. the attempt to use coercion to affect the basic values of grown-up people in general.

In all forms of ‘’thought coercion’’ the immediate objective is to force other people to act ‘’as if’’ their basic choice rules were identical to those of the coercing party. However, this mere conformity of “outward” behaviour is but a first step. The true and final aim of thought coercion is to induce a change in the victim’s objective function itself, i.e. the basic set of values and rules by which the victim determines his or her own choice among the alternatives of ‘’any’’ feasible set. Thought coercion is thus generally meant to be only ‘’temporary’’. Once the desired change in values has been brought about, the victim is expected to conform spontaneously, without any need for further coercion.

Whether and under what conditions this final aim can in fact be stably achieved is a difficult question, and it will be considered in the section devoted to the effects of coercion. Here it is necessary to point out that, whatever its effectiveness, thought coercion has in fact been used very extensively throughout history.

Religious coercion

The most ancient, extensive and durable kind of thought coercion has concerned religion. It has taken the form of religious discrimination and persecution, including forced conversions, and on many occasions it has led to religious wars. To discriminate is to make a distinction. ... Persecution is persistent mistreatment of an individual or group by another group. ...

As far as Christianity is concerned, its early persecution by Rome had in fact political rather than strictly religious objectives. But its subsequent expansion was associated with a substantial amount of purely religious coercion, mainly by Christians against members of other religions and heretics. Moreover, Christianity’s tendency to strong and systematic religious coercion – particularly but not only by the Catholic Church – has long outlived its first few centuries, and has only been finally checked – though by no means extinguished - by the emergence of modern liberal democracies, with their principle of firm separation between Church and State. Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life, teachings, death by crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as portrayed in the New Testament writings of his early followers. ... City motto: Senatus Populusque Romanus – SPQR (The Senate and the People of Rome) Founded 21 April 753 BC mythical, 1st millennium BC Region Latium Mayor Walter Veltroni (Democratici di Sinistra) Area  - City Proper  1290 km² Population  - City (2004)  - Metropolitan  - Density (city proper) 2,546,807 almost 4,000,000 1... Heresy, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the ‘catholic’ or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. ... The Roman Catholic Church believes its founding was based on Jesus appointment of Saint Peter as the primary church leader, later Bishop of Rome. ...

Although its past record has shown a somewhat higher degree of religious tolerance (e.g. towards Jews), Islam has also been and continues to be an important and durable source of religious coercion. Islam   listen? (Arabic: al-islām) the submission to God is a monotheistic faith, one of the Abrahamic religions, and the worlds second largest religion. ...

Ideological coercion

‘’Ideological coercion’’ is the use of thought coercion in the attempt to modify people’s socio-political philosophy. This is of course quite different from plain propaganda, or even the simple persecution of political opponents, because its objective is to force individual ideological conversions. Unlike religious coercion, it is a quite recent phenomenon, confined to some of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. The concept of Totalitarianism is a typology or ideal-type used by some political scientists to encapsulate the characteristics of a number of twentieth century regimes that mobilized entire populations in support of the state or an ideology. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar (often from (1900 to 1999 in common usage). ...

The most notable single example of ideological coercion was the already mentioned Chinese “Thought Reform” campaign of 1951-52, which signalled itself for both thoroughness and number of people involved. Yet, it must be noticed that by 1966 the Chinese authorities found it necessary to follow that up with a new – albeit slightly milder – campaign, as part of the Maoist “Cultural Revolution” of 1966-1968. 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (link goes to calendar) // Events January January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa ousts president David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic. ... Maoism or Mao Zedong Thought (Chinese: 毛澤東思想, pinyin: Máo Zédōng Sīxiǎng), also called Marxism-Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM), is a variant of communism derived from the teachings of Mao Zedong (1893–1976). ... 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (link goes to calendar) // Events January January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa ousts president David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic. ... 1968 was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ...

Starting from the Soviet purges of the Thirties, similar “brainwashing” techniques were intermittently and less systematically used by most Communist regimes of the twentieth century. By contrast, the Fascist and Nazi regimes of Italy and Germany tended to confine their coercive activities to purely political aims, without any serious attempt to force the ideological conversion of their opponents. The use of (physical) ideological coercion was however theorised by some Fascist philosophers, like Giovanni Gentile. Soviet redirects here. ... Communism - Wikipedia /**/ @import /w/skins-1. ... Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, was the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. ... The Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ... Politics is the process and method of decision-making for groups of human beings. ... Giovanni Gentile in his earlier years. ...

Disciplinary coercion

Somewhere in the middle between predatory and pedagogic coercion one finds the forms of coercion that are used as the main coordination tools of command systems. These are organisations that use coercion to enforce on their members patterns of division of labour aimed at reaching the organisation’s goals, which for a variety of reasons may not always be consistent with each member’s personal aims. The most typical example of a command system is a military organisation, but any large production team may easily fall into this category.

Through the punishment system of disciplinary coercion, each individual member is typically forced into altruistic behaviour in the interest of the whole group. This is why this kind of coercion is not predatory, and – unlike thought coercion – may often be accepted in advance by the members of the group.

Scope

The scope of coercion has to do with who uses a conditional threat against whom. It is closely linked with some of the other aspects already surveyed above, and may be of paramount importance in determining coercion’s effects and implications.

Specific coercion

Specific or ‘’personal’’ coercion is the most commonly considered kind. It takes place when the conditional threat is decided upon by one particular individual or small group, and/or directed against some other individual or small group. All forms of predatory and thought coercion fall into this category.

Unspecific coercion

Under unspecific or ‘’impersonal’’ coercion the conditional threats come from well-known and socially accepted general rules – rather than any individual or sub-group – and are directed against anybody in the stated conditions, according to clearly stated principles of due process. In practice, the narrowing down of individual choice may be here principally aimed at reducing the incidence of specific coercion, rather than forcing on everybody some special sub-set of positive goals. More generally, unspecific coercion may be the form taken by disciplinary coercion, and this appears to be in fact the case within the most effective command systems of the modern world.

Unspecific coercion is thus the same thing as the rule of law in its widest sense. This must not however be confused with the ‘’monopoly of coercion by the State’’. First, State coercion may very easily be arbitrary – indeed technically very ‘’specific’’, according to the above definition. Secondly, there are well-documented historical examples of (small) societies that have practiced unspecific coercion ‘’without’’ the help of State institutions – like Iceland in the early Middle Ages. The identification between State and law is but a special ‘’normative’’ principle introduced by (public) Roman law, which according to some, like Maitland, was for this very reason to be treated as the quintessential “law of tyranny”. The rule of law implies that government authority may only be exercised in accordance with written laws, which were adopted through an established procedure. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Maitland may mean the following places: Maitland, New South Wales, Australia Maitland, Florida, USA Maitland, Missouri, USA Maitland, South Australia Maitland River, Canada or these people: John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale Charles Maitland, 3rd Earl of Lauderdale James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale Henry Maitland Wilson Frederic William Maitland...

Effects

The effects of coercion may differ substantially according to its type and scope. Here they will be considered from the legal, psychological, social and ethical points of view.

Legal effects

In most legal systems, the use of ‘’physical’’ specific coercion by private individuals is a criminal offence in all cases not involving self defence. for other uses please see Crime (disambiguation) A crime is an act that violates a political or moral law. ...

The picture is less simple for ‘’psychological’’ specific coercion, owing to the general difficulty in finding clear evidence for it. In most systems psychological coercion is treated as a criminal offence when it is aimed at ‘’extortion’’, as is typical of blackmail. It is also punished when it leads to ‘’undue influence’’, defined as a master-slave relationship.

Finally, ‘’economic’’ coercion is generally unlawful under most systems of anti-trust legislation, where it can amount to either a criminal offence – as under the Sherman Act of the US – or an administrative offence liable to a mere fine – as under EU legislation on the abuse of a dominant position. It is important however to remember that trade unions and other groups of organised workers are mostly exempted from this general principle for acts of economic coercion (like strikes) against their employers, A union (labor union in American English; trade union, sometimes trades union, in British English; either labour union or trade union in Canadian English) is a legal entity consisting of employees or workers having a common interest, such as all the assembly workers for one employer, or all the workers...

Exculpation and nullity

Specific coercion may be used as a legal defence in criminal cases for acts committed under threat of injury. Similarly, one may claim the legal nullity of a contract signed under duress. A contract is any legally-enforceable promise or set of promises made by one party to another and, as such, reflects the policies represented by freedom of contract. ...

In both cases, however, the question arises of whether a "reasonable person" would have perceived a threat, and reacted in the same way. Moreover, under most modern legal systems ‘’disciplinary’’ coercion cannot be claimed as an exculpating circumstance for war crimes committed under unlawful orders. The reasonable man or reasonable person standard is a legal fiction that originated in the development of the common law. ... A war crime is a punishable offense, under international law, for violations of the law of war by any person or persons, military or civilian. ...

Psychological effects: the effectiveness of thought coercion

As already stated, thought coercion – either religious or ideological – is defined by its ultimate end to alter the fundamental values and beliefs of its victims. To ask whether this can in fact be done is to put a fundamental and age-old question: can conscience be coerced? Conscience is generally thought of as a moral faculty, sense, or feeling that impels individuals to believe that particular activities are morally right or wrong. ...

At the beginning of the sixth century, in a famous letter to the Jews of Genoa, the Gothic king Theodoric the Great, who was an Arian Christian, wrote: “...We cannot command the religion of our subjects, since no-one can be forced to believe against his will”: Hodgkin (1886) p. 219. This idea that conscience ‘’cannot’’ in fact be coerced originated among the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece, and resurfaced many centuries later during and after the European Renaissance, as one of the basic tenets of classic (or Whig) liberalism. Location within Italy Flag of Genoa Christopher Columbus monument in Piazza Aquaverde Genoa (Italian Genova, Genoese Zena, French Gênes) is a city and a seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. ... Besides its original meaning, of or relating to the Goths, a Germanic tribe and thus the Gothic language and the Gothic alphabet, and aside from its Early Modern connotations of rough, barbarous, the word Gothic has been used since the 18th century to refer to distinctly different things. ... Theodoric the Great (454 - August 30, 526) was king of the East Goths, the Ostrogoths (488-526), ruler of Italy (493-526), and regent of the Visigoths (511-526). ... This article is about the theological doctrine of Arius. ... Stoicism is a school of philosophy commonly associated with such Greek philosophers as Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, or Chrysippus and with such later Romans as Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. ... By Region: Italian Renaissance Northern Renaissance *French Renaissance *German Renaissance *English Renaissance The Renaissance was an influential cultural movement which brought about a period of scientific revolution and artistic transformation, at the dawn of modern European history. ... Note: This is not an article about Liberalism in the United States or in any other specific country, but it discusses liberalism as a world wide ideology. ...

The opposite view was however the dominant one within what Karl Popper (1945) has called the Platonic tradition, which included among other things both mainstream Christianity and Hegel’s philosophy, with its later polar developments of Marxism and Fascism. Karl Popper Sir Karl Raimund Popper (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994), was an Austrian-born philosopher of science. ... Platonic idealism is the theory that the substantive reality around us is only a reflection of a higher truth. ... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 - November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century German philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, was the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. ...

Yet, though these opposite answers may lead to divergent ethical and political prescriptions, the question itself is about a matter of mere psychological fact, which can be addressed empirically, looking at experience. Lifton (1961) on Chinese thought reform is one of the very few such works, and its findings are thus highly relevant here. Very broadly and on the whole, these findings were that on most victims the impact of thought reform tended to be temporary. In the short run it might be considerable, even leading to something close to a profound religious experience – particularly in subjects of relatively younger age (under thirty). But after a few years, and left to themselves, the victims tended to question the principles they had been indoctrinated with, reverting in most cases to their former values and convictions.

If correct, these findings would suggest that thought coercion cannot generally achieve its ultimate goal to ‘’permanently’’ affect people’s basic values. In the Chinese case, this prediction came soon true, with the unorthodox outcomes of the “Hundred Flowers” episode of 1957. More generally, one would hence be led to expect that – far from being temporary – thought coercion would have to become a ‘’stable’’ feature of society, in order to produce any long-lasting result. And indeed – as seen above – such predicted tendency to repeat and institutionalise itself appears to be borne out by the historical record of thought coercion in both Communist regimes and the Catholic Church.

Social effects: coercion and progress

Whig-liberal tradition

According to the Whig-liberal tradition, due to the Scottish moral philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, widespread specific coercion has the general effect of limiting society’s ability to find new and better ways of doing things: see e.g. Hayek (1960). This follows from the view of social culture as the outcome of an evolutionary process of adaptation and selection through trial and error. Since specific coercion restricts the range of potential choices to the whims of only a few individuals, it narrows down society’s chances to experiment and select new solutions, and hence its ability to adapt. Thus, it is predicted that ‘’in the long run’’ the most successful societies would mainly be those where the incidence of specific coercion was less.

However, this only applies to ‘’specific’’ coercion. By contrast, it is argued that ‘’unspecific’’ coercion – brought about by the rule of law – does not in itself hinder adaptation in any important way, because it is as uniform and predictable as the constraints following from natural laws. Moreover, the rule of law is the only available way to curb specific coercion. Hence, far from being a hindrance, unspecific coercion is in this view a necessary condition for human progress.

Platonic tradition

Needless to say, those who believe they already know what is best for society, and thus feel no need to rely on any evolutionary process, do not share the Whig-liberal negative view of the social effects of specific coercion. They often opt instead for a so-called social engineering approach, whereby a command system steered by a few competent individuals – and buttressed up by quite specific coercion – is assumed to be the most “rational” way to ensure social progress. Social engineering has several meanings: Social engineering (political science) Social engineering (computer security) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Command has multiple meanings: An order. ...

The earliest formulation of this alternative view is found in Plato’s ‘’Republic’’. In modern times the idea re-surfaced during the French Revolution, thanks to Rousseau’s famous distinction between the will of all and a supposed “’’general will’’”, which – unlike the former – was defined as embodying the objective “good” for society. According to Rousseau and his followers, social progress required that those who are somehow inspired by the “general will” should be entitled to enforce it through revolutionary coercion on the will of all. Later on, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this French revolutionary principle – though not of course its specific way to identify the “general will” – percolated into first Socialist and then Fascist political thinking. PLATO, an apronym for Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operation, was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems, originally built by the University of Illinois (U of I) and later taken over by Control Data (CDC), who provided the machines it ran on. ... The color red and particularly the red flag are traditional symbols of Socialism. ... Fascism (in Italian, fascismo), capitalized, was the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 under the leadership of Benito Mussolini. ...

Ethical effects: coercion and freedom

To most people, the ethical implications of individual predatory coercion are straightforward. In recent times, some have attempted to extend a similar ethical judgement to non-predatory forms of coercion by individuals. Thus, for instance, the Taking Children Seriously movement has criticised pedagogic coercion by adults, including parents, on children, holding that it is possible and desirable to act with a child in such a way that all activities are consensual. Taking Children Seriously is an educational philosophy founded by the libertarians Sarah Fitz-Claridge and David Deutsch. ...

The ethical standing of wider forms of supposedly “altruistic” specific coercion – like political and thought coercion – is however much more controversial, along lines relating to the assumed relationship between coercion and freedom, which is often regarded as an ethical value in itself. Statue of Liberty - Liberty is one meaning of freedom. For proper-noun uses of Freedom, see Freedom (disambiguation). ...

Coercion as the negation of freedom

The Whig-liberal tradition has led to the well-known notion of (negative) freedom as lack of specific coercion. According to this view, any form of specific coercion is then unethical in itself as an injury to freedom, quite apart from its damaging effects on social progress. Indeed, the ethical value of (negative) freedom is grounded on the idea that conscience cannot be coerced, and is thus the ultimate standard of morality. It hence follows that – from an ethical point of view – coercion cannot even be regarded as a lesser evil: since it cannot produce conscientious behaviour, it can never bring about the fulfilment of ‘’any’’ ethical value.

Coercion as a source of freedom

However, the basing of all ethical values on conscience has also produced a diametrically opposed view. Developing the Socratic idea that moral evil is a result of ignorance, the Stoic philosophers had argued that one’s “true” conscience – and hence virtue – could only be attained by freeing oneself from irrationality and passions, through the stern self-control that is typical of wise men. This principle was then fitted into the Christian framework of original sin and the need for “outside” redemption, to produce the idea that on many occasions external specific coercion could and should take the place of self-control in setting ordinary people free from their sinful tendencies. Almost paradoxically, personal spiritual freedom came thus to be often based on specific thought coercion by the inspired few,

This alternative approach has percolated far beyond the religious field, and is shared to-day by all those who think they have a privileged access to “true” conscience, thanks to divine revelation, superior “scientific” knowledge or some other special circumstance. A part from religious principles, the “true” conscience involved may be class-consciousness, patriotism, altruism, “social” values, political correctness or any other strongly held ethical world-view. The common element is the firm belief that coercion – ranging from legal State-coercion to terrorism – can and should be used to realize “true” freedom for all.

References

• Anderson, Scott A. (undated), "Towards a Better Theory of Coercion, and a Use for It", The University of Chicago [1]
• Hayek, Friedrich A. (1960) ‘’The Constitution of Liberty’’, University of Chicago Press.
• Hodgkin, Thomas (1886) (trans.) ‘’Letters of Cassiodorus’’, London: H. Frowde.
• Lifton, Robert J. (1961) ‘’Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism’’, Penguin Books.
• Popper, Karl R. (1945) The Open Society and Its Enemies
• Rhodes, Michael R. (2000), "The Nature of Coercion", Journal of Value Inquiry, 34 (2/3)
• Rothbard, Murray N. (1982), "F. A. Hayek and the Concept of Coercion", in ‘’The Ethics of Liberty, Humanities Press [2]