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WELL DEVELOPED SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS AND A BOTTLE OF RUM. Forget Scandinavia, the people we should take tips from on building a fairer society are... pirates! According to a recent New Yorker piece by James Surowiecki, high-seas marauders had a functioning constitutional system:
Pirate ships were governed by what amounted to simple constitutions that, in greater or lesser detail, laid out the rights and duties of crewmen, rules for the handling of disputes, and incentive and insurance payments to insure that crewmen would act bravely in battle.
Workers compensation:
The rules that governed a ship that the buccaneer John Exquemelin sailed on, for instance, provided that six hundred pieces of eight would go (pdf) to a man who lost his right arm.
Separation of powers:
Pirates adopted a system of divided and limited power. Captains had total authority during battle, when debate and disagreement were likely to be both inefficient and dangerous. Outside of battle, the quartermaster, not the captain, was in charge—responsible for food rations, discipline, and the allocation of plunder.
Social equality:
On most ships, the distribution of booty was set down in writing, and it was relatively equal; pirate captains often received only twice as many shares as crewmen.
An independent judiciary:
when questions arose about the rules that governed behavior on board, interpretation was left not to the captain but to a jury of crewmen.
And free and fair elections:
The most powerful check on captains and quartermasters was that they did not hold their positions by natural right or blood or success in combat; the crew elected them and could depose them.
Surowiecki wants this to be a metaphor for business leadership, but I think it's more applicable to our current government. George W. Bush: Worse Than Pirates. Yarrr.
--Sam Boyd
COMMENTS (7)
Ha! Don't forget that pirate ships also had a relatively high amount of racial equality, as you might expect in combat situations...
That reminds me: what's a pirate's favorite civil rights leader? Why, it's Marrrrrrrghtin Luther King, Jr. Somebody stop me...
Posted by: P | July 10, 2007 1:53 PM
But of course, most of the code is really more like ... a buunch of guidelines. Which is of course the Bush's administration's key insight that allows them to be more brazen than any administration in history.
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | July 10, 2007 1:58 PM
The difference, as always, is accountability.
Posted by: Steve | July 10, 2007 2:09 PM
Yeah, I'm with Steve. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the classical notion that democracy is only viable in a slave society - that is to say, since citizens invariably vote to take more value out of the system than they put in, you need a counterbalancing mass of producers who have no say in decisionmaking.
And in that light, it hardly seems surprising that pirate societies should rest on democratic foundations, as they represent an extremity of this type of imbalance. After all, the sum total of pirate booty comes from captured ships and cargo, but their crews certainly don't get a vote in how it's distributed. Going even further than slaveholders, pirates don't pay for prey fleets' provisions or capital improvements, and they don't even have the instrumental threat of a serfs' uprising to pressure them towards fairness in that regard.
Posted by: Senescent | July 10, 2007 2:41 PM
I'm somewhat sympathetic to the classical notion that democracy is only viable in a slave society...citizens invariably vote to take more value out of the system than they put in...
What makes you think that doesn't exist in America right now? How many of us can call a Conressperson and get an earmark providing $5 million for our industrial sugar cane operation? Very few of course. So, the Bush administration and pirates are alike in that they plunder on behalf of their fellows; they're different in that people plundered by pirates actually realized they were being robbed. Nowadays, the citizenry seem largely all right with having government act as a conduit for transferring wealth from the lower and middle classes to the rich.
Posted by: T. Paine | July 10, 2007 3:50 PM
What's been said of the pirate ethic so far is fine with me, but as a sadist chafing at the constraints of society, I'd like to emphasize the throat-cuttin' and the rapin' and the makin'-'em-walk-the-plank. And I want Paris Hilton's smug little head on the blade of my dirk.
Posted by: Bluebeard | July 11, 2007 2:10 AM
The racial equality of pirate ships is actually a fairly contentious matter. (It's undeniable that blacks served on pirate ships.) Marcus Rediker's excellent Villains of All Nations is the last book I read on the subject, and I seem to recall his reading of the evidence is that blacks were usually highly restricted in their roles on the ship.
More to the point of Sam's reading, one of the reasons pirate ships functioned like that is because of the incredible awfulness of the Royal Navy for the average sailor. Heighten the contradictions!
Posted by: Steve | July 11, 2007 7:54 AM