Guest Post: 'The Last Jedi' Resonates with the Lessons of Lord Acton

Power corrupts, regardless of whether you're Jedi or Sith.

by Mateusz Machaj

[The following article contains a few elements of the plot of The Last Jedi, which some may consider spoilers.]

Putting aside the creative and entertaining value of the new Star Wars movie, one major element remains strong with the saga: its warnings about the dangers of power. They actually go even further than they did in the previous installments.

The title itself may be mind-boggling to some of the fans, much as the line we heard in the trailer from the Jedi hero, Luke Skywalker, who wants the “Jedi to end.” Some were wondering what big secret may be hidden in those words, but not the people who paid attention to the messages already present in the previous episodes, especially the prequel trilogy (however imperfect it was). The main protagonist and idealist wants the Jedi to end because the school has become a legacy of failure, hypocrisy, and hubris.

The Role of the Jedi
They were a part of the Old Republic system and served as a special service having superior privileges granted by the government. Besides the legal commands, they had their own education system which raised new generations of followers. Eventually, they failed miserably in training the pupils. One of them even became the leading man responsible for building terror in the evil Empire. Careful observation would lead the viewer to such conclusions – now the main hero states so openly and with merits (it is also a good artistic tool for the character on screen to repeat fans’ views as it happens in the movie).

What Luke offers in his reinterpretation of events (as compared to his personal predecessors) is the more thoughtful understanding of the way world functions. He notices that knowledge and the workings of everything in the universe (the “force”) are not things that belong to one group of people called the Jedi. To argue so is vanity as those things cannot, and should not, be monopolized by one agency — perhaps a reflection that previous Jedi teachers did not see in full picture.

Moreover, that has led to arrogance and blindness to the obvious dangers of political systems, of which they were part. We got to see them training many of the younglings, but mostly in a physical and spiritual way. Nobody was teaching them about social sciences, human relations, and how politics functions — at least nowhere we could see. The downplaying of political economy is what eventually killed them and destroyed the Republic, finally to be substituted by the evil Hobbesian rule of the Emperor.

The Lesson of Lord Acton
Luke learned the hard way what Lord Acton taught us: power is corruptive. Control over other people can easily make one focused only on a particular goal at the expense of the free will of others. Part of the reflection made by Luke can be inferred by historically studying what happened to the Jedi in the past episodes. Luke further learns this in his personal experience: how even a mature teacher can be easily tempted to make wrong and authoritarian judgments about people, leading them to disastrous consequences.

No human agency or real person should have the ultimate power over everyone else’s fate. Such themes were always the main messages of the Star Wars movies that started right at the beginning in 1977. The newest movie makes a shining and almost Tolkienian conclusion reached by simply following the logical inferences. The rule of power applies not only to the people we consider “bad,” “evil,” or “corrupted" because not a single human being is either forever lost or always free from misplaced temptations or free from being prone to failure. Both redemption and temptation are not far away from anybody. Anyone can make a mistake. We should distrust any rules giving too much power to any person or group of people, not just the ones recognized as the “bad guys.”

The original trilogy showed that bad people are also human beings who still can be converted from bad to good. The prequel trilogy showed that good people can do bad things, too, willingly or not. As we further learn from The Last Jedi, corruptive potency hidden in the meanders of power is actually nothing personal.

That is why solutions for efficiently curtailing expansionary power have to be universal and impersonal.



Mateusz Machaj is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Wroclaw (Poland). He is the author of Money, Interest, and the Structure of Production. Resolving Some Puzzles in the Theory of Capital.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

#StarWarsDay Guest Post: What's So Bad about the Galactic Empire?

by Sean Malone

Everyone familiar with Star Wars knows that the Empire is bad, and the Rebellion is good.

But, why?

Seriously. What makes life under Emperor Palpatine so unbearable, and what would make life under the New Republic so much better, for the ordinary citizens of the galaxy? The movies offer surprisingly little information as to what's actually wrong with Imperial rule.

Now, I'm not talking about blowing up planets or Anakin murdering Jedi children. I'm talking about the daily lives of ordinary citizens. People who don't have any connection to the Sith or the Jedi or the battle for the Senate or any of that stuff.

Sure, behind closed doors, Emperor Palpatine is secretly a Sith Lord who can shoot light bolts from his hands. That definitely seems evil, but, according to the movies, nobody but a few Jedi even knows about it. He doesn't walk down the street electrocuting random peasants.

For the most part, his brutality seems to be limited to confrontations with the Rebel Alliance.

And yeah, Darth Vader is one of the most intimidating villains of all time, and he's obviously a menace to Rebellion soldiers and the Jedi, but imagine you're just some ordinary moisture farmer going about his business on Tatooine. Unless your name is Owen Lars, Darth Vader almost certainly doesn't care about you. He's mainly interested in finding Luke Skywalker. So the question is, what would it mean to live in a Galaxy "ruled" by the Empire, and why is it the ultimate depiction of Tyranny in popular culture?

The more I've thought about this, the more I have struggled to come up with an answer based on anything actually depicted in the films themselves.

Part of the problem is that in most Star Wars movies, the characters are all fighting in a single political struggle. And apart from Padme's interminable dialogue about Senatorial procedure in the Prequels, there's almost no discussion of governing philosophy in the entire series.

Ask yourself: What does the Rebel Alliance stand for besides the destruction of the Empire, and what does the Empire stand for apart from maintaining power?

In A New Hope, Grand Moff Tarkin at least offers some insight into the Empires operation, when he explains that regional governors have “complete control” over their territories.

But, what does that actually mean? What policies does the Emperor want to be enforced across the Galaxy? What is it that he's actually imposing on his citizens that requires multiple planet-destroying superweapons to enforce?

I mean, I get that Palpatine wanted power, but, what does he actually do with it?

Once he acquired political control over the Galaxy, did he ban gay marriage? Droid marriage? Gay droid marriage? Did he ban books and restrict speech? Does Star Wars even have books? Did he nationalize (or “Galactize”) major industries?

For something that's so important to the story, Star Wars doesn't really even try to answer these questions.

When Liberty Dies

But here's what we do know.

First, there's a lot of smuggling in the Star Wars universe. And that probably means that there are a lot of laws and regulations making various goods and services costly or illegal. Prohibiting or restricting trade creates Black Markets, it can also impoverish many people and make their lives much harder when they can't access the things that they want and need.

Even though it's the invisible fabric of everyone's daily life, commerce doesn't really seem to exist in the Star Wars universe at all, but one way the Empire could be ruining people's lives is by controlling what gets bought, sold, or traded; dictating prices; or by taxing everything so much that even basic necessities become impossible to afford.

Another thing we know is that the Imperial military uses its power against citizens of the Empire, and not just in terms of collateral damage.

In Star Wars: Rebels, Storm Troopers and other Imperial agents are often seen conscripting innocent people into their armies and seizing their property without compensation. More recently, in Rogue One, we see a Star Destroyer hovering over a Kybur Crystal mine, and the Empire appears to force people to work in the mines in order to acquire key components of the Death Star.

We might assume that the Imperial military gets many or most of its supplies and resources through similar means – stealing from people around the galaxy, taking their property by force. But that assumes some kind of property rights, and that's never fully established in that world.

And there's one more terrible thing we know about the Empire from Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Reformed Storm Trooper Finn (FN-2187) explains to Rey that he was actually taken from his family as a child, conscripted into the Imperial Army, and trained to be a soldier. That's a form of slavery that many real-world governments have used throughout history. Sadly even the United States government still has the power to draft its citizens into war, though that hasn't happened for decades.

Unfortunately, Star Wars never actually wrestles with these issues in any meaningful way.

It seems to assume that the major difference between a "good" world and a "bad" world is the presence of Democracy, but that's hardly a guarantee. Many Democratic leaders have created misery for their citizens and even used Democracy to amass power and become dictators themselves – just like Emperor Palpatine did.

I think the idea that a Senator becoming Chancellor becoming the Emperor works so well in the film because it's so true to what we actually see in real life. And when Padme says “This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause,” she gets to the real issue here.

Liberty.

The only answer to this question that actually makes sense is that the Empire is an awful place to live because its people lack individual freedom.

Citizens of the Empire aren't secure in their possessions and property. They can't go where they want without being stopped by Imperial forces. They can be imprisoned or forced into an army without a trial or the opportunity to say no, and restrictions on trade and commerce make them poor and condemn them to getting what they need from dangerous black markets, smugglers, and gangsters.

If the Rebellion stands against that, then they are true heroes.

Sean Malone is the Director of Media at FEE. His films have been featured in the mainstream media and throughout the free-market educational community.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.