On Aung San Suu Kyi, And Capitalism

Yesterday's post was on Democracy, written on the occasion of Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest. Today, I read this report in which she has spoken some words on her political beliefs. She demands "political liberty" - and that is something classical liberals and libertarians also demand from our socialist Indian democracy. Apart from that, all that is mentioned is this:

I believe in human rights and I believe in the rule of law. I will always fight for these things.

Do read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the United Nations in 1948, which you can find here. It starts off well enough, and it does include Property, but then the list goes on and on, including the "right to free education," "right to social security," "right to form trade unions," "right to just remuneration," and other such "socialist rights" that only serve to enhance the role of the State. I find Suu Kyi belief in these overblown "human rights" problematic. To me, it is Property that must be inviolable. And Contract must be free.

Second, as far as "rule of law" is concerned, the central idea is as old as the Magna Carta (1215 AD), in which one important clause read as follows:

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Today, to most lay people, "human rights" refer to protection from the excesses of the State Police - but that is what the notion of "rule of law" is all about. Indeed, this is what "constitutions" are really meant for. As one constitutional scholar put it:

The original idea behind constitutions is that of limiting government and of requiring those who govern to conform to laws and rules.

I think it is perhaps this idea of "rule of Law' that Aung San Suu Kyi should uphold - the idea of a constitutionally "limited government" - while jettisoning the rather dubious (and socialist) ideas behind the "human rights" that United Nations, the world's biggest and most unaccountable bureaucracy, has been tom-tomming all these years.

The word that I find missing from Aung San Suu Kyi's political beliefs is the word "Capitalism." I find this troubling, for Burma is officially a "socialist" country. It is this socialism that must be politically challenged.

In the meantime, I have been reading Pico Iyer's travelogue on Burma, dated 1988. It begins with the airport in Rangoon, and all the various forms that have to be filled up for all the various officials. Once outside, Iyer relates how "non-officials" take over - and the "black market" comes into play. The taxis are all 1950-model. The hotels are all empty. There are no tourists. And there are many reports on black markets. In one of these, his guide tells him: "This is a necessary evil. Or, you may say, and evil necessity." I found these lines worth quoting:

"Once," a gentle Burmese soldier assured me, "Rangoon Airport was one of the great international centres of Asia. Now... "

This travelogue on Burma can be found in Pico Iyer's Video Night in Kathmandu - an excellent book, though slightly dated, which can be bought here. The chapter that follows the one on Burma is on Hong Kong!

CAPITALISM - that is the word I am waiting for Aung San Suu Kyi to utter.