~::: La Gaceta de ::: ~
: ~ : Caracas : ~ :
~ 2 April 1828 ::: ~ Reprinted by Request of Intende Jacinto Lara ~
The Centralist Doctrine Of Republican Imperialism
Simón Bolivar
Dear Colombians, I write to you today in the hopes that I may clarify and then convince you of the central founding doctrine of this nation, as the Federalists had done for the United States of America. This doctrine being that of liberty, freedom and dignity, the doctrine that will mould us Americans into a nation worthy of respect and greatness, the doctrine borne out of the ink of the enlightenment pen and forged from the iron of the liberatory sword. This, being the doctrine of republican imperialism that is the core of my centralist philosophy in politics, governance, society and warfare.
I must take you back to the founding of our Republicá de Colombia. The position of those who dwell in the American hemisphere has been for centuries purely passive, their political existence null. We were at a level even lower than servitude, prevented from elevating ourselves to the joys of freedom - una tirania activa y dominante. What is this concept of active tyranny you ask? We Americans have occupied no other place in society than that of servants suited for work or, at best, that of simple consumers. We have never been viceroys, or governors, except in extraordinary circumstances; rarely archbishops or bishops; never diplomats; always military subordinates.
Under the triple yoke of ignorance, tyranny, and vice we, the American people, have been unable to acquire, or even to know, either power or virtue. As disciples of these pernicious masters, we have only learned the most destructive lessons and studied the worst examples. Slavery is the daughter of darkness; an ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction. These disciples who do not or cannot engage with the fruit of the Enlightenment, of Montesquieu or Machiavelli, of Rousseau or the Revolution in France, of Locke or Liberty. They adopt illusions for reality, take licence for liberty, treachery for patriotism, vengeance for justice. Without a strong foundation for our government, a corrupt people can win its liberty, only to lose it once again.
Understand me as such: the people of this Gran Colombia are the ‘New Princes’ of Machiavelli. We are peoples long accustomed to political subjection of the peninsulares, and through no fault of our own the common person displays none of the great heartedness or virtues that inspire acts of self-sacrifice for the common good in long-standing stable republics. Rather, they are consumed by petty, competitive bids for personal comfort and aggrandisement. This makes establishing and maintaining a republican constitution de novo a particularly vexed problem in republican thought. The heart of the doctrine of republican imperialism, therefore, lies in its compensation for the legacies of three centuries of oppression.
Americans lacked opportunities to develop the civic virtues which we republicans regard as requisite to the maintenance of self-government. Since now, that we have managed through momentary superiority of arms, to wrest independence away from the Spanish, our present level of cultural and societal development is incapable of maintaining their liberty against internal or external threats. We can see this obviously with the armas liberticidas being pointed at the throat of our Republic, from the events of La Cosiata and in Guayaquil. How, I ask, having broken the chains of our ancient oppression, can we perform the miracle of preventing their iron remnants from being re-forged as freedom-killing weapons?
In search of an answer, I have studied classical precedents and found two unparalleled instances of successful government. Rome and Great Britain are the nations that stand out amongst the ancients and moderns; both were born to rule and to be free; but both were constituted, not for brilliant forms of Liberty, but on solid foundations. Both Rome and Great Britain were, like Gran Colombia, societies characterised by stark social hierarchies, divided between a small, learned elite and a large, occasionally insurrectionary populace.
We are not Europeans, nor Indians, but a species halfway between aboriginal and Spanish. Americans by birth and Europeans by law, we find ourselves contending with the natives for titles of ownership and at the same time trying to maintain our rights in our birth country against the opposition of invaders; thus our case is most extraordinary and complex. The American revolutions were creole revolutions, formed and led by a colonial upper-class, the descendants of European settlers in a New World characterised by a deep socio-racial heterogeneity. Thus, we are placed in the difficult position of attempting to rise above the marginal status we are accorded as Americans within European empires without conceding the advantages we enjoyed as Europeans within American colonies.
Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the European. It belongs to us to vindicate the honour of the human race, and to teach that assuming brother moderation. Our hard-fought independence is therefore a double indication. It is both a shift in the global balance of power away from Europe, as well as an associated shift in political ideas, ushering in an era of enlightenment and inclusion that is here before unrivalled.
I am aware and conscious of the precarious position of my enlightened revolutionary cadre within a population mostly indifferent, if not actively opposed to my liberatory projects. I am thus attracted to the classic balance of the Roman Republic and the model of gradual, elite-led liberal reformism that characterises Great Britain. If you want to usher in a new era of progress and liberty for all humans, Native, Criollo, African, Mestizo or Pardo; I implore you to listen to my proposals for centralist institutions to serve as the foundations of our republic.
I am haunted by the spectre of 'pure democracy' and its implications. This ‘pardocracia’, ruled by the free, mixed-race population is troubling to many criollo elites for the backwards ideas of the Europeans, and such ideas should be shunned. However, I am troubled for reasons stemming from rationalism and the enlightenment. There is a possibility that with the legal equality of our liberatory revolution, the poor underclass through no fault of our own may demand absolute equality, both public and private and the shortsighted extermination of the privileged class, which is the only class fighting for the principles of liberty and fraternity. The shortsighted adoption of absolute equality by ‘New Princes’ entails the abandonment of this great project of enlightenment I and many other cadres are honoured to undertake.
I will now introduce to you the specific proposals that I, an ardent centralist, would adopt in order to continue the march of liberty. Firstly, I strongly denounce absolutism as a solution. Any and all limits on popular participation in government that I sought to establish were meant to buttress a transitional period during which Spanish Americans would undergo an education in civic virtue, rendering more and more of them fit for self rule. The goal is to liberate not just the bodies of all Colombians, it is to liberate their minds from the tyranny of tradition; to forge new bonds of fraternity and solidarity that belong to a free and liberal Colombia.
For our Senate, I believe that a centralist would support my idea of reform. Instead of being elective, were hereditary, it would serve as the base, the bond, the soul of our Republic. During political tempests, this institution would deflect lightning from the government and repulse waves of popular dissent. I can state this position and give you full confidence that I am speaking the truth, because the elective senate currently gives me their full support, and I am proposing to weaken my current political position in pursuit of a stronger, central government. We know that the common men do not know their own true interests, and thus would be best served by a system in which their protection was entrusted to a neutral body, owing nothing to either the election of the government or the people by virtue of its being staffed by inherited right, to serve as a bulwark against the whims of the general population.
Unlike the House of Lords in Great Britain whose history shackles the government to a crusty old aristocracy, we have the opportunity to upshore these arrogant pretensions with a republicanised and secular Congress. Under my proposal for a hereditary Congress, I would select the leaders of the liberation and their descendents deserved to occupy forever an exalted position in the republic which owes them its existence. That way, the lovers of liberty, the revolutionaries who spilled blood for our Republicá’s flag, their descendents whose blood will flow with the fire of independence.
On the executive authority, in a republic, it must be all the stronger, because everything conspires against it. A republican magistrate is an isolated individual in the middle of a society, charged with containing the impetuosity of the people. Though one wants to contain the executive authority such that they do not give into the temptations of absolutism, the bonds should be strong while not being too tight. The neutral, hereditary Congress will serve as a fair restraint. Therefore, let us concentrate the executive power in a President, and confer upon him sufficient authority that he will be able to continue to fight against the difficulties that attend upon our current situation, the state of war that we face, and the sorts of internal and external enemies that we will long battle.
The core mission of this strong President and the Liberatory Legislature is to prepare the minds of ordinary peoples to receive self-government and rationalism. Therefore, our constitution, the guiding document of our peoples, should reflect the needs of society in its present state. The conscious cultivation of virtue is of such importance that a new branch of government is absolutely necessary. To the tripartite system of legislature, executive, and judiciary, I therefore propose to introduce the following institution as the quartapotestad.
The fourth power of government to be added, this branch will be called the ‘poder moral’, an innovation in American constitutionalism. We stand upon the shoulders of the North Americans when we redraft our constitution, it is up to us to reach higher than they could ever reach. The present government, on paper, gives us the legal goal of strengthening our government to touch the lives of all citizens materially. However, the dominion of the ‘poder moral’ is childhood and men's hearts, the public spirit, good customs, and republican morality.
Is this radical? Of course not, it has been tried and tested with great success by the founders of democracy in our civilisation: the Athenian Areopagus and the Roman Censors are precedents with great success. This institution could restore to the world the idea of a people who are not content by being free and strong, but also want to be virtuous.
This is the central principle of the doctrine of republican imperialism. We are not centralists for the purpose of keeping power for the elites, this is a recipe for monarchy and absolutism. This constitutional provision, yes, is overtly authoritarian in its design, but intended, in a sense, to bring about its own obsolescence, becoming unnecessary once its function of creating a virtuous population has been discharged. I appeal to educational despotism, to imperialism itself as a means of overcoming the trauma of empire, and this principle runs through all of my political thought, as it should for any proper centralist.
This dilemma to resolve the problem of the ‘New Prince’ is best formulated by Rousseau. He writes that “For a young people to be able to relish sound principles of political theory and follow the fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause; the social spirit, which should be created by these institutions, would have to preside over their very foundation, and men would have to be before law what they should become by means of law.”
Rousseau makes mention of a mystical Legislator, a founding father, possessed of superior knowledge and virtue, who attracts the adherence of his people with a quasi-religious authority. Though I cannot claim to be a man of that stature, I have attempted such a feat in Upper Peru. I was undertaken by confusion and timidity when I was asked by the people I just liberated to tame the two monstrous enemies that reciprocally combat one another, and which both attack at once: tyranny and anarchy.
The end product was a perfection almost beyond what could be hoped for; a synthesis of Europe with America, of the army with the people, of democracy with aristocracy, and of imperialism with republicanism. It contained a three-chambered legislature, adopted because two chambers inevitably lead to perpetual combat. The third chamber being the Chamber of Censors, comprised of elder citizens serving a life-term, charged with regulating morality, the sciences, the arts, education, and the press.
My favourite provision I have implemented in Upper Peru is that of the présidente vitalicio. This is a life-term president who is empowered to choose his own successor. I am inspired by France's Constitution of the Year X (1802), as well as our neighbours in the most democratic republic in the world, the southern Republic of Haiti. After winning its independence, the island of Haiti found itself in a state of constant insurrection. After experiments with all of the known forms of govern
ment, and even some unknown ones, its people were forced to appeal to the illustrious Alexandre Pétion for salvation. Once Pétion was made president for life in 1816, the island's destiny was placed on more secure ground, and all had gone well since. Haiti, then, provided triumphant proof that a lifetime President, with the power to choose his successor, is the most sublime innovation in the republican system.
Under our Constitution, the President of the Republic will be like the Sun, unmoved at the centre, giving life to the universe. The fixed point around which magistrates and citizens, men and materials, revolve. Give me a fixed point, said an ancient, and I will move the world. For Upper Peru, this point is the présidente vitalicio; for Colombia, if you shall so bestow upon me the honour, I am willing to give my life for this republic and its liberty. The présidente vitalicio is the republican emperor, yes, who rules in order that his subjects will learn to rule themselves; a permanent institutionalisation of Rousseau’s legislator; and the only means by which the young peoples of Spanish America can sustain their independence.
The Constituent Congress of Upper Peru was unfortunately not ready to embrace the more appealing provisions I had conceived: the abolition of slavery, which is 'a violation of every law and a contradiction that impugns only our reason more than our justice'; and the disestablishment of religion, which, being a question of conscience lying within divine jurisdiction, makes all attempts at legal coercion both 'sacrilegious' and 'null'. Therefore, it is obvious to me that to bring our Patria of Colombia into the future, we must embrace an even more imperious constitution, as any enlightened, reformist, liberal thinker will agree beyond reproach.
Notice that in the upcoming Convention of Ocaña, you may fall victim to the false notion that our constitution is too absolutist, too centralist already. I have assured you that absolutism is not the goal of my administration already, and anything you hear on this is a falsity. Next, our constitution is flawed not because of a lack of federalism, no! It is a lack of centralism that makes this country weak, weak to those who I have mentioned are unused to freedom and liberty, those who are consumed by petty, competitive bids for personal comfort and aggrandisement. You will see the arguments of the federalists, see how they demand more and more power for themselves in their fiefdoms carved out of the body of Colombia. See how they demand more positions, more control over the scant tax revenue, more control over government functions for every single province. It is as if they learned nothing from the failures of La Patria Boba, the failures of excessive federalism which led to the occupation of Nueva Granada and Venezuela for an additional decade. When the flesh of our Republicá is carved away by these federalist vultures, all that will remain is a withered skeleton.
States are enslaved either by virtue of their constitution or through the abuse of it; a people is enslaved when the government, by its essence or through its vices, tramples and usurps the rights of the citizen or subject. I call upon all lovers of liberty; my allies and compadres; my brothers in arms and all those who wish to invite the enlightenment into their hearts and minds, to attend to the patriotic faction, the centre of enlightenment and of all revolutionary interests under whose leadership, we will lay down the foundation stone of South American liberty!
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