Liberal Thought in Argentina, 1837-1940

José Hernández: Governments as Business Managers (1869)

250 In the last sessions of the Senate, on the occasion of the debate on the matter of the port, which has not yet been resolved, General Mitre gave several speeches in support of the province’s right to set itself up as the manager of said works. “They are mistaken,” said General Mitre, “those who contend that governments should not be business managers.” And as if this simple denial were sufficient, General Mitre believes himself to be exempt from entering into further explanations to demonstrate the foundation of his extraordinary claim. I can understand why he does not stoop to provide evidence, because we know not on what basis he might have upheld such a patent denial of the most obvious principles of science and economic liberty. Though we were and still are in diametrically opposed ranks, though we fought him like a fatal antagonist, it wounds us to see General Mitre descend from the heights where fortune has elevated him in order to make use of untenable sophisms and articulate words bereft of any meaning in politics, at the service of the most retrograde doctrines in the economic and social order. Our people, who can be said to have grown up in the midst of revolutions and anarchy, are generally strangers to the principles of economic science, and have not managed to elucidate clearly and succinctly those problems that hinder their progress. But, with their instinctive insight, they have understood for some time that the purely administrative mission of governments tends to be increasingly narrower and more simplified, while the people improve themselves in the practical schooling of democracy, regaining strength and exercising their rights. 5 José hERNáNdEz Governments as Business Managers (1869) Original title: “Gobiernos empresarios.” Source: El Río de la Plata, September 17, 1869. governMentS aS BuSIneSS ManagerS (1869) : 251 In the most advanced civilizations, which have borne the flag of liberty and progress furthest, which are conscious of their political mission , power is relegated to strictly limited functions. Not many years ago, the Buenos Aires press, concerning itself with Paraguay and faced with the prospect of a possible impolitically provoked rupture, marked out the people of Paraguay as a strange and singularaberration amid the political progress of the continent, and marked out for satire and ridicule that dismal government that monopolized for itself the only important branch of trade in that country: yerba mate. And, upon my soul, the press had more than enough reason, all the more so, because of the greater injustice and absurdity of the new arguments that today resolutely support the provincial government, derailed from the progressive and moral track along which it was progressing with such determination. To try to turn governments into business managers is to set up a monstrous theory that amounts to the falsification of all the healthy principles on which economic and administrative science rests. It amounts to the enthronement of privilege, monopoly, plundering, but no longer to benefit individuals, as we have seen thus far, but to benefit the government, responsible for guaranteeing all liberties and all franchises of our liberal institutions. It amounts to turning against the country the laws that should guarantee it and, in a word, legalizing injustice and pillage. On what basis, on what precept of law can a government stand and claim for itself the exercise of an individual right, when it thus exploits the most important branches of social activity? Where might it find set down those powers alien to its mandate, to want to destroy the benefits of free competition in one fell swoop, extinguishing the spirit of enterprise and making the works of progress and future depend on the unstable movements of politics that absorb our governments’ time? The Constitution empowers them to promote the enterprises on which the province’s moral and material progress depends, but that does not mean handing on a power that is alien to the nature and character of governmental functions. To govern is not to trade, nor is it to speculate, and if we were to permit our governments to embrace the branches of commercial activity and launch themselves down the difficult paths of speculation, we 252 : JoSé hernández would wholly pervert the origin and foundation of the government of the states, distracting their efforts from truly legitimate and constitutional objectives. We cannot allow this demoralizing result, and it is necessary for us to raise our...