Buccaneers of the world, unite!

Since some feared that Obama’s message to schoolchildren yesterday would turn out to be sly socialist indoctrination (his insidious “work hard in school” agenda is probably groundwork priming our children for soviet-style work camps), and others are concerned that healthcare reform is hurtling us toward socialism, it's a good time to give serious consideration to ... piracy. Forget Somalia. The true urgency of surveying the historical tradition of piracy is signaled in an essay in last week’s New Yorker. Caleb Crain’s review of literature on the pirate life reveals that these seafaring gangs were, in addition to torturers and thieves, egalitarian socialists with universal healthcare, of a sort. If we’re really headed toward socialism, I say we ought to take some notes from the pirates of yore, who may have come closest historically to that elusive feat of establishing a thriving society based on communal ownership and regulation.

First, a quick guide to the pirate life: To belong to the nautical bandit brotherhood, you start by signing onto the pirate code of ethics. In the 17th Century, this was suggestively titled the Custom of the Brothers of the Coast, and the creed was upheld by the various ships in the region, which maintained friendly relations with each other in a sort of borderless society of pirates. The Custom established some constitutional basics for the Brothers: every ship Captain was democratically elected, and his authority was only absolute during periods of “engagement.” Otherwise, the whole crew participated equally in decision-making, just as the Captain participated equally in the labors of pillaging and sailing. Spoils were divvied equitably, with bonuses awarded to those who demonstrated particular valor during the given raid. The creed set down certain rules and established the basis for a “court of honor” in which to try individuals of dubious conduct or character. No women were allowed in the brotherhood or on the ships, but I propose that we drop this bit of the Pirate Code if we do pattern the new constitution of the United Socialist States of America after the Brothers of the Coast (and for the record, a few cross-dressing women did in fact manage to circumvent this bit of besmirching chauvinism).

Once all that’s settled, the pirate life is a paragon of simplicity: You plunder, you torture or reprieve (according to the dictates of justice), you share the booty, you squander your portion of the booty on booze and revelry, and then you repeat the whole process. Maritime brothers don’t have to work all that much (pirating vessels generally require a crew of 16-20, while humble accommodations allow pirate crew sizes to average about 80), so there’s plenty of time for the famed pirate antics and playful mischief. A final virtue that some of the pirate ships of yore could boast is that they were racially tolerant and empowering, and tended to mostly raid slave ships and other arms of The Man.

The success of pirating ventures (before penal repression) did not arise in spite of the socialist organization of pirating society; rather, it grew directly from the pirate system of communal ownership and responsibility. This, at least, is the case made (more or less cognizantly) in the economically-oriented book Crain reviews in the New Yorker piece.

The Invisible Hook, written by U of Chicago visiting Professor in Economics Peter Leeson, explains the way that these socialist brothers actually had incentives to work hard and well, contrary to the accepted wisdom that socialism breeds universal laziness. Leeson argues that, in fact, it is the sharing of booty and responsibility that makes the pirate experiment dodge a standard business pitfall that economists call the “principal-agent problem.” Because all pirates own a stake in their pirating, and because ships don’t divide the Captain from his Crew with a resentment-cultivating hierarchy, every member of the crew is both principal and agent. You’ve got the conditions for an egalitarian self-management system impossible in corporations where the agents are marginalized. Or, as Crain paraphrases, on a standard, non-pirating ship like the Pequod, “a certain amount of surveillance and coercion is necessary to persuade Ishmael to hunt whales instead of spending all day in his hammock with Queequeg.” Give Ishmael an ownership stake and a non-authoritarian Captain, and he just might want to catch the great white sperm whale. After which, he and Queequeg can canoodle to their hearts’ delights.

Leeson makes a point to counteract his apparent endorsement of certain tenets of socialism. He asserts that the pirate model can be mobilized to demonstrate, rather discordantly, the capitalist precept that entrepreneurial operations thrive best when left to regulate themselves. And I'd add a reminder that pirate raids aren’t exactly business ventures in the most traditional sense. They require someone else to produce the goods that the pirates then plunder. And I’m afraid that our closest heirs today to the pirating kind of business have raised some doubts about their ability to regulate themselves.

So we might not be headed toward adopting a national or international Custom of the Siblings of the Earth, after all. Outside of the thieving industry, most people still have to be involved in a hierarchical system of labor that breeds discord, trespasses on impish leisure, and impedes participatory self-government. I don’t see a simple solution to this (but I don’t claim omniscience), unless global warming and a robotic coup create auspicious conditions for us to morph into seafaring rebels. But maybe the pirates can still teach us a few lessons about solidarity, sharing, and carousing.