DemocracyThe God That Failed

by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

  Second, any income or wealth redistribution within civil society implies that the recipients are made economically better off without having produced either more or better goods or services, while others are made worse off without their having produced quantitatively or qualitatively less. Not producing, not producing anything worthwhile, or not correctly predicting the future and the future exchange-demand for one's products thus becomes relatively more attractive (or less prohibitive) as compared to producing something of value and predicting the future exchange-demand correctly. Consequently—and regardless of the specific legislative intent, be it to "help" or "protect" the poor, the unemployed, the sick, the young or the old, the uneducated or the stupid, the farmers, steelworkers or truckers, the uninsured, the homeless, whites or blacks, the married or unmarried, those with children or those without, etc.,—there will be more people producing less and displaying poor foresight, and fewer people producing more and predicting well. For if individuals possess even the slightest control over the criteria that "entitle" a person to be either on the receiving or on the "giving" end of the redistribution, they increasingly will shift out of the latter roles and into the former. There will be more poor, unemployed, uninsured, uncompetitive, homeless, and so on, than otherwise. Even if such a shift is not possible, as in the case of sex-, race-, or age-based income or wealth redistribution, the incentive to be productive and farsighted will still be reduced. There may not be more men or women, or whites or blacks, at least not immediately. However, because the members of the privileged sex, race, or age group are awarded an unearned income, they have less of an incentive to earn one in the future, and because the members of the discriminated sex, race, or age group are punished for possessing wealth or having produced an income, they, too, will be less productive in the future. In any case, there will be less productive activity, self-reliance and future-orientation, and more consumption, parasitism, dependency and shortsightedness. That is, the very problem that the redistribution was supposed to cure will have grown even bigger. Accordingly, the cost of maintaining the existing level of welfare distribution will be higher now than before, and in order to finance it, even higher taxes and more wealth confiscation must be imposed on the remaining producers. The tendency to shift from production to nonproduction activities will be further strengthened, leading to continuously rising time-preference rates and a progressive decivilization—infantilization and demoralization—of civil society.32

  In addition, with public ownership and free entry into a democratic-republican government, the foreign policy changes as well. All governments are expected to be expansionary, as explained above, and there is no reason to assume that a president's expansionary desires will be smaller than a king's. However, while a king may satisfy this desire through marriage, this route is essentially precluded for a president. He does not own the government controlled territory; hence, he cannot contractually combine separate territories. And even if he concluded inter-government treaties, these would not possess the status of contracts but constitute at best only temporary pacts or alliances, because as agreements concerning publicly-owned resources, they could be revoked at any time by other future governments. If a democratic ruler and a democratically elected ruling elite want to expand their territory and hence their tax base, then only a military option of conquest and domination is open to them. Hence, the likelihood of war will be significantly increased.33

  32On the "logic" of government interventionism—its counterproductivity, inherent instability, and "progressive" character—see Ludwig von Mises, Critique of Interventionism (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1977); see also idem, Human Action, part 6: "The Hampered Market Economy."

  For empirical illustrations of the decivilizing and demoralizing effects of redistributive policies see Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited; Charles Murray, Losing Ground (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

  33Prior to and long after the onset of the democratic-republican transformation of Europe with the French (and the American) Revolution, most prominent social philosophers—from Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Say, to J.S. Mill—had essentially contended "That it was only the ruling classes [the king, the nobility] who wanted war, and that'the people,' if only they were allowed to speak for themselves, would opt enthusiastically for peace." Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1978), chaps. 1 and 2, p. 45. Indeed, Immanuel Kant, in his Perpetual Peace (1795), claimed a republican constitution to be the prerequisite for perpetual peace. For under a republican constitution,

  Moreover, not only the likelihood but also the form of war will change. Typically, monarchical wars arise out of disputes over inheritances brought on by a complex network of interdynastic marriages and the irregular but constant extinction of certain dynasties. As violent inheritance disputes, monarchical wars are characterized by territorial objectives. They are not ideologically motivated quarrels but disputes over tangible properties. Moreover, since they are interdynastic property disputes, the public considers war the king's private affair, to be financed and executed with his own money and military forces. Further, as private conflicts between different ruling families the public expects and the kings feel compelled to recognize a clear distinction between combatants and noncombatants and to target their war efforts specifically against each other and their respective private property. As late as the eighteenth century, notes military historian Michael Howard,

  on the continent commerce, travel, cultural and learned intercourse went on in wartime almost unhindered. The wars were the king's wars. The role of the good citizen was to pay his taxes, and sound political economy dictated that he should be left alone to make the money out of which to pay those taxes. He was required to participate neither in the decision out of which wars arose nor to take part in them once they broke out, unless prompted by a spirit of youthful adventure. These matters were arcana regni, the concern of the sovereign alone.34

  when the consent of the citizens is necessary to decide whether there shall be war or not, nothing is more natural than that, since they would have to decide on imposing all of the hardships of war onto themselves, they will be very hesitant to begin such an evil adventure. In contrast, under a constitution where the subject is not a citizen, which is thus not republican, it is the easiest thing in the world, because the sovereign is not a citizen of the state but its owner, his dining, hunting, castles, parties, etc., will not suffer in the least from the war, and he can thus go to war for meaningless reasons, as if it were a pleasure trip. (Gesammelte Werke in zwolf Banden, Wilhelm Weischedel, ed. [Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1964], vol. 11, pp. 205f.)

  In fact the opposite is true: the substitution of a republic for a monarchy does not imply less government power, or even self-rule. It implies the replacement of bad private-government administration by worse public-government administration. On the illusionary character of Kant's and others' views to the contrary and the "positive" historical correlation between democracy and increased militarization and war, see Michael Howard War in European History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); John F.C. Fuller, War and Western Civilization 1832-1932 (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries, 1969); idem, The Conduct of War, 1789-1961 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992); also Ekkehard Krippendorff, Staat und Krieg (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1985).

  In fact, writes Guglielmo Ferrero of the eighteenth century,

  war became limited and circumscribed by a system of precise rules. It was definitely regarded as a kind of single combat between the two armies, the civil population being merely spectators. Pillage, requisitions, and acts of violence against the population were forbidden in the home country as well as in the enemy country. Each army established depots in its rear in carefully chosen towns, shifting them as it moved about; . . . Conscription existed only in a rudimentary and sporadic form,... Soldiers being scarce and hard to find, everything was done to ensure their quality by a long, patient and meticulous training, but as this was
costly, it rendered them very valuable, and it was necessary to let as few be killed as possible. Having to economize their men, generals tried to avoid fighting battles. The object of warfare was the execution of skillful maneuvers and not the annihilation of the adversary; a campaign without battles and without loss of life, a victory obtained by a clever combination of movements, was considered the crowning achievement of this art, the ideal pattern of perfection.35 ... It was avarice and calculation that made war more humane.... [W]ar became a kind of game between sovereigns. A war was a game with its rules and its stakes—a territory, an inheritance, a throne, a treaty. The loser paid, but a just proportion was always kept between the value of the stake and the risks to be taken, and the parties were always on guard against the kind of obstinacy which makes a player lose his head. They tried to keep the game in hand and to know when to stop.36

  34Howard, War in European History, p. 73. For a similar assessment see Fuller, The Conduct of War:

  So completely was civil life divorced from war that, in his A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, Laurence Sterne relates that during the Seven Years' War [1756-1763] he left London for Paris with so much precipitation that "it never entered my mind that we were at war with France," and that on his arrival in Dover it suddenly occurred to him he was without a passport. However, this did not impede his journey, and when he arrived at Versailles, the Duke of Choiseul, French Foreign Minister, had one sent to him. In Pans he was cheered by his French admirers, and in Frontignac was invited to theatricals by the English colony, (pp. 22-23)

  35See on this also Fuller, The Conduct of War, chap. 1. Fuller here (p. 23) quotes Daniel Defoe to the effect that often "armies of fifty thousand men of a side stand at bay within view of one another, and spend a whole campaign in dodging, or, as it is genteely called, observing one another, and then march off into winter quarters"; and similarly, Sir John Fontescue is quoted with the observation that

  To force an enemy to consume his own supply was much, to compel him to supply his opponents was more, to take up winter-quarters in his territory was very much more. Thus to enter an enemy's borders and keep him marching backwards and forwards for weeks without giving him a chance of striking a blow, was in itself no small success, (p. 25)

  In contrast, democratic wars tend to be total wars. In blurring the distinction between the rulers and the ruled, a democratic republic strengthens the identification of the public with a particular state. Indeed, while dynastic rule promotes the identification with one's own family and community and the development of a "cosmopolitan" outlook and attitude,37 democratic republicanism inevitably leads to

  36Guglielmo Ferrero, Peace and War (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), pp. 5-7. See also Fuller, The Conduct of War, pp. 20-25; idem, War and Western Civilization, pp. 26-29; Howard, War in European History, chap. 4; Palmer and Colton, A History of the Western World, pp. 274-75. In the eighteenth century, they note,

  never had war been so harmless,... This was one reason why governments went to war so lightly. On the other hand governments also withdrew from war much more easily than in later times. Their treasuries might be exhausted, their trained soldiers used up; only practical and rational questions were at stake; there was no war hysteria or pressure of mass opinion; the enemy of today might be the ally of tomorrow. Peace was almost as easy to make as war. Peace treaties were negotiated, not imposed. So the eighteenth century saw a series of wars and treaties, more wars, treaties, and rearrangements of alliances, all arising over much the same issues, and with exactly the same powers present at the end as at the beginning. (Ibid.)

  37As the result of marriages, bequests, inheritances, etc., royal territories were often discontiguous, and kings frequently came to rule linguistically and culturally distinct populations. Accordingly, they found it in their interest to speak several languages: universal ones such as Latin, and then French, as well as local ones such as English, German, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Czech, etc. (See Malcolm Vale, "Civilization of Courts and Cities in the North, 1200-1500," in Oxford History of Medieval Europe, George Holmes, ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988], pp. 322-23.) Likewise the small social and intellectual elites were usually proficient in several languages and thereby demonstrated their simultaneously local and supra-local, or cosmopolitan-intellectual orientation. This cosmopolitan outlook came to bear in the fact that throughout the monarchical age until 1914, Europe was characterized by a nearly complete freedom of migration. "A man could travel across the length and breadth of the Continent without a passport until he reached the frontiers of Russia and the Ottoman Empire. He could settle in a foreign country for work or leisure without formalities except, occasionally, some health requirements. Every currency was as good as gold" (A.J.P. Taylor, From Sarajevo to Potsdam [New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966], p. 7). In contrast, today in the age of democratic republicanism, it has become unthinkable that one might be ruled by a "foreigner," or that states could be anything but contiguously extended territories. States are defined by their citizens, and citizens in turn are defined by their state passports. International migration is strictly regulated and controlled. Political rulers and the intellectual elite, far more numerous now, are increasingly ignorant of foreign languages. It is no coincidence that of all the members of the European Parliament, only Otto von Habsburg, the current family head of the former Habsburg rulers, speaks all of the parliament's official business languages.

  nationalism, i.e., the emotional identification of the public with large, anonymous groups of people, characterized in terms of a common language, history, religion and /or culture and in contradistinction to other, foreign nations. Interstate wars are thus transformed into national wars. Rather than representing "merely" violent dynastic property disputes, which may be "resolved" through acts of territorial occupation, they become battles between different ways of life, which can only be "resolved" through cultural, linguistic, or religious domination and subjugation (or extermination). It becomes more and more difficult for members of the public to remain neutral or to extricate themselves from all personal involvement. Resistance against higher taxes to fund a war is increasingly considered treachery or treason. Conscription becomes the rule, rather than the exception. And with mass armies of cheap and hence easily disposable conscripts fighting for national supremacy (or against national suppression) backed by the economic resources of the entire nation, all distinctions between combatants and noncombatants fall by the wayside, and wars become increasingly brutal. "Once the state ceased to be regarded as 'property' of dynastic princes," notes Michael Howard,

  and became instead the instrument of powerful forces dedicated to such abstract concepts as Liberty, or Nationality, or Revolution, which enabled large numbers of the population to see in that state the embodiment of some absolute Good for which no price was too high, no sacrifice too great to pay; then the "temperate and indecisive contests" of the rococo age appeared as absurd anachronisms.38

  For a prominent, highly apologetic historical treatment of the transition from cosmopolitanism to nationalism in nineteenth-century Germany, see Friedrich Meinecke, Cosmopolitanism and the National State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970).

  38Howard, War in European Civilization, pp. 75-76. See also Marshal Ferdinand Foch, The Principles of War (Chapham and Hall, 1918):

  A new era had begun, the era of national wars, of wars which were to assume a maddening pace; for those wars were destined to throw into the fight all the resources of the nation; they were to set themselves the goal, not of a dynastic interest, not the conquest or possession of a province, but the defense or propagation of philosophical ideas in the first place, next of principles of independence, of unity, of nonmaterial advantages of various kinds. Lastly, they staked upon the issue the interests and fortune of every individual private. Hence the rise of passions, that is elements of force, hitherto in the main unused, (p. 30)