DemocracyThe God That Failed

by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

  To be sure, there are a number of factors other than increased irresponsibility and shortsightedness brought on by legislation and welfare that may contribute to crime. Men commit more crimes than women, the young more than the old, blacks more than whites, and city dwellers more than villagers.42 Accordingly, changes in the composition of the sexes, age groups, races, and the degree of urbanization could be expected to have a systematic effect on crime. However, all of these factors are relatively stable and thus cannot account for any systematic change in the long-term downward trend of crime rates. As for European countries, their populations were and are comparatively homogeneous; and in the U.S., the proportion of blacks has remained stable. The sex composition is largely a biological constant; and as a result of wars, only the proportion of males has periodically fallen, thus actually reinforcing the "normal" trend toward falling crime rates. Similarly, the composition of age groups has changed only slowly; and due to declining birth rates and higher life expectancies the average age of the population has actually increased, thus helping to depress crime rates still further. Finally, the degree of urbanization began to increase dramatically from about 1800 onward. A period of rising crime rates during the early nineteenth century can be attributed to this initial spurt of urbanization.43 Yet after a period of adjustment to the new phenomenon of urbanization, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, the countervailing tendency toward falling crime rates took hold again, despite the fact that the process of rapid urbanization continued for about another hundred years. And when crime rates began to move systematically upward, from the mid-twentieth century onward, the process of increasing urbanization had actually come to a halt.

  It thus appears that the phenomenon of rising crime rates cannot be explained other than with reference to the process of democratization: by a rising degree of social time preference, an increasing loss of individual responsibility, intellectually and morally, and a diminished respect for all law—moral relativism—stimulated by an unabated flood of legislation.44 Of course, "high time preference" is by no means equivalent with "crime." A high time preference can also find expression in such perfectly lawful activities as recklessness, unreliability, poor manners, laziness, stupidity, or hedonism. Nonetheless, a systematic relationship between high time preference and crime exists, for in order to earn a market income a certain minimum of planning, patience, and sacrifice is required. One must first work for a while before one gets paid. In contrast, most serious criminal activities such as murder, assault, rape, robbery, theft, and burglary require no such discipline. The reward for the aggressor is immediate and tangible, whereas the sacrifice—possible punishment—lies in the future and is uncertain. Consequently, if the social degree of time preference were increased, it would be expected that the frequency in particular of these forms of aggressive behavior would rise—as they in fact did.45

  42See J. Philippe Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995); Michael Levin, Why Race Matters (Westport, Conn.: Praeger,1998).

  43See Wilson and Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature, p. 411.

  44Essentially the same conclusion is also reached by ibid., pp. 414-15:

  As a society becomes more egalitarian in its outlook, it becomes skeptical of claims that the inputs of some persons are intrinsically superior to those of others, and thus its members become more disposed to describe others' output as unjustly earned. There can be little doubt, we think, that the trend of thought in modern nations has been toward more egalitarian views, buttressed in some instances by the rising belief among disadvantaged racial, ethnic, and religious minorities that the deference they once paid need be paid no longer; on the contrary, now the majority group owes them something as reparations for past injustices. Of course, persons can acquire more egalitarian or even more reparations-seeking views without becoming more criminal. But at the margin, some individuals—perhaps those impulsive ones who value the products of an affluent society—find that value suddenly enhanced when they allow themselves to be persuaded that the current owner of a car has no greater (i.e., no more just) claim to it than they do Data on changes in internalized inhibitions against crime are virtually nonexistent. . . . [However,] one tantalizing but isolated fact may suggest that internalized inhibitions have in fact changed, at least in some societies. Wolpin finds that in England the ratio of murderers who committed suicide before being arrested to all convicted murderers fell more or less steadily from about three out of four in 1929 to about one in four in 1967.

  45On the relationship between high time preference and crime see also Edward C. Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), esp. chaps. 3 and 8; idem, "Present-Orientedness and Crime," in Assessing the Criminal, Randy E. Barnett and John Hagel, eds. (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1977). Explains Banfield (The Unheavenly City Revisited, pp. 140-41):

  The threat of punishment at the hands of the law is unlikely to deter the present-oriented person. The gains he expects from the illegal act are very near to the present, whereas the punishment that he would suffer—in the unlikely event of his being both caught and punished—lies in a future too distant for him to take into account. For the normal person there are of course risks other than the legal penalty that are strong deterrents: disgrace, loss of job, hardship for wife and children if one is sent to prison, and soon. The present-oriented person does not run such risks. ... he need not fear losing his job since he works intermittently or not at all, and for his wife and children, he contributes little or nothing to their support and they may well be better off without him.

  Conclusion: Monarchy, Democracy, And The Idea Of Natural Order

  From the vantage point of elementary economic theory and in light of historical evidence, then, a revisionist view of modern history results. The Whig theory of history, according to which mankind marches continually forward toward ever higher levels of progress, is incorrect. From the viewpoint of those who prefer less exploitation over more and who value farsightedness and individual responsibility above shortsightedness and irresponsibility, the historic transition from monarchy to democracy represents not progress but civilizational decline. Nor does this verdict change if more or other indicators are included. Quite to the contrary. Without question the most important indicator of exploitation and present-orientedness not discussed above is war. Yet if this indicator were included the relative performance of democratic republican government appears to be even worse, not better. In addition to increased exploitation and social decay, the transition from monarchy to democracy has brought a change from limited warfare to total war, and the twentieth century, the age of democracy, must be ranked also among the most murderous periods in all of history.46

  See also Wilson and Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature, pp. 416-22. Wilson and Herrnstein report of indicators for young persons becoming increasingly "more present-oriented and thus more impulsive than those who grew up earlier." There is some evidence that this is true. In 1959, Davids, Kidder, and Reich administered to a group of institutionalized male and female delinquents in Rhode Island various tests (completing a story, telling the interviewer whether they would save or spend various sums of money if given to them) designed to measure their time orientation. The results showed them to be markedly more present-oriented than were comparable nondelinquents. Fifteen years later, essentially the same tests were given to a new group of institutionalized delinquents in the same state and of the same age. This group was much more present-oriented and thus much less willing to delay gratification (by, for example, saving rather than spending the money) than the earlier group of delinquents. Moreover, the more recent group frequently mentioned spending the gift money on drugs (nobody suggested that in 1959) and never mentioned giving it to somebody else (several had said they would do so in 1959), p. 418.

  46On the contrast between monarchical and democratic warfare see Fuller, The Conduct of War, esp. chaps. 1 and 2; idem, War and Western Civilization (Freeport,
N.Y.: Books for Libraries, 1969); Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), esp. chap. 6; idem, War and the Liberal Conscience (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1978); de Jouvenel, On Power, chap. 8; William A. Orton, The Liberal Tradition (Port Washington, Wash.: Kennikat Press, 1969), pp. 25ff.; Ferrero, Peace and War, chap. 1; see also chap. 1 above.

  Thus, inevitably two final questions arise. The current state of affairs can hardly be "the end of history." What can we expect? And what can we do? As for the first question, the answer is brief. At the end of the twentieth century, democratic republicanism in the U.S. and all across the Western world has apparently exhausted the reserve fund that was inherited from the past. For decades, until the 1990s boom, real incomes have stagnated or even fallen.47 The public debt and the cost of social security systems have brought on the prospect of an imminent economic meltdown. At the same time, societal breakdown and social conflict have risen to dangerous heights. If the tendency toward increased exploitation and present-orientedness continues on its current path, the Western democratic welfare states will collapse as the East European socialist peoples' republics did in the late 1980s. Hence one is left with the second question: What can we do now, in order to prevent the process of civilizational decline from running its full course to an economic and social catastrophe?

  Above all, the idea of democracy and majority rule must be delegitimized. Ultimately, the course of history is determined by ideas, be they true or false. Just as kings could not exercise their rule unless a majority of public opinion accepted such rule as legitimate, so will democratic rulers not last without ideological support in public opinion.48 Likewise, the transition from monarchical to democratic rule must be explained as fundamentally nothing but a change in public opinion. In fact, until the end of World War I, the overwhelming majority of the public in Europe accepted monarchical rule as legitimate.49 Today, hardly anyone would do so. On the contrary, the idea of monarchical government is considered laughable. Consequently, a return to the ancien regime must be regarded as impossible. The legitimacy of monarchical rule appears to have been irretrievably lost. Nor would such a return be a genuine solution. For monarchies, whatever their relative merits, do exploit and do contribute to present-orientedness as well. Rather, the idea of democratic-republican rule must be rendered equally if not more laughable, not in the least by identifying it as the source of the ongoing process of decivilization.

  47For a revealing analysis of U.S. data see Robert Batemarco, "GNP, PPR, and the Standard of Living," Review of Austrian Economics 1 (1987).

  48On the relation between government and public opinion see the classic expositions by Etienne de la Boetie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (New York: Free Life Editions, 1975); David Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), esp. Essay 4: "Of the First Principles of Government."

  49As late as 1871, for instance, with universal male suffrage, the National Assembly of the French Republic contained only about 200 republicans out of more than 600 deputies. And the restoration of a monarchy was only prevented because the supporters of the Bourbons and the Orleans stalemated each other.

  But at the same time, and still more importantly, a positive alternative to monarchy and democracy—the idea of a natural order—must be delineated and understood. On the one hand, this involves the recognition that it is not exploitation, either monarchical or democratic, but private property, production, and voluntary exchange that are the ultimate sources of human civilization. On the other hand, it involves the recognition of a fundamental sociological insight (which incidentally also helps identify precisely where the historic opposition to monarchy went wrong): that the maintenance and preservation of a private property based exchange economy requires as its sociological presupposition the existence of a voluntarily acknowledged natural elite—a nobilitas naturalist

  The natural outcome of the voluntary transactions between various private property owners is decidedly nonegalitarian, hierarchical, and elitist. As the result of widely diverse human talents, in every society of any degree of complexity a few individuals quickly acquire the status of an elite. Owing to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, bravery or a combination thereof, some individuals come to possess "natural authority," and their opinions and judgments enjoy widespread respect. Moreover, because of selective mating and marriage and the laws of civil and genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority are more likely than not passed on within a few noble families. It is to the heads of these families with long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary personal conduct that men turn with their conflicts and complaints against each other, and it is these very leaders of the natural elite who typically act as judges and peacemakers, often free of charge, out of a sense of obligation required and expected of a person of authority or even out of a principled concern for civil justice, as a privately produced "public good."51

  50See also Wilhelm Ropke, A Humane Economy (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1971), pp. 129-36; de Jouvenel, On Power, chap. 17.

  51See also Marvin Harris, Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), pp. 104 ff., on the private provision of public goods by "big men."

  In fact, the endogenous origin of a monarchy (as opposed to its exogenous origin via conquest)52 can only be understood against the background of a prior order of natural elites. The small but decisive step in the transition to monarchical rule —the original sin—consisted precisely in the monopolization of the function of judge and peacemaker. The step was taken once a single member of the voluntarily acknowledged natural elite—the king—insisted, against the opposition of other members of the social elite, that all conflicts within a specified territory be brought before him and conflicting parties no longer choose any other judge or peacekeeper but him. From this moment on, law and law enforcement became more expensive: instead of being offered free of charge or for a voluntary payment, they were financed with the help of a compulsory tax. At the same time, the quality of law deteriorated: instead of upholding the pre-existing law and applying universal and immutable principles of justice, a monopolistic judge, who did not have to fear losing clients as a result of being less than impartial in his judgments, could successively alter the existing law to his own advantage.

  It was to a large extent the inflated price of justice and the perversions of ancient law by the kings which motivated the historical opposition to monarchy. However, confusion as to the causes of this phenomenon prevailed. There were those who recognized correctly that the problem lay with monopoly, not with elites or nobility.53 But they were far outnumbered by those who erroneously blamed it on the elitist character of the rulers instead, and who accordingly strove to maintain the monopoly of law and law enforcement and merely replace the king and the visible royal pomp by the "people" and the presumed modesty and decency of the "common man." Hence the historic success of democracy.

  Ironically, the monarchy was then destroyed by the same social forces that kings had first stimulated when they began to exclude competing natural authorities from acting as judges. In order to overcome their resistance, kings typically aligned themselves with the people, the common man.54 Appealing to the always popular sentiment of envy, kings promised the people cheaper and better justice in exchange and at the expense of taxing—cutting down to size—their own betters (that is, the kings' competitors). When the kings' promises turned out to be empty, as was to be predicted, the same egalitarian sentiments which they had previously courted now focused and turned against them. After all, the king himself was a member of the nobility, and as a result of the exclusion of all other judges, his position had become only more elevated and elitist and his conduct only more arrogant. Accordingly, it appeared only logical then that kings, too, should be brought down and that the egalitarian policies, which monarchs had initiated, be carried through to their ultimate c
onclusion: the monopolistic control of the judiciary by the common man.

  52For a comparative evaluation of theories of the endogenous versus the exogenous origin of government and a historical critique of the latter as incorrect or incomplete see Wilhelm Mtihlmann, Rassen, Ethnien, Kulturen (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1964), pp. 248-319, esp. pp. 291-96.

  For proponents of theories of the exogenous origin of government see Fried rich Ratzel, Politische Geographie (Munich, 1923); Oppenheimer, Der Staat; Alexander Riistow, Freedom and Domination (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976).

  53See, for instance, Gustave de Molinari, The Production of Security (New York: Center for Libertarian Studies, 1977), published originally in French in 1849.

  Predictably, as explained and illustrated in detail above, the democratization of law and law enforcement—the substitution of the people for the king—made matters only worse, however. The price of justice and peace has risen astronomically, and all the while the quality of law has steadily deteriorated to the point where the idea of law as a body of universal and immutable principles of justice has almost disappeared from public opinion and has been replaced by the idea of law as legislation (government-made law). At the same time, democracy has succeeded where monarchy only made a modest beginning: in the ultimate destruction of the natural elites. The fortunes of great families have dissipated, and their tradition of culture and economic independence, intellectual farsightedness, and moral and spiritual leadership has been forgotten. Rich men still exist today, but more frequently than not they owe their fortune now directly or indirectly to the state. Hence, they are often more dependent on the state's continued favors than people of far lesser wealth. They are typically no longer the heads of long established leading families but nouveaux riches. Their conduct is not marked by special virtue, dignity, or taste but is a reflection of the same proletarian mass-culture of present-orientedness, opportunism, and hedonism that the rich now share with everyone else; consequently, their opinions carry no more weight in public opinion than anyone else's.