There is interaction—reciprocal influence—between all parts of the universe: between the wolf and the sheep that he devours; between the germ and the man it kills; between the falling stone and the thing upon which it falls. Society, on the other hand, always involves men acting in cooperation with other men in order to let all participants attain their own ends.3
In addition to an inequality of labor and/or land, a second requirement must be fulfilled if human cooperation is to evolve. Men—at least two of them—must be capable of recognizing the higher productivity of a division of labor based on the mutual recognition of private property (of the exclusive control of every man over his own body and over his physical appropriations and possessions) as compared to either self-sufficient
2See on this Jonathan Bennett, Rationality: An Essay Toward an Analysis (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964).
3Mises, Human Action, p. 169.
isolation or aggression, depredation, and domination. That is, there must be a minimum of intelligence or rationality; and men—at least two of them—must have the sufficient moral strength to act on this insight and be willing to forego immediate gratification for even greater future satisfaction. But for intelligence and conscious will, writes Mises,
men would have forever remained deadly foes of one another, irreconcilable rivals in their endeavors to secure a portion of the scarce supply of means of sustenance provided by nature. Each man would have been forced to view all other men as his enemies; his craving for the satisfaction of his own appetites would have brought him into an implacable conflict with all his neighbors. No sympathy could possibly develop under such a state of affairs.4
A member of the human race who is completely incapable of understanding the higher productivity of labor performed under a division of labor based on private property is not properly speaking a person (a persona), but falls instead in the same moral category as an animal—of either the harmless sort (to be domesticated and employed as a producer or consumer good, or to be enjoyed as a "free good") or the wild and dangerous one (to be fought as a pest). On the other hand, there are members of the human species who are capable of understanding the insight but who lack the moral strength to act accordingly. Such persons are either harmless brutes living outside of and separated from human society, or they are more or less dangerous criminals. They are persons who knowingly act wrongly and who besides having to be tamed or even physically defeated must also be punished in proportion to the severity of their crime to make them understand the nature of their wrongdoings and hopefully to teach them a lesson for the future. Human cooperation (society) can only prevail and advance as long as man is capable of subduing, taming, appropriating, and cultivating his physical and animalistic surroundings, and as long as he succeeds in suppressing crime, reducing it to a rarity by means of self-defense, property protection, and punishment.5
4Ibid,p.l44.
Rarely has the importance of cognition and rationality for the emergence and maintenance of society been more strongly emphasized than by Mises. He explains that one
may admit that in primitive man the propensity for killing and destroying and the disposition for cruelty were innate. We may also assume that under the conditions of earlier ages the inclination for aggression and murder was favorable to the preservation of life. Man was once a brutal beast But one must not forget that he was physically a weak animal; he would not have been a match for the big beasts of prey if he had not been equipped with a peculiar weapon, reason. The fact that man is a reasonable being, that he therefore does not yield without inhibitions to every impulse, but arranges his conduct according to reasonable deliberation, must not be called unnatural from a zoological point of view. Rational conduct means that man, in face of the fact that he cannot satisfy all his impulses, desires, and appetites, foregoes the satisfaction of those which he considers less urgent. In order not to endanger the working of social cooperation, man is forced to abstain from satisfying those desires whose satisfaction would hinder establishment of societal institutions. There is no doubt that such a renunciation is painful. However, man has made his choice. He has renounced the satisfaction of some desires incompatible with social life and has given priority to the satisfaction of those desires which can be realized only or in a more plentiful way under a system of the division of labor This decision is not irrevocable and final. The choice of the fathers does not impair the sons' freedom to choose. They can reverse the resolution. Every day they can proceed to the transvaluation of values and prefer barbarism to civilization, or, as some authors say, the soul to the intellect, myths to reason, and violence to peace. But they must choose. It is impossible to have things incompatible with one another. (Human Action, pp. 171-72)
II
As soon as these requirements are fulfilled, however, and as long as man, motivated by the knowledge of the higher physical productivity of a division of labor based on private property, is engaged in mutually beneficial exchanges, the "natural" forces of attraction arising from the differences in the sexes and the "natural" forces of repulsion or enmity arising from the differences between and even within the races, can be transformed into genuinely "social" relations. Sexual attraction can be transformed from copulation to consensual relations, mutual bonds, households, families, love, and affection.6 (It testifies to the enormous productivity of the family-household that no other institution has proven more durable or capable of producing such emotions!) And inter- and intraracial repulsion can be transformed from feelings of enmity or hostility to a preference for cooperating (trading) with one another only indirectly—from afar and physically separated and spatially segregated—rather than directly, as neighbors and associates.7
See on this also Joseph T. Salerno, "Ludwig von Mises as Social Rationalist," Review of Austrian Economics 4 (1990).
6Within the frame of social cooperation," writes Mises,
there can emerge between members of society feelings of sympathy and friendship and a sense of belonging together. These feelings are the source of man's most delightful and most sublime experiences. They are the most precious adornment of life; they lift the animal species man to the heights of a really human existence. However, they are not, as some have asserted, the agents that have brought about social relationships. They are the fruits of social cooperation, they thrive only within its frame; they did not precede the establishment of social relations and are not the seeds from which they spring. (Ibid., p. 144)
"The mutual sexual attraction of male and female," Mises explains further,
Human cooperation—division of labor—based on the one hand on integrated family-households and on the other one on separated households, villages, tribes, nations, races, etc., wherein man's natural biological attractions and repulsions for and against one another are transformed into a mutually recognized system of spatial (geographical) allocation (of physical approximation and integration or of separation and segregation, and of direct or of indirect contact, exchange and trade), leads to improved standards of living, a growing population, further extensification and intensification of the division of labor, and increasing diversity and differentiation.8
As a result of this development and an ever more rapid increase of goods and desires which can be acquired and satisfied only indirectly, professional traders, merchants, and trading centers will emerge. Merchants and cities function as the mediators of the indirect exchanges between territorially separated households and communal associations and thus become the sociological and geographical locus and focus of intertribal or interracial association. It will be within the class of merchants in which racially, ethnically, or tribally mixed marriages are relatively most common; and since most people, of both reference groups, typically disapprove of such alliances, it will be the wealthier members of the merchant class who can afford such extravagances. However, even the members of the wealthiest merchant families will be highly circumspect in such endeavors. In order not to endanger their own position as a merc
hant, great care must be taken that every mixed marriage is, or at least appears to the relevant ethnicities to be a marriage between "equals." Consequently, the racial mixture brought on by the merchant class will more likely than not contribute to genetic "luxuration" (rather than genetic "pauperization").9 Accordingly, it will be in the big cities as the centers of international trade and commerce, where mixed couples and their offspring typically reside, where members of different ethnicities, tribes, races, even if they do not intermarry, still come into regular direct personal contact with each other (in fact, that they do so is required by the fact that their respective tribesmen back home do not have to deal directly with more or less distasteful strangers), and where the most elaborate and highly developed system of physical and functional integration and segregation will arise.10 It will also be in the big cities where, as the subjective reflection of this complex system of spatio-functional allocation, citizens will develop the most highly refined forms of personal and professional conduct, etiquette, and style. It is the city that breeds civilization and civilized life.
is inherent in man's animal nature and independent of any thinking and theorizing. It is permissible to call it original, vegetative, instinctive, or mysterious;... However, neither cohabitation, nor what precedes it and follows, generates social cooperation and societal modes of life. The animals too join together in mating, but they have not developed social relations. Family life is not merely a product of sexual intercourse. It is by no means natural and necessary that parents and children live together in the way in which they do in the family. The mating relation need not result in a family organization. The human family is an outcome of thinking, planning, and acting. It is this fact which distinguishes it radically from those animal groups which we call per analogiam animal families. (Ibid., p. 167)
7On the significance of race and ethnicity, and especially on "genetic similarity and dissimilarity" as a source of mutual attraction and repulsion see J. Philippe Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995); idem, "Gene Culture, Co-Evolution and Genetic Similarity Theory: Implications for Ideology, Ethnic Nepotism, and Geopolitics," Politics and the Life Sciences 4 (1986); idem, "Genetic Similarity, Human Altruism, and Group Selection," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (1989); idem, "Genetic Similarity in Male Friendships," Ethology and Sociobiology 10 (1989); also Michael Levin, Why Race Matters (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997); idem, "Why Race Matters: A Preview," Journal of Libertarian Studies 12, no. 2 (1996).
8See Murray N. Rothbard, "Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor," in idem, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000).
9See Wilhelm Muhlmann, Rassen, Ethnien, Kulturen. Moderne Ethnologie (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1964), pp. 93-97. In general, apart from the upper strata of the class of merchants, peaceful racial or ethnic mixing is typically restricted to members of the social upper-class, i.e., to nobles and aristocrats. Thus, the racially or ethnically least pure families are characteristically the leading royal dynasties.
10For instance, Fernand Braudel has given the following description of the complex pattern of spatial separation and functional integration and the corresponding multiplicity of separate and competing jurisdictions developed in the great trading centers such as Antioch during the heyday of the Islamic civilization from the eighth to the twelfth century: At the city center
was the Great Mosque for the weekly sermon Nearby was the bazaar, i.e., the merchants' quarter with its streets and shops (the souk) and its caravanserais or warehouses, as well as the public baths . . . Artisans were grouped concentrically, starting from the Great Mosque: first, the makers and sellers of perfumes and incense, then the shops selling fabrics and rugs, the jewelers and food stores, and finally the humblest trades... curriers, cobblers, blacksmiths, potters, saddlers, dyers. Their shops marked the edges of the town In principle, each of these trades had its location fixed for all time. Similarly, the maghzen or Prince's quarter was in principle located on the outskirts of the city, well away from riots or popular revolts. Next to it, and under its protection, was the mellah or Jewish quarter. The mosaic was completed by a very great variety of residential districts, divided by race and religion: there were forty-five in Antioch alone. "The town was a cluster of different quarters, all living in fear of massacre." So Western colonists nowhere began racial segregation—although they nowhere suppressed it. (Braudel, A History of Civilizations [New York: Penguin Books, 1995], p. 66)
To maintain law and order within a big city, with its intricate pattern of physical and functional integration and separation, a great variety of jurisdictions, judges, arbitrators and enforcement agencies in addition to self-defense and private protection will come into existence. There will be what one might call governance in the city, but there will be no government (state).11 For a government to arise it is necessary that one of these judges, arbitrators, or enforcement agencies succeed in establishing himself as a monopolist. That is, he must be able to insist that no citizen can choose anyone but him as the judge or arbitrator of last resort, and he must successfully suppress any other judge or arbitrator from trying to assume the same role (thereby competing against him). More interesting than the question of what a government is, however, are the following: How is it possible that one judge can acquire a judiciary monopoly, given that other judges will naturally oppose any such attempt; and what specifically makes it possible, and what does it imply, to establish a monopoly of law and order in a big city, i.e., over a territory with ethnically, tribally, and/or racially mixed populations?
nSee Otto Brunner, Sozialgeschichte Europas im Mittelalter (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1984), chap. 8; Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969); Charles Tilly and Wim P. Blockmans, eds.. Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, 1000-1800 (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994); Boudewijn Bouckaert, "Between the Market and the State: The World of Medieval Cities," in Values and the Social Order, Vol. 3, Voluntary versus Coercive Orders, Gerard Radnitzky, ed. (Aldershot, U.K.: Avebury, 1997). Incidentally, the much maligned Jewish Ghettoes, which were characteristic of European cities throughout the Middle Ages, were not indicative of an inferior legal status accorded to Jews or of anti-Jewish discrimination. To the contrary, the Ghetto was a place where Jews enjoyed complete self-government and where rabbinical law applied. See on this Guido Kisch, The Jews in Medieval Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942); also Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, "Hebrews and Christians," Rothbard-Rockzvell Report 9, no. 4 (April 1998).
First, almost by definition it follows that with the establishment of a city government interracial, tribal, ethnic, and clannish-familial tensions will increase because the monopolist, whoever he is, must be of one ethnic background rather than another; hence, his being the monopolist will be considered by the citizens of other ethnic backgrounds as an insulting setback, i.e., as an act of arbitrary discrimination against the people of another race, tribe, or clan. The delicate balance of peaceful interracial, interethnic, and interfamilial cooperation, achieved through an intricate system of spatial and functional integration (association) and separation (segregation), will be upset. Second, this insight leads directly to the answer as to how a single judge can possibly outmaneuver all others. In brief, to overcome the resistance by competing judges, an aspiring monopolist must shore up added support in public opinion. In an ethnically mixed milieu this typically means playing the "race card." The prospective monopolist must raise the racial, tribal, or clanish consciousness among citizens of his own race, tribe, clan, etc., and promise, in return for their support, to be more than an impartial judge in matters relating to one's own race, tribe, or clan (that is, exactly what citizens of other ethnic backgrounds are afraid of, i.e., of being treated with less than impartiality).12
At this stage in this sociological reconstruction let us, without further explanation, briefly intro
duce a few additional steps required to arrive at a realistic contemporary scenario regarding race, sex, society, and state. Naturally, a monopolist will try to maintain his position and possibly even turn it into an hereditary title (i.e., become a king). However, accomplishing this within an ethnically or tribally mixed city is a far more difficult task than within a homogeneous rural community. Instead, in big cities governments are far more likely to take on the form of a democratic republic—with "open entry" into the position of supreme ruler, competing political parties, and popular elections.13 In the course of the political centralization process14—the territorial expansion of one government at the expense of another—this big city model of government, then, will become essentially its only form: that of a democratic state exercising a judicial monopoly over a territory with racially and /or ethnically widely diverse populations.
12For a sociological treatment of the first (predemocratic) stage in the development of city states, characterized by aristocratic-patrician government founded on and riven by families (clans) and family conflicts, see Max Weber, The City (New York: Free Press, 1958), chap. 3. See also note 16 below.
DemocracyThe God That Failed Page 28