Democracy: The God that Failed, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe - Excerpts

[Democracy: The God that Failed – The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy, and Natural Order. Hans-Hermann Hoppe. 2001. ISBN 0-7658-0868-4]

EXCERPTS

The world-historic transformation from the ancient regime of royal or princely rulers to the new democratic-republican age of popularly elected or chosen rulers may be also characterized as that from Austria and the Austrian way to that of America and the American way.

In the U.S., less than a century of full-blown democracy has resulted in steadily increasing moral degeneration, family and social disintegration, and cultural decay in the form of continually rising rates of divorce, illegitimacy, abortion, and crime. As a result of an ever-expanding list of nondiscrimination – “affirmative action” – laws and nondiscriminatory, multicultural, egalitarian immigration policies, every nook and cranny of American society is affected by government management and forced integration; accordingly, social strife and racial, ethnic, and moral-cultural tension and hostility have increased dramatically.

No form of taxation can be uniform (equal), but every taxation involves the creation of two distinct and unequal classes of taxpayers versus taxreceiver-consumers.

In short, monarchical government is reconstructed theoretically as privately-owned government, which in turn is explained as promoting future-orientedness and a concern for capital values and economic calculation by the government ruler … Democratic government is reconstructed as publicly-owned government, which is explained as leading to present-orientedness and a disregard or neglect of capital values in government rulers, and the transition from monarchy to democracy is interpreted accordingly as civilizational decline.

If one must have a state, defined as an agency that exercises a compulsory territorial monopoly of ultimate decisionmaking (jurisdiction) and of taxation, then it is economically and ethically advantageous to choose monarchy over democracy. But this leaves the question open whether or not a stat is necessary, i.e., if there exists an alternative to both, monarchy and democracy.

The term adopted here for a social system free of monopoly and taxation is “natural order”. Other names used elsewhere or by others to refer to the same thing include “ordered anarchy”, “private property anarchy”, “anarcho-capitalism”, “autogovernment”, “private law society”, and “pure capitalism”.

I will explain the rapid growth of state power in the course of the twentieth century lamented by Mises and Rothbard as the systematic outcome of democracy and the democratic mindset, i.e., the (erroneous) belief in the efficiency and/or justice of public property and popular (majority) rule.

The imposition of a government tax on property or income violates a property or income producer’s rights as much as does theft does. In both cases the appropriator-producer’s supply of goods is diminished against his will and without his consent. Government money or “liquidity” creation involves no less a fraudulent expropriation of private-property owners than the operations of a criminal counterfeiter gang.

Every government, and that means every agency that engages in continual, institutionalized property-rights violations (expropriations), is by its very nature a territorial monopolist.

Having to begin small, the original form of government is typically that of personal rule: of private ownership of the governmental apparatus of compulsion (monarchy).

But as the government’s private owner, it is in his interest to draw – parasitically – on a growing, increasingly productive and prosperous nongovernment economy, as this would – always and without any effort on his part – also increase his own wealth and prosperity. Tax rates would thus tend to be low.

Owing to its exclusive character and the correspondingly developed class consciousness of the ruled, government attempts at territorial expansion tend to be viewed by the public as the ruler’s private business, to be financed and carrier out with his own personal funds. The added territory is the king’s, and so he, not the public, should pay for it.

A democratic ruler can use the government apparatus to his personal advantage, but he does not own it … He owns the current use of government resources, but not their capital value … Instead of maintaining or even enhancing the value of the government estate, as a king would do, a president (the government’s temporary caretaker or trustee), will use up as much of the government resources as quickly as possible, for what he does not consume now, he may never be able to consume.

… with a “publicly” owned and administered government a new type of “law” emerges: “public” law, which exempts government agents from personal liability and withholds “publicly owned” resources from economic management.

… the mere act of legislating – of democratic lawmaking – increases the degree of uncertainty. Rather than being immutable and hence predictable, law becomes increasingly flexible and unpredictable. What is right and wrong today may not be so tomorrow.

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.

… just as monarchy was once accepted as legitimate but is today considered to be an unthinkable solution to the current social crisis, it is not inconceivable that the idea of democratic rule might someday be regarded as morally illegitimate and politically unthinkable.

It is not government (monarchical or democratic) that is the source of human civilization and social peace but private property, and the recognition and defense of private property rights, contractualism, and individual responsibility.

In contrast to the right of self-defense in the event of a criminal attack, the victim of government violations of private property rights may not legitimately defend himself against such violations.

As hard as they tried, monarchical rulers did not succeed in establishing monopolies of pure fiat currencies, i.e., of irredeemable government paper monies, which can be created virtually out of thin air, an practically no cost. No particular individual, not even a king, could be trusted with an extraordinary monopoly such as this. It was only under conditions of democratic republicanism – of anonymous and impersonal rule – that this feat was accomplished.

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.

… after the crushing defeat and devastation of the secessionist Confederacy by Lincoln and the Union, it was clear that the right to secede no longer existed and that democracy meant absolute and unlimited majority rule.

Motivated (as everyone is) by self-interest and the disutility of labor but with the unique power to tax, a government agent’s response will invariable be the same: To maximize expenditures on protection, and conceivably almost all of a nation’s wealth can be consumed by the cost of protection, and at the same time to minimize the actual production of protection. The more money one can spend and the less one must work to produce, the better off one will be.

Under democracy, everyone is equal insofar as entry into government is open to all on the same terms. In a democracy no personal privileges or privileged persons exist. However, functional privileges and privileged functions exist. As long as they act in an official capacity, democratic government agents are governed and protected by public law and thereby occupy a privileged position vis-à-vis persons acting under the mere authority of private law (most fundamentally in being permitted to support their own activities by taxes imposed on private law subjects).

Given the rules of democratic government – of one-man-one-vote and majority rule – a caretaker, whether to secure his present position or advance to another, must award or promise to award privileges to groups rather than particular individuals, and given that there always exist more have-nots than haves of everything worth having, his redistribution will be egalitarian rather than elitist.

The decision to secede involves that one regard the central government as illegitimate, and that one accordingly treat it and its agents as an outlaw agency and “foreign” occupying forces. That is, if compelled by them, one complies, out of prudence and for no other reason than self-preservation, but one does nothing to support or facilitate their operations. One tries to keep as much of one’s property and surrender as little tax money as possible. One considers all federal law, legislation and regulation as null and void and ignores it whenever possible. One does not work or volunteer for the central government, whether its executive, legislative, or judicial branch, and one does not associate with anyone who does (and in particular not with those high up in the hierarchy of caretakers).

… the decision by members of the elite to secede from and not cooperate with government must always include the resolve of engaging in, or contributing to, a continuous ideological struggle, for if the power of government rests on the widespread acceptance of false indeed absurd and foolish ideas, then the only genuine protection is the systematic attack of these ideas and the propagation and proliferation of true ones.

Political integration (centralization) and economic (market) integration are two completely different phenomena. Political integration involves the territorial expansion of a state’s power of taxation and property regulation (expropriation). Economic integration is the extension of the interpersonal and interregional division of labor and market participation.

As one approaches the limits of a One World state, all possibilities of voting with one’s feet against a government disappear. Wherever one goes, the same tax and regulation structure applies. Thus relieved of the problem of emigration, a fundamental rein on the expansion of governmental power is gone.

… under socialism, ownership of productive assets is assigned to a collective of individuals regardless of each member’s prior action or inaction relative to the owned assets. In effect, socialist ownership favors the nonhomesteader, the nonproducer, and the noncontractor and disadvantages homesteaders, producers, and contractors … since means of production cannot be sold under socialism, no market prices for factors of production exist. Without such prices, cost-accounting is impossible.

From the fact that one does not want to associate with or live in the neighborhood of Blacks, Turks, Catholics, or Hindus, etc., it does not follow that one does not want to trade with them from a distance. To the contrary, it is precisely the absolute voluntariness of human association and separation – the absence of any form of forced integration – that makes peaceful relationships – free trade – between culturally, racially, ethnically, or religiously distinct people possible.

Other things being equal, businesses move to low-wage areas, and labor moves to high-wage areas, thus effecting a tendency toward the equalization of wage rates (for the same kind of labor) as well as the optimal localization of capital.

While the judicial monopoly of governments extends nowadays typically far beyond a single city and in some cases over almost an entire continent, the consequences for the relations between the races and sexes and spatial approximation and segregation of government (monopoly) can still be best observed in the great cities and their decline from centers of civilization to centers of degeneration and decay.

As a result of this overproportional growth of low and even underclass people and an increasing number of ethnically, tribally, racially mixed offspring especially in the lower and lowest social strata, the character of democratic (popular) government will gradually change as well. Rather than the “race card” being essentially the only instrument of politics, politics becomes increasingly “class politics”. The government rulers can and will no longer rely exclusively on their ethnic, tribal, or racial appeal and support, but increasingly they must try to find support across tribal or racial lines by appealing to the universal (not tribe or race specific) feeling of envy and egalitarianism, i.e., to social class ( the untouchables or the slaves versus the masters, the workers versus the capitalists, the poor versus the rich, etc.).

Whether intended or not, the welfare state promotes the proliferation of intellectually and morally inferior people and the results would be even worse were it not for the fact that crime rates are particularly high among these people, and that they tend to eliminate each other more frequently.

Welfare must be recognized as a matter exclusively of families and voluntary charity, and state welfare as nothing but the subsidization of irresponsibility.

To be a conservative means nothing specific at all except to like the existing order, whatever that may be.

Social education and social security provide an opening for the rebellious youth to escape parental authority (to get away with continuous misbehavior). Old conservatives knew that these policies would emancipate the individual from the discipline imposed by family and community life only to subject it instead to the direct and immediate control of the state. Furthermore, they knew, or at least had a hunch, that this would lead to a systematic infantilization of society – a regression, emotionally and mentally, from adulthood to adolescence or childhood.

A return to normalcy requires no less than the complete elimination of the present social security system: of unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, etc. – and thus the near complete dissolution and deconstruction of the current state apparatus and government power.

What the countercultural libertarians failed to recognize, and what true libertarians cannot emphasize enough, is that the restoration of private property rights and laissez-faire economics implies a sharp and drastic increase in social “discrimination” and will swiftly eliminate most if not all of the multi-cultural-egalitarian life style experiments so close to the heart of left libertarians. In other words, libertarians must be radical and uncompromising conservatives.

The modern welfare state has largely stripped private property owners of the right to exclusion implied in the concept of private property. Discrimination is outlawed. Employers cannot hire whom they want. Landlords cannot rent to whom they want. Sellers cannot sell to whomever they wish; buyers cannot buy from whomever they wish to buy. And groups of private property owners are not permitted to enter in whatever restrictive covenant they believe to be mutually beneficial.

In civilized society, the ultimate price for ill behavior is expulsion, and all-around ill-behaved or rotten characters (even if they commit no criminal offense) will find themselves quickly expelled from everywhere and by everyone and become outcasts, physically removed from civilization.

Egalitarianism, in every form and shape, is incompatible with the idea of private property. Private property implies exclusivity, inequality, and difference. And cultural relativism is incompatible with the fundamental – indeed foundational – fact of families and intergenerational kinship relations. Families and kinship relations imply cultural absolutism.

Once the principle of government – judicial monopoly and the power to tax – in incorrectly accepted as just, any notion of restraining government power and safeguarding individual liberty and property is illusory.

Among the most popular and consequential beliefs of our age is the belief in collective security. Nothing less significant than the legitimacy of the modern state rests on this belief.

… statists from Thomas Hobbes to James Buchanan have argued that a protective state would come about as the result of some sort of “constitutional” contract. Yet who in his right mind would agree to a contract that allowed one’s protector to determine unilaterally – and irrevocably – the sum that the protected must pay for his protection? The fact is no one ever has!

In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on “social” security and “public” safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.

In short, while we have become more helpless, impoverished, threatened and insecure, the U.S. government has become ever more brazen and aggressive. In the name of “national” security, it “defends” us, equipped with enormous stockpiles of weapons of aggression and mass destruction, by bullying ever new “Hitlers”, big or small, and all suspected Hitlerite sympathizers anywhere and everywhere outside of the territory of the U.S.

The empirical evidence thus seems clear. The belief in a protective state appears to be a patent error, and the American experiment in protective statism a complete failure. The U.S. government does not protect us. To the contrary, there exists no greater danger to our life, property, and prosperity than the U.S. government, and the U.S. president in particular is the world’s single most threatening and armed danger, capable of ruining everyone who opposes him and destroying the entire globe.

Every American supposedly pays taxes to the U.S. government and is thus de facto, whether he wishes to be or not, implicated in every government aggression.

As taxpayer or draftee, every Iraqi is implicated in his government’s defense just as every American is drawn into the U.S. government’s attack. Thus, the war becomes a war of all Americans against all Iraqis, i.e., total war.

No clear distinction between combatants and noncombatants exists. Everyone is an enemy, and all property provides support for the attacked government. Hence, everyone and everything becomes fair game.

How in the world can anyone expect that a majority of an increasingly degenerate people accustomed to the “right” to vote should ever voluntarily renounce the opportunity of looting other people’s property? Put this way, one must admit that the prospect of a social revolution must indeed be regarded as virtually nil.