Read DemocracyThe God That Failed Online
Authors: Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Note that none of this, not even the most exclusive form of segregationism, has anything to do with a rejection of free trade and the adoption of protectionism. 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.
6
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.
7
6
As Ludwig von Mises reminds us,
even if such a thing as a natural and inborn hatred between various races existed, it would not render social cooperation futile... Social cooperation has nothing to do with personal love or with a general commandment to love one another. People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the right and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.
(Human
Action,
p. 168)
7
Contrary to the currently fashionable multiculturalism, it might be pointed out here that no multicultural society—and especially no democratic one—has ever worked peacefully for very long. Peter Brimelow,
Alien
Nation:
Common
Sense
About
America's
Immigration
Disaster
(New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 124-27, has provided some recent evidence to this effect. Working back from the present, look at the record:
Eritrea,
ruled by Ethiopia since 1952, splits off in 1993;
Czechoslovakia,
founded in 1918, splits into Czech and Slovak ethnic components in 1993;
Soviet
Union,
splits into multiple ethnic components in 1991, and many of these components are threatened with further ethnic fragmentation;
Yugoslavia,
founded in 1918, splits into several ethnic components in 1991, and further breakup is still under way;
Lebanon,
founded 1920, effective partition of Christians and Muslims (under Syrian domination) since 1975;
Cyprus,
independent since 1960, effective partition of Greek and Turkish territories in 1974;
Pakistan,
independent since 1947, ethnically distinct Bangladesh splits off in 1971;
Malaysia,
independent since 1963, Chinese-dominated Singapore is expelled in 1965. The list goes on with cases, which have not yet been resolved:
India,
and the Sikhs and Kashmiris; Sn
Lanka,
and the Tamils;
Turkey,
Iraq,
Iran,
and the Kurds;
Sudan,
Chad,
and the Arabs versus Blacks;
Nigeria,
and the Ibos;
Ulster,
and the Catholics versus the Protestants;
Belgium,
and the Flemish versus the Walloons;
Italy,
and the German-speaking South Tyrolians;
Canada,
and the French versus the English.
IV
In an anarcho-capitalist society there is no government and, accordingly, no clear-cut distinction between "inlanders" (domestic citizens) and foreigners. This distinction only arises with the establishment of a government, i.e., an institution which possesses a territorial monopoly of aggression (taxation). The territory over which a government's taxing power extends becomes "inland," and everyone residing outside of this territory becomes a foreigner. State borders (and passports), are an "unnatural" (coercive) institution. Indeed, their existence (and that of a domestic government) implies a two-fold distortion with respect to peoples' natural inclination to associate with others. First, inlanders cannot exclude the government (the taxman) from their own property and are subject to what one might call "forced integration" by government agents. Second, in order to be able to intrude on its subjects' private property so as to tax them, a government must invariably have control of existing roads, and it will employ its tax revenue to produce even more roads to gain even better access to all private property
qua
potential tax source. This over-production of roads does not result merely in the innocent facilitation of interregional trade—a lowering of transaction costs —as starry-eyed economists would have us believe but leads to forced domestic integration (artificial desegregation of separate localities).
8
But is not Switzerland, with an assembly of Germans, French, Italians, and Romansh, an exception? Put briefly, the answer is no. All essential powers in Switzerland, in particular that of determining cultural and educational matters (schools), are concentrated in the hands of the
cantons
rather than those of the central government. And almost all of the 26 cantons and "half-cantons" are ethnically homogeneous. Seventeen cantons are almost exclusively German; 4 cantons are almost exclusively French; and 1 canton is predominantly Italian. Only 3 cantons are bilingual, the Swiss ethnic balance has been essentially stable, and there is only a limited amount of intercantonal migration. Even given these favorable circumstances, Switzerland
did
experience an unsuccessful, violently suppressed war of secession—the
Sonderbundskrieg
of 1847. Furthermore, the creation of the new, breakaway French-speaking canton of Jura from the predominantly German canton of Berne in 1979 was preceded by years of terrorist activity.
On the most likely genetic base of the human tendency to associate with "likes," and dissociate from "unlikes," see J. Philippe Rushton, "Gene-culture, Coevolution, and Genetic Similarity Theory: Implications for Ideology, Ethnic Nepotism, and Geopolitics,"
Politicsand
the
Life
Sciences
4 (1986); idem.
Race,
Evolution,
and
Behavior
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1995).
In fact, as noted by Max Weber,
Soziologie,
Weltgeschichtliche
Analysen,
Politik
(Stuttgart: Kroener, 1964), p. 4, the famed roadways of ancient Rome were typically regarded as a
plague
rather than an
advantage,
because they were essentially military rather than trade routes.
Moreover, with the establishment of a government and state borders, immigration takes on an entirely new meaning. Immigration becomes immigration by foreigners across state borders, and the decision as to whether or not a person should be admitted no longer rests with private property owners or associations of such owners but with the
government
as the ultimate sovereign of all domestic residents and the ultimate super-owner of all their properties. Now, if the government excludes a person while even one domestic resident wants to admit this very person onto his property, the result is
forced
exclusion
(a phenomenon that does not exist under private property anarchism). Furthermore, if the government admits a person while there is not a single domestic resident who wants to have this person on his property, the result is
forced
integration
(also nonexistent under private property anarchism).
V
It is time to enrich the analysis through the introduction of a few "realistic" empirical assumptions. Let us assume that the government is privately owned. The ruler owns the entire country within state borders. He owns part of the territory outright (his property title is unrestricted), and he is partial owner of the rest (as landlord or residual claimant of all of his citizen-tenants real estate holdings, albeit restricted by some preexisting rental contracts). He can sell and bequeath his property, and he can calculate and capture the monetary value of his capital (his country).
Traditional monarchies—and kings—are the closest historical examples of this form of government.
9
What will a
king's
typical immigration and emigration policy be? Because he owns the entire country's capital value, he will tend to choose migration policies that preserve or enhance rather than diminish the value of his kingdom, assuming no more than his self-interest.
As far as
emigration
is concerned, a king would want to prevent the emigration of productive subjects, in particular of his best and most productive subjects, because losing them would lower the value of the kingdom. Thus, for exam
ple, from 1782 until 1824 a law prohibited the emigration of skilled workmen from Britain.
10
On the other hand, a king would want to expel his nonproductive and destructive subjects (criminals, bums, beggars, gypsies, vagabonds, etc.), for their removal from his
territory would increase the value of his realm. For this reason Britain expelled tens of thousands of common criminals to North America and Australia."
9
See on this also chaps. 1-3.
10
See A.M. Carr-Saunders,
World
Population:
Past
Growth
and
Present
Trends
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), p. 182.
On the other hand, as far as
immigration
policy is concerned, a king would want to keep the mob, as well as all people of inferior productive capabilities, out. People of the latter category would only be admitted temporarily as seasonal workers without citizenship, and they would be barred from permanent property ownership. Thus, for example, after 1880 large numbers of Poles were hired as seasonal workers in Germany.
12
A king would only permit the permanent immigration of superior or at least above-average people; i.e., those, whose residence in his kingdom would increase his own property value. Thus, for example, after 1685 (with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes) tens of thousands of Huguenots were permitted to settle in Prussia; and similarly Peter the Great, Frederick the Great, and Maria Theresa later promoted the immigration and settlement of large numbers of Germans in Russia, Prussia, and the eastern provinces of Austria-Hungary.
13
11
Ibid., p. 47, estimates the number of criminals thus transported to North America from 1717 to 1776at 50,000.
12
Seeibid.,pp.57,145.
13
See ibid., pp. 56-57. The settlement of Germans in Eastern Europe actually began in the eleventh century and was generally encouraged by various regional Slavic kings and princes who thereby hoped to promote the economic development of their realms. See Brimelow,
Alien
Nation,
p. 131. A highly illuminating account of the social effects and repercussions of these migration policies in the multicultural Habsburg Empire is provided by Mises,
Nation,
State,
and
Economy,
pp. 112-13.
As a result of centuries-long colonization, the urban bourgeoisie and the urban intelligentsia were German everywhere in Austria and Hungary, large landownership was in great part Germanized, and everywhere, even in the middle of foreign-language territory, there were German peasant settlements. All of Austria outwardly bore a German stamp; everywhere German education and German literature were to be found. Everywhere in the Empire the Germans were also represented among the petty bourgeoisie, among the workers, and among the peasants, even though in many districts, especially in Galicia, in many parts of Hungary, and in the coastal territories, the German minority among the members of the lower strata of the population was quite small. But in the entire Empire (upper Italy excepted) the percentage of Germans among the educated and among the members of the higher strata was quite considerable, and all those educated persons and prosperous bourgeois who were not themselves German and did not want to acknowledge belonging to the German nation were German by their education, spoke German, read German, and appeared at least outwardly to be German.... Thus Austria no doubt was not German, but politically it
wore a German face. Every Austrian who wanted to take any interest at all in public affairs had to master the German language. For the members of the Czech and of the Slovene peoples, however, education and social ascent could be achieved only through Germanness. They still had no literature of their own that would have made it possible for them to do without the treasures of German culture. Whoever rose became German because precisely the members of the higher strata were German. The Germans saw that and believed that it had to be so. They were far from wanting to Germanize all non-Germans compulsorily, but they thought that this would take place on its own. They believed that every Czech and South Slav would try, even in his own interest, to adopt German culture.
In brief, while through his immigration policies a king might not entirely avoid all cases of forced exclusion or forced integration, such policies would by and large do the same as what private property owners would do, if
they
could decide whom to admit and whom to exclude. That is, the king would be highly selective and very much concerned about
improving
the quality of the resident human capital so as to drive property values up rather than down.
VI
Migration policies become predictably different once the government is publicly owned. The ruler no longer owns the country's capital value but only has current use of it. He cannot sell or bequeath his position as ruler; he is merely a temporary caretaker. Moreover, "free entry" into the position of a caretaker government exists. In principle, anyone can become the ruler of the country.
As they came into existence on a worldwide scale after World War I, democracies offer historical examples of public government.
14
What are a
democracy's
migration policies? Once again assuming no more than self-interest (maximizing monetary and psychic income: money and power), democratic rulers tend to maximize
current
income, which they can appropriate privately, at the expense of capital values, which they can
not
appropriate privately. Hence, in accordance with democracy's inherent egalitarianism of one-man-one-vote, they tend to pursue a distinctly egalitarian—nondiscriminatory—emigration and immigration policy.
As far as emigration policy is concerned, this implies that for a democratic ruler it makes little, if any, difference whether productive or unproductive people, geniuses or bums leave the country. They all have one equal vote. In fact, democratic rulers might well be more concerned
about the loss of a bum than that of a productive genius. While the loss of the latter would obviously lower the capital value of the country and loss of the former might actually increase it, a democratic ruler does not
own
the country. In the short run, which is of the most interest to a democratic ruler, the bum, voting most likely
in
favor
of egalitarian measures, might be more valuable than the productive genius who, as egalitarianism's prime victim, will more likely vote
against
the democratic ruler.
15
For the same reason, quite unlike a king a democratic ruler undertakes little to actively
expel
those people whose presence within the country constitutes a negative externality (human trash which drives individual property values down). In fact, such negative externalities—unproductive parasites, bums, and criminals—are likely to be his most reliable supporters.
14
See on this also chaps. 1-3.