Read DemocracyThe God That Failed Online
Authors: Hans-Hermann Hoppe
To be sure, this decline has not been a continuous one. Matters did not always become worse from a liberal viewpoint. There were also some reprieves. As a result of World War II, for instance, West Germany and Italy experienced significant liberalization in comparison to the
status
quo
ante
under national socialism and fascism. Similarly, the collapse of the communist Soviet Empire in the late 1980s has led to a remarkable liberalization across Eastern Europe. However, as much as liberals welcomed these events, they were not indicative of a renaissance of liberalism. Rather, the liberalization of Germany and Italy in the aftermath of World War II and the current post-communist liberalization of Eastern Europe were the outcome of external and accidental events: of military defeat and/or outright economic bankruptcy. It was in each case liberalization by default of the old system, and the default option adopted subsequently was simply a variant of socialism: social democracy as exemplified by the U.S. as the only surviving—not yet militarily defeated or economically bankrupt—superpower.
Thus, even if liberals have enjoyed a few periods of reprieve, ultimately the displacement of liberalism by socialism has been complete. Indeed, so complete has been the socialist victory that today, at the beginning of the twentieth-first century, some neoconservatives have waxed triumphantly about the "End of History" and the arrival of the "Last Man," i.e., of the last millenium of global, U.S.-supervised social democracy and a new
homo
socio-democraticus.
2
2
See Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?"
The
National
Interest
16 (Summer 1989); idem,
The
End
of
History
and
the
Last
Man
(New York: Avon Books, 1993). Summing up his own thesis, Fukuyama there writes that
I argued that a remarkable consensus concerning the legitimacy of liberal [i.e., social-democratic] democracy as a system of government had emerged throughout the world over the past few years, as it conquered rival ideologies like hereditary monarchy, fascism, and most recently communism. More than that, however, I argued that liberal democracy may constitute the "end point of mankind's ideological evolution" and the "final form of human government," and as such constituted "the end of history." That is, while earlier forms of government were characterized by grave defects and irrationalities that led to their eventual collapse, liberal democracy was arguably free from such fundamental internal contradictions This did not mean that the natural cycle of birth, life, and death would end, that important events would no longer happen, or that newspapers reporting them would cease to be published. It meant, rather, that there would be no further progress in the development of underlying principles and institutions, because all of the really big questions had been settled, (pp. xi-xii)
II
Even if one regards the Hegelian aspirations of this interpretation as preposterous, according to which liberalism marks only a transitory stage in the evolution of the fully-developed social democratic man,
3
liberals still must be pained at the mere
appearance
of truth of neoconservative
philosophizing. Nor can they console themselves with the knowledge that social democracy also is bound to collapse economically. They knew that communism had to collapse, yet when it did, this did not inaugurate a liberal renaissance. There is no
a
priori
reason to assume that the future breakdown of social democracy will bear any more favorable results.
The neoconservative movement to which Fukuyama belongs emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the American left became increasingly involved with Black Power politics, affirmative action, pro-Arabism, and the "counterculture." In opposition to these tendencies, many traditional left-wing (frequently former Trotskyite) intellectuals and cold war "liberals," led by Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, broke ranks with their old allies, frequently crossing over from the long-time haven of left-wing politics, the Democratic party, to the Republicans. Since then the neoconservatives, while insignificant in sheer numbers, have gained unrivaled influence in American politics, promoting typically a "moderate" welfare state ("democratic capitalism"), "cultural conservatism" and "family values," and an interventionist ("activist") and in particular Zionist ("pro-Israel") foreign policy. Represented by figures such as Irving Kristol and his wife Gertrude Himmelfarb, and son William Kristol; Norman Podhoretz and his wife, Midge Decter, son John Podhoretz, and sons-in-law Steven Munson and Elliott Abrams; by Daniel Bell, Peter Berger, Nathan Glazer, Seymour Martin Lipset, Michael Novak, Aaron Wildavsky, James Q. Wilson; and journalist-commentators such as David Frum, Paul Gigot, Morton Kondracke, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Lind, Joshua Muravchik, Emmett Tyrrell, and Ben Wattenberg, the neoconservatives now exercise controlling interest in such publications as
Na
tional
Interest,
Public
Interest,
Commentary,
the
New
Republic,
the
American
Spectator,
the
Weekly
Standard,
the
Washington
Post,
and the
Wall
Street
Journal,
and they have close ties to several major foundations such as Bradley, Olin, Pew, Scaife, and SmithRichardson. See on this Paul Gottfried,
The
Conservative
Movement,
rev. ed, (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993); also George H. Nash,
The
Conservative
Intellectual
Movement
in
America
(New York: Basic Books, 1976).
3
Thus, writes Fukuyama,
for a very large part of the world, there is now no ideology with pretensions to universality that is in a position to challenge liberal democracy, and no universal principle of legitimacy other than the sovereignty of the people. . . . we have trouble imagining a world that is radically better than our own, or a future that is not essentially democratic and capitalist. ... we cannot picture to ourselves a world that is
essentially
different from the present one, and at the same time better.... it is precisely if we look not just at the past fifteen years, but at the
whole
scope
of
history,
that liberal democracy begins to occupy a special kind of place.... there is a fundamental process at work that dictates a common evolutionary pattern for
all
human societies - in short, something like a Universal History of mankind in the direction of liberal democracy.... if we are now at a point where we cannot imagine a world substantially different from our own, in which there is is no apparent or obvious way in which the future will represent a fundamental improvement over our current order, then we must also take into consideration the possibility that History itself might be at an end.
(The
End
of
History,
pp. 45-51)
Assuming that the course of human history is determined by ideas (rather than "blind forces") and historical changes are the result of ideological shifts in public opinion, it follows that the socialist transformation of the last hundred years must be understood as the result of liberalism's intellectual—philosophical and theoretical—defeat, i.e., the increasing rejection in public opinion of the liberal doctrine as faulty.
4
In this situation, liberals can react in two ways. On the one hand, they may still want to maintain that liberalism is a sound doctrine and that the public rejects it in spite of its truth. In this case, one must explain why people cling to false beliefs, even if they are aware of correct liberal ideas.
5
Does the truth not always hold its own attraction and rewards? Furthermore, one must explain why the liberal truth is
increasingly
rejected in favor of socialist falsehoods. Did the population become more indolent or degenerate? If so, how can this be explained?
6
On the other hand, one may consider the rejection as indicative of an error in one's doctrine. In this case, one must reconsider its theoretical foundations and identify the error which can account not only for the doctrine's rejection as false but more importantly for the actual course of events. In other words, the socialist transformation must be explained as an intelligible and systematically predictable progressive deconstruction and degeneration of liberal political theory originating in and logically arising from this error as the ultimate source of all subsequent socialist confusion.
Ill
Liberalism's central and momentous error lies in its theory of government.
7
4
See on this Ludwig von Mises,
Theory
and
History:
An
Interpretation
of
Social
and
Economic
Evolution
(Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1985), esp. part 4.
5
For an attempt in this direction see Ludwig von Mises,
The
Anti-Capitalistic
Mentality
(South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press, 1972).
6
For an attempt in this direction see Seymour Itzkoff,
The
Decline
of
Intelligence
in
America
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994). Itzkoff here undertakes to explain the social degeneration observable in particular in the U.S. as the outcome of dysgenic effects promoted by public welfare policies.
7
See on the following in particular Murray N. Rothbard,
The
Ethics
of
Liberty
(New York: New York University Press, 1998); Hans-Hermann Hoppe,
The
Econom
ics
and
Ethics
of
Private
Property
(Boston: Kluwer, 1993).
Classical-liberal political philosophy—as personified by Locke and most prominently displayed in Jefferson's
Declaration
of
Inde
pendence
—was first and foremost a moral doctrine. Drawing on the philosophy of the Stoics and the late Scholastics, it centered around the notions of self-ownership, original appropriation of nature-given (unowned) resources, property, and contract as universal human rights implied in the nature of man
qua
rational animal.
8
In the environment of princely and royal rulers, this emphasis on the universality of human rights placed the liberal philosophy naturally in radical opposition to every established government.
9
For a liberal, every man, whether king or peasant, was subject to the same universal and eternal principles of justice, and a government either could derive its justification from a contract between private property owners or it could not be justified at all.
10
But could
any
government be so justified?
The affirmative liberal answer is well-known. It set out from the undeniably true proposition that, mankind being what it is, murderers, robbers, thieves, thugs, and con artists will always exist, and life in society will be impossible if they are not threatened with physical punishment.
In order to maintain a liberal social order, liberals insisted, it is necessary that its members be in the position to pressure (by threatening or applying violence) anyone who does not respect the life and property of others to acquiesce to the rules of society. From this correct premise, liberals concluded that this indispensable task of maintaining of law and order is the unique function of government.
11
8
See also Ernst Cassirer,
The
Myth
of
the
State
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1946), esp. chaps. 8 and 13; Richard Tuck,
Natural
Rights:
Their
Origin
and
Development
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Murray N. Rothbard,
Economic
Thought
Before
Adam
Smith:
An
Austrian
Perspective
on
the
History
of
Eco
nomic
Thought
(Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1995), vol. 1, esp. chap. 4: HansHermann Hoppe, "The Western State as a Paradigm: Learning from History,"
Politics
and
Regimes.
Religion
and
Public
Life
30(1997).
9
Thus, Ludwig von Mises,
Nation,
State,
and
Economy
(New York: New York University Press, 1983) characterizes liberalism as "hostile to princes" (p. 33). In order to avoid any misunderstanding it should be noted, however, that this sweeping verdict applies, and is indeed applied by Mises only to the "absolute" rulers of seventeenthand eighteenth-century Europe. It does
not
apply also to earlier, medieval kings and princes, who were typically just
primus
inter
pares,
i.e., voluntarily acknowledged authorities held to be subject to the same universal natural law as everyone else. See on this Fritz Kern,
Kingship
and
Law
in
the
Middle
Ages
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1948).
10
Thus Cassirer writes:
The doctrine of the state-contract becomes in the seventeenth century a self-evident axiom of political thought. . . . this fact marks a great and decisive step. For if we adopt this view, if we reduce the legal and social order to free individual acts, to a voluntary contractual submission of the governed, all mystery is gone. There is nothing less mysterious than a contract. A contract must be made in full awareness of its meaning and consequences; it presupposes the free consent of all parties concerned. If we can trace the state to such an origin, it becomes a perfectly clear and understandable fact.
(The
Myth
of
the
State,
pp. 172-73)