Abstract
An the preceding chapters it has been demonstrated that socialism as a social system implying a redistribution of property titles away from user-owners and contractors to nonuser-owners and noncontractors necessarily involves a reduction in the production of wealth, since the use and contracting of resources are costly activities whose performance is made even more costly as compared with alternatives available to actors. Secondly, such a system cannot be defended as a fair or just social order from a moral point of view because to argue so, in fact to argue at all, in favor or against anything, be it a moral, nonmoral, empirical, or logico-analytical position, necessarily presupposes the validity of the first-use-first-own rule of the natural theory of property and capitalism, as otherwise no one could survive and then say, or possibly agree on, anything as an independent physical unit.
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Notes
On the difference between institutional aggression committed by the state as the very incorporation of socialism and common, criminal action cf. L. Spooner, No Treason, Colorado Springs, 1973, pp. 19–20.: “...the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: “Your money, or your life.” And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by brandishing you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures and insults and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave. The proceedings of those robbers and murderers, who call themselves ’the government,” are directly the opposite of these of the “single highwayman.”
On the theory of the state cf. M. N. Rothbard, “The Anatomy of the State,” in: the same, Egalitarianism As A Revolt Against Nature, Washington, 1974; For A New Liberty, New York, 1978; and The Ethics of Liberty, Atlantic Highlands, 1982; H. H. Hoppe, Eigentum, Anarchie und Staat, Opladen, 1987; cf. also A. Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State (ed. E. Mack), Indianapolis, 1978; H. Spencer, Social Statics, London, 1851 ; F. Op-penheimer, The State, New York, 1926; A. J. Nock, Our Enemy, the State, Delevan, 1983; cf. also J. Schumpeter’s remark directed against then as now prevalent views, notably among economists, that “the theory which construes taxes on the analogy of club dues or the purchase of a service of, say, a doctor only proves how far removed this part of the social sciences is from scientific habits of minds” (J. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York, 1942, p. 198).
In addition, the use of at least some weaponry, such as atomic bombs, against one’s subjects would be prohibitive, since the rulers could hardly prevent that they themselves would be hurt or killed by it, too.
D. Hume, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, Oxford, 1971, p. 19; cf. also E. de La Boetie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, New York, 1975.
The classical exposition of the idea that in the “state of nature” no distinction between “just” and “unjust” can be made and that only the state creates justice is to be found in T. Hobbes, Leviathan, Oxford, 1946. That this “positivistic” theory of law is untenable has been implicitly demonstrated in Chapter 7 above. In addition, it should be noted that such a theory does not even succeed in doing what it is supposed to do: in justifying the state. Because the transition from the state of nature to a statist system can of course only be called justified (as opposed to arbitrary) if natural (pre-statist) norms exist that are the justificatory basis for this very transition. For modern positivists cf. G. Jellinek, Allgemeine Staatslehre, Bad Homburg, 1966; H. Kelsen, Reine Rechtslehre, Wien, 1976; for a critique of legal positivism cf. F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, 3 vols., Chicago, 1973–79.
For the classical exposition of this view of politics cf. N. Machiavelli, The Prince, Harmondsworth, 1961; cf. also Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Cambridge, 1978.
Cf. on this and the following, M. N. Rothbard, Power and Market, Kansas City, 1977, pp.182f.
On the role of the intellectuals and teachers as advocates of socialism and statism cf. B. de Jouvenel, “The Treatment of Capitalism by Continental Intellectuals,” in: F. A. Hayek, Capitalism and the Historians, Chicago, 1954; L. v. Mises, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, South Holland, 1972.
On a free market monetary system and the effects of government intervention on this system cf. R. Paul and L. Lehrman, The Case For Gold, San Francisco, 1983f, Chapters 2, 3; M. N. Rothbard, What Has Government Done to Our Money?’, Novato, 1973.
On the problem of a free market production of law and order cf. Chapter 10 below.
Cf. on this also Chapter 5, n. 4.
On this point cf. also Chapter 10 below.
F. Oppenheimer, System der Soziologie, Vol. II, Der Staat, Stuttgart, 1964. Oppenheimer sums up the peculiar, discriminatory character of state-provided goods, in particular of its production of law and order, in this way (pp.322–323): the basic norm of the state is power. That is, seen from the side of its origin: violence transformed into might. Violence is one of the most powerful forces shaping society, but is not itself a form of social interaction. It must become law in the positive sense of this term, that is, sociologically speaking, it must permit the development of a system of ‘subjective reciprocity’: and this is only possible through a system of self-imposed restrictions on the use of violence and the assumption of certain obligations in exchange for its arrogated rights. In this way violence is turned into might, and a relationship of domination emerges which is accepted not only by the rulers, but under not too severely oppressive circumstances by their subjects as well, as expressing a ‘just reciprocity.’ Out of this basic norm secondary and tertiary norms now emerge as implied in it: norms of private law, of inheritance, criminal, obligational, and constitutional law, which all bear the mark of the basic norm of power and domination, and which are all designed to influence the structure of the state in such a way as to increase economic exploitation to the maximum level which is compatible with the continuation of legally regulated domination.” The insight is fundamental that “law grows out of two essentially different roots (...): on the one hand, out of the law of the association of equals, which can be called a ‘natural’ right, even if it is no ‘natural right,’ and on the other hand, out of the law of violence transformed into regulated might, the law of unequals.”
Only the fact that democracy has become a sacred cow in modern politics can explain why the extent to which the idea of majority rule is ridden with inner contradictions is almost generally overlooked: first, and this is already decisive, if one accepts democracy as justified, then one would also have to accept a democratic abolishment of democracy and a substitution of either an autocracy or a libertarian capitalism for democracy—and this would demonstrate that democracy as such cannot be regarded as a moral value. In the same way it would have to be accepted as justified if majorities decided to eliminate minorities until the point at which there were only two people, the last majority, left, for which majority rule could no longer be applied, for logico-arithmetic reasons. This would prove once again that democracy cannot in itself be regarded as justifiable. Or, if one did not want to accept these consequences and instead adopted the idea of a constitutionally limited, liberal democracy, one would at the same time have to admit that the principles from which these limitations are derived must then be logically more fundamental than the majority rule-and this again would point to the fact that there can be nothing of particular moral value in democracy. Second, by accepting majority rule it is not automatically clear what the population is to which it should be applied. (The majority of which population is to decide?) Here there are exactly three possibilities. Either one applies the democratic principle once again with regard to this question, and decides to opt for the idea that greater majorities should always prevail over smaller ones—but then, of course, there would be no way of saving the idea of national or regional democracy, as one would have to choose the total, global population as one’s group of reference. Or, one decides that determining the population is an arbitrary matter-but in this case, one would have to accept the possibility of increasingly smaller minorities seceding from larger ones, with every individual being his own self-determining majority, as the logical end point of such a process of secession-and once again the unjustifiability of democracy as such would have been demonstrated. Third, one could adopt the idea that selecting the population to which the majority principle is applied is neither done democratically nor arbitrarily, but somehow differently-but then again, one would have to admit that whatever this different principle that would justify such a decision might be, it must be more fundamental than the majority rule itself, and majority rule in itself must be classified as completely arbitrary. Cf. on this M. N. Rothbard Power and Market, Kansas City, 1977, pp.189ff., H. H. Hoppe, Eigentum, Anarchie und Staat, Opladen, 1987, Chapter 5.
B. de Jouvenel, On Power, New York, 1949, pp.9–10; on the social psychology of democracy cf. also the same, On Sovereignty, Cambridge, 1957;
G. Mosca, The Ruling Class, New York, 1939;
H. A. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, New York, 1926; on the tendency of democratic rule to “degenerate” to oligarchic rule cf.
R. Michels, Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie, Stuttgart, 1957.
Cf. on this process, R. Bendix, Kings or People, Berkeley, 1978.
On the fundamental difference between private business organizations and the state cf. L. v. Mises, Bureaucracy, New Haven, 1944.
L. Spooner describes the supporters of the state as falling into two categories: “1. Knaves, a numerous and active class, who see in the government an instrument which they can use for their own aggrandizement or wealth. 2. Dupes-a large class, no doubt-each of whom, because he is allowed one voice out of millions in deciding what he may do with his own person and his own property, and because he is permitted to have the same voice in robbing, enslaving, and murdering others, that others have in robbing, enslaving and murdering himself, is stupid enough to imagine that he is a ‘free man,’ a ‘sovereign,’ that this is a ‘free government,’ ‘the best government on earth,’ and such like absurdities” (L Spooner, No Treason. The Constitution of No Authority, Colorado Springs, 1973, p. 18).
Writes E. de la Boetie (The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, New York, 1975, pp.52–53): “He who domineers over you ... has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you .... Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”
On a strategy for liberty, and in particular on the importance of a libertarian movement for the achievement of these goals, cf. M. N. Rothbard, For A New Liberty, New York, 1978, Chapter 15; and The Ethics of Liberty, Atlantic Highlands, 1982, part 5.
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Hoppe, HH. (1989). THE SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIALISM or THE THEORY OF THE STATE. In: A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7849-3_8
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