Book Review: Democracy, the God that Failed’ by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Many ideas are presented in The God that Failed, and it would be impossible to present them all in a short review. The essence of the book, then, is a critique of democratic nation-states, in which the author concludes that democracy is an inferior form of government to monarchy, and that both are inferior to a hypothetical libertarian society Hoppe terms as ‘natural order.’
I was highly skeptical when I began reading it, but the author makes some compelling points. For example, there probably is some truth to the assertion that warfare between monarchies was often (although certainly not always) limited warfare strictly between professional armies, whereas warfare between governments based on democratic, or at least ‘popular’ ideologies, tend far more strongly towards ‘total war,’ such as happened repeatedly through the 20th century.
A major foundation stone of Hoppe’s analysis is the observation of the evils of the American entrance into WWI. Before the American entrance, according to Hoppe, the war was a more traditional conflict between old-world powers over territory and predominance, but with the entrance o the democratic U.S. on the pretext of “making the world safe for democracy,” the war became increasingly ideological and “total” in nature, and the unequal peace that resulted from the triumph of the democracies directly paved the way for the rise of fascism and communism, followed by World War II.
Hoope holds that monarchy is essentially “privately owned government,” and that as such monarchs have more incentive to look after the long-term well-being of their nation state and subjects so that they can pass on this inheritance to heirs, while democratic politicians have only short terms in office and no such incentive. One major obstacle for Hoppe, which he doesn’t much address, is that contrary to this idea, the monarchical nations of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Russia are widely held to be the first aggressors of World War I. But aside from that, there is an even more serious issue.
As Hoppe points out, but doesn’t resolve, Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. President who dragged the U.S. into World War I with all the disastrous consequences that followed, ran as a peace candidate. Wilson explicitly ran on his second term as a peace candidate who would keep the U.S. out of war. This is evidently what the majority who elected him expected he would do.
So then, in criticizing Wilson, which is laudable, it’s fair to ask whether Hoppe is effectively criticizing democracy. After all, the basic meaning of the word, derived from its roots is “demos” - people, and “kratos” - rule. If, when a majority of voters elect a peace candidate but instead get a war candidate, can we legitimately call this a critique of democracy, or is it rather a critique of an absence of democracy?
Nations like the U.S. are called democratic under the theory or representation. This theory is that a variety of candidates state their positions and run for various offices, and that the public votes for the candidates who most reflect their own views. The incentive of remaining in office entices candidates to remain true to their stated positions.
But all of this is just a theory. If other incentives are stronger than remaining in office - if there is a term limit - if the candidate isn’t enticed by a repeat term - is election funding heavily favors incumbents, among other possibilities - this theory of representation can break down. Majoritarian elections do not a democracy make, anymore than someone with a crown called a king within the borders of a state makes a monarchy. For a government to be a monarchy, the person called King or Queen must actually determine policy, and for it to be a democracy the majority must actually determine policy. It would be unfair to criticize Queen Elizabeth II for the policies of the present day U.K., because she doesn’t set them and has only minor influence over them; likewise, it is unfair to criticize the majority of voters, and hence democracy, if those voters are not in fact determining policy and may have only minor influence over them. Unfortunately, this is the basic unfairness on which Hoppe’s book is based.
At the start of the book, Hoppe lays out a critique of empirical, or evidence based readings of history, preferring to argue by logic alone. So, on that basis, a logical problem must be examined. If monarchies are ‘privately owned governments,’ and that this provides an incentive for good government, then do not monarchs suffer from a serious ‘knowledge problem’ - they have to imagine what ‘good government’ might be for their subjects, while, if the subjects themselves owned the government, there would be far less of a knowledge problem. The individuals themselves would, as Austrian theory points out, know their own interests better than anyone else, and certainly far better than a distant hereditary ruler or bureaucrat in a capitol.
What Hoppe is really critiquing is “representative’ democracy,” and not truly the concept of democracy itself. For example, the problem of a politician who will serve a short term in office and thus has a short time-preference [for example, by making decisions which will be popular in the short term but destructive in the medium to long term] is not truly a critique of democracy per se, but a critique of a defective machinery which (often falsely) promises democracy. As a critique of representative democracy as a “god that failed,” the book is very interesting and offers some highly original and perhaps useful critiques. However, what I was expecting to find - a cogent critique of majoritarian policy determination, is not truly found within the book.
