Found this on YouTube. Leaving aside its conclusion, do you think the video’s point is in line with Hoppean theory of history?
Clayton -
Of course the critics will often say that they don’t advocate for a dictatorship in place for the Monarchy, but a Democracy. All of the atrocities portrayed in the film were done by dictators. That’s what they will say. What will be your response?
Democracy does not preclude dictatorship. Germany was a Republic at the time Hitler was appointed Chancellor and, while he was a de facto dictator, the Reichstag dutifully re-confirmed Enabling Act to maintain his de jure status as said dictator. The US President has clearly delineated dictatorial powers which can be exercised in any so-called time of emergency. The real problem, in my opinion, is not democracy, monarchy or dictatorship but statutory law and the self-serving nature of the State in deciding the limits of its own powers.
Clayton -
Nazi Germany is a perfect example of the scenario of Democracy democratically undemocracising.
I think the author of this video is missing the point. This should be more of a warning not to have a concentration of power into one body. If the removal of Tsar Nicholas means the opening of a position of power for someone more dubious, then why propound the power into one individual? Why openly state monarchies are great when you have historical examples in which the removal of said monarchy leads to destructive forces. I don’t see the logic in having a Hoppeian outlook of monarchy over democracy [ yes I understand he favors anarchy above all ] Monarchy is the instilling of power into a single actor or a significantly small group of actors while anarchy is the wide-scale dispensation of power into self-governance. How can one go from rule by one or few to rule by self? If Hoppe where saying ’ Ok lets get power into one man then completely ignore him’ then I would see the logic in that but I don’t see Hoppe saying that. It is almost akin to Marxism thinking that liberty of the individual will be brought about by the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat or maybe Rousseau’s idea that to be completely free we all have to give ourselves to each other.
He isn’t saying “ignore” him because his point is that there’s a much bigger contrast of “us vs them” with a monarch, redoubling suspicion towards their activities. That is one of his arguments, that democratic politicians either go unnoticed or become part of the “us”.
I think it misses the point to focus on who holds power. What matters most is what powers exist, not who holds them. Henry VIII was a tyrant, but he never had the power to conscript troops. He couldn’t he impose an income tax. He could never have floated a fiat currency. Generally speaking, only republics (and “constitutional monarchies”) are able to create those powers. Republics do many things that monarch’s could only dream of. That makes them far more oppressive and dangerous than monarchies despite any diffusion of power.
What makes you presume that a monarchy couldn’t actually create these legislations?
Nearly all statists that I have encountered always refuse to acknowledge that
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Germany was a Democracy -They say they were Fascists, which according to them is opposite to Democracy.
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That Germans were true socialists
What monarchy ever has?
Power depends on people to enforce it. Diffusing power (or at least giving that appearance) through republican and quasi-democratic power sharing arrangements greatly expands the ability of the regime to enforce the will of its leaders. In fact it was precisely this characteristic of republicanism that enabled Napoleon to conquer Europe. Napoleon’s secret weapon was universal conscription. No one else in Europe had conscription and Napoleon won by provoking large battles with heavy casualties, knowing that he could replace his loses and his opponents could not. It was also the political strength of republicanism in Britain that ultimately brought about the defeat of Napoleon. Britain, also a de facto republic, alone had the income tax during the war.
What monarchy has existed in the 20th century which is really when the welfare state reach it apogee? I don’t think that ‘well it hasn’t happened therefore it can’t’ is a solid refutation as to why monarchies, if they were to ever arise again, cannot have fiat currency, income tax, etc.
Could you explain how diffusing power leads to a greater ability to enact power through specific and concentrated individuals?
Conscription isn’t exclusive to republicanism. Certainly one could be conscripted in other systems of governance.
So you are postulating that Britain defeated Napoleon because it had the power to tax??
I think logically that’s probably putting the cart before the horse. Welfare comes about after the income tax and as a result of it. Besides, what true monarchy would ever want to implement a welfare state? Welfare is harmful to societies and this was well understood at the time it was being introduced. The welfare state began in Prussia (in the 19th century) as a mechanism for binding the people to the new unified state. It exists today as a means to bind constituencies to political parties.
Power depends on people to enforce it. Diffusing power gives a stake in the success of the regime to large numbers of individuals.
But historically conscription is exclusive to republicanism (or to what is called democracy).
Attempts at conscription by monarchs prior to the French Revolution involved press gangs roving the streets kidnapping people. Friends, neighbors, and even strangers would help young men hide or get away from them. After the revolution suddenly it became “our” army, not the king’s army. War became something against and about us, not merely some adventure of the king’s. Such were the popular philosophical superstitions surrounding the republic that now friends and neighbors would turn young men in to the recruiters when they came looking.
This superstition that the government is really us and that somehow the things government does are our own acts is what enables republican (democratic) governments to get away with policies that would never be tolerated from a monarch.
Yes.
Not just any tax though. The income tax is far more powerful than any other form of tax in its ability to raise revenue. Also, since it is steady and can be reliably projected into the future the income tax enables a state to tap into sources of credit which would otherwise not be available.
Nor could such a refutation arise, though. Hoppe’s argument is as to why feudal monarchies exhibited comparative restraint relative to democracies, and to a lesser degree, absolute monarchies. He mentions in his book on the matter that monarchy is beyond salvation at this point. The argument he might give for newly arising monarchies is that a) their activities contribute to the king’s personal wealth (and of course the monarch stands above everyone else in terms of status) and b) they have control over what happens to this wealth. Because of a), it’d be hard to pass off activities such as inflation as being “for the people” and because of b) such activities would decrease the net value of their kingdom rather than increasing their wealth. This does not mean a monarch could not instead arise in other ways.
His argument for feudal monarchy specifically rests in that the king’s basis to his holdings was said to lie in private property, and hence governed by the same laws as everyone else’s, and thus that expropriations on his part were unlikely to be tolerated (as well as the nobles exercising a restraining influence given antithetical interests to the king’s.) If a new-found monarchy were to arise from the ashes of a democracy, it might well turn out to maintain all the democracy’s negative features, and perhaps might be better called a dictatorship were the leader calls him/herself a monarch.
Not necessarily. You could just inflate to achieve the necessary monetary units. It would be odd but possible.
Then why was it introduced if it was so harmful? And on some level this mentality of the necessity of welfare is sustained today. I understand your points about Bismark and modern day politicians but it is not as if the populace throughly thinks welfare is a social harm and should be gotten rid of outright.
But how is that concentrating power into a minority of individuals allowing them to better enact said power?
African dictators don’t conscript children warriors? Tsarist Russia actually engaged in conscription. Are we going to consider that a republic?
Well that contradicts your earlier statement of conscription being exclusive to republicanism.
So Napoleon’s Russian campaign didn’t influence his future defeat? Come on.
But doesn’t this assume that the monarch would be taught by Austrian scholars / libertarian scholars? Certainly a monarch could have say a Keynesian who thinks ‘inflate for the common good.’ Plus it assumes that the king will always act homo economicus
Why rest on that though? It is certainly possible for a king to hold a double standard.
No, it merely requires for them to understand what will and what will not increase their wealth. Monarchs that repeatedly enact policies that bankrupt them will fall by the wayside. Currently Keynesians can get away with it, but when your own money is on the line things shift dramatically. Pretty much like owning a firm. And I agree that a King can have double standards. I was pointing out a historical peculiarity Hoppe identifies in feudalism.
Monarchs never had fiat currencies, so their ability to inflate was limited to coin clipping. You can’t fund a welfare state through coin clipping. It isn’t possible to impose a fiat currency without legal tender laws and the first “state” to successfully do that was the colony of Massachusetts - a republic.
Bismark thought the trade off was worth it. He wanted unification above all else.
I wasn’t referring to the public. I was referring to the ruling class in Prussia, the ones who made the decision to implement Bismark’s “social security” plan. The public had no say about it initially. It was easy to get the public to go along with the largess though, especially after they got dependent on it. Bismark’s welfare program did become popular and had pretty much exactly the effect he had hoped for. Deutchland Uber Alles is not a song invented by the Nazis. It’s from the Bismark era.
I’m not sure what you’re asking.
First, they are democratic/republican dictators, not kings. Second, universal conscription is the ability to compel enlistment. It isn’t a press gang. See below.
As I recall that didn’t work out too well.
Russia did have a legislature after 1905. The “autocratic” power of the Tsar was in practice just the power to appoint all senior officials in the government. The Duma still had to pass laws and raise money. So yes, Tsarist Russia had republican attributes and capabilities. I don’t think they ever quite managed to pull off convincing the army that they were really fighting and dying for themselves though.
Again, press gangs are not universal conscription. Let’s look at a comparison. At the battle of Malplaquet in 1709 the French were able to muster about 75,000 troops. Nine decades later Napoleon took to the field with 800,000 men. And by the time he was defeated he had conscripted around three million men.Needless to say the population of France had not grown tenfold. What was different was the nature of political authority in France. The government could call for troops and they would come.
I don’t think that’s what I said.
Russia, Prussia, and most the other belligerents would have dropped out years before the war ultimately ended if not for financial support from Britain. So in that sense it was mainly the British income tax that won the war.
Hitler was democratically elected.
Austrian methodology precludes the blind use of historical correlations to establish praxeological knowledge - a perfect example is the “democracies never go to war with other democracies” myth. Even if it is true that no democracy has ever gone to war with another democracy (it happens to be patently false), nothing can be said of why this is the case. Such observations are interesting, at best. The end of many monarchies resulting in chaos and dictatorship is at most interesting. It can’t give us any meaningful knowledge regarding human behavior because it contains no causal content.
What I find fascinating is the successive, rapid collapse of monarchies in the 20th century. Why did this happen? It happened almost entirely in the West. Some Muslim, Asian and other countries still have monarchies. Something was different in the West than everywhere else in the world. And that thing that was different caused a “cluster of errors” on the part of many monarchs. Monarchs, like entrepreneurs, can make predictions and foresee impending events. How come so many monarchs - almost exclusively in the West - failed to foresee their impending doom? I feel like there must be some hidden history here, something that isn’t taught in the history books. I no longer believe in chance in human affairs. Whenever something interesting or important happens in the realm of human affairs, it happens for a reason. Why did all these monarchs collapse in such rapid succession? The cluster of errors suggests a common cause. What was it? More importantly, who was it?
Clayton -
I just figured that they all got overthrown in favor of democracy. (Just like if people were to start to hate democracy and want to go back to monarchy in the west, democracies in the west would start to collapse “in such rapid succession” and get replaced by monarchies.)