Some forum members might have noticed that recently I’ve been thinking/posting a lot about effective and efficient statism. Mainly, I’ve been thinking, “If I were the government and I wanted to maximize my economic gain as a parasite, what policies would I enact?” This thread is simply a continuation of those earlier posts.
Having been partially raised by a chauvinistic Polish grandfather and in between reading Potop and All Quiet on the Western Front, I’ve begun to think about effective imperialism in the context of the attempted Germanisation of Poles under the Prussian Empire.
Presumably, the goal of the Prussian government was to maximize the economic gain that Germany received from conquering much of Western Poland. Of course, taking into consideration the times, a secondary goal probably was partial or total Germanization of Western Poland. Here is how I would have proceeded if I were the Kaiser or some other powerful figure in the Prussian government:
I would have immediately established the Kaiser as a figurehead monarch of “Poland.” Instead of making it appear that Poland was being wiped out by Germany, I would attempt to make it appear that Poland is simply being unified with “Greater Germany,” while retaining its “independence.”
I would establish a weak, limited, republican government in Poland subservient to the Prussian government and to the Kaiser. This would give the German occupation an air of legitimacy.
Divide & Conquer: I would break up Prussian-occupied Poland into several smaller states, so that no single member of the Polish “Republic” would become too powerful.
I would establish German and Polish as the official languages of the Polish “Republic.” Thus, Poles would not be outright discriminated against, but gradual Germanisation would become the norm.
I would require the teaching of German, as well as the official pro-Prussian propaganda, in all Polish schools.
I would allow free trade and free immigration in between Poland and the German states under control of Prussia.
I would allow an almost-free market to exist in Poland. No regulations (except the ones listed above) and virtually no taxation (except those necessary to feed the Polish “Republic” and the Prussian state). State capitalism makes it possible to feed and entertain the masses enough that they won’t revolt. This would be my goal.
I think the above could be carried over to almost any historical situation. British India, for example, could have been a much more successful experiment in imperialism had the UK allowed a relatively free enterprise system to exist in India.
This raises some interesting questions: How much do Statist leaders know about their status as a monopoly on force, or as a parasite? Would they be able to get more tax money in the long run if they stayed out of the free market (in everything but force)? How long is their “long run”? Or, is the nature of the monopoly that any one individual in it will be motivated merely to increase his or her own short-term gain and then get out?
The state already does this and has developed the idea much more. I was a leech once, the worst kind.
This is a basic formula for allocating stolen supplies. All career agents of the state understand this. Machiavelli, still in force today. Once the IRS, Finanzamt, Treasury, etc.. steals the capital, the rest of the government steals from the IRS and buys toys like nuclear warheads, and kick ass infantry weapons, and cool handheld anti-tank missiles, and 3 billion dollar tanks that are destroyed by $50 bombs, and 20 billion dollar rockets to bomb the moon for fun.
What you have described above is how the state operates in all arenas. It fails after it consumes everything, then it falls off the remnants of society like a bloated tick. After awhile the tick starts feeding again. Sometimes its swatted off and sometimes it falls off the carcass. That seems to be a pretty common cycle throughout history anyway. The tick is pretty well fed right now.
I think your plan is perfect for running a state apparatus, the only way to calculate is through rank and political influence. Your plan makes excellent use of those tools.
It is extremely hard to forcefully linguisticaly assimilate ethnicities which have become nationaly awekened. The state that was the most successful in its planned campaign of assimilation through restrictions, persecution and public schools was France but its linguistic minorities did not a posses the anchor of ethno-nationalism to enable them to whitstand this pressure. Elsewhere where the attempts at assimilation targeted nationaly awekened ethnicities it mainly backfired as it bred resentment and determination to resist.
The Poles had probably already formed as a modern nation by the end of 18th century. In such a case the best course of action is to hope for assimilation to occur from economic reasons. For that a situation where Poles can suceed as easily Germans on the account of there being no discrimination, but where the command of German is crucial for success, is the best. To aid it you probably need a vast federal burocracy (the military is a good choice) to be able to offer a huge number of good jobs with many benefits, but for which the German language is a requirement. Once such a system is in place many parents will send their children to German schools on their own aiming to give them the best chance for a better life (in economic terms). The UK and the USSR for example are two places which saw a great deal of linguistic assimilation of this type.
J.R. Hummel has an interesting section on this in his article “The Will to be Free”:
A simple way to model what happened is to conceive of long-run shifts in the Laffer curve. The short-run Laffer curve depicts the immediate trade-off between tax rates and tax revenue, or more broadly, between the State’s rate of expropriation, aggregating all its exactations, and the total revenue it manages to extract from the economy. Only by reducing the expropriation rate well below what will generate maximum revenue can governments lay the preconditions for secular increases in output. Over time, ironically, this will shift the Laffer curve upward so that even at the same expropriation rate, the government will capture more total revenue. Just as private savers must give up consumption in the present to gain more consumption in the future, governments had to give up revenue in the present in order to stimulate the growth that would make them wealthier and stronger in the future. In the intensely competitive political environment of Europe some States were finally able to discover this formula for eclipsing their rivals. (p. 7)
Typically the most widespread “second language” is not the language of the majority, but the language of the most mercantile tribal group. So, in order to convert a people to your language, you need only limit access to the market to your language group.
German already played this role in much of Eastern Europe, through the Austrian empire. But it was mostly the upper classes who spoke it. The lower classes, who didn’t really interact with anyone outside their community, only needed their native language.
With regards to India, the most widespread second language, regardless of what the official national language is, remains English.
Marko, I’m a strong believer in economic incentives. It doesn’t seem plausible to me that a millionaire will go out into the streets with an AK-47 and an RPG to fight “the occupation.” Thus, in 19th century and early 20th century Poland, I would have tried to maximize the economic freedom and wellbeing of Poles in order to reduce nationalism and revolutionary tendencies. An excellent example would be the parts of Poland that were conquered by Austria. I am not aware of any uprisings or rebellions occurring in Austrian-occupied Poland besides a single uprising, and a large part of this is, I believe, due to the largely laissez-faire approach the Austrians took to Poland. Krakow remained a free city for a long period, until it was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Cracow. Krakow was probably the most economically advanced city in all of Partitioned Poland.
I believe that this could be carried over to other experiments in imperialism. All you have to do is give people a stake in “the system,” and they won’t want to overthrow “the system.” That’s why there’s hardly any revolutionary sentiment in the United States today: almost everyone has something to lose if they revolt.
I disagree. Look at the United States federal budget, as an example. The majority of the budget goes toward social programs (e.g. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, welfare, etc.) that benefit special interests, not the state.
Most states today practice something closer to monopoly capitalism, not state capitalism. I would define monopoly capitalism as the use of the state to benefit special interests, like agribusiness (the EU being an excellent example of this) or financial firms (the US, duh). Even nominal free markets (e.g. Singapore) practice a form of monopoly capitalism, although to a much lesser degree.
State capitalism, on the other hand, is something I would describe as using capitalism to benefit the state. That would require almost complete deregulation and very low taxes to ensure the long-run prosperity of the host (the free economy), and thus the long-run growth of the parasite (the state).
In Hoppean terms, state capitalism is most likely to be practiced by absolute monarchies, while monopoly capitalism is something most often practiced by forms of government controlled by special interests (republics, democracies, single-party systems, military juntas, etc.).
It is true that people will be less inclined to revolt the more avenues you open to them to apply themselves in. Ie, if you take away their shot at becoming a buisinessman at least leave them with a shot to become a historian or a writter and vice versa.
But the Austrian part of Poland is a special example. In this case it would be a gross simplification to think of the Poles as only a subjugated people. Instead the Polish magnates and Vienna entered an arrangement where the Poles were given a territorial autonomy in return for supporting centralist policies of Vienna everywhere else. Thus Vienna enabled Poles to keep themselves in superior position to Ruthenians who returned the favour by de facto supporting similar arrangement of the Germans in relation to Czechs and Slovenes. In a sense Austro-Hungary was held together by a German-Hungarian-Polish axis and the Poles were in a sense one of the state forming peoples of Austria-Hungary. (Albeit they would have prefered independence in an ethnic state where they could pursue their own foreign policy rather than be subject to Habsburg foreign policy, if they had thought it a realisticaly attainable option, but then so would have Hungarians and Germans.)
What I am saying is that the stake the Poles had in Austria was not economic, it was political.