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NOTE 3. The State

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Chapter 3. The State. The State as Aggressor.

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The central thrust of libertarian thought, then, is to oppose any and all aggression against the property rights of individuals, in their own persons, and in the material objects they have voluntarily acquired.

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While individual and gangs of criminals are of course opposed, there is nothing unique here to the libertarian creed, since almost all persons and schools of thought oppose the exercise of random violence against persons and property.

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There is, however, a difference of emphasis on the part of libertarians, even in this universally accepted area of defending people against crime.

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In the libertarian society there would be no district attorney who prosecutes criminals in the name of a non-existent society, even against the wishes of the victim of crime.

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The victim would himself decide whether to press charges.

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Furthermore, as another side to the same coin, in a libertarian world the victim would be able to press suit against a wrongdoer without having to convince the same district attorney that he should proceed.

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Proceed.

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Moreover, in the system of criminal punishment in the libertarian world, the emphasis would

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never be, as it is now, on societies jailing the criminal.

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The emphasis would necessarily be on compelling the criminal to make restitution to the victim

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of his crime.

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The present system, in which the victim is not recompensed, but instead has to pay taxes

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to support the incarceration of his own attacker would be evident nonsense in a world that

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focuses on the defense of property rights and therefore on the victim of crime.

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Furthermore, while most libertarians are not pacifists, they would not join the present

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system in interfering with people's right to be pacifists.

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Thus suppose that Jones, a pacifist, is aggressed against by Smith, a criminal.

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If Jones, as the result of his beliefs, is against defending himself by the use of violence,

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and is therefore opposed to any prosecution of crime, then Jones will simply fail to prosecute,

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and that will be the end of it.

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There will be no governmental machinery that pursues and tries criminals even against the

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wishes of the victim.

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But the critical difference between libertarians and other people is not in the area of private

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crime.

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The critical difference is their view of the role of the state, the government.

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For libertarians regard the state as the supreme, the eternal, the best organized aggressor

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against the persons and property of the mass of the public.

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All states, everywhere, whether democratic, dictatorial, or monarchical, whether red,

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white, blue, or brown.

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The state.

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These and ever, the government and its rulers and operators have been considered above the

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general moral law.

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The Pentagon Papers are only one recent instance among innumerable instances in history of

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men, most of whom are perfectly honorable in their private lives, who lie in their teeth

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before the public.

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Why?

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For reasons of state.

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Apparatus to the state is supposed to excuse all actions that would be considered immoral

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or criminal if committed by private citizens.

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The distinctive feature of libertarians is that they coolly and uncompromisingly apply

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the general moral law to people acting in their roles as members of the state apparatus.

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Libertarians make no exceptions.

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For centuries, the state, or more strictly, individuals acting in their roles as members

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of the government, has cloaked its criminal activity in high-sounding rhetoric.

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For centuries, the state has committed mass murder and called it war, then ennobled the

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mass slaughter that war involves.

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For centuries, the state has enslaved people into its armed battalions and called it conscription

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in the national service.

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For centuries, the state has robbed people at bayonet point and called it taxation.

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In fact, if you wish to know how libertarians regard the state and any of its acts, simply

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think of the state as a criminal band, and all of the libertarian attitudes will logically

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fall into place.

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Let us consider, for example, what it is that sharply distinguishes government from

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all other organizations in society.

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Many political scientists and sociologists have blurred this vital distinction and refer

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to all organizations and groups as hierarchical, structured, governmental, etc.

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Left-wing anarchists, for example, will oppose equally government and private organizations,

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such as corporations, on the ground that each is equally elitist and coercive.

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But the rightist libertarian is not opposed to inequality, and his concept of coercion

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applies only to the use of violence.

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The libertarian sees a crucial distinction between government, whether central, state,

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or local, and all other institutions in society, or rather, two crucial distinctions.

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First, every other person or group receives its income by voluntary payment, either by

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by voluntary contribution or gift, such as the local community chest or bridge club, or

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by voluntary purchase of its goods or services on the market, for example, grocery store

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owner, baseball player, steel manufacturer, etc.

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Only the government obtains its income by coercion and violence, that is, by the direct

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threat of confiscation or imprisonment if payment is not forthcoming.

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This coerced levy is taxation.

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A second distinction is that apart from criminal outlaws, only the government can use its funds

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to commit violence against its own or any other subjects.

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Only the government can prohibit pornography, compel a religious observance, or put people

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in jail for selling goods at a higher price than the government deems fit.

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Both distinctions, of course, can be summed up as only the government in society is empowered

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to aggress against the property rights of its subjects, whether to extract revenue,

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to impose its moral code, or to kill those with whom it disagrees.

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Furthermore, any and all governments, even the least despotic, have always obtained the

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bulk of their income from the coercive taxing power.

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And historically, by far the overwhelming portion of all enslavement and murder in the

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history of the world have come from the hands of government.

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And since we have seen that the central thrust of the libertarian is to oppose all aggression

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against the rights of person and property, the libertarian necessarily opposes the institution

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There is another reason why state aggression has been far more important than private,

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a reason apart from the greater organization and central mobilizing of resources that the

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rulers of the state can impose.

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The reason is the absence of any check upon state depredation, a check that does exist

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When we have to worry about muggers or the mafia.

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To guard against private criminals, we have been able to turn to the state and its police.

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But who can guard us against the state itself?

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No one.

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For another critical distinction of the state is that it compels the monopolization of the

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service of protection.

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The state arrogates to itself a virtual monopoly of violence and of ultimate decision-making

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in Society.

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If we don't like the decisions of the state courts, for example, there are no other agencies

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of protection to which we may turn.

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It is true that in the United States, at least, we have a constitution that imposes strict

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limits on some powers of government.

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But as we have discovered in the past century, no constitution can interpret or enforce itself.

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It must be interpreted by men.

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And if the ultimate power to interpret a constitution is given to the government's own supreme

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court, then the inevitable tendency is for the court to continue to place its imprimatur

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on ever broader powers for its own government.

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Furthermore, the highly touted checks and balances and separation of powers in the American

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government are flimsy indeed, since in the final analysis all of these divisions are

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are part of the same government and are governed by the same set of rulers.

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One of America's most brilliant political theorists, John C. Calhoun, wrote prophetically

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of the inherent tendency of a state to break through the limits of its written constitution.

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A written constitution certainly has many and considerable advantages, but it is a great

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mistake to suppose that the mere insertion of provisions to restrict and limit the powers

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Res endorsers of the government, will be sufficient to prevent the Hajar and dominant

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party from abusing its powers.

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Being the party in possession of the government, they will be in favor of the powers granted

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by the constitution and oppose to the restrictions intended to limit them.

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As the hajar and dominant parties, they will have no need of these restrictions for their

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Their Protection.

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The minor or weaker party, on the contrary, would take the opposite direction and regard

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them as essential to their protection against the dominant party.

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But where there are no means by which they could compel the major party to observe the

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restrictions, the only resort left them would be a strict construction of the Constitution.

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To this, the major party would oppose a liberal construction, one which would give to the

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the words of the grant, the broadest meaning of which they were susceptible.

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It would then be construction against construction, the one to construct and the other to enlarge

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the powers of the government to the utmost.

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But of what possible avail could the strict construction of the minor party be against

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the liberal interpretation of the major, when the one would have all the powers of the government

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to carry its construction into effect, and the other be deprived of all means of enforcing

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its construction.

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In a contest so unequal, the result would not be doubtful.

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The party in favor of the restrictions would be overpowered.

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The end of the contest would be the subversion of the Constitution.

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The restrictions would ultimately be annulled, and the government be converted into one of

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unlimited powers.

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Or would the division of government into separate and, as it regards each other, independent

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departments prevent this result?

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As each and all the departments, and, of course, the entire government, would be under the

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control of the numerical majority, it is too clear to require explanation that a mere distribution

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of its powers among its agents or representatives could do little or nothing to counteract its

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tendency to oppression and abuse of power.

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But why worry about the weakness of limits on governmental power?

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Especially in a democracy, in the phrase so often used by American liberals in their heyday

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before the mid-1960s when doubts began to creep into the liberal utopia, are we not

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the government?

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In the phrase, we are the government, the useful collective term we has enabled an ideological

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Political Camouflage to be thrown over the naked exploitative reality of political life.

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For if we truly are the government, then anything a government does to an individual is not

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only just and not tyrannical, it is also voluntary on the part of the individual concerned.

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If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group

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on behalf of another, this reality of burden is conveniently obscured by blithely saying

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that we owe it to ourselves, but who are the we and who the ourselves?

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If the government drafts a man or even throws him into jail for dissident opinions, then

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he is only doing it to himself, and therefore nothing improper has occurred.

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Under this reasoning, then, Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered.

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They must have committed suicide, since they were the government, which was democratically

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chosen, and therefore anything the government did to them was only voluntary on their part.

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But there is no way out of such grotesqueries for those supporters of government who see

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the state merely as a benevolent and voluntary agent of the public.

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And so we must conclude that we are not the government.

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The government is not us.

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The government does not in any accurate sense represent the majority of the people.

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But even if it did, even if 90% of the people decided to murder or enslave the other 10%,

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this would still be murder and slavery, and would not be voluntary suicide or enslavement

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on the part of the oppressed minority.

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Crime is crime.

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Aggression against rights is aggression, no matter how many citizens agree to the oppression.

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There is nothing sacrosanct about the majority.

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The lynch mob, too, is the majority in its own domain.

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But while, as in the lynch mob, the majority can become actively tyrannical and aggressive,

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the normal and continuing condition of the state is oligarchic rule.

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rule by a coercive elite which has managed to gain control of the state machinery.

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There are two basic reasons for this.

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One is the inequality and division of labor inherent in the nature of man, which gives

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rise to an iron law of oligarchy in all of man's activities.

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And second is the parasitic nature of the state enterprise itself.

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We have said that the individualist is not an egalitarian.

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Part of the reason for this is the individualist's insight into the vast diversity and individuality

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within mankind, a diversity that has the chance to flower and expand as civilization and living

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standards progress.

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Individuals differ in ability and in interest, both within and between occupations, and hence

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in all occupations and walks of life, whether it be steel production or the organization

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of a Bridge Club, Leadership in the activity will inevitably be assumed by a relative handful

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of the most able and energetic, while the remaining majority will form themselves into

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rank-and-file followers.

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This truth applies to all activities, whether they are beneficial or malevolent, as in criminal

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organizations.

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Indeed, the discovery of the iron law of oligarchy was made by the Italian sociologist Robert

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Richard Michels, who found that the Social Democratic Party of Germany, despite its rhetorical

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commitment to egalitarianism, was rigidly oligarchical and hierarchical in its actual

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functioning.

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A second basic reason for the oligarchic rule of the state is its parasitic nature,

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the fact that it lives coercively off the production of the citizenry.

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To be successful to its practitioners, the fruits of parasitic exploitation must be confined

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to a relative minority, otherwise a meaningless plunder of all by all would result in no gains

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for anyone.

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Nowhere has the coercive and parasitic nature of the state been more clearly limbed than

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by the great late 19th century German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer.

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Oppenheimer pointed out that there are two and only two mutually exclusive means for

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man to obtain wealth.

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One, the method of production and voluntary exchange, the method of the free market, Oppenheimer

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termed the economic means.

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The other, the method of robbery by the use of violence, he called the political means.

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The political means is clearly parasitic, for it requires previous production for the

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In short, private crime is, at best, sporadic and uncertain.

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The parasitism is ephemeral, and the coercive parasitic lifeline can be cut at any time

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by the resistance of the victims.

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The state provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for predation on the property of the

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producers.

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It makes certain, secure, and relatively peaceful the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society.

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The great libertarian writer Albert J. Nock wrote vividly that the state claims and exercises

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is the monopoly of crime.

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It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale.

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It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether

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the property of citizen or of alien.

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At first, of course, it is startling for someone to consider taxation as robbery, and therefore

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government as a band of robbers.

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But anyone who persists in thinking of taxation as in some sense a voluntary payment can see

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what happens if he chooses not to pay.

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The great economist Joseph Schumpeter, himself by no means a libertarian, wrote that the

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state has been living on a revenue which was being produced in the private sphere for private

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purposes and had to be deflected from these purposes by political force.

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The theory which construes taxes on the analogy of club dues or of the purchase of the services

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of, say, a doctor, only proves how far removed this part of the social sciences is from scientific

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habits of mind.

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The eminent Viennese legal positivist, Hans Kelsen, attempted in his treatise, The General

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Theory of Law and the State, to establish a political theory and justification of the

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on a strictly scientific and value-free basis.

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What happened is that early in the book, he came to the crucial sticking point,

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the pons asinorum of political philosophy.

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What distinguishes the edicts of the state from the commands of a bandit gang?

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Kelson's answer was simply to say that the decrees of the state are valid,

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and to proceed happily from there, without bothering to define or explain

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explain this concept of validity. Indeed, it would be a useful exercise for non-libertarians

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to ponder this question. How can you define taxation in a way which makes it different

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from robbery?

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To the great 19th century individualist anarchist and constitutional lawyer Lysander Spooner,

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there was no problem in finding the answer. Spooner's analysis of the state as robber

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per Group is perhaps the most devastating ever written.

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It is true that the theory of our constitution is that all taxes are paid voluntarily, that

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our government is a mutual insurance company voluntarily entered into by the people with

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each other.

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But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact.

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The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man, your money or your life, and

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Many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

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The government does not indeed waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the

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roadside and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets.

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But the robbery is nonetheless a robbery on that account, and it is far more dastardly

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and shameful.

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The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his

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own act.

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He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money or that he intends to

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use it for your own benefit.

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He does not pretend to be anything but a robber.

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He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a protector and that he takes

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men's money against their will merely to enable him to protect those infatuated travelers

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who feel perfectly able to protect themselves or do not appreciate his peculiar system of

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protection.

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He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these.

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Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you as you wish him to do.

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He does not persist in following you on the road against your will, assuming to be your

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rightful sovereign on account of the protection he affords you.

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He does not keep protecting you by commanding you to bow down and serve him, by requiring

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you to do this and forbidding you to do that, by robbing you of more money as often as he

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finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so, and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor,

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and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy if you dispute his

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authority or resist his demands.

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He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures and insults and villainies

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If the state is a group of plunderers, who then constitutes the state?

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Clearly, the ruling elite consists at any time of

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a. the full-time apparatus, the kings, politicians and bureaucrats who man and operate the state

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and B, the groups who have maneuvered to gain privileges, subsidies, and benefits from the state.

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The remainder of society constitutes the ruled.

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It was again John C. Calhoun who saw with crystal clarity that no matter how small the power of government,

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no matter how low the tax burden or how equal its distribution,

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The very nature of government creates two unequal and inherently conflicting classes in society.

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Those who, on net, pay the taxes, the tax payers, and those who, on net, live off taxes, the tax consumers.

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Suppose that the government imposes a low and seemingly equally distributed tax to pay for building a dam.

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This very act takes money from most of the public to pay it out to net tax consumers,

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the bureaucrats who run the operation, the contractors and workers who build the dam,

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etc.

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And the greater the scope of government decision making, the greater its fiscal burdens, Calhoun

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went on, the greater the burden and the artificial inequality it imposes between these two classes.

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You comparatively as they are, the agents and employees of the government constitute

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that portion of the community who are the exclusive recipients of the proceeds of the

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taxes.

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Whatever amount is taken from the community in the form of taxes, if not lost, goes to

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them in the shape of expenditures or disbursements.

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The two, disbursement and taxation, constitute the fiscal action of the government.

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They are correlatives.

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What the one takes from the community under the name of taxes is transferred to the portion

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of the community who are the recipients under that of disbursements.

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But as the recipients constitute only a portion of the community, it follows, taking the two

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parts of the fiscal process together, that its action must be unequal between the payers

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of the taxes and the recipients of their proceeds.

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Or can it be otherwise, unless what is collected from each individual in the shape of taxes

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shall be returned to him in that of disbursements, which would make the process nugatory and

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absurd?

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The necessary result, then, of the unequal fiscal action of the government is to divide

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the community into two great classes, one consisting of those who, in reality, pay the

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and, of course, bear exclusively the burden of supporting the government, and the other of those who are the recipients of their proceeds through disbursements, and who are, in fact, supported by the government, or, in fewer words, to divide it into taxpayers and tax consumers.

301
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But the effect of this is to place them in antagonistic relations in reference to the

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fiscal action of the government, and the entire course of policy therewith connected.

303
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For the greater the taxes and disbursements, the greater the gain of the one and the loss

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of the other, and vice versa.

305
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The effect then of every increase is to enrich and strengthen the one, and impoverish and

306
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weaken the other.

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If states have everywhere been run by an oligarchic group of predators, how have they been able

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to maintain their rule over the mass of the population?

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The answer, as the philosopher David Hume pointed out over two centuries ago, is that

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in the long run, every government, no matter how dictatorial, rests on the support of the

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majority of its subjects.

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Now this does not, of course, render these governments voluntary, since the very existence

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The convergence of the tax and other coercive powers shows how much compulsion the state must exercise.

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Nor does the majority support have to be eager and enthusiastic approval.

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It could well be mere passive acquiescence and resignation.

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The conjunction in the famous phrase death and taxes implies a passive and resigned acceptance

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to the assumed inevitability of the state and its taxation.

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The tax consumers, the groups that benefit from the operations of the state, will of course be eager, rather than passive, followers of the state mechanism.

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But these are only a minority. How is the compliance and acquiescence of the mass of the population to be secured?

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Here we come to the central problem of political philosophy, that branch of philosophy that deals with politics,

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The Exercise of Regularized Violence, The Mystery of Civil Obedience

322
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Why do people obey the edicts and depredations of the ruling elite?

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Conservative writer James Burnham, who is the reverse of libertarian, put the problem very

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clearly, admitting that there is no rational justification for civil obedience. Neither the

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source nor the justification of government can be put in wholly rational terms. Why should

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Why should I accept the hereditary or democratic or any other principle of legitimacy?

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Why should a principle justify the rule of that man over me?

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His own answer is hardly calculated to convince many others.

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I accept the principle, well, because I do, because that is the way it is and has been.

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But suppose that one does not accept the principle.

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What will the way be then?

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And why have the bulk of subjects agreed to accept it?

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The State and the Intellectuals The answer is that, since the early origins

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of the state, its rulers have always turned, as a necessary bolster to their rule, to an

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alliance with society's class of intellectuals.

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The masses do not create their own abstract ideas, or indeed think through these ideas

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independently.

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They follow passively the ideas adopted and promulgated by the body of intellectuals,

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who become the effective opinion molders in society.

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And since it is precisely a molding of opinion on behalf of the rulers that the state almost

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desperately needs, this forms a firm basis for the age-old alliance of the intellectuals

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and the ruling classes of the state.

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The alliance is based on a quid pro quo.

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On the one hand, the intellectuals spread among the masses the idea that the state and its

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rulers are wise, good, sometimes divine, and, at the very least, inevitable and better than

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any conceivable alternatives.

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In return for this panoply of ideology, the state incorporates the intellectuals as part

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of the ruling elite, granting them power, status, prestige, and material security.

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Furthermore, intellectuals are needed to staff the bureaucracy and to plan the economy and society.

350
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Before the modern era, particularly potent among the intellectual handmaidens of the state was the priestly caste,

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cementing the powerful and terrible alliance of warrior chief and medicine man, of throne and altar.

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The State established the Church, and conferred upon it power, prestige, and wealth extracted from its subjects.

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In return, the Church anointed the State with divine sanction, and inculcated this sanction into the populace.

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In the modern era, when theocratic arguments have lost much of their luster among the public,

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the intellectuals have posed as the scientific cadre of experts,

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and have been busy informing the hapless public that political affairs, foreign and domestic,

357
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are much too complex for the average person to bother his head about.

358
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Only the state and its core of intellectual experts, planners, scientists, economists and national security managers

359
00:32:05.680 --> 00:32:08.680
can possibly hope to deal with these problems.

360
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The role of the masses, even in democracies,

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is to ratify and assent to the decisions of their knowledgeable rulers.

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Historically, the union of church and state, of throne and altar, has been the most effective

363
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device for inducing obedience and support among the subjects. Burnham attests to the power of myth

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and mystery in inducing support when he writes that, in ancient times, before the illusions of

365
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of Science had corrupted traditional wisdom, the founders of cities were known to be gods

366
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or demigods.

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To the established priestcraft, the ruler was either anointed by God or, in the case

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of the absolute rule of many oriental despotisms, was even himself God.

369
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Hence any questioning or resistance to his rule would be blasphemy.

370
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Money and subtle are the ideological weapons the state and its intellectuals have used

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over the centuries to induce their subjects to accept their rule.

372
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One excellent weapon has been the power of tradition.

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The longer lasting the rule of any given state, the more powerful this weapon.

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For then the X dynasty, or the Y state, has the seeming weight of centuries of tradition

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behind it.

376
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Worship of one's ancestors then becomes a none-too-subtle means of cultivating worship

377
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of one's ancestral rulers.

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The force of tradition is, of course, bolstered by ancient habit, which confirms the subjects

379
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in the seeming propriety and legitimacy of the rule under which they live.

380
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Thus, the political theorist Bertrand de Juvenel has written,

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The essential reason for obedience is that it has become a habit of the species.

382
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Power is for us a fact of nature.

383
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From the earliest days of recorded history it has always presided over human destinies.

384
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The authorities which ruled in former times did not disappear without bequeathing to their successors their privilege,

385
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nor without leaving in men's minds imprints which are cumulative in their effect.

386
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The succession of governments which, in the course of centuries, rule the same society, may be looked on as one underlying government which takes on continuous accretions.

387
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Another potent ideological force is for the state to deprecate the individual and exalt either the past or the present collectivity of society.

388
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Any isolated voice, any razor of new doubts, can then be attacked as a profane violator of the wisdom of his ancestors.

389
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Moreover, any new idea, much less any new critical idea, must necessarily begin as a small minority opinion.

390
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:10.960
Therefore, in order to ward off any potentially dangerous idea from threatening majority acceptance of its rule,

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Rule.

392
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The state will try to nip the new idea in the bud by ridiculing any view that sets itself

393
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against mass opinion.

394
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The ways in which the state rulers in ancient Chinese despotisms used religion as a method

395
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of binding the individual to the state-run society were summarized by Norman Jacobs.

396
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Chinese religion is a social religion, seeking to solve the problems of social interests,

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and individual interests.

398
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Religion is essentially a force of impersonal social adjustment and control rather than

399
00:35:47.520 --> 00:35:53.420
a medium for the personal solutions of the individual, and social adjustment and control

400
00:35:53.420 --> 00:35:58.680
are effected through education and reverence for superiors.

401
00:35:58.680 --> 00:36:04.480
Reverence for superiors, superior in age and hence in education and experience, is the

402
00:36:04.480 --> 00:36:09.180
ethical foundation of social adjustment and control.

403
00:36:09.180 --> 00:36:15.720
In China, the interrelationship of political authority with orthodox religion equated heterodoxy

404
00:36:15.720 --> 00:36:18.140
with political error.

405
00:36:18.140 --> 00:36:25.220
The orthodox religion was particularly active in persecuting and destroying heterodox sects.

406
00:36:25.220 --> 00:36:30.020
In this, it was backed by the secular power.

407
00:36:30.020 --> 00:36:36.180
The general tendency of government to seek out and thwart any heterodox views was outlined

408
00:36:36.180 --> 00:36:42.900
in typically witty and delightful style by the libertarian writer H. L. Mencken.

409
00:36:42.900 --> 00:36:48.860
All that government can see in an original idea is potential change and hence an invasion

410
00:36:48.860 --> 00:36:50.940
of its prerogatives.

411
00:36:50.940 --> 00:36:55.680
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for

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himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.

413
00:37:01.260 --> 00:37:05.980
Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest,

414
00:37:05.980 --> 00:37:25.520
It is also particularly important for the state to make its rules seem inevitable.

415
00:37:25.520 --> 00:37:31.100
Even if its reign is disliked, as it often is, it will then be met with the passive resignation

416
00:37:31.100 --> 00:37:35.820
expressed in the familiar coupling of death and taxes.

417
00:37:35.820 --> 00:37:40.260
One method is to bring to its side historical determinism.

418
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If X state rules us, then this has been inevitably decreed for us by the inexorable laws of

419
00:37:46.280 --> 00:37:53.460
history, or the divine will, or the absolute, or the material productive forces.

420
00:37:53.460 --> 00:37:58.820
And nothing that any puny individuals may do can change the inevitable.

421
00:37:58.820 --> 00:38:04.360
It is also important for the state to inculcate in its subjects an aversion to any outcropping

422
00:38:04.360 --> 00:38:08.800
A Searching of What is Now Called a Conspiracy Theory of History

423
00:38:08.800 --> 00:38:14.600
For a search for conspiracies, as misguided as the results often are, means a search for

424
00:38:14.600 --> 00:38:23.020
motives and an attribution of individual responsibility for the historical misdeeds of ruling elites.

425
00:38:23.020 --> 00:38:29.600
If however any tyranny or venality or aggressive war imposed by the state was brought about

426
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not by particular state rulers, but by mysterious and arcane social forces, or by the imperfect

427
00:38:36.960 --> 00:38:43.840
state of the world, or if in some way everyone was guilty, we are all murderers, proclaims

428
00:38:43.840 --> 00:38:49.360
a common slogan, then there is no point in anyone's becoming indignant or rising up

429
00:38:49.360 --> 00:38:51.200
against such misdeeds.

430
00:38:51.200 --> 00:38:57.440
Furthermore, a discrediting of conspiracy theories, or indeed of anything smacking of

431
00:38:57.440 --> 00:39:03.080
and Economic Determinism will make the subjects more likely to believe the general welfare

432
00:39:03.080 --> 00:39:08.880
reasons that are invariably put forth by the modern state for engaging in any aggressive

433
00:39:08.880 --> 00:39:10.600
actions.

434
00:39:10.600 --> 00:39:14.360
The rule of the state is thus made to seem inevitable.

435
00:39:14.360 --> 00:39:20.920
Furthermore, any alternative to the existing state is encased in an aura of fear.

436
00:39:20.920 --> 00:39:27.040
Neglecting its own monopoly of theft and predation, the state raises the specter among its subjects

437
00:39:27.040 --> 00:39:32.300
of the chaos that would supposedly ensue if the state should disappear.

438
00:39:32.300 --> 00:39:37.300
The people on their own, it is maintained, could not possibly supply their own protection

439
00:39:37.300 --> 00:39:40.500
against sporadic criminals and marauders.

440
00:39:40.500 --> 00:39:46.220
Furthermore, each state has been particularly successful over the centuries in instilling

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fear among its subjects of other state rulers.

442
00:39:50.740 --> 00:39:56.140
With the land area of the globe now parceled out among particular states, one of the basic

443
00:39:56.140 --> 00:40:01.700
Ludwig's doctrine and tactics of the rulers of each state has been to identify itself

444
00:40:01.700 --> 00:40:04.780
with the territory it governs.

445
00:40:04.780 --> 00:40:10.700
Since most men tend to love their homeland, the identification of that land and its population

446
00:40:10.700 --> 00:40:17.580
with the state is a means of making natural patriotism work to the state's advantage.

447
00:40:17.580 --> 00:40:23.980
If then, Ruritania is attacked by Waldavia, the first task of the Ruritanian state and

448
00:40:23.980 --> 00:40:29.440
and its intellectuals is to convince the people of Ruritania that the attack is really upon

449
00:40:29.440 --> 00:40:34.120
them, and not simply upon their ruling class.

450
00:40:34.120 --> 00:40:40.560
In this way, a war between rulers is converted into a war between peoples, with each people

451
00:40:40.560 --> 00:40:45.840
rushing to the defense of their rulers in the mistaken belief that the rulers are busily

452
00:40:45.840 --> 00:40:48.480
defending them.

453
00:40:48.480 --> 00:40:53.720
This device of nationalism has been particularly successful in recent centuries.

454
00:40:53.720 --> 00:40:58.760
It was not very long ago, at least in Western Europe, when the mass of subjects regarded

455
00:40:58.760 --> 00:41:05.760
wars as irrelevant battles between various sets of nobles and their retinues.

456
00:41:05.760 --> 00:41:10.580
Another tried-and-true method for bending subjects to one's will is the infusion

457
00:41:10.580 --> 00:41:12.400
of guilt.

458
00:41:12.400 --> 00:41:18.900
Any increase in private well-being can be attacked as unconscionable greed, materialism

459
00:41:18.900 --> 00:41:25.120
or Excessive Affluence and Mutually Beneficial Exchanges in the Market can be denounced as

460
00:41:25.120 --> 00:41:27.120
selfish.

461
00:41:27.120 --> 00:41:32.460
Somehow the conclusion always drawn is that more resources should be expropriated from

462
00:41:32.460 --> 00:41:39.420
the private sector and siphoned into the parasitic public or state sector.

463
00:41:39.420 --> 00:41:44.820
Often the call upon the public to yield more resources is couched in a stern call by the

464
00:41:44.820 --> 00:41:52.100
The Ruling Elite for More Sacrifices for the National or the Common Wheel Somehow, however,

465
00:41:52.100 --> 00:41:58.540
while the public is supposed to sacrifice and curtail its materialistic greed, the sacrifices

466
00:41:58.540 --> 00:42:00.900
are always one way.

467
00:42:00.900 --> 00:42:03.400
The state does not sacrifice.

468
00:42:03.400 --> 00:42:08.580
The state eagerly grabs more and more of the public's material resources.

469
00:42:08.580 --> 00:42:12.020
Indeed, it is a useful rule of thumb.

470
00:42:12.020 --> 00:42:19.540
When your ruler calls aloud for sacrifices, look to your own life and pocketbook.

471
00:42:19.540 --> 00:42:24.780
This sort of argumentation reflects a general double standard of morality that is always

472
00:42:24.780 --> 00:42:29.260
applied to state rulers, but not to anyone else.

473
00:42:29.260 --> 00:42:34.740
No one, for example, is surprised or horrified to learn that businessmen are seeking higher

474
00:42:34.740 --> 00:42:35.800
profits.

475
00:42:35.800 --> 00:42:41.480
No one is horrified if workers leave lower-paying for higher-paying jobs.

476
00:42:41.480 --> 00:42:45.400
All this is considered proper and normal behavior.

477
00:42:45.400 --> 00:42:50.600
But if anyone should dare assert that politicians and bureaucrats are motivated by the desire

478
00:42:50.600 --> 00:42:58.200
to maximize their incomes, the hue and cry of conspiracy theorist or economic determinist

479
00:42:58.200 --> 00:43:00.900
spreads throughout the land.

480
00:43:00.900 --> 00:43:06.120
The general opinion, carefully cultivated, of course, by the state itself, is that men

481
00:43:06.120 --> 00:43:11.640
enter politics or government purely out of devoted concern for the common good and the

482
00:43:11.640 --> 00:43:13.880
public wheel.

483
00:43:13.880 --> 00:43:19.160
What gives the gentlemen of the state apparatus their superior moral patina?

484
00:43:19.160 --> 00:43:24.640
Perhaps it is the dim and instinctive knowledge of the populace that the state is engaged

485
00:43:24.640 --> 00:43:30.820
in Systematic Theft and Predation, and they may feel that only a dedication to altruism

486
00:43:30.820 --> 00:43:35.120
on the part of the state makes these actions tolerable.

487
00:43:35.120 --> 00:43:41.360
To consider politicians and bureaucrats subject to the same monetary aims as everyone else

488
00:43:41.360 --> 00:43:47.240
would strip the Robin Hood veil from the state predation, for it would then be clear that

489
00:43:47.240 --> 00:43:53.600
in the Oppenheimer phrasing, ordinary citizens were pursuing the peaceful, productive, economic

490
00:43:53.600 --> 00:44:00.000
means to wealth, while the state apparatus was devoting itself to the coercive and exploitative

491
00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:08.160
organized political means. The emperor's clothes of supposed altruistic concern for the common wheel

492
00:44:08.160 --> 00:44:13.840
would then be stripped from him. The intellectual arguments used by the

493
00:44:13.840 --> 00:44:19.840
state throughout history to engineer consent by the public can be classified into two parts.

494
00:44:19.840 --> 00:44:21.740
Arguments 1.

495
00:44:21.740 --> 00:44:27.340
That rule by the existing government is inevitable, absolutely necessary, and far better than

496
00:44:27.340 --> 00:44:31.960
the indescribable evils that would ensue upon its downfall.

497
00:44:31.960 --> 00:44:32.960
And 2.

498
00:44:32.960 --> 00:44:38.240
That the state rulers are especially great, wise, and altruistic men.

499
00:44:38.240 --> 00:44:42.480
Far greater, wiser, and better than their simple subjects.

500
00:44:42.480 --> 00:44:48.040
In former times, the latter argument took the form of rule by divine right, or by the

501
00:44:48.040 --> 00:44:53.480
The Divine Ruler Himself, or by an aristocracy of men.

502
00:44:53.480 --> 00:44:58.620
In modern times, as we indicated earlier, this argument stresses not so much divine

503
00:44:58.620 --> 00:45:05.520
approval as rule by a wise guild of scientific experts, especially endowed in knowledge of

504
00:45:05.520 --> 00:45:09.760
statesmanship and the arcane facts of the world.

505
00:45:09.760 --> 00:45:15.840
The increasing use of scientific jargon, especially in the social sciences, has permitted intellectuals

506
00:45:15.840 --> 00:45:45.840
The Theory of Money and Credit

507
00:45:45.840 --> 00:46:10.840
In recent years, we have seen the development in the United States of a profession of national security managers, of bureaucrats who never face electoral procedures, but who continue through administration after administration, secretly using their supposed special expertise to plan wars, interventions, and military adventures.

508
00:46:10.840 --> 00:46:15.800
Only their egregious blunders in the Vietnam War have called their activities into any

509
00:46:15.800 --> 00:46:18.200
sort of public question.

510
00:46:18.200 --> 00:46:22.920
Before that, they were able to ride high, wide and handsome over the public they saw

511
00:46:22.920 --> 00:46:27.560
mostly as cannon fodder for their own purposes.

512
00:46:27.560 --> 00:46:33.520
A public debate between isolationist Senator Robert A. Taft and one of the leading national

513
00:46:33.520 --> 00:46:39.440
security intellectuals, McGeorge Bundy, was instructive in demarking both the issues at

514
00:46:39.440 --> 00:46:44.580
at Stake and the Attitude of the Intellectual Ruling Elite.

515
00:46:44.580 --> 00:46:52.580
Bundy attacked Taft in early 1951 for opening a public debate on the waging of the Korean War.

516
00:46:52.580 --> 00:46:57.940
Bundy insisted that only the executive policy leaders were equipped to manipulate diplomatic

517
00:46:57.940 --> 00:47:05.740
and military force in a lengthy decades-long period of limited war against the communist nations.

518
00:47:05.740 --> 00:47:11.500
It was important, Bundy maintained, that public opinion and public debate be excluded from

519
00:47:11.500 --> 00:47:15.180
promulgating any policy role in this area.

520
00:47:15.180 --> 00:47:21.660
For, he warned, the public was unfortunately not committed to the rigid national purposes

521
00:47:21.660 --> 00:47:24.720
discerned by the policy managers.

522
00:47:24.720 --> 00:47:30.140
It merely responded to the ad hoc realities of given situations.

523
00:47:30.140 --> 00:47:35.620
Bundy also maintained that there should be no recriminations or even examination of the

524
00:47:35.620 --> 00:47:43.620
and the Decisions of the Policy Managers, because it was important that the public accept their decisions without question.

525
00:47:43.620 --> 00:47:51.620
Taft, in contrast, denounced the secret decision-making by military advisors and specialists in the executive branch,

526
00:47:51.620 --> 00:47:55.620
decisions effectively sealed off from public scrutiny.

527
00:47:55.620 --> 00:48:02.620
Furthermore, he complained, if anyone dared to suggest criticism or even a thorough debate,

528
00:48:02.620 --> 00:48:08.100
He was at once branded as an isolationist and a saboteur of unity and the bipartisan

529
00:48:08.100 --> 00:48:10.140
foreign policy.

530
00:48:10.140 --> 00:48:16.540
Similarly, at a time when President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles were privately

531
00:48:16.540 --> 00:48:22.660
contemplating going to war in Indo-China, another prominent national security manager,

532
00:48:22.660 --> 00:48:28.180
George F. Kennan, was advising the public that there are times when, having elected

533
00:48:28.180 --> 00:48:33.740
a Government, we will be best advised to let it govern and let it speak for us, as it

534
00:48:33.740 --> 00:48:37.620
will in the councils of the nations.

535
00:48:37.620 --> 00:48:45.220
We see clearly why the state needs the intellectuals, but why do the intellectuals need the state?

536
00:48:45.220 --> 00:48:51.220
Put simply, the intellectuals' livelihood in the free market is generally none too secure,

537
00:48:51.220 --> 00:48:55.900
for the intellectual, like everyone else on the market, must depend on the values and

538
00:48:55.900 --> 00:49:01.340
and Choices of the Masses of His Fellow Men, and it is characteristic of these masses that

539
00:49:01.340 --> 00:49:05.740
they are generally uninterested in intellectual concerns.

540
00:49:05.740 --> 00:49:10.900
The State, on the other hand, is willing to offer the intellectuals a warm, secure, and

541
00:49:10.900 --> 00:49:17.980
permanent birth in its apparatus, a secure income, and the panoply of prestige.

542
00:49:17.980 --> 00:49:23.460
The eager alliance between the State and the intellectuals was symbolized by the avid desire

543
00:49:23.460 --> 00:49:28.940
of the professors at the University of Berlin in the 19th century to form themselves into

544
00:49:28.940 --> 00:49:36.500
what they themselves proclaimed as the intellectual bodyguard of the House of Hohenzollern.

545
00:49:36.500 --> 00:49:41.700
From a superficially different ideological perspective, it can be seen in the revealingly

546
00:49:41.700 --> 00:49:48.340
outraged reaction of the eminent Marxist scholar of ancient China, Joseph Needham, to Carl

547
00:49:48.340 --> 00:49:53.380
Wittvogel's assiduous critique of ancient Chinese despotism.

548
00:49:53.380 --> 00:49:58.980
Wittvogel had shown the importance for bolstering the system of the Confucian glorification

549
00:49:58.980 --> 00:50:05.900
of the gentleman scholar officials who manned the ruling bureaucracy of despotic China.

550
00:50:05.900 --> 00:50:12.060
Needham charged indignantly that the civilization which Professor Wittvogel is so bitterly attacking

551
00:50:12.060 --> 00:50:16.740
was one which could make poets and scholars into officials.

552
00:50:16.740 --> 00:50:22.160
What matter the totalitarianism so long as the ruling class is abundantly staffed by

553
00:50:22.160 --> 00:50:24.820
certified intellectuals?

554
00:50:24.820 --> 00:50:30.140
The worshipful and fawning attitude of intellectuals toward their rulers has been illustrated many

555
00:50:30.140 --> 00:50:32.580
times throughout history.

556
00:50:32.580 --> 00:50:38.460
A contemporary American counterpart to the intellectual bodyguard of the House of Hohenzollern

557
00:50:38.460 --> 00:50:44.180
is the attitude of so many liberal intellectuals toward the office and person of the President.

558
00:50:44.180 --> 00:50:50.780
Thus, to political scientist Professor Richard Neustadt, the president is the sole crown-like

559
00:50:50.780 --> 00:50:53.180
symbol of the Union.

560
00:50:53.180 --> 00:50:59.220
And policy manager Townsend Hoops, in the winter of 1960, wrote that under our system,

561
00:50:59.220 --> 00:51:03.820
the people can look only to the president to define the nature of our foreign policy

562
00:51:03.820 --> 00:51:11.140
problem and the national programs and sacrifices required to meet it with effectiveness.

563
00:51:11.140 --> 00:51:15.780
After generations of such rhetoric, it is no wonder that Richard Nixon, on the eve of

564
00:51:15.780 --> 00:51:19.940
his election as president, should thus describe his role.

565
00:51:19.940 --> 00:51:26.620
He, the president, must articulate the nation's values, define its goals, and marshal its

566
00:51:26.620 --> 00:51:27.620
will.

567
00:51:27.620 --> 00:51:33.340
Nixon's conception of his role is hauntingly similar to Ernst Huber's articulation in

568
00:51:33.340 --> 00:51:39.980
the Germany of the 1930s of the Constitutional Law of the Greater German Reich.

569
00:51:39.980 --> 00:51:45.060
Miller wrote that the head of state sets up the great ends which are to be attained and

570
00:51:45.060 --> 00:51:50.220
draws up the plans for the utilization of all national powers in the achievement of

571
00:51:50.220 --> 00:51:52.060
the common goals.

572
00:51:52.060 --> 00:51:57.500
He gives the national life its true purpose and value.

573
00:51:57.500 --> 00:52:02.740
The attitude and motivation of the contemporary national security intellectual bodyguard of

574
00:52:02.740 --> 00:52:08.540
the state has been caustically described by Marcus Raskin, who was a staff member of the

575
00:52:08.540 --> 00:52:12.780
The National Security Council during the Kennedy administration.

576
00:52:12.780 --> 00:52:18.340
Calling them mega-death intellectuals, Raskin writes that their most important function

577
00:52:18.340 --> 00:52:23.260
is to justify and extend the existence of their employers.

578
00:52:23.260 --> 00:52:28.820
In order to justify the continued large-scale production of these thermonuclear bombs and

579
00:52:28.820 --> 00:52:34.400
missiles, military and industrial leaders needed some kind of theory to rationalize

580
00:52:34.400 --> 00:52:36.280
their use.

581
00:52:36.280 --> 00:52:41.840
This became particularly urgent during the late 1950s, when economy-minded members of

582
00:52:41.840 --> 00:52:47.920
the Eisenhower administration began to wonder why so much money, thought, and resources

583
00:52:47.920 --> 00:52:52.580
were being spent on weapons if their use could not be justified.

584
00:52:52.580 --> 00:52:58.080
And so began a series of rationalizations by the defense intellectuals in and out of

585
00:52:58.080 --> 00:53:00.360
the universities.

586
00:53:00.360 --> 00:53:05.220
Military procurement will continue to flourish, and they will continue to demonstrate why

587
00:53:05.220 --> 00:53:07.020
Why it Must

588
00:53:07.020 --> 00:53:11.820
In this respect, they are no different from the great majority of modern specialists who

589
00:53:11.820 --> 00:53:16.740
accept the assumptions of the organizations which employ them because of the rewards in

590
00:53:16.740 --> 00:53:19.740
money and power and prestige.

591
00:53:19.740 --> 00:53:25.780
They know enough not to question their employer's right to exist.

592
00:53:25.780 --> 00:53:31.300
This is not to say that all intellectuals everywhere have been court intellectuals,

593
00:53:31.300 --> 00:53:34.500
servitors and junior partners of power.

594
00:53:34.500 --> 00:53:39.460
But this has been the ruling condition in the history of civilizations, generally in

595
00:53:39.460 --> 00:53:45.000
the form of a priestcraft, just as the ruling condition in those civilizations has been

596
00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:48.380
one or another form of despotism.

597
00:53:48.380 --> 00:53:54.460
There have been glorious exceptions, however, particularly in the history of Western civilization,

598
00:53:54.460 --> 00:53:59.600
where intellectuals have often been trenchant critics and opponents of state power and have

599
00:53:59.600 --> 00:54:04.800
have used their intellectual gifts to fashion theoretical systems which could be used in

600
00:54:04.800 --> 00:54:08.240
the struggle for liberation from that power.

601
00:54:08.240 --> 00:54:13.720
But invariably, these intellectuals have only been able to arise as a significant force

602
00:54:13.720 --> 00:54:19.460
when they have been able to operate from an independent power base, an independent property

603
00:54:19.460 --> 00:54:23.480
base, separate from the apparatus of the state.

604
00:54:23.480 --> 00:54:29.840
For wherever the state controls all property, wealth, and employment, everyone is economically

605
00:54:29.840 --> 00:54:35.960
dependent on it, and it becomes difficult, if not impossible, for such independent criticism

606
00:54:35.960 --> 00:54:37.560
to arise.

607
00:54:37.560 --> 00:54:43.760
It has been in the West, with its decentralized foci of power, its independent sources of

608
00:54:43.760 --> 00:54:49.600
property and employment, and therefore of bases from which to criticize the state, where

609
00:54:49.600 --> 00:54:54.360
where a body of intellectual critics has been able to flourish.

610
00:54:54.360 --> 00:54:59.840
In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church, which was at least separate, if not independent

611
00:54:59.840 --> 00:55:05.800
from the state, and the new free towns were able to serve as centers of intellectual and

612
00:55:05.800 --> 00:55:09.080
also of substantive opposition.

613
00:55:09.080 --> 00:55:14.680
In later centuries, teachers, ministers, and pamphleteers in a relatively free society

614
00:55:14.680 --> 00:55:20.080
were able to use their independence from the state to agitate for further expansion of

615
00:55:20.080 --> 00:55:21.700
freedom.

616
00:55:21.700 --> 00:55:27.440
In contrast, one of the first libertarian philosophers, Lao Tse, living in the midst

617
00:55:27.440 --> 00:55:33.020
of ancient Chinese despotism, saw no hope of achieving liberty in that totalitarian

618
00:55:33.020 --> 00:55:39.540
society except by counseling quietism to the point of the individuals dropping out of social

619
00:55:39.540 --> 00:55:42.360
life altogether.

620
00:55:42.360 --> 00:55:48.240
With decentralized power, with a church separate from the state, with flourishing towns and

621
00:55:48.240 --> 00:55:54.760
cities able to develop outside the feudal power structure, and with freedom in society,

622
00:55:54.760 --> 00:56:00.300
the economy was able to develop in Western Europe in a way that transcended all previous

623
00:56:00.300 --> 00:56:01.800
civilizations.

624
00:56:01.800 --> 00:56:07.520
Furthermore, the Germanic, and particularly the Celtic, tribal structure, which succeeded

625
00:56:07.520 --> 00:56:13.240
The disintegrating Roman Empire had strong libertarian elements.

626
00:56:13.240 --> 00:56:18.840
Instead of a mighty state apparatus exerting a monopoly of violence, disputes were solved

627
00:56:18.840 --> 00:56:24.440
by contending tribesmen consulting the elders of the tribe on the nature and application

628
00:56:24.440 --> 00:56:28.240
of the tribe's customary and common law.

629
00:56:28.240 --> 00:56:33.860
The chief was generally merely a war leader who was only called into his warrior role

630
00:56:33.860 --> 00:56:40.800
whenever war with other tribes was underway. There was no permanent war or military bureaucracy

631
00:56:40.800 --> 00:56:47.280
in the tribes. In Western Europe, as in many other civilizations, the typical model of

632
00:56:47.280 --> 00:56:53.780
the origin of the state was not via a voluntary social contract, but by the conquest of one

633
00:56:53.780 --> 00:57:00.520
tribe by another. The original liberty of the tribe or the peasantry thus falls victim

634
00:57:00.520 --> 00:57:02.620
Welcome to the Conquerors.

635
00:57:02.620 --> 00:57:07.860
At first, the conquering tribe killed and looted the victims and rode on.

636
00:57:07.860 --> 00:57:12.360
But at some time, the conquerors decided that it would be more profitable to settle down

637
00:57:12.360 --> 00:57:18.960
among the conquered peasantry and rule and loot them on a permanent and systematic basis.

638
00:57:18.960 --> 00:57:26.020
The periodic tribute exacted from the conquered subjects eventually came to be called taxation.

639
00:57:26.020 --> 00:57:31.200
And with equal generality, the conquering chieftains parceled out the land of the peasantry

640
00:57:31.200 --> 00:57:36.860
to the various warlords, who were then able to settle down and collect feudal rent from

641
00:57:36.860 --> 00:57:38.660
the peasantry.

642
00:57:38.660 --> 00:57:44.480
The peasants were often enslaved, or rather, insurfed, to the land itself to provide a

643
00:57:44.480 --> 00:57:49.980
continuing source of exploited labor for the feudal lords.

644
00:57:49.980 --> 00:57:55.980
We may note a few prominent instances of the birth of a modern state through conquest.

645
00:57:55.980 --> 00:58:02.000
One was the military conquest of the Indian peasantry in Latin America by the Spaniards.

646
00:58:02.000 --> 00:58:07.000
The conquering Spanish not only established a new state over the Indians, but the land

647
00:58:07.000 --> 00:58:12.260
of the peasantry was parceled out among the conquering warlords, who were ever after to

648
00:58:12.260 --> 00:58:16.420
collect rent from the tillers of the land.

649
00:58:16.420 --> 00:58:21.420
Another instance was the new political form imposed upon the Saxons of England after their

650
00:58:21.420 --> 00:58:25.480
conquest by the Normans in 1066.

651
00:58:25.480 --> 00:58:30.740
The land of England was parceled out among the Norman warrior lords, who thereby formed

652
00:58:30.740 --> 00:58:37.040
a state and feudal land apparatus of rule over the subject population.

653
00:58:37.040 --> 00:58:41.520
For the libertarian, the most interesting and perhaps the most poignant example of the

654
00:58:41.520 --> 00:58:46.800
creation of a state through conquest was the destruction of the libertarian society of

655
00:58:46.800 --> 00:58:53.160
ancient Ireland by England in the seventeenth century, a conquest which established an imperial

656
00:58:53.160 --> 00:59:18.160
and Ejected Numerous Irish from Their Cherished Land The Libertarian Society of Ireland, which lasted for a thousand years, and which will be described further below, was able to resist English conquest for hundreds of years because of the absence of a state which could be conquered easily, and then used by the conquerors to rule over the native population.

657
00:59:18.160 --> 00:59:36.160
But while throughout Western history, intellectuals have formulated theories designed to check and limit state power, each state has been able to use its own intellectuals to turn those ideas around into further legitimations of its own advance of power.

658
00:59:36.160 --> 00:59:46.160
Thus, originally in Western Europe, the concept of the divine right of kings was a doctrine promoted by the Church to limit state power.

659
00:59:46.160 --> 00:59:50.720
The idea was that the king could not just impose his arbitrary will.

660
00:59:51.440 --> 00:59:55.120
His edicts were limited to conforming with the divine law.

661
00:59:56.240 --> 01:00:02.720
As absolute monarchy advanced, however, the kings were able to turn the concept around to the idea

662
01:00:02.720 --> 01:00:09.600
that God put his stamp of approval on any of the king's actions, that he ruled by divine right.

663
01:00:09.600 --> 01:00:18.600
Similarly, the concept of parliamentary democracy began as a popular check on the absolute rule of the monarch.

664
01:00:18.600 --> 01:00:23.600
The king was limited by the power of parliament to grant him tax revenues.

665
01:00:23.600 --> 01:00:33.600
Gradually, however, as parliament displaced the king as head of state, the parliament itself became the unchecked state sovereign.

666
01:00:33.600 --> 01:00:49.600
In the early 19th century, English utilitarians, who advocated additional individual liberty in the name of social utility and the general welfare, were to see these concepts turned into sanctions for expanding the power of the state.

667
01:00:49.600 --> 01:00:52.100
As de Jouvenel writes,

668
01:00:52.100 --> 01:00:58.600
Many writers on theories of sovereignty have worked out one or the other of these restrictive devices.

669
01:00:58.600 --> 01:01:05.600
But in the end, every single such theory has, sooner or later, lost its original purpose,

670
01:01:05.600 --> 01:01:13.100
and come to act merely as a springboard to power, by providing it with the powerful aid of an invisible sovereign,

671
01:01:13.100 --> 01:01:18.100
with whom it could, in time, successfully identify itself.

672
01:01:18.100 --> 01:01:28.100
Certainly, the most ambitious attempt in history to impose limits on the state was the Bill of Rights and other restrictive parts of the United States Constitution.

673
01:01:28.100 --> 01:01:39.100
Here, written limits on government became the fundamental law to be interpreted by a judiciary supposedly independent of the other branches of government.

674
01:01:39.100 --> 01:01:47.100
All Americans are familiar with the process by which John C. Calhoun's prophetic analysis has been vindicated.

675
01:01:47.100 --> 01:01:56.100
The state's own monopoly judiciary has inexorably broadened the construction of state power over the last century and a half.

676
01:01:56.100 --> 01:02:02.100
But few have been as keen as liberal professor Charles Black, who hails the process,

677
01:02:02.100 --> 01:02:09.100
in seeing that the state has been able to transform judicial review itself from a limiting device

678
01:02:09.100 --> 01:02:15.100
into a powerful instrument for gaining legitimacy for its actions in the minds of the public.

679
01:02:15.100 --> 01:02:32.100
If a judicial decree of unconstitutional is a mighty check on governmental power, so too a verdict of constitutional is an equally mighty weapon for fostering public acceptance of ever greater governmental power.

680
01:02:32.100 --> 01:02:41.100
Professor Black begins his analysis by pointing out the crucial necessity for legitimacy of any government in order to endure,

681
01:02:41.100 --> 01:02:46.600
That is, basic majority acceptance of the government and its actions.

682
01:02:46.600 --> 01:02:52.600
Acceptance of legitimacy, however, becomes a real problem in a country like the United States,

683
01:02:52.600 --> 01:02:58.100
where substantive limitations are built into the theory on which the government rests.

684
01:02:58.100 --> 01:03:07.600
What is needed, adds Black, is a method by which the government can assure the public that its expanding powers are indeed constitutional.

685
01:03:07.600 --> 01:03:14.560
And this, he concludes, has been the major historic function of judicial review.

686
01:03:14.560 --> 01:03:17.800
Let Black illustrate the problem.

687
01:03:17.800 --> 01:03:23.300
The supreme risk to the government is that of disaffection and a feeling of outrage widely

688
01:03:23.300 --> 01:03:28.560
disseminated throughout the population, and loss of moral authority by the government

689
01:03:28.560 --> 01:03:34.980
as such, however long it may be propped up by force or inertia or the lack of an appealing

690
01:03:34.980 --> 01:03:54.980
Almost everybody living under a government of limited powers must sooner or later be subjected to some governmental action which, as a matter of private opinion, he regards as outside the power of government, or positively forbidden to government.

691
01:03:54.980 --> 01:04:00.300
A man is drafted, though he finds nothing in the Constitution about being drafted.

692
01:04:00.300 --> 01:04:03.600
A farmer is told how much wheat he can raise.

693
01:04:03.600 --> 01:04:08.420
He believes, and he discovers that some respectable lawyers believe with him that the government

694
01:04:08.420 --> 01:04:13.140
has no more right to tell him how much wheat he can grow than it has to tell his daughter

695
01:04:13.140 --> 01:04:15.300
whom she can marry.

696
01:04:15.300 --> 01:04:20.380
A man goes to the federal penitentiary for saying what he wants to, and paces his cell

697
01:04:20.380 --> 01:04:31.600
A businessman is told what he can ask, and must ask, for buttermilk.

698
01:04:31.600 --> 01:04:36.700
The danger is real enough that each of these people, and who is not of their number, will

699
01:04:36.700 --> 01:04:42.940
confront the concept of governmental limitation with the reality, as he sees it, of the flagrant

700
01:04:42.940 --> 01:04:48.700
overstepping of actual limits, and draw the obvious conclusion as to the status of his

701
01:04:48.700 --> 01:04:53.380
is Government with Respect to Legitimacy.

702
01:04:53.380 --> 01:04:59.260
This danger is averted, Black adds, by the states propounding the doctrine that some one

703
01:04:59.260 --> 01:05:05.500
agency must have the ultimate decision on constitutionality, and that this agency must

704
01:05:05.500 --> 01:05:08.940
be part of the federal government itself.

705
01:05:08.940 --> 01:05:13.900
For while the seeming independence of the federal judiciary has played a vital role

706
01:05:13.900 --> 01:05:34.780
Professor Black concedes that the government has thereby set itself up as a judge in its

707
01:05:34.780 --> 01:05:41.380
own case, and has thus violated a basic juridical principle for arriving at any kind of just

708
01:05:41.380 --> 01:05:42.980
decision.

709
01:05:42.980 --> 01:05:47.920
But Black is remarkably light-hearted about this fundamental breach.

710
01:05:47.920 --> 01:05:52.760
The final power of the state must stop where the law stops it.

711
01:05:52.760 --> 01:05:57.300
And who shall set the limit, and who shall enforce the stopping against the mightiest

712
01:05:57.300 --> 01:05:58.300
power?

713
01:05:58.300 --> 01:06:03.460
Why, the state itself, of course, through its judges and its laws.

714
01:06:03.460 --> 01:06:05.340
Who controls the temperate?

715
01:06:05.340 --> 01:06:09.780
Who teaches the wise?

716
01:06:09.780 --> 01:06:15.400
And so Black admits that when we have a state, we hand over all our weapons and means of

717
01:06:15.400 --> 01:06:18.300
coercion to the state apparatus.

718
01:06:18.300 --> 01:06:23.860
We turn over all of our powers of ultimate decision-making to this deified group.

719
01:06:23.860 --> 01:06:29.740
And then we must jolly well sit back quietly and await the unending stream of justice that

720
01:06:29.740 --> 01:06:35.620
will pour forth from these institutions, even though they are basically judging their own

721
01:06:35.620 --> 01:06:37.220
case.

722
01:06:37.220 --> 01:06:42.980
Black sees no conceivable alternative to this coercive monopoly of judicial decisions enforced

723
01:06:42.980 --> 01:06:49.220
by the state, but here is precisely where our new movement challenges this conventional

724
01:06:49.220 --> 01:06:56.820
view and asserts that there is a viable alternative, libertarianism.

725
01:06:56.820 --> 01:07:01.620
Seeing no such alternative, Professor Black falls back on mysticism in his defense of

726
01:07:01.620 --> 01:07:07.220
of the State, for in the final analysis he finds the achievement of justice and legitimacy

727
01:07:07.220 --> 01:07:13.820
from the state's perpetual judging of its own cause to be something of a miracle.

728
01:07:13.820 --> 01:07:20.300
In this way, the liberal black joins the conservative Burnham in falling back on the miraculous

729
01:07:20.300 --> 01:07:28.140
and thereby admitting that there is no satisfactory rational argument in support of the state.

730
01:07:28.140 --> 01:07:33.200
Applying his realistic view of the Supreme Court to the famous conflict between the Court

731
01:07:33.200 --> 01:07:40.020
and the New Deal in the 1930s, Professor Black chides his liberal colleagues for their short-sightedness

732
01:07:40.020 --> 01:07:43.700
in denouncing judicial obstructionism.

733
01:07:43.700 --> 01:07:48.740
The standard version of the story of the New Deal and the Court, though accurate in its

734
01:07:48.740 --> 01:07:51.500
way, displaces the emphasis.

735
01:07:51.500 --> 01:07:53.820
It concentrates on the difficulties.

736
01:07:53.820 --> 01:07:57.280
It almost forgets how the whole thing turned out.

737
01:07:57.280 --> 01:08:02.400
The upshot of the matter was, and this is what I like to emphasize, that after some

738
01:08:02.400 --> 01:08:10.040
24 months of balking, the Supreme Court, without a single change in the law of its composition,

739
01:08:10.040 --> 01:08:15.600
or indeed in its actual manning, placed the affirmative stamp of legitimacy on the New

740
01:08:15.600 --> 01:08:21.820
Deal and on the whole new conception of government in America.

741
01:08:21.820 --> 01:08:27.120
In this way, the Supreme Court was able to put the quietest to the large body of Americans

742
01:08:27.120 --> 01:08:33.440
who had strong constitutional objections to the expanded powers of the New Deal.

743
01:08:33.440 --> 01:08:36.400
Of course, not everyone was satisfied.

744
01:08:36.400 --> 01:08:41.920
The Bonnie Prince Charlie of constitutionally commanded laissez-faire still stirs the hearts

745
01:08:41.920 --> 01:08:46.000
of a few zealots in the highlands of choleric unreality.

746
01:08:46.000 --> 01:08:51.560
But there is no longer any significant or dangerous public doubt as to the constitutional

747
01:08:51.560 --> 01:08:56.780
power of Congress to deal as it does with the national economy.

748
01:08:56.780 --> 01:09:03.340
We had no means, other than the Supreme Court, for imparting legitimacy to the New Deal.

749
01:09:03.340 --> 01:09:10.220
Thus, even in the United States, unique among governments in having a Constitution, parts

750
01:09:10.220 --> 01:09:16.940
of which, at least, were meant to impose strict and solemn limits upon its actions, even here,

751
01:09:16.940 --> 01:09:22.900
the Constitution has proved to be an instrument for ratifying the expansion of state power

752
01:09:22.900 --> 01:09:25.300
rather than the opposite.

753
01:09:25.300 --> 01:09:31.360
As Calhoun saw, any written limits that leave it to government to interpret its own powers

754
01:09:31.360 --> 01:09:38.380
are bound to be interpreted as sanctions for expanding and not binding those powers.

755
01:09:38.380 --> 01:09:44.680
In a profound sense, the idea of binding down power with the chains of a written constitution

756
01:09:44.680 --> 01:09:48.920
has proved to be a noble experiment that failed.

757
01:09:48.920 --> 01:09:54.000
The idea of a strictly limited government has proved to be utopian.

758
01:09:54.000 --> 01:10:00.420
Some other, more radical means must be found to prevent the growth of the aggressive state.

759
01:10:00.420 --> 01:10:05.880
The libertarian system would meet this problem by scrapping the entire notion of creating

760
01:10:05.880 --> 01:10:12.120
a government, an institution with a coercive monopoly of force over a given territory,

761
01:10:12.120 --> 01:10:16.820
and then hoping to find ways to keep that government from expanding.

762
01:10:16.820 --> 01:10:25.500
The libertarian alternative is to abstain from such a monopoly government to begin with.

763
01:10:25.500 --> 01:10:31.700
We will explore the entire notion of a stateless society, a society without formal government

764
01:10:31.700 --> 01:10:33.760
in later chapters.

765
01:10:33.760 --> 01:10:39.660
But one instructive exercise is to try to abandon the habitual ways of seeing things,

766
01:10:39.660 --> 01:10:43.860
and to consider the argument for the state de novo.

767
01:10:43.860 --> 01:10:48.760
Let us try to transcend the fact that for as long as we can remember, the state has

768
01:10:48.760 --> 01:10:53.360
monopolized police and judicial services in society.

769
01:10:53.360 --> 01:10:58.020
Suppose that we were all starting completely from scratch, and that millions of us had

770
01:10:58.020 --> 01:11:04.140
been dropped down upon the earth, fully grown and developed, from some other planet.

771
01:11:04.140 --> 01:11:10.480
Debate begins as to how protection, police and judicial services will be provided.

772
01:11:10.480 --> 01:11:16.380
Someone says, let's all give all of our weapons to Joe Jones over there and to his relatives,

773
01:11:16.380 --> 01:11:21.080
and let Jones and his family decide all disputes among us.

774
01:11:21.080 --> 01:11:26.180
In that way, the Joneses will be able to protect all of us from any aggression or fraud that

775
01:11:26.180 --> 01:11:28.700
anyone else may commit.

776
01:11:28.700 --> 01:11:33.060
With all the power and all the ability to make ultimate decisions on disputes in the

777
01:11:33.060 --> 01:11:37.380
hands of Jones, we will all be protected from one another.

778
01:11:37.380 --> 01:11:42.460
and then let us allow the Joneses to obtain their income from this great service by using

779
01:11:42.460 --> 01:11:49.180
their weapons and by exacting as much revenue by coercion as they shall desire.

780
01:11:49.180 --> 01:11:54.940
Surely in that sort of situation no one would treat this proposal with anything but ridicule,

781
01:11:54.940 --> 01:11:59.860
for it would be starkly evident that there would be no way in that case for any of us

782
01:11:59.860 --> 01:12:06.660
to protect ourselves from the aggressions or the depredations of the Joneses themselves.

783
01:12:06.660 --> 01:12:12.260
No one would then have the total folly to respond to that long-standing and most perceptive

784
01:12:12.260 --> 01:12:18.980
query who shall guard the guardians by answering with Professor Black's blithe who controls

785
01:12:18.980 --> 01:12:20.860
the temperate.

786
01:12:20.860 --> 01:12:25.900
It is only because we have become accustomed over thousands of years to the existence of

787
01:12:25.900 --> 01:12:31.700
the state that we now give precisely this kind of absurd answer to the problem of social

788
01:12:31.700 --> 01:12:34.860
protection and defense.

789
01:12:34.860 --> 01:12:40.880
And of course, the state never really did begin with this sort of social contract.

790
01:12:40.880 --> 01:12:46.640
As Oppenheimer pointed out, the state generally began in violence and conquest.

791
01:12:46.640 --> 01:12:52.920
Even if at times internal processes gave rise to the state, it was certainly never by general

792
01:12:52.920 --> 01:12:56.460
consensus or contract.

793
01:12:56.460 --> 01:13:00.700
The libertarian creed can now be summed up as 1.

794
01:13:00.700 --> 01:13:04.620
The Absolute Right of Every Man to the Ownership of His Own Body

795
01:13:04.620 --> 01:13:06.380
2.

796
01:13:06.380 --> 01:13:12.700
The Equally Absolute Right to Own and Therefore to Control the Material Resources He Has Found

797
01:13:12.700 --> 01:13:16.420
and Transformed and 3.

798
01:13:16.420 --> 01:13:21.860
Therefore the Absolute Right to Exchange or Give Away the Ownership to Such Titles to

799
01:13:21.860 --> 01:13:25.900
Whoever is Willing to Exchange or Receive Them.

800
01:13:25.900 --> 01:13:30.840
As we have seen, each of these steps involves property rights.

801
01:13:30.840 --> 01:13:36.880
But even if we call step one personal rights, we shall see that problems about personal

802
01:13:36.880 --> 01:13:43.800
liberty inextricably involve the rights of material property or free exchange.

803
01:13:43.800 --> 01:13:49.680
Or briefly, the rights of personal liberty and freedom of enterprise almost invariably

804
01:13:49.680 --> 01:13:54.460
intertwine and cannot really be separated.

805
01:13:54.460 --> 01:14:00.220
We have seen that the exercise of personal freedom of speech, for example, almost invariably

806
01:14:00.220 --> 01:14:08.260
involves the exercise of economic freedom—that is, freedom to own and exchange material property.

807
01:14:08.260 --> 01:14:14.180
The holding of a meeting to exercise freedom of speech involves the hiring of a hall, traveling

808
01:14:14.180 --> 01:14:19.900
to the hall over roads, and using some form of transportation, etc.

809
01:14:19.900 --> 01:14:25.380
The closely related freedom of the press even more evidently involves the cost of printing

810
01:14:25.380 --> 01:14:32.020
and of using a press, the sale of leaflets to willing buyers, in short, all the ingredients

811
01:14:32.020 --> 01:14:34.060
of economic freedom.

812
01:14:34.060 --> 01:14:39.820
Furthermore, our example of shouting fire in a crowded theater provides us with the

813
01:14:39.820 --> 01:14:46.280
clear guideline for deciding whose rights must be defended in any given situation.

814
01:14:46.280 --> 01:14:51.640
The Guidelines Being Provided by Our Criterion The Rights of Property