WEBVTT NOTE Class and Conflict 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.720 Okay, let me finish up a couple of points that I wanted to raise in connection with 2 00:00:04.720 --> 00:00:11.680 classical liberal class conflict theory. The French contribution 3 00:00:11.680 --> 00:00:17.440 remained pretty much the same after the industrialist school through the 19th century. 4 00:00:18.160 --> 00:00:25.200 It was repeated. There wasn't much amplification or enrichment in a theoretical way, I would say. 5 00:00:25.200 --> 00:00:34.440 Nonetheless, the French school typically adhered to the analysis that I gave you in the last hour 6 00:00:34.440 --> 00:00:37.740 and added certain other historical examples. 7 00:00:37.740 --> 00:00:42.240 Now I mentioned Gustave de Molinari. 8 00:00:42.240 --> 00:00:48.440 He became, after a while, the grand old man of French liberal economics. 9 00:00:48.440 --> 00:00:50.840 I told you he lasted for a long, long time. 10 00:00:50.840 --> 00:00:57.840 became the editor of the Journal des Economistes for some decades at the end of the 19th century, into the 20th century. 11 00:00:57.840 --> 00:01:09.840 And I indicated also that he, in a way, added a historical example in the connection with class conflict theory 12 00:01:09.840 --> 00:01:14.840 that had to do with the American Civil War. 13 00:01:14.840 --> 00:01:29.840 That is, in his interpretation, his interpretation is basically the interpretation you can read in Charles Adams and to a degree in Tom DeLorenzo's book on the Civil War and to a degree in Tom DeLorenzo's book, and that is that the main issue was the tariff. 14 00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:40.840 The tariff had been the issue over which secession had practically already occurred in the 1830s in connection with South Carolina, not the issue of slavery, 15 00:01:40.840 --> 00:01:51.840 and that this was the foremost, according to De Molinari, this was foremost in the minds both of the southern leaders and of the northern republicans. 16 00:01:51.840 --> 00:02:03.840 So that the American Civil War then fit into this category of class conflict, the predatory class being the northern republicans who wanted protectionism 17 00:02:03.840 --> 00:02:07.840 and the preyed upon class being the southern planters. 18 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:26.840 But, in general, de Molinari used this analysis all over the place. He analyzed the success of French regimes, not only Louis Philippe, but the Revolution of 1848, Napoleon III, the Third Republic, in these terms. 19 00:02:26.840 --> 00:02:31.840 Now, meanwhile, let's turn our attention to Italy for a moment. 20 00:02:31.840 --> 00:02:41.280 If you know something about James Buchanan's public choice theory, he gives great credit 21 00:02:41.280 --> 00:02:48.400 to the Italian economists for steering him in this direction, giving him the tools of 22 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:59.120 basic analysis. One economist he doesn't mention is the man who more or less founded Italian 23 00:02:59.120 --> 00:03:05.480 Free-Market Economics in the 19th Century, Francisco Ferrara. 24 00:03:05.480 --> 00:03:12.760 Ferrara taught for many decades at the University of Turin, and Murray has again, in his History 25 00:03:12.760 --> 00:03:16.000 of Economic Thought, a few pages on Ferrara. 26 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:24.920 But Ferrara's main interest for us is that he acted as the editor of an enormous series 27 00:03:54.920 --> 00:04:07.920 by for instance Bastiat, influencing the Italian Ferrara and from Molinari we have the influence 28 00:04:07.920 --> 00:04:15.620 on Wilfredo Pareto. Now Pareto will be a name to people who studied economics here. Pareto 29 00:04:15.620 --> 00:04:22.280 optimality is still a concept that's used. Now in economics he was more of the school 30 00:04:22.280 --> 00:04:30.280 The School of Valra, not an Austrian really, but in his social theory very much of a libertarian. 31 00:04:30.280 --> 00:04:38.280 And again Murray has some pages on Pareto in his History of Economic Thought. 32 00:04:38.280 --> 00:04:46.280 Pareto openly referred to Molinari as his master, called him meta-master. 33 00:04:46.280 --> 00:04:54.280 You can see the traces of Molinari's economic theory in general, especially this class conflict analysis in Pareto. 34 00:04:54.280 --> 00:05:01.280 Pareto is simply the most well-known of a whole school of Italian economists. 35 00:05:01.280 --> 00:05:06.280 They were the best Italian economists of the time, late 19th century, early 20th century. 36 00:05:06.280 --> 00:05:12.280 Schumpeter says that by this time Italian economists were the equal of any in the world. 37 00:05:12.280 --> 00:05:32.280 Very prominent is a man named Antonio Daviti Di Marco, whom Jim Buchanan quotes, and Mafio Pantaleone, whom I don't think he does quote. 38 00:05:32.280 --> 00:05:40.960 However, reading Jim Buchanan on these people and then reading the authors themselves, I 39 00:05:40.960 --> 00:05:45.280 don't think he does justice to the radicalness of their position. 40 00:05:45.280 --> 00:05:51.840 Again and again, they excoriate the Italian state, the being nothing but a collection 41 00:05:51.840 --> 00:05:58.640 of predators, of crooks, of gangsters, of people who are in one way or another stealing 42 00:05:58.640 --> 00:06:04.640 Making money from the productive citizens, working people, business people, the peasants 43 00:06:04.640 --> 00:06:11.160 of the South and so on, and channeling the privileges to their favorite clientele, which 44 00:06:11.160 --> 00:06:20.720 included not only businessmen who got protection through tariffs, contractors of all kinds, 45 00:06:20.720 --> 00:06:30.240 but also unionized workers, so that in general it was the North with the industrialists and 46 00:06:30.240 --> 00:06:36.920 their protective tariffs and paying off the unionized workers as well to gain their support 47 00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:42.720 that were preying on the productive citizens of the rest of the country and especially 48 00:06:42.720 --> 00:06:50.520 in the agricultural sector which was still the main industry in Italy. 49 00:06:50.520 --> 00:06:55.560 These people are well worth looking into. 50 00:06:55.560 --> 00:07:01.840 The analysis continued afterwards with a man who is famous, really, I have to tell you, 51 00:07:01.840 --> 00:07:13.240 although maybe you're not familiar with his name, Luigi Inaudi, a free market economist 52 00:07:13.240 --> 00:07:18.880 who was the first president of the Italian Republic after World War II and probably the 53 00:07:18.880 --> 00:07:26.680 The most famous free market liberal thinker in Europe at that time. 54 00:07:26.680 --> 00:07:37.280 Now this class conflict analysis had other traditions besides that of the French and 55 00:07:37.280 --> 00:07:39.400 through the French of the Italians. 56 00:07:39.400 --> 00:07:48.480 In the United States, for instance, some Jeffersonians and Jacksonians also grappled in detail with 57 00:07:48.480 --> 00:07:56.800 and the question of class in the politically relevant sense, and came to conclusions very much reminiscent of the industrialist school. 58 00:07:56.800 --> 00:08:01.520 John Taylor of Caroline, William Leggett, a man I'm going to speak about in a moment, 59 00:08:01.520 --> 00:08:06.240 John C. Calhoun, were keen observers and critics of the social groups 60 00:08:06.240 --> 00:08:12.620 whom they believed were utilizing political power in order to exploit the rest of society, the producers. 61 00:08:12.620 --> 00:08:35.620 John Taylor was outraged by what he saw as the betrayal of the principles of the American Revolution by a new aristocracy based on, quote, separate legal interests, again, homing in on the idea that these conflicting classes were created by government privilege. 62 00:08:35.620 --> 00:08:43.620 The bankers privileged to issue paper money as legal tender and the beneficiaries of public improvements and protective tariffs. 63 00:08:43.620 --> 00:08:51.620 The American system, the policy of the Whigs in the early 19th century. 64 00:08:51.620 --> 00:09:01.620 American society, according to John Taylor, had been divided into the privileged and the unprivileged by this substantial revival of the feudal system. 65 00:09:01.620 --> 00:09:06.620 Talking now about feudalism in the way that the industrialist writers had. 66 00:09:06.620 --> 00:09:13.620 Two decades later, in the 1830s, the northern radical, William Leggett, 67 00:09:21.620 --> 00:09:26.620 a northern democrat, denounced the same exploiting classes. 68 00:09:26.620 --> 00:09:32.620 and Leggett was the Chief Spokesman for Jacksonian Principles in the North. 69 00:09:32.620 --> 00:09:50.620 He denounced, in the Jeffersonian manner, the bankers, the beneficiaries of government grants for internal improvement. 70 00:09:50.620 --> 00:10:02.620 And his own position was, as he thought of it, the same as that of the original American Republic, laissez-faire, do not govern too much. 71 00:10:02.620 --> 00:10:13.620 The American aristocracy, he thought, naturally favored a strong government, including especially control of the banking system. 72 00:10:13.620 --> 00:10:16.620 The banking issue was the main issue of that time. 73 00:10:16.620 --> 00:10:23.620 Legate, in contrast, demanded the absolute separation of government from the banking and credit system. 74 00:10:23.620 --> 00:10:30.620 Now it happens, and this is a copy of the book I just got from the library here, so I'll return it and you can look at it, 75 00:10:30.620 --> 00:10:43.620 that a collection of Legate's editorials was assembled and published by Larry White, the Austrian economist, now in Missouri, and published by Liberty Press. 76 00:10:43.620 --> 00:10:47.620 Now, if you're not familiar with the Liberty Press, you should become familiar with them, 77 00:10:47.620 --> 00:10:52.620 since they put out very good editions, cheaply, of important books. 78 00:10:52.620 --> 00:10:55.620 This happens to be Murray's copy. 79 00:10:55.620 --> 00:10:59.620 You can tell it's Murray's copy because every single line is underlined. 80 00:10:59.620 --> 00:11:05.620 We always thought, you know, really, what's the point, Murray? 81 00:11:05.620 --> 00:11:08.620 You look at it, every single line. 82 00:11:08.620 --> 00:11:16.980 On the other hand, there are remarks in the margins, no, because he favors this, so the 83 00:11:16.980 --> 00:11:24.100 remarks are, ah, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, right, right. 84 00:11:24.100 --> 00:11:27.580 With authors he disagrees with, it's different. 85 00:11:27.580 --> 00:11:37.860 So Leggett, by the way, he was the editorial writer and his pulpit was the New York Evening 86 00:11:37.860 --> 00:11:43.140 Post, the oldest paper in America founded by Alexander Hamilton, as they still have 87 00:11:43.140 --> 00:11:51.140 the nerve to put on the front page of this idiotic rag that's worse than the New York 88 00:11:51.140 --> 00:11:55.880 Daily News now, if you can imagine it, the New York Post. 89 00:11:55.880 --> 00:12:01.580 But in those days it was edited by the great American writer and poet, William Cullen Bryant, 90 00:12:01.580 --> 00:12:13.520 And Leggett was there, the chief editorial writer. He summed up his, he expressed the 91 00:12:13.520 --> 00:12:19.180 principles that he was going to be writing according to. They were the principles of 92 00:12:19.180 --> 00:12:23.940 Thomas Jefferson, he said. The sum of good government is described by that illustrious 93 00:12:23.940 --> 00:12:30.220 champion of democracy, he's a Jacksonians, so he thinks he's talking in favor of democracy, 94 00:12:30.220 --> 00:12:32.980 is all we aim at. In Jefferson's words, 95 00:12:32.980 --> 00:12:37.660 a wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, 96 00:12:37.660 --> 00:12:42.320 shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, 97 00:12:42.320 --> 00:12:48.220 and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. 98 00:12:48.220 --> 00:12:50.520 And this book is really 99 00:12:50.520 --> 00:12:52.260 a goldmine. There's all kinds of... 100 00:12:52.260 --> 00:12:54.660 he wrote very well and there's all kinds of 101 00:12:54.660 --> 00:12:58.300 great editorials here by Leggett. 102 00:12:58.300 --> 00:13:08.300 He has an editorial denouncing the governor of New York for proclaiming thanksgiving. 103 00:13:08.300 --> 00:13:18.300 Where he says, where in heaven's name does this politician come off telling us when we should give thanksgiving to the Lord? 104 00:13:18.300 --> 00:13:20.300 And appointing a special day for it. 105 00:13:20.300 --> 00:13:26.300 Why doesn't government leave it up to us to decide when we want to do something like that? 106 00:13:26.300 --> 00:13:30.300 And he has an essay here called The Street of Palaces. 107 00:13:30.300 --> 00:13:33.300 He talks about Genoa. 108 00:13:33.300 --> 00:13:40.300 It has a very elegant street, commonly called the Street of Palaces, 109 00:13:40.300 --> 00:13:46.300 with the houses of the great and influential and nobles of the past. 110 00:13:46.300 --> 00:13:52.300 But he says, is this condition of things confined to Genoa or to the European countries? 111 00:13:52.300 --> 00:13:55.300 Is there no parallel in our own country? 112 00:13:55.300 --> 00:14:03.300 Have we not, in this very city, New York, our street of palaces, adorned with structures as superb as those of Genoa? 113 00:14:03.300 --> 00:14:08.300 Have we not, too, our privileged orders, our scrip nobility? 114 00:14:08.300 --> 00:14:14.300 You understand scrip? That is, a paper put out under some different authority, 115 00:14:14.300 --> 00:14:18.300 without any backing and precious metals to act as money. 116 00:14:18.300 --> 00:14:25.500 are script nobility, and he means the banks that were given the right in New York State 117 00:14:25.500 --> 00:14:31.580 to issue paper money without the backing of precious metals. 118 00:14:31.580 --> 00:14:36.620 Aristocrats clothed with special immunities who control indirectly but certainly the political 119 00:14:36.620 --> 00:14:42.740 power of the state, who monopolize the most copious sources of pecuniary profit and ring 120 00:14:42.740 --> 00:14:46.500 the very crust from the hard hand of toil. 121 00:14:46.500 --> 00:14:50.540 Have we not, in short, like the wretched serfs of Europe, our lordly masters? 122 00:14:50.540 --> 00:15:00.420 If any man doubts how these questions should be answered, let him walk through Wall Street. 123 00:15:00.420 --> 00:15:08.060 You can see in what sense he was a radical, in what sense he was a democrat, but his ire 124 00:15:08.060 --> 00:15:16.980 was directed against those influential, wealthy, often wealthy people who use the state in 125 00:15:16.980 --> 00:15:23.740 order to gain their assets, and this is very typical of the whole liberal tradition going 126 00:15:23.740 --> 00:15:32.260 back to the levelers, obviously no classical liberals were believers in socialism or egalitarianism 127 00:15:32.260 --> 00:15:37.700 or the leveling of fortunes, on the other hand they were very suspicious of people with 128 00:15:37.700 --> 00:16:06.700 William Graham Sumner and Sumner talked about the plutocrats. 129 00:16:06.700 --> 00:16:09.700 Now, maybe you've heard that term, plutocrat. 130 00:16:09.700 --> 00:16:14.700 It's commonly used to mean any wealthy person. 131 00:16:14.700 --> 00:16:17.700 It comes from the god Pluto, 132 00:16:17.700 --> 00:16:20.700 who as the god of the underworld 133 00:16:20.700 --> 00:16:22.700 was supposed to be the god of treasures 134 00:16:22.700 --> 00:16:25.700 and buried wealth and so on. 135 00:16:25.700 --> 00:16:28.700 And this, of course, means rule by. 136 00:16:28.700 --> 00:16:32.700 So, nowadays it means rule by wealthy people, 137 00:16:32.700 --> 00:16:45.280 Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, Jean-Baptiste Say, Frederic Bastiat, Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, Carl Menger, Jean-Baptiste Say, Frederic Bastiat, Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, Carl Menger, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, 138 00:17:02.700 --> 00:17:13.700 Finally, what I want to say is that, in contrasting the Marxist and the classical liberal ideas of class conflict, 139 00:17:13.700 --> 00:17:20.700 it seems obvious to me that the classical liberal idea of class conflict is enormously superior, 140 00:17:20.700 --> 00:17:28.700 in fact, there's no contest, to the Marxist theory in explaining Marxist regimes. 141 00:17:28.700 --> 00:17:34.060 Now Marxists and Communists in general had a very hard time trying to explain what kind 142 00:17:34.060 --> 00:17:40.060 of society, what kind of regime existed for instance in the Soviet Union, right? It wasn't 143 00:17:40.060 --> 00:17:45.060 a capitalist regime anymore, it wasn't an exploitative regime of the bourgeoisie because 144 00:17:45.060 --> 00:17:50.940 they'd gotten rid of the bourgeoisie, they chased them out or executed them, and all 145 00:17:50.940 --> 00:17:57.740 the property was taken over by the state in the name of the people. What sort of regime 146 00:17:57.740 --> 00:18:02.900 is that what class is involved there 147 00:18:02.900 --> 00:18:04.780 if class conflict 148 00:18:04.780 --> 00:18:10.380 exists according to the marxist views because of differential access to the 149 00:18:10.380 --> 00:18:11.980 means of production 150 00:18:11.980 --> 00:18:16.700 well there's no capitalists on one side to claim the means of 151 00:18:16.700 --> 00:18:18.340 production anymore 152 00:18:18.340 --> 00:18:20.940 there's no struggle over the means of production anymore 153 00:18:20.940 --> 00:18:24.260 what you have are the means of production allegedly owned by society at 154 00:18:24.260 --> 00:18:25.620 large 155 00:18:25.620 --> 00:18:35.380 This was the position of the Soviet regime. We're a class society. We don't have class exploitation anymore. 156 00:18:35.380 --> 00:18:39.700 In fact, this was obvious to everyone from the word go. 157 00:18:39.700 --> 00:18:52.860 Every alleged Marxist regime in the world was an exploitative regime with a ruling class that came to be known as the nomenclatura. 158 00:18:52.860 --> 00:18:58.940 So, how to explain that? Well, you have the liberal idea of class conflict, that is, a 159 00:18:58.940 --> 00:19:05.700 certain group of people gain control of the state apparatus and exploit the rest of society. 160 00:19:05.700 --> 00:19:12.900 This was the new class, as it was sometimes called. Have you read Animal Farm, maybe? 161 00:19:12.900 --> 00:19:26.700 This was the pigs, this was the nomenklatura, that is the people in charge, the people whose 162 00:19:26.700 --> 00:19:34.340 names were in a certain book of influential people, so that the liberal idea can explain 163 00:19:34.340 --> 00:19:59.340 and also Marxist regimes in a way that the Marxist idea of class conflict cannot and in general it is much more useful than any alternative and maybe it's time that some of our scholars discovered that there was such a thing as the liberal idea of class conflict. 164 00:19:59.340 --> 00:20:11.660 Now, one area of class conflict that was especially pointed out by the classical liberals was 165 00:20:11.660 --> 00:20:16.060 the area of war and peace and international relations. 166 00:20:16.060 --> 00:20:21.780 I mentioned to you last time that the motto on the front page of the Censure Européenne 167 00:20:21.780 --> 00:20:25.020 in every issue was peace and freedom. 168 00:20:25.020 --> 00:20:30.660 And a pro-peace position was central to the industrialist point of view. 169 00:20:30.660 --> 00:20:36.840 And their attack, just to take this one liberal group, their attack on militarism and standing 170 00:20:36.840 --> 00:20:39.860 armies was savage and relentless. 171 00:20:39.860 --> 00:20:48.740 This is a typical passage repeated many times, for instance, by Dunwayier. 172 00:20:48.740 --> 00:20:51.780 He's being sarcastic, really savagely sarcastic here. 173 00:20:51.780 --> 00:21:06.780 Remember, he talked about how production is at the center of, production and exchange at the center of social life, so that we have to honor and respect the people who engage in production. 174 00:21:06.780 --> 00:21:12.780 Well, what is the production of the standing armies of Europe? He raises the question. 175 00:21:12.780 --> 00:21:19.220 It has consisted in massacres, rapes, pillages, conflagrations, vices and crimes. 176 00:21:19.220 --> 00:21:24.060 The deprivation, ruin and enslavement of the peoples, these standing armies have been the 177 00:21:24.060 --> 00:21:31.620 shame and the scourge of civilization. 178 00:21:31.620 --> 00:21:40.820 The industrialists and including and also Jean-Baptiste Say attacked British imperialism, 179 00:21:40.820 --> 00:21:47.540 The Arrogance of British Imperialism, which they say, which Say said, has turned production 180 00:21:47.540 --> 00:21:54.180 and commerce itself into an attack on civilization. 181 00:21:54.180 --> 00:21:59.820 They were for various reasons not particularly Anglophile. 182 00:21:59.820 --> 00:22:06.900 Now you've heard many times the phrase that war is the health of the state, comes from 183 00:22:06.900 --> 00:22:14.940 from this left anarchist Randolph Bourne in the course of the First World War, and Murray 184 00:22:14.940 --> 00:22:25.060 Rothbard was the one who introduced this phrase and concept into libertarian thinking. Murray 185 00:22:25.060 --> 00:22:29.340 always stressed the idea that war is the health of the state, because that is what history 186 00:22:29.340 --> 00:22:33.660 has demonstrated, and I'm sure that next week, those of you who have the privilege of listening 187 00:22:33.660 --> 00:22:42.660 Robert Higgs will find him amplifying on that to a great extent. It's one of his major fields. 188 00:22:42.660 --> 00:22:57.660 So, the idea of war being a special problem for society, the preservation of peace being a major aim of liberalism. 189 00:22:57.660 --> 00:23:13.660 In Mises book on liberalism, he has a different, in the beginning the different sections, property, freedom, and among the early ones, peace, as one of the aims of the liberals. 190 00:23:13.660 --> 00:23:33.820 Peace is the father of all things, peace is always better than war. 191 00:23:33.820 --> 00:23:49.820 Stolen peace has characterized the classical liberal movement from the 18th century, at least from Turgot on, through the 19th century, even Gladstone, who wasn't frankly that much of a liberal. 192 00:23:49.820 --> 00:23:55.820 His slogan in mid-Victorian Britain was peace, retrenchment and reform. 193 00:23:55.820 --> 00:24:11.820 Now, in Anglophone countries, the greatest single factor leading to the identification of classical liberalism with a pro-peace position is the work of the Manchester School and its leaders Richard Cobden and John Bright. 194 00:24:11.820 --> 00:24:20.820 And here we have another couple of my personal heroes, especially Cobden. 195 00:24:20.820 --> 00:24:24.820 Richard Cobden and John Bright 196 00:24:24.820 --> 00:24:28.820 Very great literature on these men 197 00:24:28.820 --> 00:24:32.820 Biographies, especially two new biographies of Cobden 198 00:24:32.820 --> 00:24:36.820 A number of their works still in print 199 00:24:36.820 --> 00:24:40.820 and certainly many of their works in libraries 200 00:24:40.820 --> 00:24:44.820 Best known for their advocacy of free trade, they were the leaders of the 201 00:24:44.820 --> 00:24:48.820 free trade movement that led to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1847 202 00:24:48.820 --> 00:24:56.180 In 1947, these men held that unhampered freedom of commerce among nations is the surest road 203 00:24:56.180 --> 00:25:02.420 to an even higher goal than the material well-being of the people, world peace. 204 00:25:02.420 --> 00:25:08.540 You know, we're always attacked for being mean-minded, venal materialists. 205 00:25:08.540 --> 00:25:14.300 It's very clear that all businessmen as they were and interested in profits as they were, 206 00:25:14.300 --> 00:25:19.380 John Bright was proud of being a successful mill owner. 207 00:25:19.380 --> 00:25:28.380 Still, in supporting free trade, their higher aim was to bring about harmony and peace among the nations. 208 00:25:28.380 --> 00:25:29.740 What year was the war on? 209 00:25:29.740 --> 00:25:31.460 1846. 210 00:25:31.460 --> 00:25:36.620 The most fundamental reason for opposition to war and its concomitants, imperialism and militarism, 211 00:25:36.620 --> 00:25:42.140 was stated succinctly by John Bright, one of his speeches during the Crimean War. 212 00:25:42.140 --> 00:25:47.860 That was a watershed, the war in the Crimea, 1850-46. 213 00:25:47.860 --> 00:25:49.220 This is what Bright said. 214 00:25:49.220 --> 00:25:50.420 What is war? 215 00:25:50.420 --> 00:25:52.660 I believe that half the people that talk about war 216 00:25:52.660 --> 00:25:55.180 have not the slightest idea of what it is. 217 00:25:55.180 --> 00:25:57.460 In a short sentence, it may be summed up 218 00:25:57.460 --> 00:26:01.540 to be the combination and concentration of all 219 00:26:01.540 --> 00:26:04.900 the horrors, atrocities, crimes, and sufferings 220 00:26:04.900 --> 00:26:09.060 of which human nature on this globe is capable. 221 00:26:09.060 --> 00:26:15.620 So when you see some of the people nowadays, some of the writers nowadays talking so glibly 222 00:26:15.620 --> 00:26:25.620 about war, you should keep that in mind. They don't. And we're supposed to be, with our 223 00:26:25.620 --> 00:26:32.580 belief in laissez-faire and pure capitalism, we're supposed to be the heartless ones, where 224 00:26:32.580 --> 00:26:41.740 They don't really give a damn about, and I think even their remorse over the death of 225 00:26:41.740 --> 00:26:48.700 American mercenaries is pretty much half-hearted, and they certainly don't give a damn about 226 00:26:48.700 --> 00:26:54.780 the victims of American war waging. 227 00:26:54.780 --> 00:27:00.260 The Pentagon itself says, we don't keep those figures. 228 00:27:00.260 --> 00:27:12.220 To take the Iraqi war, the thousands of civilians, that even Associated Press counted as 3200-something, 229 00:27:12.220 --> 00:27:20.900 but you know, maybe you've seen that headline, but 3200 was only people who died in hospitals, 230 00:27:20.900 --> 00:27:27.140 not people who were buried under rubble or died on the road, only about half the hospitals 231 00:27:27.140 --> 00:27:37.780 in Iraq, although the largest ones, so it's very probable that some 5, 6, or maybe 10,000 232 00:27:37.780 --> 00:27:45.140 civilians died, that does not include the ones who were maimed, mutilated, like Kid 233 00:27:45.140 --> 00:27:53.140 Ali with his arms gone, so what we're talking about, he was a Quaker, he was not a pacifist 234 00:27:53.140 --> 00:28:10.140 But he was a Quaker, he was a human being, unlike the people who call themselves conservatives nowadays, who really could not care less, in fact sort of gloat about it, that we have the power to do that kind of thing. 235 00:28:10.140 --> 00:28:22.140 Someone who had that point of view, that it was fine to kill people just because we had the point of view, would have come under, I believe would have come under suspicion in the SS. 236 00:28:22.140 --> 00:28:27.640 as most likely a potentially dangerous sadist. We don't want those kind of people. 237 00:28:27.640 --> 00:28:32.140 We want people who are just disciplined and killed and kill when they're given the order 238 00:28:32.140 --> 00:28:36.640 and don't get any special kick out of it. Well, be that as it may. 239 00:28:36.640 --> 00:28:44.140 Let's go back to the Manchester School. They believe that the interest of the great majority in all countries was peace. 240 00:28:44.140 --> 00:28:51.640 And that both specific wars and long-term patterns of belligerency on the part of governments 241 00:28:51.640 --> 00:29:05.640 could be explained by and large by reference to the interests of particular groups within the governing circles, more or less of what Bright was fond of calling the tax-eating rather than the tax-paying classes. 242 00:29:05.640 --> 00:29:14.640 And this was the old liberal view that you could find in Kant and Condorcet and Paine and many others. 243 00:29:14.640 --> 00:29:22.140 that it was the classes associated with the old order, and largely in the industrialists also, 244 00:29:22.140 --> 00:29:26.140 the classes associated with the old order who fomented war, 245 00:29:26.140 --> 00:29:32.140 and the classes of the producers would tend to want to avoid war. 246 00:29:32.140 --> 00:29:38.140 In mid-19th century England, these tax-eating classes that favored war 247 00:29:38.140 --> 00:29:42.140 were in their view the aristocracy with its ramified sinecures 248 00:29:42.140 --> 00:30:02.140 in the Army, Navy, Foreign Office and Colonial Bureaucracy, The Established Church of England and, to a lesser degree, certain capitalist groups wishing to spread foreign trade with the backing of English military and political power, the opium wars against China, for instance. 249 00:30:02.140 --> 00:30:07.940 Besides pressing for free trade, which would tend to make war an increasingly self-defeating proposition, 250 00:30:07.940 --> 00:30:18.140 the Manchester Liberals considered it their duty to attack and expose the particular wars into which England was always drifting or threatening to drift. 251 00:30:18.140 --> 00:30:31.140 I'm concentrating on this Manchester score because they adumbrate many of the traits of future classical liberal writers down to libertarian writers today 252 00:30:31.140 --> 00:30:38.100 in their critique of war and the forces behind it. 253 00:30:38.100 --> 00:30:42.740 Cobden said it would seem as if there was some unseen power behind the government, 254 00:30:42.740 --> 00:30:49.060 conspiracy theory anyone, always able unless held in check by an agitation in the country 255 00:30:49.060 --> 00:30:55.460 to help itself to a portion of the national savings limited only by the taxable patience of the public. 256 00:30:55.460 --> 00:31:05.100 The two-volume political writings of Richard Cobden, which David Hart, whom I mentioned 257 00:31:05.100 --> 00:31:14.260 to you last time, of the Liberty Fund is going to put online, two big volumes of Cobden's 258 00:31:14.260 --> 00:31:19.140 different pamphlets and so on, all concern foreign policy and international relations. 259 00:31:19.140 --> 00:31:23.860 Naturally, Cobden made speeches and wrote on many, many different issues, but these 260 00:31:23.860 --> 00:31:30.400 These political writings are on this subject and, in my view, he was the greatest libertarian 261 00:31:30.400 --> 00:31:36.860 theorist of international relations who ever lived. 262 00:31:36.860 --> 00:31:45.700 In his first, very first pamphlet, he put on title page a quotation from George Washington's 263 00:31:45.700 --> 00:31:48.460 farewell address. 264 00:31:48.460 --> 00:31:53.260 Washington said, the great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in 265 00:31:53.260 --> 00:31:58.980 and extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection 266 00:31:58.980 --> 00:32:02.460 as possible. 267 00:32:02.460 --> 00:32:09.280 So no entanglements, not only entanglements, hardly any connection, if possible, with foreign 268 00:32:09.280 --> 00:32:14.120 governments and let our merchants go all over the world as in fact they did during 269 00:32:14.120 --> 00:32:21.620 our terrible isolationist period when America was like an ostrich with its head in the sand. 270 00:32:21.620 --> 00:32:36.880 Compton said these words of Washington are the primary cause of the prosperity and happiness 271 00:32:36.880 --> 00:32:39.520 of the American people. 272 00:32:39.520 --> 00:32:47.620 In his early years, before reality set in, he looked forward to the day when the test 273 00:32:47.620 --> 00:32:53.120 of no foreign politics would be applied to those who offered to become the representatives 274 00:32:53.120 --> 00:32:55.700 of free governments. 275 00:32:55.700 --> 00:32:58.980 No foreign politics just have nothing to do with them. 276 00:32:58.980 --> 00:33:06.680 Well, there was the Crimean War and the British public's wild support of it that changed his 277 00:33:06.680 --> 00:33:12.480 mind on that, as to whether that was a reasonable expectation. 278 00:33:12.480 --> 00:33:18.480 Bastiat went so far as to propose the unilateral disarmament of France. 279 00:33:18.480 --> 00:33:22.480 Who's going to come and invade us? 280 00:33:22.480 --> 00:33:27.480 Who's going to bother to send armies, garrison the country? 281 00:33:27.480 --> 00:33:35.480 We have a large population, we have a highly intelligent, disciplined, self-disciplined population. 282 00:33:35.480 --> 00:33:39.480 Why don't we set the example and simply get rid of our army? 283 00:33:42.480 --> 00:33:52.480 Now, whatever the concept, the concept that's sometimes used in this connection is, by Starings, is free trade imperialism. 284 00:33:52.480 --> 00:34:09.480 That is, being in favor of free trade and against protectionism, but using the government in order to force other countries to adopt free trade and to allow our capital imports and commodity imports. 285 00:34:09.480 --> 00:34:16.480 The American open door policy in China is a prime example of free trade imperialism. 286 00:34:16.480 --> 00:34:22.480 The American government and American business community at the time figured that we could out-compete any other country. 287 00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:30.480 So what we had to do was to make sure that China kept an open door, an equal open door to all foreign countries, 288 00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:35.480 and we could sell our goods there, out-competing the British, the Japanese, certainly, and others. 289 00:34:35.480 --> 00:34:50.480 and others. Now, in order to enforce this open door policy, the American government used diplomacy, economic sanctions against Japan at various times, finally the threat of war and war itself. 290 00:34:50.480 --> 00:35:01.480 It was the American policy towards China and the so-called open door policy that was the major stumbling block between the United States and Japan. 291 00:35:01.480 --> 00:35:06.040 So that is something you could call free trade imperialism. 292 00:35:06.040 --> 00:35:13.600 Well whatever you want to say about that, Cobden was no supporter of that at all. 293 00:35:13.600 --> 00:35:18.900 He declared, Affairs of trade, like matters of conscience, change their very nature if 294 00:35:18.900 --> 00:35:21.400 touched by the hand of violence. 295 00:35:21.400 --> 00:35:27.180 For as faith forced would no longer be religion but hypocrisy, so commerce becomes robbery 296 00:35:27.180 --> 00:35:32.180 if Coerced by Warlike Armaments. 297 00:35:32.180 --> 00:35:38.900 Also it's important to note and significant that the Manchester School, in the example 298 00:35:38.900 --> 00:35:45.540 for instance of the repeal of the Corn Laws, was in favor of unilateral free trade. 299 00:35:45.540 --> 00:35:50.260 That is, you don't enter into complicated agreements like the North America Free Trade 300 00:35:50.260 --> 00:35:58.380 Free Trade Agreement, how many pages is that? 1,700,000 pages or something of the so-called 301 00:35:58.380 --> 00:36:04.340 free trade agreement. What you do is simply abolish your tariffs. You don't get the impression 302 00:36:04.340 --> 00:36:10.620 that by abolishing your tariffs you're helping the other side. What you're doing is you're 303 00:36:10.620 --> 00:36:15.540 helping your own consumers, you're helping your own public to just do away with the tariffs 304 00:36:15.540 --> 00:36:20.420 and allow your own domestic consumers to buy things more cheaply. 305 00:36:20.420 --> 00:36:24.700 If the other side wants to punish its own people 306 00:36:24.700 --> 00:36:28.380 by keeping its tariffs, well that's up to them. 307 00:36:28.380 --> 00:36:34.580 Now, in respect to their foreign policy views, the Manchester men have been 308 00:36:34.580 --> 00:36:39.940 have been termed little Englanders. That's what the term 309 00:36:39.940 --> 00:36:45.020 refers to, little Englanders. Cobden's critique of English imperialism in the 310 00:36:45.020 --> 00:36:55.740 The Peace Party will never rouse the conscience of the people, so long as they allow them 311 00:36:55.740 --> 00:37:01.180 to indulge the comforting delusion that we have been a peace-loving people. We have been 312 00:37:01.180 --> 00:37:05.940 the most combative and aggressive community that has existed since the days of the Roman 313 00:37:05.940 --> 00:37:21.940 Since the Revolution of 1688, we have expended more than 1,500 million pounds of money upon wars, not one of which have been upon our own shores or in defense of our hearths and homes. 314 00:37:21.940 --> 00:37:29.940 We have manifested an insatiable love of territorial aggrandizement in the insolence of our might. 315 00:37:29.940 --> 00:37:42.580 And without waiting for the assaults of our envious enemies, we have sallied forth in search of conquest or rapine and carried bloodshed into every quarter of the globe. 316 00:37:42.580 --> 00:37:57.620 And Bright said, what do you think of a people that has never experienced an invasion since the year 1066 and yet lives in daily fear of a foreign invasion? 317 00:37:57.620 --> 00:38:03.620 Is this some kind of mass delusion? Well, he thought it was forced to, typically by the government. 318 00:38:03.620 --> 00:38:13.620 Now, by the way, from some statement like that, you might come to the conclusion that he was some kind of self-flagellating masochist or something. 319 00:38:13.620 --> 00:38:23.620 He wasn't. He was enormously healthy, very happy, happily married, and happy in his family life and his political career, and loved England. 320 00:38:23.620 --> 00:38:49.460 Cobden died in 1865, John Bright survived him by 24 years. 321 00:38:49.460 --> 00:38:55.040 The most notable foreign policy issue that arose in this period involving Bright was 322 00:38:55.040 --> 00:39:00.740 the Prime Minister William Gladstone's decision to occupy Egypt in 1882. 323 00:39:00.740 --> 00:39:06.820 It was a temporary occupation that lasted for 75 years. 324 00:39:06.820 --> 00:39:11.580 Bright as a member of the cabinet resigned in protest. 325 00:39:11.580 --> 00:39:17.700 At his advanced age, he could not make Egypt into a crusade as he had at the time of the 326 00:39:17.700 --> 00:39:25.020 Corn Laws or, as he tried to do in the Crimean War, in private Wright identified the City 327 00:39:25.020 --> 00:39:30.980 of London's financial interests as the chief force behind expansion into Egypt, since holders 328 00:39:30.980 --> 00:39:37.380 of Egyptian government bonds were fearful of the loss of their capital. 329 00:39:37.380 --> 00:39:43.260 So now we've moved away from the old feudal classes, the nobility, the established church, 330 00:39:43.260 --> 00:39:49.980 The State and its functionaries as the fermenters of imperialism and war. 331 00:39:49.980 --> 00:39:55.460 Now it's certain capitalist interests. 332 00:39:55.460 --> 00:40:01.220 He confided to his friend Goldwyn Smith, a famous historian of the time, 333 00:40:01.220 --> 00:40:04.660 It is a stock jobbers war. 334 00:40:04.660 --> 00:40:08.020 We shall very likely have more of the same thing. 335 00:40:08.020 --> 00:40:17.020 When one set of causes of war departs, another crops up in its place. 336 00:40:17.020 --> 00:40:20.020 An interesting view. 337 00:40:20.020 --> 00:40:26.020 We can contrast with the position of the Manchester School, the position of John Stuart Mill. 338 00:40:26.020 --> 00:40:36.020 Again, Mill was no principled opponent of foreign intervention. 339 00:40:36.020 --> 00:40:51.020 The example he took is, if any million bothered to think about it, a rather embarrassing example for him. 340 00:40:51.020 --> 00:41:01.020 What he said was this, if Europe was filled with nationalist movements that were trying to gain independence from empires, 341 00:41:01.020 --> 00:41:28.020 For instance, the Austrian Empire and, for instance, the Hungarians. He said if a national movement should rise up, attempting to gain its independence from some tyrannical government, then we let them fight it out because whether the nationalist movement can survive or not is a good test of whether it's mature enough to become independent. 342 00:41:28.020 --> 00:41:48.020 However, what happened in 1848, 1849 in Central Europe was this. The Hungarians were able to defeat the Habsburgs and maintain a certain independence for a while, but then the Habsburg Emperor called in the Russians to help him. 343 00:41:48.020 --> 00:41:58.020 The Russian army came across the passes of the Carpathian Mountains, as they did in 1956 to crush the revolution, and defeated the Hungarians. 344 00:41:58.020 --> 00:42:11.020 In that case, when a third party intervenes, England has the obligation to use all of its resources to support the nationalist independent movement. 345 00:42:11.020 --> 00:42:20.020 He said, those people who are in favor of non-intervention and little England and mind their own business are selfish. 346 00:42:20.020 --> 00:42:30.020 And it's embarrassing for the whole world to see that we English are so selfish, all we're interested in is our own national self-interest, our own survival. 347 00:42:30.020 --> 00:42:35.020 We should be altruistic about this. 348 00:42:35.020 --> 00:42:44.020 So, he would have favored, and as he did, he favored the Crimean War to punish the Russians. 349 00:42:44.020 --> 00:42:48.420 But now, when I said that millions would be embarrassed by his position, what I had in 350 00:42:48.420 --> 00:42:50.860 mind was this. 351 00:42:50.860 --> 00:42:55.980 The truth of the matter is, and the fact of the matter is, that yes, the Hungarians led 352 00:42:55.980 --> 00:43:11.580 by Louis Koschutt, one of their independents from the Habsburgs. And the way people judge 353 00:43:11.580 --> 00:43:18.000 superficially on these matters, Koschutt had will-wishers everywhere, Britain, the United 354 00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:26.640 States Everywhere. But in actuality, what Kossuth insisted on was Hungarian, that is, 355 00:43:26.640 --> 00:43:30.800 the ethnic group, not the territory, Hungary, which is something else, but the ethnic group 356 00:43:30.800 --> 00:43:36.680 of Hungarians, who call themselves Magyars, that they should control all of that part 357 00:43:36.680 --> 00:43:44.480 of the Austrian Empire and that they should lord it over the Slovaks, the Romanians, the 358 00:43:44.480 --> 00:43:56.160 The Serbs and other minority, Croats, I guess I mentioned, and other minority ethnic groups. 359 00:43:56.160 --> 00:43:57.160 You follow what I'm saying? 360 00:43:57.160 --> 00:44:02.360 So, in other words, what he wanted was a smaller version of what the Habsburgs wanted. 361 00:44:02.360 --> 00:44:07.200 The Habsburgs wanted to control and lord it over different ethnic groups, and he wanted 362 00:44:07.200 --> 00:44:12.580 his own people, the Hungarians and Magyars, to lord it over these various groups. 363 00:44:12.580 --> 00:44:13.760 That was his actual position. 364 00:44:13.760 --> 00:44:21.080 John Stuart Mill presumably was one of the best informed people in Europe. He was either 365 00:44:21.080 --> 00:44:26.040 not aware of this or didn't think it was particularly important, maybe thinking that the Hungarians 366 00:44:26.040 --> 00:44:31.360 were more advanced than these Slavic people and the Romanians and therefore maybe deserved 367 00:44:31.360 --> 00:44:38.520 to be in charge. But my point is that here we have somebody who was willing to involve 368 00:44:38.520 --> 00:44:48.620 England in a war with Russia in 1849 on the basis of lack of information, of not really 369 00:44:48.620 --> 00:44:50.440 understanding what was going on. 370 00:44:50.440 --> 00:44:53.440 And he actually was in favor, if he had been able to press a button he would have done 371 00:44:53.440 --> 00:44:54.440 it. 372 00:44:54.440 --> 00:45:00.560 Now the Crimean War came a few years after that, but even that there was no reason to 373 00:45:00.560 --> 00:45:01.560 have. 374 00:45:01.560 --> 00:45:12.360 This is the case very often in regard to war making, based on incorrect information or 375 00:45:12.360 --> 00:45:22.760 sometimes deceptive information, disinformation, in the case of the war over Kosovo in 1999. 376 00:45:22.760 --> 00:45:27.760 Nothing is clearer now than that what was involved was an insurrection on the part of 377 00:45:27.760 --> 00:45:35.080 The Kosovo Albanians against the rule of the Serbians, Kosovo being a province of Serbia. 378 00:45:35.080 --> 00:45:39.240 This insurrection, which had been going on for a while, was led by a group called the 379 00:45:39.240 --> 00:45:46.960 KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army, something like that, or whatever, UCK in their own language, 380 00:45:46.960 --> 00:45:51.240 which had been labeled a terrorist group by the United States State Department. 381 00:45:51.240 --> 00:46:01.240 Well, Milosevic, the leader of Yugoslavia, attacked the KLA rather severely. 382 00:46:01.240 --> 00:46:05.240 It was an insurrection. It was brutal and harsh about putting it down. 383 00:46:05.240 --> 00:46:10.240 But nonetheless, that was the situation, that was what was going on. 384 00:46:10.240 --> 00:46:20.240 It was nowhere, incidentally, nowhere as brutal as the United States government was in putting down the Vietnamese rebellion during the Vietnam War. 385 00:46:20.240 --> 00:46:36.240 The US government and the media began now a campaign that genocide was going on in Kosovo, 386 00:46:36.240 --> 00:46:39.240 that the Serbs were committing genocide. 387 00:46:39.240 --> 00:46:42.240 Maybe you're too young to remember. 388 00:46:42.240 --> 00:46:48.240 Maybe, like most Americans, you think it's ancient history anyway, so why bother? 389 00:46:48.240 --> 00:47:07.240 Christiane Amanpour should really be put on trial for war crimes or the way the US does it or the Israelis do it, just shot in the streets for having fomented this war. 390 00:47:07.240 --> 00:47:13.240 Those of us of a certain age followed it in detail. They talked about genocide. 391 00:47:13.240 --> 00:47:20.240 This is the worst example of ethnic cleansing in Europe since the Second World War. This is genocide. 392 00:47:20.240 --> 00:47:28.240 Elie Wiesel said it was genocide. It was comparable to the Holocaust. I heard with my own ears Senator Lieberman say this is genocide. 393 00:47:28.240 --> 00:47:39.240 Amenpour said that 100,000 Kosovo Albanians of military age are missing. Where are they? Where are they? 394 00:47:39.240 --> 00:47:55.240 The US and NATO troops have control of Kosovo, just as they have control of Iraq now. They go wherever they can, looking for bodies. Altogether, they found 2,100 people who were killed by the KLA. 395 00:47:55.240 --> 00:48:04.240 The US and NATO troops have control of Kosovo, just as they have control of Iraq now. They go wherever they can, looking for bodies. 396 00:48:04.240 --> 00:48:17.240 Looking for Bodies. Altogether, they found 2,100 unidentified dead. Unidentified, that is, it was not clear whether they were Albanians or Serbs. 397 00:48:17.240 --> 00:48:24.240 Not clear if they were Albanians, whether they had been fighters and died in some firefight. 398 00:48:24.240 --> 00:48:36.240 This was a disinformation on the basis of this alleged genocide was a disinformation spread by the U.S. government, by NATO, other NATO governments, by the western media. 399 00:48:36.240 --> 00:48:43.240 This was a disinformation that stampeded the American public into supporting this war in Kosovo. 400 00:48:43.240 --> 00:48:48.240 It's the sort of thing that you can find on the Internet. Thank God for the Internet. 401 00:48:48.240 --> 00:48:57.240 And a belated thank you to Vice President Gore for having invented the Internet. 402 00:48:57.240 --> 00:49:02.240 And where is he now that we need him? 403 00:49:02.240 --> 00:49:08.240 Now, to continue with the liberal anti-war tradition. 404 00:49:08.240 --> 00:49:20.240 This is what I mentioned the other day from Sydney Smith. 405 00:49:20.240 --> 00:49:26.240 Remember I mentioned that Sydney Smith studied under Dougal Stuart who was a disciple of Adam Smith 406 00:49:26.240 --> 00:49:31.240 and in this way imbibed his liberal ideas in the early 19th century. 407 00:49:31.240 --> 00:49:35.640 In 1923, he wrote to a friend, 408 00:49:35.640 --> 00:49:38.640 For God's sake, do not drag me into another war. 409 00:49:38.640 --> 00:49:42.640 I'm worn down and worn out for crusading and defending Europe, 410 00:49:42.640 --> 00:49:46.140 protecting mankind. I must think a little of myself. 411 00:49:46.140 --> 00:49:49.840 I'm sorry for the Spaniards. I'm sorry for the Greeks. 412 00:49:49.840 --> 00:49:54.740 The people of the Sandwich Islands are groaning under the most detestable tyranny. 413 00:49:54.740 --> 00:49:58.840 Baghdad is oppressed. I do not like the present state of the Delta. 414 00:49:58.840 --> 00:50:12.840 Tibet is not comfortable. Am I to fight for all these people? The world is bursting with sin and sorrow. Am I to be the champion of the decalogue and be eternally raising fleets and armies to make all men good and happy? 415 00:50:12.840 --> 00:50:21.840 There was a liberal who thought not. There were different views afterwards. 416 00:50:21.840 --> 00:50:33.840 Now in the United States, classical liberals were first mobilized against imperialism at the time of the Spanish-American War and the following war against the Philippine Insurrection. 417 00:50:33.840 --> 00:50:49.840 You know, it's always called the Philippine Insurrection, although by what right the United States acquired the Philippines as a colony and became the legitimate power against which these Filipinos were now engaged in insurrection is unclear. 418 00:50:49.840 --> 00:50:59.840 The Anti-Imperious Lee was led by Edward Atkinson, E. L. Gatkin, of The Nation, at the time the flagship of the classical liberal publications, 419 00:50:59.840 --> 00:51:07.840 Carl Schurz, Men Who Were American Versions of the Little Englanders. 420 00:51:07.840 --> 00:51:36.840 You can find, I'm sure, somewhere on the internet, although I have my own hard copies of it, from books, a very famous essay by a man I just mentioned a little while ago, William Graham Sumner, titled, The Conquest of the United States by Spain. 421 00:51:36.840 --> 00:51:47.040 Sumner was a professor of sociology at Yale, the leading classical liberal of his time, 422 00:51:47.040 --> 00:51:54.700 defender of the gold standard, free trade against coercive unionism, against spending 423 00:51:54.700 --> 00:51:59.480 the author of the famous book, the famous essay, The Forgotten Man. 424 00:51:59.480 --> 00:52:07.080 The Forgotten Man really would be an example of the productive individual who becomes a 425 00:52:07.080 --> 00:52:10.580 prey of the predators. 426 00:52:10.580 --> 00:52:17.600 And interestingly enough, this was whatever, 1880s, he said the Forgotten Man is a person 427 00:52:17.600 --> 00:52:23.440 who does what he's supposed to do, is where he's supposed to be, contributes to society, 428 00:52:23.440 --> 00:52:33.520 and then becomes the victim of the do-gooder who takes from him to give to the underprivileged. 429 00:52:33.520 --> 00:52:41.520 He says, the forgotten man, by the way, is very often a woman, maybe a widow or a single 430 00:52:41.520 --> 00:52:48.260 woman who does what she's supposed to do, works hard, is frugal, doesn't ask anything 431 00:52:48.260 --> 00:52:54.260 from Anyone Else and Yet Becomes a Victim of Government Coercive Charity. 432 00:52:54.260 --> 00:52:56.260 Well, this is just one example. 433 00:52:56.260 --> 00:53:04.260 Sumner did a lot of polemical writings of this kind, besides his work in sociology, which he was very famous for. 434 00:53:04.260 --> 00:53:10.260 Now, in this essay, a speech first of all it was, The Conquest of the United States by Spain, 435 00:53:10.260 --> 00:53:25.260 Sumner startles people by the title itself. The United States had just smashed Spain the way we just smashed Iraq. 436 00:53:25.260 --> 00:53:36.260 But he says, yes, militarily speaking, the United States was victorious, but in fact, Spain was victorious in the field of ideas. 437 00:53:36.260 --> 00:53:45.260 Because what is happening is that the United States is going down the road that the Spaniards pioneered, the road of empire. 438 00:53:45.260 --> 00:53:57.260 And in this way, turning its back on its own nature, on the philosophy that had been the signature of the American people, 439 00:53:57.260 --> 00:54:05.260 the philosophy of the founding fathers, and opting for the grandeur of empire. 440 00:54:05.260 --> 00:54:16.660 And the Spaniards did achieve greatness through their empire, great conquests, great wars, great victories. 441 00:54:16.660 --> 00:54:28.260 But in the nature of things that had a price, and the price was constant war, large standing armies, 442 00:54:28.260 --> 00:54:35.220 heavy taxation, inflation, debt, crushing taxes 443 00:54:35.220 --> 00:54:40.300 remember I quoted from the Spanish late scholastics in an earlier lecture 444 00:54:40.300 --> 00:54:48.420 about how the level of taxation was destroying the substratum of the villages and towns of Castile 445 00:54:48.420 --> 00:54:54.580 and this way of empire brought Spain to where it is today 446 00:54:54.580 --> 00:55:00.340 for Spain to become the hollow shell of a country that we could so easily crush. 447 00:55:00.340 --> 00:55:08.060 But we're on that road now and we have to expect, because nature is, he was a Darwinian 448 00:55:08.060 --> 00:55:14.260 and a follower of Spencer, nature is not forgiving. 449 00:55:14.260 --> 00:55:23.220 You do A and that causes B and all your wishes, all your tears aren't going to make any difference. 450 00:55:23.220 --> 00:55:31.820 So, he warned about this and he said, really what I would say myself, he said, we seem 451 00:55:31.820 --> 00:55:34.020 to have decided on this road to empire. 452 00:55:34.020 --> 00:55:38.300 By the way, it was a cabal, Joe Stromberg can give you the details and has written in detail 453 00:55:38.300 --> 00:55:39.300 about it. 454 00:55:39.300 --> 00:55:42.660 It was a small cabal of people who decided on the war. 455 00:55:42.660 --> 00:55:47.980 He said the American people have been convinced, decided on the war, undertaken this road to 456 00:55:47.980 --> 00:55:55.460 Empire and in this way put an end to the old republic. 457 00:55:55.460 --> 00:56:01.020 I don't think that my own little talk here, as he said, or my own little essay is going 458 00:56:01.020 --> 00:56:03.020 to make any difference. 459 00:56:03.020 --> 00:56:04.020 So why am I doing it? 460 00:56:04.020 --> 00:56:10.540 Why I'm doing it is because it really was quite an idea at the beginning, it really was 461 00:56:10.540 --> 00:56:18.220 has quite a vision that the government would only take care of the guaranteeing of the 462 00:56:18.220 --> 00:56:22.500 rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of the people and everything else 463 00:56:22.500 --> 00:56:29.420 would be left to civil society, to the voluntary interaction of people. 464 00:56:29.420 --> 00:56:39.100 And Sumner says it is worth maybe paying a final tribute to it as it's about to vanish 465 00:56:39.100 --> 00:56:44.100 into History, and that's why I'm writing, that's why I'm saying what I'm saying. 466 00:56:44.100 --> 00:57:03.100 Now, it turns out, we could get into an interesting discussion on that, that there were some classical liberals 467 00:57:03.100 --> 00:57:17.100 who thought that war could be useful and people have a much better claim to be classical liberals 468 00:57:17.100 --> 00:57:28.140 than John Stuart Mill does. Before I get into that, let me mention another late 19th century, 469 00:57:28.140 --> 00:57:58.140 Herbert Spencer, The Struggle for Existence, The Survival of the Fittest 470 00:57:58.140 --> 00:58:28.140 was a central view of his but what Spencer believed was that warfare was suitable only to mankind's primitive stage the Western world however had long since left the stage of militancy and entered the stage of industrialism he uses the phrase industrial industrialism also war in the contemporary world was retrograde and destructive of all higher value 471 00:58:28.140 --> 00:58:41.140 Early in his career, back in 1848, Spencer maintained, as the Manchester School did, that wars were caused by the uncurbed ambition of the aristocracy. 472 00:58:41.140 --> 00:58:54.140 Much as Schumpeter afterwards was to say in a famous essay of his on imperialism, he argued that war was linked to the feudal spirit. 473 00:58:54.140 --> 00:59:10.140 He also argued against state-sponsored overseas colonization as burdensome to the domestic taxpayers and oppressive of the native inhabitants, that is, of the areas overseas where these British colonists were being resettled. 474 00:59:10.140 --> 00:59:16.140 Colonists had no right to be protected by the government of the society they abandoned. 475 00:59:16.140 --> 00:59:26.140 Spencer found none of England's recent wars, including the Opium War, then being waged in 1843 against China to be necessary. 476 00:59:26.140 --> 00:59:38.140 At this earlier, more anarchistic period of his career, he even suggested the defense of the country against invasion might be provided independently of the state. 477 00:59:38.140 --> 00:59:44.140 In social statics, Spencer has a famous chapter on the right to ignore the state. 478 00:59:44.140 --> 00:59:59.980 To the following decade Spencer opposed the wars, mainly colonial wars, in which England 479 00:59:59.980 --> 01:00:08.180 was involved. At the end of his life, by 1903, he was outraged by the Boer War, the British 480 01:00:08.180 --> 01:00:13.520 attack on the Dutch farmers of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The pretext for 481 01:00:13.520 --> 01:00:18.560 For Hostilities was the refusal of the Transvaal government to extend voting rights to the 482 01:00:18.560 --> 01:00:24.000 outlanders who were mainly British immigrants who flocked to the little state to exploit 483 01:00:24.000 --> 01:00:26.040 the gold mines discovered there. 484 01:00:26.040 --> 01:00:31.120 In other words, in the mind of the British government, they were waging war against the 485 01:00:31.120 --> 01:00:36.680 Boers for the sake of bringing them democracy. 486 01:00:36.680 --> 01:00:42.520 In an essay titled Patriotism, Patriotism, sort of ironically, Spencer confesses that 487 01:00:42.520 --> 01:00:49.660 But he had cherished a love of England because of its long history of fostering free institutions. 488 01:00:49.660 --> 01:00:55.180 But his love of country could not survive the desolating war against the Boers, concocted 489 01:00:55.180 --> 01:01:03.420 by the arch-conspirators like Cecil Rhodes, and again with the frenzied support of the 490 01:01:03.420 --> 01:01:08.700 English public, as they had supported also the Crimean War. 491 01:01:08.700 --> 01:01:16.620 And Spencer said, if I am called unpatriotic, well, I am content to be so called. 492 01:01:16.620 --> 01:01:20.180 Spencer had evidently grown so embittered that he openly stated his indifference to 493 01:01:20.180 --> 01:01:25.780 the death of British soldiers engaged in imperialist adventures. 494 01:01:25.780 --> 01:01:31.020 At the time he wrote this, by the way, it happened to be in Afghanistan. 495 01:01:31.020 --> 01:01:37.540 Herbert Spencer said, when men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing 496 01:01:37.540 --> 01:01:45.160 Talking about the justice of their cause, I don't care if they are shot themselves. 497 01:01:45.160 --> 01:01:51.660 To the objection that his position amounted to a suicidal pacifism, Spencer replied, No, 498 01:01:51.660 --> 01:01:53.740 not at all. 499 01:01:53.740 --> 01:02:02.100 For one war an army would remain just as available for as now is a war of national defense. 500 01:02:02.100 --> 01:02:06.440 In such a war, every soldier would be conscious of the justice of his cause. 501 01:02:06.440 --> 01:02:23.440 He would not be engaged in dealing death among men, about whose doings, good or ill, he knew nothing, but among men who were manifest aggressors against himself and his compatriots. Only aggressive war would be negative, not defensive war. 502 01:02:36.440 --> 01:02:43.440 And now, I want to talk about some of these, because this brings up an interesting theoretical point, 503 01:02:43.440 --> 01:02:54.440 some of these liberals who have favored war under certain conditions. 504 01:02:54.440 --> 01:03:00.440 And they go back to the 18th century. 505 01:03:00.440 --> 01:03:05.440 Among writers, we could mention Wilhelm von Humboldt, even in Limits of State Action, 506 01:03:05.440 --> 01:03:09.240 of State Action, he says that there's some good that could be said for war, not that 507 01:03:09.240 --> 01:03:14.640 he actually supports war, but war did develop certain elements of the personality which 508 01:03:14.640 --> 01:03:22.000 tended to be stunted by modern society. That's a kind of minor concession. Much more important 509 01:03:22.000 --> 01:03:30.000 is what Alexis de Tocqueville says about war and imperialism. And that's a major reason 510 01:03:30.000 --> 01:03:36.680 I do not consider Tocqueville to be a hardcore, authentic, classical liberal. 511 01:03:36.680 --> 01:03:41.680 Another reason is that he didn't care very much about economics, didn't know very much 512 01:03:41.680 --> 01:03:44.540 about economics. 513 01:03:44.540 --> 01:03:50.720 His views had to do with politics, there he made some very important points about the 514 01:03:50.720 --> 01:03:58.520 dangers of centralization of power and so on, but he was not any supporter of the factory 515 01:03:58.520 --> 01:04:01.520 System and the Industrial Revolution. 516 01:04:01.520 --> 01:04:06.120 As an aristocrat who lived off the rents of his land, I guess he saw no particular reason 517 01:04:06.120 --> 01:04:14.040 to have factories and industrialization, so that on that basis he's more of a middle-of-the-road 518 01:04:14.040 --> 01:04:19.040 or more of a wig, I would say, than a real, authentic liberal, and especially on the question 519 01:04:19.040 --> 01:04:21.320 of war and imperialism. 520 01:04:21.320 --> 01:04:31.480 He favored the creation of a new French colony in Algeria that had started in 1829. 521 01:04:31.480 --> 01:04:49.440 He supported the British in India, he thought it was a magnificent occasion for advancing 522 01:04:49.440 --> 01:05:03.440 and Civilization, and here we have a more significant, theoretically interesting case 523 01:05:03.440 --> 01:05:13.280 going back to the 18th century, late 18th century. 524 01:05:13.280 --> 01:05:20.280 In the course of the French Revolution, France comes to wage war against almost all the rest 525 01:05:20.280 --> 01:05:24.120 of Europe. 526 01:05:24.120 --> 01:05:33.840 The group at this time in the French Revolutionary complex that is considered liberal in the 527 01:05:33.840 --> 01:05:42.680 sense of favoring a free society, free enterprise and so on, are the Girondins. 528 01:05:42.680 --> 01:05:51.200 And their close ally, Condorcet, who has a real claim to be an important classical liberal 529 01:05:51.200 --> 01:05:56.840 thinker, the main disciple of Turgeau. 530 01:05:56.840 --> 01:06:07.520 Now at first the Girondins and Condorcet had the position that the French Revolution, which 531 01:06:07.520 --> 01:06:14.480 They Thought Expanded Freedom was threatened by the reactionary powers of Europe. 532 01:06:14.480 --> 01:06:23.480 However, when the French Revolutionary armies began to throw back the invading armies of 533 01:06:23.480 --> 01:06:29.760 the Prussians and the Austrians, the Girondins and the Incandesce came to the conclusion 534 01:06:29.760 --> 01:06:41.440 that with the new freedom-loving principles of the French Revolution to lead them forward, 535 01:06:41.440 --> 01:06:48.120 the French Revolutionary Army should now undertake the liberation of Europe. 536 01:06:48.120 --> 01:06:54.160 Not simply defend France and its revolution against attacks, but now bring the blessings 537 01:06:54.160 --> 01:06:59.440 of the French Revolution, of the new liberal order, to everyone else. 538 01:06:59.440 --> 01:07:05.840 So what you have here is a, you can say your first example in a way of another strain, 539 01:07:05.840 --> 01:07:10.200 I don't think it's really the major strain and I don't think it's the most authentic 540 01:07:10.200 --> 01:07:18.240 strain of classical liberalism, that is the idea that you have now a free country that 541 01:07:18.240 --> 01:07:27.560 is also a powerful country and it should use its power to spread freedom everywhere. 542 01:07:27.560 --> 01:07:38.640 This position was accepted also by a man who was in Paris at the time, a friend of Condorcet, 543 01:07:38.640 --> 01:07:41.160 Thomas Paine. 544 01:07:41.160 --> 01:07:49.800 You know, Paine's work in the American Revolution, and Paine associated himself with the Girondins. 545 01:07:49.800 --> 01:07:55.280 In fact, Jacobins arrested Paine, and if the reign of terror had continued, they probably 546 01:07:55.280 --> 01:08:15.280 And as the French Revolutionary Armies, as they said, liberated Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, the left bank of the Rhine River, and then Northern Italy and so on, 547 01:08:15.280 --> 01:08:25.280 and so on. Payne became very enthusiastic and said that this is the beginning now of the Federation of Free States and supported the Revolutionary Armies. 548 01:08:25.280 --> 01:08:39.280 Now, this was also the position that, as I said, you can draw a line from there to certain liberals, not very good liberals, but people who were considered liberals like Palmerston in England in the 19th century. 549 01:08:39.280 --> 01:08:59.280 and then this becomes Wilsonianism, the Wilsonian doctrine that we have a duty, not only a duty and therefore a right, as a powerful and free country to use our power to support and extend our values to the unfree world. 550 01:08:59.280 --> 01:09:24.280 And this, as you know, is an argument which is used nowadays, and is in a very sharp contrast to the authentic liberal position of non-intervention, for which I'll give some theoretical, analytical reasons probably in my next lecture. 551 01:09:24.280 --> 01:09:46.280 Okay, so what we want to do now is entertain some questions and comments about everything I've said about class conflict this morning and now, and also about liberalism and this question which is obviously becoming increasingly important of war and peace. 552 01:09:46.280 --> 01:09:59.280 Like in 1848, there was a conservative spirit in Europe with Madernich. How did the liberals react to him? 553 01:10:16.280 --> 01:10:26.280 and then at the Congress of Vienna, ending the Napoleonic War in 1814-1815, he was a major presiding figure there. 554 01:10:26.280 --> 01:10:32.280 Menenex was of course a conservative and you could say reactionary. 555 01:10:32.280 --> 01:10:40.280 He had a position which is more interesting than it's usually made out to be in the textbooks, and that was this. 556 01:10:40.280 --> 01:10:47.280 The great majority of the people want peace. They want peace and quiet. 557 01:10:47.280 --> 01:10:55.280 There's a small minority of people, liberals in the cities, members of the middle class, 558 01:10:55.280 --> 01:11:01.280 who have big influence because of their links to the press and in education and so on, 559 01:11:01.280 --> 01:11:05.280 a small group of people who want to keep agitating society. 560 01:11:05.280 --> 01:11:07.280 They want to bring in all these reforms. 561 01:11:07.280 --> 01:11:19.280 The great majority of people have no interest in that, so that a government that suppresses liberals and the demand for reform is acting really in the interests of the majority. 562 01:11:19.280 --> 01:11:30.280 So how do we keep peace? Well, how do we keep peace is by accommodating all the interests, the interests of the kings, of the emperors, of the princes, 563 01:11:30.280 --> 01:11:46.280 to a degree the interest of the aristocracy, the interest of important elements of the third estate, but none of these blanket demands for individual rights, because that ends in endless revolution. 564 01:11:46.280 --> 01:11:54.280 So, well, you can see that on the face of it, the liberals considered him an enemy as he was, a self-declared enemy of liberalism. 565 01:11:54.280 --> 01:12:05.280 He used the secret police, censorship, sent spies into universities to make sure that the students weren't hearing things that they shouldn't, 566 01:12:05.280 --> 01:12:15.040 and try to keep the lid on liberalism and also, since he was the Austrian minister, 567 01:12:15.040 --> 01:12:22.720 on nationalism because nationalism would have meant the death of Austria as it finally did, 568 01:12:22.720 --> 01:12:24.920 the death of Austria. 569 01:12:24.920 --> 01:12:32.440 In 1848, when everything finally exploded, the Habsburgs thought that they could buy 570 01:12:32.440 --> 01:12:35.560 by some public support by throwing him to the wolves. 571 01:12:35.560 --> 01:12:38.880 So they dismissed him and didn't make any difference. 572 01:12:38.880 --> 01:12:41.480 People wanted, or the activists, at least, 573 01:12:41.480 --> 01:12:43.320 wanted more than that. 574 01:12:43.320 --> 01:12:48.560 Like everybody else in 1848, like Mazzini and Garibaldi, 575 01:12:48.560 --> 01:12:54.000 Koshut, Karl Marx, Metternich wound up in London. 576 01:12:54.000 --> 01:12:56.880 And I guess they could have gotten together 577 01:12:56.880 --> 01:12:59.000 and told some good stories to each other. 578 01:12:59.000 --> 01:13:01.000 But of course, they hated each other. 579 01:13:01.000 --> 01:13:04.000 Guizot also in France, wound up in London.